Comments on Sacrifice

The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.

Pardon me while I squee like mad for a moment....Ok, better, somewhat coherant again. As you know, I really LOVE unique, and unexpected, perspectives of the Akllabth events. This was just the ticket!

I loved how you used a surgeon in this manner, how he studied those destined to die in the temple. Love the medically accurate details, as always. I loved your conversatin beteen Sauron and Nemir. Awesomeness! And your account of Nmir and his wife escapin back to Middl earth is heartwrenching, but believable. I loved how youshowed the perspective of a neutral, who just wanted to learn and expand hi knowledge, an how Sauron manipulated that, and how the Faithful loathed Nemir for it.....Just.....Wow. Thi is so powerful on so many levels, I'm actually flabberghasted and in awe of this.

Really really great job. I'm favoriting this. I'm dreafully behind on reading AinA stories, but I really thought I would cheat a bi and read this. Loved it! "hugs"



Thanks very much, Roisin - I'd sort of alluded to this notion in 'Survivors of the Downfall' (which is going to need a bit of revision once MEFAs are over), that at least some of the surgeons in Numenor were using some of the Faithful as anatomic specimens. I think that in my 'verse, it also helps explain why 3000 years later, there's still revulsion and suspicion when the surgeons in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith want to dissect cadavers to learn anatomy.

Thanks again!

I enjoyed this!  The storytelling is delightfully precise, and the triumph of scientific curiosity over, er, well perhaps some  rather slight qualms, is very plausible.  So is the use of victims for scientific research. (I have a vague feeling that the public dissection of executed criminals and possibly even more private vivisections went on back in the day in Alexandria, but I can't remember any details.)  The ending is a powerful paradox, past and present conflicting as so often happens.  Thank you!



Thanks very much! Yep, Herophilus and Erasistratus, the founders of the great medical school in Alexandria, had permission to vivisect condemned criminals. That's apparently one of the reasons that a lot of physicians of that era wanted to study in Alexandria - they knew they'd be able to study things in Alexandria that they wouldn't be able to study anywhere else in the world.

Thanks again, I'm glad you enjoyed this!

This is a darkly layered story that hits home personally -- not so much because I have been a vivisectionist of humans, but as a thrall to one of the three most reviled industries in the US, I have engaged in some research activities that some would find reprehensible although arguments for such research are strong. So I feel for Nemir. Gaining knowledge is not always pretty and pure.  It can involve moral compromise, and scientists tread a fine ethical line so much of the time. Sacrifice really captures that dilemma. And likewise, you capture Sauron's cold, efficient pragmaticism.

Well done, lad. ;^)

I've never vivisected humans, but I have dissected them: as part of gross anatomy lab as a student and as an assistant on a couple of autopsies where I really wanted to see certain things for myself (sudden post-op deaths).

Actually, as I'm considering that statement, it's not entirely true - I cut into living people as part of my daily work. ;)

Gaining any sort of medical knowledge is often ugly - all one has to do is pick up the Journal of Trauma and read the experimental descriptions to realize that. I once knew someone who was studying resuscitation fluids for trauma using head-injured rats with hemorrhagic shock as an experimental model, and she managed to disgust a table full of surgeons by describing how she managed to give each rat the exact same head injury. She didn't prove what she was hoping to prove - but she still got some extremely useful information.

I'll stop babbling now and just say thank you. :D

*shudders* What gets me the most about this story is that his actions are logical. Very powerful and it brings up a ton of ethics questions.

I love the conversation with Sauron. The part where he says Melkor exists made me laugh.

The last two lines are my favorites in the story. Light and dark, with the dark ever in mind.

Thought-provoking and very well done.

My profession is full of lots of sticky ethics questions, which makes it interesting.

And if it's any consolation, I made myself shudder writing this - at least partly because I can't really say with certainty that I wouldn't have done the same thing.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting!

Another fascinating, if uncomfortable look at the events of the Akallabêth from an unusual POV! The idea that people from the colonies would seek to study in Númenor is great. And Nemir's decision, horrifying though it is, doesn't lack a certain logic. If these people are going to die anyway, why not use the chance to find out a bit more about how the human body works? *shudders* I think that's part of the effect of this story: To think that even reasonably good people might, for all kinds of reasons, participate in something horrible. (Ah, one of the recurring themes of human history...)

Thank you for sharing!

 



An interesting study in corruption; Nemir doesn't have much wiggle room even if he did not want to vivisect humans; but it is obvious that his thirst for knowledge overwhelmed any reverence he might have had for human life - and Sauron took full advantage of it, as he took advantage of Pharazon's greed. 

If the Faithful sea-captain believed that all healers from Armenelos were involved in the torture of other Faithful individuals, I can't blame him for being hostile to Nemir.  I would say that the only difference between Nemir and Dr. Mengele is that Nemir finally heeded his conscience and voluntarily abandoned the practice of vivisecting humans.  (as far as I know, Dr. Mengele either didn't have a conscience or didn't pay any attention to it)

A quite compelling story.



I really liked this story, and I know it is probably creepy that I use that word, but I thought it was such an interesting, intriguing, multi-layered portrait, and it completely grabbed me from the start. The first person voice works really well for the kind of narrative, and Nemir is very compelling in his story-telling. But, I really appreciate that it is not only Nemir that we get to know, but society in general, and even the Faithful captain that denies Nemir's wife the care she needs is nuanced and not quite as Faithful as he wants to believe himself. It was also awesome to see Sauron and his grasp on human nature (and I like to think that a lot of his power comes, precisely, from this uncanny ability to pay attention and read people. It's amazing to see that in action!).

Great job! I have really enjoyed reading your take on all these events. Thanks for sharing your talent :-)



Thanks very much, Fireworks!

I grew up in Texas, and realized at a fairly young age that there are multple sides to all sorts of stories - what our history teachers said about the US Civil War was quite different from what was in the history books, and my native Mexican Spanish teachers had very different ideas about the Mexican-American War of the 1840s than my native Texan history teachers did. I think it's because of that background that I like exploring what the other side of the story might be - whether Ar-Pharazon might've actually been a decent person, whether everyone involved with the sacrifices really believed in what they were doing, whether the Faithful were really as saintly as some stories make them out to be, etc.

I'm really glad you enjoyed this!

This was chillingly great. The uncomfortable thing about it is perhaps that Nemir is such an utterly normal person. No a hero, alright, but hardly a villian, and not stupid enough to make his decisions seem like simple mistakes. 



Raksha the Demon here compared Nemir to Mengele. It strikes the little historian in me as somewhat inaccurate. Mengele's so-called "research" had little if any scientific value; as recounted by the Auschwitz survivor Alex Dekel, he was doing it "for the evulz", being not sane enough to derive valuable data from what he did. Nemir is more like Shiro Ishii, the leader of Imperial Japanese Unit 731, whose research was just as inhumane but in fact useful for science and was motivated by real need of information rather than homicidal wackiness.