[Herenya]

So after spending some of my free time over the past couple of days immersing myself into reflections on the plot of that prequel story, I'm now starting to wonder if it would be better for the world if it remained untold? The point is that it reminds me more and more of the Professor's trilogy in terms of plot, except that it's already clear now that my story lacks some of the appealing qualities that the latter arguably has, mostly the main character's constrained optimism and belief in getting better.

A company of heroes consisting of a wizard (Gandalf,) an Arnorian half-elf, two Arnorian Dúnedain and two hobbits gathers and sets off on a long and dangerous journey in the hope of being able to find the One Ring in the wetlands of the Gladden Fields, and then take it to Mordor in order to try to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom. Only that, in their opinion, can save their kingdom of Artedain from impending doom and it has to be done before Angmar has gathered enough forces to start a new devastating war with Artedain.

But their mission is complicated by the fact that Mount Doom was dormant at the time (that is, its caldera was frozen,) as well as by other confusing circumstances. Further events are not developing in the most favorable way for their mission and for the main character himself, as a result of which the protagonist is forced to suffer first from serious anxiety, and then from depression and extreme guilt for the entire second and third parts of the story.

Since at some point it was actually his personal responsibility to decide what the future of Middle-earth would be, and he made this decision alone, on his own, hence for almost the entire remaining two-thirds of the story he is forced to suffer from post-traumatic syndrome and doubts whether the choice he made was the right one. Alongside their ineffectual long journey, events develop in such an unfavorable way that finally it turns out that both the company and the main character personally achieve nothing in terms of their initial task.

The story also features a number of secondary characters, some of whom initiate the main character into secret lore about the structure and history of that "flavour" of Middle-earth in which the events of this story take place. Perhaps some details of the main character's conversations with those supporting characters might seem slightly interesting to someone else. Despite that, I have doubts that the possible readers of my story would be happy to spend so much of their valuable time examining the story that seems so unbearably depressing even to me, differing in this from The Lord of the Rings so strikingly. Perhaps the bitterness of that story could only ruin the mood of its readers for the day, and it would also conceal some of the positive qualities that the story arguably possesses.

Thus I should first try to do something to improve the plot of that story to make it more optimistic and hopeful, and make the bitterness of that story more moderate. I really hope that I will be able to amend the plot in this way somehow, since I have already given much thought to that story, and I've also become too attached to some of the secondary characters. Otherwise, I could only humbly recommend watching some old anime from the mid-90s instead, as I believe that the plots of many of those anime may be more promising than my story's.