A couple of people soon turned into a couple hundred, then a couple thousandand many loved the Mellon Chronicles so much that they wanted to write stories for it as well. At its peak around 2004, the Mellon Chronicles had an active Yahoo Groups list large enough that it was mentioned as one of the biggest fan communities in a book about Tolkien scholarship; fan-made audiobook readings, Photoshopped story art, and YouTube videos; their own fanfiction awards; and a fanlisting. Trailer For Marvel's SECRET INVASION - The Great Nick Fury is Back For "One Last Fight", Gaming Hardware News Round-Up April 2023 Part 2, Trailer For The Absurd and Cheesy 1988 Sci-Fi Horror Film THE BRAIN, Frank Herbert's DUNE Imagined in The Style of ALIEN Designer H.R. 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They'd been hunting a rouge band of orcs, left over from the great war. Aragorn-legolas.5u.com stayed up for years, becoming a sort of digital ghost town, the Photoshopped story banners getting more and more dateduntil the website abruptly vanished when the credit card that Sio had set up with auto-pay was stolen. Eleanore was 12 when she started reading the Mellon Chronicles in 2002, and when the Hobbit movies came out a few years ago, she wanted to reread them, but found the original site gone. Now, Polychron is claiming that the show infringes on his copyright, and has even provided tables highlighting moments in his book that he believes are similar to moments in the TV show. The story of the Mellon Chronicles begins in another fandom. "I was totally in awe of her, which we still laugh about now. Cassia and Sio wrote collaboratively, coming up with ideas and outlines in "a flurry of emails back and forth," and then each writer would choose sections to work on. That's rightthis 1.2 million word epic is a Lord of the Rings fanfiction series. We talk all the time. People are nuts. "One Christmas there was something like 13 different countries we sent Christmas gifts to," Sio says. "It was a wonderful and humbling feeling to see it take on a life of its own like that.". It's called the Mellon Chronicles. He only grinned. "We decided to let it go, thinking we'd only get like a couple of people actually reading," Sio said. Sio now runs the office of the place she worked while writing the Mellon Chronicles, and Cassia also credits the Mellon Chronicles for her current job, saying, "some of the peripheral things associated with running the list and website back then actually helped me discover what career path I wanted. Both say they lurk in fandomsand both look back on their Mellon Chronicle days with fondness. "We decided to let it go because it had been so long since we'd done anything to it we really didn't think people were reading the stories anymore," Sio said. All rights reserved. "Friendship with her was the best thing that came out of the MC.". Even then, we had no idea how long the series would become. Now, she gets comments from readers both old and new. He'd be out with Gimli and a few of Aragorn's men. /// Copyright / DMCA Notice Inspiration held for three years, from 2002 until 2005. When I was 12 years old, I became obsessed with an epic literary series. Recently, I found Cassia and Sio's old AOL and Hotmail email addresses linked on a late '90s fanfiction website, valarguild.org, and found that one still workedSio's. Copyright 2008-2021, GeekTyrant Industries, LLC. It was a mutual thing and it was the right time," she says. They were wrongshortly after aragorn-legolas.5u.com's disappearance, the Mellon Chronicles started appearing on the popular fanfiction website Archive Of Our Own, moved by an English fan, Eleanore, 26. "We really didn't think people were reading the stories anymore. She is one of those rare, special people that you can share anything with, and who you know will be a part of your life forever. By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. Stunning Trailer for STAR WARS: AHSOKA Teases the Heir to the Empire! Amazon secured the rights to The Lord of the Rings story through extensive collaboration with The Tolkien Estate, and this legal wrangling seems more like a publicity stunt than a genuine legal challenge. "I could easily spend between four to eight hours a day writing," Cassia said. Like romance novels, Westerns, and Sherlock Holmes, the Mellon Chronicles follow a formula: most of the 36 stories begin with Aragorn and/or Legolas traveling somewhere; then one of them gets captured and usually tortured; and then the other one rescues him. Cookie Declaration /// Privacy Policy Cassia set up the website to host the stories so they had an archive. This lawsuit is about as likely to succeed as Legolas missing his mark. Eleanore began posting the stories to AO3, mostly for herself, and was surprised to find there was an audience"I started getting messages asking when I was going to post the rest, which made me realise that other people were re-reading them too," she said. After apparently taking a wrong turn in a mysterious forest, something happens to Legolas. Lord Elrond is the only hope to save Thranduil's son of an early passing to the Undying Lands, and as the Lord uses everything in his power to heal the prince, a strong and somewhat inevitable bond happens between them. Legolas had fallen to the back of the line of men on the third night of their . I struggled against his grip, but he was strong for a drunkard. Sio says. The Mellon Chronicles' legacy survives: along with Archive of Our Own, a fanlore wiki charts its impressive history; the Yahoo Groups is still somewhat active, and fully archived; there's a "Mellon Chronicles" tag on Tumblr; and Sio still gets regular emails from fans. Giger, Red-Band Trailer For THE WRATH OF BECKY Sees Lulu Wilson on Another Ultra-Violent Adventure, Trailer for Comedian Hannah Gadsby's New Netflix Special HANNAH GADSBY: SOMETHING SPECIAL, LEGO Announces Plans for STAR WARS Day Celebrations, CALL OF DUTY Comes to Your Table Next Year with a Board Game, Trailer For THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Mark Hamill and His Return of the Jedi Prop Lightsaber Reunite in Pop Culture Quest Clip. While this description might not sound like it, the Mellon Chronicles were entirely nonsexual"no slash, no smut," as the saying went. The Aragorn/Legolas friendship was a popular fanfiction genre when the three Peter Jackson-directed movies were coming out in the early 2000sprobably largely thanks to the fact that Aragorn and Legolas were played by the extremely attractive Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloomand the Mellon Chronicles, written by the mysterious Cassia and Siobhan, or Sio, were the most popular of all. ", Cassia says that she and Sio "remain best of friends. The group members were so close that Cassia and Sio sent them Christmas presents each yearonce, it was homemade bookmarks; another time, it was keychains. "I think the first time I realized how much others were enjoying the world we'd created was when people started requesting to use our original characters and sometimes the backdrop of the MC world as a whole in their own stories," Cassia says. Polychron's book, titled The Fellowship of the King, is a follow-up to The Lord of the Rings that also delves into the story of the Second Age and the history of The Rings of Power. In fact, we mean not to.". ", Neither Cassia nor Sio ever published any more fanfiction, though Cassia now writes original fiction and Sio paints and draws. They set Lord of the Rings fanfiction tropes that other fanfic writers faithfully followed. At its peak around 2004, the Mellon Chronicles had an active Yahoo Groups list large enough that it was mentioned as one of the biggest fan communities in a book about Tolkien scholarship. ", The ending of the Mellon Chronicles coincided with the beginning of the stories' disappearance. But that led to us co-writing our first story, which was actually a Star Wars fic called 'The Hunted. '", When the first Lord of the Rings movie came out in late 2001, both Cassia and Sio wrote their own fanfictionseparately. And we don't expect we shall return. A series of unfortunate events leads to Legolas being deadly wounded while hunting orcs. ", "It was a wonderful and humbling feeling to see it take on a life of its own like that.". The plaintiff, Demetrious Polychron, has filed a lawsuit against Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos, Jennifer Salke (the head of Amazon Studios), Simon . But for now, let's just sit back, grab a pint of ale, and watch this legal drama play out. And that's not all even The Tolkien Estate has been dragged into this legal maelstrom.if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'geektyrant_com-banner-1','ezslot_4',104,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-geektyrant_com-banner-1-0');if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'geektyrant_com-banner-1','ezslot_5',104,'0','1'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-geektyrant_com-banner-1-0_1'); .banner-1-multi-104{border:none !important;display:block !important;float:none !important;line-height:0px;margin-bottom:7px !important;margin-left:auto !important;margin-right:auto !important;margin-top:7px !important;max-width:100% !important;min-height:250px;padding:0;text-align:center !important;}. One entity that may take an interest in this lawsuit is Embracer Group, the investment firm that purchased the rights to The Lord of the Rings outright and might not take kindly to unauthorized works being published. Their group had been no more than a three days journey from Gondor, where Aragorn had only recently been crowned as King, and Arwen as his Queen. I spent half the day writing in between work duties and keeping up with the [Yahoo Groups] List.". The Mellon Chronicles is a 1.2 million word epic fanfiction series. It was more than twice as long as War and Peace or Infinite Jest; longer than the entire Harry Potter series, and two and a half times as long as The Lord of the Rings, the series on which it was based. This was Cassia's first online fandom, which she joined at around 18, and Sio's second, after the TV show The Sentinel. They didn't realize that Yahoo had an automatic Group Mailing List set up with the website, so when they started getting emails about stories they were totally surprised. In today's edition of "lawsuits that are as likely to succeed as Frodo making it to Mordor without Sam," a Lord of the Rings fan-fiction author is taking on Amazon Studios over their smash-hit series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[320,100],'geektyrant_com-medrectangle-4','ezslot_6',109,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-geektyrant_com-medrectangle-4-0'); if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'geektyrant_com-box-4','ezslot_2',113,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-geektyrant_com-box-4-0');if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'geektyrant_com-box-4','ezslot_3',113,'0','1'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-geektyrant_com-box-4-0_1'); .box-4-multi-113{border:none !important;display:block !important;float:none !important;line-height:0px;margin-bottom:7px !important;margin-left:auto !important;margin-right:auto !important;margin-top:7px !important;max-width:100% !important;min-height:250px;padding:0;text-align:center !important;}The plaintiff, Demetrious Polychron, has filed a lawsuit against Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos, Jennifer Salke (the head of Amazon Studios), Simon Tolkien (grandson of JRR Tolkien himself), and the showrunners for The Rings of Power, Patrick McKay and John D Payne. Cassia and Sioboth pen namesconnected while writing Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice fanfiction around 1999. After that, Cassia and Sio began collaborating on a story taking place immediately after "First Meetings. Then, Sio wrote a short story about Aragorn and Legolas' first encounter called "First Meetings," giving Legolas the history that Cassia wrote for him. All rights reserved. In a move that was either incredibly bold or incredibly naive, the author then sent a letter asking for his manuscript back and declared his intention to publish it anyway (along with sequels). "We actually both 'knew' that our time with the MC had come to an end and would end in July 2005. Links monetized by VigLinkCustom Code and Design by, Free Reyes. Taking its name from the Elvish word for "friend," the Mellon Chronicles follows the misadventures of a young Aragorn and Legolas. Copyright 2008-2021, GeekTyrant Industries, LLC. But when darkness encroaches from within and without, they learn refuge can become a deadly trap. However, many of these similarities just serve to underscore how closely the fan-fiction work hews to Tolkien's original works. Sio added, "I was actually a horrible employee while we had the MC. All names, trademarks and images are copyright their respective owners. I think this whole thing is hilarious that a fan-fiction writer is suing the people who actually own the rights to the stories that hes building his fan-fiction off of. "Sure, go ahead and shoot me," He said quietly, "You can go, and I'll leave." Slowly I lowered my bow, but keeping . After the fanfiction.net takedown, Cassia and Sio continued posting the Mellon Chronicles on their own website, aragorn-legolas.5u.com, and in the Yahoo Group, but in summer 2005, they posted their final storyand with it, an announcement that, "To paraphrase Bilbo slightly, we need a holiday. In early 2005, fanfiction.net removed the series completely due to new rules about using song lyricsthe Mellon Chronicles often used a song lyrics as an epigraph before a chapter or as a pagebreak between sections. Wicked Awesome New Trailer and Posters For DC Studios' THE FLASH! Basically, we just kept going as long as the inspiration held," Cassia said. She looped in Cassia, and the three of us had a long email interview about the Mellon Chronicles and the early days of Lord of the Rings online fandom. The author claims to have registered the book with the US Copyright Office back in 2017 and even attempted to reach out to The Tolkien Estate for collaboration to no avail.if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,600],'geektyrant_com-leader-1','ezslot_10',105,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-geektyrant_com-leader-1-0'); Undeterred, Polychron ended up hand-delivering a copy of his manuscript, but still received no response. When the Mellon Chronicles ended in 2005, Cassia and Sio mailed a CD with the text of the entire series on it to every reader who wanted one. The book even includes a dedication to Tolkien and his son before immediately using characters created by the legendary author. "Friendship with her was the best thing that came out of the MC. Injured and alone, Legolas and Aragorn are forced to take refuge in a wintry foreign land. Cassia says that the early 2000s were a special time for fandombefore social media existed, or even Livejournal, people had to track down likeminded fans by using webrings, recommendation lists, and individual Geocities sites. He published the novel on September 30, 2022, which also happened to be the same day that the fifth episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiered on Prime Video.if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'geektyrant_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_7',106,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-geektyrant_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0');if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'geektyrant_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_8',106,'0','1'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-geektyrant_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0_1'); .large-mobile-banner-1-multi-106{border:none !important;display:block !important;float:none !important;line-height:0px;margin-bottom:7px !important;margin-left:auto !important;margin-right:auto !important;margin-top:7px !important;max-width:100% !important;min-height:250px;padding:0;text-align:center !important;}. First, in 2002, Cassia wrote a dark short story called "Captive of Darkness," about a very young Legolas getting captured and tortured (including an implied rape) by evil humans before being rescued by Elrond. Cassia and Sio started the Yahoo Groups list completely by accident. I'm blessed to have met her. A very long holiday. "She had written this super cool Star Wars story and I contacted her about it," Sio said. In today's edition of "lawsuits that are as likely to succeed as Frodo making it to Mordor without Sam," a Lord of the Rings fan-fiction author is taking on Amazon Studios over their smash-hit series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Sio says that it was simply time for the series to end. "I do think that there was a certain enthusiasm and joy of discovery and exploration in those early days that perhaps is not so present now," she says. "I don't think it was until we were halfway through writing the story that came after that, 'Exile,' that we realized this was going to be a series, since by then we realized that 'Exile' was going to have to end with something pretty drastic happening, that would then need to be fixed in the following story, 'Return.' Spectacular Full Trailer for SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE! He laughed horribly, and started to drag me through the woods, but I threw him off, immediately grabbing my bow and aiming an arrow at his forehead.
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