Trevor Collins

He might have been inspired by it.

And he's kind of saying that any sort of truths amongst the fiction are just kind of being stumbled into.

But this leads us to a very interesting conversation when we talk about the aftermath of this story hitting the world and being published.

But that's the story.

I want to give a pause for a second.

If you have any thoughts or questions before we move into how this story then was broadly accepted and what people responded with it.

Right.

Especially in a time where you don't have cameras so readily available in your pocket.

You don't have video of all things, obviously.

And so, yeah, a lot of things do rely on word of mouth and believing of facts, which I think is a very interesting cornerstone to this particular topic.

But before we get away from it, though, I did kind of gloss over the Blackgate of Mordor metaphor.

Christian, were you able to find if there was any inspiration taken from this particular story?

I mean, it would not surprise me.

I know some battles in particular definitely motivated his description of death and helped him paint a very vivid world.

I mean, he was a World War I soldier.

He fought in World War I. So whether it's this battle or another or the greater war at hand, obviously it played a large part in his experience.

So

But it is funny that you mentioned it because that was definitely on my mind.

Okay, so now thinking about some of your instincts, your questions, those will play out interestingly here in the aftermath.

So after the story was published, it instantly became popular.