#but so much of what is most popular is & draws from tolkien specifically in ways that are truly structural and foundational

[arhddhg]

stan + kyle + kenny for the character ask game!! :)

Oooooh, this is going to be a long one.. I always thought that my view of the South Park characters were pretty boring so here are my first impressions:

Kyle broflovski

Sexuality Headcanon: I personally think he’s straight, I feel like I’ll get a lot of shame because of this but I never really saw him as a bisexual man let alone a gay man😭 I’m so sorry. But on one hand I do kind of see him being a Demisexual? I don’t know if there is really that much evidence to it but I feel like him being Demisexual. I can also see Asexual Kyle too? I think he’s straight but definitely not allo.

Gender Headcanon: I think he’s a cis man, but trans boy Kyle sounds like a good headcanon? It mostly rooted from Cartman’s sexist jokes but it sounds pretty cool, I’m down for more trans rep! Even if it’s from canonically cis characters..

A ship I have with said character: Kybecca is so fuckwg cute !!!!!!! The way Kyle guides her into relationships was adorable. I also like the dynamic of a shy awkward inexperienced-in-relationships girl and a nice (a genuinely nice) guy who helps her out when it comes to relationships!!! Fucking blorbos.. I want to hold them around like 2 little kittens :( I also really see the potential in Kychole and I wish it got more recognition, it would’ve been an actually great chance for him to get a girlfriend, fuck you Cartman, like honestly.

A BROTP I have with said character: It’s probably going to be Style, of course. Their friendship is honestly very cute to watch, but it can also get a bit sad at times (ex: assburgers). I also like Tokyle, Kyutters, and Kybe as a brotp. Tolkien and Kyle being mom best friends, looking over at their insane children fighting like little chihuahuas, while talking about mom things.. hwoedhsj. And also Kyle and Bebe being best friends gossiping to each other and spilling the tea (this wasn’t my idea though). I’m a bit stuck towards Kyutters though, cause I only thought of it just now.

A NOTP I have with said character: I used to like this ship A LOT, but now I have to say it’s Kyman. I can still see the potential in One sided Kyman and I always saw it being a thing somehow, but that’s as far as I’ll go for this ship nowadays. Kyman just feels weird, and all it took was a couple of callout posts for me to eventually lose interest in it.

A random headcanon: Kyle is the most simplest guy EVER. His music taste isn’t a specific genre and it all goes down to “well I like music as long as it sounds good”. He doesn’t like a specific type of food and is just like “I like any food as long as it’s good”. He’s the least fashionable and most distasteful guy in town, and his friends (the main 4 ofc) attempted to try and get him into fashion and introduce him to different kinds of genres (whether it be music, movies, or whatever) to see which one he’d consider to be his favorite. But it NEVER worked out, he’s just that boring. (Yeah, I’m projecting onto him, what about it)?

General Opinion over said character: He’s honestly such a well developed character, he’s not exactly my fave but I can definitely understand his popularity and place in this fandom! He’s just a lil guy :)

Stanley marsh

Sexuality headcanon: I think he’s either straight or bisexual, but all I know is that he definitely went through a bicurious phase. Remember how confused he was when Wendy turned out to be trans? He was also confused about Tweek and Craig’s whole relationship! He doesn’t know where he stands on the LGBT spec but he’s still trying to figure it out.

Gender headcanon: I only thought of this just now but demiboy Stan. I also like to think he’s experimenting with his gender, and it goes down to the examples I listed trying to describe his sexuality from my perspective. He’s open to people using any pronouns on him, and I love that for him :)

A ship I have with said character: Stendy, I remember drawing Stendy A LOT over here. I still love their relationship but not as much as I used to. Although, I have to say that I still yearn for their good ol’ girlboss and malewife dynamic.. I would also consider Stolkien because their current relationship reminds me of a forbidden romance, it’s honestly interesting to look at it that way. I like to think he tries to get together with Tolkien in an attempt to open more doors for relationships, relating to his whole bicurious and gender questioning thing.

A BROTP I have with said character: Just like the brotp I have for Kyle, it’s Style. I also really like Stary as a friendship. I honestly hope that Gary might make a comeback and Stan would spend more time with him, while the rest of the main 4 gets absolutely mad they are hanging out with such a “wuss” and not with them instead >:( but unfortunately Gary is just a one and off character.

A NOTP I have with said character: I honestly don’t know what notp I have for him, I don’t seem to have any Stan ship that I actually loathe. I’m pretty sure I stated before that I LOVE ships featuring stan despite him not being my fave. Which is a bit weird to think about, but I’ll just leave it as a mere coincidence for now.

A random headcanon: Despite the fact that Stan’s goth phase was supposed to happen because of the fact Wendy broke up with him, he actually developed an interest in the goth style and still (secretly) hangs out with the goth kids. The goth kids don’t seem to mind being around him and they’re nice enough to actually guide him through the goth style! Stan REALLY enjoyed getting into it and the goth kids developed a soft spot for him, they’re a bunch of softies on the inside :( Stan would also wear a bunch of edgy black t shirts under his jacket because he just got soooooo into it. And his friends still don’t know about it, his interest in goth culture is still a secret, mostly out of fear of being ripped on.

General Opinion over said character: I honestly like him because he slightly reminds me of myself? We aren’t ENTIRELY similar but I can see myself in him. I also find a lot of his ships tasteful.

Kenny McCormick

Sexuality headcanon: I used to think he was a straight aromantic but now I can see him being pansexual, like I’m pretty sure he would love ANYTHING with titties. Him being a closeted pansexual aro is honestly very swaggy in my book. I say closeted because he literally lives in a family of rednecks, I think he’ll have to deal with a lot of internalized homophobia here. And I think it’s interesting to explore that in him! (The internalized homophobia idea was again not mine).

Gender headcanon: he’s a cis GNC man, he’s perfectly fine with identifying as a man but he loves dressing up as a princess, and he still does it from time to time!

A ship I have with said character: I don’t think I have any ship with him aside from Kenman. Their dynamic works very well and the way they laugh at each other’s jokes is so fuckeng adorable. I think their friendship should be explored more often, both in the actual show and in the fandom. There is a lot to unpack there. And also the way they carry a BFF necklace, adorable.

A BROTP I have with said character: Kenman again (I like it both romantically and platonically). I’m not used to ships with Kenny in them so I’m sorry if this is EXTREMELY bland.

A NOTP I have with said character: I’m sorry to say this but I never really found Bunny interesting.. that’s all I have to say, I’m sorry if that disappoints any of you.

Random headcanon: speaking of Kenny loving to dress as a princess, he sometimes roleplays as princesses with his little sister Karen, they come up with the most dramatic storylines ever and Kevin gets so annoyed by it sometimes and tells them to shut up. This one time Kenny and Karen stayed up all night playing dress up and they talked so loudly, that everyone woke up by the stupid annoying sounds they made. They never stopped doing it, and it was hell on earth for everyone else aside from these 2 mfs >:) I think there was also a point where all the other people around them heard it, but it was rather faint, so it took a while for everyone else to notice the loudness of it all.

General Opinion over said character: I never really thought about him, so my impression of him is a bit boring. But I’m hoping to dig more into his character if that’s what you guys want!

__________

Thank you so much for the question, it honestly got me to think more about the character’s personalities! :)

#south park #south park headcanons #sp headcanons #kyle broflovski #stanley marsh #stan marsh #kenny mccormick #fayoftheforest

[rogue-durin-16]

MATCHUP FOR:

@luna-says-stuff

I wanted to send in a Stranger Things request, if that is okay with you. I’ll try to make this short enough, but let’s see where we end. My pronouns are she/her, I am bisexual, and 18+. My most defying traits are probably that I am a cat person, I am obsessed with learning new stuff about things I’ll never use (mythology, true crime, paranormal etc.), and I consider myself a huge nerd. I love walking through bookstores, I collect doctor Martens, lp’s, band shirts, fantasy books, and my closet only exists out of Happy Socks and Christmas socks. This is no joke. You literally cannot find a pair of black socks, even if you dusted off the abandoned corners. Big fan of holidays. There is no such thing as a subtle Christmas, or a subtle Halloween. We have to go all out for that one, boss.

I can be rather impatient, immature, and I tend to procrastinate and run away from responsibilities for as long as I can. I can’t sit quietly to save my life, so I always need to busy my hands. I draw, I paint, I sculpt, I do embroidery, but most of all; I consider myself a writer. I love writing as much as I love to read. I can rant about the things I love for hours, and will not know how to stop (ask me about Tolkien’s works, I dare you). I also cannot stand people chewing. I lose my mind when it’s something crunchy. I absolutely hate it and I can’t explain why.

A toxic trait is that I saw Queen live and I will never let anyone forget. I love going to concerts, and I thankfully have a music taste which allows me to go to concerts often. (Hardrock, classic rock, heavy metal, and - occasionally - death metal, but a very specific corner. Still no fan of the screaming)

From Stranger Things I Ship You With:

Robin Buckley

Ship Dynamic:

The Chaotic Duo™

Quote:

«Meeting you was like listening to a song for the first time and knowing it would be my favorite.»

I can and will elaborate but also you two just go inexplicably well together, everyone shut up.

First things first, while you give an outcast vibe, it's not punk outcast like Eddie, it's more of a "I'm kinda weird and unfit for society's standards for 'cool' so I don't exist for popular kids", which inevitably makes you gravitate towards Robin.

Only that the 'hey we got interests in common, we should bond to survive' turns into 'you're like my favorite person now'.

I kinda see you two being pretty much aloof towards each other at first because meh, forced proximity by standing in the same corner socially speaking but is a true bond worth the effort?

YES IT IS.

While you two got the same general vibe (and by that I mean would definitely befriend you both), you're not even close to being the same.

Robin 100% pulls a face when you tell her about your music taste. You make it your mission to get her to at least try every hard rock subgenre.

She obviously can't say no to you, so as a revenge, she makes you listen to every song of artists like The Bangles and Stevie Nicks.

It becomes a tradition to go and meet up under the bleachers to listen to each other's music tapes during lunch break. I'm not talking about sitting quietly and listening, I'm talking about turning on the dramatic antics and making a full ass spoken essay about what you think of the songs.

You two might or might not enjoy whatever the other brings in the mixtape, but nonetheless you'll tease the hell out of each other.

Enriching each other's music taste as lifestyle.

First time you kiss you're both listening to music and it's very romantic but also very awkward because ✨it's the eighties✨ and you're ✨two girls kissing under the bleachers✨.

Mind you, I don't think either of you would have come out to the other, so it just sort of happens and then it's panic time. You're good tho.

You two don't start dating straight away, Robin wants to go down the old-fashioned, romantic way and take you on a thousand thoughtful dates to make you swoon. Devoted simp queen.

You sketched Robin in class once and she didn't even know how to function after that. Now you draw her a lot when she's not looking because the way this lanky lesbian goes (⁠⊙⁠_⁠◎⁠) is priceless.

Bookstore dates with a lot of bickering because you go for our fantasy Lord and linguistics King J. R. R. Tolkien and she goes for fucking Anthony Olcott????

You two make fun of each other's taste CONSTANTLY but ultimately end up giving it a try and actually enjoying it.

Two energy cannonballs. In this house we don't do control, we only do chaos. You're a menace when you're outside. Be gay do crime etc.

Steve is like, Robin's #1 hypeman in this relationship. He actually pushes her to ask you to be her girlfriend.

Robin buys you weird socks. Once she made fun of your Christmas socks collection and then bought you a pair with that vibe. And then another. And another. And—

This woman hangs anything you create from the wall. Painting? Hung. Rough sketch? Hung. A piece of fabric you randomly embroidered? Hung.

She loves to read whatever you write and actively encourages you to publish it somewhere.

She writes too. Mostly poems. She won't EVER tell you tho because omg so embarrassing going full on Sappho for you.

You probably find the poems at some point because she's a messy queen and you constantly snoop around at her place.

Listening to true crime stories and going to the library to dig into a very specific topic randomly is something you two do constantly and it's just as endearing as it is worrying, because no one —and I mean NO ONE— who's mentally okay runs to the library on a weekend to investigate about sighted UFOs in the last five years just because.

Robin keeping your immaturity and procrastination in check with an iron fist, and you doing the same for her.

Matching costumes for the win.

Robin isn't super big on holidays but she goes out of the way for you.

You say you saw Queen live, I say the two of you saw it and will NEVER let ANYONE forget about it. So sexy of you.

You're that odd couple everyone ships.

#robin buckley #stranger things i ship you with

[grandhotelabyss]

Do you think the rise of autofiction is partly to blame for genre fiction being so prelevant and bad in a roundabout way? Like there is the stereotype of "I want to turn of my brain, not read some perverts sex fantasys" - which maybe got popular because there was a push for it:

Well I suspect more that it is a convenient excuse, to hide one's total content with content : If one can reduce everything either into sludge or poison, then bathing in the former may be justifiable, even if the true romantic would still rather swallow the toxins and die with whats left of dignity. IDK, I think I lost the plot of what I tried to ask tbh

Yes, I've had that thought too in the last decade, that autofiction is partially an elite countersignaling strategy against what has so far been a century of Tolkien, Harry Potter, and Marvel. I think there can be good fantasy, and if anything my attitude toward fantasy has softened as the Tolkien/Marvel version, which I didn't even like as a child, has waned. Dune is a better cultural influence. There's also obviously good and great fiction rooted in autobiography. My objection to autofiction was never so much the subject matter as the way this specific 2010s version of the autobiographical deliberately disparaged and demoted literary form and imagination in favor of some new "authenticity" guaranteed by the artlessness of the prose. This was the initial draw of Knausgård: that he did away with artifice and just let his life flow onto the page. As I've pointed out elsewhere, James Wood's review giving Knausgård the stamp of approval for American audiences deliberately contrasted My Struggle with Black Swan Green, an intricately wrought autobiographical novel by a writer better known as a fantasist. It seemed an upscale and comfortable version of what Bolaño had been celebrated for in the 2000s, his race against death to produce a fictional corpus in his final decade. But, while this might have aerated his prose by removing the time available for Flaubertian niceties—and I have no problem with that—it led him to an ever more expansive vision, not an ever narrower one. (I do understand that Knausgård has written highly imaginative novels both before and after My Struggle—I haven't read them—just as I grasp the autobiographical layer of much of Bolaño's work. Both writers are bigger than these categories.) Anyway, novels can be about anything from the writer's own childhood to futuristic life on other planets and written in any style from the most simple to the most complex. A great novel is always a leap in the dark for the writer and a surprise for the reader. I mainly object to trends as trends, because trends discourage writers from leaping and train readers to not even want to be surprised.

#autofiction #literary criticism #creative writing

[neechees]

Ok ok about your post about cultural appropriation and stealing from Native Americans. I'm almost curious how much of this was influenced by the English specifically. Like, the English hated the Native Americans and Celts (idk enough about Vikings and Old Norse, though), seeing both of them as barbaric. So I wonder if the English went "Natives are barbaric, we're going to depict Celts like this, too"? And then this mentality caught fire and now we have what we have today. Do you think this might play into it?

I'm not sure how much of it exactly would be the English specifically. But one example I can think of that influenced many other things would be Tolkien and some of his worldbuilding, which later influenced many many other fantasy works, specifically his depiction of Orcs, some of the human cultures, the Elves in some ways (The Avari, specifically Eol, but it's a little less obvious than some other, later & more modern fantasy depictions) and the Druedain. But he was far from the only person to do this, even at the time, AND he also based those things on cultures like Indigenous Africans, as well, so you could make the argument for either. The White , English artist John White is one of the artists that based his depictions of Celts/Picts on his OTHER drawings of Native Americans, specifically the Wampanoag and the Powhatan, and that was waaay back in the early 16th century. I think in general when White people wanted to portray anything as "barbaric" and uncivilized", they went with the association of Native Americans (and Indigenous Africans) because most White people thought of us like that anyway, so they used it as a short hand, but I don't know if it was specifically English influence to popularize it just because, again, that sentiment was so widespread already.

It's also pretty much guaranteed that even if White people hated both Celts (& because of the association with Scotland and Ireland in England's case) and Native Americans or thought both of us were "savage", they almost certainly thought Natives were MORE savage (by virtue of being brown & not situated in Europe), so they used US to make depictions of Celts and Vikings/Old Norse people as worse. Altneratively, I've also seen White people conflate Native Americans and Black people (usually specifically African Americans) by having their depictions of Natives use butchered AAVE, in an attempt to compare us to Black people and show us as like... Less civilized or uneducated, or less eloquent, when they wanted. A New Ager, Plastic Shaman, and pretendian in the 60s, Mary Summer Rain claimed she was a shaman trained by two Native women who didn't speak English very well, & this is how she alleged one of them spoke

The text says "stereotyped Tonto Speak", and while I don't think it's NOT that, there's clearly butchered AAVE sprinkled in, what with the habitual "be". The (White) author of the book Dance Me Outside (yes he was White) did the exact same thing with alleged Cree characters who spoke little to no English, and as a Cree who has been around other Crees like that, I promise you Crees who speak English as a second language don't talk like this. So in other words, White people (because the above mentioned two were American and Canadian respectively) have been and will use allusions to different cultures to portray them as "savage" or less civilized by comparison, and they did the same thing between us and Black people. White people do this everywhere, so it's hard to pinpoint if any one person started it or if the English specifically did.

However, going back to your original question of where it might've gained popularity in a specific area, I believe the associations and links between Native Americans and Celts/Old Norse people and using us for the aesthetics and culture part, REALLY picked up speed again in the 60s and 70s thanks to hippies. It started out because of appropriation and obsession with Native Americans, the new age movement, the development of wicca, and white supremacists weird obsession with Vikings and Celts an Anglo Saxons. New Age spiritualities & hippies started commercializing Native Spirituality, often with pretendians claiming to have been specially trained by Native American "Shamans", & then selling that info out via books, alleged spiritual objects (including crystal skulls), 'ceremonies' that one payed to enter, and tutorials on finding your spirit name and the like. One of the explanations as to the appeal of this was because of trying to find spiritual meaning within the framework of capitalism and a disillusionment with Christianity:

"McRacken argues that individuals in a consumer society use consumer goods to try to recover displaced cultural meaning. He defines displaced meaning as cultural meaning deliberately removed from the daily life of a community and displaced onto a distant cultural domain by romanticizing another culture." -Aldred, Lisa. "Plastic shamans and astroturf sun dances: New Age commercialization of Native American spirituality." American Indian Quarterly 24.3 (2000): 329-352. Page 338.

the white supremacist obsession with Vikings/Celts/Anglo-Saxons comes in here because they did the same thing with THOSE cultures, and evidently, they see themselves as inherently "Indigenous" to Europe (completely ignoring actual Indigenous groups there that they helped oppress and commit genocide against) AS WELL as having a claim to North America. WS's of this ilk also happen to be obsessed with Native Americans, and you'll find overlap between them AND New Age spiritualists, so they are often New Agers themselves. The aforementioned pretendians who started all this (Again, often hippies) also mixed various bastardized Native American spiritualities and other beliefs like Buddhism, Hinduism, and paganism and ancient Druidism.

So in the rough timeline we have: White people make artistic allusions to Native Americans in art and writing in place of or alongside other cultures deemed uncivilized, setting the stage

-> The Noble Savage trope gains popularity

-> media representations of historic "savages" in Europe continue to use the associated allusions to Native Americans

-> obsession with Native Americans & our spirituality grows, New Agers conflate Indigenous aesthetics and spirituality with Celtic/Norse ones while professing to be an Authority on the subject alongside hippies appropriating Indigenous fashion and aesthetics

-> the wider public believes this & the bastardized, commercialized versions of Native spirituality to be true

-> White people, including white supremacists, take part in New Age spirituality because of the obsession with the ancient White Cultures (and Indigenous) associated, they utilize the appropriated aesthetics from Native Americans That Hippies and New Agers set the stage for & applied

-> the appropriated aesthetics and allusions to Native Americans becomes widespread & instead associated with Vikings/Celts/Old Norse cultures as well as fictional cultures and races coded as either due to media misrepresentation (as seen in my post, which is what it was about)

So, while it didn't begin there, and this explanation is missing some things and it's a much shortened version of explaining a few things, the connection between inaccurate depictions of Vikings/Celts/Old Norse coming from Native American cultures and aesthetics was very much influenced and picked up a lot of speed and popularity in the 60s and 70s thanks to White Hippies, Pretendians, and white supremacists. Note that a lot of these people were also middle to upperclass & they did all this (& profited from it) while Native spiritualities were illegal and Native kids were in Residential Schools. And again, please note there's also Indigenous African and African American influence with New Agers as well, but I know less about that I wanted to talk about what I DO know, cause I don't wanna talk out of my ass, and I was talking about specifically the connection between Vikings/Celts/Native Americans (I'm sure there's Black influence there too, but again, I know much less of it and I'm not sure about specifics). I learned that even a popular tattoo design from the 80s of the Celtic knot came from Native American and Aboriginal (specificall Maaori, Aboriginal, and Tahitan) tattoo designs and art. I'm sorry this was so long but I had a lot to say hgushfus.

#long post #antiblackness #indigenous targeted racism #appropriation

[themousefromfantasyland]

Fairy Tale Laws: How Fairy Tales and their Worldbuilding work

Who follows me knows I'm mega into mythology and folklore. One of my favorite pieces of folklore and fantasy literature is the Fairy Tale. Since I was a child I was always draw to the magical world of Disney films and their darker literary counterparts.

I love fairy tales, yet in my opinion they continue to be one of the more misunderstood and neglected genres out there.

So, as a Disney fan and avid fairy tale reader, in this essay I show how the genre itself generally works and which principles rule their whimsical world

Fairy Tales, Myths and Fables

The thing that fairy tales, myths and fables have in common is that they all find their origins in the oral tradition.

They were fantastical tales, not told specifically for children but deeply enjoyed by them, that were transmitted through generations.

Both fairy tales and myths don't follow real world logic, instead following their own dream-like logic, in a sequence of weird and fantastical events, that are magical and intriguing to the listener, but essentially normal to the in-universe characters.

Often than not there aren't any explanations of why these events happen and their impact of those in-universe societies, they just happen. Animals talk, mythical creatures live along with human societies just fine, inanimated objects come to life, people seem to turn into animals all the time, etc, and nothing of that seem to ever change the status quo.

The thing that differentiate the fairy tale from the myth, is that the myth is supposed to have happened in our world, but in a far off past. They are supposed to explain how our world came to be, and they have a very strong religious importance. The fairy tale on the other hand is not supposed to be took seriously. It's a fun story that the older generation tell to the younger generation. It can pass deeply important life or religious values, but that's not their main point. They are fairy tales, not fables.

The point of the fable is to transmit a moral. The point of a fairy tale is to transport the listener into a fantastical journey.

Fairy Tales vs. Oral Stories

Although many folk stories became immortal fairy tales, not all fairy tales came from oral tradition. Actually, some can be traced back to specific authors.

The Little Mermaid, the Ugly Duckling and the Steadfast Tin Soldier are all considered immortal fairy tales, yet they were all created by famous danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. A lot of his stories are authoral, and all are considered true fairy tales.

The term "Fairy Tales" actually comes from the french "conte de fées" and was coined in the 17th century by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy, the Madame d'Aulnoy, a french writer who wrote about a world where love and happiness came to heroines after overcoming great obstacles.

These stories arise from the Préciosité, a French literary style in the 17th century, from "les précieuses", intellectual, witty and educated women who frequented the salon of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet. Themes presented in these stories are the ideals of feminine elegance, etiquette and courtly Platonic love, all hugely popular with female audiences, but scorned by men.

Telling fairy tales was a popular préciosité parlor game, and they should be told as if spontaneously, even though they all were carefully prepared. This style served as influence for Charles Perrault and Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.

Villeneuve herself was the original author of Beauty and the Beast, and although the story is heavily inspired by older legends like Cupid and Psyche, it still is an authoral story.

Even the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, who were famous for being collectors of tales from oral tradition, gave their own twists and embellishments to their tales. For example, in many Cinderella tellings it's her mother's ghost who helps her. The Fairy Godmother is Perrault's invention.

So more than been just stories from the oral tradition, fairy tales as a literary genre are the reinvention of the old tropes found in the folk stories under a more sophisticated polish, for a new public.

Fairy Tale as a literary genre

In a way I consider the Fairy Tale a sibling genre to Magical Realism. As TV Tropes puts:

"In Magic Realism, events just happen, as in dreams. [...] Magical realism is a story that takes place in a realistic setting that is recognizable as the historical past or present. It overlaps with Mundane Fantastic. It has a connection to surrealism, dream logic, and poetry."

Both use a surreal, almost poetic internal logic with little to no explanation. Magical Realism is the occurrence of a fantastical event in a realistic setting, in a fusion between the mundane and the magical world.

Fairy Tales are similar because they often deal with very domestic topics and subjects. The protagonists often are normal people with very mundane goals. They don't want to save the world, they want to save themselves and their loved ones.

Cinderella and Snow White for example, are more concerned with escaping from their abusive families than being cultural or legendary heroes like in the myths. Hansel and Gretel are trying not to die from starvation, and Red Riding Hood is trying to visit her sick grandmother. Regardless of class status, these are people with their own problems that find in the fantastical events a escape from them, or a even worse danger.

This is not a universal rule, as some characters are more heroic and there's more in stake, but generally the heroes are domestic heroes and it's only their lives that are in stake.

The difference between the Magic Realism and the Fairy Tale, is that while in the Magic Realism you can easily point where the realistic setting ends and the magical one begins, the fairy tale goes even further, and the lines between the worlds are way more muddled.

Worldbuilding in Fairy Tales

Now, that's the most important part. Fairy Tales are a sub-genre to Fantasy, but while in the other genres the magic world is described in the minimal details, often with rich details about the in-universe cultures and their rules, the Fairy Tale maintain the magic world as vague as possible. That's because it uses what I call "soft-worldbuilding".

Part of the appeal of the fairy tale is to transport the reader in a fantastical journey, but in order to do that they use as little details possible, allowing the reader to try to fill in the gaps. That's in order to avoid the magic world of feeling too real or too close to reality. The reader needs to have a sense of wonder and intrigue, and if you started to describe your world in all its details, it will become too grounded, and the wonder and the intrigue will be lost.

Said that, you need some basic rules, otherwise everything will be incredibly incoherent. You reader needs to understand how the magic world works and their rules, but they also need to be slightly lost, discovering all the details along the way and be amazed by them, lost in a mystery that they will never find all the answers.

To illustrate this, look at the differences between the Middle-earth and Narnia. One is a standard fantasy world, the other is a fairy tale world. J.R.R. Tolkien drew inspiration from the epics, C.S. Lewis drew inspiration from fairy tales and childhood stories.

The Middle-earth is grounded on its own rules, with their own races, cultures, languages and myths. Narnia is a playground were everything magical is allowed. Greek mythology creatures? Okay. Roman gods? Okay. Father Christmas? Okay. Jesus? Of course!

One is worried about all the small details, the other wants everything as vague and simple as possible, as to ensure the wonder and the intrigue will never be lost the reader.

When you're dealing with a fairy tale world you have way more freedom than the standard fantasy world. You don't need to think too deeply in the details. You can use the Rule of Funny and the Rule of Cool as much as you want, as long as it's minimal consistent and coherent

Fairy Tale Laws

This are some basic rules and principles that I believe rule over the fairy tale genre

Establish rules of how the world works. Keep it consistent and coherent. That's your base

Not every fantastical event needs a deep explanation, and magic is not allowed as an universal explanation

Keep it simple. Don't worry too much about the small details.

You don't want your world to be too grounded in reality. A little escapism is key

Poetic logic and surrealism reigns

Have fun with all the weird and magical things that crowded your world. "Rule of Cool" and "Rule of Funny" reign

Never reveal too much to your reader. They need to constantly feel as if there is something more happening off the limits of your story

Domestic heroes (As Narnia and the old dragon slayer stories show, this is not an universal rule)

The overall tone can be darker and edgier, softer and lighter, or somewhere in the middle

#fairy tales #fantasy literature #writers on tumblr #worldbuilding

[maverick-werewolf]

Modern Dragon Designs - Where they came from

Your regularly scheduled werewolf facts will return soon. For now, we provide this special, because you may not realize this, but I love dragons. There’s a reason one of my protagonists is basically obsessed with dragons.

Once upon a time, there was a movie - I don’t see anyone talk about it, I’m not even sure how many people are familiar with it...

It’s called Reign of Fire.

This movie shaped the modern Hollywoodian concept of dragons. Seriously, it did. Hear me out.

Released in 2002, Reign of Fire was a movie about - essentially - dragons as that age-old trope of “let’s take one monster and turn them into an overpopulated zombie plague so we can use them to tell a story about humans and make the monster just this brainless evil locust swarm backdrop.” This has happened to a lot of monsters by now.

But wait, these dragons aren’t like the dragons you might be used to: these dragons were completely redesigned from the ground up by the filmmaker(s) in order to make a more “realistic” and “animalistic” dragon that was acceptable by Hollywood, who generally views “dragon movies” (like so many other fantasy things...) as cheesy and silly. Market your movie as a film about dragons and you probably won’t get a deal. Well, turns out, coming up with your own gritty dragon designs worked!

Doesn’t this remind you of every other dragon you’ve seen in a movie for the last, you know, 18 years? Although it actually looks quite a bit cooler than those other ones that came after it

Please note that while I may sound sarcastic, jaded, and often maybe a bit scathing, I mean nothing against the creators of Reign of Fire or director Rob Bowman. I watched the movie in theaters when it released. I applaud Bowman for coming up with unique and interesting dragon designs, in order to have a different take on the creatures, so that they fit the story he wanted to tell, instead of doing what so many people do and completely co-opting concepts without trying to alter them to fit anything and... yeah... okay, I’m not going to talk about werewolf things in this post. Getting back on track:

What I don’t applaud is everyone ripping off Reign of Fire for their own dragons, doubly so because most of these people didn’t even take into account the reasons why it was designed that way. They should have left his dragons alone and come up with their own thing, but at least I guess Bowman can go down in history as the man who designed every Hollywood dragon for over a decade to come - with no signs of stopping - even down to the tail shape.

On Vice, you can find an article and interview with Rob Bowman, the director of Reign of Fire, discussing how he came up with this dragon design and how influential it has become. I highly recommend giving it a read.

Please note the Vice article is clearly written with the bias of someone who “can’t take dragons seriously,” so it’s also a good look at the Hollywood mindset about dragons and how much Hollywood treats fantasy in general like garbage (jerks).

It’s impossible to pretend this movie didn’t basically reshape modern dragons. Let’s get to the details...

Animalistic Design

Dragons in popular culture are generally - or at least they were generally - assumed to be powerful, intelligent creatures, often of a higher nature than humans and other mere mortals. They may be good or evil, but one can’t understate that traditional fantasy dragons are regal and majestic either way.

Reign of Fire wanted to usurp the majestic, intelligent dragon image, creating a smaller, hunched, knuckle-dragging sort of dragon that looks more like an animal - like a pteranodon. This is because the dragons in Reign of Fire are not exceptionally intelligent, noble beings that speak and hoard gold and have the wisdom of the ages. They are brutal hunters that set things on fire and eat everything smaller than them. So this design choice was a conscious one and a smart one.

The dragons in Reign of Fire are meant to be more scientific, more plausible, and also simpler, in a manner of speaking. They are not colorful, magical, ancient fantasy dragons...

Trouble is, everyone took cues from this design for their talking wise noble fantasy dragons, and it... doesn’t really work, at least if you ask me.

The dragon design in Reign of Fire looks like an ancestral throwback, an evolutionary ancestor to the intelligent, talking fantasy dragon, although they are smaller. They’re hunched, they haven’t evolved forelegs independent of their wings... you get the idea. Take a look at the “proto-drakes” in World of Warcraft versus the ordinary drakes, which have tiny dangly T-rex forelegs that haven’t fully developed yet, so they walk like the Reign of Fire dragons.

A proto-drake in World of Warcraft - also say hi to my worgen warrior

So many things taking this design for their intelligent, “higher being” dragons seems kind of... odd to me, to say the least. Unfortunately, Hollywood decided that’s the only way moviegoers can “take dragons seriously,” so here we are.

“Wyvern” - Two Legs vs Four

Municipal arms of Stjørdal, Norway

In medieval heraldry, there came to be a creature called a wyvern. Now, the etymology on the term “wyvern” is a little shaky. It originally didn’t specifically refer to a “two-legged dragon.” It is thought to mean/be derived from words meaning anything ranging from “asp” to “light javelin,” and essentially boils down to a flying serpent. It is noteworthy, of course, that the word “dragon” basically just means “serpent” too.

In heraldry, though, “wyvern” came to refer to a two-legged dragon - at least, if you ask the English, Scottish, and Irish; elsewhere in Europe, they may not be so picky. And now, in modern pop culture (such as Dungeons and Dragons), we often use it in the same sense.

Wyverns weren’t really a “thing” in folklore, just as dragons in folklore didn’t look like our modern idea of a dragon. It’s debatable whether the father of our modern concept of dragons, Fafnir (from whom Tolkien drew inspiration for Smaug), even had wings at all; he was essentially a serpent, perhaps with legs. Point is, wyverns come from heraldry, especially the specificity of two legs versus four.

So now you know why you might see a lot of people (myself included) referring to this design as a “wyvern design” for a dragon.

Dull Coloration - Grey and Brown over Red, Blue, Green...

There’s something else - something very important - that Hollywood took from Reign of Fire... the concept that dragons aren’t pretty colors and are, in fact, various hues of grey and brown, and any more contrasting colors are just vague indications instead of bright red scales.

Now, Reign of Fire obviously did this because - again - they were going for the more animalistic, natural look as opposed to the mysterious majestic magical being look. Okay, that’s fine. But then Hollywood decided that fantasy, too, has to be devoid of dragons with bright colors.

The green dragon in Game of Thrones

There are countless examples of this in modern media. Any dragon that was previously brightly colored has been dulled pretty much to an extreme. Sometimes you might catch a fleeting glimpse of them looking like a brighter shade, but it was probably just a trick of the light. Why? Because all dragons are desaturated to the point of being almost indistinguishable by color.

The golden dragon in The Witcher Netflix series

This is also why you see so many mods on the Skyrim Nexus called things like “true red dragon.”

There are plenty more examples of this - I’m sure you can see the difference when you look at those dragons and other modern film dragons over, say, something like this...

Red dragon in D&D

And now we move on to...

The Fire Breathing - Chemicals, not Magic

Bowman insisted on ditching traditional fire breathing (you don't want the audience wondering whether the dragon's mouth is being burnt up with every flame) and again looked to the animal kingdom for inspiration. The king cobra, once again, was a great starting point. It doesn't spray fire, but it can spit its venom. Even more useful was the bombardier beetle, which shoots two chemicals from its abdomen that, once mixed, create a hot, burning spray. Bowman used these real-world examples to inspire his own dragons. They don't breathe fire exactly, but rather spit chemicals from two different sacks in their mouths that, when combined, ignite. "That's anatomy. That's already been designed, so we're going to draw from there," he said.

(quoted from the Vice article linked to earlier in this post)

The Hungarian Horntail in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - fire is streaming from two separate organs in the mouth, but they aren’t chemicals mixing together like in Reign of Fire...

The director of Reign of Fire wanted his dragons to be more natural in that they breathe fire through organic means, based on chemical reactions, instead of the usual dragon magic. But lots of people loved this “mouth flap”/”mouth organ” design with “streams” of fire coming from the mouth instead of fire flowing directly from the dragon’s throat, so now you see it pretty dang often.

Horns? Brow Ridges!

Another thing that is basically out now in dragon designs is the real horns of many traditional dragons, like Spyro, and like the dragons in Dungeons & Dragons used to have.

These days, it’s all about brow ridges and big spiny scales that aren’t separate horns, they’re just big pointed scales or piles of scales or bone ridges - and they aren’t a different color than the dragon’s scales, either, pretty often. And, in general, dragon’s horns have become much smaller and far more numerous, and more like spines/ridges, as opposed to the great, sweeping horns of classical dragons.

Firkraag, the red dragon, in the D&D video game Baldur’s Gate II, from 2000

Firkraag is a very traditional dragon. Now, while Dungeons & Dragons has generally kept more traditional dragons (yay!), they did fall into the brow ridge horn thing - although they, thankfully, didn’t make the horns smaller and subtler and more numerous little spikes, like so many other modern dragon designs. They also went with the brow ridge horns for tieflings (once humans with demon blood, then some weird thing in 4E, and now I think they’re humans with demon blood again), as opposed to the ordinary horns of the tieflings in previous editions of D&D.

Skyrim dragon head concept art

The Desolation of Smaug(’s design)

Here is... a big one. Here, we’ll talk some about the production of The Hobbit films over time, so we’re going behind the scenes.

Alright, so we all know Smaug, probably, by pop culture osmosis if nothing else. He is the quintessential dragon. He’s basically the founder of all Western dragon concepts: he’s big, he’s red, he hoards gold, he’s extremely intelligent and talks, etc. You get the picture. Every dragon that we have borrowed at least something from Smaug. And, in turn, he was inspired by Fafnir, the father of all our dragon concepts, from Norse mythology - but Tolkien took it all a step further and created the concept of dragons that we have today. Or, well, the not Reign of Fire ones. The fantasy ones.

A map drawn by Tolkien: notice the winged, four-legged Smaug over his mountain

During the first Hobbit movie, An Unexpected Journey, we see Smaug attack the Lonely Mountain...

In this clip, you can plainly see that Smaug has four legs. This was actually edited slightly for later editions of the movie, or so I’ve heard (I haven’t watched any later editions).

I can tell you for certain that when I saw the theatrical release, it was like this, too. It is apparent throughout the scene that Smaug has four legs and wings, separately. I know because I was paying very, very close attention, because I was going to be very upset if Hollywood turned Smaug into a wyvern.

Well, they did - later.

Smaug the wyvern looking like just another slightly different take on the bog-standard Hollywood dragon

Apparently, some studio exec decided that having a traditional fantasy dragon, even if this dragon happens to be frelling Smaug himself, would not be okay in this modern Hollywood world. So we ended up with a dull reddish spiney hunching knuckle-dragging wyvern with an angler mouth (I’m sorry; I really am sorry if you like the design, that’s totally fine, it’s a fine design, I am glad you enjoyed it, but Smaug shouldn’t have looked that way IMO and forgive me but I am still in pain over it) in place of a more traditional dragon that held more to things like, I dunno, how Tolkien himself drew Smaug. Smaug’s movie design flies right in the face of that and destroyed our chance to finally see a proper traditional dragon done justice on the big screen.

Tolkien’s art of Smaug - note the position of the forelegs, separate from the wings, like in the earlier map

This is all just one big example why we should be thankful that The Lord of the Rings films were all shot in one go, so no one could alter important things like the design of the fantasy genre’s father of all dragons, in the middle of production. Of course, the production on The Hobbit movies was a nightmare at best, as you can read about in assorted other articles, and Peter Jackson was very unhappy with what the studio had him do to the series. All of that is just another story, I suppose.

Dragons Redesigned by Reign of Fire: Example List

Now that we’ve gone over just a few of the talking points about Reign of Fire’s dragon designs (although I didn’t even get into the flat, spaded tail look in detail), here’s an undoubtedly incomplete list of several examples that have either entirely taken the design and/or were massively influenced by it...

(please note that not everything in this list held entirely to Reign of Fire’s design, obviously; some have the fire, some don’t; some have horns, some have head/brow ridges; but all of them are wyverns and most are darkly-colored)

Skyrim - Obvious influence with the general design, skin/scales and ridges design, as well as coloration; however, it is noteworthy that the Elder Scrolls has had dragons with no forelegs since at least 1998, in the game Redguard - though that dragon was also very brightly-colored (also of note: Peryite, while technically a Daedric prince and not a dragon, had four legs at least as far back as Daggerfall in 1996)

The Hobbit films, specifically The Desolation of Smaug onward - as mentioned before

Harry Potter movies - Wholesale. Two streams of fire from mouth flaps in Goblet of Fire, generally dull greyish and/or brownish colorations, no forelegs, short/simple horns that are mostly ridges...

Gods of Egypt - The giant fire-breathing cobras have the mouth flaps

Game of Thrones - This one’s pretty obvious too.

Disney’s Maleficent - In the new live action Disney movie(s), the dragon falls right into this design (though the fire doesn’t come from mouth flaps)

Netflix Witcher series - Villentretenmerth is very much a wyvern design and a dull shade, and he in fact has no horns at all, even though dragons weren’t portrayed this way in any previous Witcher adaptations

Stargate SG1 (season 10) - In the episode series “The Quest,” a dragon appears and... well, it looks just like all those other dragons, though the fire does come from its throat.

Beowulf (2008) - I try not to ever talk about or think about this film, but I have to just throw out there that the dragon is very much Reign of Fire, especially with that wyvern design.

Seventh Son - If you can call Malkin a dragon  - she was called one, I think - she definitely also has the same kind of dull-colored wyvern design.

Sucker Punch (movie)

Lots and lots of B-movies and direct to DVD/streaming films - Dawn of the Dragonslayer, Dragon (2006), Dragon Crusaders...

Something to note, also, is that cartoons, anime, and other non-film media is mostly - but not entirely - free from this influence. Cartoons especially are free from it, partially because they aren’t influenced by Hollywood producers who want “serious” and “realistic” dragons. Cartoons are allowed to have magical, colorful, four-legged dragons. Unfortunately, we are deprived of those in live action film and television, by and large.

There are still other exceptions - most notably things that were created before this influence, like Dragonheart and its spinoffs and sequels, which have thankfully kept their dragon designs consistent instead of erasing their forelegs.

Of course, why dragons are depicted as four-legged and winged in the first place - and when this depiction arose - is another topic entirely. I’m not going into that right now, seeing as how this post is already preposterously long.

Long story short, I was rewatching the movie Gods of Egypt and, when I saw the giant cobra monsters breathe fire, I was possessed to write this article. Because Reign of Fire’s influence is something I have always noticed ever since its release, and something my brother and I talk about a lot (and everyone who knows me has surely heard me talk about it, too) - because, frankly, it’s always bothered me. My favorite dragons are traditional dragons: four legs, bright colors, wings, horns, breathing fire, the works.

So, although the original creator of these design ideas did something cool and different because he wanted to do his own take on dragons, Hollywood decided that these design cues should be taken to dumb down all dragons forever, the same way that Hollywood has dumbed down so many monster designs so that the only acceptable ones just a bunch of near-replicas of each other, including werewolves.

I think it’s very sad that film producers think you can’t take something like dragons or werewolves seriously unless they are dull, nontraditional, and ugly. And I say ugly in the sense of these are not pretty, majestic fantasy designs - they are, many of them, intended to be ugly. Though I personally also hold the opinion that most of them are ugly regardless of if they are intended to be ugly.

So - now you know! If you haven’t seen Reign of Fire, go check it out to meet the father of modern dragon designs, from the color of their hides to the shape of their bodies, the smaller horns, and - sometimes - even their tails.

(Special thanks to everyone on my discord who helped me compile this list, as well as of course my brother and all our ranting at/with each other on this topic over many years)

If you like this post, maybe you’ll enjoy the rest of my blog, where I post a lot about folklore and all kinds of monsters (especially werewolves)!

Werewolf Facts --- Patreon

#dragons #pop culture #dragon #reign of fire #creature design #folklore #wyvern #wyverns #game of thrones #skyrim #harry potter #the desolation of smaug #the hobbit #movies #film #hollywood #long post #EXTREMELY LONG post

[adapembroke]

Icelandic Sagas and Norse Culture: A Conversation with Jared Juckiewicz

There are some people who are so interesting and knowledgeable about a fascinating subject that I wish it was culturally acceptable to hand them a lectern and microphone in social settings and ask them to give an impromptu lecture. My friend Jared Juckiewicz is one of those people.

Jared’s knowledge of Norse history and culture is legendary in our circle, and it was a privilege to have the opportunity to chat with him about the Icelandic Sagas, Jared's class on the Sagas for Nameless Academy, and why you shouldn't carry a magical banner with a raven on it into battle if you value your life.

Ada: For those who are new to the subject, what are the Sagas? 

Jared: So Merriam-Webster defines a saga as “a prose narrative recorded in Iceland in the 12th and 13th centuries of historic or legendary figures and events of the heroic age of Norway and Iceland” which is actually bang on for my definition of the historical Icelandic sagas. (I’d class things like Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied as sagas as well, but epic sagas rather than historical ones.) Most of them are attributed to one writer, an Icelandic gentleman by the name of Snorri Sturlisson, who took advantage of his position in the Icelandic Diocese to record as much of Iceland’s Oral History as he could. Each one is basically the history of one of the important families in Iceland at the time, typically going back a generation or two or three before the settlement of Iceland.   

Ada: I’m surprised that the dictionary defines “saga” as Icelandic specifically. I always thought “saga” was a synonym for “very long poem.” I’m learning something already! 

Was there something about the settlement of Iceland that inspired the Icelanders to write down all of these stories, or is it more that more of the oral tradition survived than it otherwise would have because of Snorri? 

Jared: I mean, I would definitely quibble with the definition being specific to Iceland myself. But then again, I don’t work for Merriam-Webster, so you know. Not my say.

So, it’s definitely a case that more of the oral tradition survived thanks to Snorri than it otherwise would have. Admittedly, he did impart a lot of his biases to them, given that he was Christian, in fact being heavily involved in Iceland’s organised Church, and a lot of his subject matter predates the Christianisation of Iceland. But it’s less of an issue in the historical sagas than in things like the Eddas. I suspect a part of his motivation is that the 13th Century was around the time we start to see the emergence of true national identities in northern europe, and a recorded history tends to be a large part of those. 

Ada: What sorts of challenges do readers have to be aware of accounting for Snorri’s biases, and why are those biases less of an issue with the sagas?

Jared: So the sagas are more of a historical account than the Eddas, which are a record of the icelandic forms of Norse myth. Being a historical account, there’s less room for interpretation, whereas most scholars agree that Snorris Eddas were revised, by him, to make them more palatable to the Church. So when reading the Eddas, it helps to be aware that the person recording them was a Christian, had been raised Christian, and so had certain views regarding morality and cosmology that may have (Read almost certainly did) differ significantly from how the Norse viewed things. Less of an issue with the historical sagas because history is less open to interpretation. His biases may have coloured his description of people’s motivations, but the events are likely accurate, as are the depictions of things like cultural mores and the like. 

Ada: What is your story with the sagas? How did you get interested, and what fascinates you about them?

Jared: So, I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with history. When I was at University, a friend dragged me along to a meeting of what became our local Historical Reenactment Society by dint of showing up to class with a wooden shield on his arm and a wooden sword in his belt. 

Ada: Best. Marketing. Ever.

Jared: I was hooked. Still am. Anyway, I’m like, 5’7” and am lucky if I weigh more than 120lbs. To be effective on the field of battle, I have to go for a mix of speed, savagery and complete disregard for my own personal safety. Four years of getting referred to as ‘The littlest Berserker that could’ lead to finding out everything I could about said Berserkers, which lead to the Icelandic sagas. They’re great stories. Dry reads, cause, you know, the 13th Century wasn’t known for popular fiction. But they’re very… human. Stories. Like you read them and it’s like “I can understand why that person would respond that way.” The culture is at enough of a remove that it feels fantastical, but because we’re talking about real people, and their emotions and their triumphs and their failings, it’s easy to emphasize with them, I find. 

Ada: How did you get from berserkers to the sagas?

Jared: There are a number of sagas where major characters are berserkers, or berserkers are mentioned. Viga-Glums Saga mentions a Berserker who made a living challenging farmers to Holmgangr (a sort of duel where the victor took the losers property. Given they were generally to the death, the loser didn’t tend to object). The eponymous Egil Skallagrimsson is also described as being a Berserker in some translations. As well as a Skald (poet), Sorceror, and what passed for Nobility in his period of Iceland. Part of it is also a dearth of other sources. You have some mention in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle and in similar Scots and Irish records from the time, but they mostly complain about the Norse being evil pagans come to destroy the Christians (When they aren’t complaining that the Vikings only bathe so they can get laid). There’s Adam of Bremen, but he didn’t talk much about the military side of things, which is where berserkers come in, and there’s Ibn Fadhlan, but until recently translations of his manuscripts were a bugger to get a hold of. 

Ada: What is it about the sagas that feels fantastical to you?

Jared: Everything is so much… MORE. If that makes sense? Like, there’s an account of a trial in Njall’s Saga where the defense witness perjures himself by libeling one of the victims, and the prosecuting attorney (Who happened to be related to said victim. No conflict of interest, it’s how things were done at the time) responded by impaling the witness, fatally, with a spear throw. And got away with it. They solve their disputes, when talk fails, with broadswords and battle axes. 

Ada: It’s like they actually do the things we’re all imagining doing when someone does something that’s completely out of line.

Jared: Certainly the things I imagine doing.  Although, I now realise I could explain it easier. Tolkien was a scholar of the Norse Sagas, and drew heavily on some of Snorri’s other works (particularly the Eddas) for the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. So part of why they feel fantastical is that the definitive work for High Fantasy is based on them. 

Ada: Other than weapons, what Tolkienesque things can readers find in the sagas?

Jared: So the sagas are maybe less of an influence on his works than the Eddas, but he drew heavily on the mythology, and there are bits where that crops up in the sagas. There are also references to things like rune-carving as a means of casting spells, and at least one instance of a magic banner. Bear in mind that this was back when magic was an accepted fact of life (in fact at the time, the Catholic Church was heavily involved in magical research. There are guides on things like alchemy and necromancy and rune magic that were written in monasteries at the time). Poetry, I suppose. The Norse were big on poetry. 

Ada: I would love to dive into the intersection between history and mythology with you, but I’ll restrain myself. What’s an example of the intersection of history and myth in the sagas?

Jared: The above mentioned magic banner, actually. It crops up in Njall’s Saga and the Orkneyinga Saga, and belonged to the Jarl of Orkney. Jarl Sigurd of Orkney, to be precise. It was a Raven Banner, sewn by his mother, who was reputed to be a Volva, which was a Norse term for a female magic practitioner, particularly one who practiced fibre magics. It was, reputedly, enchanted to draw the attention of Odin and his aid, and whatever army carried it into battle would have victory, but the bearer of the banner would be slain. Well, the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 was particularly hard fought, and after he’d gone through several standard-bearers, none of Sigurd’s companions was willing to pick it up. He informed them that by spurning Odin’s gift, the battle was lost, tied it round his waist like a belt, and led his final charge. Sigurd’s side lost the battle, and the few of his immediate companions were hunted down shortly thereafter by Kari Solmundsson (admittedly for unrelated reasons).

Ada: One of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation with you is because you are going to be teaching a class on the sagas at the Nameless Academy in February. 

I’m really excited to have the chance to sit in on your class because you are a person who I regularly want to hand a lectern and microphone because you have so much knowledge and so many stories.

What is this class, and what will you be teaching?

Jared: So the class is called Íslendingasögur 101: Norse Polytheism and Medieval Culture in Icelandic Sagas.It’s a mouthful I know. Really, it’s just an introduction to pre-Christian Iceland. There’s a lot of misinformation floating about regarding the Norse. I’m not going to name any names. *Cough* Wagner *Cough* Victorian England *Cough* 

Ahem. Don’t worry, it’s not Covid, I promise. 

But no, there’s a lot of misinformation about the Norse out there, and it’s only in the past five or six decades that we’ve started to undo that. The thing is, the corrections started in Academia, and it took three or four decades before accurate information began to be easily available to the general public. So while we’re doing away with the popular image in peoples heads of the ravening barbarian with the horned helmet, it’s slow going. 

I’m hoping in future semesters to do guided self-study of some of the Icelandic studies, but because I do not want to spend all my time correcting common misconceptions, I decided to teach this first, so that anyone looking into the sagas themselves, either under the aegis of the Nameless Academy, or by themselves, is doing so with at least a basic understanding of the culture those sagas concern. 

Ada: Other than the horned helmet ridiculousness, what is a common misconception that tends to trip up newbies to the sagas?

Law. The Norse had the greatest respect for their Laws, even if they didn’t always follow them. Because of how sparsely settled Iceland was, and given the lack of urbanisation, they didn’t have permanent courthouses like you find nowadays. Instead they all met up at regular intervals at what was known as a ‘Thing’. No that is not a typo, it was actually called a Thing. The big one in Iceland was held at Thingvellir or “Place of the Thing”. “Field of the Thing”? I do not (yet) speak Old Norse and I’ve seen multiple translations. It was sort of a combination of court and county fair, that was opened by a member of the community, the Lawspeaker, reciting a portion of the legal code to all assembled. It was a great honour to be chosen as the Lawspeaker, even if it also meant moderating all the suits. 

One of the most famous Sagas (and my personal favourite) actually focuses heavily on the Laws and Legal matters. In fact, more attention is paid in most sagas to legal nitty-gritty than to pitched battles. 

Ada: Other than an interest in history, why might people want to take your class?

Jared: Perspective. People don’t change, even if the places and laws and the cultures do. It’s also a conversation piece. I mean, you can back me up on this. I can relate almost anything to the Sagas.

Ada: That is absolutely true. I feel sometimes when you're talking like they're stories that are happening now.

If people wanted to read the Sagas, where do you suggest they start?

Jared: So, if you prefer Dead Tree Editions, most of my hardcopies were released by either Penguin Classics or Oxford University Press. They tend to be older translations, but still very good, and I’ve never had a problem finding them at good second-hand bookstores or my local library. Well. Never had a major problem. And in this time of Covid, if you don’t want to go out or have someone bring a copy to your door. 13th Century is pretty much Public Domain now, so there are a few of the sagas available as ebooks through Project Gutenberg. Alternately, there’s an Icelandic Non-Profit that hosts a website, sagadb.org which hosts all the extant Icelandic sagas in a variety of languages and formats (although not all of them are available in English). If I do manage to lead some guided self-study it’s likely to be the SagaDB translations I use. Amongst other things, they’re free. 

Ada: Thank you so much for talking with me, Jared. 

How can people who are interested in learning more about you and your class find you?

Jared: So I’m on Tumblr. At present I’m A-Krogan-Skald-And-Bearsark, and if that changes, only the article and the first identifier will change. Admittedly, I don’t curate my Tumblr AT ALL. So there’s a bit of everything on it. 

I’m also on Discord, and you can reach me there on the Nameless Academy server as Jared, or on Polytheists or Diviners Anonymous as JehanCriec. Mind you, my internet access can be sporadic, so if you don’t hear back from me right away, don’t take it as a slight, I’m just on a boat and will respond as soon as I get a chance. 

#norse #norse pagan #witchblr

[arecomicsevengood]

“Follow Your Own Star”

Lately I’ve found it hard to shake the feeling that everything of value is being destroyed, but we are being given simulacra in exchange, while we wait, to soften the blow. The relationship between the U.S. economy and what actually has value is basically nil, obviously, and COVID has only highlighted that, but beyond that, being in isolation has brought to light how much of what I consider “real” because it exists outside the bounds of money is nonetheless vulnerable. We’ve been given podcasts to fill our working hours with parasocial relationships where once we may’ve had genuine camaraderie with our coworkers. We’re given desultory political candidates to vote for in the absence of those who would govern in accordance with our actual beliefs. It feels like an elaborate art heist is taking place, where the masterpieces are exchanged for forgeries, and the endgame of those seeking to enrich themselves is to set a bonfire of all that’s made us human, all we’ve invested our true selves into. All this can occur only because our relationships have been made increasingly transactional already. I wondered at the start of quarantine how many couples, with the ability to see one another in the flesh compromised, had switched to having “sex” over Skype, how many intimate relationships were compromised by distance into resembling cam shows. Partly this curiosity was a way of comforting myself, as I came to the understanding that I would not be entering into anything approaching a real romantic relationship for the foreseeable future.

In the context of all of this, reading a book that feels reminiscent of the work of another artist feels like a minor thing, but it slips easily enough into the larger pattern. After reading Roaming Foliage by Patrick Kyle, I thought “Huh, this is very much a CF/Brian Chippendale thing.” Then, after reading Eight-Lane Runaways by Henry McCausland, I thought, “Oh, this is even more like a CF thing.” Both are, I think, appropriate for kids, which Powr Mastrs isn’t, but I also never read Powr Mastrs and felt like the thing that made it good was its BDSM pornography elements. People have been biting CF’s style for years — enough for him to address it with a little note in the third Powr Mastrs book, instructing them to “follow your own star.” Simon Hanselmann admits the similarities between the character design for Owl and a character in CF’s story in Kramers Ergot 5, Hanselmann’s subsequent popularity seems to suggest a moment where something becomes less of a direct influence and more just something that exists generally in the world. It’s art: Inspiration, influence, and appropriation are all part of the game. Reading Hanselmann, I’ve wondered what his work would’ve been like before exposure to his most obvious influences; reading these, I wondered instead if they would still have been made had Powr Mastrs 4 ever come out, to finish out the story and close the system; it feels like, in a transactional relationship between artist and audience, the fact of a work remaining unfinished makes it more socially acceptable to steal from. For instance, think of the debt Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain owes to Rene Daumal’s Mount Analogue. It feels like an attempt to create something with an ending, to satisfy a desire for the logic to reach its conclusion. The comics fulfill a certain set of expectations, I found them a pleasant enough experience, satisfying on a certain level. However, on a deeper level, I found them completely unsatisfying, because they speak so directly to a sense of unfulfilled potential. They lack the thrill that CF’s comics provide, of totally transcending any expectations placed on them.

Measuring the impact made by CF, Paper Rad, and the Fort Thunder contingent is difficult to calculate, because there were so many radical gestures inside that work, and while some have been metabolized, others have not. The “reclamation of genre material in an art-school context” is maybe the most readily understood. Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit probably wouldn’t exist were it not for these comics, but that’s such a “who cares” for me, such a dumbed-down and simplistic understanding of what makes these comics good. The silkscreening of covers is close behind, in terms of something that people really ran with. That’s fine, no one owns silkscreening, it looks great. What hasn’t really been reckoned with are the gestures against commodity fetishism. Paper Rodeo is progenitor of the free comics newspaper format, but the work that ran there is so much wilder than what you see in what followed, and most of it was anonymous. I understand why that was a gauntlet that wasn’t picked up, but is still one of the things that made an impact on its initial readership. Similarly, I haven’t seen anyone steal the CF format of the single-sheet xerox, with comics on the front and back. I guess that’s not surprising! But honestly? Sick format.

I’ve just been talking about comics, but Lightning Bolt playing on the floor is its own radical gesture, albeit one with an obvious precedent in the form of Crash Worship. The Forcefield oeuvre is its own thing. Those videos are great! The animation made out of photographing the cutting layers of multicolored clay… I wonder how much of this stuff hasn’t been picked up on because it’s the last stand of working with real world physical materials, before the coming of digital as the default medium for art students to work in. Obviously, the silkscreening has similar roots in physical media, and playing on floors relates directly to how you communicate with people when you’re in the same physical space as them. Real world community has distinct advantages, but many that came after took the trade for the benefits working digitally provides. Anyway. I could write a 33 1/3 book proposal for Lightning Bolt’s Ride The Skies that addresses all this stuff, but I also believe I would not be the best person to write such a book; I suspect those better suited would not be interested.

There is something so exciting about artists whose work feels overflowing with ideas, not just on a level of concept or drawing but also in terms of how the work is presented. That whole Providence/Picturebox crew was so abundant with this creative ferment that when I see others picking up on individual threads it makes sense on a certain level — you want more of a certain thing — but if it’s not backed up by something distinctly unique, as a reader I’m hyper-aware of what’s absent.

These artists also made books, and records, and it was their doing so that brought their work to a larger audience, including me. Not everything has to be a gesture against making money. But at the same time, radical gestures suggest the benefits made in fostering community work out better in the long term than leveraging oneself to be consumed as a commodity does. This is not to suggest that McCausland or Kyle are doing something wrong that will sabotage some sort of grand plan for utopia: I’m really just riffing here. If I buy electronic music mp3s online, I’m not necessarily going to lament the death of live music performance the same way I do when buying the mp3s of a jazz act. Looking at a contemporary superhero comic that feels dire and ugly will make me nostalgic for the Mike Parobeck comics of my youth, but a contemporary black and white zine exists in a completely different universe and might not remind me of anything. Certain things make you miss the world that was more than others.

It’s also worth noting that by all accounts Patrick Kyle has a bunch of people online ripping off his style but I have successfully been able to avoid such people. While Roaming Foliage is consciously modeled after the sort of weird adventure comics of not just Powr Mastrs, but also Brian Chippendale’s If N Oof,  What I am most often seeing and thinking “that’s a ripoff” is the presence of these geometrical patterns which are also similar to design choices made throughout his oeuvre. There’s a chaotic, obfuscatory energy approach to comics that he works with frequently, but so much of his other comics feel dark, melancholy, or paranoid whereas this feels much lighter in its tone. At the same time, compared to the claustrophobia of Don’t Come In Here, having his characters move about makes for an adventure narrative. Watching them wander, interact, and be given quests and goals belongs to this tradition that’s not unique to the Picturebox artists — but the feeling that this fantasy material was arrived at through adventure games like Zelda moreso than Tolkien makes for this sort of… generational level of familiarity, rather than seeming to occupy some sort of Campbellian myth-space, if that makes sense. The strangeness of Kyle’s art, where backgrounds overtake figures, suggests a sort of PC glitching, almost like the Cory Arcangel/Paper Rad collaboration Super Mario Movie, but achieved through photocopier technology of blowing up and distorting images. It is the sensation of a feeling being chased after that makes the book feel less exciting and more melancholy, though subsequently, that darker feeling might make the book slot into Kyle’s oeuvre so much that bigger fans of his might not even notice the resemblance I’m seeing.

McCausland has a list of acknowledgments in his book which includes CF alongside Herge and Otomo. I can sort of see them all, but Herge especially is an influence that’s been so widely absorbed by comics as a whole that I really only feel particularly aware of it in the case of Joost Swarte or something. McCausland’s resemblance to CF is reinforced by things as molecular as a resemblance in the lettering, which is really odd. The figures all have this youthful smallness to them, and I can’t tell if the characters are meant to be young specifically or if it’s just the way he’s learned to draw. I can see Otomo, but it’s definitely approached through the CF filter. Other trademarks, like the rendering of geometric shapes, the patterns of parallel lines, seems integrated, highlighted, by the “racetrack” premise that gives the book its name. However, he distinguishes himself because his work is more constantly busy, with the same general level of detail. There’s also these trees in the background, which seem like they’re rendered as these painted soft grey daubs, a type of texture you don’t see in CF’s darkened pencil work.

His storytelling is different, prone to large spreads, or showing the same character multiple times in a panel as they move across the landscape. (The dimensions of Eight-Lane Runaways are considerably larger than those of Powr Mastrs.) There are nonetheless panels that seem exactly like CF drawings, but with a less cryptic sense of humor. It feels more populist, like it’s based around what a person liked, and in the act of working it out, subtracted the mystery. What would’ve been a detailed “money shot” in a CF sequence is here the baseline level of drawing detail that never gets subtracted from. It’s really fascinating to me how this makes it less good, I think many people would prefer it.

I wrote most of this before learning that Anthology is releasing a new CF book next week. You can order it and see preview images at the Floating World site. You can draw your own conclusions. CF’s on his own path such that you might not even note a resemblance between his new images and McCausland’s. We’re all living on the same planet, orbiting the same sun in an expanding universe, subject to the will of an accelerating time.

[absynthe--minded]

So far I've been reading the Silm by looking up characters that seem interesting in the index & reading those passages. And Fingon is 100% next on the list & I the irresponsible reader am 100% here for even your most spoilery thoughts.

AAAAAAHHH OKAY SO

I love my boy.

I’m gonna start by saying that Fingon does three things in the Silm that people really know him for - he rescues Maedhros, who is his half-cousin and at the very least his close friend, from imprisonment in Angband; he becomes High King of the Noldor and rules briefly (twelve-ish years); he dies. Saying he dies is both a spoiler that I do in fact feel bad for bringing up and also kind of like saying that someone in Les Misérables dies, because odds are if they’re a named character who do something important they’re gonna die, in either book. Of these three things, Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros is the most popular subject for fanfiction and fanart; in fanart it’s almost a requirement that if you draw a lot of Noldor you have to at least attempt to illustrate the rescue. And it’s a really dramatic rescue, so I can’t blame them!

Since you’re a new fan I’ll also say that you can spot Fingon by his braids; artists draw him as part of a wide range of ethnicities, but he’ll have at least one braid with gold ribbon/wire/passing thread in it. This comes from a line in (I think) The Peoples of Middle-Earth, talking about how the “fin” in a great deal of the names (Fingon, Finwë, Finrod, Fingolfin, Finarfin, etc) means “hair” in Quenya, and how Fingon wore his own hair plaited through with gold. This is where the common assumption that he and his family aren’t white comes from; there’s some more fandom history behind that but its roots are in this passage.

and now on to my like. actual thoughts.

Fingon gets a lot of love in fanart and I’d say he’s a popular character in terms of being a guy you can safely bet will show up in art/being an uncontroversial choice for Favorite Character, but he also tends to come as part of a matched set. I talked about this a little bit in an earlier reblog about Russingon (the name of his ship with Maedhros) and trauma? But I feel like a lot of Fingon’s popularity comes from his relationship with Maedhros rather than him being an interesting character on his own. And it’s funny because a lot of other fandom favorites really aren’t like that - Glorfindel is an extremely minor character who dies like a badass and he’s got two relatively small ships that he’s associated with, but his presence in art and fic is based entirely on he himself, for example. Same with characters like Rog, or Fingolfin, or any of the non-Maedhros sons of Fëanor. Fingon is the only one for whom his entire fandom presence seems to stem from Being In Love.

And with that, on to the ship.

I love Russingon (Maedhros/Fingon; the name comes from a Quenya nickname given to Maedhros and from the Sindarin translation of Fingon’s name) to death. It’s my OTP to end all OTPs, over and over again. I think their dynamic is incredible, even if I don’t always like fandom takes on it. I love their loyalty to one another, their devotion and continued cooperation, I love that so much of their story is canonically defined by love to the point that even if you don’t ship them you’re left with nothing but evidence of how deeply they cared for one another. I think Fingon specifically loves very earnestly, very totally, very wholly. And I think that his love is also a massive flaw, to an extent we don’t see in characters often.

I said this in my earlier post, but Fingon does terrible things for love. He doesn’t hesitate to do them. He plunges in with both feet, impulsive and brash, and only stops to think about the consequences afterwards, and this is done out of love for the people around him, particularly love for Maedhros. And this, at least, is canon, it’s not projection on my part. Whether or not that’s romantic love is up to you the reader? But I’ll always see it that way. I focus on this because Tolkien’s tragic heroes and best protagonists act with love as a primary motivator, and so many of his villains’ flaws have to do with love turning sour somehow, or turning to selfishness, or rotting into obsession and the desire for control. It’s also interesting because I think what keeps Fingon from losing himself completely in that love is his sense of duty and responsibility - unlike others, such as Fëanor or Maedhros even, he never stops remembering he has a job to do and a people to serve.

What a good character, honestly. Holy shit.

#replies #anon replies #tolkien #silmarillion meta #fingon #findekáno bb #absynthe's meta

[septembercfawkes]

21 Recommended Books for Writers

As I've talked about on my blog several times, an important part of growing as a writer is learning about writing. For years I've wanted to compile a list of writing books I've read, liked, and recommend. Today I'm happy to say I now have that list to add to my blog (perfect timing for anyone who likes summer reading). I'm sure over time, this list will be added to.

Many writers I've talked to have read quite a few of these books. How many have you read? And is there one I need to look into? (You can comment at the bottom).

If you haven't read any of them, cool. Now you have a list to chose from should you ever want to.

Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories. In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

​ BUY / LEARN MORE

What makes a good story or a screenplay great? The vast majority of writers begin the storytelling process with only a partial understanding where to begin. Some labor their entire lives without ever learning that successful stories are as dependent upon good engineering as they are artistry. But the truth is, unless you are master of the form, function and criteria of successful storytelling, sitting down and pounding out a first draft without planning is an ineffective way to begin. Story Engineering starts with the criteria and the architecture of storytelling, the engineering and design of a story--and uses it as the basis for narrative. The greatest potential of any story is found in the way six specific aspects of storytelling combine and empower each other on the page. When rendered artfully, they become a sum in excess of their parts. BUY / LEARN MORE 

Bestselling author David Farland has taught dozens of writers who have gone on to staggering literary success, including such #1 New York Times Bestsellers as Brandon Mull (Fablehaven), Brandon Sanderson (Wheel of Time), James Dashner (The Maze Runner) and Stephenie Meyer (Twilight). In this book, Dave teaches how to analyze an audience and outline a novel so that it can appeal to a wide readership, giving it the potential to become a bestseller. The secrets found in his unconventional approach will help you understand why so many of his authors go on to prominence.

  ​ BUY / LEARN MORE

How do you create a main character readers won't forget? How do you write a book in multiple-third-person point of view without confusing your readers (or yourself)? How do you plant essential information about a character's past into a story? Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by award-winning author Nancy Kress answers all of these questions and more! This accessible book is filled with interactive exercises and valuable advice that teaches you how to:    Choose and execute the best point of view for your story    Create three-dimensional and believable characters    Develop your characters' emotions    Create realistic love, fight, and death scenes    Use frustration to motivate your characters and drive your story.

​ BUY / LEARN MORE

The road to rejection is paved with bad beginnings. Agents and editors agree: Improper story beginnings are the single biggest barrier to publication. Why? If a novel or short story has a bad beginning, then no one will keep reading. It's just that simple. In Hooked, author Les Edgerton draws on his experience as a successful fiction writer and teacher to help you overcome the weak openings that lead to instant rejection by showing you how to successfully use the ten core components inherent to any great beginning. Plus, you'll discover exclusive insider advice from agents and acquiring editors on what they look for in a strong opening. With Hooked, you'll have all the information you need to craft a compelling beginning that lays the foundation for an irresistible story!

​ BUY / LEARN MORE

This ultimate insider's guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a show biz veteran who's proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat!

BUY / LEARN MORE

"Show—don't tell." How many times have you heard this standard bit of writing advice? It's so common in writing courses and critiques that it has become a cliche. Writers are often told to write scenes, dramatize, cut exposition, cut summary—but it's misguided advice. The truth is good writing almost always requires both showing and telling. The trick is finding the right balance of scene and summary—the two basic components of creative prose. Showing and Telling shows you how to employ each of these essential techniques in the appropriate places within a narrative. Complete with examples from bestsellers and interactive exercises, this comprehensive guide offers an in-depth look at scene development, the role of reflection in storytelling, the art of summarizing, and how to bring it all together.

BUY / LEARN MORE

One of the biggest problem areas for writers is conveying a character's emotions to the reader in a unique, compelling way. This book comes to the rescue by highlighting 75 emotions and listing the possible body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for each. Using its easy-to-navigate list format, readers can draw inspiration from character cues that range in intensity to match any emotional moment. The Emotion Thesaurus also tackles common emotion-related writing problems and provides methods to overcome them. This writing tool encourages writers to show, not tell emotion and is a creative brainstorming resource for any fiction project.

BUY / LEARN MORE

This book is a set of tools: literary crowbars, chisels, mallets, pliers and tongs. Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your imagination. Award-winning author Orson Scott Card explains in depth the techniques of inventing, developing and presenting characters, plus handling viewpoint in novels and short stories. With specific examples, he spells out your narrative options—the choices you'll make in creating fictional people so "real" that readers will feel they know them like members of their own families.

BUY / LEARN MORE

All successful writers use resonance to enhance their stories by drawing power from stories that came before, by resonating with their readers' experiences, and by resonating within their own works. In this book, you'll learn exactly what resonance is and how to use it to make your stories more powerful. You'll see how it is used in literature and other art forms, and how one writer, J. R. R. Tolkien, mastered it in his work.

BUY / LEARN MORE

An illuminating and invaluable guide for beginners wary of modern poetry, as well as for more advanced students who want to sharpen their craft and write poems that expand their technical skills, excite their imaginations, and engage their deepest memories and concerns. Ideal for teachers who have been searching for a way to inspire students with a love for writing--and reading--contemporary poetry.

BUY / LEARN MORE

Like a muse for the writer, Oakley Hall thoughtfully leads us past the sinkholes of cliches, flat prose, and self-conscious writing and guides us toward the magic of vivid and original storytelling. ...An essential resource for any writer -- beginning, published, or just plain stuck. -- Amy TanOakley Hall cites the works and methods of such great novelists as John Steinbeck, Joyce Carol Oates, Leo Tolstoy, Agatha Christie and Milan Kundera to show readers what works in the novel, and why. This book features advice on taking a novel through each of its stages, from the beginning of an idea to The End, and guides writers through the process of writing a novel.

BUY / LEARN MORE

How essential is setting to a story? How much description is too much? In what ways do details and setting tie into plot and character development? How can you use setting and description to add depth to your story?

You can find all the answers you need in Write Great Fiction: Description & Setting by author and instructor Ron Rozelle. This nuts-and-bolts guide - complete with practical exercises at the end of each chapter - gives you all the tips and techniques you need to:

   Establish a realistic sense of time and place

   Use description and setting to drive your story

   Craft effective description and setting for different genres

   Skillfully master showing vs. telling

With dozens of excerpts from some of today's most popular writers, Write Great Fiction: Description & Setting gives you all the information you need to create a sharp and believable world of people, places, events, and actions.

BUY / LEARN MORE

Learn step-by-step how to create fictional fights that leave the reader breathless with excitement.

The book gives you:

* A six-part structure to use as blueprint for your scene.

* Tricks how to combine fighting with dialogue

* Information about swords, daggers and other weapons, and suggestions how to write about them

It helps you to decide:

* What's the best weapon for your character

* Where the scene takes place

* Which senses to use, how and when

* How much violence your fight needs

and more.

BUY / LEARN MORE

“Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999—and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it—fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

BUY/LEARN MORE

The Elements of Style is the definitive text and classic manual on the principles of English language read by millions of readers. The 18 main topics are organized under the headings, “Elementary Rules of Usage,” “Elementary Principles of Composition,” “A Few Matters of Form,” “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused,” and “Words Often Misspelled.”

BUY/LEARN MORE

Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience.

In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the "magic" of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.

BUY/LEARN MORE

A deft analysis and appreciation of fiction―what makes it work and what can make it fail.

Here is a book about the craft of writing fiction that is thoroughly useful from the first to the last page―whether the reader is a beginner, a seasoned writer, or a teacher of writing. You will see how a work takes form and shape once you grasp the principles of momentum, tension, and immediacy. "Tension," Stern says, "is the mother of fiction. When tension and immediacy combine, the story begins." Dialogue and action, beginnings and endings, the true meaning of "write what you know," and a memorable listing of don'ts for fiction writers are all covered. A special section features an Alphabet for Writers: entries range from Accuracy to Zigzag, with enlightening comments about such matters as Cliffhangers, Point of View, Irony, and Transitions.

BUY/LEARN MORE

Get Your Readers' Attention—And Keep It—From the First World to the Final Page.

Translating that initial flash of inspiration into a complete story requires careful crafting. So how do you keep your story from beginning slowly, floundering midway, and trailing off at the end? Nancy Kress shows you effective solutions for potential problems at each stage of your story—essential lessons for strong start-to-finish storytelling.

Hook readers, agents, and editors in the first three paragraphs.

Make and keep your story's implicit promise to the reader.

Build drama and credibility by controlling your prose.

Consider the price a writer pays for flashbacks.

Reveal character effectively throughout your story.

Get the tools you need to get your story off to an engaging start, keep the middle tight and compelling, and make your conclusion high impact.

BUY/LEARN MORE

* This is a guidebook for nonfiction, but I've included it because many of its great principles can apply to creative writing

On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet.

Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental principles as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

BUY/LEARN MORE

* This is a guidebook for nonfiction, but I've included it because many of its great principles can apply to creative writing, and I have referred to it in my writing tips.

Engaging and direct, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace is the guidebook for anyone who wants to write well.Engaging and direct, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace is the guidebook for anyone who wants to write well.

Williams’ own clear, accessible style models the kind of writing that audiences–both in college and after–will admire. The principles offered here help writers understand what readers expect and encourage writers to revise to meet those expectations more effectively. This book is all you need to understand the principles of effective writing.

BUY/LEARN MORE

Happy reading ^_^

In other news, I do have several writerly blog posts in the works. This last week I started one on Mary Sues--that's been an interesting one to write.

#writing #writing tips #writing tip #writing help #writing helps #writing lesson #writing lessons #writing advice #writing reference #reading #recommended reading #writeblr #writblr #writerblr #writing tips and tricks

[elrondsscribe]

The Seventh Avenger: Chapter 1

Nothing here's mine, of course. Tolkien and Marvel Studios own it all.

April 21, 2012

Glorfindel let himself into his apartment and hung up his keys on the rack next to the door. He set his phone down on the counter by the sink, opened the dishwasher to retrieve a clean glass, and retrieved an open jug of distilled water from the refrigerator. He drank deeply, the cool water soothing his dry throat.

He had been running, partly because it was a beautiful day but mostly because he'd needed the exercise to loosen himself up for the day's exercise routines. Now that his profession was so demandingly physical, he had to take better and more intentional care of his body than he'd had to in a few centuries. He quite relished the challenge.

He was just about to go for a much-needed shower when his senses belatedly went on the alert. He stiffened, and looked around.

Someone uninvited was in the house - was in fact in the next room, which was the living room. A tall, completely bald black man with a patch over his left eye was sitting comfortably on the couch holding a book. "You know, I used to love fantasy novels when I was in high school," he said conversationally. "Maybe that's why I still believe in heroes."

Glorfindel could honestly say that he had not had a genuine surprise like this for a solid decade. "Should I know you?" he asked suspiciously.

"You don't?" The man with the patch finally looked up and turned his head so that he was facing Glorfindel directly. "I'm surprised. Didn't you save my ungrateful ass from, to quote you directly, 'a Houseless in service to the Enemy' near forty-three years ago?"

And then Glorfindel remembered the lean, long-limbed boy who had come within an inch of death and worse that hot summer night. "You are Nicholas Fury," he said, and cocked his head. "I didn't recognize you at first; you've changed much since then."

The Man Nicholas Fury looked gave him a searching look. "You haven't."

Glorfindel's mouth tightened. "Is there a reason you are here, Mr. Fury?" he asked sharply.

But the Man smiled. "Now we're getting somewhere," he said, and he shut the book and turned the cover toward Glorfindel. "I'm now the director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, or SHIELD."

Glorfindel tensed, and wondered briefly if now after all these years he would be exposed. "What is SHIELD?" he asked warily.

Fury tucked the (rather large) book he'd been reading under his arm and got up. As he came into the kitchen Glorfindel saw that he was also holding a folder. "SHIELD is an international extra-governmental counter-terrorism intelligence agency," he said. "Our focus is on protection - specifically, protecting the world from alter-natural threats, and from alter-natural secrets they're not ready to hear yet."

And with these words he swept the book from under his arm and laid it on the kitchen table, and its title, The Lord of the Rings: One Volume, gleamed in large gold letters.

Glorfindel stared at the book and pursed his lips, trying to hide his unease. "Secrets people aren't ready to hear?" he asked. "This work -" he pointed to the book. "- is known the world over - been translated into heaven only knows how many languages."

"It's even been made into a motion picture," said Fury. "You probably already know there's another one scheduled to come out in November."

"That's the point," said Glorfindel. "Hobbits and Elves and Dwarves are popular everywhere -"

"Isn't that convenient," rumbled Fury.

Glorfindel became silent. He couldn't afford vehement denial.

"Then, on the other hand, maybe not," Fury went on. "See, a little while back, I remembered what you said to me that night. I started doing a little research - Fellowship, Silmarilllion, Unfinished Tales, Book of Lost Tales, Peoples of Middle-Earth. Hell, I even went through online forums and fan articles. I had a theory, see, based on what you said."

Glorfindel gritted his teeth.

"Like I said, I did some digging," said Fury. "And I found this story about an Elf called Glorfindel. He came back from the dead and was sent back to Middle-Earth as an emissary of the Valar, like Gandalf was later on. Glorfindel, I hear, was an extraordinary warrior, but he was even more than that. He could send Sauron's most terrifying minions running like a bunch of dormice just by showing up."

In spite of his worries, Glorfindel found his lips curling. "I wouldn't quite say that," he hedged.

"Too humble?" asked Fury with a smirk. "Not surprised."

Caught. Red-handed.

"Is there something in particular you need?" snapped Glorfindel.

"Well, I'm here for two things," said Fury. "The first one you already took care of - admitting to, you know, that." He gestured to the large volume. "You haven't been nearly as careful as you should about trying to protect your secret."

Glorfindel gulped. "What do you mean?"

Fury opened his folder, and began drawing papers and photos from it one by one. "Taylor Alexander, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet for three years, been with the company for ten. Laurence Matthews, flute teacher in Maryland for twenty-eight years until a fatal car accident in 1971. Adam Bartlett, promising intelligence agent during the Second World War, killed in action in 1943. Jonathan Davis, professional photographer that went down with the Titanic after nearly thirty years in business. Rare photo of Samuel McCarson, famed abolitionist and post-war Reconstruction activist, killed in a riot in 1875 - you have no idea how many strings I had to pull to get that one -"

Glorfindel felt his heart come into his mouth as all his last aliases were displayed one by one.

"- and those are just the identities we have photos for," Fury went on. "We've got painted portraits of a Bernard Mandeville, a Herman John Walker, a Raymond Vandeleur, and a Charles Williamson. I won't bore you with the entire list, but you get the idea, right?"

Glorfindel's jaw was tight. "What do you want from me?"

"What do I want from you?" Fury shook his head. "No, that's not the question here. The question here is, what do you want from me? See, there aren't too many people even in the intelligence community who know about all this -" he pointed to all the photos and documents on the table. "But when it comes to secrets, two's plenty and three's a crowd. You dig what I'm getting at?"

And just like that, when he'd thought things couldn't get worse, they'd worsened. "You're not the only one who's guessed about me, have you?" asked Glorfindel.

"I'm willing to bet I'm not," said Fury. "So here's the deal: I can make you disappear from every record about you that exists - SHIELD's good like that. Nobody'll ever find you - or any others of your kind, I might add -" Glorfindel let out a small groan. "- the way I did."

"Should have known I wouldn't be the only one," sighed the Elf, rubbing his neck again. "What's the catch? And don't play coy with me, I know there's a catch."

"Not a catch, per se," said Fury, his single visible eye gleaming in amusement. "Just a favor I'd like to ask, which you're actually free to turn down if you really want to. I do owe you that."

"What's the favor?" asked Glorfindel.

Without a word, the Man laid down the folder and turned it toward Glorfindel, who raised his eyebrows at the title, printed in large black letters under a logo designed like an eagle. "The Avengers Initiative?"

"Call me an idealist," Fury's expression was enigmatic. "Earth's mightiest heroes, coming together to fight the battles we couldn't."

Glorfindel opened the folder, and his jaw fell. "These are your other candidates?"

Fury's smile was shark-like. "You got an idea, now, what I'm asking you for?"

A slow grin spread across the Elf's face. He looked back up at Fury. "If I agree to this, may I ask a small favor of you?"

April 21, 2012

A bright yellow sun with eight rays set inside a larger circle of deep forest green glowed on Fury's office wall.

"So he actually wants to use the original Golden Flower device?" asked Agent Maria Hill, gazing at the icon.

"He said he was ready to 'step out of the shadows'," said Fury. "Thought it was 'time for the age of marvels to begin.'" His tone turned mocking at the last words.

Hill was not fooled. "You're enjoying everything about this, aren't you?" she asked, arching her eyebrows at her superior.

Fury's single eye glinted. "Maybe. Get the thing put on a suit of armor."

Hill took a look at the numbers underneath the image. "A suit of armor for a seven-foot-two creature out of an adventure novel. Should I put in an order a sword?"

"What else would he use?" snorted her superior.

She shook her head. "You know the Council wouldn't be happy to hear you're still working on Phase One."

Fury fixed his eye on Hill. "Sure they wouldn't, if they knew jack about it."

[From the classified personal file of Director Nicholas J. Fury]

May 1: Destruction of Project PEGASUS; arrival of hostile Asgardian force identified as Loki; brainwashing of unknown number of PEGASUS participants including Agent Barton and Dr. Erik Selvig.

May 2: Reactivation of Phase One: Avengers Initiative - call in and brief the following candidates: Captain Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Dr. Bruce Banner, and Laurëfindel/Glorfindel (alias Taylor Alexander).

"This is out of line, Director," said Councilman Malick sternly. "You're dealing with forces you can't hope to control."

"You ever been in a war, Councilman?" snapped Director Fury, gazing up at the group of screens in front of him in a virtual conference room. Each of the screens displayed a real-time image of a member of the World Security Council. "In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?"

"You saying that this Asgard declared war on our planet?" demanded the American Councilman.

"Not Asgard, Loki," corrected Fury.

"He can't be working alone," interjected Councilwoman Hawley, a representative from the United Kingdom. She was writing busily on a notepad. "What about the other one, his brother?"

"Our intelligence says Thor is not a hostile," said Fury. "But he's worlds away. We can't depend on him for help. It's up to us."

"Which is why you should be focusing on Phase Two," said Councilman Malick. "It was designed for exactly -"

"Phase Two isn't ready," Fury cut him off. "Our enemy is. We need a response team."

"The Avengers Initiative was shut down," Councilman Malick's voice held a hint of warning.

"This isn't about the Avengers," said Fury dismissively.

"We've seen the list," said Councilman Singh, arms folded.

"We're running the world's greatest security network," Councilman Malick leaned forward. "And you're going to leave the fate of the human race to a handful of freaks."

Fury's frown deepened. "I'm not leaving anything to anyone," he said emphatically. "We need a response team. These people may be isolated - unbalanced, even - but I believe with the right push they can be exactly what we need."

"You believe?" asked Councilwoman Hawley, with a smile that held no warmth.

"War isn't won by sentiment, Director," added Councilman Malick.

"No," said Fury, and his voice rang with conviction. "It's won by soldiers."

Yeah, this chapter was slow. And brief. Sorry. The next ones will make up for it, though I can't guarantee they'll come very quickly.

Couple things straight off the bat - in case you couldn't tell in the first chapter, I've made Glorfindel the focus of my story, not Legolas. He's a lot older, more powerful, and in my opinion more the Avenger type than Legolas (at least canon Legolas). He will also be by far the oldest Avenger.

Also, I referenced the real 2012 schedule for the NYCB to see what a real dancer in Glorfindel's position would have been doing at this point - which on this particular day is nothing, since the winter season ended February 26 and the spring season didn't begin until May 1. [Which means that Glorfindel will get the call to come in at a really bad time . . .]

#elrondsscribe #fanfiction on tumblr #fanfiction #fanfic #avengers #lotr #lord of the rings #glorfindel #glorfindel the avenger #the seventh avenger

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Space 1889, Barry Windsor Smith, Tokien, Prydain

Popular Culture (DVS Press): If you needed more proof that the obsession with fictional corporate franchises has a religious overtone to it, here is a major filmmaker advertising just that. When my viewers were upset about the corporate destruction of Star Wars, calling the franchise a cultural institution, I thought it a bit hyperbolic – after all, these are just stories, and you can’t uncreate what George Lucas did. I see things better now. Star Wars is part of the religious reverence for popular franchises.

RPG (Matthew J. Constantine): Way back in the 80s when I was a wee lad and just getting into tabletop RPGs, I used to see Space 1889 on the shelf at a local game store and I thought it looked pretty cool. Somewhere around there, my father picked up a copy, and I used to thumb through it a bunch.  There was something in the setting that really hit a lot of my buttons. I was an Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne fan, so that was probably enough. But the setting had something that drew me in.

Comic Books (ICV2): Marvel Comics announced Conan the Barbarian: Coming of Conan, the first volume of collected Conan books restored for The Original Marvel Years Epic Collection, for release into trade in June 2020. Conan’s adventures would become legend, but before he became king, he was Conan the Barbarian. In this new trade paperback, Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith bring Robert E. Howard’s barbarian to four-color life, and have restored the art to match the epic majesty of their original editions.

Cinema (Amatopia): So this Birds of Prey movie didn’t do so hot. The usual suspects are blaming misogyny among the movie-going public. The other usual suspects are blaming a marketing campaign that specifically told men that this movie was not for them. Now, both are apocryphal, as I have not found men telling other men not to see this movie because it features women, and I have also not found people involved with the making of the movie telling men “This movie is not for you.”

Tolkien (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): we now know that Tolkien was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature at least three times: in 1961, when he was nominated by C. S. Lewis. in 1967, when his name appeared on the (alphabetical) long list as #58 of 70 nominees. In 1969, when he was #90 on the long list of 103 names. So far as I know he did not make the short list any of these times.

Weird Fiction & Appendix N (Goodman Games): Without August Derleth (1909-1971), you probably wouldn’t have that Cthulhu bumper sticker on your car, that Cthulhu for President poster, and certainly not that Plushie Cthulhu you have staring down at you from your geek-memorabilia shelf.  Not that Cthulhu would not exist, but he (it?) would be just one more forgotten character in a series of stories by an author unknown except to the most ardent of horror literati. Howard Philip Lovecraft’s greatest creation and most if not all of his fiction would have passed into obscurity if not for August Derleth’s founding of Arkham House publishing.

Fiction (DMR Books): These are stories of Jean Ray, who was known as “The Belgian Poe.” Other writers he was similar to are H. P. Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, and Guy de Maussapant. I first read Ray’s fiction in the doorstopper anthology The Weird by Jeff and Anne VanderMeer which reprinted his stories “The Mainz Psalter” and “The Shadowy Street.” Reading these stories, I felt like I did when I first read Lovecraft. They were tales of cosmic horror of immense power and imagination. I decided I would seek out more of his fiction.

RPG (Black Gate): For twenty years, the folks at Privateer Press have been creating games, primarily set in their Iron Kingdoms steampunk fantasy setting. They began with a series of RPG volumes, including an award-winning trilogy of adventures from 2001. These adventures, later collected into The Witchfire Trilogy, was built on the D20 System from Dungeons and Dragons 3E. Then Privateer Press really came into their own with the introduction of the Warmachine miniature wargame, focusing on armies that control massive metallic warjacks, one of the iconic creatures from their Iron Kingdoms setting.

T.V. (Dark Worlds Quarterly): When I was in graduate school, one of my

favorite television shows was Highlander.  I’d seen the first and second movies, and while I’d enjoyed them, it was the TV show that really captured my imagination and made me think about immortals and immortality. A movie is limited to approximately two hours. By contrast, a weekly show has a lot more time to develop characters, backstory, plots and subplots, and story-arcs that can last for months or even years.

Fiction (Epoch Times): In 1907, the man who composed these verses won the Noble Prize for Literature at the remarkably young age of 41. He also wrote hundreds of short stories and several novels. Many of these were made into films in the 20th century, among which were “The Jungle Book,” “Kim,” “Gunga Din,” “Wee Willie Winkie,” “Captains Courageous,” “Soldiers Three,” and “The Man Who Would Be King.” (Reader, if you haven’t seen this last film, starring Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer, treat yourself to a great movie this winter.)

Fiction (Wasteland & Sky): A couple of years ago, Superversive Press announced a series of 12 volumes each containing short stories based on the classic planetary system. 9 were based on the planets, and two were based on the sides of the moon. Each volume would contain stories science fiction, fantasy, horror, and weird fiction, with everything in between. No genre style was off limits. All that mattered was matching tone and theme. As a themed series of short story anthologies, it was quite ambitious.

Retro-Science Fiction (25 Years Later): There are two closely-knit, though not necessarily always interchangeable, subgenres of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Raypunk, or in architectural design circles referred to as Raygun Gothic, is the retrofuture with an eye for a bright future. Atompunk generates dystopian vibes and warns of a dreaded future in which the atomic bomb desecrated all humankind. Atompunk is bleak and afraid. Raypunk is quite excited for what tomorrow has in store.

Cinema (Jon Mollison): Bollywood often gets bandied about as an alternative to Hollywood fare by those cut back on consumption of it’s anti-American resentment.  Taken in by the flashy colors, the obvious national pride of the productions, and for some strange reason the song and dance numbers that break out on the regular, they seek solace in alien spectacle.  Personally, I find the sheer foreign-ness of Bollywood off-putting in much the same way I find anime incomprehensible. . . Enter Furious, the Russian made story of 17 brave warriors who stood up to a full Mongol horde.

Art (Down the Tubes): The Windsor-Smith Studio announced the completion of Monsters, the long awaited graphic novel by Barry, last December, and that the project is on track for a mid-2020 release, but a publisher was not revealed. Assuming it will be launched through traditional distribution routes and not solely through the Windsor-Smith Studio official web site, you’d expect a solicitation through Diamond Previews might soon be in the offing.

Fantasy Fiction (Superversive SF): To both spend time with my children and give them literary food to build their minds, I recently read to them THE CHRONICLES OF PRYDAIN. For them, it was the second reading, but they were too young to remember the first. This time, they were begging for me to read more each night. The stories of Taran and the companions, Fflewddur Fflam, Gurgi, and Eilonwy not only filled their imaginations with adventure but taught them how dragons can be slain (paraphrasing of G.K. Chesterton).

Tolkien (Tentaculii): In August 1955 L. Sprague de Camp reviewed new Conan books and The Fellowship of the Ring, in Science Fiction Quarterly, August 1955. Worth reading right across the spread, as it’s ‘all of a piece’. For those who have somehow not yet enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, note that his review has plot spoilers for the first volume. At that time the second volume was not yet published. Camp must surely have here been the first to draw the comparison between the modus operandi of the ring in the Conan novelette “The Phoenix on the Sword” (1932) and The Lord of the Rings.

Sensor Sweep: Space 1889, Barry Windsor Smith, Tokien, Prydain published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[ginnyzero]

Knock Offs, Counterfeits, Clones, and Plagiarism

And how does this apply to Fashion and writing.

I’m a fashion person. I’m also a writer person. And the last three years or more I’ve spent more time being a writer person than I have been a fashion person. (My current dream job is putting together a girl targeted AAA noncombatant horse MMO with enough clothing skins to rival GW2. Yes. Goals! GW2 is known as Fashion Wars.) But both industries, and a lot of industries have a major problem with theft.

I’m not going to talk about outright e-book download theft and how that hurts authors. I’ve already done that.

No. I’m talking about creative theft. Writers and Fashion Designers stealing from other Writers and Fashion Designers. I’m talking about companies stealing the designs/ideas of Designers and Writers and copying them. I’m talking about knock offs and counterfeiting, genre clones and plagiarism.

Theft is the reason why we have copyright, trademarks and patents. Because human beings like to steal from each other for some reason and the easiest thing to steal are ideas. Ideas are hard to prove to be original. It’s hard to prove who had the idea first. (Fashion is just beginning to tiptoe into patents. Trademarking has been standard for years.)

So, what is the difference between a knock-off and a counterfeit?

Well, both are stealing. The knock off however doesn’t try to pretend that it’s from a famous brand name.

A knock off design is a long standing tradition in fashion. Designers like Worth would put out their designs for the new seasons in the windows, other seamstresses would come and sketch the designs and go back to their studios and make the same designs out of different fabric at a lower price. (And quite possibly a lower quality.) Apparently, I had a relative that could do this! She could go look at the designs in the window, sketch them and come home and pattern them out for herself. As far as I know, she did this without any formal training.

I could probably do this, but I do have formal training. I choose not to.

The knock off design isn’t pretending to be a gown from Worth or any current famous day designer. The Knock Off looks the same usually in different materials at a different price point and gives the customer a feeling that they have luxury goods even if the label is different.

In Asia, the customers are so obsessed with brand names and labels, that the high end companies have made it a point to have their products in three or four different price points so that all the customers can have their goods. (Or else no doubt knock offs and counterfeits would abound even more than they already do.) Now, this was a good decade ago. It might have changed. This policy hasn’t been instituted anywhere else that I’m aware of. But this is one way that big name brands can discourage knock offs, basically, by doing it themselves by embracing more than their “core customer.”

A knock off in writing. Well, it’s a clone.

Remember when the Hunger Games came out and everyone compared it to Battle Royale? And Suzanne Collins swore up and down that she’d never read that series or seen the movies or even heard of it. (Unless she was into anime, I’d believe her. Battle Royale was a bit niche even for anime.)

Dungeons and Dragons “ripped off” Tolkien. (As did Forgotten Realms.) Warhammer “ripped off” Dungeons and Dragons. WarCraft “ripped off” Warhammer. (Only because Warhammer backed out of a game deal with Blizzard and they had too much money invested to abandon the project. I bet Warhammer is wincing now.) And lots of MMOs ripped off World of Warcraft.

They’re clones. They’re genre clones. The difference between all of them is that none of them are claiming that they’re Tolkien. (Tolkien created a mythos based off the legends and tales of Europe, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Christianity.)

It doesn’t become a counterfeit or plagiarism until the writer directly lifts words from the other writer or tries to pass the garment/handbag/pair of shoes as coming from a high end company when they really don’t.

We’ll get to trademark infringement in a moment.

Using someone’s design stitch for stitch, color for color and putting in a label that can be mistaken for a high end company’s label like Gucci or Fendi etc is counterfeiting. Taking someone’s words, word for word, from another book, more than 50 words, without credit is plagiarism.

It’s stealing

Stealing is wrong.

Now, yes, to a certain extent knock offs are wrong too. Let’s not get into the idea that “oh, because I presented it as my own, it’s okay.” Knock offs and genre cloning are really this grey area. So, here is where we get into trademarks.

Trademarks were created by the gov’t in order to protect, along with copyright, intellectual property. Trademarks deal with words and visuals and in fashion, they deal with overall design details. Trademarks, the applying of trademarks and not applying for frivolous trademarks and trademark infringement is one of those things that gets lawyers involved and no one makes any money.

The Lord of the Rings is a trademark. Elves aren’t trademarked. Dwarves aren’t trademarked. The Lord of the Rings as a property is trademarked.

That eye searing color of pink that T-Mobile uses on its products and stores. Trademarked.

The double stitching on denim back pockets, the red tag on the back right pocket and the specific leather back tag on Levi Jeans, trademarked. (In fact, they even might be registered which is a step beyond trademarking.)

These are things that make each brand different. If you want to write high fantasy, you can’t use the series title “the Lord of the Rings.” Sure, go ahead and have rings in your story. The Shannara Chronicles did it, there is another series that did it that I can’t remember the name of. But you can’t title it, “The Lord of the Rings.”

If you’re a phone company, don’t even think about bothering to use anything close to that color of pink that T-Mobile uses. They’ll sue you for trademark infringement. Customers might confuse your store for theirs. And they can’t have that!

If you want to design a jean, don’t use double stitching across the back pockets, ban the color red from all your tags and for all that is holy don’t think to use the Levi Logo on a brown leather square on the back of the waistband (or that color of brown for that matter.) Those are Levi’s. People may see those things and think you’re wearing Levi’s. (And I mean, no line of double stitching in any design. It’s a no go.)

Creative people draw from other works of art and writings and from the world around them all the time. There are trends in media and there are writers/corporations/designers that want to jump onto those trends and try to get a bit of that money that everyone is spending on that particular trend at that particular time. (All the dystopian novels that came out after the Hunger Games. All the little WoW MMO Clones. Kanye West’s designs showing up in the windows and on the racks of H&M.)

There are literally writers dedicated to writing stories to fit Amazon search term/graphs. There are writers who take the themes and stories from other writers, dress it up in slightly different trappings and try to peddle it as original. They clone the work without changing it significantly. They use imagery and ideas and even words similar to other popular writers in order to try and leech off those other writer’s fan bases.

Now, I have an entire rant about not worrying about being too original because it’s all been done before.

What I’m saying here is don’t be so unoriginal and draw only from one work of stories or deliberately tread into another author’s trademarked series in order to try and present their works and brand as your own works and brand.

There’s a difference between a Lord of the Rings clone and a Lord of the Rings fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off. A clone is going to do more than just change the  “setting” and the “names.” A clone is going to introduce new plots and new ideas drawn from other sources than just Tolkien. Yes. It’s going to be, “Oh, this is similar to Lord of the Rings.” (The first Shannara book didn’t stray quite as far as it should have from Tolkien, for example.) But it’s still going to be different enough to say, “oh, and I see other mythologies and new themes are being explored and it’s advancing the genre.”

And if it doesn’t, then it’s a bad clone even if the names and settings have been changed. It remains that fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off of it.

In fashion, in general, I wince at “brands” that I can tell or have explicitly stated that they’re knock off brands.

They may not realize they’re knock off brands. If part of your company story is going to a store, buying a product and then finding out how to recreate it at a lower price point, then you’re a knock off brand. They may not get this because some, not all, the people who do this don’t have fashion training. And don’t know how fashion business works and why knocking off “styles” of stuff is bad. They didn’t design that style. They didn’t put thousands of dollars into researching how to make that shoe and make it comfortable from sole to last. They went and bought it at a store and copied it. Then they’re presenting it as their own under their name.

Why are they knocking off that handbag? Or shoes? Or item of clothing? Mostly, to make money. But their voice, their point of view as a person isn’t coming through because honestly, most of the time, they don’t have one. I’m talking about fashion brands here started by not fashion people who haven’t gone to school, or companies that don’t hire fashion designers. They make me whimper and cringe. Why? Why? Why? Money. Ohkay, profit isn’t a dirty word, but don’t you feel the least bit dirty taking someone else’s design and remaking it? How can you be remotely proud of that?

It bugs me.

Writers who deliberately want to make a Narnia clone or a Star Wars clone or insert popular trend of the moment clone make me wince as well. I have to ask myself, though I don’t ask them, what they think they’re bringing to the genre by just making another rendition of a popular thing? What questions are they asking? What themes are they exploring? Or are they just trying to make money? Do they really have their own story to tell? Where is their voice? Where is their personal experience?

Personally, if I want to read more of a popular universe, I go to AO3 or FF.net and I read fanfiction. Not only is it free, there’s roughly the same amount of good to bad that I’ll find on bookshelves. The characters are the characters I know and love and leaving a kudo or comment can make someone’s day! (Okay, leaving a review of someone’s book can also make an author’s day. Seriously! Leave reviews!)

When I sat down to write the first book of Heaven’s Heathens. I wanted to write Urban Fantasy. I like the worlds that Kim Harrison and Jim Butcher and Patricia Briggs and Laurell K. Hamilton create. And there is a lot of Urban Fantasy on the shelves and it’s mostly mysteries. And it’d be easy, oh so easy, to create a clone of one of those worlds to put in all the different races and the tensions and try to put my own spin on that. (And there are plenty of writers who have done that!)

And I do have an idea like that. My idea draws on another popular genre as well. (And I’m amazed at how popular that genre is to be honest. It baffles me like Amish romances baffle me.)

But that didn’t feel right at the time. I didn’t want to be another clone of another urban fantasy. I didn’t want to be dystopia either. Even though that was popular at the time. I wanted to write about bikers and werewolves and touch upon themes that were important to me; belonging, family, emotional labor, feminism, healthy masculinity, different types of dating.

Straight up urban fantasy didn’t seem a good fit. Putting it in today’s world might be a bit touchy. And the only place I could think of where leather was accepted was post-apocalyptic fiction. And with that, I could set it into the future and have fun with technology making it science fantasy instead of just pure urban fantasy. There’s more adventures in science fantasies and I’m good at writing adventures and action. (And silliness, I’m good at silliness.)

Originality comes from taking the building blocks of different ideas and different designs and fitting them together in different ways to say new and meaningful things in your own voice. Remember, stealing from one person is plagiarism. Stealing from many is research.

Knock offs and cloning, counterfeiting and plagiarism, the deliberate and with intent stealing of other people’s creative work, words, writing and designs and presenting them as your own is wrong. Counterfeiting and plagiarism is straight up illegal. Knock offs and clones aren’t as long as they don’t stray into trademark infringement. Though there is a very good question about morals and ethics if you want to knock off another design or another book.

The reason why there are so many kitchen sink urban fantasies out there outside of the popularity of the genre, is because they don’t stray into trademark infringement, the worlds are different, the protagonists are different even if they are essentially all doing the same thing; solving mysteries. And there is nothing wrong with having 101 different types of kitchen sink urban fantasy mysteries with private eye wizards or mechanics or nurses or bounty hunters or security people or line cooks at bbq joints that double as assassins. (And those are the ones I’ve read.) Because the world building is different, the characters are different, the rules are different. They may be clones but they aren’t direct copies trying to pass themselves off as from super popular writer.

And readers like this because that means there are more kitchen sink urban fantasies for them to read (regardless of quality.)

So, if you want to write a kitchen sink urban fantasy go right ahead. Just, remember, you need to take your voice and your experience and your themes and infuse them into your writing by creating your own characters and writing in your own world instead of using someone else’s.

In fashion, it’s the same way. There are basic building blocks to fashion. There are basic ideas for clothes, the tailored jacket, the 5 pocket jean, the basic t-shirt, the pencil skirt and so on and so forth. And if you want to create a fashion label, then by all means, create a fashion label and remember that these basic building blocks (that everyone needs) are launching and jumping points for higher designed clothing. Don’t go out and buy someone else’s pencil skirt or t-shirt or bootie and cut it apart and trace their pattern. Take your voice, your experience with clothing and try to find out what is important to you in fashion, what types of things do you want to wear and others like you want to wear. Those are the fashion details you bring to your clothes!

Be yourself. Find your voice. Then, you don’t have to worry about being a clone or a knock off or being sued for copyright or trademark infringement. (Though looking into various fashion trademarks is a good idea to be honest.) If you have something you want to say and it’s important to you, you’ll find a way to say it without relying on the ideas of others.

[ciathyzareposts]

Controlling the Spice, Part 1: Dune on Page and Screen

Frank Herbert in 1982.

In 1965, two works changed the face of genre publishing forever. Ace Books that year came out with an unauthorized paperback edition of an obscure decade-old fantasy trilogy called The Lord of the Rings, written by a pipe-smoking old Oxford don named J.R.R. Tolkien, and promptly sold hundreds of thousands of copies of it. And the very same year, Chilton Books, a house better known for its line of auto-repair manuals than for its fiction, became the publisher of last resort for Frank Herbert’s epic science-fiction novel Dune. While Dune‘s raw sales weren’t initially quite so impressive as those of The Lord of the Rings, it was recognized immediately by science-fiction connoisseurs as the major work it was, winning its year’s Nebula and Hugo Awards for Best Novel (the latter award alongside Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal).

It may be that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can to a large extent judge the importance of The Lord of the Rings and Dune by their thickness. Genre novels had traditionally been slim things, coming in at well under 300 pocket-sized mass-market-paperback pages. These two novels, by contrast, were big, sprawling works. The writing on their pages as well was heavier than the typical pulpy tale of adventure. Tolkien’s and Herbert’s novels felt utterly disconnected from trends or commercial considerations, redolent of myth and legend — sometimes, as plenty of critics haven’t hesitated to point out over the years, rather ponderously so. At a stroke, they changed readers’ and publishers’ perception of what a fantasy or science-fiction novel could be, and the world of genre publishing has never looked back.

In the years since 1965, almost as much has been written of Dune as The Lord of the Rings. Still, it’s new to us. And so, given that it suddenly became a very important name in computer games circa 1992, we should take the time now to look at what it is and where it came from.

At the time of Dune‘s publication, Frank Herbert was a 45-year-old newspaperman who had been dabbling in science fiction — his previous output had included one short novel and a couple of dozen short stories — since the early 1950s. He had first been inspired to write Dune by, appropriately enough, sand dunes. Eight years before the novel’s eventual publication, the San Francisco Examiner, the newspaper for which he wrote, sent him to Florence, Oregon, to write about government efforts to control the troublesomely shifting sand dunes just outside of town. It didn’t sound like the most exciting topic in the world, and, indeed, he never managed to turn it into an acceptable article. Yet he found the dunes themselves weirdly fascinating:

I had far too much for an article and far too much for a short story. So I didn’t know really what I had—but I had an enormous amount of data and avenues shooting off at all angles to get more… I finally saw that I had something enormously interesting going for me about the ecology of deserts, and it was, for a science-fiction writer anyway, an easy step from that to think: what if I had an entire planet that was desert?

The other great spark that led to Dune wasn’t a physical environment, nor for that matter a physical anything. It was a fascination with the messiah complex that has been with us through all of human history, even though it has seldom, Herbert believed, led us to much good. Somehow this theme just seemed to fit with a desert landscape; think of the Biblical Moses and the Exodus.

I had this theory that superheroes were disastrous for humans, that even if you postulated an infallible hero, the things this hero set in motion fell eventually into the hands of fallible mortals. What better way to destroy a civilization, society, or race than to set people into the wild oscillations which follow their turning over their judgment and decision-making faculties to a superhero?

Herbert worked on the novel off and on for years. Much of his time was spent in pure world-building — or, perhaps better said in this case, galaxy-building — creating a whole far-future history of humanity among the stars that would inform and enrich any specific stories he chose to set there; in this sense once again, his work is comparable to that of J.R.R. Tolkien, that most legendary of all builders of fantastic worlds. But his actual story mostly took place on the desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune, the source of an invaluable “spice” known as melange, which confers upon humans improved health, longer life, and even paranormal prescience, while also allowing some of them to “fold space,” thus becoming the key to interstellar travel. As the novel’s most popular and apt marketing tagline would put it, “He who controls the spice controls the universe!” The spice has made this inhospitable world, where water is so scarce that people kill one another over the merest trickle of the stuff, whose deserts are roamed by gigantic carnivorous sandworms, the most valuable piece of real estate in the galaxy.

The novel centers on a war between two great trading houses, House Atreides and House Harkonnen, for control of the planet. The politics involved, not to mention the many military and espionage stratagems they employ against one another, are far too complex to describe here, but suffice to say that Herbert’s messiah figure emerges in the form of the young Paul Atreides, who wins over the nomadic Fremen who have long lived on Arrakis and leads them to victory against the ruthless Harkonnen.

Dune draws heavily from any number of terrestrial sources — from the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, from the more mystical end of Zen Buddhism, from the history of the Ottoman Empire and the myths and cultures of the Arab world. Nevertheless, the whole novel has an almost aggressively off-putting otherness about it. Herbert writes like a native of his novel’s time and place would, throwing strange jargon around with abandon and doing little to clarify the big-picture politics of the galaxy. And he shows no interest whatsoever in explaining that foremost obsession of so many other science-fiction writers, the technology and hardware that underpin his story. Like helicopters and diving suits to a writer of novels set in our own time and place, “ornithopters” and “stillsuits,” not to mention interstellar space travel, simply are to Dune‘s narrator. Meanwhile some of the bedrock philosophical concepts that presumably — hopefully! — unite most of Dune‘s readership — such ideas as fundamental human rights and democracy — don’t seem to exist at all in Herbert’s universe.

This wind of Otherness blowing through its pages makes Dune a famously difficult book to get started with. Those first 50 or 60 pages seem determined to slough off as many readers as possible. Unless you’re much smarter than I am, you’ll need to read Dune at least twice to come to anything like a full understanding of it. All of this has made it an extremely polarizing novel. Some readers love it with a passion; some, like yours truly here, find it easier to admire than to love; some, probably the majority, wind up shrugging their shoulders and walking away.

In light of this, and in light of the way that it broke every contemporary convention of genre fiction, beginning but by no means ending with its length, it’s not surprising that Frank Herbert found Dune to be a hard sell to publishers. The tropes were familiar enough in the abstract — a galaxy-spanning empire, interstellar war, a plucky young hero — but the novel, what with its lofty, affectedly formal prose, just didn’t read like science fiction was supposed to. Whilst allowing what amounted to a rough draft of the novel to appear in the magazine Analog Science Fiction in intermittent installments between December 1963 and May 1965, Herbert struggled to find an outlet for it in book form. The manuscript was finally accepted by Chilton only after being rejected by over twenty other publishers.

Dune in the first Chilton edition.

Those other publishers would all come to regret their decision. Dune took some time to gain traction with readers outside science fiction’s intelligentsia; Herbert didn’t make enough money from his fiction to quit his day job until 1969. But the oil embargoes of the 1970s gave this novel that was marked by such Otherness an odd sort of social immediacy, winning it many readers outside the still fairly insular community of written science fiction, making it a trendy book to have read or at least to say you had read. For many, it now read almost like a parable; it wasn’t hard to draw parallels between Arrakis’s spice and our own planet’s oil, nor between the Fremen of Arrakis and the cultures native to our own planet’s great oil-rich deserts. As critic Gwyneth Jones puts it, Dune is, among other things, a depiction of “scarcity, and the kind of human culture that scarcity produces.” It was embraced by many in the environmentalist movement, who read it it as a cautionary tale perfect for an era in which we earthbound humans were being forced to confront the reality that our planet’s resources are not infinite.

So, Dune eventually sold a staggering 12 million copies, becoming by most accounts the best-selling work of genre science fiction in history. And so we arrive at one final parallel to The Lord of the Rings: that of a book that was anything but an easy read in the conventional sense nevertheless selling in quantities to rival any beach-and-airport time-waster ever written. Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose was famously described at the height of its 1980s popularity as a book that everyone owned and almost no one had ever managed to get all the way through. Dune may very well be the closest equivalent in genre fiction.

Herbert wrote five sequels to Dune, none of which are as commonly read or as highly regarded among critics as the first novel.1 One might say, however, that the second and third novels at least — Dune Messiah (1969) and Children of Dune (1976) — are actually necessary to appreciate Herbert’s original conception of the work in its entirety. He had always conceived of Dune as an epic tragedy in the Shakespearean sense, but reading the first book alone can obscure this fact. That book is, as the science-fiction scholar Damien Broderick puts it, typical pulp science fiction in at least one sense: it satisfies “an adolescent craving for an imaginary world in which heroes triumph by a preternatural blend of bravery, genius, and sci.” It’s only in the second and third books that Paul Atreides, the messiah figure, begins to fail, thus illustrating how a messiah can, as Herbert says, “destroy a civilization, society, or race.” That said, it would be the first novel alone with which almost all media adaptations would concern themselves, so it will also monopolize our attention in these articles.

Dune‘s success was such that it inevitably attracted the interest of the film industry. In 1972, the British producer Arthur P. Jacobs, the man behind the hugely successful Planet of the Apes films, acquired the rights to the series, but he had the misfortune to die the following year, before his plans had gotten beyond the storyboarding phase.

Yet Dune‘s trendiness only continued to grow, and interest in turning it into a film remained high among people who wouldn’t have been caught dead with any other science-fiction novel. In 1974, the rights passed from Jacob’s estate to Alejandro Jodorowsky, a transgressive Chilean director who claimed to once have raped one of his actresses in the name his Art. Manifesting an alarming obsession with the act, he now planned to do the same to Frank Herbert:

It was my Dune. When you make a picture, you must not respect the novel. It’s like you get married, no? You go with the wife, white, the woman is white. You take the woman, if you respect the woman, you will never have child. You need to open the costume and to… to rape the bride. And then you will have your picture. I was raping Frank Herbert, raping, like this! But with love, with love.

The would-be rape victim could only look on in disbelief: “He had so many personal, emotional axes to grind. I used to kid him, ‘Well, I know what your problem is, Alejandro. There is no way to horsewhip the pope in this story.’”

Jodorowsky planned to fill the cast and crew of the film, which would bear an estimated price tag of no less than $15 million, with flotsam washed up from the more dissipated end of the celebrity pool: Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, Charlotte Rampling, Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, Alain Delon. But, even in this heyday of Porno Chic, no one was willing to entrust such an erratic personality with such a budget, and the project fizzled out after Jodorwsky had blown through $2 million on scripts, concept art, and the drugs that were needed to fuel it all.

In the meantime, the possibilities for cinematic science fiction were being remade by a little film called Star Wars. Indeed, said film bears the clear stamp of Dune, especially in its first act, which takes place on a desert planet where water is the most precious commodity of all. And certainly the general dirty, lived-in look of Star Wars, so distinct from the antiseptic futures of most science fiction, owes much to Dune.

In the wake of Star Wars, Dino De Laurentiis, one of the great impresarios of post-war Italian cinema, acquired the rights to Dune from Jodorowsky’s would-be backers. He secured a tentative agreement with Ridley Scott, who was just finishing his breakthrough film Alien, to direct the picture. Rudy Wurlitzer, screenwriter of the classic western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, wrote three drafts of a script, but the financing necessary to begin production proved hard to secure. Thus in 1981 the cinematic rights to Dune, which Herbert had sold away for a span of nine years to Arthur P. Jacobs back in 1972, finally reverted to the author after their extended but fruitless world tour.

Yet De Laurentiis remained passionate about his Dune film — so much so that he immediately entered into negotiation with Herbert to reacquire the rights. Having watched various filmmakers come close to doing unspeakable things to his creation over the previous decade — even Wurlitzer’s recent script reportedly added an incest plot line involving Paul Atreides and his mother — Herbert insisted that he must at least be given the role of “advisor” to any future film. De Laurentiis agreed to this.

He was so eager to make a deal because Dune had suddenly looked to be back on, for real this time, just as the rights were expiring. His daughter, Raffealla De Laurentiis, had taken on the Dune film as something of a passion project of her own. She was riding high with a brand of blockbuster-oriented, action-heavy fare that was quite different from the films of her father’s generation. She was already in the midst of producing Conan the Barbarian, starring a buff if nearly inarticulate former bodybuilding champion named Arnold Schwarzenegger; it would become a major hit, launching Schwarzenegger’s career as Hollywood’s go-to action hero over the next couple of decades. But the Dune project would be a different sort of beast, a sort of synthesis of father and daughter’s priorities: a big-budget film with an art-film sensibility. For Ridley Scott had by this time moved on to other projects, and Dino and Raffealla De Laurentiis had a surprising new candidate in mind to direct their Dune.

David Lynch and Frank Herbert. Interviewers were constantly surprised at how normal Lynch looked and acted in person, in contrast to his bizarre films. Starlog magazine, for example, wrote of his “sculptured hair [and] jutting boyish features,” saying he was “extremely polite and well-mannered, the antithesis of enigma. Not a hint of phobic neurosis or deep-seated sexual maladjustment.”

David Lynch was already a beloved director of the art-film circuit, although his output to date had consisted of just two low-budget black-and-white movies: Eraserhead (1977), a surrealistic riot of a horror film, and The Elephant Man (1980), a mournful tragedy of prejudice and isolation. He would seem to stand about as far removed from the family-friendly fare of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s new Hollywood as it was possible to get. And yet that mainstream of filmmakers saw something — something having to do with his talent for striking, kinetic visuals — in the 36-year-old director. In fact, Lucas actually asked him whether he would be interested in directing the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, whereupon Lynch rather peremptorily turned the offer down, saying he wasn’t interested in making sequels to other people’s films. But when Dino De Laurentiis approached him about Dune he was more receptive. Lynch:

Dino’s office called me and asked if I had ever read Dune. I thought they said “June.” I never read either one of ’em! But once I got the book, it’s like when you hear a new word. And I started hearing it more often. Then, I began finding out that friends of mine had already read it and freaked out over it. It took me a long time to read. Actually, my wife forced me to read it. I wasn’t that keen on it at first, especially the first 60 pages. But the more I read, the more I liked. Because Dune has so many things that I like, I said, “This is a book that can be made into a film.”

Lynch joined screenwriters Eric Bergen and Christopher De Vore for a week at Frank Herbert’s country farmhouse, where they hammered out a script which ran to a hopelessly overlong 200 pages. As the locale would indicate, Herbert was involved in the creative process, but kept a certain distance from the details: “This is a translation job. I wouldn’t presume to be the person who should translate Dune from English to French; my French is execrable. It’s the same with a movie; you go to the person who speaks ‘movie.’”

The script was rewritten again and again in the months that followed, the later drafts by Lynch alone. (He would be given sole credit as the screenwriter of the finished film.) In the process, it slimmed down to a still-ambitious 135 pages. And with that, and with the De Laurentiis father and daughter having lined up a positively astronomical amount of financing from Universal Pictures, who were desperate for a big science-fiction franchise of their own to rival 20th Century Fox’s Star Wars and Paramount’s Star Trek, a real Dune film finally got well and truly underway.

Raffealla De Laurentiis and Frank Herbert with the actors Kyle MacLachlan and Francesca Annis on the set of Dune, 1983.

Rehearsals and pre-production began in the Sonora Desert outside of Mexico City in October of 1982; actual shooting started the following March, and dragged on over many more months. In the lead role of Paul Atreides, Lynch had cast a 25-year-old Shakespearean-trained stage actor named Kyle MacLachlan, who had never acted before a camera in his life. Nor, at six feet tall and 155 pounds, was he built much like an action hero. But he was trained in martial arts, and he gave it his all over a long and difficult shoot.

Joining him were a number of recognizable character actors, such as the intimidating Swede Max von Sydow, cast in the role of the Fremen leader Kynes, and the villain specialist Kenneth McMillan, all but buried under 200 pounds of fake silicon flesh as the disgustingly evil — or evilly disgusting — Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Patrick Stewart, later to become famous in the role of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played Paul’s martial mentor Gurney Halleck. In a bit of stunt casting, Sting of the rock band the Police, deemed “biggest band in the world” by any number of contemporary critics, took the role of one of the supporting cast of villains — a role which would, naturally, be blown out of all proportion by the movie’s promoters. To a person, everyone involved with the shoot remembers it as being uncomfortable at best. “I was taxed on almost every level as a human being,” says MacLachlan. “Mexico City is not one of the most pleasant spots in the world to be.” The one thing they all mention is the food poisoning; almost everyone among cast and crew got it at one time or another, and some lived with it for the entirety of the months on end they spent in Mexico.

Universal Pictures had given David Lynch, this young director who was used to shooting on a shoestring budget, an effective blank check in the hope that it would yield the next George Lucas and/or the next Star Wars. Lynch didn’t hesitate to spend their money, building some eighty separate sets and shooting hundreds of hours of footage. Even in Mexico, where the peso was cheap, it added up. Universal would later claim an official budget of $40 million, but rumblings inside Hollywood had it that the real total was more like $50 million. Either figure was more than immense enough to secure Dune the title of most expensive Universal film ever. (For comparison’s sake, consider that the contemporary big-budget blockbusters Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom cost approximately $40 million and $30 million respectively.)

The shoot had been difficult enough in itself, but the film first began to show the telltale signs of a doomed production only in the editing phase, as Lynch tried to corral his reams of footage into a finished product. He clashed repeatedly with Raffealla De Laurentiis and Universal, both of whom made it clear that they expected a relatively “clean,” PG-rated film with a coherent narrative through line for their money. Such qualities weren’t, of course, what David Lynch was known for. But the director had failed to secure final-cut rights to the film, and he was repeatedly overridden. Finally, he all but removed himself from the process altogether, and Raffealla De Laurentiis herself cobbled together much of the finished film, going so far as to shoot her own last-minute bridging scenes whilst layering clumsy voice-overs and internal monologues over the top, all in a (failed) effort to make the labyrinthine plot comprehensible to a casual audience. Meanwhile Universal continued to spew forth a fountain of hype about “Star Wars for adults” and “the end of the pulp era of science-fiction movies,” whilst continuing to plaster Sting, looking fetching in his black leather, across their “Coming Attractions” posters and trailers as if he was the star. Dune was set for a fall.

And, indeed, the finished product, which arrived in theaters in December of 1984, provided a rare opportunity for every corner of movie fandom and criticism to unite in hatred. The professional critics, most of whom had never read the book, found the film, even with all the additional expository voice-overs, as incomprehensible as Raffealla De Laurentiis had always feared they would. Fans of the novel had the opposite problem, bemoaning the plot simplification and the liberties taken with the story, complaining about the way that all of the thematic texture had been lost in favor of Lynchian weirdness for weirdness’s sake. And the all-important general audience, for their part, stayed away in droves, making Dune one of the more notorious flops in cinematic history. Just like that, Universal Pictures’s dream of a Star Wars franchise of their own went up in smoke.

Whatever else you can say about it, David Lynch’s Dune is often visually striking.

Seen today, free of the hype and the resultant backlash, the film isn’t as bad as many remember it; many of its scenes are striking in that inimitable Lynchian way. But it doesn’t hang together at all as a holistic experience, and its best parts are often those that have the least to do with its source material. Many over the years have suspected that there’s a good film hidden somewhere in all that footage Lynch shot, if it could only be freed from the strictures of the two-hour running time demanded by Universal; Lynch’s own first rough cut, they point out, was reportedly at least twice that long. Yet various attempts to rejigger the material — including a 1988 version for television that ballooned the running time to more than three hours — haven’t yielded results that feel all that much more holistically satisfying than the original theatrical cut. The film remains what it was from the first, a strange hybrid stranded in a no-man’s land between an art film and a conventional blockbuster, not really working as either. At bottom, the film reflects a hopeless mismatch between its director and its source material. What happens when you ask a brilliant director with very little interest in plot to film a novel famous for its intricate plot? You get a movie like David Lynch’s Dune. Perhaps the kindest thing one can say about it is that it is, unlike so many of Hollywood’s other more misbegotten projects, an interesting failure.

Lynch disowned the film almost immediately. He’s generally refused to talk about it at all in interviews since 1984, beyond dismissing it as a “sell-out” on his part. The one positive aspect of the film which even he will admit to is that it brought Kyle MacLachlan to his attention. The latter starred in Lynch’s next film as well, the low-budget psychological-horror picture Blue Velvet (1986), which rehabilitated its director’s critical reputation at a stroke at the same time that it marked the definitive end of his brief flirtation with mainstream sensibilities. MacLachlan would go on to find his most iconic role as the weirdly impassive FBI agent Dale Cooper in Lynch’s supremely weird television series Twin Peaks.

The Dino de Laurentiis Corporation had invested everything they had and then some in their Dune film. They went bankrupt in the aftermath of its failure — but, in typical corporate fashion, a phoenix known as the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group soon emerged from the ashes. Just to show there were no hard feelings, one of the reincarnated production company’s first films was David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

Surprisingly in light of the many readers who complained so vociferously about the liberties the Dune film took with his novel, Frank Herbert himself never disowned it, speaking of it quite warmly right up until his death. But sadly, that event came much earlier than anyone had reckoned it would: he died in 1986 at age 65, the victim of a sudden blood clot in his lung that struck just after he had undergone surgery for prostrate cancer.

Dune did come to television screens in 2000, in a rather workmanlike miniseries adaptation that was more comprehensible and far more faithful to the novel than Lynch’s film, but which lacked the budget, the acting talent, or the directorial flare to rival its predecessor as an artistic statement. Today, almost half a century after Arthur P. Jacobs first began to inquire about the film rights, the definitive cinematic Dune has yet to be made.

There is, however, one other sort of screen on which Dune has undeniably left a profound mark: not the movie or even the television screen, but the monitor screen. It’s in that direction that we’ll turn our attention next time.

(Sources: the books The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn and Frank Herbert by Timothy O’Reilly; Starlog of January 1983, May 1984, October 1984, November 1984, December 1984, February 1985, and June 1986; Enter of December 1984; the online articles “Jodorowsky’s Dune Didn’t Get Made for a Reason… and We Should All Be Grateful For That” and “David Lynch’s Dune is What You Get When You Build a Science Fictional World With No Interest in Science Fiction” by Emily Asher-Perrin.)

As for the flood of more recent Dune novels, written by Frank Herbert’s son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, previously a prolific author of X-Files and Star Wars novels and other low-hanging fruit of the literary landscape: stay far, far away. ↩

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/controlling-the-spice-part-1-dune-on-page-and-screen/

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