Haunted Mirror

I went rifling through an old notebook (one of my hodge-podge journals where I was journalling EVERYthing together which I like to do, but is dreadful for finding stuff) and came across a Bizarre Concept.

One of those "fantasy cliche" exercises spurred it (or so I would gather from their juxtaposition on neighboring pages). It's one of the notes I was completely puzzled over until I'd puzzled it out to the end:
    A culture where the names of the gods are chosen carefully to be invoked for identities at births...but a very slight mispronounceation invokes a certain god. The children are unalterably kleptos.
    Luckily, there's a thieves colony, because it happens fairly often.

That's a fairly malleable bit. It could turn to a story where the colony emerges as an odd thievery-accomodating culture, where it begins to plot revolt, where... see?

I've started a new blog mostly for myself to practice descriptive writing by making memories into stories. I really want to learn to evoke places, times, environments. To be able to better this:
" Instead of the echoing quiet of the display hall, the rumble of motors and squeal of shop doors surrounded them. "    A gem of originality, that...

And I wrote Escape Pod because it's been 2 months since I submitted.
That makes me a bit nervous.

You know the scene break is good if you get to the end and think, "Oh, shoot."

Note to Elf: Practice "shoot" scene breaking.

Epiphany courtesy of Mister Monday (Garth Nix)~Chapter Four

Whooosh. I'd forgotten, not how Two Towers ended, but how much of a cliff-hanger it was! The emotional investment of the Tower of the Moon sequences is just really strong; I love how Sam just unfolds in that fourth volume. The way he mimicks Gollum is just a beauty to behold. Grim Sam=priceless.

I was much struck with how taking The Ring was "against his nature"...he thinks he's made a dreadful mistake, but that's when we have the inkling that while not quite so fey and fell as Frodo (take that alliteration and stick it in your hat), he's a fair stout Hero himself.* The foreshadowing of that talk they have before they come out of Ithilien (Tolkien, like good storytellers everywhere, knew the value of letting up occasionally), of the story they're in is so hobbit-like, yet very much suited to the high task, just as Pippin and Merry's banter is suited to the extremes of their natures. Can wear armor about the Shire without being ridiculous because they have a high sense of humor about it, you can tell. Back to Sam and Frodo's talk (I dearly love a digession or two), in the movie I don't remember it coming so early, so I was surprised it WAS a foreshadow.

And back to the beginning in a merry round of mummery,

I was surprised, the first time, how the Two Towers movie did not end on the slamming of the doors. To me, it seems a perfect ending to a Volume Two of Three. Then again, it had to tie things up. But the pacing there was pretty much the only thing that threw me into "Wait; the book was different!" mode. {Besides the Legolas stairs surfer/Oliphaunt slayer thing. But we won't talk about that.}

{I was thoroughly shocked to find the counting game between Gimli and Legolas in The Book, on that note. Pleasantly surprised, actually, to think the humor was to be credited to Tolkien.}

Tolkien r/labu-r/labu...

*Funny, how he thinks he's ruining everything—Heroes do tend to ruin things, if only for the antagonist, but realistically...that's a little simplistic. Sam is only ruining himself, though the whole mess with Gollum does come about. The fact is, the breaking of Gollum's trust is what ends up getting them rid of the One Ring after all. The trouble he causes in that way (taking the ring, and before that in his unsubtle suspicion) all serves the purpose. Ruining himself, in that wearing the Ring, for that time, means Havens for him after all, when I think...Sam should have been buried and become part of the soil of the Shire.

But prices must be paid. If the Gollum made everything right in the end, and if Frodo was always a little too elven for his own good, Sam is a price—for the Shire, and Frodo, and Sam himself.