Under the moon, the fires burn.
I decided to listen to my Dragon Singer soundtrack today in the car, which of course got me thinking about it. I did a little brainstorming with the hubby during lunch. Yeah, my brain is scattery like that. Am in the process of making a few revisions.
I mean, Geris’ cabal has a name: the Blackports. They hail out of Lanschport, in the southeast…which has a certain reputation even among Cowls. All people of Verre have some particular superstitions about the ocean, and avoid it if possible; easy to do on their world. Lanschport has the notoriety of being the only major city built seaside, which contributes to its unsavory reputation. This, by the way, is information that doesn’t have anything to do with the story of Raphel and Saeli, so it will probably never get mentioned.
Geris takes particular delight in being from Lanschport, but then, he’s a weird, perverse kind of guy.
What would Raphel call his cabal? To the larger world, the name would be mostly irrelevant. Raphel is so famous that his cabal is simply going to be known by most people as “Raphel’s cabal”…they aren’t going to care what he himself calls it. But still, they must call themselves something…every group needs an identity.
I’m inclined toward something like “New Iadnah”, or something like that. The Cowls in Raphel’s cabal, or at least a good number of them, are survivors of the Siege of Iadnah. Raphel met Nasira in Iadnah during the siege, an event which definitely changed his life. It’s an identifying point with them…gives them particular reason to want to assassinate high-ranking Mantles. Only New Iadnah sounds a little presumptuous to me. But I dunno, maybe Raphel would name his group something presumptous. Maybe he did it when he took it over from Nasira when he was 18.
I’ll just have to think about it some more.
I’ve been tossing an idea around in my head these last few weeks, and it was brought to the forefront yet again the other night after seeing the Prince of Persia.
Which is, by the way, not a bad movie, and I quite enjoyed it. It wasn’t on par with Pirates, and I decided that a lot of that was because it didn’t have a Jack Sparrow to carry it. The actors in Prince of Persia weren’t bad, but they weren’t great either…imagine Pirates without Jack Sparrow or Elizabeth Swan. I honestly don’t know why a lot of the critics were saying that the plot of Prince of Persia didn’t make sense, because I didn’t have any trouble following what was going on. No, it’s not realistic…you’ve got a dagger that can turn back time, for pity’s sake. The whole premise is unbelievable, but at least it’s internally consistent and the story works. I’ll admit that I spent a great deal of the movie admiring Dastan’s arms. And thinking that his particular brand of crazy “I’ll handle the impossible gate” bravado is a lot like Raphel’s.
I think my subconscious is trying to get me to finish Shades, too. It keeps spouting new story ideas at me! Here’s the dream I had:
There was this kingdom, which bordered another kingdom that had been swallowed in evil and darkness; trees weighed down by noxious moss, poisoned water, goblins that killed and ate people, trees that ate people, always dark.
There was a princess, looking for a cure for her country. She has limited magic, but most of it was corrupted along with her land. She has brought some of her nobles into the neighboring kingdom, where they have been disrupting things, trying to take over, though they really aren’t trying to do anything *bad*. (Nobody really knows what they want, actually). The princess herself is rarely seen, and her nobles seem arrogant and dangerous to everyone.
There was a soldier, a knight of this neighboring kingdom who is mistrustful of these new “nobles”. He makes a plan to expose their hidden activities. The plan fails, and he and his cohorts get themselves thrown into the forbidden kingdom to die. In a twist of happenstance, the populace turns against the princess and she is thrown in with them. The soldier is inclined to hate her at first, but he ends up befriending her and learning the truth about the hellhole they’re in. He decides that the only way they’ll all survive is by lifting the curse on the corrupted kingdom.
Well, it has been a ridiculously long white since I’ve updated here, but I guess maybe I can blame Easter. And Eli being sick…and me being sick…and, and…oh well. The visit to family for Easter went well; Eli got to play with family that doesn’t get to see him that often, and Jon and I got to relax a bit. On Saturday afternoon, I took a small nap…which of course, is an almost guaranteed way for me to have strange dreams.
This one was about vampires. Well, sort of.
I have decided to extend my personal deadline for having the first book finished to the end of April, since the end of March is upon me and I’m still plugging away on that last chapter. The hard drive crash cost me, mostly in terms of getting off track and not being able to get back on than in actual content lost. (Though there is that. And I’ve been especially missing my lost outline this week.)
Too campy?
As you might have read from my last post, in the interest of posting something in here every day, I’m thinking of giving myself a theme to work with for each day of the week. TV and movies are easy topics: they’re not entirely unrelated to writing and they’re everywhere. At most, you could expect a review from me; at the very least, a memorable quote.
Book reviews I think I’ll do on Fridays (Fiction Fridays? Still trying to be all clever and stuff). Saturdays and Sundays could be song lyric days, as I’m usually pretty busy and wouldn’t have time to post much else. Wednesday could be Writer Wisdom day. That leaves Thursday. Hmm. The only thing left is art…Artsy Thursdays? I really should get some of my wand photos up here, and other story related artwork.
So, in the interest of TV Tuesdays, here’s a quote from a show that I really like, despite the genre.
MICHAEL: “If I surrender now, I lose everyone I love.”
PRIEST: “But do you lose your soul in the process?”
MICHAEL: “Well, we all have our crosses to bear.”
That pretty much sums up the kind of guy Michael Scofield is in Prison Break. This scene occurs somewhere in the second season, after he’s broken his brother out of prison and is on the run. Michael has just stolen a GPS that he couldn’t afford, and is having a crisis of conscience about it. He goes into a confessional booth to have a conversation with a priest about everything he’s done up to this point to save his brother. Ultimately he is the type of person who would sacrifice his own soul to save someone else.
Nickelback - How You Remind Me
Prison Break is one of those shows that looks like it’s going to just be all grit and violence (and there is that), but underneath it has these great characters and a really strong story. It’s unusual, as prison stories go, in that all the characters except one are actually guilty of the crimes that put them there, even the main protagonist. The worst villains in the show have enough backstory and complexity to make them into sympathetic characters, which I really like. Even T-Bag, who is about as bad as you can get…you do kind of end up feeling sorry for the guy.
I initially started watching the show simply to see Wentworth Miller in action, because the moment I laid eyes on that actor, I said, “Holy crap, if that guy had hair, he’d look exactly like Raphel.” I mean, he can even glare the way I had imagined. Now I like the show for its own sake, and I really respect Miller as an actor.
Did that get your attention? It got mine. Blame Saeli for the revelation.
Don’t know how many Objectivist fans I have on board here, but this is an extremely well-written article by Nathaniel Branden, one of Rand’s close associates for a number of years. He highlights precisely what is attractive about Rand’s philosophy, and where it falls short. More eloquence than I’d be capable of on the subject.
Read the whole article…it’s worth it
Here’s a quote from within the article, which quite nicely sums up why I still admire the woman’s philosophy, even if I disagree with some of its finer points:
“Ayn Rand has an incredible vision to offer—in many respects a radiantly rational one. I am convinced that there are errors in that vision and elements that need to be changed, eliminated, modified, or added and amplified, but I am also convinced that there is a great deal in her vision that will stand the test of time.
Her vision is a very uplifting one, it is inspiring. It doesn’t tell you your mind is impotent. It doesn’t tell you that you’re rotten and powerless. It doesn’t tell you that your life is futile. It doesn’t tell you that you are doomed. It doesn’t tell you that your existence is meaningless. It tells you just the opposite.
It tells you that your main problem is that you have not learned to understand the nature of your own power and, therefore, of your own possibilities. It tells you that your mind is and can be efficacious, that you are competent to understand, that achievement is possible, and that happiness is possible. It tells you that life is not about dread and defeat and anguish but about achievement and exaltation.”
I think I’ve said it before in another post, but I maintain to this day that there were a number of things that Ayn Rand hit dead on.
The hubby wants me to come up with a short story that we could possibly turn into a short video. I keep coming back to the Grimms concept because it has such potential to be a serial tale. (Quick recap, Grimms: a woman escapes from Arcadia and begins rescuing other children from the Fae. Some of these children join forces with her, take on fairy tale personas, and form a team called the Grimms, after Grimm’s Fairy Tales). While we were waiting to see Avatar, we started brainstorming about special Fae abilities these kids could have as a result of the time spend among the Fae.
Here’s what we came up with:
Please Login or Register to view this.
I think this will be a fun story concept to play with.
A. Dennison, fantasy writer and artist. I am currently working to finish my first novel.
Copyright © 2010 Nightphoenix All rights reserved. Theme by Laptop Geek.
Like!