intertribal | Most people looked at him with terror and with fear, but to Gondor chicks he was such a lovely dear

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Most people looked at him with terror and with fear, but to Gondor chicks he was such a lovely dear

I can't get over how different the Lord of the Rings books are from the Lord of the Rings movies, and how much I - in general - prefer the movies. I'm pretty sure this makes me a bad person (writer? fantasy fan?) in some way. Mostly I am just so tired of Gandalf and all the non-entities that surround him. I know, I know. But The Return of the King really should be called The Return of the Gandalf, because he's all Ra-Ra-Rasputin right now. Uh oh, Boney M segue!

Wow, re-imagining that song with LOTR just made my morning substantially better. Must resist temptation to revise entire lyrics to fit LOTR.

I also can't get over how my mother refuses to accept that Lord of the Rings was written in the 1940s and not the 1600s. I keep telling her, and she keeps going, "really??!"

ETA: Crap, I'm becoming convinced that I need to totally re-structure the current short story WIP from the perspective of a new protagonist. FUCKING HELL AFTER ALL THIS WORK

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LOL, that's funny, imagining LOTR written in the 1600s. Maybe we can find an old folio edition :-)

ALSO THIS SONG IS AWESOME.

LOL I know. I discovered it in college, and then one time back at home I was talking to a Russian student who actually brought it up in conversation - he got sheepish about it when I said I knew it. Apparently it's popular in Russia even though the USSR banned the band from playing the song when they performed there.

I can't believe it used to be part of the soundtrack of our awful middle-school parties.

But Gandalf as Rasputin? First I said OMG, No, no, you have it all wrong!

And then I thought... yannow. She has a point....

Twisty little mind there... Awesome.

Hey, our soundtrack was like, Smashmouth ("Hey now! You're an all-star!"), so I'd say you've got one up on me there.

Thank you for the compliment! :) Twisting up good vs. evil narratives is a beloved hobby.

You need to give that ETA its own entry!

Still, I bet this will make it a better story, right?

(Look who's bored with her day job and trawling hopelessly through LJ this afternoon. Meh. Back to work.)

Edited 2011-04-25 19:15 (UTC)

Yeah, I was doing that until I started worrying about grad school classes...

Anyway, yeah, I hope so. Anyway, the story is about a "revolutionary" and I was originally writing it from her perspective, but it just didn't feel right (this is me all weekend: "damnniiiit") and what I kept fixating on was the moments when she was interacting with the leader of the people she's "revolting" against (but she's not really - long story), because he's actually her namesake in a really weird way (it's complicated), and now I realize that it has to be from his perspective instead, the king. I think this stems somewhat from something I said a while ago to my mom, that it's easy to side with the revolutionaries when it's just presented in David-and-Goliath style (even though politics/history show that people in general have a lot of trouble admitting to themselves that they are the Goliath, so they'll root for underdogs in movies even though they will vote to keep Goliaths in office, etc.), but it's a much bigger challenge to get the reader to root for the revolutionary when the reader is set to identify with the oppressor (i.e., if the oppressor isn't easily ID'd as evil).

It's a rather complicated story, as you can tell...

LOL why so many Anyways

*nods*

We're extremely culturally conditioned to side with the brave underdog, even though this country is as Goliath as they come.

I know it's you writing it, so I know you'll reel him away from being a mere stupid autocrat and her from being a mere Braveheart-type figure. (Because that's what I hate. Stories where it's laid out so blindingly clearly. "Hello, I am Mr. Despot, and I want to grind the faces of the poor/my minority peoples. I take special pleasure in their suffering, and I'm buying myself gold plated sailboats and despoiling the environment, too, because that's how we despots roll." "Hello, I am a noble representative of the oppressed people. I will never, ever do anything wrong. I'm not like the American revolutionaries who institutionalized slavery, oh no. I am the embodiment of all good things.")<--never close my parens....

... you won't do that.

Edited 2011-04-25 19:35 (UTC)

Yep. I will certainly try hard not to do that. I actually googled Braveheart to refresh myself on the story because I thought a couple times, "oh, fuck, I'm writing Braveheart!"

And the whole point of the story is the "history is written by the victors" bit (not oppressive people are oppressive), and I fear that if I focus the story around the revolutionary, that disparity between the version of history that eventually gets sanctified and what "really happened" isn't going to be as clear. Plus I wonder if it just wouldn't be a less interesting story. And plus it isn't flowing so my instinct is to change this shit up, haha. It's going to be tricky for me to write regardless, but I almost feel like I'm more interested in this side of events.

(i.e., the revolutionary doesn't win)

--and to be honest, I only have a vague, general knowledge of the Braveheart story. I'd better go read up, too.

I like the cantankerous side of you that gets you to look at the people whom we *don't* want to sympathize with and makes us question that. Which doesn't mean I want you supporting oppressing people, or despots--not at all. Just that I like that you're not likely to let it be easy.

In Pugelbone, even though the lines were very clearly drawn, what I liked was how you showed how the therapist just didn't get how blind she was to her own prejudices and notions, and how you showed the main character trying to gauge what she could say that would let her escape the situation with the least damage--how threatening the situation that, supposedly, was for the main character's benefit, actually was. That was great.

I was forbidden from watching Braveheart when I was little because of the (attempted) rape scene, and TBH I've only seen bits and pieces of it since. I will always wonder what my mother was thinking banning me from watching Braveheart when a few years later we were all sitting around watching A Clockwork Orange.

My problem is that I want everybody to sympathize with all my characters to some extent, and it's for the basic reason that I want people to understand that even "bad guys" are people with families and difficult choices, and furthermore, that you (general you) could be a bad guy too. But in a short story, I really have to pick and choose.

I'm really happy to hear you say that re: Pugelbone, cuz that's exactly what I was trying to do, haha.

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Most people looked at him with terror and with fear, but to Gondor chicks he was such a lovely dear

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