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Diaryland

I Start Fires!

Lexiroth
Her Rainess
Lizsama
'Cedez
Moonie
Pipey
Timofsky
Motro
Squeeky
Lady Maverick
DM
Shoisies
Chokie

2002-12-17

Piggy's specs were nicked at: 4:23 p.m.

I'm from Gryffindor!

Hogwart's Sorting Hat Quiz made by The Genki Gang

Well, I guess I'm living on borrowed time. Why is it that I always get Gryffindor whenever I take these damn sorting hat quizes? It doesn't make sense. Whenever I read a Harry Potter book, I want to kick the ass of every Gryffindor do-gooder that passes across the page. Hufflepuff is where it's at, if you ask me. Oh well, I guess it's better to be a Gryffindoor than a Slytherin ... potentially evil, snide rich greedy kids in a house represented by a serpent. That is TEH ORIJINAL.

Chris from #mechadrake was reading some of my original works yesterday, and he happened across Between Instincts, one of my older pieces. He liked it, which makes me feel warm. Oh wait, nevermind. That's just me pissing my pants. Seriously, I've noticed a mild surge of interest in this particular story lately ... a university prof wrote to say he liked it about a month ago, and I'm like "Whoa." Since I hadn't read the piece in about a million years (I wrote it when I was 18 for my grade 13 Writer's Craft class), I decided to re-indulge.

Even though the tagline mentions I don't particularily care for the story, I'm going to backtrack and say I kind of do. It's ... simple. A love story above everything else, and not too gushy. Faithfulness and companionship is put above everything else here. I kind of am intrigued by the world I created and might do something more with it. For the record, the story itself is based almost scene-for-scene about a dream I had with mutated humans wandering the world, except my dream had a schoolbus in it. Maybe my subconscious was saluting All Buses go to Heaven, an excellent post-apocalyptic fiction I read by Maria Jade on Elfwood. I'll dig it up and post the link next time I get a chance, if it's even still there.

Between Instincts has some gnawing problems. The ending is sort of abrupt, some of the dialogue from the main character, Track, is just Screwsville, and there was one particular bit I'm surprised my Writer's Craft teacher didn't crucify me over:

Dran shrank away slightly. I could feel his hatred for me, smoldering with smoky wisps of jealousy and fear. The loathing suddenly blazed into a terrified triumph as Dran stiffened, looked me right in the eye, and threw my meat to the Pokkis behind me. The animals pounced gladly, and that was the end of my dinner.

"That'll teach you," Dran said, "that when I tell you to hurry up, you'd better hurry up." His cool tone betrayed the tangle of emotions that choked his insides.

BZZZZT. WRONG. I shifted perspectives like a demon there. It's funny that my teacher didn't catch it ... even weirder is that Kenneth Newquest didn't catch it when I got the thing published that summer. Well, at least it's not as embarrasing an error as the time I poured my sweat and soul into a poster for a college project, made a major typo (mispelled "heroes" as "heros"),and still got an A. Take heart, I flunked the semester overall, so someone with some beans in their noggin must be in charge of things somewhere.

And that's Between Instincts. Just a wee love story in the time of nuclear fallout and jealous mutants.

Lexiroth, I'm afraid I must command you to read Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. I'm not a raging King fan (I absolutely adore 10% of his work and hate or am indifferent to the rest), but EOTD is the greatest fantasy novel I ever read, period. No trolls, no elves, no My Little Pony dragons. Just a lot of dark gritty beheadings, dirt, disease, sex, murder, betrayl, poison and magicians named Flagg.

Going a little further on Fantasy novels, I hesitate to lump Margaret Weis' Dragonlance "Chronicles" and "Legends" with the Usual Gang of Idiots. Chronicles is a little more fluffy and magical, but the books are well done. The Dragonlance Legends, however, are truly excellent and almost devoid of fantasy cliches, except Dalamar the dark elf who's damn cool anyway. And I read the Legends when I was totally burned out on fantasy. If you see a Dragonlance Book without Weis, Hickman or Perrin's name attatched to it, however, run very far away.

Maybe books like Eyes of the Dragon and Dragonlance Legends are good because they're about the struggles of one or two people ... they don't encompass the world and bore us with gritty details. If there's one thing I've learned about writing, your world means squat if the characters that inhabit it are boring. One book that bored me to tears was Heart's Blood. Super cool surroundings, interesting customs, intriguing way of life ... but the characters were dull and unreadable. The plot was no prize, either. Kind of broke my heart, so to speak, because I really did want to like Heart's Blood. I strained and strained but couldn't lift my finger to turn the page past 32.