Threnody (of Epically Parodic Proportions)

Note: Only the "threnody" part of the title has anything to do with the first part of this post.

MySpace ate Imeem.

:: cries ::

I could stomach the misfortune if MySpace had any clarity and coherence to its design. But it doesn't. Its pages are choked with clutter and it's so difficult to navigate. I refuse to use it. I suppose its back to Youtube for me, then (with the many joys of dial-up!). Yikes.

--

Finished my German final today. Two down, one more to go. I have two and a half days to rewrite a ten-page story and compose two more, beginning to end. One story has already flown wildly out of control. Wish me joy.

Below is a selection from my epic Mary Sue parody (the piece I'm supposed to have fun with, in my portfolio, and the one that keeps getting longer and more feral). The innkeep has trapped our heroes (Princess Lightning Snow, the Handsome Stranger - temporarily named Fine-as-good-wine - his Wise Mentor of a grandmother - called the Crone - and a Sidekick) and summoned the evil king's soldiers to finish them off. It's a bit violent. Beware.

The innkeep gave a crazy laugh, like any mad Dark Lord.
“Stop yer wailin’, little wretch; even now I hear a horde
"Of soldiers coming, the good king’s best, come to cut ye up.
"Don’t resist, or all that’s left won’t be enough to fill a cup!”

He scuttled away and up the stairs, his voice lifted and loud
“I’ve trapped ‘em in the cellar, m’lords; of me ye can be proud!”
“Aside!” Their captain’s voice rang out. And then, “Aside!” again
“I said move aside, you vile knave—“ But ah! To his chagrin
The innkeep asked for payment ere he handed them the key
“ Then have your gold,” the captain snarled; he swung his sword and the innkeep’s head spun free

They took the key and down the stairs barreled with wild cries
While in the cellar shrieked the Boy, “We must escape outside!”
"Escape we shall,” said Lightning Snow, as she loosed her singing blade
“We’ll cut a path through evil men; come, if you aren’t afraid!”
“Be good and hide,” said Fine-as-good-wine, lifting his own shining steel,
“I’ll take them out; now do make haste, and behind that sack go kneel!”
“Kneel?” scoffed the princess, “kneel and hide? I think not, sexist pig.
“I can hold my own, thank you, boy; this sword is not a twig.”
“Indeed it’s not,” said Fine-as-good-wine, with some flaring of heat,
“And that is why it’s too much for you; you’ll cut off your own feet!”
“Oh I’ll show you,” she hissed at him, “you’ll see that I can fight.
“Count, if you dare, how many men I’ll doom to eternal night!"

There was a sound: a key in lock, and then the door burst in
Soldiers spilled into the room; princess and hero set upon them
The Scullery Boy screamed and wriggled far away to hide
The Crone began to run too slow; a sword found her; she died
Hack and slash and slash and hack--the sword flashed quick as snakes
One man, two men, ten men down; blood spattered like red snowflakes
Across the walls and upon the floor, a rain that blinded all
Except the two who spun and sliced and made each soldier fall

I have a feeling this poem needs editing. Like woah.

Behold, the red pen come to save this poem, like to muddy writing as iron is to the Fair Folk, x3

One Exam Down...

... two more to go.

I had my art exam today - two final charcoal drawings that I submitted for in-class critique. My first was that of a chocolate mug throwing its shadow across a book. The book makes me grimace a little (its edges are... wobbly, >.> Code word for eeevil; my grades suffer because of my wobbly circles, darn it!) and the reflections in the mug look like wanna-be Picasso. My second drawing was of an old radio, a chocolate mug (... wait) sitting on top of a fireplace, and an open book on a chair. The knobs on the radio gave me unspeakable grief, the chocolate mug may be disappearing into the atmosphere behind it, and the book... actually looks pretty good. If one ignores the shadow.

xD But in truth, looked at again after having finally had a respite (read: sleep) from them, the drawings aren't all that dreadful. I quite agree with my art teacher, who noted that it was sadly obvious that I had taken massive liberties with the proportions of the objects in my second drawing, but then he added that that might be my style. (Read: the liberties taken with a lamp in one my my earlier drawings: I shrank it so it stooped over the objects I was lighting, for I intended to draw it in and fulfill my assignment, though the manipulation of reality was necessary to do so. I confessed to this deception during class, and the teacher said, "Huh. It doesn't look bad." And I said "Yaaay." Both drawings look like pictures for a children's storybook. If I may be so bold in declaring.)

I'm really going to miss my drawing class. It was beginning to feel like a family, ):

I have a final exam in German tomorrow (... it might be a good idea to start studying. What do you think?) and a portfolio to turn in for creative writing on Monday. The portfolio is going to be fun, if I can manage to make something of my ideas. The professor wishes to see three pieces: one that we're very proud of, another that we've revised, a third that we've had fun with. I'm planning to revise my first workshop submission for Piece #2, write a satire of a Mary Sue story in epic poem style for Piece #3, and... well, Piece #1 is giving me trouble. Should it be the first chapter of my NaNo? (revised, but hey, no one knows that?) Finish up a story I've meant to finish for five years, in which a girl is snatched away by a kelpie? (It's written from the stuffy POV of some guy who doesn't believe her tales of Celtic fairies stalking her around until the kelpie rises from a lake and swallows her up. Woot.) Write that one story I've meant to write for six months now, in which a girl battles a wardrobe possessed of the wicked spirit of her grandfather? (I've always wanted to try magic realism/utter screaming surrealism. Yarr.)

Ah well. Options, options. We'll see.

:: already misses drawing class SO VERY MUCH even though it just ended today, D: ::

Masters of Fortune - Excerpt

The first storyteller tells of two brothers. The younger attempts to save the elder from an enchantress by killing her, but the elder, broken by his grief at the murder, falls into an enchanted sleep. The younger, devastated, takes his brother through the kingdom, looking for someone who can wake him up. Before the following scene begins, a wise man tells the younger brother that certain ghosts that live on top of a mountain may be able to answer his question - but he doubts there is any hope for the elder brother.

But the boy set no store by the wise man’s doubts. He took his elder brother upon his sled and started toward the mountain.

He heard rumour of it with every league he walked: the wind and snow and frozen rain a man must battle to reach the summit, the carcass of a temple that sat upon that summit, a place filled with ghosts. These were not the ghosts of priests, but the ghosts of the demonfolk those priests had called upon, They That Lived Beneath the Mountain. These priests had depended too much upon these Folk, and the Folk had destroyed them. Those who remained thirsted for the humans they had consumed and could no longer obtain. They could answer any question that a man might wish to ask, but they would ask a price for the service—and few who went to their mountain were ever seen again. The younger brother listened to these tales and closed a hand over the amulet, his protection. Its gentle warmth soothed him, even as the words of men and winter over the land grew as cold and bitter as grief.

The nights grew longer, the farther the younger brother went, and they fell so quickly that the daytime became a figment of memory, a sweet dream that had once warmed the boy, and now abandoned him. The towns grew few, until he rode for a day and saw none, until the very road wore away. But before him, something was growing on the horizon—a ragged twist of stone stabbing the storm-blue vault—a mountainous spire, a goliath planted among a dead, silent city of white mountain ice.

The ground before the mountain was misshapen, broken and corrupted with the earth falling in on itself, and black pillars rising up. Where there were no rocks, the earth was soft with rotten ice. And where the rocks remained, the ground was brittle; the boy slipped upon the loose stones and cut himself. The ground began to slope up, and it grew harder to pull the sled.

He came to the ice men had whispered of in the towns, and he bruised his body upon its slickness, scraped his skin raw as he clawed for purchase. The wind came, and it brought with it waves of rain—needles that ate into him and froze his hands and face. And the rain froze and turned to snow, and the snow to black ice. But the younger brother staggered on, feeling the mingled reassurance and misery of his brother’s weight against the rope, looped about his waist, reminded himself of the gently thump of the amulet against his chest, even when he grew so cold that he could no longer feel it.

And at last, long long last, he reached that ragged twist of stone men call the Rev’nant’s Tower. He laid himself at the foot of the ruins, and gasped his entreaties into the silence.

A voice answered him. “Who calls, and why does he call?”

“Please,” the younger brother gasped. “To save my brother, I slew a witch who had ensnared him in her spell. But my brother lamented her death; he turned his face from me, and sank into a sleep of grief. I want him to awaken, to see the life that I have returned to him—” But it had been so long since he had spoken his story that the pain of it choked him, and he hid his face in his hands and wept.

“Is this your tale?” the voice whispered. “What then is your question?”

“What will awaken him? What must I do to wake him up?”

“Give him a reason to wake up,” the voice replied. “That is all you can do.”

“But what is that reason? I have pleaded with him and I have tried to reason with him and he has not heard me. He will not listen to me.”

“And why should he listen to you?” said the voice, and is sounded almost sly. “You’ve robbed him of his beloved—and now you expect him to thank you for it.”

“No! I’ve robbed him of nothing—”

“You’ve only saved him from everything.”

“You don’t know what you are saying—” the brother protested.

“Then why did you come to us?” The voice grew heavy with foreboding. “If you are so wise?”

“I rescued him,” the younger cried. “From evil and trickery and damnation. If what I have done is wrong, why did the gods not stop me? I wore Their amulet, and walked in its protection; I do what I must in Their name, and They does not condone wrong!”

“Let us say, then, that what you claim is truth,” retorted the voice.

“It is!”

“Then why do your gods not help you? Why do They not wake your brother? Or give you the words and influence to awaken him?” The voice paused, and the pause was fraught with fire. “Well then? Speak your answer. Or do your gods not help your brother because there is no help to give? Do They not speak through you because They have nothing to say—or any tongue to say it with? It that Their spirit you wear about your neck? Or is that but a disc of gold, beguilingly wrought and silent and helpless as death?”

The younger brother shut his eyes. “I deny you.”

The voice laughed. “Deny me all you want; there is at least evidence of me in your mind.”

“And is that not also the same as the evidence for the power of gods in this amulet?”

“Gods grant miracles. I answer questions. I cannot say what miracles have been done for you. But answers—well—they have led you this far, and may take you even farther.”

The younger brother’s voice was heavy and trembling with grief. “I have not had answers. I have only had pity and useless sympathy, and people saying what cannot be done cannot be done.”

“Yes,” said the voice. “But I see, for you, that the impossible is irrelevant.”

After some moments, the voice spoke again. “Take your question to the centre of the mountain. I have told you what I can. There is a woman down below who may be able to tell you more.”

The younger brother came unsteadily to his feet. “To the centre of the mountain? But how do I reach that place?”

“Enter this ruin and you will find it riddled with rooms filmed over in ice and frosty with snow. Take only right turns, until you find a room into which all rooms lead, and you will find a great crack that has torn the room in two. Take your brother into it, and walk until you find her.”

“I thank you.” The brother took up the rope, and began to drag his brother’s sled through one of the ruined doorways.

“But I am not done.” The voice was suddenly quieter, and the boy felt it as a chill inside his bones. There is my price yet to paid, for the questions I have answered, the service I had rendered you.”

The chill in the younger brother’s bones grew as sharp as fear and pain, and he felt a protest rise to his lips. But even as he trembled, he understood that he had dealt with the Folk, and their law required a fair and just exchange. He stifled his protest and said, voice shaking, “If I am able, I will give you what you ask.”

“It does not matter what you are able to do,” said the voice. “I ask for your living, beating heart.”

The younger brother gave a great cry of horror, and the voice continued, “It is my price!” And suddenly, from within the belly of that temple, a shadow emerged. It towered twelve feet in height, long and thin as a winter-ravaged tree. The boy tried to run, but his elder brother’s sled caught upon a piece of broken mortar . He collapsed, his leg twisting. He felt a crunch of bone; he screamed with pain. The massive figure came with deliberate steps to his side. With one hand, like the naked braches of a tree, it pinned the boy to the ground, and with the other hand, it plunged its fingers into his chest, and drew out his beating, living heart.

It raised the great muscle free of the cold, still body upon the ground, and the heart pulsed in its hand. It looked down into the colourless face, considering, and then it bent once more and took the boy's amulet between thumb and forefinger. “May your gods rest nearer to you than your own heart,” it murmured, and slid the amulet into the cavity that had once held the boy’s heart.

Purple Bar Victory

:D

Still not finished. MoF may hit 100k by the time I'm completed it, methinks. But now for the fun part of After-NaNo: the Reflection! i.e. Things I Have Learned:

1) I can trust myself to reach 50,000 without embellishment. Elaborate descriptions delay "The End", rather than encourage it to arrive in a timely fashion

2) Why so serious? xD The characters don't have to take themselves and the story so seriously, really.

3) Never use Raziya in a story again.

4) "Sandwich" is an impossible word to spell without the assistance of spell check

5) Handwriting prose a good story makes, 8D It's soothing to feel the story forming beneath my hand (and I'm not so tempted to digress!)

6) Persistence, surprisingly, really does work

7) In a first draft, all things are forgiven

Will post an excerpt posthaste!

Green Bar Victory

I'm taking what few hours I have for noveling today to write write write, and then see what number I end up at before I validate. At 58k now. Still not even halfway through the story, D: But unlike last year and the year before, I know exactly where I'm going.

The Great Race Begins!

Bad News: I've abandoned my Coffin of Glass novel (two estranged brothers, one mystery). I was fighting so hard to keep it plausible and realistic that it just imploded... though perhaps that image is too thrilling to describe what happened. The novel's heartbeat grew so faint that it was a few days before I realized it had stopped. I know you're just supposed to plow through - quantity, not quality! the NaNo catchphrase - but I couldn't take it anymore. CoG was so low-key that it made one of my normal days look as exciting as an end-of-the-world movie. So I just dropped it. Abandoning words is better than spending a day in tears over its corpse. And I suppose I can always go back and turn it into a short story - which is better pushing on to write NaNos 2007/2008, Part 3: The Nightmare. Really, this NaNo, I'm looking for something I can work with later. And I wasn't sure what to do with CoG, :[

So that was 13,000 words off my word count. Which I was so totally not supposed to bother with anyway, this year. Gaaah.

Good News: Two pieces, in fact. I have not yet begun to despair over my handwritten novel. I've come close, but I've shut my eyes and scribbled on, and things are looking a little brighter (still nowhere near finishing; must be proactive and stop describing scenery!) At 35k. Also, after I told CoG to rest in peace, I returned to the next chapter of Moonstruck, my everlasting Zelda fanfiction. My goal is writing I can do something with later, and I can certaintly do something with an update to Moonstruck. At 8,600 words with that. 43k in total. V. happy. And now I have thirteen days to concentrate on the words "The End". The great race begins!

NaNo Posts

... just because.

from the topic Anyone Else Doing A Fairy Tale Re-Telling?

According to the outline, my novel "Masters of Fable" is supposed to be nothing more than a series of retellings - or perhaps reimaginings? "heavily inspired by" kinds of things? - of all sorts of fairy tales. So far, I've counted Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Bluebeard, The Snow Queen, Beauty and the Beast, Tam Lin (... which would be a ballad/folk tale, rather than a fairy tale. If there's a vast difference. It's one of my favourite stories of all time), and several mythological tales: Eurydice; the descent of the goddess Inanna (a tale which has haunted me since I first read Victoria Schmidt's "45 Master Characters"); and the story of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades. I think being able to finish a short story reimagining of a favorite fairy tale and move on to the next will really inspire me to finish my novel. I'm excited!

from the topic No Female Main Characters?

I've actually encountered the opposite problem: when I had finished developing the cast for my main project, I sat back - and realized that there was not a single male character to be seen. It was rather distressing. I've tried to add in MMCs since, and have so far suceeded in coaxing the FMC's father into the story. All my MMCs, it appears, have migrated to my secondary NaNo project, which was ostentibly about a pair of brothers uncovering the secrets of their mother's past, and turned instead into a great drama between the brothers and their fathers, with the mother's ghost as an incidental sideshow.

In 22k between both novels. Fun and happiness, :)