tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post5721599682281778276..comments2024-01-09T18:40:53.465-08:00Comments on Ramblings of a Creative Double Dipper: Caress of Twilight--chapter 30Christwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17590823821715820817noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-70908688434059644742013-03-09T03:01:44.361-08:002013-03-09T03:01:44.361-08:00"Cookie Monster: ...yeah, I think one of thes..."Cookie Monster: ...yeah, I think one of these damn books opens with a sex/dream scene involving bloody cookies. So I actually think that's cannon. (And it totally made my day...)"<br />Mistral's Kiss, as summarized here: http://helen-keeble.livejournal.com/28618.html<br /><br />And that is a charitable summary. :P<br /><br />Also, the Anita series has one poor sap who was literally nicknamed Cookie Monster. What, exactly, does LKH have in for cookies?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-91203769508662141862013-03-06T16:51:17.100-08:002013-03-06T16:51:17.100-08:00Random thoughtery...
Stories of people with limit...Random thoughtery...<br /><br />Stories of people with limited power setting out to challenge the status quo are acceptable. Akira Kurosawa's 'Ikiru' is about a man trying to create a legacy by pushing for the construction of a small park. But a story of someone who holds power setting out to challenge the status quo would basically boil down to watching someone strong kick down the structures other people depend on. <br /><br />Superman used to be proactive. He went out looking for trouble. He destroyed slums, overthrew corrupt governments, hunted down greedy executives... And people were terrified of him. The modern version of Superman would be even more terrifying if he were still proactive.<br /><br />Most of the time you don't need a proactive protagonist, because most of the time you don't need a protagonist at all. 9999 times out of 10000 society just works on a day to day basis. You only need a vampire hunter/madman in a bat costume/cop for that one time that things get out of control.<br /><br />You could go the outsider route. Have a proactive minority protagonist who actively works to hunt down people who pose a threat to their group. You could write about a woman who tracks MRA forums and reddit comments, seeking out potential stalkers and rapists to stop them before they hurt anyone. As satisfying as that would be (Seriously), good luck selling that woman as a hero to the general public.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05828438966741169694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-76989662867858303192013-03-06T11:25:44.560-08:002013-03-06T11:25:44.560-08:00An update from a previous post - Random House just...An update from a previous post - Random House just seems to get worse and worse: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/06/note-to-sff-writers-random-houses-hydra-imprint-has-appallingly-bad-contract-terms/<br /><br />More thoughts on active protagonists when I have time to be thoughty.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05828438966741169694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-75590747699313315312013-03-06T10:23:48.764-08:002013-03-06T10:23:48.764-08:00"Lips, tongue, even teeth fed at each other’s..."Lips, tongue, even teeth fed at each other’s mouths. The heat filled my mouth almost like liquid. I could feel the warm, sweet thickness of it like warm honey, warm syrup that filled my mouth and spilled into Galen."<br /><br />It sounds like he's a drooler. Eew, ick. Duamuteffehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03467912396487349539noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-44908634614497672692013-03-06T09:55:37.645-08:002013-03-06T09:55:37.645-08:00I got to go to Canada for Christmas a couple years...I got to go to Canada for Christmas a couple years ago. (*waves at Ian*). I remember looking down at the ground beside the runway and thinking "Why is there sand all over everything?" And then I realized it was snow with grass poking out of it and I got excited, and then my friends apologized for there being no snow and I was like "LOOK AT THE GROUND THAT WHITE STUFF THAT IS SNOW", and then they took me out to Lake Louise and I was like "THIS IS WHY THEY PUT SHITTY PLASTIC SHREDDED STUFF IN THE DEPARTMENT STORES AT CHRISTMAS THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THIS" and I spent the entire trip pretty much fangirling the snow. <br /><br />Cookie Monster: ...yeah, I think one of these damn books opens with a sex/dream scene involving bloody cookies. So I actually think that's cannon. (And it totally made my day...)Christwriterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17590823821715820817noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-45319731858834309512013-03-06T09:48:39.718-08:002013-03-06T09:48:39.718-08:00(In case you can't tell, this is a favorite su...(In case you can't tell, this is a favorite subject of mine. Anyway...)<br /><br />You can have your protagonist go looking for trouble to fix, but there's still an active/reactive paradigm that personally, I like less than the more common trouble-on-my-doorstep one. Not only do you not have the white pieces, you don't have the chessboard. You're letting the bad guy set up his position while your hero/heroine wanders around trying to find them, and unless you pull an eleventh hour love interest out of the ether, your hero/heroine won't have much of a personal stake in things. Anything you do to make your hero's actions justified and personal in the eyes of the reader takes them from an active character to more of a reactive one. (IE if you have the bad guy's guards kill someone in front of them, the hero is now reacting to the death, not actively persuing the bad guy for his own ends.)<br /><br />We see the same issue IRL--crime prevention, IRL heroics, the things we celebrate as "good" are all reactive behaviors. We don't actually prevent crime, we react when it occurs and we take steps to prevent it from happening again. But if nobody ever stole or murdered, we probably would not have police. If there were no fires, there would be no firemen. <br /><br />In short (TOO LATE) having a purely reactive hero protagonist is like injecting yourself with a vacciene for a disease that doesn't exist: It's pointless, and it risks turning your audience against the hero character. Nobody likes a bully, and if your villian is reacting to your hero's actions and has not acted against the hero/the hero's family/people under the hero's protections in a manner that justifies moving against them, your hero is a bully. <br /><br />Or, to create the most tangled metaphore on earth, if you cut into somebody with no provocation, you're evil. If you cut into somebody because they have a tumor, you're a surgeon and you're saving their life. The tumor gets the white pieces. Christwriterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17590823821715820817noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-26385538140907982342013-03-06T09:24:07.297-08:002013-03-06T09:24:07.297-08:00That's a good rant, but I'd balance it wit...That's a good rant, but I'd balance it with a couple things.<br /><br />Reactive characters are how western audiences "read" heroic characters. Superheroes sit around and wait for a crime, and usually have some great wound that they are reacting to in choosing to be a superhero. Superman is the exception, but there's websites dedicated to how much of a dick he is. Another clue that reactive characters are the only "good" characters in western eyes is how, when a writer needs to defuse sympathy for a victim (...and that's a rant all on its own) they do something that makes the crime a reactive crime--the villian is responding to something the victim did, even if the villian has no way of knowing and/or acting on the knowledge of how awful the victim is (See: EVERY. SLASHER. MOVIE. EVER.)<br /><br />The problem with heroics is it requires an evil of slightly greater strength to fight. The evil has to exist first, and THAT is the first move. The closest we get to truly active heroes are the Lord of the Rings bunch, because Sauron never does anything onscreen to justify the destruction of the Ring. Gandalf makes the first onscreen move by pushing Frodo et al in the direction of Mt. Doom, but nobody would be doing anything if Sauron didn't exist first. (cont...)Christwriterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17590823821715820817noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-90341299979872235802013-03-06T09:20:41.243-08:002013-03-06T09:20:41.243-08:00I hear you. I'm Canadian (enough said, I think...I hear you. I'm Canadian (enough said, I think)<br />I still cant get the image of Sage as a douchey frat boy out of my head. Just a tiny fairy in a fedora saying "Yeah, I got your cure. Right here. *grabs crotch* BOOM"<br /><br />Also... I'm sorry to do this, but now all I can picture is Lau-Anit-I mean Merry's lust as the cookie monster. What has been seen can never be unseen. Korenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-9126410362699298912013-03-06T06:55:55.071-08:002013-03-06T06:55:55.071-08:00I don't understand. At all. But I'm glad y...I don't understand. At all. But I'm glad you're excited about writing! That's the best feeling.<br /><br />Yeah, I've tried hard to make my protagonists active, but ultimately they are still reactive. They wouldn't be doing any of what they do if not for the monsters coming into their town. But at least they go after them! There's a good rant on that here, btw<br />http://limyaael.livejournal.com/346035.htmlRFhttp://a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-2896245805125098402013-03-06T00:40:17.253-08:002013-03-06T00:40:17.253-08:00I think what she is *trying* to say is that the sp...I think what she is *trying* to say is that the spell (which is, of course, embodied by the orgasm) is leaving her body and entering Galen's. <br /><br />Which is why food based metaphores for both magic and sex DO NOT WORK WELL. <br /><br />(...I could actually go with "the cold froze", but I think that is because I am from South Texas, and while we do have cold--40F is MISERABLE with 90% humidity--having things acutally freeze either requires human intervention or is a once-in-a-lifetime thing worthy of note. We had snow in 04, and we are STILL publishing books of photos of said snow EVERY. FUCKING. YEAR. We are two christmases away from TEN YEARS OF SNOW BOOKS and there is no end in sight.) <br /><br />...so far the abyss hasn't looked back. And I probably won't be here to tell you when it does, because I think that'll be Cthululu. Or the second coming of Christ. Whichever comes first.Christwriterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17590823821715820817noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350096535937978369.post-54040295421012623122013-03-05T23:45:38.415-08:002013-03-05T23:45:38.415-08:00"Our lips touched and it was as if the heat w..."Our lips touched and it was as if the heat were hungry for him."<br />These words. Make. No. Sense.<br />I thought words were supposed to mean something :(.<br />The best I can break it down is that her lust is heightened by the kiss, but what she's saying is that the lust needs him, which are two synonyms. It's like saying that the cold froze.<br />I swear, sometimes reading these books seems like staring into the abyss. Korenoreply@blogger.com