Jenn's World

After re-reading the Wheel of Time FAQ, I have changed my mind as to who killed Asmodean.

It was Bela.

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And probably Graendal. Although I still think it would have been cool if Mazrim Taim or his controller hired Slayer to take out Asmodean so Taim could take his place as Rand's teacher and gain his trust. And when Slayer said the Dark One himself had called on his services, well, who else but to take a Forsaken? It would have been cool, but I don't think that's what happened. And Demandred's alter-ego is, apparently according to interviews, not someone we've met on-screen yet. Which is dumb.

You know you love a world when it can invoke so much rage in its readers.

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In other news, I apparently may not patent my catchphrase "throw the back against the wall." Someone else got to it first.

Tv Tropes is a wonderfully interesting website to explore, if you haven't already. Basically it covers tropes in television, movies, literature, video and table top games. Not to criticize the tropes, but to explain them. It has some beautiful terminology and I love the comprehensive links system. From contemptible covers to growing the beard to "Not Using the Z word," this has loving references to all the tropes we know and love. You can search by trope or by book/movie/whatever to discover all sorts of interesting stuff. Great time-waster! I love it! Be warned...you can get lost in this for hours...and it is definitely not WWJS (What Would Jesus Surf?). Especially the outside links, including some to...erotic Care Bear fanfic.

Ah, Grumpy Bear. You should be ashamed of yourself.

However, as a writer, you walk away from the site a sense of depression. Because YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE TROPES. Nothing you ever do will ever be original. Ever.

I also got queasy after reading the 'unfortunate implications' page. I'm trying to do some interesting things with race in my books, but it gives me nightmares sometimes what someone reading about 'savage Dark Elvs' and the slavery of dark-skinned Lomari mages by the light-skinned humans (albeit after generations of the dark-skinned Lomari enslaving the light-skinned humans) will think after reading it. The end point of the book is that NO ONE RACE in this world is right and pure and perfect, and that its a semi-ironic take on the normal fantasy, especially of Elvs (ie, Our Elvs are better and the Noble Savage concepts). But I can see how some things can be misinterpreted.

Well, any press is good press. Right? Right?

It would be incredibly ironic if, when I write book solely on my desire to have brown-skinned female wizard protagonists (not as unique as I thought), I end up killing the same book because it accidentally comes off really racist. Well, at least she isn't a staff chick.

Ah, the overwrought conscience of a politically correct liberal.

On the plus side, I got 100 pages of revision done. The middle of my book is mostly dialogue so the pages just kind of fly by. I'm doing them over again, of course, and I'm going to try and add some more depth, and wondering whether some parts fit the rule of cool or its just me. Albeit not of the sexual and more of the bright shiny explosions variety.

So...Yeah.

Last post for the day. Time to go do something semi-useful.

A fan tribute to the Lord of the Rings movies was released on Sunday. It's 40 minutes long and entitled the "Hunt for Gollum." You can read about it here.

The question is, how legal is it to use another author's/moviemaker's characters/world in a not-for-profit way? It's probably not something worth suing over, but it's definitely in the gray area, unless it's a parody.

I have mixed feelings about fan fiction. So often, it's just plain poorly written, that it's hard to feel overly threatened by it. (And sometimes, fun results: see "badfic," definitely not all work safe). As an author, I think I'll be more amused than anything if my characters end up in strange, non-healthy relationships on the back of someone's web site. I mean, heck, at least someone's reading and caring about those characters, right? And I seem to remember writing a Raistlin fanfic in my angst-changed pre-teen days, so it's not like I have much right to preach (although I never showed it to anybody, thank god. The mortification would have been deadly).

But on the other hand, I wouldn't want some fan fictionist who happens to guess the way my plot is going to sue me for plagiarizing his/her idea. Well, I doubt that would happen, since they were plagiarizing my idea in the first place, but you never know.

I would probably implement a don't ask, don't tell policy and avoid it until all my books were done. Then, I might invite the really good fan fiction writers over to my house for tea.

Here's the preview for Hunt for Gollum. It looks extremely well made in terms of cinematography, though I'm kind of sick of pretty women with pointy ears. I'll pull up some popcorn and watch it this week.

Other amusing fanfic here. Good night moon mixed with the Bourne Supremacy. Hilarious!