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( central park as the mount of olives, ~1500 words )
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( apocalyptic continuity, 360 words )
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( apocalyptic continuity, 360 words )
Mar. 8th, 2012
30 Day Book Challenge: 21
Mar. 8th, 2012 12:01 pmDay 21 – Favourite book from your childhood
Two books:
Ella Enchanted! It is a magical book. It has a linguist for a main character. It's a reinterpretation of Cinderella where the main character has agency, and does things her own way: she doesn't have Rebellious Princess Syndrome, she's just a little different. She saves her prince from ogres, not by beating him at his own game, but by utilizing her particular talents to beat the ogres at theirs. And I like that the relationship between Ella and Char is presented in terms of these two distinct people. You get to see why they like each other, and what fuels their relationship, and I think this was the first book I read as a kid where that was shown, and not just assumed. It stuck out to me, anyway.
The whole story has an interesting feel to it; on the one hand, it contains a lot of traditional elements of fairy-tales: fairy godmothers, ogres, elves, giants, centaurs, kings and queens and princesses and ugly stepsisters. It doesn't specifically subvert those elements, but uses them in earnest and plays with them, and adds a dash of language on top of it all.The characters are people that jump beyond the stock characters they came from, and it's just a fun book to read.
And! The Witches, from around the same time as Ella Enchanted, I believe. The Witches is a fantastic, weird book, and even in elementary school, my favorite part of the book was that the main character doesn't go back to being a kid at the end. He stays a mouse, with a very short lifespan, and he is okay with that because he doesn't want to outlive his grandmother. I rejoiced when I read that, because finally! I thought to myself. A book that isn't coddling us or expecting that just because we're still in the single digits, we need a perfect happy ending where everything goes back to normal. I've had people tell me that the book scared them as a child, but for me, The Witches was nothing short of awesome.
(The Twits, on the other hand ... holy bejeezus, The Twits still creeps me out.)
Two books:
Ella Enchanted! It is a magical book. It has a linguist for a main character. It's a reinterpretation of Cinderella where the main character has agency, and does things her own way: she doesn't have Rebellious Princess Syndrome, she's just a little different. She saves her prince from ogres, not by beating him at his own game, but by utilizing her particular talents to beat the ogres at theirs. And I like that the relationship between Ella and Char is presented in terms of these two distinct people. You get to see why they like each other, and what fuels their relationship, and I think this was the first book I read as a kid where that was shown, and not just assumed. It stuck out to me, anyway.
The whole story has an interesting feel to it; on the one hand, it contains a lot of traditional elements of fairy-tales: fairy godmothers, ogres, elves, giants, centaurs, kings and queens and princesses and ugly stepsisters. It doesn't specifically subvert those elements, but uses them in earnest and plays with them, and adds a dash of language on top of it all.The characters are people that jump beyond the stock characters they came from, and it's just a fun book to read.
And! The Witches, from around the same time as Ella Enchanted, I believe. The Witches is a fantastic, weird book, and even in elementary school, my favorite part of the book was that the main character doesn't go back to being a kid at the end. He stays a mouse, with a very short lifespan, and he is okay with that because he doesn't want to outlive his grandmother. I rejoiced when I read that, because finally! I thought to myself. A book that isn't coddling us or expecting that just because we're still in the single digits, we need a perfect happy ending where everything goes back to normal. I've had people tell me that the book scared them as a child, but for me, The Witches was nothing short of awesome.
(The Twits, on the other hand ... holy bejeezus, The Twits still creeps me out.)
Character Names
Mar. 8th, 2012 04:52 pmI am fed up with all of these stupid names that I have created. I like the names of the main characters. After that, it gets extremely debatable. So I decided that I am going to go the route of picking an ethnic background and pulling all of the names from there. Not the most imaginative way to do it, but I really like the way Welsh sounds. I'm hesitant, but only because the two characters who started this whole endeavor, Tsuya and Nyali, will also have to change their names, and I don't know if that's quite fair to them.
I tried to pick names that sounded, to me, like the character. In the case of a lot of Tanwen's family, that has nothing to do with their current name, which were all smushed together out of Gaelic words and then muddled with some more.
( I think 'Emrys' is my favorite rename and he doesn't even appear in this story anymore )
I tried to pick names that sounded, to me, like the character. In the case of a lot of Tanwen's family, that has nothing to do with their current name, which were all smushed together out of Gaelic words and then muddled with some more.
( I think 'Emrys' is my favorite rename and he doesn't even appear in this story anymore )
