The Mystical Land of Pardes

Okay, so... am I crazy, or is this elf dude hitting on my elf:

You seek Dorwinion Red? You are wise to do so; it is a fine wine indeed. Subtle, complex... rather like me, actually.

I swear, you do one Ale Association quest and NPCs start getting ideas about what kind of elf you are! (I bet he says that to ALL the elves. :P) It's so fun to mess with hobbits, though. :D I'm a bad, bad elf. It's true. Very slowly, this alt is acquiring a uh, personality of sorts, and it only took fifty levels and months of playing! I've been looking for a subject to draw that's "mine" but also connected to something I'm really into, so I have motivation to actually pick up a pencil; maybe I'll use her for that.

Still miles away from Moria, literally and figuratively. Sigh. I've started pushing forward in the "epic storyline" to make time move onward - and it's pretty cool, though I have some nitpicky questions - but there's a lot to get through to reach my goal. It's also making the elves and their perfect feather quests sound practical. I mean, there I am, fresh from battle, we just lost a bunch of important NPCs, and the ranger dude running the place says, "We really have to go after X, but... we need to rest. We also need to have a fancy funeral in this very special place that we have to clear out first, and then YOU can start running to Rivendell while we sit around."

YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. IN A FIRE.

I like that we get some NPCs with background that's relevant to the storyline (besides the canon characters, that is). This has revealed to me that I'm still a ficcer at heart; when Laerdan's storyline started and he clearly had some kind of ~secret past~ with Amarthiel, my first thought was naturally an affair-- and then they pulled a Lloyd/Kratos moment on me. WHY ME. God. So like... I say this proves I'm a fic writer at heart because I always assume romance, pairing fic being the bread and butter of most fan fiction, as I think Samu put it.

Gen is sadly not mainstream. Why? Gen is awesome. :/ Even when I want to write romance, I write gen. I know when to fold.

All of this makes me want to write some dark Numenorians. Hahahahaha.

How many years late is this? I hate theaters, and kept forgetting to put it on my Netflix list, and let me tell you, I'm glad I didn't buy it - even used.

Most of the complaints I heard (back in the day) focused on things that were in the book that didn't make it into the movie. I consider story cuts to be a natural casualty of the adaption process; they don't surprise or offend me, and I expect to see them. The movie is not the book, etc. I'm generally pretty tolerant of movie interpretations because the writing demands of books and screenplays are different, and sometimes they don't get along.

My complaints are just these: they compressed too much and didn't make up for it with proper set-up. Every story point was heavy-handed to the point of absurdity. It's like the script decided we had to be told everything straight-up, just in case we missed it - not an unrealistic fear with the way they handled their information - and so there were moments in which the actors stared at us and told us exactly what just happened, or exactly what they intended, like it was a frigging Scooby Doo cartoon. Watch the super-dramatic evil churchmen announce that they want to rule the world! Look at Lyra announce what those guys at the North Pole are really doing with the kids! (I guess they'd have to, because public imagination would move in different directions.) Of course, if they'd set daemons up better from the get-go, they could've introduced some subtlety into that revelation, but since that didn't happen, their hands were tied.

I don't know. Movies have strict time demands, but there are plenty that introduce their concepts at the beginning without stumbling and leaving people confused. (There are also a lot that don't! Sigh.) It seems to me they didn't do their adapting very well, and all of this heavy-handed storytelling came after a lengthy prologue they should've used to set up the immediate situation.

(Listen to me, the amateur writer, criticize storytelling. Hilarious.)

I laughed at the ending. They had to end it there. Any farther and they would've been obligated to make a sequel, and you know that'll never happen. It might offend the conservatives! Besides, we can't show violence against children in a movie, adapted from a book, that revealed a systematic violation of those poor little kids' souls in the name of the church. GOD NO.

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Not sure how I feel about Lyra. I thought Nicole Kidman could've made a great Mrs. Coulter, but the role felt overacted-- like everything else in the movie. Lyra was an okay fit, I guess, but Asriel seemed off, and I just died laughing when I saw Christopher Lee in the church committee, and then heard Ian McKellan's voice. Died. I could not stop seeing Saruman and hearing Gandalf. XD I did think the guy they got for Lee Scoresby was a perfect fit, but those two - Coulter and Scoresby - are the only ones I felt were cast correctly.

The disc wasn't even worth keeping an extra day for screencaps, though the visuals were nice enough. Not stunning, but nice.

Next on my list are Prince Caspian, then Dawn Treader. After that I'm not sure. I always meant to see one of the X-Men movies, and one of the Transformer movies, but neither topic is all that interesting to me.

1. The series you loved the most this year?
Hmmmmm, I'm going to say Lord of the Rings, even though that only counts for the last quarter of the year or so. I feel more love for that than I did for anything else in 2011. And... that's kind of weird, because it's not like this is the first time I've read the books, seen the movies, or looked into the background of the story.

I guess it'd be more accurate to say The Silmarillion is what I fell in love with. I kinda sorta don't care about most of the Third Age, which is what drives LOTR.

Fire Emblem also technically belongs here, because I had a lot of fun writing posts about it and discussing storyline stuff.

( And the rest. )

I keep missing weeks when I'm supposed to be posting prompts at awenish. Sorry, guys. :/ They're not a huge community activity, but I do like to be on time and all.

Soooo. The year hasn't quite ended yet. I still have time to try to make bread! I'm afraid tamales are out, though. Maybe next year.

Rivendell steed get FUCK YEAH. Now I just have to get all of the other elf faction steeds. It only took forever to get this one. :|

Finally bought a house, too, and am disappointed that the weaponsmith vocation doesn't get to make many decorations. Candelabras are nice, but you can only put so many of those in a room before it becomes excessive, and I can't even use the bloody chandelier. Maybe I should auction it off for an obscene price like everyone else on the game does.

I'm looking forward to Moria, though it sounds like it'll be slow going if you can't take horses in. The faction there has a mine-crawling mount, but hahaha, kindred status isn't anything to sneeze at, man. That takes time and effort, or lots of money at the auction house! (You know which route this lazy player is going to take.) I'd really like to be able to mine metal that will give me craft experience, because my crafting level is worlds ahead of my character level, and that's irritating and inconvenient. I guess it works out when I need to make new weapons for myself, but still.

Also, Rey, I may just make a new character that can run around with you at a comparable level. I might even try a dwarf. They look pretty cool. :D Then we can have arguments about how prissy elves are, and I can join the Ale Association. :D :D

Usually I do work instead of playing LOTRO, yes. I swear. Just... not this week. Reputation in Rivendell is SUPER IMPORTANT, you don't understand.

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I should really get going and sell some doll stuff I've been meaning to get rid of, but setting up sales posts and getting the photos taken is such a pain in the ass.

If you happen to like Crimea and Gallia, please do continue on - that's okay by me and I'm not trying to change any minds. It's been forever since I played these games, anyway; maybe I forgot something.

I'm sure I've mentioned somewhere around here that Elincia's chapters bored me to death when I first played Radiant Dawn. Friends told me I would've liked them better if I had played Path of Radiance first, and playing PoR did add a bit to her situation; in general, the characters were likable enough in the prequel that I thought having memories of PoR in my head would make all the difference when approaching Crimea in RD, or even in fanfic.

Not so, as it turns out! And if you think about it, I liked the Greil Mercenaries just fine while playing RD, having never seen the first game - they stand on their own as a group and as characters even without the prequel. Elincia and her group were the only problem characters. The entire storyline was a problem, actually, because it's so generic, but it goes much deeper than that. When asked why I don't write or read fic about Crimea or the Greil Mercenaries very often, my response is usually: "Because they're boring," which makes it sound like I hate the characters, but that isn't it at all. They're boring unpacks into something much more complex.

Look at Crimea's story: they break off from Begnion (peacefully), have a few wars with Daein, and then-- nothing for a while, until Ashnard suddenly invades and murders the king and queen. Elincia is suddenly the quintessential Lost Heir or Dethroned Princess, whatever you want to call it, who has to gather allies and take back her throne while sighing over her hero. Yay. Exciting. About the only unexpected thing that happens (besides Ashnard's surprisingly interesting personality) is that Ike isn't interested in his princess.

Fast forward a few years, and now there are some nobles who are unhappy with how she's ruling, and they stage a rebellion. Predictably, she wins. Yay. You know what was less predictable? What was going to happen in Daein, which I really wanted to see, but instead got stuck watching Crimea for however many chapters.

In the interim, the Greil mercenaries save kittens from trees and fight the occasional bandit, sometimes for free! (What kind of mercenaries are these, again?) Ooooh, life on the edge.

There's nothing to do in Crimea. The only characters among the mercenaries with any depth are Soren and Greil, with the possible exception of Shinon - but only because you can come up with so many theories about why he sticks around when he's clearly not happy - and Oscar. Mist, Titania, even Rhys, don't yield much after a bit of gentle poking. And Greil is most interesting before he starts this group - Greil-fleeing-from-Daein, Greil-grieving-over-the-medallion-incident, Gawain-serving-Daein, those are the interesting aspects of his character.

I'm not trying to say that the mercenaries don't have stories or backgrounds. The three brothers have a surprisingly developed background, and we can piece Titania's past together pretty well also. They have substance. The problem is... well.

Oscar is three things: formerly a knight of Crimea, a cook, and a big brother. I suppose he might've had a hard time trying to raise the other two, and he probably regretted leaving the knighthood, but felt it was the only thing he could do. Right? That's cool. I like that. Sounds depressing! There's room to write about regret, and life decisions, and stuff - until he joins the damned knighthood again. Then what? I suppose there's still room to write something, but I don't know what, since nothing ever happens in Crimea unless you're Kieran.

Titania? Uhhhh.

Rhys? I like him, but... what would I write about? His parents, I guess? I don't know, not much emotional depth going on here.

(That last sentence up there goes 200% for Gallia.)

As for the Crimean court... well, Elincia has conniving nobles, but Begnion does that much better and provides a bigger cast of characters with which to do it. (See: almost all of Radiant Dawn, which is driven by the shit Begnion's senate is pulling, and has been pulling, for a very long time. Sanaki's relationship to her council is a strong parallel to Elincia's, right down to succession concerns.) Crimea has rebuilding and rebellion, but Daein does that better by virtue of being under hostile occupation and starting a real civil war, instead of just trying to. Crimea is divided on the matter of laguz, but so is everyone else - and the issue is much more dangerous in Daein, and more complex in Begnion.

Despite PoR being about retaking Crimea, and despite the fact Crimeans (or people who align themselves with the mercenaries) make up a huge chunk of the cast, we hardly spend any time there. It practically doesn't exist. It's a cardboard backdrop for the real play, which takes place in other countries.

That's why I don't like Crimea.

As for Gallia, well. I feel like it's there so we can have cat girls. Skrimir was pretty fun, I'll admit, but to be honest, all I envision when I think of Gallia is forests, forests, and more forests. And cats marking trees.

Look at this, even when I put Gallia in the subject line, I hardly talk about it at all. But what is there to talk about?