Why Rewrites are Bad News

So, the MaMotR rewrite steamrollers along at close to 50 pages now (and Boromir hasn't even left Gondor yet, which is a good sign for the narrative pace, I think.) I had a discussion with my sister about whether a rewrite was against FF.net rules, and we agreed as long as it gets a new title, I should be okay. I've decided on "A Rose Among the Briars", a twist on a line from the Christina Rossetti poem "The Rose":

The lily has a smooth stalk,

Will never hurt your hand;

But the rose upon her brier

Is lady of the land.

But something about this story is really starting to worry me. I actually had a discussion with myself the other day that went a little something like this:

Muse: You had Rhoswen get a dog for New Year's in the original. You still want to go through with that? I think getting a hawk would be so much cooler.

Me: A hawk would be cool. But the dog would have to be a hunting dog, and I think the original had greyhounds, which I still think would be appropriate.

Muse: But dogs and hawks are symbols of the hunt, and I don't think they're big on the hunting scene in the Tower of Guard. I mean, you've already established that the Pelannor Fields are townlands.

Me: Damn, you're right. They wouldn't have time for stuff like that in Gondor. Hunting is a replacement for fighting, and they fight all the time. Nix on that. Still want Rhoswen to get a hawk, though. Maybe it could just be an elite status symbol, a throwback to a time when they did have the time.

Muse: Now, wait. She's good with small children and gardening. And she sings later. You can't have her be good with animals too!

Me: Damn, hadn't thought of that either. Gonna have to think of something else for a present.

Yes, I had this conversation! I am so afraid New!Rhoswen is turning into a Sue after reading Why Bella is a Mary Sue by whitedog1 on DeviantArt. The MarySue Litmus test gives me a 20, which still isn't very reassuring, but I checked some canon character boxes that only get checked because I took her dad's name from the list of lords that ride into Minas Tirith before the Battle for the Pelannor Fields.

And on top of all that, I guess I'm afraid no one's going to want to read it. All in all, not good prognosis here.

Finishing

Say, I haven't put any updates on here in a while, have I? I think it's time to rectify that.

Song of a Peacebringer -- FINISHED, finally. People died, people got married, people generally reflected on the whole story. It was interesting. Now I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself. You can read the whole thing, all 33 chapters, HERE.

The Hunting of the Sue -- Up and running at FF.net, and receiving generally complimentary reviews. You can read it HERE. The Summary:

Harry's stories may be over, but his adventures continue, no longer as leader in the fight against the Dark Lord, but as a Jurisfiction agent fighting alongside Thursday Next to defeat one of the most terrifying demons known to the BookWorld -The MarySue. A Thursday Next/ Harry Potter Crossover, produced in conjunction with the BookWorld in storycode WebBook1.0

I found out after posting this that Jasper Fforde does not condone fanfiction in any genre or style, so I assume that's the reason there's so precious little of it floating about the 'net. I wrote this because I wish he'd hurry up and finish One of Our Thursdays is Missing, and I'm not making any profit off of it at all, so there. And I combined it with Harry Potter, so his absolute dislike of fanfiction and Rowling's acceptence of it should make it only mildly bad, I think.

The Untitled Cranford Fic -- As yet unpublished Cranford fic (not a whole lot of them floating around, either) I thought I would post here to get some initial feedback from my Cranford fans in the crowd. (Mom, Dad, Helen, this means you.)


Imagine, if you think you can, a small village in Cheshire preparing, as it always does, for the end of summer. Carts of laborers going out to the fields, the market lane bustling with the comings and goings of the village folk. They are a simple people, unconcerned with the wars that fill their newspapers or the gossip about Queen and crown that is filling everyone else’s heads. If you are imagining, pray do not trouble yourself any longer, for the people and the town they inhabit are very real, and their comings and goings are much the same as yours or mine. The town is Cranford, and the year is 1854. If you are acquainted with the place (as I know some are) it is probably ten years since you have seen the place, but fear not; in its usual Cranfordian fashion nothing much has changed. True, some of the less colorful inhabitants have died or moved on to better climes (though what climate could be better or more healthful than Cranford’s the town’s greatest minds are still undecided) but some who have left are returning, names and faces who were once long associated with the town and the niceties of manner and speech that are still practiced here though they have quite left the rest of England.

See, here is one of them now – that young man there, in the lane, astride the bay mare. Do you see him? Topcoat tails soiled as if from a lengthy journey, trousers tucked inside equally stained riding boots, his body is well-formed and his seat on his mare is good, though he does not carry off the air of having ridden his whole life. His clothes are tailored by a professional hand and everything about him, from the shoes of his horse to the slight jauntiness in his top hat, suggests a young gentlemen home from school. This is of course the case, and the school (or rather the college, he is quite older than school) is Saint John’s College in Cambridge, a long way off in Cranford terms. Yes, this is Harry Gregson, once nothing more than a poacher’s son and sometime street urchin, now come back to his hometown a scholar of serious repertoire, well versed in Latin, Greek, the smallest of smatterings in Hebrew and of course his mother-tongue, which he speaks now with an upper-class city air.

He has learned mathematics, economics, and a hint of law, and – though he never admits to this – some of the other vices common to boys of a certain class: a regard for good company and a fine face, and a desire, however latent, to marry such a face and perhaps retain such comfortable circumstances as permit the fine face to shine even finer...

The Summer of the Re-Read

I think I'm going to call this summer "The Summer of the Re-Read." Being too lazy to find new books to read at the library, too cheap to buy new ones and too lazy, again, to write the books I'd want to read, I'm re-reading many of the better books that have passed through my hands in the past several years. I plowed through the rest of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books at the end of May, demolished all seven Harry Potter books in a scant weekend (even that one impresses me) and am now working through Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series with my sister in tow.








Let me be frank with you -- Fforde's books are book-reader's books. You know how you have actor's actors? Yeah, well, these are books designed for biblophiles. They're complex, they're filled with jokes and characters pulled from other famous books, and in books two, three, and four, Fforde actually takes you inside the BookWorld where books are supposedly created.

Yes, I know, it's awesome. If I could die and become anyone I wanted to be, living or dead, I'd vote to come back as Jasper Fforde. I can't express how much of a genius I think this man is.

So, while I wait for the fourth Next book to come via Interlibrary loan (I don't own Four or Five, more's the pity) I whipped out a Thursday Next fanfic, because I'm ambitious and slightly suicidal like that. I'm calling it The Hunting of the Sue. It deals with how I think fanfiction might be impacting the BookWorld, which is governed by very specific rules with which the fanfiction world kind of interferes. Coming soon to a Fanfiction Site near you or wherever Archontic Literature is distributed.

Beware the Mary-Sue, my son,
the hands that catch, the eyes that burn
Beware her pretty looks and shun
T’desire to return!

– doggerel attributed to Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat (Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire) after finding a MarySue version of Alice snooping around inside the Looking Glass

The First Rule of Fight Club is...

...you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is -- You DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB.

Yeah, yeah, I know, we're not supposed to talk about Fight Club.But I watched this movie for the first time last night while I was trying to work off a coffee cooler I drank around seven pm and I realized something after the movie was over.

SPOILER ALERT!!! If you've never seen Fight Club, don't read the rest of this post! It will spoil the movie and this is not a movie you want spoiled for you. Stop reading this and GO WATCH THE FILM.







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Are you gone yet? Good.






Brad Pitt's character (We'll call him TylerSurreal for the purposes of this blog post) is a Mary Sue. Why do I say this?

"You could not do this on your own,"TylerSurreal tells TylerReal (Edward Norton) towards the end of the film. "All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck. I am smart, capable and, most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not."

Like MarySues, TylerSurreal was created by TylerReal for the purposes of personifying everything he's not, everything he wishes he could be. He uses TylerSurreal to do things he otherwise wouldn't have done, just as writers use MarySue to sleep with their favorite character (Something most younger female writers wouldn't do in real life if they had the chance) be brave and commit deeds of daring do (another thing we don't have the chance to act on in real life) and probably most importantly, realize our desires for physical perfection. (If TylerReal wanted to be Brad Pitt, I think MarySue wants to be Angelina Jolie or Megan Fox, or some other Hollywood dazzler, someone who stops traffic and makes cameras stare.)

Like MarySue, TylerSurreal is destructive. TylerSurreal destroys by blowing up buildings and created an army around his cultish personality becuase he's a disconnected half of one person, trying to become fully realized, taking over the whole brain. MarySue destroys because she too is disconnected. She is aloof from her creator, who neglects to put essential humanity, essential imperfection, into the way she interacts with other characters. And we hate her because of it, just as we hate TylerSurreal for making TylerReal shoot himself. But in the end, we have to metaphorically shoot ourselves to make MarySue go away. Earlier in the movie, we remember TylerSurreal putting a gun to Raymond K. Hessel's head and asking him what he wants to be. At the end of that interchange Raymond runs off screaming, and Tyler Surreal calmly reminds TylerReal, "Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted."

By shooting himself, TylerReal recognizes the same thing. The next day of his life will be the most beautiful day he has ever experienced. His breakfast will taste better. Why?

Because he knows he's not perfect, he knows he never will be, and he's glad of that fact, because perfection is dangerous, and the only thing that makes life worth living is getting to fix the mistakes we make.