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Ink is the strongest drug, the deepest ocean, the longest journey and the strangest love.. |
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I am a writer... A teen writer... Teen as in highschooler... Highschooler as in insanely-busy-geek-with-no-social-life-outside-of-school-and-abnormal-circle-of-friends-who-are-all-at-school-anyway-and-don't-really-count... *smacks forehead* I don't know whatever possessed me to start doing this, but you know the old quote: "Ink is the strongest drug, the deepest ocean, the longest journey and the longest love..." Okay, so that isn't an old quote. I made it up. But hey, I'm a writer! Rated "T" because I get a little heated when I rant angrily... Not scorching, but more than lukewarm... |
| December 31, 2006 ~ Sunday ~ New Year's Eve Ah, the old year is almost up. Just a few more hours and with a crash of cymbals and a whir of noisemakers, the new year shall spring into being... Yup... Today we had a bit of a scare: my dad rolled the tractor he was working with over and then got our van stuck trying to pull it out. So we had to call in our neighbor with his tractor and he pulled out our van and then he and my dad spent the better part of two hours trying to pull the tractor back onto its wheels. We finally did and no one was hurt, but that was a long two hours... I'm really excited because I finished that dadgummed chapter I have been griping about for weeks... Yeah me! And I got an e-mail from my bestest bud in the whole world who moved away a year or so ago and she was telling me all about her past year and I had very little to say back... Hmm... I think I need to get out more... *grins* My teachers says the reason I have a nonexistent social life is because I have a blog... Noooo, I had a nonexistent social life for a long time before starting a blog and the blog helps me fill my lonely hours... *grins again* Anyhoo, I am also excited because the story I have posted on FP that is my main focus right now (Ocean of Tears if anyone's interested) is on the favorites list of 3 people!! Yeah!! May not sound like a lot, but they are all intelligent and helpful in their critisisms and I actually did mean what I said in prefering a few smart people to a hundred reviews reading "OMG! I LUVED IT! UPDATE SOON!!!! XD"... So yup, my life is good... Time to leave now, see you all next year! ~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings http://www.fictionpress.com/u/477786/ |
| December 30, 2006 ~ Saturday Well, I really have nothing worth writing today. All of my creative juices are flowing in the direction of my novel and dishing out some pretty interesting ideas... Remember that chapter I was ranting on about? Well, I figured out how to skirt around the area that was giving me trouble and Voila! I am out of the swamp and in the meadow, making my happy way watching the deer scatter and picking at the little purple flowers... Yup, happy am I despite the still horrid pain in my neck. Currently I am waiting for the link to a site where there are themes for writing. When I get it and depending on how it is set up, I am thinking about writing a series of short stories based on these themes, to use as inspiration or simply as "Power Writing" Writer's Block busters... Yup and that is my life today... Ta! ~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings p.s. I do have more parts to the Eragon rant, but my computer has messed up the files I wrote them in and so now I have to find them... Ugh... |
| December 29, 2006 ~ Friday again... Hmm, it seems I am doing a lot of yelling today... AGH!! I went on to FP today and the alert system is still(!) not working... It's been down for the past few days and it is still not working! AGH!!! Yeah, I just had to rant on this subject... Ever since they updated it in October, stuff just keeps not working for days at a time... I like FP for its ease of use and simpler layout. I like Writing.com as well, but my first love was FP and that's where all of my stuff is... Plus its free and you have an unlimited portfolio and you don't keep getting these little messages about how the chapter you want to upload won't because this that or the other thing wasn't entered right or whatever. Sorry but I have some serious problems with Writing.com's upload system... And now it seems that FP is having alert problems! AGH!!! That means I will not be getting alerts for any reviews I will have gotten, nor will I get alerts on stories that have updated... Anyway, on a side note that I forgot in my earlier entry, I finished reading Clive Barker's "Abarat" for the second time yesterday while waiting in the doctor's office and have read "Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War" before. Has anyone else out there read these and loved them as much as I? I LUV these books! Yeah anyhoo, neck hurting... ~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings |
| December 29, 2006 ~ Friday Hello, hello, hello... Right now I am in a butt-load of pain if you will pardon the crude analogy. Yesterday I injured my neck, causing my lympnodes (spelling, anyone?) to swell and some muscles on my back left of my neck have tightened and locked painfully. Right now my neck is bent at a strange angle and I have yet to find the position that doesn't hurt. Some just hurt more than others and others hurt even worse. So right now I am on some big ol' dosages of painkillers and some muscle relaxers. I'm waiting for my breakfast dose to kick in, 'cause last night was not so fun... Yeah, anyway, before all of this happened, I had auditions lately with my drama club and I am so excited! I got the roles I wanted! *wants to dance, but can't because of @#*&$ neck...* Okay yeah anyway, enough of my whining... I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas holiday and that you will all have a great New Year!! ~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings |
| Hey hi! Yesterday was Christmas!! I got a super-thick sketchbook for which I am sooooo happy!! And "Pride and Prejudice" is on its way, but delivery times are something like a week and we ordered two or three days before Christmas... I made my dad cry with a poem I wrote... Didn't expect that at all... I'm posting it here so you guys can tell me what you think of it... http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1194338 Anyhoo... Ladies and Gentlemen!! The long awaited (or maybe not so long awaited) "Eragon" rant... At last I post it... Okay day, keep in mind that I didn't edit this so much, but I did try to stay in story line sequence. But if something pops up out of order, don't sue me... I warned you. Also, I cannot find my own copy of "Eragon" so if I mispell a name or place or can't remember the name, don't kill me. If you know the correct spelling, say so, but don't flame me. (It is a long story how I lost my book, filled with alien brothers and grandparents' houses...) Also, if I leave anything out that you noticed, feel free to comment...That all said, proceed! Spoiler Warning: If you have not read the book or watched the movie, or have watched the movie without reading the book, you might not want to read this... I will definitely be giving out spoilers right and left... First off, the Shade was waiting in hiding to ambush Arya (my first potential mispelling), not just standing in the middle of the road. He didn't want to alert her of his presence until the last possible moment. The Urgals had horns dadgumit!! It is only mentioned like 5 times alone on the first page! In the movie, they just look like fat men with shaved heads and face paint. Design department, where were you??? The egg is not a stone. Nor is it ever officially recognized to be a stone, unlike it is in the movie. The narrator actually says "stone" to describe the egg. No, the only reason it is ever called a stone in the book is because that is what it looks like to Eragon. Eragon did not go hunting just that morning. He had been on the path for several days, which would make a little more sense, considering how far away the Spine is supposed to be from his house and then the house from the village. Ayra didn't really come into the story anymore between when she is captured and Eragon rescues her. But in the movie, they have her come in a few times, all of which is just her looking into the camera with helpless expressions... When Eragon takes the stone to Sloam, the butcher, he reacts much more violently and refuses to sell anything at all to Eragon, simply because he found the stone in the Spine, not because of the soldiers or anything. Hoarst, the blacksmith, eventually has to rescue the situation by paying for the meat himself and having Eragon to pay off the debt. The soldiers were not just randomly carting off people in the village just yet. That doesn't happen until the second book if I remember correctly. (Having no book and no access to the library just now doesn't help anything...) Instead of being a bum in the pub, Brom is a well-known storyteller and the people love him for his stories instead of despising him for his politcal statements. And he tells his story in a storyteller's circle at the fair and not in the corner of a rundown tavern... (The candles in the tavern really bothered me, you would think that they would break off the wax and use it to make more candles or something... All of the candles in the movie really bothered me... Sorry, pet-peeve sidenotes will probably happen also...) Eragon and his cousin do not train to fight like they do in the movie. I do believe they wrestled occasionally, but they did not train... It takes much longer for Saphira to hatch and Eragon is actually scared of her, not amused and familiar with her so abruptly... Saphira doesn't look so adorable... When she was first born, she was already dignified and regal and did not gawk about so much after she gained control of her legs. There is a whole bit about how she watches the sunrise like a statue. And I am pretty sure that the scar was supposed to be round and shiny like burned skin, not in the shape of a dragon... (And noticed that the scar dragon has spikes, but does Saphira? Noooooo...) Eragon's cousin left because he wanted to marry Sloam's daughter but had no money, so he was going to work for the miller... NOT BECAUSE HE WAS RUNNING AWAY FROM RECRUITMENT!! For crying out loud, they totally omit the whole romance between Eragon's cousin (can't remember his name...) and Sloam's daughter (can't remember her name either...). And that is very important. It is pretty much the entire driving force behind EC's actions in the second book. (I don't know how they are going to make a second movie since they cut out all the subplots in the first book that rise up to become the main plot in the second book... ARGH!!) Saphira does not grow up in thirty seconds... That's it... It took her months to grow and learn to speak and so on and so forth... She also did not have a name already. When she was still young, Eragon went to Brom and asked him about dragons and got a bunch of names of dragons. Then he went home and tried them all out on Saphira, but all she kept doing was repeating the word "Eragon." Finally they settle on Saphira though, and this is the only way that Eragon realizes that the dragon is a girl... Eragon was actually quite adament about keeping Saphria a secret from his uncle and cousin. In the movie, they never make this clear... The whole mind-speak thing is totally undercut in the movie. It is terribly important to understand that it is not just a thing between a rider and his dragon. It is available to anyone who is trained and some that aren't and can be a deadly weapon. It is total access to the mind, not just words. Saphira was not feathered (though I loved that look on her, since I haven't seen many feathered dragons that I like, but she pulled it off beautifully...) and she has a line of spikes running down her neck and back. These are also important, but the designers seemed to think that they weren't neccesary... Ugh... And there is a relatively humorous moment involving these spikes in the second book. But anyway, they were forgotten... You do not get to see the Shade or Galbatorix (spelling errors are all my fault) at all in the castle. Period. The reader doesn't know anymore than Eragon what is going on in the king's head... The Ra'zacs were not men made of bugs; they WERE bugs... They were the larval stage and only in this form can they pass for men in cloaks. When they are adults, they have wings like dragons and in the second book, there are Ra'zacs that ride on their parents instead of dragons... The Ra'zacs are actually hunting for Eragon a few days before they stumble across Sloam. It was winter, by the way, when this part happens... Saphira takes Eragon to the Spine, not just on a wild ride around town. He is actually mounted on her actually and tears the insides of his legs to bits. She does not speak to him either during this first flight. When they get to the Spine, Eragon has to convince her to take him back after they have already spent a night there. When they get back to his uncle's house, Eragon's uncle is not dead yet. NOT DEAD YET, DO YOU HEAR ME!?!?!? And Brom doesn't magically appear just then. Instead, Eragon gets Saphira to carry his uncle most of the way, then he drags him a little further and passes out eventually. Horst's wife finds them or something (little fuzzy here) and they are taken to a healer's. THERE his uncle dies after a long period of suffering caused by what look like acid burns and Eragon's legs heal. After this, Eragon decides to go at it alone BY HIMSELF!! He steals some leather and meat and is getting ready to leave when he is stopped by Brom. There Brom exposes the scar on Eragon's palm. Eragon calls for Saphira, but then finds out that Brom has spoken to her and she will remain aloft until they sort out their differences. Brom tells him not to be stupid, to let Brom come along "because he is a storyteller and likes a good adventure." (BS answer by the way... this was one of Paolini's weak points in storytelling... Sorry man...) They have to buy horses... And Brom's horse is white, not black... Eragon mindspeaks with a horse when they are buying them... But this entire bit is cut out, so why not important information too? End of Part I |
| December 25, 2006 ~ Monday ~ Christmas Day!!! ((see title above... ;)) Merry Christmas and happy wahtever other holiday you choose to celebrate!! Happy Birthday Jesus!!! I don't have any more time today, my relatives are over for a gift exchange... Ta! ~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings |
| December 24, 2006 ~ Sunday ~ Christmas Eve!! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!! Wow, two entries in one day... I'm on a roll here... I was thinking about this blog the other day (before I was distracted by my revelations about Kratos ((see below rant, but beware, spoilers abound)) and I realized that it is in many ways my free area. Around my family, I tend to talk alot, but rarely about the things that interest me the most. I mean, most of my family (stressing MOST) are fairly practical people. They see things in black and white, sometimes to the extent of ignoring the gray. In an example, I'll use the X-2 movie, featuring Nightcrawler. Okay, I love Nightcrawler. I have yet to decide if he or Wolverine is my favorite X-men character just for their character (super-powers are great and all, but no body cares unless you have good character). Anyway, one (just one of many, but it will do for this example) reason that I like Nightcrawler is because of his faith and devotion to that faith. He looks like a demon, but he has the heart of an angel. A paradox. And I know that that is exactly what his creaters wanted. He is a loyal, loving and sensitive character. Meanwhile, one member of my family hates this character simply for his appearence. Their argument is that he looks evil and that it is almost as though the creators were trying to make evil look good. No, they were showing that you can't judge a book by its cover (which is the entire point that the X-Men series was trying to make). Just because someone looks "evil" doesn't mean that they are. And on the reverse hand, just because someone looks beautiful doesn't mean that they are inside. After all, Lucifer was the greatest of the angels, the most beautiful and the most intelligent, and yet look where he is now. Ruling the Abyss; the Lord of Hell. Ugh. I do know that the world is not all shades of gray like some would have you believe. After all, if there were no black and white, how would we determine what was gray? There is an extreme good and there is an extreme evil. However, you can't view everything in simply those two extremes. After all, no one is perfect. Everyone is some shade of gray, whether they be nearly white or nearly black doesn't matter. They aren't pure until they are dead and decided. So why view the world that way? Nightcrawler can't help the fact that he looks like a demon (or at least the traditional view, since we really don't know what their true form is) but he chose a path of goodness. Anyway, this has gotten a little off topic. I recently had a discussion with this same member of my family and they were adament about me decreasing my intake of fantasy material, citing that a lot of it seemed dark. I don't read dark fantasy generally. A moderately scary vampire novel is enough to cause me to be paranoid about faces in the window for days. E.T. gave me nightmares for years and until I was twelve, I didn't want to go in dark rooms alone. I scared myself with my OWN character one time. I wrote a scene where he was watching another character while she slept and his eyes reflected the light like cats' eyes. This scared me to death for a few months and I still shiver when I read that scene. Its all about perception. I shiver when I read that scene, not because it is particularly scary in itself, but because I understood the intent I had had behind it. He was watching her because he wasn't sure yet if he could trust himself to love her. He himself is dangerous and the wrong emotion at the wrong time could cause him to kill someone, even the one closest to him. He already loves her to much to want to do that to her. (Isn't it funny how complex a character can be in your mind, but when you put them down on paper, you can never seem to capture the effect you wanted. Tell me that you've never done this...) Anyhoo, I don't read dark fiction that much. It scares me. However, I am not bothered by clean gore (if there can be any such thing). I myself have written quite a few scenes of injury or decapitation or whatever. (I don't know how accurate they are ((see below rant about Blood)) as they are just in rough drafts with little or no real research behind them. But I wrote them and I read fiction with that sort of thing in it. How many good fiction don't have some loss or sacrifice in them. In my current work-in-progress ((see intro for note about "fantasy trilogy")) I have at least three, if not possibly four of my main-ish characters die. I tell this to that certain member of my family and they are shocked. "Why don't you just have them live?" They ask... Because not everything in the world is happy. (also because when I came up with this storyline, I was quite firmly stuck in the middle of a period of depression, so everything I wrote at this time was like this...) There are losses and bad choices and mistakes. There is evil in the world and there are gray people. One character dies because of the road he chose, another dies in result of that character's choice. Another character dies because of others around them. I haven't yet decided about the fourth character, but they will have a good reason for dying if I kill them. Anyway, I'm not sure if I made my original point... I just needed to rant, even if it is to an invisible person on the end of an internet connection... Thanks for reading... May Christ be with you during this season of joy, ~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and do taste well with ketchup. |
| To everyone who is playing the GameCube game "Tales of Symphonia" and hasn't yet gotten to the Tower of Salvation in Tethe'alla (sp I am not sure of...) there is a major spoiler ahead... Read at your own discretion. . . . . . . . . . KRATOS IS LLOYD'S FATHER!!!!!!!!!!!! I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT!!!! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! Major Kratos FanGirl am I!! My brother got this game months ago and I had only just started playing it a month or so ago, and I immediately got sucked into the more subtle story points. The plot line is pretty simple, but so many plot twists happen along the way, along with great characters and mini betrayals and major revelations and so on and so forth... My brother likes it because the fights are pretty darn interactive and actually require some sort of stragegy, though you can get pretty far by just swinging your sword. I like it for the story... Kratos was my favorite character from day one and I always had a suspicion that he was Lloyd's father from the way he was always telling him not to die and all of these other subtle little hints and how everyone kept commenting on how they saw the resemblance. I just knew it... Then when Kratos betrayed everyone, I just wanted to cry. But then I just found out for sure that he is Lloyd's father and I am sooooo excited because I am pretty sure that we are going to find some way for him to redeem himself...  Kratos!!!Yeah, and then when Yuan shot him and I thought he was dead and I freaked out and my brother was freaking out and then my mom made us shut it down, but not before we got to watch this really long scene where Kratos tells Lloyd all about his mother and how she died and I must say that the best voice actor in the entire game is Kratos because you could really hear the anguish in his voice as he told about how he killed her... Ack. I usually hate screaming fangirls but now I am one, so... Hmm... I'm not sure what that means. Alright, my little rant is done... I love Kratos and I am so sure that he is going to become good, or sacrifice himself for good or something like that. Or he's going to die, which I very greatly suspect also, since I just watched a very shocking death in my party that I wasn't entirely surprised at but which caught me unawares all the same... Yeah, NOW my rant is done... Keep your sword sharp and beware the stranger who wears a gentle smile... ~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings http://www.fictionpress.com/~gryphonfledglingofsilverwings Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and do taste well with ketchup. |
| December 21, 2006 ~ Thursday Well, well, well... Christmas break has begun and I am enjoying the scant days I have before my brothers' breaks start as well. There are advantages to being in completely different break schedules as other schools... Anyhoo, nothing much has happened recently to me. I lead a pretty boring existence. My chapter that I am STILL working on (see rant below "To Write and ReWrite") has gone pretty much nowhere and I am sitting in front of my computer with a despairing motivation. I'll make it through, never fear, as I was exactly like this two chapters before where I wanted to scream and smash in the moniter with a hairdryer. But I made it through that chapter and I haven't quite reached the smashing moniter with hairdryer point yet. Oh and to reiterate my point about romance vs. more intelligently written works that might not be romance, I just read a story on FP that had 937 (count 'em 937!!) reviews for seventeen chapters. And it wasn't even all that great. Contrast that to another story I just read (granted, it is brand new and only a chapter or two long, but it was good) that has 2 comments including my own... *growls and mutters* Anyway, I am thinking up more intelligent things to write about as I sit here... Maybe I'll actually come up with something worth your time next time... ~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings |
| Well, I watched the new movie "Eragon" last night in theatres and was sorely disappointed. The dragon effects themselves made the movie worthwhile to me, but storywise and any effects other than those of Saphira completely butchered the book. If you are going to see this movie, I would highly suggest reading the book first, as nearly three quarters of extra material, sub-plots, exposition and other things were cut out of the movie. I am currently working on typing down all of the rants I came home to fume at my brother about. I swear, that is the fastest I have ever spoken. I rattled off everything I could think of that they had ruined or changed of the books and it was insane... So yes, rant to come about the movie, but it will most likely have spoilers, so read it at your own discretion... ~SilverGryphon |
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I daresay the reviews here on Writing.com are not nearly so shallow as on Fictionpress.