![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Can't resist!
May. 27th, 2006 12:02 amSorry, I'll answer you soonest, but it's latish - midnight, actually - and I'm all in after a sodding GRUELLING day of therapy, so forgive me me laziness, please.
But, browsing through limyaael's LJ's odl entries I came across this:
An Author's Darling continually does all the "cool" things. This can include saving the world, but it's actually more likely to include things like:
-throwing fireballs.
-figuring out the mystery or main puzzle in an extraordinarily clever way.
-humiliating (rather than triumphing over or fighting) his or her enemies.
-being suspected of wrongdoing, and then proven innocent.
-redeeming a character no one else could bring back to the "light."
-going alone to do something dangerous (no matter how suicidally stupid this seems to the reader).
-pulling pranks.
-saying witty comebacks.
Harry Sodding Potter to the life! She says it applies to Harry and Draco in fanfic writing, but she forgets to add that it applies to Harry in Canon! Author's Darling is a perfect definition.
Though, speaking of limyaael, I must say I wish she would try and read something beside Fantasy. I do understand her life was changed by LOTR, but, even if she pays lip service to Pterry, I doubt she's ever read any other kind of books, which is a pity, because she wouldn't get so het up all of the time. After reading two years of her LJ, I suspect she doesn't really understand that Pterry is most emphatically NOT a Fantasy writer, or better, he is, but very guilty of literature. He's a modern Swift, not a modern Perrault.
And besides, LOTR has author's Darlings comeing out of the woodwork. Sodding Gandalf, sodding Eowyin, sodding Merry and Pippin, sodding Sam... in fact sodding Hobbits, salt of the Earth, yeomen of England blah blah blah. Alright, I only read the books for the languages and liked them for the languages only, I prefer to read about characters who are persons, not cardboard cutout and don't epic me no epic. Achilles was buggering Patroclus AND Chriseis and was an opinionated loudmouth with an overinflated sense of self. People in the Iliad arepeople. If homer could do it, so can modern fantasy writers, IMO. Aim high, never settle for 'this sells', after all, Pterry sold a shot at 13. good writing sells.
Oh and I love him best because after selling a short at 13 and a novel at... what was it? 17? 18? he stopped. He waited until he was sure he could write up to his own standards which he calls lax, but aren't really. The only really monstrous authorial mistake I ever read him making - I mean read in a book - was the Tchekov sequence in Fifth Elephant.
BTW, Daniel dear, that is a really DARK novel - well except for that unfortunate sequence, that is - where no character comes out well, except Sybil. Vimes has to lose an important piece of himself to kill the werewolf, Carrot is a petty jealous and cruel bully, even Angua is a wuss. VERY interesting book, hard as hell to read, no fluff and what little hope there is is Sybil, who nobody believes is a character. But, boy, is she complex, and human and true to herself and dignity! Go re-read Sybil now! Shoo shoo!
Gah, I'm so verbose.
But, browsing through limyaael's LJ's odl entries I came across this:
An Author's Darling continually does all the "cool" things. This can include saving the world, but it's actually more likely to include things like:
-throwing fireballs.
-figuring out the mystery or main puzzle in an extraordinarily clever way.
-humiliating (rather than triumphing over or fighting) his or her enemies.
-being suspected of wrongdoing, and then proven innocent.
-redeeming a character no one else could bring back to the "light."
-going alone to do something dangerous (no matter how suicidally stupid this seems to the reader).
-pulling pranks.
-saying witty comebacks.
Harry Sodding Potter to the life! She says it applies to Harry and Draco in fanfic writing, but she forgets to add that it applies to Harry in Canon! Author's Darling is a perfect definition.
Though, speaking of limyaael, I must say I wish she would try and read something beside Fantasy. I do understand her life was changed by LOTR, but, even if she pays lip service to Pterry, I doubt she's ever read any other kind of books, which is a pity, because she wouldn't get so het up all of the time. After reading two years of her LJ, I suspect she doesn't really understand that Pterry is most emphatically NOT a Fantasy writer, or better, he is, but very guilty of literature. He's a modern Swift, not a modern Perrault.
And besides, LOTR has author's Darlings comeing out of the woodwork. Sodding Gandalf, sodding Eowyin, sodding Merry and Pippin, sodding Sam... in fact sodding Hobbits, salt of the Earth, yeomen of England blah blah blah. Alright, I only read the books for the languages and liked them for the languages only, I prefer to read about characters who are persons, not cardboard cutout and don't epic me no epic. Achilles was buggering Patroclus AND Chriseis and was an opinionated loudmouth with an overinflated sense of self. People in the Iliad are
Oh and I love him best because after selling a short at 13 and a novel at... what was it? 17? 18? he stopped. He waited until he was sure he could write up to his own standards which he calls lax, but aren't really. The only really monstrous authorial mistake I ever read him making - I mean read in a book - was the Tchekov sequence in Fifth Elephant.
BTW, Daniel dear, that is a really DARK novel - well except for that unfortunate sequence, that is - where no character comes out well, except Sybil. Vimes has to lose an important piece of himself to kill the werewolf, Carrot is a petty jealous and cruel bully, even Angua is a wuss. VERY interesting book, hard as hell to read, no fluff and what little hope there is is Sybil, who nobody believes is a character. But, boy, is she complex, and human and true to herself and dignity! Go re-read Sybil now! Shoo shoo!
Gah, I'm so verbose.
