I liked some of the pern books. The harper hall trilogy were awesome but I believe I was 12 or 13 at the time. Still it filled me with squeeage because i was an angst ridden pre-teen and menolly was an angst ridden teenager and her name was close to my real name, molly XD And I liked the first Acorna but the later ones weren't as good. I was also 14 for that, so ya know.
And I read Eragon a long time ago. I remember being disgruntled because it closely followed the plot of my Cyrna novels (dragonriders are uber. dragonriders go away. dragonriders make a comeback) but it was really good otherwise I have Eldest on my book shelf but I want to finish Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series (now THERES a fantasy author who can grip me) and my boyfriend keeps bugging me to read Eldest, read Eldest!
And lastly about the tolkein copying -- I didn't really see it much in Eragorn but that could just be me. Now in Wheel of Time on the other hand ... I read the first book of wheel of time mistakenly before i read lotr and i remember thinking hey this is a lot like eye ofthe world lol
Eragon wasn't really Tolkien copying. It was just the elves that bugged me. Ever since the LOTR movies, too much of fantasy has been "OMG!!!111oneoneeleven! ELVES!!!!!!1111oneoneone!" Eragon with those ever so perfect elves was just kinda... bleh.
not tolkien copying~ His dragons were so.. pernese. Except with a few differences. That was what bugged me. Though the author did do a lot more with them than mccaffery did, and expandined on personality more. :/ My memory is off, so i dun remember how similar they ACTUALLY were, but while I Was reading, I just kept thinking, "wow. He's read pern. And his dragons are a lot like the pernese ones."
That isn't nessicarily a bad thing, though~ It just bothered me slightly as i was reading it, maybe cuz i was going through one of my sick-of-pern phases at the time. ^^
I have the distinct ability to ignore elves. >.> Like, everwhre. I barely notice them.
am i a bad person?
I didn't like the female though. elf female? Argh I always wanted to slap her.
I did like that guy who was traveling with the main character. :/ he was nifty. and the werecat. and the witch. And the old storyteller guy, but he annoyed me sometimes too, particularly near the end.
Well, pern was good in the old days. It has been falling since AWoP. Still liked SoP; just chalk it up to age. Everything will fade eventually.
As for Eragon, really only watching it out of boredom. Could've been better....a lot better. Should've stayed away from Star Wars a bit more. And the name stealing miffed me a bit.
The best elves in fiction were the ones in Terry Pratchett's book 'Lords and Ladies'. Where they were evil and needed to be killed. And all the sensible characters were like "Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!" Best elves ever are the ones that die.
;_; You people are so mean to elves. Truthfully, I don't like the whiney, fragile little mice that a lot of writers come up with. My elves tend to be woodsy, quippy and strong. More like Robin Hood than tree-huggers.
I don't like how elves are so completely perfect, actually. Even Tolkien's elves were a bit short on the good old character flaws. They're immortal, they're attractive, and basically, as the image that was posted suggests, they're just better at everything. But unlike the traditional perfect Mary-Sue, nobody even wants elves to fall off the nearest cliff. If someone writes an elf that isn't perfect, or at least has some decent character flaws, then I wouldn't mind them quite so much... *shrugs*
Role Play Weyrs: Dark Fort is the one RP weyr I would ever recommend to any of my role playing friends. So if anyone here wants to see Pern in a whole new non-Sue light... hunt down that yahoo!group. They've got a realistically corrupt leadership, lots of factions, and not every girl can be a goldrider. In fact, few girls are even allowed to ride dragons! It's rife with drama and intrigue, and perfect for the literate role player who is looking for a little spice on the Pernese scene.
As for elves... ack I'mma sucker for the near perfect pretty boys and ladies! But the recent Sue elves of even published authors bugs me to pieces. T___T *snugs Palan*
And Astra, LORD RAHL SAVE US!!!!
=D
"If someone does not smile at you, be generous and offer your own smile. Nobody needs more a smile than the one that cannot smile to others."
I'm not a fan of Dark Fort. Nothing to do with the Weyr itself, as such. It's a matter that I'd not like to go into with too much detail. Lets just say I've had experiences with Dark Fort's owners.
I suppose Znorlians are a lot like elves ... if all humanoids with pointy ears are elves ... but they're far from perfect, i mean, they're like any other race I guess
No, Star Trek rocks. They have a reason for all the aliens looking human. I saw the episode where it was explained. When there's a grand purpose behind it, it's okay.
When it's because the writer can't think of anything different, it's not. Most fantasy these days just uses humans, elves and dwarves because that's what Tolkien used. It strikes me as a big advert saying "I'm not actually creative enough to make anything new."
Like I said, I'm fussy about my fiction in my old age.
znorlians used to be humans with tails. That was it. No other differences except for tails. I got frustrated with that and its unrealisticness, and I decided different color hair would be a good idea, but that seemed unrealistic too. Finally I decided to make their hair and skin pigment follow the blue spectrum (rather than the brown spectrum humans follow) and gave them really long ears. Then they ended up looking like night elves from WOW :-/ But oh well, you can't blame me for trying. Most of my other races are just basicly furries of various types. I like relating my aliens to something recognizeable *shrug*
And on my fantasy world, there are only humans and dragons. I never saw the need to include elves or dwarves, and things like orcs and goblins bothered me too. I have problems with a race being "all good" or "all evil." Humans can be either good or evil so why can't other species too?
edit:
originally I wasn't going to have my sci-fi universe have humans at all, and znorlians would just be "the humans" for all intents and purposes. But then Elsa Webber found a way to sneak onto my plane of existence and then I decided to let there be humans living on New Gecnaw who used to be slaves of the Gecnawans (for story-purposes, the descendants of those abducted from ancient rome and egypt when the gecnawans visited earth a couple millennia back) and it was all down hill from there. But I don't really feel like following most of the old rules for that universe anymore, since I had all but forgotten about it until i revived it for dragoning this summer
Last edited by Astra on Sun Oct 08, 2006 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I like your races, Astra. They have personality, which counts for a lot more than appearance anyway.
It's the whole 'humans are average, elves are perfect and dwarves are short hairy guys who do a lot of mining' thing that you see in so much fantasy these days.
Maybe it's because they're big sellers and that's what a lot of people are comfortable with reading--like Hollywood movies or popular games, there seems to be a limited amount of what is produced, and the rest gets pushed to the sidelines. Most people aren't comfortable in investing (and companies that produce them, even less so) in something that they're not familiar with at least a little bit.
What's important for authors and creators of all types, I think, is to balance the creative part with the familiar part. If you're going to do something completely different, make sure you blow the hell out them with it or else it''s probably going to flop. If you're not 100% certain you have something never-before-seen, or if you're not literally a little insane, then it's all a matter of innovating within the known realm. XD That's probably why fantasy (and sci fi. Hoi vey~) books are so... unenthralling these days. They don't go far enough with what they've got. o.o
you need some flamingodragons too, shiolar. Though actually old country boy makes me think of you toothless on a rocking chair on afront porch with a shotgun. hee.
>.> I don't have races. Just anthros, which don't have a story. I'm speeshul. The only exception were those two i made for your weyr~
What /is/ cow-tipping? I'm imagining people pushing a cow over, but it also has these horribly dirty and possibly kinky undertones that maybe I'm too ignorant to understand. o.O"
as far as i know its just pushing a cow over. they have trouble getting back up and apparently its pretty funny when you're drunk. because chances are if you live in a place where there are cows there ain't much else to do for amusement
Yep~ that's what it is, to my knowledge. :/ Someone also told me that the cows suffocate becuase they're to big to get back on their feet, but i dunno how true that is. I do know that animals like horses and prolly cows do suffocate if they lay on their sides, because gravity and their bodies crush their lungs, but to my knowledge they can always get to their feet unless they're really really sick or something.
I have Eldest on my book shelf but I want to finish Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series (now THERES a fantasy author who can grip me) and my boyfriend keeps bugging me to read Eldest, read Eldest!
you need some flamingodragons too, shiolar. Though actually old country boy makes me think of you toothless on a rocking chair on afront porch with a shotgun. hee.