Monthly Archives: January 2013

Dwarves

I don’t know why, but in general I don’t like dwarves or at least I don’t care about them.
Even though they are one of the classic fantasy creatures (alongside Elves, Fairies, Trolls, etc.) I never really payed attention to them …
All those novels about them, be they by the German novelist Markus Heitz or someone else, just didn’t sound interesting to me.
Only if they were part of a story it was ok for them to be there. They make good side characters and antagonists.
But before I want to give you some examples of dwarves I (dis)liked, I’d like to explain a fact I find rather interesting:
Grammatically there are two plurals of the word dwarf: dwarfs and dwarves. And even though I had dwarfs in mind when I started with this post, it seems I have to go with dwarves, according to this:

„Dwarfs is the standard plural of the noun dwarf. Dwarves is a newer variant popularized (though not invented) by English author J.R.R. Tolkien in his fantasy fiction works, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Tolkien spelling is appropriate when referring to little people in fantasy worlds. Dwarfs is better everywhere else.

I think that is pretty cool. I consider origins of sayings or words to be quite interesting anyway. And having a plural for a fantasy version of something is, well, pretty cool. 🙂
But now onwards to some of the different dwarves that crossed my path so far.

The first dwarves every kid notices are probably the seven dwarves from Snow White. So did I. Probably. My favourite dwarf however in Disney’s Snow White was the grumpy one, but even as little kid I felt somewhat betrayed when he turned into one of her willing „slaves“ towards the end. Still I kind of vividly remember the scene where the dwarves chase the queen over the edge of the cliff. Pretty cool scene. Though, I kind of felt bad for the queen .. .and annoyed by Snow White … so not one of my favourite versions of it. But Once Upon a Time‘s Grumpy kind of makes up for his cartoon versions lack of personality(?). His rough attitude and his comments are just hilarious and fun. And I really liked the story of how his name changed. Yet, it is a creepy thought thinking about dwarves hatching from eggs … I’m not sure whether I’ve read/heard something akin to that before. I just don’t want to think about it …

Another Snow White adaptation with focus on the dwarves is from the German comedian/actor Otto Waalkes: 7 Zwerge – Männer allein im Wald (7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood), where nearly every dwarf is portrayed by a German comedian (including Otto).
It is a pretty funny movie that gives a different view on the whole story. And of course the re-occurring joke – as none of the actors is that small – that it is a prejudice that dwarves are small.  🙂
Well, there are far to many versions of this fairytale to explore them all and I don’t really want to dwell on Snow White any longer (or even get into the latest versions with Snow White and the Huntsman or Mirror Mirror as I’ve seen neither of them so far.)

As you read in the quote earlier the word „dwarves“ was popularized by Tolkien and he has quite a bunch of dwarves in his stories – so I heard. I belong to those people that never read Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. Though I watched the LOTR movies. Well, and didn’t understand them, but that is a different topic. Maybe one day I will read the novels …

Even older than both Snow White and LOTR are myths surrounding dwarves. They were mostly depicted as miners or other craftspeople, so they are more common in areas where those industries where widely spread. Unfortunately (or luckily?) I do not live in such areas, so I can’t tell you any local myths.

But I can however tell you about the dwarves in Norse myths. 🙂 The dwarves that have utterly complicated names, which I can’t remember. But I know that they forged things like Odins ring, an automatic boar, Thor’s hammer Mjölnir and one of them sewed Lokis lips when he had told one too many lies or rather mocked them one too many times. One does not mock a dwarf. 😀
Just as one does not make fun of a certain warlock, but this is about dwarves, so my focus will not be on Richard form the webcomic Looking for Group. The comic has its fair share of dwarves, with the bardic smith Pella being the most famous one. A kick-ass woman that knows how to swing her hammer for forging and her axes in battle. She has however a relationship of understanding for the warlock, but no I am not diverting to give him attention. He already gets that more than enough in the comics. 😀

Speaking of attention: I’d like to draw your attention to some other dwarves.
The dwarves I used in my own stories.
For once there is Bogie the tall dwarf from my „Weltenbaum“ (Worldtree) short stories. He is among the youngsters from the Underworld who find their way unto the Surface, into the world of humans. These stories are written in German, so it might not be understandable for some. Not sure if I’ll translate them one day, but after reading them again I might at least add some more to them or edit them a bit.

Nevertheless, I’d also like to introduce you to the newest addition to my blog: „The Quest for Ore“ – whose title is obviously not inspired by Van Canto’s „Quest for Roar„.
An English short story inspired by my first experiences with Minecraft – the more or less addictive game, where you have to build your own world through crafting blocks into whatever is possible.
As the guys I’m playing with are planing to create a dwarven city I started thinking about stories about dwarves. And the one above is the first product of that.

There probably will be more – one other is already half done even – stories within this world I created for it. I’m kind of curious what I will come up with next.
But what I write in this case might be inspired by running around in Minecraft, but it is not a tale from what I actually experienced. And I think you can’t call it a FanFiction either.
(Spoiler: E.g. did we run through the „mines“, but we did not encounter any spiders.)

And yes I know: You don’t really read that the characters are supposed to be dwarves. They could just as well be humans.

But I think they are (still nameless) dwarves that will get some screentime again

And I have to say: It was fun writing a normal fictional story again, instead of adding something to an existing world.

PoiSonPaiNter

Warlords

As I occasionally mentioned in my posts I am working on a book together with DarkFairy.
The book is called „Warlords“ and is based on a RPG we started writing for fun in 2009.

For those who don’t know what RPG is: RPG stands for Role Play Game.
Most RPGs are on the basis of Pen&Paper (like The Dark Eye/Das Schwarze Auge, which is the one DarkFairy mostly playes) rules and settings, where you create a character according to those and play with other people in a given storyline.
Written RPG however do not always follow those rules.
You decide on your character(s) and an order of posting, but you create your own setting/storyline mostly along the way.

We started in a simply medieval setting, but added more and more Fantasy elements.
Originally it was a RPG to write when everyone else in the forum was busy at the weekend, but we soon couldn’t stop writing.
So we wrote more or less full-time; beginning about 10 in the morning and stopping close to 2 in the morning of the following day.
That way we managed to write a lot in a short amount of time.
But with our different studies starting we had to cut back, as it did not allow us to write that much throughout the last 3 years.
But we still haven’t lost our interest and our passion for our story and we want it to evolve even farther.
We want to turn our „little“ RPG into a book – or a book series even, as we have that much material by now.
Therefore we are editing what we have so far over and over again – and sometimes we ask ourself which „pills“ we popped while writing some of it.
Nevertheless we had and still have tons of fun with this project and want to share some of our thoughts and silly moments with an ever growing audience.
To do this we started this blog: dfppentertainment.wordpress.com
The story itself is centered around the young monk Coelestin, who loses everything when the King claims himself as god/divine king and his henchmen start to burn down all monasteries that would not accept this.
When he flees from the Capital City he meets Grace, one of the King’s hand maiden’s that had fled when she was supposed to become his mistress.
Together they set up to warn other monasteries of the King’s doings.
Later on they are  joined by Coelestin’s childhood friend Corwyn and Grace‘ long-lost brother Pride, but also by Isane, a young healer that wishes to help them in their course. Together they develop a plan to overthrow the King, even gaining help from rebels under the leadership of the charismatic Nero. But not everything goes according to plan.
Despite his vow of chastity Coelestin falls more and more in love with the woman at his side.
Unable to accept his feelings at first, he gives into them when Corwyn convinces him that not even god is against love.
After Coelestin had spent a night with Grace, all hell breaks loose – or rather Luzifer shows up for a visit.
The Lord of Hell makes him an offer: His very own help in their course against the King in exchange for the remaining soul of the monk – as he already has a part of it due to Coelestin committing the sin of Lust.
Once again the young man has to struggle with himself and becomes seriously ill.
And only one thing can help him: Acceptance for his situation – well and one of the arch angels telling him that it’s alright to love.
Beside that Michael gives him a task: He should continue his way as The Voice of God.
If you want to know how he does that, feel free to follow our blog for updates and more background and additional information.
PoiSonPaiNter

Crossing Over: Chapter 7

I can now proudly say: I have finally managed to finish the seventh chapter of my Bleach-Naruto Crossover-Fanfiction Crossing Over!

As I said in my previous post:

I had the chapter nearly written out for quite a while, but it was not what I wanted it to be like. I wanted to add better transitions and better phrasing. Maybe even some more scenes.

And it’s not like I didn’t know what to write, but I just didn’t really have the time to do so. Going from one Semester to the other. From one exam to the next and so forth. Barely even had time to take a breather at all. But with the Christmas days and some vacation days I finally managed to get it done.
I can’t promise the next chapter will be online faster, but I kind of doubt it will take as long as this one.

As for the chapter itself, I can give you two new songs:
Both Rangiku-parts were accompanied by Stratovarius “Hunting High and Low”, while Byakukay’s part held another Blind Guardian song: “Curse my Name”. I made a list of which songs I already used and discovered that this is the forth song of this band and the second time I used it for that character.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy(ed) the chapter and you excuse my lack of updates these past months and the months to come.

Again I have the next chapter planned, and partly written out, but I have more phrasing to do with this one. I do have a planned out storyline, but I have a tendency for shoving some of the topics around to regain a certain balance within each chapter. For the last chapter I even got a positive Review regarding the balance of character-time. I am always grateful for input like that.
An author can only do so little to ensure their work is liked by his audience and this is even worse when it comes to fiction about stories that already exists. But I will have a closer look into the depths of Fanfictions with one of my upcoming posts. 😉

We’ll see how far I’ll come with the next chapter and every other plans as my bachelor’s thesis is just around the corner.

But fear not!

I will still update the blog regardless – as I have done so far as well.
As I said there will be a post about Fanfiction, also the second part of my Wacken-Review is in the making, as well as posts about other festivals and conventions I’ve attended (*cough* last year*cough*).
I also got some ideas for a set of short stories centering around a society of dwarfs. One is even already typed and will be published soon, others so far are mere ideas.

Other than that I started making a recorded version of the chapters of Crossing Over so far and I might add other things that I’d like to rant about.

But still there are exams that want to be passed, a bachelor’s thesis that wants to be written and a hand that wants to be healed.

So stay tuned, I will return. =)

PoiSonPaiNter