Tag Archives: dwarfs

Answering Questions from being Tagged

As I am a great fan of procrastination I thought I might as well use DarkFairy’s tagging to write something completely different…again….
But what’s this tagging about?
The tagging is used for small Blogs to enlarge their readership and Fairy tried to do this with her own and mine. It is quite like a chain letter, but this has better and more useful side effects. 😉
The rules for the tagging are:

  • You are asked 10 Questions by the tagger. Answer them in your post.
  • Think of 10 Questions you want to ask the Bloggers you are going to tag.
  • You tag 10 Blogs with below 200 followers.
  • You of course have to tell the people that you tagged them.
  • Tagging the person that tagged you isn’t allowed.

Now to Fairy’s questions (translated from her side, see link above):

  1. Do you like mustard or do you prefer ketchup?
    Ketchup, definitely ketchup.
    But if the mustard is needed as ingredient for dishes like Rinderrouladen or in Hot Dogs I can live with it, otherwise I can’t stand the smell and taste of it.
    Funny side story: When I first watched the Doctor Who Episode „The Eleventh Hour“ I honestly mistook „custard“ for „mustard“ when Eleven ate his famous fishfingers and custard…
  2. The Zombie apocalypse is happening. What is now the most important thing and with what are you arming yourself?
    Well….the most important thing is of course my family and I’d do anything to protect them. What I’d arm myself with would however be quite difficult. We don’t really have anything here that would count as a useful weapon in a zombie apocalypse…though wait…Hyundai recently made it possible to build a Zombie Killing Machine maybe I’d just tune up my trusted car to become a weapon. 😀
  3. Are you pro Elves or pro Dwarf?
    I don’t really care about either of them, but from what I’ve learned so far dwarves hold my sympathy as I already mentioned in this post: Dwarves.
    Elves are just too arrogant and „perfect“ for my taste…except Fairy’s Odokè who sounds quite interesting. 😉
  4. What is your favourite dish?
    I’d say most dishes with potatoes or noodles. But if I had to pick one, I guess it would be potato in the skin (Pellkartoffeln). Grilled meat – or meat in any kind of variation – also belongs among my favourites.
  5. What is your favourite animal?
    It is always a tie between wolves, bats and owls. All of them are fascinating animals and I don’t want to decide for a winner here.
  6. In which sports would you like to be really good at?
    As I am horrible at sports in general, I really don’t know. The only one I irregularly play is volleyball and I’m not too dissatisfied with my abilities there.
  7. What can you not live without?
    Currently I think the answer would be my parents. But as I know that I will lose them one day, I’d say: Without someone I can confine in or simply be myself around.
    As someone who spends a high amount of time in front of a laptop I could also say that I couldn’t live without it, but I clearly can live without checking in on stuff and I have enough unread books to keep me entertained for a while. 😉
  8. Which fictional character (e.g. from a book or movie) would you like to meet?
    I honestly have no idea…There are so many great characters and meeting them would in my opinion only be possible in the regulations of the story, so talking to me would change the actions if I so much as let any information of future events slip and so on. But the fact that I am an author of one or the other fanfiction shows that I do think about changing or adding story lines and possibly being involved somehow at times. I also wrote about this in one of my (German) short stories about the unknown worlds that lie within books. (The story was first referred to in this post about libraries, btw.)
  9. Open the cabinet door or drawer nearest to you. What do you see at first?
    As I am too lazy to get up and actually do that, I will tell you what I see in the shelf next to me: A pile of books (some novels from the Anita Blake-series by Laurell K. Hamilton, Terry Pratchett’s The Colours of Magic and Cujo by Stephen King) that I most likely have not read yet…No, I actually did read most of them (The exception being Cujo)…Nice to know…
  10. If you would live in a fantasy world, would you be a mage or a warrior?
    In MMO’s and the like I mostly play warriors, because they simply have the better stats. But as magic always fascinated me and my physical form is far from it’s best (see question 6.) I think I’d actually be a mage/sorceress/witch. Also I prefer to keep my distance towards threats and enemies, so magic would come in quite handy with this. Besides I am currently finally watching the episodes of Merlin that I could not see before and I clearly do not wish to follow all those disposable knights…I’m certain they have a nest of those somewhere below Camelot…

Now for my questions:

  1. What is the first thing that springs to your mind when you hear the word „Eclipse“?
    (Unrelated Note in my defence: My first thought is related to what I wrote in this post: „Hello World„)
  2. When you write a story, what kind of Feedback would you like to get? (E.g. constructive, flattering, honest, etc.)
  3. What is your favourite TV show?
  4. The age old question: Werwolves or Vampires?
    (Fairy started it with the Elves and the Dwarves and I already mentioned Eclipse, it’s a totally reasonable question, right? >_<)
  5. Would you like to be immortal?
  6. Do you prefer the city side or the countryside?
  7. What song holds the most emotions for you and which emotion is it?
  8. What was the scariest thing that you ever experienced?
  9. If you met a Jinn or a Fairy that grants you 3 wishes, what would they be?
  10. What attribute would cause you to judge a person by its appearance?

Well…and now I have to think of who I am going to tag…
So far amoung the Blogs I follow and the ones in my Blogroll (and those that are not already tagged), only two fulfil the criteria:

  • Joaninja [Edit 07.01.16: The Blog no longer exists]
  • Icewolf

This post will be updated as soon as I find missing Blogs for the needed amount.
But if you want to tag yourself, feel free to send me a note and let me make it official. 🙂
PoiSonPaiNter

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