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The Twilight Groan

12/27/2009

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200910.25 letter to Mike Argento, York Daily Record

Argento is a brilliant, hysterically funny columnist with a wit sharper than a Na'Vi arrowhead. He can write serious stuff too, but mostly he sends up the Morons of our culture (no shortage of those in York County). This was my (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) plee to him to save our tweens from the vampires.




The rise of the New Moon sparked a deep, insistent urge to lurk at my computer, biting deep into the bloody depths of the Thesaurus, and Spell Check. Then I considered that you only write articles of Deep Social Meaning, sending up the Idiots of Society.

Wait; this has Deep Social Meaning. We must save our young girls from the ravages of...

...a meaningless life obsessing over boys with bad hair and weird eyes.

I noted your excellent send-up of 2021, or 2012... or 2010, no wait, that was Real Science Fiction, written by a Real Science Fiction writer; Arthur C. Clarke.

We need, in this benighted age, Mikey the Vampire Slayer. Or, perhaps, Van-argento.

J.K. Rowling gave us a complex, unique world of Wizards and Good and Evil. She addressed the Deep Questions of The Meaning of Life. She gave us three Heroes on a Hero Journey that made sense and resonated with our own lives (note that one of them is an intelligent girl, with a career, and a Life, and a Purpose, and cool guy friends, and... a cool guy). Rowling gave us Quidditch, and Time Turners and an owl delivery service and a large drooly dog, and a larger droolier gamekeeper, and the wonderful vision of turning a horrible relative into a hot air balloon.

J.R.R.Tolkien and C.S.Lewis gave us entire planets to run around on. Middle Earth and Narnia with their Elves and Orcs and Centaurs and Talking Animals had plenty of room for each of us to pick up our longbows and broadswords and learn to slay the evils in our mundane lives. To ride into the sunset, to wax poetic over the song of gulls in the dark, to talk to trees, to ride without saddle or rein, to have seven meals a day, to sail with the Corsairs of Umbar, to ...

Oh, yes, I digress...

George Lucas and Gene Rodenberry eschewed the use of initials and went with their full names, which may be why they gave us the whole universe to play in. Go ahead, snicker at the kid whomping womp rats on his game boy, or the girl with the pointy ears at the sci-fi convention doing the Vulcan salute, but when your computer breaks down, or your rover is stranded on Neptune; who 'ya' gonna' call?

In the wake of these greats, yea, in the Twilight of their existence, comes a saga of a girl and a vampire. And some other vampires who are not as nice. Although the main one isn't very nice either, at first. I tried very hard to finish the first book, but after two hundred pages of a very boring teenager obsessing over a badaxx boy I had to donate the book to the Library for the Literary Impaired, and go find a copy of Treasure Island, which, despite its political incorrectness, is a romping good yarn, and contains a young hero who acts impulsively but with good heart and wins out in the end. I also plowed through several thousand pages of the Inkheart Trilogy, which contains a heroine who has better things to do with her life than obsess over boys with bad hair and weird teeth.

I think you should do an interview with the vampire's girlfriend: it would go something like this...

“So, Bella, how was school today?”

Her eyes glaze over. Hoarsely she whispers. “Edward.”

“Ah. What are you studying?”

Her eyes have now developed a strange shape, like those anime or manga characters: little hearts. They seem to be twitching in a weird rhythm. “Eeeeedwaaard.”

“Um, went by the animal rescue earlier this week, I think you should have a dog. What kind would you like?”

“Edward.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Edddddddward.” The eyeball hearts are definitely thumping like manic bunnies. Bunnies, bunnies, ohgawd, what do bunnies do best?

“You realize this is kind of gross, I mean, he's dead and everything...”

She's stopped talking, only the weird little thumpy hearts are visible. You knock her upside the head, duct tape her to a chair and make her watch all three...extended DVD... Lord of the Rings films. At least Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson aren't dead. Then you drag her kicking and screaming to the library.

Save us Argento-wan, you're our only hope.

The rest of us will sling our longbows over our backs, our swords, lightsabers and phasers at our hips, mount our steeds of Rohan (or centaurs, or landspeeders, if you're horse-impaired) and sally forth to rescue True Fantasy and Science Fiction from the clutches of the Pseudo-vampiric hordes. Some of us will probably settle down with a good Anne Rice book, or a Sookie Stackhouse novel. We might, (gasp) even turn on the TV and catch a drop or two of True Blood, or a rerun of Buffy.

Live Long and Prosper...
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the Hero Journey According to Campbell and Obi-Wan

8/12/2009

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a long time ago, in a sketchbook far, far away...

some friends and I visited the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian, in Washington D.C. for an exhibit of props, costumes and other goodies from the Star Wars films. (We had already been to the one they devoted to Star Trek). In the displays, the museum outlined George Lucas' interpretation of the Hero Journey through the three first films. Lucas had studied the works of Joseph Campbell, a guy who studied myth, legend and faerie tale and made it comprehensible to the rest of us. Then Lucas brought it to the masses with Luke and Han and the rest. Here are my notes from the exhibit, with an eye to writing my own tales. Perhaps they'll be useful for yours... 
  
1999.01.16
Remember Space 1999? It was SF then, now it's ancient history.

George Lucas based his mythic tale on the concepts of Joseph Campbell , who studied the worlds mythologies and folk tales. Mythologizing mythology; taking an overview of all the world's spiritual ideas. PBS did The Power of Myth as a series, I own Hero With A Thousand Faces (the Hero Journey Cycle), Primitive Mythology and Myths to Live By, all by Campbell. I cant find Hero, I am in the middle of writing several Hero Journey tales. I did find my Star Wars notes.

Forthwith, here they are:(with some nods to other Hero Journeys I have loved)

Star Wars is driven by character, story. You don't have to explain what everything is. We figure out hyperdrive and lightsabers without the scientific treatise.

The Hero is obscure, ordinary; a farm boy, a Hobbit, a Gelfling, a girl from Kansas, a fat panda working in a noodle shop, a beat-up trash compactor robot named WALL-E.

The Mentor is Jedi, wizard, wiz, wise man. Gandalf, Obi-Wan.

The call to adventure:

Begins with The Herald: usually small, unassuming. Talking frogs. Gollum with a ring. Droid with a message. The guy pasting the sign on he wall about choosing the Dragon Warrior (Kung-Fu Panda). Starship landing (Wall-E). Ok, that one wasn't small and unassuming. In Pan's Labyrinth, the messenger is a bug-fairy. The Hand of Fate oftens plays a role here: the apparent Bad Thing drives the tale forward, involves the Hero, becomes part of the Journey.

The threshold:

Mos Eisley spaceport. Rivendell. Train stations (Narnia: Prince Caspian & Harry Potter). The Stairway to Heaven in Kung-fu Panda: the Place of Enlightenment is at the top. Note that he falls down that stairway a lot.

The Hero must leave familiar life behind and begin journey from childhood to adulthood, and to a life transformation. The threshold contains dangers, but also helpers. In SW, Han and Chewie are Dark Hero? Trickster? Beast Prince (Chewie) Animal Companion (the power of the Hero's instinctive nature). The ship has an animal name as well. Maybe it should have been the Millenium Raven. Or Chasseur. Han is a privateer (complete with wicked swift agile Baltimore Clipper); out for his own gain at first, but always fighting the tyrannical empire.

I do a lot of Elves, shapeshifters and folk with animal totems. They are plugged into their instinctive natures, one with Nature.

A dive is a Hero Journey. You cross the Threshold of the Surface into an alien world where all the rules are changed. A journey by ship is similar: the Dock is the threshold. You leave this last attachment to land and set out into the Unknown.

Into the labyrinth:

Difficult journey into the Unknown. Death Star. The Old Forest. Moria. Heroes don armour to rescue princess. Pan's Labrynth has a very literal labyrinth.

The dark road of trials:

Midway through the hero journey comes the long and perilous path of trials and ordeals bringing important moments of illumination and understanding. The decent into darkness. Moria again. One of Lewis' entire tales (the Silver Chair) is a Journey in the Dark. Monsters to be slain. Obstacles to be passed.

Into the belly of the beast:

The Millenium Falcon flies into the asteroid cave which turns out to be the maw of a huge beast. Jonah and the whale. Pinochio and the same whale. Leviathan. Is there an equivalent in Middle Earth? In Pan's Labyrinth, there is the beast-frog under the tree, who spits out the key (rather grossly). Vader undergoes transformation in egg-like chamber. You are eaten, you are spat out again, transformed.

The sacred grove:

Enclosure where the Hero is changed. Trees infused with creative energy. Forests symbolize mystery and transformation (the forest world of Dagobah). Forests are also the unconcious mind; secrets, dark emotions to confront (Luke's battle with the Vader-image under the tree). Water is also the Unconcious Mind. The Dive Beneath, to the scary dark place.

Sacrifices:

Opening of mind and heart to spiritual knowledge requires sacrifice from Hero. Cloud City: Han and Luke both reaffirm the meaning and importance of their lives by willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater cause.

Hero deeds:

The princess rescue, the Death Star attack, lightsaber battles, firefights. The blowing up of the Death Star in film one is the beginning of the next stage: the Road of Trials.

The path to atonement:

Hero Journey sometimes includes a Fatherquest. After trials, the Hero finds the Father and becomes At-One with him. A spiritual symbol of oneness with God. Luke is following in his father's footsteps: pilot, Jedi...

...but Luke is ready to sacrifice himself rather than follow his father's path to evil. Luke falls (from the underside of Cloud City), is rescued (by sister: one with the same father), acknowledges Vader as Father, they move toward reconciliation, Vader moves toward his own transformation.

The hero's return:

End of the Road of Trials. Hero returns across the threshold to his society with the means to benefit it. In SW, each character has undergone their own Hero Journey. In LOTR, the Hobbits return to the Shire and cleanse and heal it. Aragorn takes on the Kingship. Legolas and Gimli rebuild Gondor. WALL-E and EVE bring people back to Earth and spark renewal. Po the Panda defeats the Villain as no one else can, and restores order to his world.

The shadow rises:

The forces of evil can also undergo change and rebirth, recoup power, gain new strength. Tolkien actually had a thought to write something after LOTR, in which this happens. If you start at the beginning of his world, the Silmarillion, and read through, you see the dark rising again and again: Morgoth the Vala is replaced by Sauron the Maia (a lesser evil), whose understudy was a wizard: Saruman. Presumeably by the time you get to the Age of Men, the Evil would have degenerated to mere human tyrants and dictators; reality.

The hero twins:

Luke and Leia are yin-yang, two sides of the same person, in a way. Anima and animé, or animus, or whatever. One of my favorite images in tales, is this Hero Twin thing: often two guys, opposites: Starsky and Hutch, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, Red and Blue in Hellboy, and last but definitely not least: Legolas and Gimli. By their contrast, they show us a complete picture. And they're usually very funny.

The enchanted forest:

The inhabitants can be helpful, dangerous, or both. The Hero must know the right magic to invoke the protective powers. Luke wins the help of the Ewoks (these faerie folk are small, have primitve tech, and a lush environment compared to the cold hard tech of the Empire). The Fellowship enters Lothlorien, but not easily and with great welcome. Boromir shows the attitude of the mainstream culture: fear of the now unknown powers of the Elves, and distance from them.

The heart of darkness;

The Fortress of Evil. Destroying it. Tolkien has several, in varying stages of evil power: Moria, Cirith Ungol, Mordor, the Cracks of Doom. Mount Doom self-destructs at the end. Dark Crystal has one of the more unique Dark Tower images: the castle which peels off its layer of darkness as the skeksis are reunited with the uru and become, again, whole urskeks. The castle casts off its dark skin and glows once more with light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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    about: Teanna

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