I had one of the bowdlerized copies of Van Hise's book as a teenager, and even with the slashiest stuff taken out it was still queer as a three dollar bill. It was my favorite Trek novel, no surprise there.
Three things I currently like about We murmur first moonwords: -I feel like it does a good job of accomplishing my primary goal: to work through the violence and conflict present in both movies. The story originally came out of my frustration, as a Viking-descended pagan, with the pro-Christian aspects of The Secret of Kells. Even though it does to some degree address Christian suppression of pagan cultures through Aisling, and the monks' unfounded fear of the woods, the Vikings stay silent cutout killers throughout, and I'll admit that in the historical struggle of Vikings v. Christians part of me is always going to be kind of cheering for the Vikings because I think they were kickass. There's something fascinating about a culture that operates on a religious myth of their own eventual defeat and destruction, you know? That's something I feel like HTTYD always kind of got - the mixture of violence and gentleness that seems to me very characteristic of northern mythology.
-I really like the tonal balance of the story. I tried to stick to Hiccup's very postmodern teenager style in his dialogue, but it was fun to be able to contextualize that dialogue through the more stylized fairy-tale mode of The Secret of Kells. It puts HTTYD back into the realm of the magical/epic, which is very fun.
-I like the parallelism of the scenes of both boys watching each other work: Hiccup fascinated by the Book of Kells, Brendan enthralled by Hiccup's smithing. They're both such adorably enthusiastic geek characters; I think it works really well to show the connections and encounters that are prevented by cross-cultural violence.
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Date: 2013-05-23 09:27 pm (UTC)Three things I currently like about We murmur first moonwords:
-I feel like it does a good job of accomplishing my primary goal: to work through the violence and conflict present in both movies. The story originally came out of my frustration, as a Viking-descended pagan, with the pro-Christian aspects of The Secret of Kells. Even though it does to some degree address Christian suppression of pagan cultures through Aisling, and the monks' unfounded fear of the woods, the Vikings stay silent cutout killers throughout, and I'll admit that in the historical struggle of Vikings v. Christians part of me is always going to be kind of cheering for the Vikings because I think they were kickass. There's something fascinating about a culture that operates on a religious myth of their own eventual defeat and destruction, you know? That's something I feel like HTTYD always kind of got - the mixture of violence and gentleness that seems to me very characteristic of northern mythology.
-I really like the tonal balance of the story. I tried to stick to Hiccup's very postmodern teenager style in his dialogue, but it was fun to be able to contextualize that dialogue through the more stylized fairy-tale mode of The Secret of Kells. It puts HTTYD back into the realm of the magical/epic, which is very fun.
-I like the parallelism of the scenes of both boys watching each other work: Hiccup fascinated by the Book of Kells, Brendan enthralled by Hiccup's smithing. They're both such adorably enthusiastic geek characters; I think it works really well to show the connections and encounters that are prevented by cross-cultural violence.