harry potter

Fantastic Beasts Post: What would you have in your suitcase?

/ Ajmorse / Leave a comment

wp-image-726289597jpg.jpgSo, I was having a thought the other day about the new movie by J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, Fantastic Beasts is about Newt Scamander, a self-proclaimed Magizoologist, or a person who loves and is enthusiastic about the care and protection of magical creatures.

Awkward Newt Scamander seems to get a long with creatures better than with people, and on a trip to New York City to help one of said creatures, he finds himself on an adventure of a life time.

During his trip, he carries a suitcase, but he doesn’t have clothes in his suitcase like every other no-mag (American term for a person who doesn’t have magic), instead, his suitcase acts as his own work space, and is where he keeps the rare creatures that he cares for.

Step into Newt’s suitcase and you’ll descend stairs and find yourself in a work-shop of sorts; full of what Newt needs to care for his creatures: extra boots and gloves, medicine for ailments, food for the animals, etc. And beyond that…his suitcase is basically a zoo, really, complete with climate and wide open plains for various creatures. Because, you know, why not?

Anything is possible with magic!

My question is this: If you could have your own suitcase like Newt’s magical suitcase, what would be in yours?

Mine would hold my office, a library, a reader’s nook, kitchenette and bathroom complete with Jacuzzi tub.

Beyond that, you would find yourself on a beach, where the air is warm and the sound of waves wash over you as you step along in the soft, soft, sand.

Follow the boardwalk and you’ll find yourself in a park, which leads to a huge, green forest with miles of walking trails, up and over hills and ravines and to a lake.

Back on the beach if you walk the other way down the boardwalk, you’ll find yourself in a food court with the option to try all different types of foods of the world.

Maybe tucked in somewhere, there will be a pool next to the office and a great patio, etc.

A dream place to go, to relax, to create and to be myself.

I’ve told you mine, now its your turn! What would you have in your suitcase?

Why J. K. Rowling is My Hero

/ Ajmorse / 1 Comment
My much-used Harry Potter books. :P

My much-used Harry Potter books. 😛

The other day I was thinking about how much I admire J. K. Rowling; how I tend to think of her lately as my own creative writing hero, how much I admire her writing style, her books, and her determination.

I admire her because she is such an inspiration. Most of us know her story; she was a single mom living on benefits, and while she was struggling to get by and in the years previous, she created a novel: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

She didn’t know what was going to happen, but she had a story that she wanted to tell, characters that she loved and she created a home for them.

I have a friend at work who likes to write like me, and every time I ask him about his story, he gives a sigh of frustration and says that he can’t seem to finish what he has done, and that it’s taken him four years to get a rough draft finished.

“Four years?” I always reply, “It took J.K. Rowling about ten.”

To this he gets a thoughtful expression and then, “I didn’t know that.”

I think a lot of writers put too much pressure on themselves, (myself especially) and we forget that greatness doesn’t happen overnight, it doesn’t always happen to everyone, but if we have a story that we love and that we want to write, we can’t forget that story. We can’t give up on it.

J.K. Rowling is my hero because she didn’t give up on Harry Potter, even though things in life, new jobs, relationships and heartbreak sometimes get in the way. She might have had doubts, she might have thought that it was useless, but she kept writing, and because she kept writing she kept true to herself.

I sometimes forget how empty it feels when a writer doesn’t write. How much of myself I miss when I don’t see my true voice down on the page. (As you might guess, I’m not always the most articulate when it comes to having to explain myself by actually speaking.)

But J.K. Rowling is my hero because she wasn’t afraid to love her characters so much that she took ten years to write their story. She could have forgotten about it, she could have stopped writing – just imagine it: would you want to live in a world where Harry Potter doesn’t exist?

I must admit, I get a bit sick feeling thinking about this…kind of like when people say Star Wars and Star Trek are the same thing (shudders) what a cold a dismal world we would live in!

Anyway, I must mention J.K. Rowling at least once in every other blog post, but I think she is worthy of admiration. She is a great writer, a great story-teller, and an inspiration to anyone that has an idea that we can’t let go.

Keep writing everyone! That’s all we can do!

Terry Pratchett and Questioning Gender roles in Fantasy Literature

/ Ajmorse / Leave a comment

I’ve been listening to Terry Pratchett’s The Slip of the Keyboard at work recently; it’s basically a collection of essays about his life, writing and his struggles with Alzheimer’s.

pi7KxKpdTIn one of his essays, he mentions how women are portrayed in fantasy. If there is a witch, she is generally evil and crouches around like an old hag, spitting curses at everyone. If she is beautiful, she is seductive, using her sexuality as a means to an end. (I think many Disney villains can be used as an example here: Ursula, Wicked Step Mother, Malificent, etc.)

Gandalf-2On the opposite scale are the Wizards, who are male, wise, and that mentor that most protagonists seek out in times of great peril. Think Gandolf in Lord of the Rings, or Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea.

I guess my question is: Why is this so?

One of my own stories has a witch as its main villain, and I inadvertently made her beautiful, seductive and evil. I did this without thought, yet I’m wondering if this isn’t the time to mix it up a bit? Isn’t it time we had an evil wizard? Or a kind, yet sexy witch, who is not evil?

(J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books don’t really count in this musing, I suppose. As plenty of her witches are very nice, beautiful intelligent people. And Voldemort, a.k.a most evil wizard, ever.)

One thing I love about Terry Pratchett’s writing is that he doesn’t write characters that are predictable. Everyone (of the characters I’ve read so far) are unique and one of a kind. They don’t fit a basic formula, and they aren’t comfortable, which is completely fine. By comfortable, I mean you don’t always know what you can expect from them: one minute they might be performing an act of heroism, the next, you might question their sanity a bit.11751426_10203753735158590_4103356951849478425_n

The point: Terry Pratchett creates real characters that don’t fit into the formula of basic hero and that’s fine. (He also made the point that not all best-selling fantasy books are the best written either.)

This is something I agree with. But I guess what gets me is this whole idea of how women are portrayed in Fantasy. If she is a witch in some stories, why do we assume she is evil?

Do we automatically assign gender roles to specific aspects of fantasy? Do we like when witches are evil? Is the old hag expected to bring bad news? Or is this what we’ve just seen time after time, and so, we use examples of literature before us and think: ‘this the way it’s supposed to be.’

Or, if these gender roles are missing in the novel, does that automatically make it more unique than others? Just a thought.

What do you guys think? Any examples you can think of?