Catching Fire - Opinions

No, no, no, this isn't a review.  It's my opinion.
Have a very, very short synopsis and then take a load of my observations:

The first book of the Hunger Games scenario starts out with a cute family of three girls - Mom, older sister Katniss, and younger sister Prim, who happens to be chosen as a gladiator in a death match for kids.  Katniss volunteers in place of her sister and, voila, story, story, story, death, death, death, blood, blood, blood.  Towards the end of the gladiator match, she and Peeta Mellark, another combatant who loves her devotedly, are the final two survivors.  They decide to eat poisonous berries together and commit suicide rather than live alone, which causes the government (who started the games) to say that there is a change in the rules and that two victors are allowed.  They survive and live happily ever after.
BUT.
Second book.  The known "world", split into Districts, then takes Katniss and Peeta's suicide attempt as a sign of rebellion against the government; the Districts rebel themselves.  With some subtle, intricate manipulating, the government is made to do exactly everything that they think would stop the rebellion, but all that happens is...yep, you guessed it: more rebellion.  As part of their effort to stop the rebellion, the government decides to hold another gladiator match with combatants who have previously won.  (Do you not understand why they'd do that, or how it would help stop the rebellion?  Yeah, well, NEITHER DID THEY.)  Katniss and Peeta are, again, thrown into another fight to the death and MORE story.  Yay for derth!  It's EBWEEWARE!  It's EBREEWUN!  DERTH DERTH DERRRTH!!!  GYAHAHAHAHAHahzzz...

...

Okay...now...have you guys seen the movie?  No?  Well, once it comes out for rent, and you get it for a dollar, here's some things to think about:

Katniss is the equivalent of... 

Amy Lee of Evanescence

~ ~ ~

 Brutus is the equivalent of...

The Heavy from Team Fortress 2

~ ~ ~

 Beetee is the equivalent of...

Eugene from Adventures in Oddessey

~ ~ ~

 Peeta is the equivalent of...

Everyone's bloody favorite puppy dog

~ ~ ~

 Gale is the equivalent of...

Ahem.

~ ~ ~

 Haymitch is the equivalent of...

BAD INFLUENCE ON TEENS, MITCHY-BOY

~ ~ ~

Effie is the equivalent of...

THE RESURRECTION OF MILEY CIRUS MILLENNIUMS AFTER SHE DIED

~ ~ ~

And last but not least...

 Thread is the equivalent of...

"BAHCUZ IM BATMUN."
Come on...you totally know what I mean, right?
I was just sitting there, waiting for him to say it in that low, husky Batman voice of his.

So there you have it.

Write on!

Clo--

...hah...

Okay, okay, I guess I have to say SOMETHING about the book/movie.  Look, for a movie that good this much hype and such grand reception, I can't criticize it or risk being assassinated by ten thousand fangirls.  Even a ninja so great as myself has her limits, and, with a near-fractured leg and a cough, I'm not doing too hot.  Furthermore, I enjoyed both the book and the movie, the latter of which hardly deviated at all from the book.  A few minor things were changed for time's sake, and very little was left out.  If you're super picky, then you might not like it, but I thought it made one wicked film - the intensity was high with less sorrow than the first (which, in my opinion, was an improvement), the costuming was amazing, and, of course, the pantheon of actors in the film did an excellent job.

HOWEVER...

If there's one thing I'm going to rant about, it's all summed up in one phrase:

"I wish the Hunger Games were real."

*sighs*

I...

Wow...just...wow.

Why?

Do you want to learn how to survive?

Do you want the lethal romance?

Do you want to kill?

Guys, one of the main POINTS in the Hunger Games is that MINDLESS KILLING AND KILLING AS A THREAT IS EVIL.  Didn't get it the first time?  Here it is again:

MINDLESS KILLING AND KILLING AS A THREAT IS EVIL.

(In fact, it's not killing at that point; it's murder.)

If you have your list of enemies that you want reaped in your fantasy version of the Hunger Games, well, I can promise that that will totally change when you get into the battlefield.  Life is a gift from GOD.  Do you, in your blind rage, really want to take that away?  Irreversibly?!  Furthermore, do you think that life is yours to take?  How about this: do you want the chance to prove your love to a significant other by killing someone else?  Do you think that the bond of love can be better forged in life-or-death situations?

Battle is different from the glorious montage of screaming and blood and dramatic Hans Zimmer music that media portrays it to be, boys and girls.  Battle hurts and scars and tears apart, and pride is the pointless beginning for all wars.

If you write about war, I really hope that you don't write with the idea that killing is consequent-less and murder brings peace.  If you're a fangirl and think Catching Fire is to die for, well, good for you, but, if I read another Hunger-Games-wanna-be with the ideal that says murder is satisfying, I will VOMIT.

Heh.

Okay.

Phew...

I'm good now; calling it a night.  :)

Write on...PEACEFULLY!

Clove

Abbriev.

Salve, poeti!

I don't know if you're an author like me who carries a notebook and pen around everywhere.  Between restaurants and shopping malls and overheard quotes, my brain is at a loss to pick up and put to memory every single detail.

The result?

Voila.
(That page is only one in many.  I'm not exaggerating here, amicae and amici; you have my word.)

I write on the go, while waiting in lines, at school (shhh...), in the car, at meals, and in my bed at night.  In that manner, I waste no time and don't have to "get into the writing groove" to start writing.  After all, my computer and documents are only every so often available to a busy little me.

Keeping in theme with productivity, I've come up with a LOT of abbreviations for little mental notes to myself.  Generally, I'll be writing, writing, writing, and then something, some word or phrase, will strike me odd, but I won't have the materials at hand to answer said oddity, so I'll draw a tiny arrow and make a tiny note.  Sooo...if you're like me, feel free to steal and put these to use!  :)

(The first space shows what I write, the second space shows what the abbrieviation stands for, the third space shows what it means.)
- SYN - synonym - "Look up a synonym for this word later."
- RW - right word? - "Is this the right word?"
- RP - right phrase? - "Is this the right phrase?"
- DP - description paragraph - "Put in a description paragraph here when you're in the mood."
- S - spelling - "Check the spelling."
- '-' - tab - "Enter a tab here."
- 'P' - paragraph return - "Enter a paragraph return here."
- CP - check previous - "Check the document for previous recordings of the word or phrase to validate accuracy."  (Generally, this has to do with age.  e.g. Was he 26 or 27?)

Hope that was helpful!

Write on!
Clove

Keeping your eyes open

Writing is a way to convey emotion.

To be human is to feel emotion.  The actions done to us and the actions we do to others arrange our feelings in intricate patterns.  The voices we hear, the sights we see, the food we taste, the aromas we smell, the textures we touch all combine into this colorful painting called life.

Writing is merely the art of taking those colorful paintings and putting them into words.
As a corollary to that rule, the best authors know the most about life, about love, about hatred and strife, pink clouds and stormy nights,  forsaken churchyards and pretty damsels and ugly witches.  They know about fires and wind and voices and silences because they keep their eyes very, very open.

Sad to say, many are turned off from writing because they "don't know what to write about", and many more stunt their abilities by keeping their eyes closed.  While photographers frame gigantic, breathing pieces of life in a single snapshot, writers need to feel those gigantic, breathing pieces of life.


Keep your eyes open, fellow authors.


Snapshots of life that are blurry are impossible to write, and, thanks to modern commodities, life has been packaged and sold with fuzz and static.

   For example, how often is music merely white noise?  Too few take the time to close their eyes and enjoy solid feeling and lyrical depth, if there is any, in a piece of artwork.  Instead, we bustle around from the mall to the restaurant, talking over the radio in the background and drowning out music with...still more music.
   Another question: do you really care for people?  How will you ever get to see the nuances of individuals for writing purposes if you gruffly greet everyone with a how-do-you-do and have-a-nice-day.  If you're asking, "How are you?" merely because it's United States politeness, you're speaking a blur of life, and the legitimate response will be equally dull.
   What about food?  I'm horribly guilty here, sad to say.  My mom's an awesome chef, and whenever meal time rolls around, I just shovel everything down my gullet in less than three minutes, not even taking the time to taste what I'm swallowing.  I'm pretty sure she could feed me cardboard, and I wouldn't even notice.  The literary result?  I'm horrible at describing food...period.
   Are these direct variations?
   You tell me.
   Think about touch and sight for a moment.  Think about your toe pads.  Are they hot?  Sweaty?  Why?  Cold and numb?  Why?  Are you wearing shoes?  Why?  Are those shoes too tight or comfortable?  Without looking, think of what the nape of your neck feels like, think of if your hair is up or down, think of a part of your body that is ticklish.  Stretch your arms out and back beside you - seriously...do it - and feel your tendons straining...
   Do you know your own body?

Authors, we are sincerely out of touch with this physical world.
If you're one to live so fast that you can't even remember what earrings you're wearing, your writing will suffer, as silly as that seems.

Just sit down once in a while and listen to music without doing anything else.  I don't mean classical opera or anything; I enjoy relaxing and tensing music together, but the catch is that I "enjoy" music.  Before you eat something beautiful, observe it and fondle it and feel floury crust warm your fingertips.  Smile and genuinely care for people around you.  Observe them.  Taste food in your mouth.  Stroke your clothes as you put them on.  Keep your eyes open and absorb the small things around you that you missed.  Let shower water bounce off your palm.  Better yet, take a bath and fill the air with the scent of bath salts and inhale the thick sauna.  Melt chocolate in your mouth before swallowing.  And most important of all?  Laugh.  Laugh hard.
There's so much to experience, we can never possibly write enough books...

...but we very well can try.


Keep your eyes open, kids.


Write on!
Clove

Religion?!

Hey one, hey all, welcome back.

We're about half-way through November, and I still haven't gotten Chapter 3 up yet, and I might not until around December-ish, sad to say.  My life has pretty much exploded between driving classes, school, weddings, violin, and upcoming birthday parties, and, to add on top of all of that, I'm sick as an over-worked horse.  Fun, fun, right?

Anyway, here's an update on what's to come:
--CHAPTER 3!  My dad was supposed to edit it while he was on a business trip to Europe, and he comes home today.  Hopefully, it'll be all marked in red and ready to go.  Hopefully.  :)
--An entire forty-five page story, which will be out in three parts by next Sunday.  Again, the story is a birthday present, so...I have to wait for the birthday to roll around before posting it.  :)
--A modern day parody on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  I was doing this for school; it was supposed to be 750 words minimal, but I had so much fun with it, it ended up being around 2,000 words.  I'd like to edit it one more time before I get it up here.

Got all that?
I am not leaving you guys in the dust; I promise.  :)

That being said...

So...I was in one of those dream-zone of writing the other day, just a side-story idea that my brother came up with and challenged me to write, when all of the sudden, in the story, BAM--

RELIGION.

Whoa.  I stared at the screen and screwed up my face and said, "Did I just write this?"  Apparently, I did.  Guys, I've tried to write religion stories before; I've tried and I've tried and I've tried, but the words never represented what I felt relative to God.  I gave up about a year and a half ago, which I'm now certain was before I had really felt that much concerning God.  I mean, seriously?  I have shed a lot of repentant tears and have heard a lot of deep sermons between now and 18 months ago.

That said, I think I can include religion.  I've been trying, anyway...
Of course, I'm sick and tired and my ribcage is burning and my lungs are raisins and my hands are crackling with ice, so...when I'm feeling better, I might come back and look at my work and laugh and say, "Yup.  Still cheesy."
But rather than wait for my health to return, I thought I'd let you guys take a look and tell me what you think.  Still cheesy?  Cheddar?  Capable of making American mozzarella?
Have a gander.  :)

~ ~ ~

     Agitated, Keary paced briskly to the elevator and shot towards the roof of the skyscraper.  He emerged on the top floor, took a staircase even further up, and ducked outside, letting his thoughts be swept away by the cold wind.  Mankind would put greed first, the wind took that, but he would put integrity first, the wind stole that, and he would be manipulated by the greedy?  The wind nabbed that thought away and threw it back at Keary in gusts of chilling air until his tight shoulder blades were numb and his tight forearms were numb and the gun, resting on his chest, was a block of ice.

     Man is...

     Wind.

     Man...

     Wind.

     Is...

     Wind.

     ...is...

     ...wind...gale...breeze...

     Rose.

     After the long moment drained his resolve, Keary stumbled his way over to the side of the roof and gazed over the cement wall, fingers grasping the rough edge.

     The cars were colored dots.  The people, the masses of people, were smears.  Their sounds and jeers and catcalls and honks were silent.  Just wind.  It would be a long, long, long, windy drop.

     No.

     Rose wouldn’t forgive him.

     But...

     She’d join him, wouldn’t she?

     Grace too.

     They’d all be dead.

   Why was he so unwilling to compromise?  Why couldn’t he be like lesser men just for once and burn the records?  Did his virtue make him stronger?  Did his integrity make him better?  Did his conscience’s innocence aid him in life?

     Keary laughed out-loud.

     No.

     It couldn’t, and it never would.

     Virtue made him weak.

    A preacher had told him something funny once.  “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.  A fool endures, but a wise man dies.  Life is vain, Mr. Sikora, but there’s more to life than vanity.”

     Keary looked up at the azure sky, then back down to the gray ground, up to the cotton clouds, then back down to the muddy ground, up to the transcending sun, then back to the helpless ground.

     That idiot preacher must have been right, somehow...somehow...

     Some sort of savior must exist.  Maybe not a monarchy of insane, power-thirsty gods, definitely not a group that created all the misery...no...man did enough of that himself...but one that...that...saved them emotionally.

~ ~ ~

Write on!

Clove

Hey, you.

Hey.  Hey.  You.
Guys.
Guys.
Guyses and girlsees.
Guess what?  Guess what, guess what?
Guess...


...


DON'T WRITE WHEN YOU'RE TIRED.

Write on!
Clove
P.S. I put one character to sleep, moved on to another, put her to sleep as well, and put a guy from a different story to bed as well.  -_-  The Muses are not with me tonight.  ;)

Why I Hate Grammar...

Josiah, my younger brother, and I make it a point to, when we bring a box of cereal to the table, turn the box to the back and read that little memo thingymerbobber that talks about how such-and-such product is the best, the most nutritious, or the most delicious.  We're both Grammar Nazi's, Warriors of the Red Pen (well, he's in training), and capable of listing every single punctuation and spelling rule that exists.  Thus, we (geeks) find a good amount of entertainment in marking out the errors on published paragraphs.

That said, I just recently finished Fahrenheit 451, my official second favorite non-spiritual book, second only to Saint Augustine's Confessions.  (At least...that's what I think...I haven't done an official list of my favorite books.  I probably should some day though...)  I noticed that Ray Bradbury, as he wrote, used punctuation only to signify pauses.  Of course, there were periods at the end of every sentence, but even every sentence he wrote didn't include a subject and a verb.

And surprisingly, I can't even say it annoyed me.

It was smooth, classic, and flowing with a pace slow enough that I wasn't just reading a blur of words, but fast enough that I wanted to re-read it as soon as I put it down to make sure I caught everything.

Even more frustratingly, I've tried to study the book and analyze the writing style so I can mimic it myself, but...sad to say...I can't.  The plot just draws me in with the fire, the funnels and water, the books, Clarisse McCellan, the parlor families, the seashells, the river, the Hound, the...the...the...

...er...

So, what was I talking about?
Right.
Why I hate grammar.
Well, after reading this book, I've found some sentences in my own stories that potentially could be broken into one independent clause and one dependent clause, but my grammar instincts prohibit me from such actions.

I want to write:

     Keary turned to Tariq.  “You knew I was going to be watching you in Samuel’s office, didn’t you?”
     “Yeah.  I guessed it.  But don’t feel bad, Keary."

But my Grammar Warrior instincts kick in, and I end up writing:

     "Yeah.  I guessed it, but don't feel bad..."

It rushes too much, too emptily, too...ehhh...it lacks the proper feeling.  I'm starting to think that in order to keep a good flow, sometimes, deviations from punctuation are necessary.

But anyway...that's just food for thought.  :)

Write on!
Clove

Poetry

I am not a poet.

Out of the 10,000 hours it takes to become a literal master at anything, I've probably spent about...100 hours on poetry.  Only 9,900 more to go.  ;)
That doesn't mean I don't like poetry.
Some poems, I just look at, screw up my face, and say, "This has neither rhyme not rhythm.  WUT ID DEH POINT?!"  I'm sure I speak from naivety and inexperience and bla bla bla because I haven't worked in this particular branch of writing long enough.  Other poems, however, really hit home in a beautifully crafted paragraph of glory.  Some are sheer hilarious, some are gorgeous enough to make me sob, and some, I just respect because I know I really, really should respect if I want to say, someday, that I'm a poet.
*coughSHAKESPEAREcough*

Non-poet that I am, I pretty much chock poetry down to the art of fitting as much emotion, as many thoughts, and as many pictures as possible into as few words is possible.  I think it's a fun challenge and a delightful way to convey emotion.
If you don't think your poetry is good or don't know how to start your path to poem-dom, here are two easy tips in the art of rhythm and rhyme.

1. RHYTHM
2. RHYME.

Simple as that.

Hehehe, okay, sorry...but seriously, guys?  Poetry is put down, in my head, to just those two things.  I count each line and make sure they have the same number of syllables.

It's loathe to me to be this blunt, - 8 syllables

But gone the doe, no foe, no hunt - 8 syllables

Sometimes, I might do something tricky like...

How much longer can we wait? - 7 syllables

How much more is there to take? - 7 syllables

Take it all; I gave it all, - 7 syllables

We believed we couldn’t fall, - 7 syllables

And then we did. - 4 syllables

Where do we stand? - 4 syllables

We’re hunted now; - 4 syllables

I’ve no more plans, - 4 syllables

The rest of the poem ends in 4 syllable lines, even though I started with 7.  The point is that it flows and is readable.  Like with actual writing, read your poems out-loud and see if you have to add in any unnatural pauses.  If you do have those awkward silence, rearrange your syllables and words, add in adjectives, or change sentence structures.

The rhyming is just as simple.  In the above poem, I did a style of...

It’s loathe to me to be this blunt, - A

But gone the doe; no foe, no hunt. - A

I don’t see why you hide in wait, - B

To search what’s left except to hate. - B

The last syllable of line one (A) rhymes with the last syllable of line two (A).  B rhymes with B and so on and so forth.  Either every other line will rhyme or couplets (two consecutive lines) will rhyme.  Just as long as your rhyming pattern is fairly consistent, there should be no problems.

With those guidelines, you then smell the flowers, taste the rain, curl your toes into mud and.....

Write on!

Clove