telophase: (Mononoke - in the balance)
telophase ([personal profile] telophase) wrote2009-01-14 09:17 am
Entry tags:

Linkblogging!

[livejournal.com profile] trobadora is thinking about writing, and is asking about characters, especially in large groups - how do you keep them distinct?

I'm still working through the replies on [livejournal.com profile] matociquala's Writing the Other post (why do these big-reaction subjects only come up when I need t be focusing on coding?), but there's a lot of repercussion going on in and around my f-list right now, including several links to [livejournal.com profile] deepad's response here.

Haven't read through [livejournal.com profile] sartorias's essay Urban Fantasy and Grrlz yet; posting here to remind myself.


And thoughts of this came up when reading the comments - a 1997 artice from the Miami New Times about a whole folklore developed among homeless children in Miami.
To homeless children sleeping on the street, neon is as comforting as a night-light. Angels love colored light too. After nightfall in downtown Miami, they nibble on the NationsBank building -- always drenched in a green, pink, or golden glow. "They eat light so they can fly," eight-year-old Andre tells the children sitting on the patio of the Salvation Army's emergency shelter on NW 38th Street. Andre explains that the angels hide in the building while they study battle maps. "There's a lot of killing going on in Miami," he says. "You want to fight, want to learn how to live, you got to learn the secret stories." The small group listens intently to these tales told by homeless children in shelters.
Absolutely fascinating. And I wonder why I haven't seen anything based on or developed out of this article? (Unless it's in the urban fantasy that's populating the shelves right now that I'm avoiding because I burned out on it years ago...)
ext_51838: (20th Century Frog)

[identity profile] croaky.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 03:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow. You know I remember sometime reading something similar on folklore, but this was much more detailed. Sounds like Neil Gaiman on crack, doesn't it. (and oddly, I actually remember tales of Bloody Mary from my childhood but obviously--I have never been homeless thankgoodness--it was never such a real story as much it was a ghost and camp fire story.)

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 03:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Bloody Mary was part of my childhood also, although I was the skeptic in the group. :D

I'm going to have to do some searching to see if anything else has been written on these kids and their stories; it's utterly fascinating.
ext_51838: (Default)

[identity profile] croaky.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 03:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, me too. I was utterly sceptical and boring as a kid when it came to stuff liek that. Apart from my embarrassing sort of Utena-type idea of wanting to Save The Princess. but that's another story. I'm just fascinated that they mentioned Sweden and that yeah, I do remember hearing about it! It's rather mindboggling how the heck these things travels -both abroad and to the ears of boring middle-working-whatever-class kids like myself. I remember she was referred to as 'the black lady' in Swedish, but her name actually still 'Bloody Mary' in it's proper English, mirror thing and all; which is interesting since at the time I had hardly learnt much English. :oa

Keep linkblogging if you find anything! :D

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Nifty! I wonder how the story traveled to Sweden. (And what else has?)

I will!

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:07 pm (UTC)(link)
so many writing posts O_O.

2009: the year i need to get involved in more writing discussion & make more writing friends.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:08 pm (UTC)(link)
There's a lot of writers on my f-list!

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
mine...has none. or i should say, has very few. i need to friend more writers! i should also probably post more about writing. that would be a start.

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:18 pm (UTC)(link)
also, that miami story link is really interesting. i lived in miami for a few years and man, i still get excited when i see something INTERESTING actually come with it's context.

even though everything literary i always come across with miami has to do with CRIME. even my writing professors in college were CRIME writers.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
My college writing prof was into writing novels that followed the story of a Vietnam vet who became a writing professor in college.

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:24 pm (UTC)(link)
:/ that sounds almost as bad, haha. i took only one fiction class in college (because afterwards i decided it was an EXTREME WASTE OF MY TIME) but half the class was 40+ writing mystery and crime stories set in the cool of south beach. and the professor loved it and lapped it up like it was all good. it almost made me prefer the one really bland guy who was wrting really bland fantasy in the class.

one day though, i will write a MIAMI BASED FANTASY STORY THAT DOESN'T INVOLVE CRIME.

if i ever write fantasy one day. hahah.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I wrote a fantasy story that was set up as two guys meeting in a bar and one, a somewhat mysterious tabloid reporter, telling the story to the other. I got it back with red ink all over it, talking about how the setup was so cliche.

Which has mystified me for years, because of course it's cliche! The bar story has a long and distinguished history, and the whole bloody point was that it was cliche! It wasn't a problem with this particular story.

I don't think he liked, or even understood, genre fiction very much. :D

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:32 pm (UTC)(link)
hahah i think i wrote this almost surrealistic story that involved some prose poetry as an opener and it was totally unloved. not that it was any good, but my fantastic, experimental vision* was lost!

(*or trash, you decide!)


after that, i quit and took up poetry.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:34 pm (UTC)(link)
The only things I got from that class were being forced to finish two stories, and how to critique without horking off the receiver of the critique.*

Which are not all that bad, actually.



* Which assumes said receiver is sane. If not, then no guarantees.

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:36 pm (UTC)(link)
haha how i love to critique, but yeah, when you get the crazies there's no hope.

all this mention of urban street kids is exciting me though, the more i think about it, because it's totally part of "things i love in life".

i need to learn to finish stuff. or start stuff. instead of stopping work just to get some chicken nuggets.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I have always loved secret cultures within other cultures, especially when the secret culture is that of children. Michael de Larrabeiti's Borribles, Clifford Hicks' Alvin Fernald books, etc.

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:44 pm (UTC)(link)
ooh i haven't read/heard of those. *looks things up*

i'm a pretty big fan of all colors of street & secret culture. they're just so interesting!

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)
You strike me as someone who might like the Borribles. :D The basic idea is that kids who get away - from their parents, from their schools, from wherever - sometimes don't grow up. They become Borribles, who have slightly pointed ears and who live in abandoned buildings and basements and who live by stealing things from adults. But it's not a lighthearted series - it's damn dark, with fighting and death, and their mortal enemies are the Rumbles, giant sentient rats.

Most excellent.

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:56 pm (UTC)(link)
aww man, you're quite right, being i also love abanonded everything? that sounds totally amazing. good thing i made room on my bookshelf recently? i'll have to pick it up

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Once you read it, let me know what you think! :D

[identity profile] tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)
you got it :D

[identity profile] seawolf10.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 06:56 am (UTC)(link)
College creative writing courses are a special kind of torment for genre fiction fans.

Nothing like having to explain all the major genre conventions to 90% of the peer reviewers and THE FUCKING PROF, none of whom, apparently, have ever cracked a fantasy novel IN THEIR LIVES!

You'd think having basic familiarity with the conventions of well-known genres would be a requirement for the PROF, at least.

I could go into a whole huge rant on this, but that'd just bore you.

[identity profile] loligo.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I think there may have been an episode of Dark Angel that borrowed some imagery from that story. I've only seen a couple episodes of the show, but I remember there was one that had some innovative mythology that really impressed me, and then several years later someone linked to that article and I read it, and there was that "innovative" folklore! I don't even remember what it was that I thought they borrowed, now -- something about a woman who appears and protects people, but it wasn't the standard BVM.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:29 pm (UTC)(link)
I just found the Wikipedia article on children's folklore, which mentions that a Mercedes Lackey novel was based on it.

My immediate knee-jerk reaction was that it deserved something much better, but unfortunately I have no desire to write anything about urban street kids.

[identity profile] rachelmanija.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 06:09 pm (UTC)(link)
It was also optioned for film, but never made. I found that out years ago when I called up to see if the rights were available. Great article.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 06:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, Development Hell. So many fascinating things languishing there...

Trust me, your knee-jerk reaction was on the ball.

[identity profile] seawolf10.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 06:30 am (UTC)(link)
Read it in high school, reread it again a few months back when I needed something to calm me down (so that I'd have a hope of getting to sleep) from the much more disturbing novel I'd read earlier in the day.

Lackey being Lackey, it was pretty crap.

Shame about her, really. Lackey's earliest, earliest urban fantasy work (Children of the Night, Burning Water) was all right. She wasn't great or anything, but she was a hell of a lot better than she's since degenerated to, and a damn sight less preachy. It was even reasonably dark, and used a lot of stuff from non-European myth. CotN had something from Japan, and Burning Water had Aztec myth as the central theme.

[identity profile] greenapple2004.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:54 pm (UTC)(link)
A friend of mine has an unpublished novel/novella about the mythology of street kids, actually (not sure if it was about the kids in Miami, but I believe it was at least a big part of her research). I have yet to read it, but I always thought it sounded fascinating.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooo, sounds interesting!

[identity profile] benchilada.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 05:18 pm (UTC)(link)
There's a fascinating and depressing documentary about homeless children in Romania called Children Underground that I cannot recommend highly enough.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 05:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks, I'll have to check it out. :)

[identity profile] tammylee.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 05:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Angels eating light to fly... awesometastic!

I didn't step in fairy rings, I remember that one. If you stepped in a fairy ring you could drag something out behind you.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 05:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I didn't step in them, either.

Of course my childhood folklore was completely buggered by getting my hands on a copy of Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Legends of Schoolchildren at an impressionable age. So I may have been single-handedly responsible for spreading British children's folklore of the first half of the century around central Texas schoolyards. XD

[identity profile] sartorias.livejournal.com 2009-01-14 08:34 pm (UTC)(link)
There have been several studies on the lore of the homeless kids, actually. I've read a few over the years.

What really interested me, though, was how elements of it had spread. Last I saw, no one had tracked that.

[identity profile] lady-ganesh.livejournal.com 2009-01-17 05:00 am (UTC)(link)
I've played around with the kids' mythology and have never gotten anything I liked.