Home » Sighted Elsewhere (Page 8)
Category Archives: Sighted Elsewhere
So Apparently They Spotted a Bigfoot in North Carolina
Have no fear, though. The guy says his Yorkie protected him.
Colin Farrell and Fantastic Beasts
Via Entertainment Weekly:
Colin Farrell is the latest Muggle to join the cast of the upcoming Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, EW has confirmed.
The actor, currently starring in the second season of HBO’s True Detective, will join Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller, and Alison Sudol. According to the original report by The Hollywood Reporter, Farrell will play a wizard who encounters Newt Scamander (Redmayne) during his journey to study magical creatures in America.
The film, which is currently slated for a December 2016 release, will also boast a cadre of Harry Potter alums behind the camera, including director David Yates, producer David Heyman, and first-time screenwriter J.K. Rowling.
I’d still love to see some authentic North American fantastic beasts when this movie finally comes out. We’ll just have to wait and see…
New Lizard Man Sighting
From Bishopville, South Carolina:
The fabled Bishopville swamp creature known as Lizard Man appears to have surfaced again Sunday afternoon.
Sarah, a Sumter woman who says she went to church with a friend Sunday morning, stepped out of the sanctuary to see the Lizard Man running along the tree line.
So she did what anyone else would do — took a picture with her phone.
“My hand to God, I am not making this up,” she wrote in an email to the ABC News 4 newsroom. “So excited!”
She says they were just a mile or so from Scape Ore Swamp, the site of a similar spotting of what may also be the Lizard Man in May.
A man who asked not to be identified submitted a short video of what he thought was the Lizard Man Monday morning. He said he took the video in May while coon hunting but kept its existence quiet — until he saw the reports of Lizard Man outside a church.
Which leads me to wonder, is the Lizard Man a Baptist or a Methodist?
Happy Birthday J. K. Rowling (and Harry Potter)!
If you’re into that sort of thing, you might want to check out mental_floss’s 35 Harry Potter Facts for Harry Potter’s 35th Birthday.
Kassan Warrad: Defining Human
Kassan Warrad’s latest post at Mythic Scribes seeks to ground fantasy races (orcs, elves, etc.) in real-world evolutionary framework. This is ground I covered in fleshing out the various groups depicted in Into the Wonder—and for the same reasons Kassan suggests. Namely, to achieve a greater level of lifelikeness:
A systematic approach to defining your races will help shape the underpinnings of your world. How are the races related to one another? Do they share a common ancestor? Can they interbreed and produce viable, fertile offspring?
These questions help define your races’ distinct sociopolitical boundaries. The world will feel more authentic, and many readers will appreciate the invested thought.
At the bottom of all of this is the issue of relatability. Do members of these groups have the same sorts of goals, aspirations, and emotions as the readers (who are all, at least in theory, human)?
The question of who counts as human is a theme underlying my third novel, Oak, Ash, and Thorn, which will be coming in February 2016.
Ten Commandments for Epic Fantasy Writing
If you’re a budding Epic Fantasy author, you’ve likely read quite a lot of advice about how your novel should start. Having read thousands of submissions and more than my fair share of published novels, I’d like to share with you ten openings that should be avoided. So here, in my opinion, is how not to do it…
-
Make sure you get all that pesky world-building out of the way up front. How can I ever enjoy your story unless I know everything about the world? What is that clasp on the archer’s tunic made from? Where and when did she get it and how much did it cost? If you want you can put all this in a lengthy prologue, but we need to know this stuff.
-
Is it raining? Describing the weather is such an dynamic way to start your novel. Nothing says ‘Epic Fantasy’ like a light breeze. We need a least three pages before we can even think about those characters.
-
The Family History. An extension of 1) really. Ok, so this guy is running for his life. But when was his grandmother born? Quick, I can’t possibly invest in this until you’re told me. That leads us to…
-
Introduce all of your characters straightaway. Fortunately readers all have photographic memories, so cram in as many names as you can in the first few pages. Better still, give them names that are impossible to pronounce like Horguur’thzogh and Ek’mazikav’tx so they will really stick in the mind.
-
Describe absolutely everything. ‘She deftly flicked the thin strand of her glossy raven hair from her cold green eyes and purposefully and steadily raised the bow of ancient, dark yew and meticulously…’ Whassat? Sorry, I think I nodded off for a second there.
-
And it was all a dream. A great way to make your world seem tedious to put a vivid dream right up front and get the reader to invest in it. Then wake your protagonist up, and you can rub it in the readers’ faces that it was all pretend and simultaneously make the ‘real’ world seem really boring. Result.
-
Waking up. Or you can skip the dream and just open with someone waking up. Every day starts with someone getting up, so why not every novel? Then they can have breakfast, which is one of the mainstays of Epic Fantasy.
-
Try hiding your info dump in dialogue. ‘My brother Rak, you know how our father, the Emperor, sent us on this quest six moons ago? Well, as we heard those outlanders – our sworn enemies – near our camp last night, if your twisted ankle is up to it, perhaps it is time to lay down the swords that once belonged to our grandfather – a famous hero of his time – and take the long road home through the mountains.’ Smooth, huh? This works well with internal monologues, too.
-
Use plenty of metaphors. Although you’re writing a Fantasy novel and everything is up for grabs in the first chapter, don’t be afraid of using metaphors from the off. Of course the beast isn’t literally a hundred feet tall or the protagonist really has eyes that shine like blue fire on a dark night. It’s obvious. Your readers are smart; they’ll figure it out eventually.
-
The epic battle. They say you should open with a bang, so why not a twenty-page action sequence? Who cares that we don’t know who anyone is, aren’t bothered if they live or die, where they are, or what’s at stake! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Are The “Real” Mines of Moria in France?
In 1916, a 24-year-old British soldier named J.R.R. Tolkien went off to fight in World War I. He was stationed near the village of Bouzincourt, took part in the nearby Battle of the Somme and writes about the area in his diaries.
Jeff Gusky, an explorer and photographer who maintains a site called “The Hidden World of World War I,” believes Tolkien may have visited Bouzincourt’s caves, places where hundreds of soldiers took refuge during the Somme — and that some of his impressions ended up in “The Lord of the Rings.”
Others aren’t so sure. At any rate, no one questions Tolkien’s experiences as a soldier during World War I had an influence on The Lord of the Rings. He once wrote in a letter that “The Dead marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme.”
If It Lived in the American South, It Never Would Have Survived This Long
Via Sky News:
The Loch Ness monster is most likely a large catfish, according to an expert who has spent 24 years searching for Nessie.
Steve Feltham, 52, gave up his home, his job and his girlfriend to move nearer the Scottish loch in pursuit of the legend.
Speaking to Sky News, Mr Feltham did not claim he had solved the mystery of Nessie.
But he said: “Looking at all the evidence, speaking to eyewitnesses, the most likely solution is a Wels catfish.”
The fish can grow up to four metres (13ft) long and weigh over 400kg (880lb).
Shellycoats
Ruth at Celtic Myth Podshow is blogging today about shellycoats, a generally harmless if perplexing creature from Scottish folklore.
THIS is a freakish spirit, who delights rather to perplex and frighten mankind than either to serve or seriously to hurt them.
Shellycoat, a spirit who resides in the waters, and has given his name to many a rock and stone the Scottish coast, belongs to the class of bogles.
When he appeared, he seemed to be decked with marine productions, and in particular with shells, whose clattering announced his approach.
The Wild Hunt, British Style
This post by Sigurd Towrie on the Wild Hunt legends of the Orkney Islands is a great follow up to Dan McCoy’s explanation I linked to about a year and a half ago. While McCoy focuses more on Norse folklore, Towrie leans more heavily on British/Celtic tellings of the legend:
But traditions of a Wild Hunt also existed in areas away from Norse influence.
In Wales, for example, the leader of the Hunt was Gwynn ap Nudd. The “Lord of the Dead”, Gwynn ap Nudd was followed by his pack of white hounds with blood-red ears.
These red-eared hounds are also found in northern England, where they were known as Gabriel Hounds. Their appearance was also a portent of doom.
In southern England, it was Herne the Hunter who led the hunt, while elsewhere it is also referred to as “Herlathing” – from the mythical King Herla, its supposed leader.
According to the 12th century write, Walter Map:
“This household of Herlethingus was last seen in the marches of Wales and Hereford in the first year of the reign of Henry II, about noonday: they travelled as we do, with carts and sumpter horses, pack-saddles and panniers, hawks and hounds, and a concourse of men and women.
“Those who saw them first raised the whole country against them with horns and shouts, and . . . because they were unable to wring a word from them by addressing them, made ready to extort an answer with their weapons. They, however, rose up into the air and vanished on a sudden.”
Darrell J. Pursiful 