Hey, "The Dark Is Rising" fans!

[justira]

You remember that great series of books? Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark Is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King; and Silver on the Tree?

What? You don't?! Shame on you! Run your butt down to the library and read it, or buy the paperback boxed set of all five books for a super cheap $17. It's worth every penny of your money and every second of your time. They're fantastic books.

Done reading them/have read them? GOOD. Listen up! The ever-wonderful twilightsrain, comm-creating wonder and fandom mommy extraordinaire, has created a wonderful community for The Dark Is Rising fans:

light_at_last

Art, fic, and any other kind of media are welcome, as is meta-riffic dicussion!

In addition, there is currently a fandom-wide fanwork-a-thon in progress. Check it out!

Comments

[nalidolly.livejournal.com]

I LOVE THOSE BOOKS. My sixth grade teacher, though we were big and bad and ostensibly past this stage, took the time to read Over Sea, Under Stone aloud to us every day after recess. I was hooked.

[justira.livejournal.com]

That's cause the books are amazing. I'm pretty sure they're the books that got me started down the road to copious sci-fi/fantasy consumption. I read them in like... fourth of fifth grade, or something, and I'm so glad I did. Gave me a head start on wading through all the awesome available in the sci-fi/fantasy genres. (I still can't believe how many people just dismiss both out of hand!)

Possibly also started my love for learning languages, as immediately after finishing The Grey King I resolved to learn Welsh XD

Seeing as I was all of 11 or so I only got so far as simple phrases then, but I've been enjoying learning languages since then =D

[tairako.livejournal.com]

I am dreading, DREADING, the movie. It's... it's just looking like no. Those books were, and are, so important to me - I learned the verses by heart and recited them to myself to get through one of the most difficult periods of my life, over ten years ago. I love them, love them, LOVE THEM, and it looks like the movie is going to change a lot.

*wails*

[justira.livejournal.com]

I'm not really looking forward to the movie either. Not many book adaptations these days are very good -- most try to ride on the reputation and quality of the book(s) they're based on instead of honestly trying to create an extension of the same story in a different medium for the enjoyment of fans old and new. About the only upside to adaptations these days is the chance to see some of your favourite moments realized. However, I tend to dislike book-to-movie adaptations in general, even if they're pretty good, just because reading is such a personal thing -- you're free to imagine the appearance, voices, mannerisms of the characters, and no matter who they cast, it won't match your mental image. It might be unreasonable, but I still don't like it.

That said, though, this movie in particular doesn't sound good at all. I might be willing to give it a chance, but judging by how things look so far... =(

In other news, though, you and your writerly self should totally head over to light_at_last >.>

[tairako.livejournal.com]

See lately, fantasy adaptations have been well done. There's Lord of the Rings, of course - fantastically realized, lovingly done, by tons of people who were fans of the original work and wanted to do it justice. Then there's Narnia, which I was indeed skeptical of, and definitely adore after seeing it. Another that was well-done, well-imaged, and captured the tone of the work and world wonderfully.

But from the small amount of material that's out about this movie, no, it doesn't look good or faithful. Also, I don't like who they cast as Merriman - the man might be a phenominal actor, but he doesn't look like the Merriman described in the books, at all. Major downside.

Heh, this one I'm gonna leave alone. I have some things I'm a fan of that I never want to get into fandom over - Harry Potter's one of them despite that Sybell Trelawny fic that's been sitting in my head for three years, and this is definitely another. It's just... too pure for me to sully with fandom, I guess.

[justira.livejournal.com]

Lord of the Rings WAS very lovingly done -- if you watch the extras on the DVDs it becomes really obvious how much everyone cared. I'm still a little miffed at them, though, for (a) warping Faramir's character (he was my favourite) and (b) somehow managing to do less well on all my favourite scenes (while doing bizarrely great with many I didn't care much about). Oh well. They still did a great job.

I missed out on Narnia, though. Never read it in school and haven't gotten around to it yet as an adult, though I'm told that if I read it for the first time at this age I might not like it. Willing to give it a go, but there's a looooot of other books on my list first.

And I understand about, I don't know. Um. The sanctity of certain canons. I'm not sure I could ever write much fic for TDIR, though I plan on drawing a little =)

[tairako.livejournal.com]

Me, I'm a Boromir fan XD Of course I fangirl over Sean Bean more than anyone, but I like the dynamics and contradictions involved in the character already. A good, noble man who wants to save his people and his home and ends up doing the wrong thing for the right reasons and then repenting - and getting absolutely murdered, but still. He's fascinating. I was never as big a fan of Faramir, for exactly the reasons Philippa Boyens describes in the extras on Two Towers - you've got this thing that takes over everyone, including an adorable, uncorruptable little hobbit, and all of a sudden this guy shows up going "No I am above it all!" You lose tension then, Faramir never has a journey as a character... Plus, you can explain something like that much better in a book. You just don't have the capability to do it on-screen in a way that makes it make sense, and I know I would have liked him even less if they'd tried it that way on film. As it is, I love him and David Wenham is also a sexy beast.

I'll forego the "How could you not have read those before?" question - at least the first one was required reading around here, so everyone knows it - and add a... conditional agreement. They are children's books, written in the fifties with the attitudes of that timeframe, so if you go into it just intending to enjoy the story and not think too much you'll definitely enjoy it more than if you try and analyze it every step of the way. Also, the Christian elements might come out and smack you in the face, but they're lovingly worked in and he actually didn't intend to involve them at first. First image he had was of a faun carrying packages walking through the snow by a lamppost, and everything grew out of trying to explain that. But yes, if you go into it not thinking about underlying themes or unintentional sexism or what have you, it's a fantastic story. You could even just watch the movie and get pretty much all the same info, and I don't say that about many things - they only changed a couple of things, added more to the beginning to explain the wartime bits for people who aren't familiar with it, and it all works very wonderfully.

See, I could look at (or draw, if I COULD draw) artwork for Dark is Rising, but not fic. I looked once, and it just felt... like I was betraying it somehow. It's just too close to me; not that my other fandoms aren't, but they're less sacred in a sense. So I won't be writing or reading anything, but I'd love to see your art XD

[justira.livejournal.com]

SEAN BEAN SEAN BEAN SEAN BEAN

... Ahem >.>

I liked Faramir in the books the most, though it was less for his nobility/incorruptibility and more for... hell, I don't know. I just liked him. Boromir and Aragorn were close behind, though, and in the movies Viggo Mortensen and Sean Bean won me over unconditionally. I'd adored Bean's work before, and he just brought out everything that made Boromir a fantastic character.

My objection to warping Faramir is mostly just fangirly foot-stomping -- I understand why they did it, I'm just, as I said, miffed. I still wish some of my favourite moments were more climactic, though -- particularly when Aragorn arrives in battle with the ship and the hosts of the dead. That was one of the few show-stoppers for me in the book (the story and worldbuilding are amazing, but I maintain that Tolkien's prose is not that great), but the movie version just didn't pull through for me. Of course, I had really high hopes; it's not really fair to complain about it much.

As for Narnia... XD

To answer the foregone question -- I spent most of my childhood outside the US (specifically, in Eastern Europe) and in general went through most of my preteen years wholly ignorant of the vast majority of American and English culture (especially pop culture, thank god). In other words, I simply ain't from around here. Would you believe I hadn't read Lord of the Rings either until I was nearly through high school? XD

Well, I'm perfectly capable of enjoying something without overanalyzing it, so if the storytelling is good, I'm likely to like it. I guess I'm a bit of a purist, though, and prefer to try the original medium first and then adaptations second, so I'll probably go ahead and read the books first. Thanks for explaining, though.

Again, I hear ya on the TDIR fanworks business. I crosspost most things I draw, so if you want to see, you'll probably find everything here -- though I might encourage you to watch that comm to help it grow =)