The Purple Wyrm

Check out the Scourge of Feathers fantasy serial fiction blog written by none other than M. Lori Motley.

Scourge of Feathers Fantasy Fiction Blog

Things are getting interesting in the forgotten kingdom of Barend. Captain Harlon spars with wife and magpie over his interest – purely professional! – of the new lady in town. The new lady in town reveals she is actually there to work. Work!

In the words of the immortal Vizzini, “Inconceivable!”

And now there’s an orc. A non-farming orc. An orc with a big-ass war hammer and a flamboyantly-dressed minder.

Scourge of Feathers is a comedic fantasy fiction blog with new chapters added weekly.
M. Lori Motley started this project to have fun, though she says she hopes people actually come to read the thing. Why? ‘Cause she thinks they’ll have fun reading it to. I’ve read some of the chapters. They are funny. I mean, not like I’m rolling around laughing my ass off or anything, but yeah… I laughed.

Ya see, Barend is this really screwy place. No one wants it, no one visits it… well, normally. And all of a sudden these people (and orcs) start showing up… screwing with the status quo, ya know? And there’s this self-appointed “King’s Own Guard,” who is really just some shmuck in a homemade uniform, who goes around trying to make money and avoiding trouble.

Lori’s got a good sense of humor. And it’s not that pffft-whoops-I-farted adolescent crap either. It’s actually funny in a dry sort of way.  Check it out.

This seems to be a serious trend in movies for kids. Fantasy movies I think they call them, though they aren’t that fantastic once you see them.

So, Melanie brings home this movie, “Spiderwick Chronicles,” which is a take-off on a book. I haven’t read the book. It’s hard to turn pages with huge, gleaming claws after all.

We watch this movie and then she turns to me and asks the question, “What did you think?”

What did I think?

I think they should stop making movies about bratty kids (my gosh, do any kids actually get along with their siblings? And what was with that Mom, blaming the youngest one for everything that went wrong? That’s what they call emotional abuse if I’m not mistaken.), magic books, and goblins. I have to admit though, that the goblins in this movie looked pretty realistic. A bit too much like frogs, but pretty good. The leader was ridiculous. No goblin is going to dress up like a wanna-be Jack Sparrow.

And it is true that hob-goblins like birds, though they didn’t get the nose quite right. And those sprites. They do swarm around like big white clouds like that too. In the summer, it gets so bad I have to let off some protective fire bursts just to see a foot in front of my face.

So, my vote is 3 stars out of 5. Decent story (though its been done 5.23 billion times already), pretty good portrayal of goblins, and the do-it-yourself magic-mushroom ring was cool.

I admit I’ve never read the books. I haven’t seen the movie. I have no desire to watch some emo teen throwing herself under the wheels of an unsuitable glittery vampire stud.

You should see my eyes rolling right now.

But hey, the teen girls seem to like it.

“Alice,” directed by czech Jan Svankmajer, a famous surrealist, is a version of the classic Alice in Wonderland story with some really bizarre modifications.

I’m a fan of surreal art, but some presumed deep meaning often eludes me. Were the thumbtacks in the jelly jar meaningful in some way? Were they some symbol of something? The sticky-sweet realm of childhood hides sharp unpleasantries ready to draw blood… or hang you up on the bulletin board of life until you age and yellow?

I don’t know. The movie was entertaining, sometimes disturbing (eek. the white rabbit’s tongue!) and occasionally boring (yes, I get that she is going down, down, down the rabbit hole already). One of the biggest issues I had with the movie was the recitation, complete with close-up of little Alice’s lips and teeth, of all the speech tags in the movie. My writerly self was aghast. “Said the white rabbit,” and “the white rabbit called,” and “Alice thought to herself.” (One thousand modern writers on internet message boards chorus, “Who else is she going to think to?”

The stop-motion animation was well-done: flying sock worms and a glut of bone animals creeping about. I like weird stuff, so the weird stuff was great. But I’m still left with some gnawing feeling … much like what the white rabbit must have been feeling as he shoveled sawdust between those awful teeth… that I didn’t ‘get it’… that I somehow missed what it was all about. Was it just weirdness on film? Was it just reality vs. fantasy in a child’s mindless boredom warring as it always does?