Post by Torrias on Sept 5, 2011 22:37:21 GMT -5
"I enjoy poetry, long walks on the beach, and poking dead things with a stick." (anon.)
I'm a Dungeons & Dragons geek who gets frustrated with the pointlessness, illogic, and baseless/arbitrary morality of pantheons in fantasy worlds, especially ones where "good" and "evil" are presented as equal forces. Tolkien's cosmology, in contrast, supports itself and is awesome. For some reason, no one in the D&D sphere seems to want to poke at the logic holes of secular fantasy morality with me...
I'm also a Christian writer who's now gone four years with hardly a glimpse of her muse, after seven years of having "writing for my massive project" as another natural life function like breathing and eating and sleeping. I've been quite creatively active in that time, improvising setting, story, and character in running an ongoing, text-based role-playing game and also working on new or revised fantasy settings for that game, but when I've tried to actually write creative prose, nothing has come. I hope to eventually turn our ongoing game to my own setting (from my novels-to-be), and thus work on my world, at least, from the inside out. Maybe it will fill in some locales and history for me ("Ok, three days later we arrive in...just a sec, let me come up with a name and major export...") and spur more writing.
I'm married to a man with the charm of a bard, mind of a rogue, and heart of a paladin, and every one of the past ten years with him has been better than the year before. I never believed someone like him could exist until he plopped himself down beside me and asked what I was thinking and honestly, intently wanted to hear. No way could I have watched that unicorn walk away. We met on a mission trip in Russia, and we've traveled to and lived in several states (at home in the US) together since then; we only wish we could travel more leisurely and get paid for it, lol.
And just because it's so cool that everyone should read it ;D, here's the poem from my signature in its entirety (Chesterton was a big influence on Tolkien and C.S. Lewis):
"The House of Christmas"
(G.K. Chesterton)
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost -- how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.
This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
