Ridley: So, for those of you who were knocking around here this time last year, you know we created a stop motion silhouette trailer for our book, Legend Unleashed.
Now I don’t know where the year has gone (it seems to have flown by on turbo wings), but we’re rolling up our sleeves and getting stuck into creating another video for book 2, which will be the sequel to Legend Unleashed. Hopefully this time around we’re a little older and wiser, and better able to not get accidentally stabbed by the Stanley knife, meaning we won’t repeat old mistakes, but we reserve the right to make new ones! So, as part of my “research” (read, procrastination) I decided to look up some of the latest (and some classics) of stop motion silhouettes and I said I’d share some of them here.
An absolute classic here from Lotte Reiniger, who was basically a founder of this style really. This was made in 1922, making something like this for that time, it must have blown away audiences. Look at the intricate, detailed work on the various ‘sets’ and characters, the fact he was able to easily portray a feather in a cap, or a sweeping dress in this medium is very impressive.
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This I like as it’s quite quirky. I loved the addition of the colours in the girl’s hair and dress, and the bell style with the design in the middle of the skirt is just lovely. Also, the transitions between the different scenes, say where she’s floating up to the guy in the hot air balloon, were really well done.
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The style in this is really different to anything I would have tried in the past, there’s way more colour in it for a start. I loved the changing background of the different newspapers, it does have me wondering how it was done as that was impressive, and the moon rising up was beautiful!
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Another very different style, but still really pretty and some fantastic skilled work gone into its creation. Plus I quite like the song!
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Here’s a music video, I think it was stop motion, though it looks so perfectly done, I’m sure there was some computer polishing at some point. The vibrant colours in this are just fantastic in it though, wish I could make something like this. Reach for the stars, eh? 🙂
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Now technically this one doesn’t count, as it’s all done on computer and there’s not actually any stop motion involved, just the silhouettes, but it’s so beautifully done I just had to include it!
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Lastly, here’s one of my favourite silhouette illustrators, Jan Pienkowski, his art is just so amazing.
I really adore them. They are also the means through which I’ve developed, rightly or wrongly, my view of Japanese, and to some degree Korean, culture!
I’m a fangirl, so I love shoujo – the girly manga! I love the ones set in schools; the drama between the school president and the yankee, or the shy girl and the cool guy.
In Korean ‘shoujo’ manhwa there’s always (ALWAYS) a jjang (leader of the gang), in the story. Sometimes it’s the girl, and sometimes it’s the boy. So again, I know I’m misguided, but I just assume in every Korean high-school there are warring factions of gangs, and everyone can fight and kick-ass! And everyone is angry… so angry!
I wouldn’t be able to hide my disappointment if I turned up (very randomly) at a Korean high-school and I wasn’t caught in a show-down between two rival gangs from opposing schools. Even though I don’t speak the language, I’d know… I’d just know what was going on. I’d know the first jjang had kissed the other jjang’s sister, or belittled her… and I’d stand there fists waving in the air screaming.
“Oh it’s on! FIGHTING”
Then if I ended up at a Japanese high-school, I’d be looking for the yankee (the bad boy, delinquent) and the bookish girl – or the tsundere (initially cold character who shows their good side in time – a staple of the shoujo!) school president and the silly, but kind-hearted girl… and I’d be chuckling to myself thinking; “Oh how is this going to turn out!”
It’s Yank-mee!! Nani TEME!!
Ah, manga (and manhwa), you really distort reality for me (but in a way that makes me so happy)! Reading them is a roller-coaster ride of emotions!
Pandora Hearts, confuses me, makes me gasp in awe, then confuses me again…
Naruto always makes me emotional – it’s the best manga for making you empathize with the baddies, because they were good once… or they have these tear-inducing back-stories…
Kamisama Hajimemashita makes my fangirl squee – such a lovely romance story!
Tomoe is a Kitsune (fox) demon – not a vampire (though it looks that way here!) …. Anyway, I’m off on Cloud Squee!
Anything by Minami Maki will make me laugh and wait desperately for the next chapter; her stories and artwork are sweet and cute and hilarious…
Then, recently (and as it’s a week for pets!), I came across this webcomic (they seem to be v.popular in Korean – at least to my untrained eye). It’s called My Young Cat and My Old Dog (by Cho) and it is… wonderful…
If you have a pet, it will make you cry.
At times the issue/episode/chapter is about the young playful pet and all the silly things they do. Then at times it’s about the old pet, who isn’t quite as fast as they used to be, or sleeps more than they used to. It’s those one’s that grab your heart and squeeze the feels out, leaving you gasping and in tears (I am an emotional being!).
I have an old, old dog, and those episodes make me pause and think of him 😦
Well, but there’s lots of joy to be had in the series too, things that make you remember how wonderful your pet is. How selfless and how they love you unconditionally; they love you for you, no other reason and we love them too..
Ah, manga and manhwa, you give me so many different feelings – and I love you for it 🙂
Latimer: As a nineties kid, I always felt like we had the best cartoons – all the Marvel cartoons, Gargoyles, Animals of Farthing Wood, Mummy’s Alive, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Batman… the list goes on!
Those cartoons had proper, involved story-lines.
But somewhere in the late nineties cartoons got fixed on this one episode, one story, structure, that I never liked. I always missed the ‘larger picture’, the big story arcs.
Then, around this time, I more or less stopped watching cartoons – so they remained, in my mind, fixed in that ‘one episode, one unconnected story’ structure.
In slightly later life, I swapped Western cartoons for Eastern ones. This would be around the time my obsession with anime kicked in. In anime, big story-lines never went out of style!!
I noticed early in the naughties Western cartoons started to taken on this East-meets-West style; an almost ‘anime but not quite, style’. I think it was due to the popularity of anime at the time.
That was probably what brought me slightly back to Western cartoons.
I think out of all those new ‘East-meets-West’ cartoon series, Avatar, has got to be one of the best.
Forget that terrible movie version. The cartoon is where it’s at!
Avatar is a great show. I was late to the game – I haven’t seen all of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but am a pretty big follower of Avatar: Legend of Korra.
I love the style, music and feel of Avatar… It’s a well-thought out story-line, with interesting characters, with interesting ethnic backgrounds. Basically the story is focused on a world where people have the power of controlling (bending) elements; water, fire, earth and air. The avatar is the one person in the world that can do all four and is sort of the, near as I can tell, spiritual and bending guide of the people. A big figure-head basically.
When the avatar dies, the next avatar is born and so on….
So, when the new Avatar Korra takes centre-stage, you know that the previous Avatar, Aang, is dead.
Which is pretty sad actually, given that the last time we see him is as this chipper 12 year old kid who saved the world. We don’t really get time to grieve over that, we just have to accept it, which is… yeah kind of rough!
But there’s lots of cool, funny characters in Legend of Korra too (and Korra is a very strong female lead, so that’s pretty cool!)
My favourite characters are Bolin and his little red panda Pabu – Bolin is just brilliant…
Okay, so maybe the best cartoons didn’t end with the 90s, maybe there are lots more to come! 🙂
Latimer: Lately I’ve been trying to get my ‘reading groove’ back on. Yup, it was gone for a while.
For me, the serious ‘groove’ comes on a little randomly – the urge to read more and more and MORE books!
My problem is, I buy too many books, then don’t get around to reading them. I have a serious backlog of books.
There are more…. there’s always more; like Highlander
Like you would not believe – and yes, I have since ordered more! I don’t learn, but I have decided that I will stop buying and clear the backlog in the lead up to Christmas.
(she says, but this turned up on her doorstep today!)
His name is Clod Iremonger, and he is an Iremonger… HOW CAN I NOT READ THIS? I’m so intrigued…. I have a problem!
Ridley, I know, has a similar reading backlog, which I aim to make worse for her, because I have a bag of seven books for her (that she must read)! Ha 🙂
Now though, I am accountable, because I’ve put this in writing – ‘I will clear my reading backlog!’ – I will succeed! If you have a backlog, join me in my crusade of reading-before-buying-more! How is this going to end for me? Not well I don’t think.
But seriously, I have started to make an… effort.
Like I finally finished Qi: The Book of the Dead by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson (and it was brilliant)
and I’m going to finish Bill Bryson’s At Home, which I have been reading on and off again for too long! (Bill Bryson’s books are fantastic really, but take forever to read!)
I vow to finish this one before the end of October (oh, what have I done!).
When I finished The Book of the Dead a dam broke inside me and I felt inspired to get out and read all my poor abandoned books, because they’re all full of interesting things 🙂
The Book of the Dead is a book filled with brief stories about lots of different people, people you know like Thomas Edison and Casanova, to people you don’t like, Moll Cutpurse, a bear-baiting cross-dressing pickpocket and James Barry, a famous doctor in the early 1800s, who gave Florence Nightingale the worst dressing-down of her life, and … oh yea and he was actually a woman (though no one found out until she died!).
It has to be one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a while.
I got emotionally caught up in peoples stories; like Nikola Tesla.
He invented the radio (although Marconi was awarded the honour and won a Nobel Prize for it).
Tesla was known as the ‘Father of the 20th Century’ and the master of electricity (more so than Edison). He was inventing things that were light-years ahead of his time; he even foresaw/wanted to make the internet – the man was a genius.
And he died in debt with no money, living with crippling OCD, though he should have been a millionaire.
But I came to realise that for some people, it isn’t about what their knowledge can give them, what monetary rewards, some people are just driven to answer questions and solve problems, because that’s where they get their joy.
Tesla’s business partner George Westinghouse was in financial ruin after a stock market crash, so Tesla dissolved the contract between them that was costing Westinghouse so much. He said;
‘You have been my friend, you believed in me when others had no faith; you were brave enough to go ahead… when others lacked courage; you supported me when even your own engineers lacked vision… you have stood by me as a friend… Here is your contract, and here is my contract. I will tear both of them to pieces, and you will no longer have any troubles from my royalties. Is that sufficient?’
It’s pretty special, and wonderful, that a person, who stood to gain 12 million dollars from those royalties, which would have made him one of the richest men in the world at that time, would do something so noble as to brush it all aside to help a friend.
Imagine that. It makes me feel pretty good about the world; we can be so good to one another sometimes.
The book also taught me that real genius is a rare and beautiful thing; and if you haven’t shown a spark by the age of 10, kiss the notion goodbye! Ha. Reading the stories, I’d have to pause and stare into the distance thinking; ‘yup, that ship’s sailed!’
Dr John Dee, one of Queen Elizabeth I’s most trusted advisors, would spend 18 hours studying everyday; 4 hours sleeping and 2 hours were set aside for meals. I can’t do that!
He was the original 007 too. He used to sign his letters to the queen ‘007’; it was a symbol that meant he was the Queen’s eyes, or that the letter was for her eyes only.
That’s Dee, Mr Dee… Mystery? Ha.
Dee was known for his mysticism but actually he was a man of science too (though the word ‘science’ didn’t exist at the time and was essentially known as witchcraft). He used geometry to successfully map the globe and was the greatest book-collector of his day (with books on mathematics, earthquakes, dreams, women, Islam, games, botany, pharmacology and veterinary science, to name a few).
By the end of his life, plague had stolen almost all of his family away from him and he lived in desperate poverty (he fell out of favour with the Queen), with his daughter Katherine, having to sell his books one at a time so he could eat (he was 82 years old).
Now that really breaks my heart.
But the beautiful thing is, a girl who lived in the area described him as…
‘He was a great peacemaker; if any of the neighbours fell out, he would never let them alone till he had made them friends. A mighty good man he was.’
Again the survival of a few kind words about a good person, from a good person, it makes you feel pretty good again.
There’s something really up-lifting about this book. It does make you feel like you haven’t had much of an adventure yet, or you’re not very smart and never will be, but it also makes you feel like isn’t it great how many weird and wonderful people there have been in the world?
We’re silly and vain, stupid and clever, wacky and weird, and we always have been, and that’s pretty great 🙂
Ridley: I’m so behind!! Everyone has been facebooking, tweeting, blogging and talking about the end of Breaking Bad, and where am I? I’ve just started season 2, having stayed put at around episode 5 in season 1 for weeks and weeks. It’s not like I didn’t know it was good, it’s been recommended to me over and over by various people since around season two/three, but I was watching other programmes like Orange is the New Black and House of Cards. Now I feel like I’ve missed out and it’s going to take me months to catch up, by that time even the hard core Breaking Bad people will have gotten over their withdrawal symptoms and found something else to obsess over. That something else will become big, then I’ll end up being behind in that too, with more sprinting to catch up, it’s like a never ending, vicious – rather pathetic, have I nothing else to worry about- circle!! Haha.
Usually, I love giving recommendations to my friends and family if I find something good to read or watch, but I’ve been perpetually disappointed the last few months when every single person I’ve spoken to has either gone ‘I’ve seen that’ or ‘oh yeah I heard about that’ (hear the escaping wind as Ridley deflates in disappointment). Damn you internet and your wise, Ridley stealing, recommendations. I don’t think I’ve been ahead of the posse in anything since I was 12, where I predicted sticker collecting and the Power Rangers were going to be big, low and behold they were. (Latimer has heard this story at least a dozen times)
Well, stickers were massive in my school anyway, I don’t know about nationwide or anything.
Oh and pogs, remember those? I knew people would love them, mainly cause I did, they were so much fun! Ah the 90s were great. I wonder where all my pogs are now…hmm…
There was a time (we all know this isn’t true but I’ve convinced myself otherwise) that I had my finger on the pulse of what was cool and up-and-coming. Now I’ve to go cap in hand to my younger brother and see if he’ll throw me a few recommendation crumbs before the masses catch on. When I ask him how he knows, he just shrugs, ‘sure everyone knows that’s a good show’. Fine, keep your mysterious sources.*jealous glare*
I’m just living in hope that one day my predicting skills return, so far I remain predictionless, and so behind my television watching! First world problems, eh? ;D
(also considering my last post was about reality television, I’m pretty sure people now think I’m like Jabba the Hutt vegetating on the couch watching endless episodes of Breaking Bad, Duck Dynasty, and all the rest…of course, you’d be right! Haha. No not really…)
I wouldn’t say I was a real gamer, because I know what it is to be obsessed about stuff and I didn’t qualify for this one!
I do have a bit of a history with gaming though.
We used to have an Amstrad in our house, when I was young. I say we, but that’s a lie, my big brother owned it and it got passed down to us young’ens over time.
It was a clunky, beautiful beast.
Games came on cassettes and you had to wait for it to ‘load’ whereby the title image would appear on the screen, one painful, pixelated line at a time.
Games took a very, very, long time to load. I remember we had a game called ‘Run the Gauntlet’ that was a series of different races; boats, cars and a final cross-country level – that was impossible to pass!
I always wondered what came after that, as the computer AI’s whizzed past my character… I would sigh, thinking, ‘I’ll never know’. And I never did. The joy of being denied content because you have no talent for gaming – that was my lot!
I used to beg my parents to buy me a console.
A Sega Mega Drive?
NO!
A Dreamcast (what happened to them!?)?
NO!
A Playstation –
No – look how are you not getting this by now? Stop asking!
Sometimes we would rent consoles from the video shop (I wonder do people do that at all anymore?) – it was about 10 pounds (back before the euro!) a night, and you’d get a game. Usually the console was a Sega. And it would be the best night ever and I’d wake up early the next day to get all the enjoyment I could before the console was pried away from me, never to be touched by my crappy, but loving, gaming hands again.
My brother somehow managed to wrangle a Gameboy out of my parents one year.
That was brilliant… that’s when I met Kirby, in Kirby’s Dream Land. Oh what a game! The premise – you are Kirby, loveable vacuum-powered ball of joy, protecting his homeland from an evil dragon-creature.
Sssss… POW evil tree!
This was one of the few I cleared and I still take it as a badge of pride. Ridley has this honour too I believe!
We did have games for the PC though. That’s where I met Lara Croft and I decided I wanted to be an archaeologist – ah, yeah, I was easily swayed!
When my sister got a real job, she bought herself a Playstation and that was my first look into having a games console on demand. She bought Kingdom Hearts and to this day I will say that it’s my favourite game to play.
I’m a Keyblade Master!! I AM!!!!
Here’s the thing, the ending made me cry and the whole game made me love Disney again. Yup, that’s the power of Kingdom Hearts – I won’t have a bad word said about Sora and the boys (Donald Duck and Goofy)!
If I still had my young heart today, I would buy a console; a Playstation 3 or 4… or 5,000 – whatever it is now. But, truth is, being denied the content of a story because I couldn’t figure out the puzzle or beat the boss (which would be inevitable) would kill me. I remember telling Ridley once (as I was playing Kingdom Hearts 2) that I got a stabbing pain in my eye and had to lie down, because I couldn’t beat a boss (the one with the water guitar – ARGH!) – I got so frustrated I literately had to go lie down and sleep away the anger.
So I know that I couldn’t handle the stress.
That’s why today, I don’t play games. I’ve moved from recreational gamer, to avid games watcher. You see I love watching games trailers and game cutscenes.
That might seem weird, but computer games combine two of my loves, art and story-telling. Games are beautiful pieces of art and they’re getting smarter and bigger all the time – and this means the stories can get more complex and involved too. Games are like books; they draw you in.
Because I don’t play, I like watching people like Pewdiepie playing for me – because it’s fun to have the shock moments during the game and Pewds is fun!
The new games today are amazing feats of world-building.
Bioshock Infinite had this massively involved story set in this epic world. It was a stunning place – a city in the clouds.
My ultimate favourite game to watch though is the Uncharted series! Oh how brilliant are they! It’s basically modern-day Indiana Jones treasure hunting.
Damn it’s hot out in the desert…
Uncharted 2 is a major reason for me wanting to go visit Nepal! I want to stand on a mountain surrounded by temples and prayer-wheels and flags… one day…one day!
I often wonder if there are other people out there who love to watch games as much as I do – other games watchers.
We should come up with a name for ourselves – unless it exists already, in which case… what are we? 🙂
Latimer: Recently I’ve been taking a lot of notice of street art. To the point where, as I walk down the street and come face-to-face with an empty wall, I start to daydream about what maybe I could put there…
I imagine images weaving across the concrete. And I start to think, leaning back and getting some perspective on the wall – ‘That would be fun!’
My daydream then takes me to the street at night-time, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag of spray-paint cans. I’m going to unfold my masterpiece image. I’m going to fix it to the wall, by climbing a steep rickety old ladder that stretches up six floors to the roof. And I’m not afraid to do it (this would never happen, I’d be crying if I had to climb a ladder).
I spray-paint the stencil. I scramble down the ladder and race across the road.
Girl in an egg, Barcelona
No police catch me.
I admire my mural, and then, I fade into the darkness like a thief in the night. A wispy shadowy creature of the witching hour; in the morning people will pass the image, wondering – who did that? How’d they do that? And I’ll pass by, smile a secret smile, and walk on.
Then my daydream ends with the harsh whack from the reality stick. I don’t go down that street at night-time, because it’s too dark and could be full of people baying for my blood; like gangs of New York.
I don’t dress in all black, because if I remember correctly I don’t have a black hat and I threw out those black jeans the other day. Where would I find the stencil? That’s a big wall, the perspective would be too much; I mean drawing on an A3 page is the most I’ve ever done. And I’ve never made a stencil…
No. I’d get caught! Definitely; if anyone would I would. The police would catch me. I’d get in trouble.
It’s too risky!!
Where do you get the spray paint anyway… is it expensive… etc. etc.
Yup, the dream fades pretty fast.
So, I’m left as a voyeur on the street art of others. I like the secret pictures and I like the mysterious people that flit in the night, spicing up the streets with quirky images. Their work waves at me as I pass the streets, from time-to-time, and I smile thinking, “Well, hello there piece of art!” Like it’s a secret discovery, belonging to just me and the street.
After you see one, as with all things, a door opens and suddenly they’re everywhere. It used to be a Dublin thing, now it’s a world thing. The images from people I’ll never know, waving across countries at me, a little Latimer they’ll never know.
Here are some I found in Barcelona.
Keep an eye out on whatever streets you’re walking! There are cool secret artists out there! Thank you for sharing your art!
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I’m not sure who the artists are, so if anyone knows, drop us a message and we’ll tag the photos etc!
Latimer: For as long as I can remember, I wanted to go to Hampton Court.
But, I kept forgetting/never knew, what it was called, so I’d get really frustrated trying to explain to people where it was I wanted to go.
“I’d love to go to Henry VIII’s Palace… you know with the,” cue my distant expression, “with the red-brick gatehouse.”
I would stare expectantly at the person and they would stare back rightly confused. I would get frustrated, thinking everyone should know what I meant and give me the name of said building (so I could forever remember it and not look like a fool every time I said I wanted to visit it!).
This has been the way it’s been for me for years. But finally I realised it was Hampton Court I wanted to visit.
It’s in London, so when Ridley and I went there, I just had to go!
Hampton Court is epic and after being stuck in a queue for every which-way-thing in London, it was surprisingly low on visitors, which probably made the experience all the better. We had an ice-cream on the lawn, enjoyed the sun and stared in wonderment at the gorgeousness that is the Court.
While there, Ridley got real bohemian. She headed over to a tree, sat down, pulled out a notebook and pen, and with a big smile said –
“Let’s do book-work!”
I shuffled over to the tree, thinking this was a very quaint idea; we’d be like Jane Austen or something. A minute later I leaped up. “There’re ants crawling all over the tree! I hate nature -!”
Ridley jumped up, screaming, her dream of book-work in the park destroyed by nature. Deflated we gave up and headed into the Palace, letting the magic of Hampton Court wash over us.
If anyone watches/reads Game of Thrones, Robert Baratheon reminds me of Henry VIII. I think that might be intentional – George R. R. Martin draws from history right? Well, the banquet hall has Baratheon stamped all over it – it’s so cool!
In my head I was saying, ‘ours is the fury’! over and over again, until I annoyed myself!
Ours is the Fury!… or something.. ha!
Apparently the tapestries that hang in the hall are made of gold and silver thread.
Rich people back then got tapestries as a show of wealth, because of the cost involved in making them and the materials used. Henry VIII amassed tapestries like celebrities today buy diamond encrusted iPhones and fancy cars. Tapestries were the flash accessory of the day, and Henry VIII had the largest collection. The tapestries aren’t as bright now as they were in his day, but they are still impressive!
Throughout our holiday we were asking each other the question of – ‘what would you do if you fell back in time?’ Our hypothesis started out with the notion that we’d be gods! We’d know everything.
But, Dara O’Briain sums up the truth of what would happen…
Ridley struggled to read the tiny script writing on a massive charter in Hampton Court. Waving her hand she moaned; “And I wouldn’t even be able to read!”
Even if we could read it wouldn’t be written in the same English as it is today – we would probably not even understand what people were saying to us. That old adage by Wittgenstein that; “If a lion could talk, we would not understand him,” because his frame of reference would be so different to ours.
So, the portal that opens sucking me and Ridley into the past becomes more and more dangerous! I think our science backgrounds would also lead to us being burnt as witches!
We did conclude, on our travels, that it would not be good to get sucked back in time and end up in Edinburgh. It was hit by ‘plague’ (we never learned which plague) 11 times. We also would not have survived the closes, with people tossing buckets of waste down the narrow streets… or having to drink beer because the water was so dangerously full of bacteria (from the waste flowing down into the lake and therefore the drinking water).
Walking around the Court is almost like walking through time (the safer version of it). You half expect to turn a corner and see a man in tights, a grey curly wig, heels and a fancy velvet jacket…
Funnily enough, that did actually happen at one point. He was sitting talking to a 1700’s era woman.
We (the tourists) all walked past them, listening in on the conversation, confused as to whether they were in-character or not and nobody talking to them to find out.
We all kept a safe distance; blinking and straining inward to listen to them, but glancing to each other and giving a nervous laugh, like we were all thinking, ‘is this a mass hallucination?! Can you see them too?!’
We left the palace, happier for having been there! If you’re in need of an oasis of calm in London, head to Court!
We just want to thank Laura over at Colorimetry and Tressa at Tressa’s Wishful Endings for letting us take part in their Read-a-thon! Get on over there and check these ladies out, that have some fantastic posts up!
We also have a four ebook giveaway for Legend Unleashed and an interview on Colorimetry, pop on over and say hi to Laura and enter the rafflecopter to win one of them!
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A book addict, are you one? We know we are!!
Everyone gets swept away by something, a novel, a movie, a person. Your imagination and your emotions are ensnared. Your heart is like a jack-hammer in your chest and your thoughts whizz by barely half-formed.
For us, it’s always been a series of books that affects us like this, though the occasional box set of a television series or Asian drama has seized us in the same way. You know that feeling when you become so immersed in this pretend new world, that if you’re jerked back into your own reality, you resent it? It’s just a fantastic feeling, isn’t it? To find something that you can become so captivated by it, that you forget you’re not actually out on the briny sea or or staring deeply into the leading man’s eyes.
Nothing else really matters; when dinner is on the table, you don’t want to stop reading to eat it, when your eyes begin to droop, you brand them traitors. You just wish you could just read faster, to find out what happens next, to know if the heroine lives or dies, if the couple end up kissing or if the bad guy wins. But there are also those other, conflicting feelings. You want to know how it ends, but you also want it to last forever, you want to slow down too. You panic a little now that the fatter part of the book is in your left hand. There are always stalling tactics, of course, like popping into the kitchen to go get a cup of tea. It’s a quick break to try to persuade yourself that you should make your book last. You finally convince yourself while you wait for the kettle to boil, that you should put the book down and leave it until tomorrow to finish but then you begin to wonder…what will happen, will our heroine make it out alive? What will he say to her now she’s said she loves him? All of this of course nibbles at your resolve and it only means the minute you’re back with your book, the steaming drink is abandoned. That little smile returns as you remove your bookmark and you continue to plough through it like a person possessed.
Reading or watching a brilliant fantastic series for us is like you’re riding high, you’re swept away on the crest of a wave until eventually you’re carried to the end of your journey. Sometimes it a gentle landing onto a soft beach, other times you’re slammed into sharpest of rocks and you tumble to a halt.
It’s amazing the feelings a good book can provoke. Both the highs and lows.
There is always a big slump, almost like a small bout of depression, after a really excellent series is finished. It generally only happens with a series, rather than stand-alone novels, because you’ve been with the world and the characters for long enough that in a way you’ve ‘bonded’ with them. This slump comes from the knowledge that you have to leave them now and that you won’t get to be that engrossed again for some time. You’re always left with question of whether you’ll find another ‘hit’. You begin to doubt that there really could be another series available as good or better that this one.
Sometimes this lull doesn’t last long. Other times you spend a day or two thinking about the book. It’s the rare few that will have you in a funk for longer (and they’re the depressing books, the ones that end in great tragedy). Though we all know the big hitters, where you’re dying for the next sequel. Their affects can last weeks, and weeks. 😀
Does anyone else find this happens to them? Or is it just us, do we become too emotionally involved in characters, that we can’t break away for ages afterwards?
It has to be said, though, the pen (or keyboard now?) with a good writer behind it really can be mightier than a sword.
Ridley: So, for those of you who were knocking around here this time last year, you know we created a stop motion silhouette trailer for our book, Legend Unleashed.
Carwicky 