Got to my desk at the day job this morning to discover that my reaction post yesterday to recent Elfquest issues got linked to on Elfquest.com! And gosh, there are a lot of you coming in to check out what I had to say. Hi there, fellow fans!
If you’re wondering who the heck I am and what my background in Elfquest might be, I’ve got a long history of being in active EQ fandom. I was one of the administrators (a.k.a. “wizards”) of Two Moons MUSH, an online, real-time, Elfquest-themed RPG. On Two Moons, my primary character was Rillwhisper, chieftess of the Willowholt, and I also have a history of having played both Mender and Rayek there. I’ve still got a very large archive of roleplay logs from the days of Two Moons, and you can find them over on my other site, annathepiper.org, here. Look for the section on this page involving “Two Moons MUSH Logs”, since they’re all broken down by various characters I played and various tribes I participated in.
As a writer, I’ve also frequently posted about how Elfquest has been a huge formative influence on me. If you look at my homepage or the pages for Faerie Blood and Bone Walker, you may well be able to see EQ influences there. This is because EQ has been a huge influence on my concepts of what elves should look like. And when I commissioned the covers for those books from artist Kiri Moth, particularly the cover for Faerie Blood, I told her all about that. In particular, for the Faerie Blood cover, I told her, “Here is a picture of Leetah from Elfquest. Here is a picture of Rayek from Elfquest. I want you to make my character Kendis look like the child these two characters never actually had.”
Please feel free to say hi and tell me about your own history with Elfquest! And I hope you’ll stick around and check out my books!
So last night Dara said to me, “How caught up are you on Elfquest?”
Not very, I admitted, at which point Dara promptly urged me to get caught up. So I re-read issue #8 of The Final Quest on my iPad, just to refresh my memory of where I’d left off. Then I read issues #9 and #10, which were the next two I had queued up waiting in my Dark Horse app.
Then I went OMG, burned through reading #11, and went and grabbed #12 and #13 off of Dark Horse’s site just so I could read through the rest of what was available as fast as possible.
Because holy crap. This is the most engaged I’ve been with Elfquest in years. And all I can think now is how, if these plot points had happened during the heyday of Two Moons MUSH, the population of the game would have flipped its collective shit over what’s going down now on the world of Abode.
Who else is reading? Tell me about it in the comments! But beware: spoilers and I mean MAJOR SPOILERS behind the fold!
And while we’re on the topic of Ways Dark Horse Comics is Going to Command My Money in 2014, we’ve also got the joy of a brand new Elfquest story starting up!
Hold on a minute, Internets, while I stand back and savor the rhythm of the phrase “new Elfquest story”. Ahem! Where was I? Ah yes!
Now that we’ve got the prologue out of the way, now we’re getting down to business with the opening chapter of this new story. And what a chapter it is. For this longstanding fan’s eyes, the Donning-Starblaze era of Elfquest is still the most lovely–but that’s not to say that this art isn’t also beautiful, because it is. Wendy Pini has hit her happy place with doing her art digitally, and there are times now in this new area of her work when I feel she comes close to the amazing lushness of the Donning-Starblaze days. So make no mistake, this issue is a pleasure to look at. I bought mine digitally, but I’ll be buying this again once there’s a graphic novel to be had, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how this color palette renders in print.
As for the story itself, well. Most of the Wolfriders of Cutter’s branch of the tribe are beginning to feel like they’re losing track of the Way, and so we see them getting back to good old-fashioned basics with a rough-and-tumble hunt. But not everybody in the tribe is down with this plan, and the outlier certainly raised my eyebrows. Meanwhile, Ember’s branch of the Wolfriders faces a new human threat, one that makes Teir come face to face with the killer of his mother–Kahvi, the chieftess of the Go-Backs.
I’m still processing what I think about this so far, but I’m definitely intrigued, and am looking forward to the next installment! Let’s talk about the issue in the comments, y’all!
And while we’re on the topic of Ways Dark Horse Comics is Going to Command My Money in 2014, we’ve also got the joy of a brand new Elfquest story starting up!
Hold on a minute, Internets, while I stand back and savor the rhythm of the phrase “new Elfquest story”. Ahem! Where was I? Ah yes!
Now that we’ve got the prologue out of the way, now we’re getting down to business with the opening chapter of this new story. And what a chapter it is. For this longstanding fan’s eyes, the Donning-Starblaze era of Elfquest is still the most lovely–but that’s not to say that this art isn’t also beautiful, because it is. Wendy Pini has hit her happy place with doing her art digitally, and there are times now in this new area of her work when I feel she comes close to the amazing lushness of the Donning-Starblaze days. So make no mistake, this issue is a pleasure to look at. I bought mine digitally, but I’ll be buying this again once there’s a graphic novel to be had, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how this color palette renders in print.
As for the story itself, well. Most of the Wolfriders of Cutter’s branch of the tribe are beginning to feel like they’re losing track of the Way, and so we see them getting back to good old-fashioned basics with a rough-and-tumble hunt. But not everybody in the tribe is down with this plan, and the outlier certainly raised my eyebrows. Meanwhile, Ember’s branch of the Wolfriders faces a new human threat, one that makes Teir come face to face with the killer of his mother–Kahvi, the chieftess of the Go-Backs.
I’m still processing what I think about this so far, but I’m definitely intrigued, and am looking forward to the next installment! Let’s talk about the issue in the comments, y’all!
Wow, it feels pretty damned awesome to be able to use the words “new Elfquest” again for the first time in years.
Fellow Elfquest fans, if you haven’t grabbed the new release, you should do so pronto. It’s not just the bit of prologue that the Pinis ran via Boing Boing a while back; it’s the whole version of that story, including the part that ran on Boing Boing but also proceeding past that as well to give us the full prologue for the story to come.
We see quite the span of time covered as well. A newer character born not terribly long ago (in terms of the last few bits of stories released) grows up and earns her tribe name. A brand new character is born and we see her grow up a bit too. We get followup with a LOT of characters, elfin AND human. And some Shit Goes Down that ends things on a truly poignant note, and there are some lovely and tragic panels in particular towards the end of the story. And we see one of the most stalwart and unchanging couples in Cutter’s tribe get shaken up, in an unexpected and real interesting way.
I also note one particular REAL interesting development that, now that this has been established as canon, would have made roleplay on Two Moons a LOT more amusing. It absolutely reminds me of a thing that stickmaker did with a character of his, way back in the day even before I started MUSHing and was running an EQ game in Kentucky. Rod, if you’re reading this, you may well remember the thing I mean; just recall the fate of Ash.
The new release is available digitally from Dark Horse, and I scarfed it right off their web site here. The print copy may be already available in comic stores near you, but you can also order it here.
Read the story yet, tribesmates? Talk to me in the comments! (If you HAVEN’T read it yet, beware the spoilers!)
Wow, it feels pretty damned awesome to be able to use the words “new Elfquest” again for the first time in years.
Fellow Elfquest fans, if you haven’t grabbed the new release, you should do so pronto. It’s not just the bit of prologue that the Pinis ran via Boing Boing a while back; it’s the whole version of that story, including the part that ran on Boing Boing but also proceeding past that as well to give us the full prologue for the story to come.
We see quite the span of time covered as well. A newer character born not terribly long ago (in terms of the last few bits of stories released) grows up and earns her tribe name. A brand new character is born and we see her grow up a bit too. We get followup with a LOT of characters, elfin AND human. And some Shit Goes Down that ends things on a truly poignant note, and there are some lovely and tragic panels in particular towards the end of the story. And we see one of the most stalwart and unchanging couples in Cutter’s tribe get shaken up, in an unexpected and real interesting way.
I also note one particular REAL interesting development that, now that this has been established as canon, would have made roleplay on Two Moons a LOT more amusing. It absolutely reminds me of a thing that stickmaker did with a character of his, way back in the day even before I started MUSHing and was running an EQ game in Kentucky. Rod, if you’re reading this, you may well remember the thing I mean; just recall the fate of Ash.
The new release is available digitally from Dark Horse, and I scarfed it right off their web site here. The print copy may be already available in comic stores near you, but you can also order it here.
Read the story yet, tribesmates? Talk to me in the comments! (If you HAVEN’T read it yet, beware the spoilers!)
I squeed about this on the social networks yesterday, but for those of you who may have missed it, Richard and Wendy Pini released the news that Dark Horse is going to be picking up publishing Elfquest! They linked up to this story on Comics Beat that has pertinent details!
Dark Horse is going to re-publish older material as well as start putting out the new stuff as well–the prologue bit that was recently serialized on Boing Boing, AND the new actual main story, “The Final Quest”, once it starts in earnest! And there will be print and digital releases!
This news fills with me HAPPY. And soon my iPad will be filled with ELFQUEST.
Because yeah, I have all the previously released print material, but I’ll adore having it in digital form as well. I know it’s been available to read for free for ages on elfquest.com (which is AWESOME), but that depends upon having a live Internet connection. And I do love the idea of having omics to read right on my iPad!
Plus: DARK HORSE! Who’ve been the main place I’ve been buying comics from at all, what with their excellent Buffy season 8 and season 9 series, as well as the stories they’ve done for the Firefly universe. They should be an excellent home for Elfquest and I am looking very much forward to giving them more of my money. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my own treatment of elf characters can trace the majority of its lineage right back to the Wolfriders and the Sun Folk, and I am over the moon that Elfquest is coming back to us again.
I squeed about this on the social networks yesterday, but for those of you who may have missed it, Richard and Wendy Pini released the news that Dark Horse is going to be picking up publishing Elfquest! They linked up to this story on Comics Beat that has pertinent details!
Dark Horse is going to re-publish older material as well as start putting out the new stuff as well–the prologue bit that was recently serialized on Boing Boing, AND the new actual main story, “The Final Quest”, once it starts in earnest! And there will be print and digital releases!
This news fills with me HAPPY. And soon my iPad will be filled with ELFQUEST.
Because yeah, I have all the previously released print material, but I’ll adore having it in digital form as well. I know it’s been available to read for free for ages on elfquest.com (which is AWESOME), but that depends upon having a live Internet connection. And I do love the idea of having omics to read right on my iPad!
Plus: DARK HORSE! Who’ve been the main place I’ve been buying comics from at all, what with their excellent Buffy season 8 and season 9 series, as well as the stories they’ve done for the Firefly universe. They should be an excellent home for Elfquest and I am looking very much forward to giving them more of my money. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my own treatment of elf characters can trace the majority of its lineage right back to the Wolfriders and the Sun Folk, and I am over the moon that Elfquest is coming back to us again.
This past weekend, my household converged on Emerald City Comicon, along with a houseguest–a friend of mine who’d come all the way from Norway to visit us, and to attend the convention as well! (My poor friend came down with strep throat during his visit, but happily we got him treated beforehand, and liberal doses of antibiotics got him up to speed to be able to attend the convention. Otherwise there would have been SADNESS.)
Since this was my first Comicon of any kind, I didn’t really know what to expect. I’m not a huge comics reader and never have been, with the gigantic exception of Elfquest. I don’t do superhero comics for the most part, though I have a history of dabbling in X-Men from way back in middle school. These days, I am actually doing a little bit of digital comics reading, but I’ve been focusing that on the Buffy season 8 and season 9 releases from Dark Horse, as well as their Firefly and Serenity stuff. And, I’ve been amusing myself with a Star Trek run of stories adapting TOS-era plotlines to use in the continuity of the new movies. There ARE a small number of webcomics I follow as well–xkcd, Kevin and Kell, and a lovely little thing called Fox Sister.
Mostly, though… I don’t follow the big storylines from Marvel or DC. Which makes me a bit sad. I love me some superheros, but I’m hugely alienated by the ongoing sexism of the art and the storylines. So I relate a lot better to superheros as they’re depicted in excellent animation like the wonderful years-long continuity that included the Batman, Superman, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited cartoons. I’ve been consistently entertained by the Marvel movie adaptations, for the most part. And as y’all know, I adored the Avengers.
So when I went through the exhibition floor at the con and saw an endless stream of female characters depicted with enormous breasts and spines twisted in angles that NOBODY WOULD EVER POSE IN EVER, all for the sake of showing off their breasts and their bottoms… all I could think was ‘yeah, mostly? This is not art intended for me‘. I was particularly sad to see one big-breasted depiction of Phoenix from the X-Men, and another of Wonder Woman with a thong so tiny she was practically nude. In both cases, the characters were depicted with dewy-eyed ‘can has sexytimes now pls?’ expressions.
Definitely not art for me.
Happily, though, there were shining exceptions to this. One was, of course, Wendy and Richard Pini’s presence at the con. Elfquest is hands down one of the most formative influence on me as a writer ever. When I had Kiri Moth do the Faerie Blood cover, in fact, I pointed her at images of Leetah and Rayek from Elfquest and told her, “Kendis looks like the child these two characters never had.” But even aside from what my brain always insists elves should look like, the values of tolerance upheld by the lead elf characters all throughout the history of the series peal through my heart. And some of the strongest female characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading about have come straight out of the pages of this series.
(If you’re new to Elfquest, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s ALL available to be read for free on elfquest.com. GO! Go look at the pretty!)
Wendy and Richard did an excellent panel about the history of the series and what we can expect from it in the future, and I happily leapt on the opportunity to not only let my friend Yngvar buy me an Elfquest shirt at the con, but to also order two more from the site now selling them. I also ordered from the Pinis a special hardback edition of one of Wendy’s non-Elfquest works, her SF adaptation of Masque of the Red Death. This, hands down, was the highlight of the con for me.
Here’s the shirt that Yngvar got me! This is a reworked version of a design I used to have on a pale orange shirt, which had the caption “To Hunt, to Howl, to Live Free”, as I recall. Here it’s been redone to be a Comicon exclusive, and I do admit to a bit of fangirly squee to see that Wolfrider with the Space Needle in the background!
To Hunt, to Howl, to Live Free (in Seattle)
That said, though, I did also find one other set of graphic novels I want to read–a three-part series called Anne Steelyard, authored by the well-respected Barbara Hambly! This thing’s supposed to be set in an Indiana-Jones-esque timeframe, only the lead character is in fact a woman. Looking forward to diving into this, too.
And we bought pretty prints of art inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, and Doctor Who. And we saw lots of awfully nifty costumes–especially my and Dara’s friend Torrey, a master-class costumer now who’s won awards at Worldcon. We found her wandering the con in her Prince Zuko costume, again from Avatar: The Last Airbender. đ
I bought two other shirts as well–both of which were Han-Solo-themed. Just to show that there was merch at this thing Relevant to My Interests. ‘Cause seriously, this shirt? How could I NOT get this shirt?
The Most Scoundrelicious Shirt in the Universe
All in all I think I still found more to relate to at ECCC than I have to date at PAX–and I’d consider doing a one-day jaunt to future cons. People who are more in comics than I am should definitely go.
ETA: Oh, right, duh, I totally forgot to mention the other actual panel I attended–the Q&A with Jhonen Vasquez, best known for being the mind behind Invader Zim, another longstanding favorite of my household. Vasquez turned out to be younger than I expected, but also hysterical–a bit of an asshole, but in a funny kind of way. He winged it through most of his panel, given that a lot of what he wanted to talk about he could not in fact do so until a later panel that should have come first, due to scheduling mixups.
Vasquez is apparently a bit weary of mostly everybody knowing him for Zim and nothing else, and isn’t shy about letting people know that. It was, however, fun to hear him talk passionately about the console games he likes, as well as discussing some of his other work.
This past weekend, my household converged on Emerald City Comicon, along with a houseguest–a friend of mine who’d come all the way from Norway to visit us, and to attend the convention as well! (My poor friend came down with strep throat during his visit, but happily we got him treated beforehand, and liberal doses of antibiotics got him up to speed to be able to attend the convention. Otherwise there would have been SADNESS.)
Since this was my first Comicon of any kind, I didn’t really know what to expect. I’m not a huge comics reader and never have been, with the gigantic exception of Elfquest. I don’t do superhero comics for the most part, though I have a history of dabbling in X-Men from way back in middle school. These days, I am actually doing a little bit of digital comics reading, but I’ve been focusing that on the Buffy season 8 and season 9 releases from Dark Horse, as well as their Firefly and Serenity stuff. And, I’ve been amusing myself with a Star Trek run of stories adapting TOS-era plotlines to use in the continuity of the new movies. There ARE a small number of webcomics I follow as well–xkcd, Kevin and Kell, and a lovely little thing called Fox Sister.
Mostly, though… I don’t follow the big storylines from Marvel or DC. Which makes me a bit sad. I love me some superheros, but I’m hugely alienated by the ongoing sexism of the art and the storylines. So I relate a lot better to superheros as they’re depicted in excellent animation like the wonderful years-long continuity that included the Batman, Superman, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited cartoons. I’ve been consistently entertained by the Marvel movie adaptations, for the most part. And as y’all know, I adored the Avengers.
So when I went through the exhibition floor at the con and saw an endless stream of female characters depicted with enormous breasts and spines twisted in angles that NOBODY WOULD EVER POSE IN EVER, all for the sake of showing off their breasts and their bottoms… all I could think was ‘yeah, mostly? This is not art intended for me‘. I was particularly sad to see one big-breasted depiction of Phoenix from the X-Men, and another of Wonder Woman with a thong so tiny she was practically nude. In both cases, the characters were depicted with dewy-eyed ‘can has sexytimes now pls?’ expressions.
Definitely not art for me.
Happily, though, there were shining exceptions to this. One was, of course, Wendy and Richard Pini’s presence at the con. Elfquest is hands down one of the most formative influence on me as a writer ever. When I had Kiri Moth do the Faerie Blood cover, in fact, I pointed her at images of Leetah and Rayek from Elfquest and told her, “Kendis looks like the child these two characters never had.” But even aside from what my brain always insists elves should look like, the values of tolerance upheld by the lead elf characters all throughout the history of the series peal through my heart. And some of the strongest female characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading about have come straight out of the pages of this series.
(If you’re new to Elfquest, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s ALL available to be read for free on elfquest.com. GO! Go look at the pretty!)
Wendy and Richard did an excellent panel about the history of the series and what we can expect from it in the future, and I happily leapt on the opportunity to not only let my friend Yngvar buy me an Elfquest shirt at the con, but to also order two more from the site now selling them. I also ordered from the Pinis a special hardback edition of one of Wendy’s non-Elfquest works, her SF adaptation of Masque of the Red Death. This, hands down, was the highlight of the con for me.
Here’s the shirt that Yngvar got me! This is a reworked version of a design I used to have on a pale orange shirt, which had the caption “To Hunt, to Howl, to Live Free”, as I recall. Here it’s been redone to be a Comicon exclusive, and I do admit to a bit of fangirly squee to see that Wolfrider with the Space Needle in the background!
To Hunt, to Howl, to Live Free (in Seattle)
That said, though, I did also find one other set of graphic novels I want to read–a three-part series called Anne Steelyard, authored by the well-respected Barbara Hambly! This thing’s supposed to be set in an Indiana-Jones-esque timeframe, only the lead character is in fact a woman. Looking forward to diving into this, too.
And we bought pretty prints of art inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, and Doctor Who. And we saw lots of awfully nifty costumes–especially my and Dara’s friend Torrey, a master-class costumer now who’s won awards at Worldcon. We found her wandering the con in her Prince Zuko costume, again from Avatar: The Last Airbender. đ
I bought two other shirts as well–both of which were Han-Solo-themed. Just to show that there was merch at this thing Relevant to My Interests. ‘Cause seriously, this shirt? How could I NOT get this shirt?
The Most Scoundrelicious Shirt in the Universe
All in all I think I still found more to relate to at ECCC than I have to date at PAX–and I’d consider doing a one-day jaunt to future cons. People who are more in comics than I am should definitely go.
ETA: Oh, right, duh, I totally forgot to mention the other actual panel I attended–the Q&A with Jhonen Vasquez, best known for being the mind behind Invader Zim, another longstanding favorite of my household. Vasquez turned out to be younger than I expected, but also hysterical–a bit of an asshole, but in a funny kind of way. He winged it through most of his panel, given that a lot of what he wanted to talk about he could not in fact do so until a later panel that should have come first, due to scheduling mixups.
Vasquez is apparently a bit weary of mostly everybody knowing him for Zim and nothing else, and isn’t shy about letting people know that. It was, however, fun to hear him talk passionately about the console games he likes, as well as discussing some of his other work.
There’s a fun meme going around Twitter today with the hash tag #10yearsago. For the benefit of those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, here are my contributions! It’s fun to write these down, especially given that this year was before I was regularly doing anything like blogging.
Y’all will notice there’s a whole lot of fandom and geekery here. This would be because, well, I was indulging in a lot of fandom and geekery that year! Which has certainly not changed at all in the ten years since.
spazzkat found out about this tonight when he happened to stumble across the first print volume of the collector's edition, and I was "wait what new Wendy Pini WHERE?" So I looked it up online and discovered that it's actually an ongoing web comic. If you go to the site, you can go through it all panel by panel, or even let it play as a sort of very slow animation. The story summary is here. Chapters 1-4 are up and Chapter 5 is in progress; all of the major players have been introduced and things seem about to go splody very soon.
Style-wise, the art's akin to the more recent Elfquest releases since Wendy's been doing things more digitally lately; this means sadly that it's not nearly as complex as early Elfquest. But it's still obviously Wendy art, and it is rather pretty, and fairly Elfquest-y; I keep doing double takes that the characters aren't actually elves, especially given that most of them are built like Gliders.
I am massively amused that one of the two lead characters is a dead ringer for Strongbow, except for having too many fingers and the wrong shape of ears. The innocent young lad that's just shown up, too, looks suspiciously Cutter-like. The only way this could amuse me any more is if the other male lead looked like Rayek. ;D (Especially given that this is a "mature content" comic; unlike with Elfquest, there's on-camera sex.)
So yeah, this is fun; Elfquest fans on my Friends list, you might consider checking it out.
If y'all haven't seen this already, check it out: an Elfquest movie is finally coming! Wendy and Richard Pini are breaking the news on Elfquest.com today.
The interesting bit for me in Wendy's post is the "combination of CGI and live action". Man, I hope they don't screw that up. If they have the budget to pull off the same clever tricks that Peter Jackson did in LOTR, they could get away with live actors playing the elves.
Which, of course, raises the fun question of who will be playing whom. The floor is now open for casting calls!
For all the Two Moons MUSH alums on my Friends list, as well as the EQ fans in general--those of you who may not know already, Wendy and Richard Pini are putting the entirety of Elfquestonline.
That's right, folks, every last bit of it.
I look forward to the inevitable outburst of icons that should emerge from this effort. And if last night's LOLCutter was any indication, there should damn well be LOLpics as well. ("RECOGNITION: UR DOIN IT WRONG"!)
Second: the 2008 Hugo nominations are out! I haven't actually read any of the contenders for Best Novel this year, though I am eying the Scalzi and the Stross, to be sure. And I must also admit that I looked at the blurb on Rollback in the store, and the concept sounded interesting. I may well indeed have to check out the reviews going around on these books.
However, I'd like to call your all's attention to the delightful list of contenders for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:
Doctor Who "Blink" Written by Stephen Moffat Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)
Doctor Who "Human Nature" / "Family of Blood" Written by Paul Cornell Directed by Charles Palmer (BBC)
Star Trek New Voyages "World Enough and Time" Written by Michael Reaves & Marc Scott Zicree Directed by Marc Scott Zicree (Cawley Entertainment Co. and The Magic Time Co.)
Torchwood "Captain Jack Harkness" Written by Catherine Tregenna Directed by Ashley Way (BBC Wales)
I am particularly delighted by the Doctor Who squareoff, and am hopeful that paulcornell2 will score the win despite the excellent competition from Mr. Moffat--just because a) Mr. Cornell is awesome, and b) as I gushed before, David Tennant's performance in that two-parter was incredible.
However, I am genuinely unsure whether either of these will pull ahead of the competition!
And last but not least, Juno says no on Faerie Blood, but this was another favorable rejection, purely a "not to my taste" thing. I can deal with that. Now I'll just have to figure out where else I have left to send this one while I'm querying Lament of the Dove; DAW's most likely. We'll see.
To steal an idea from technosage, I thought that in honor of International Blog Against Racism Week, I would take some time to squee about favorite characters of color in my various fandoms.
In Elfquest, Rayek and Ember. Rayek because I spent several years roleplaying him on Two Moons MUSH--I in fact still have a lot of the roleplay logs. (I play Rayek in those up through 1998 or so.) I loved Rayek a lot for starting off an arrogant jerk and maturing eventually into a humbler yet still highly motivated elf. As for Ember, I really liked her storylines trying to grow up in the shadow of her famous chieftain father, not to mention her brother packing more magical power than anyone in their tribe had ever seen. Some of the best RP I ever did on Two Moons, in fact, was as Rayek--in no small part due to eveshka and mizkit.
In Firefly, Zoe. Because, well, duh. I loved every deadpan line she had playing off of Mal, as well as her loving and vigorous relationship with her husband.
In Doctor Who, Martha. Out of respect for those of you who have not yet seen the full third season of New Who featuring Martha as Tenth Doctor's Companion, I will simply say that she is made entirely of awesome.
And, of course, in classic Star Trek we have Uhura, the voice of the Enterprise. Because she is a musician, because I loved the old Trek novel Uhura's Song (and the feline sentient who took on the name Another StarFreedom in Uhura's honor), and because, let's face it, her hottest moment ever was whipping out that knife on evil!Sulu in "Mirror, Mirror". ;)
For the jimbutcher fans on my Friends list, especially the local ones: Jim is going on tour to do signings for the latest Dresden novel, White Night. Local people, he's going to be at the University Bookstore on April 3rd! This may in fact warrant me buying my first Dresden hardback!
In science news, I have found myself intrigued by the reports of chimpanzees being observed using spears to hunt prey in Senegal, as well as other research pertaining to how they may have used hammers up to 4,300 years ago. Part of me finds this all incredibly cool, and wants to cheer the chimps on and welcome them to the society of tool-using mammals. The rest of me (the Elfquest fangirl part, specifically), having seen photos of the critters they've been observed hunting, wants to go, "But, but, treewees!" and sniff.
I have been entertained by reading John Scalzi's blog, accessible to LJ users via scalzifeed, and have finally picked up a copy of his book Old Man's War. I'm not normally into military SF, but I figure what the hey, I've been reading Patrick O'Brian, not to mention naominovik, so it's not entirely out of left feed for me. And speaking of Patrick O'Brian, I am currently in the middle of reading the seventh Aubrey-Maturin, The Surgeon's Mate; further remarks on this will be forthcoming.
Last but not least, solarbird went downtown today on a quest to buy stuff: we got her a new backpack and new shoes at REI. We are amused that her shoes are the exact same shoes as mine, both in color and in size. We dig the Merrells, but unfortunately REI carries them in just one color. So we'll have to remember that her shoes are the ones that look newer, or else mark them with Sharpies or something.
It turned out that Seattle was a very small town today, as we ran into both my uberboss and Dara's Japanese tutor. And it must also be observed that the people opening up the new LUSH store in Westlake are tempting tantalizing bastards, as the store looks more or less ready to open but still has paper up on all its windows. But some of the paper had come down, so you could see all the LUSH-y goodness inside and how there were a couple people in there apparently doing employee training or something. And the lovely LUSH-y scents were wafting right out into the shopping area, smacking us right in the face and insisting that we come in and purchase things. Except we couldn't, because they WEREN'T OPEN YET. Dara pawed at the door and meowed piteously. It didn't help. Tempting tantalizing bastards.
Anyway, it has been a Good Day, and I hope the same has applied for you all.
Miles since the 18th: 16.7 Miles out of Hobbiton: 1790.5 Miles out of Rauros Falls: 481.5 Miles to Isengard: 2.5
I finally decided I needed me a decent Elfquest icon too, to represent my Elfquest fandom. Those of you who know me from my years on Two Moons MUSH will be utterly unsurprised by my choice of EQ character to use, too. No caption, because Strongbow is an elf of as few words as possible.
This was brought on, of course, by my finally deciding to pick up the graphic novel version of the latest Elfquest story, Discovery. I hadn't been terribly moved to buy the individual issues, as I've posted about before. But when I flipped through the soft-bound graphic novel in the comic store yesterday, I figured what the heck.
Picoreview: Meh. The Pinis have done better, though there were a few aspects about it that I did actually like. Mostly interesting if you're an established Elfquest fan and you're also a completist.
Yesterday, in the hopes of relaxation and getting my ass out of the house for a little while, I went out to meet up with the lovely and talented mamishka for a viewing of the new Russell Crowe flick, A Good Year. Before I met up with Meems, though, I indulged in a bit of retail therapy on the Ave, since I hadn't been there in ages.
Since Tower Records is going out of business, I stopped in there to see if by any chance they had any Seven Nations discs. They didn't, but I did wind up buying an Afro Celt Sound System disc (Volume 1 Sound Magic) and the second season BSG soundtrack disc (since I do like the music from the show).
At the U Bookstore, I picked up three books: Charlaine Harris' Grave Sight now that it's out in paperback, Yasmine Galenorn's Witchling since she's local and I wanted to have something else of hers (and I wanted to see how she does with something paranormal/fantasyish), and Gina Farago's Ivy Cole and the Moon, which sounded vaguely entertaining and seems to involve a female werewolf.
And last but not least, at Zanadu Comics I finally picked up the graphic novel version of the latest Elfquest story, Discovery. As y'all know I was waffling about whether or not to get that, but after flipping through the soft-bound graphic novel I figured what the hell, I'd give it a shot.
Then I swung down to the Metro Theater to meet up with Meems for the movie. Which turned out to be about what I expected. It's unfortunately not getting very good reviews--I think a lot of people are just really boggled by the whole idea of Russell in a fluffy, comic, romantic movie. I didn't have much of a problem with it, but then, I've also seen him in Mystery Alaska. And I'll be commenting further on the flick in another post!
Wednesday through Sunday miles: 13.3 Miles out of Hobbiton: 1528.9 Miles out of Rauros Falls: 219.9 Miles to Isengard: 264.1
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