Pen of the Gryphon

Black and White, with shades of Gray

December 24, 2006 ~ Sunday ~ Christmas Eve!! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

Wow, two entries in one day... I'm on a roll here...

I was thinking about this blog the other day (before I was distracted by my revelations about Kratos ((see below rant, but beware, spoilers abound)) and I realized that it is in many ways my free area. Around my family, I tend to talk alot, but rarely about the things that interest me the most. I mean, most of my family (stressing MOST) are fairly practical people. They see things in black and white, sometimes to the extent of ignoring the gray.

In an example, I'll use the X-2 movie, featuring Nightcrawler. Okay, I love Nightcrawler. I have yet to decide if he or Wolverine is my favorite X-men character just for their character (super-powers are great and all, but no body cares unless you have good character). Anyway, one (just one of many, but it will do for this example) reason that I like Nightcrawler is because of his faith and devotion to that faith. He looks like a demon, but he has the heart of an angel. A paradox. And I know that that is exactly what his creaters wanted. He is a loyal, loving and sensitive character.

Meanwhile, one member of my family hates this character simply for his appearence. Their argument is that he looks evil and that it is almost as though the creators were trying to make evil look good. No, they were showing that you can't judge a book by its cover (which is the entire point that the X-Men series was trying to make). Just because someone looks "evil" doesn't mean that they are. And on the reverse hand, just because someone looks beautiful doesn't mean that they are inside. After all, Lucifer was the greatest of the angels, the most beautiful and the most intelligent, and yet look where he is now. Ruling the Abyss; the Lord of Hell.

Ugh. I do know that the world is not all shades of gray like some would have you believe. After all, if there were no black and white, how would we determine what was gray? There is an extreme good and there is an extreme evil. However, you can't view everything in simply those two extremes. After all, no one is perfect. Everyone is some shade of gray, whether they be nearly white or nearly black doesn't matter. They aren't pure until they are dead and decided.

So why view the world that way? Nightcrawler can't help the fact that he looks like a demon (or at least the traditional view, since we really don't know what their true form is) but he chose a path of goodness.

Anyway, this has gotten a little off topic. I recently had a discussion with this same member of my family and they were adament about me decreasing my intake of fantasy material, citing that a lot of it seemed dark. I don't read dark fantasy generally. A moderately scary vampire novel is enough to cause me to be paranoid about faces in the window for days. E.T. gave me nightmares for years and until I was twelve, I didn't want to go in dark rooms alone. I scared myself with my OWN character one time. I wrote a scene where he was watching another character while she slept and his eyes reflected the light like cats' eyes. This scared me to death for a few months and I still shiver when I read that scene.

Its all about perception. I shiver when I read that scene, not because it is particularly scary in itself, but because I understood the intent I had had behind it. He was watching her because he wasn't sure yet if he could trust himself to love her. He himself is dangerous and the wrong emotion at the wrong time could cause him to kill someone, even the one closest to him. He already loves her to much to want to do that to her. (Isn't it funny how complex a character can be in your mind, but when you put them down on paper, you can never seem to capture the effect you wanted. Tell me that you've never done this...)

Anyhoo, I don't read dark fiction that much. It scares me. However, I am not bothered by clean gore (if there can be any such thing). I myself have written quite a few scenes of injury or decapitation or whatever. (I don't know how accurate they are ((see below rant about Blood)) as they are just in rough drafts with little or no real research behind them. But I wrote them and I read fiction with that sort of thing in it. How many good fiction don't have some loss or sacrifice in them. In my current work-in-progress ((see intro for note about "fantasy trilogy")) I have at least three, if not possibly four of my main-ish characters die. I tell this to that certain member of my family and they are shocked. "Why don't you just have them live?" They ask...

Because not everything in the world is happy. (also because when I came up with this storyline, I was quite firmly stuck in the middle of a period of depression, so everything I wrote at this time was like this...) There are losses and bad choices and mistakes. There is evil in the world and there are gray people. One character dies because of the road he chose, another dies in result of that character's choice. Another character dies because of others around them. I haven't yet decided about the fourth character, but they will have a good reason for dying if I kill them.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I made my original point... I just needed to rant, even if it is to an invisible person on the end of an internet connection... Thanks for reading...

May Christ be with you during this season of joy,

~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings

 


Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and do taste well with ketchup.