[curses blasted comment system] If they’d been proper fey, acting to their own rules - usually brownies started working in houses out of debt or because it was their home too, and would punish masters that tried to exploit them with typical fairy vindictiveness (never let anyone tell you fairies are nice: that’s a very recent Victorian sanitisation of the folkloric creatures) - then all right, you’ve got brownies and for some reason you want to call them elves, sure. (tip two: letting elves into your house is a Very Bad Idea. If my ancestors were scared of the vicious tall skinny buggers, and if you consider my ancestors would fight the Romans naked and painted blue...you really don’t want elves in your house.) But if you make the "elves" act like humans apart from the inept grasp of language and the loving to serve...you have have what Hollywood terms ’Negro sidekick syndrome’. And it is Not Good.

Minutae - ’tis Greek, not Roman. [eyes Classical civilisations warily and considers kicking them] Mm. I find the change and the range of ideas fascinating...it makes me want to cry, sometimes, thinking how much knowledge was lost with the destruction of the native american countries...imagine the applications of mathematics without Elucid or Pythagoras, complex enough to calculate cosmic cycles beyond tens of lifetimes, advanced science and medicine nonetheless still integrated with mythological explanations much like the Renaissane ideas of ’humours’, due to the lack of Rome-enforced doctrine...gah. Fantasy, at least, allows us to bring a tiny fragment back.

What is ’cultural anthropology’? I’d ask my flatmate who does arch.&anth. but she’s asleep because the sun’s up...all I know about anthropology is the sort that sends people off to go patronise some natives without ever quite learning all the nuances of their language to ask rather than observe, then buggering off back to the white western world to write papers on it... [stays well clear, as you can probably tell]

Harry David Frost replies: "He he I remember dobies from "The Dawling-Kindersley Library of Myths and Legends"; completely awesome creatures! Grrr Greeks! I can’t bear that Western philosophy has been blighted with Socrates’ essentialist rubbish! If only we’d read Gorgias, we’d be a good deal more enlightened and a god deal less likely to fall for the whole "Wow! That leader’s REALLY good at rhetoric- he must be from God/speak the truth/be a good chap generally". Also; Derrida’s idea of the interdependent binary? What’s the yin yang?! Thesis and antithesis containing a piece of one another in critical symbiosis? The Chinese just giggling away that it’s taken us three centuries...(which is incidentally the amount of time it’ll be until my ticket is processed; it’s 802). Fair play about cult. anth. Meant more ’folklorist’."

Oh, human nature exists, it’s why we get patterns in history. It’s ideas that’re in flux...another pet peeve with fantasy is modern ideas thrown in without an in-world basis, like "childhood is sacred". That’s a pretty modern thing, witness ****ens’ heroes often packed off to the cruel factory floor age about ten, and that being socially normal...not a reason for a villan to say "look, I had an abused childhood, this explains my actions to the point where I’m not even guilty."
I suspect it’s just laziness leads to Destiny-heavy works, that and the bastard offspring of Tolkienian derivatives (bizzarrely selective - there’s hardly any Destiny in Tolkien, just stortelling-within-storytelling, but I suspect this is where the pretty, fading, feeble parodies of elves that you find in high/pulp fantasy come from too) and fantasy’s saga heritage (which is why the genre’s still largely stuck in the temperate-to-cold zones with white protagonists).

Aww, you had a fairy book with real fairies! [chuckles] yeah, the East has been ahead in most things for a loong time...
[headtilt] Explain? Folkloric anthropology sounds fascinating....I’ve always liked the idea of trying to find the root(s) of the vampire mythos - until Stoker they were pretty rare in Northern Europe, but, like dragons, they seem to be around *somewhere* on every continent (except Australia. Australia has no dragons. Oceana in general gets its dragons from NZ and southeast Asia), rooted deep in the human psyche. Hehe, Jungian vampires...now that would be a headache...

Harry David Frost replies: "Hmm...some would say that it’s ideas that alter ’nature’, and that there is nothing essentially human (as Plato argues) about us except our propensity to decide that there is and falsify histories and records to confirm it. The dominant ideology, or conception of our own nature, is inevitably the ideology of the ruling class and compels us to normalise oppressive maxims.
I find it hilarious that we aren’t allowed to say Charles Richard-ens’ name. Folklore is awesome- there are such unbelievable mythological tropes in regions you wouldn’t have thought mixed! Try "Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology"- really interesting bit about Loki."

That would be to separate the humanity from the human animal and its environment entirely...’s why western society bends towards Aristotle with his ideas - incorrect but applicable to life as it is lived - not Plato, who I feel would be a Lib Dem if he were around today. The dominant ideology does indeed belong to the dominant, but patterns will still exist as people seek shelter, security, and once they have those, wealth, however it is counted in that society.

[gestures towards comment boards] ...I would really like to see a race "built for" communisim (I generalise wildly here, hopefully you get my meaning), it’d truly be a fascinating excersise... I think my quibble is mostly that *I* write individual/body-outward, following a person around a world, and that has a different set of logic. Example:
If I had a race that ’bred’ by artifice, it’d typologically evolve like manufactured objects, far more like AIs designing better AIs - within a few generations, as making technologies improved, the offspring would not only be something else, but able to out-perform older generations, inherently destabilising any group of such organisims, since there’s always a final limit to rescources (faster, smarter, happier vs. experience) unless they were a) hive-minded b) a limiting factor was introduced, e.g. completely restrictive traditions (brainwashing, really)/grandparent has to die to animate new life/iron-handed population control (enforced by whom?).

Using pure idea/magic rather than environment/evoloution as the dynamic is as alien to me as it is interesting...harder, I believe, to make work, but magnificently shiny when pulled off. That was, by the way, a vote of encouragement.

Heh, ****ens is a dirty word...[grins] I dunno, I read a *lot* of folklore when I was 10-12 and have devoured mostly obscure and/or surrealist fantasy since, I’m not sure what would be unbelievable to me any more...I didn’t blink, for instance, finding Baba Yaga (or someone suspiciously like her) in Indonesia - tales travel even further than goods. [will try and find a copy of this] I always liked Loki, vicious little god’s-bastard that he is...

Harry David Frost replies: "Yeah! Well you’ll see as the story goes on, but really they’re ’built’ so as not to need Communism; that’s why it’s Arcadia not Utopia. It’s for propagating Socialism/Marxism and theorising Utopia for Men that they’re handy. Oh, and I don’t suppose I could write in your guestbook for replies? One wonders if it’s somehow taboo...But there is seldom space here! Thank you very much for the encouragement."

[beats off workload with a broom] Mneh, I should disclaim that I have days so inarticulate I ned a whole story to make a point that language has no words for...I don’t understand the guestbook comment - have they put a word limit on replies? O_o It doesn’t seem to have affected my boards yet if so, but still...ach, another reason to throw tomatoes at the developers...

Oh! yes, also: without timekeeping, how does anyone ever arrange to meet anyone else?/know when they’ve had enough sleep?

Harry David Frost replies: "Yupp, there is a foul, fascist word limit; I think there is, as it were, a "glass ceiling" of wit and sophistication one comment box can sustain, thesis and reply, so the less I write, the more you can and vice versa. Time keeping is a very valid point...and a little problematic...I mean, if folks had sort of syndacates whereby they all slept at a certain time for their work or something, it’d create dangerously isolated groups...one wonders if even a nature disposed to socialist solidarity could maintain it if its friends were all asleep when it wanted to quaff ale and such like. I shall consider it carefully; it’ll have to be one of those bridges one traverses when necessary. There are bells, though, at important events, though again that would mean in practice that those who’ve only ust gone to sleep would roll over cursing and wouldn’t bother. Hardly the right attitude. Never mind. All shall be well. I am over half way thorugh Chapter 2 and have 3 all planned out neatly; I’m going to Shine up Ch. 1 and probably the Preface, too, if I get around to it. I am sorry about your workload. I am in a position to empathise. I commented on a poem of a favourite of yours; very nice! Lovely and feminist."

[with feeling] Dastards. I knew the changes were bad for wyvern’s comments, but ugh! No wonder a proportion of my online friends left elfwood completely - gah! [displeased]

[amused] You’ll think of something. Huzzah for more! [puzzled look, being allergic to poetry] Hm, one of Anne’s? Hers have female things in, but not women, as far as I know...good to hear you’re reading around and settling in, though.

Hey, thought I’d drop a comment here as well... The changes being what they are, I’m not around in the capacity of a reader-writer much these days, but I always (near enough) respond to comments and am available for talking and such.

So, I chose to respond to your comments here, and thank you for the excellent input! I am not sure if you read the originals, or the redo’s of the Pillar story. The ticket just went through, and I was away for a few days when it snuck past me. If you happened to miss the redo’s, I think they solved a few... umm... quirks... in the story... ::waves to Cecily:: thanks to some suggestions made by other observant writers/readers.

Anyways, I am pleased you enjoyed the story, and I will be able to add some stuff that will smooth out what you thought needed it. Mainly because I need to make another change... apparently the mod who put the ticket through didn’t see a clear fantasy theme, so, I need to come up with a crazed fireball throwing mage, or a lost alien, or something.

I’m going to be going to check out the ’Bjorstattir Cycle’, since Cecily mentioned it, and you mentioned it in your comment, and my interest had piqued.

[a rabbit speeds onto the page in a terrified blur, but trips, stumbles, rolls headlong and is too exhausted to get to its feet again, twitching helplessly and trying to scoot itself away from whatever pursues it, chest heaving. eventually it can’t even do that]

Siolchamustaírd: [feral, childlike thing about the size of a small three-year-old or large tomcat shimmers into view above the unfortunate creature and pokes it with one delicate finger] Hm.
[rabbit lacks the breath to scream, just stares, eyes huge]
Teadamhain: [a similar creature appears, this one wearing only bits of old rope and no swirling markings/tattoos, pale green in colour, all bones and mantis angles] Is’t dead?
Leamcán: [voice with weird harmonics from above] Blood, spread, bones, bread.
Siolchamustaírd: ’Taint, but not running, neither, would it would...[picks up rabbit by the ears and throws it a little way] [rabbit tries to get up and flee, physically can’t]
Teadamhain: tch, now where’s the chase?
Leamcán: Nip-leaping, heart beating, swifter blood race...
Siolchamustaírd: [sudden grin] Little ugly!
[a fourth fairy bolts from under the foliage and the rest chase after it, whooping and bouncing off trees]

Yes, I gave my fairies CheetOs to see what the additives would do to them...I’m about-ish until I’m on dig...

Harry David Frost replies: "[fairies feel the clunk of a new prose-consciousness; having two writers hurts, tendons snap with each v[o]ice-like shift]
Leamcán: Ghosts, Mustardseed...Siolchamustaírd...other ghosts we’re wing-beating- different buoyancy.
[rabbit feels it, but lies still stricken, chest quivering with breaths that could be heartbeats, so fast and shallow.]
Teadamhain: No matter- up-thrust is up-thrust, we’ll not sink and the soft fur-horn-unhorned is still dying.
Siolchamustaírd: Dying, not braying or leaping ditch; ditch and furze. Run, Fur-Horn-Unhorned!
[the rabbit feels the blood of its million ancestors stirring, it feels split lungs mend, it swallows the bile in its mouth and presses a velveteen pad to the coarse grass. The rabbit runs and is gone.]
Leamcán: Soft, fur, nuzzle...[he weeps]
Siolchamustaírd and Teadamhain: Weak. [they advance, clawed. The fourth fairy and the bolt through the forest, rabbit forgotten.]

They are fun to write! This, I suppose, is what would have happened in a parallel universe, slightly afterwards, where the fourth fairy was late (I failed to take in, until I was half way through, that the rabbit scene was over and wanted to join in). A dig sounds nice. Thank you for writing!



"

I tried to write a comment to your comment you left on my page but it was being a pain. So I will write here if it lets me. Thank you for your advice and comment. I have found myself indulged in other work that Elfwood would never allow on the site for the graphic nature of my thinking. I don’t know where to go to get it published or know of anyone with a freakish mind like mine that would like to get wrapped into the story. Write me back if you will. We will talk private. Thank you again. I want to mark you as a favorite.

Harry David Frost replies: "Thanks for writing! My pleasure. I know what you mean- Most of the stuff I write would probably get me thrown off here...probably because I share Germaine Greer’s indifference towards the word c...nevermind. About publishing..weeellll, who knows. As far as I can see, the main criterion for publication is having a book that’s a narrow-minded duplication of some other existing book! That certainly isn’t how I’d like to write. ’Freakish’ is an interesting word...a mind is only freakish if you accept that there is a way to be ’normal’. Anyone who tries to tell you how you are is ’not normal’ is trying, politically at the very least, to dominate you. If you let them, you’ve surrendered yourself."

can u draw centaurs