The Hobbit: An Unexpectedly Confusing Sequel or I’m as lost as these dwarves seem to be in the movie

A Host of Unexpected Questions

I am a HUGE Lord of the Rings fan.

In fact, I can safely say there is no bigger, more Hobbit-like, more intimately familiar with the material, more enthusiastic fan out there. I can quote anything from the first three movies lock, stock, and quote-smoking barrel.

All of which means I was very excited to see The Hobbit.

So imagine my disappointment at what a confusing mish-mash of gibberish the movie turned out to be.

And I’m not talking about all the Elvish being spoken.

SPOILERS AHEAD

First off, what the heck is up with the ending? They didn’t even get to the gold. And why bother showing us that dragon, Smog, if they’re never gonna interact with it? Bilbo Jr. is all, “I think the worst is behind us, the end.”

WTF??

Ultimately, the movie raised more questions than it answered, which I found extremely frustrating:

Where the hell did the ring come from?

It’s been a while since I saw the Return of the King, but I’m pretty sure that thing got melted in the volcano lava. Along with Gollum.

Which brings up another question.

Why is Gollum in this movie?

He died at the end of Lord of the Rings, didn’t he? Or is he fire-proof, and swam away with the ring? I admit, there is some ambiguity there. But then if that was the case, Sauron would still be around, right? And his giant eye was nowhere to be seen in The Hobbit.

So I’m led to conclude that Gollum’s twin brother, Seagull, died at the end of Return of the King. But Peter Jackson could have made that clear, rather than forcing the viewers to guess that for themselves.

None of which explains where the ring came from.

Who in Sauron’s Inferno was the old guy at the start of the movie who was also named Bilbo?

Bilbo Baggins Senior? If that’s the case (and I’m not 100% certain it is), then why not call Martin Freeman’s Bilbo by a different name? Or possibly ‘Junior’?

Which brings to mind another issue I have, not just with this movie, but all the other fans of the series as well:

What is this refusal to acknowledge R. Tolkien Jr. properly?

Everywhere I look, people move the ‘Jr.’ to the front of his name, like this: J. R. R. Tolkien.

At first I thought this was some sort of Britishism, but I did extensive research on Wikipedia and could find no other examples. Did R. Tolkien Jr. have some sort of complex about being named after his father and as a result adopted this odd nom de plume?

I tell you, not knowing a rational explanation for this drives me crazy.

Other minor quibbles:

Frodo still has his finger.

I may not have been wearing my glasses when I saw Return of the King, but I’m pretty sure Seagull bit it off. And I know he has that finger now because I was wearing my glasses when I watched The Hobbit.

I can only assume Gandalf used magic to grow it back. Would it have killed Peter Jackson to include that scene in the movie? Talk about lazy filmmaking!

Speaking of Gandalf, what happened to his white robe?

Why is it grey again? Did he have an accident at the laundromat, and if so, why not show us that too? Frankly, I’m quite keen to see what a Middle Earth laundromat looks like.

Why was Gandalf talking to Saruman in the middle of this movie?

Hello! I thought Gandalf was this great and all-powerful wizard, yet he forgot that Saruman is a bad guy? Huh??

Too many damn beards.

I couldn’t tell the characters apart through the thick forest of facial hair. What, no razors in Middle Earth? Then why are the Hobbits so clean-shaven, huh? Huh?

Check and mate, Mr. Jackson. Check and mate.

Now before I threw these questions up on my blog and risked looking like a complete idiot, I ran them past a few acquaintances I’ve met via social media, to see if there was an obvious answer I had somehow overlooked.

There wasn’t.

The least-laughable solution they could come up with was the silly notion that if you assume The Hobbit is a prequel rather than a sequel, all of my questions answer themselves.

My response to that is, “Poppycock! Why make the first part of the story last? That makes no sense!”

I was hoping the novelization would do a better job addressing these questions, but I’m a quarter of the way through and so far it has even less stuff going on it in than the movie!

I will give credit where credit is due, however. It was a nice touch having the Doctor’s 7th incarnation be Radagast the Brown. I’d love to see how #7 got from there to the horrible, awful television movie.

Actually, if they make a sequel to The Hobbit, it would be really cool to see the Doctor help out.

Because he totally could.

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The Blog Hop of (Self-Promotional) Shame, or Chain Letter: The Next Generation

My friend and FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive #4 (she’ll kill #3 to move up, no doubt) Kit Campbell tagged me to participate in something called a ‘blog hop’.

I’m not sure how you get a blog to hop; I expect it involves a trampoline, a laptop, and a high likelihood of damaging said laptop. Or perhaps dangerously overclocking your computer. Either way, I’m not sure it’s worth the risk. On the other hand, I’m terrified of Kit.

To avoid Kit’s wrath, I must answer some questions about my latest work in progress, then chain letter five other bloggers (hopefully authors, or this whole exercise doesn’t make any sense) with the same task.

I may or may not be on blogging terms with five other authors, so I might end up breaking this chain and dooming all previous participants to bargain-bin obscurity.

So be it. I only hope Kit is merciful because I tried.

1) What is the working title of your book?

Crap. The first question would be a toughie.

I’m actually struggling with this question right now. The working title is the unworkably horrible Marlowe and the Spacewoman Versus the Santa Claus Gang. I know.

But hey, you can help a struggling artist out, and I can experiment with WordPress’ polling functionality for the first time.

2) Where did the idea for the book come from?

This is a short story set in the Marlowe and the Spacewoman universe. I originally wrote it years ago as a Christmas story that I sent out to friends and family. I recently decided to revisit (and re-write) the story and make it canon. This proved to be a lot of work, as this short was actually written before the Marlowe and the Spacewoman novel and contradicted the novel in many places.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Science fiction, with a dash of mystery, a touch of humor, and a hint of the absurd. Also, half a cup of milk and a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine-y bits go down.

4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I could see a young Sigourney Weaver or an old Elle Fanning (with her hair dyed black) playing Nina. But honestly, as long as the actress comes off as vaguely Greek, I don’t care.

Since Marlowe looks like Humphrey Bogart, Bogart would be the perfect casting choice for him, except that actor has been dead for decades. Someone willing to undergo a lot of plastic surgery, I suppose.

House, as always, would be voiced by Stephen Fry. Yes, I know, you hear “House” and “Stephen Fry” and you immediately think I mean “Hugh Laurie”. Well, you’re wrong.

Though Laurie could play Marlowe. Hmm.

5) What is the one two sentence synopsis of your book?

Can Marlowe and Nina stop the redistributionist Santa Claus Gang from stealing the entire stock of the Xmas season’s #1 toy, the Prussian Robot Death Squad Commando Now with Live-Action Grappling Hook!™, saving the poor conglomerate that manufactures it from financial ruin?

Let’s hope so, because remember, corporations are people too.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self-published. Most of the agencies have restraining orders against me, making finding representation difficult.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I wrote it something like fifteen years ago, so honestly, I can’t remember. But knowing my approach and writing habits back then, I probably cranked that puppy out in one all-nighter.

Ah, to be young again.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I suppose comparing it to Marlowe and the Spacewoman wouldn’t be entirely cricket, would it.

Isidore Haiblum’s Tom Dunjer books come to mind, for those of you who enjoy obscure references.

Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide series.

The missus says the writing reminds her of Terry Pratchett. I can see that, and find it very flattering to boot!

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

When I was young and naïve, I started this tradition of writing Christmas stories and making them into mini books I sent out to friends and family in lieu of a card. This was the second or third such story, and I was hard pressed for an idea. I had recently written a short story called Semi-Sentient Soap Scum on the Prowl (which later became the novel Marlowe and the Spacewoman), and decided to write a sequel.

There might have been rum spiked with a suggestion of eggnog involved, but my memory’s a bit hazy.

10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Everyone who does not read this book dies within a week of not reading it. Or will, once I release it. So, does the potential of saving your life pique your interest?

Also, if you hadn’t guessed, this story involves Prussian Robot Death Squad Commandos. With Live-Action Grappling Hooks!™ even. Who can resist that?

And now for the truly unpleasant business of dragging other innocent victims into this hopping menace: Regretfully, I condemn Lisa, Scott, and Tamela. I share all my other author blogging friends with Kit, and she already tagged them, leaving me short two. But she is evil, after all.

(If you’re an author, you have your own blog, I haven’t tagged you above, and you’d like to be tagged, let me know and I’d be happy to grow my authorial army to better rival Kit’s.)

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I Urgently Want, Desperately Need, Hungrily Desire That My Effort To Learn How To Write Erotica Ends Happily

As authors, we all eventually come to that dreaded moment when we realize:

Crap, I have to write a love scene.

There are many reasons we might come to this horrible conclusion:

• The characters’ star-crossed story arcs have become entangled and we must do the deed to keep them on course
• We’ve written twenty pages about how to pick a lock, and aside from the reader now needing a little something to spice up the narrative, the whole key-in-the-lock metaphor is begging for some fumbling, first time exploration
• Our chosen genre is erotica

Fortunately for the general public, erotica is not my chosen genre. If I ever attempt to write such a yarn, I’m sure blue-helmeted UN soldiers will come for me on black helicopters and arrest me for violating the Geneva Convention on Torture.

That said, I can see some love scenes in my literary future.

No amount of drinking or shock therapy has been able to disabuse me of this notion.

To be fair, I have no place to go but up with regards to this writing front. Take, for example, one of my very early attempts to get the reader’s motor running:

Bonus points for penmanship, right?

His finger became erect as she sauntered to him and stopped at his table to say, “What the hell is going on with your hand?”

Yes, terrible, but I wrote it in 3^rd grade, before I had a proper understanding of the mechanics of love-making. I’d heard something about the distance between a man’s thumb and forefinger being an important indicator about size or some-such, and drew my own conclusions.

As did my 3^rd grade teacher. That was a very long year of parent-teacher conferences and sessions with the school psychiatrist. The loss of control and power I experienced that year left me feeling completely impotent.

I do feel compelled to point out that while the writing may have fallen terribly short, my youthful scrawl on brown butcher paper imbued the passage with a level of charm that, had it been printed in a book, would be sorely lacking.

It is this inherent charm that led me to originally published my first book, Marlowe and the Spacewoman, on bound butcher paper.

The first twenty pages were written in a childlike scrawl, but after that my hand cramped and I lost the will to continue. I figured twenty pages of charm ought to be enough to hook the reader, and the rest was printed.

I learned, after the fallout from 3^rd grade, to hide my future attempts at erotic writing, something which added a sense of naughtiness to the words and magnified the wrongness of them tenfold. This continued well into my thirties, much to the reading world’s benefit.

I also went to great lengths to develop a rock hard understanding of sex, how it works, who does it, where the erogenous zones are, things like that.

The missus is shaking her head now. She doesn’t think I can hear, but she’s muttering, “All that research, and nothing to show for it.”

Presumably she’s talking about my written love scenes. I concede the point.

But the downside to this research is that my subsequent efforts at conveying intimate encounters read more like a Catholic nun-authored, 5^th grade Personal Growth textbook describing how sex worked.

A 5^th grade Personal Growth textbook translated into English from the original Esperanto. By someone who doesn’t speak Esperanto.

Or English.

His member became erect as his increased heart rate due to arousal raised his blood pressure, flushing his face bright red and engorging his sexual unit to the point of rigidity required for successful penetration of the female body in that special place (not her bum!). At the same time, his capability for critical thinking diminished due to a reduction of blood reaching his brain.

Had his critical thinking skills not been diminished, he might have paused to consider his soon-to-be lover’s large hands and prominent Adam’s apple.

“Shh,” he whispered brusquely, pressing a finger against her lips. “No need to tell me. I’ve taken 5^th grade Personal Growth. I know where this,” and he gestured down to his ‘eleventh finger’, “goes.”

Dry and mechanical, yes, but a huge improvement over my 3^rd grade effort, no?

And to think, I was only 33 when I wrote that.

I figure by the time I reach 50, I’ll have overcome the one remaining issue I have with writing erotica: my extreme discomfort with using certain terms referring to a person’s sexy-fun bits.

You do not want to know what I call breasts, or that elusive, possibly mythical button-thingy women allegedly have that makes sex feel nice for them.

Ultimately, my problem right now is not how to write the love scenes I know are coming, but to write my characters’ story arcs in such a way as to put off that moment as long as humanly possible.

My characters lead very frustrating lives.

But not to worry. I have no doubt that eventually, my beloved paper friends will get their happy ending.

—

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Lack of sleep will boldy take you…where no one has gone before! /SWISH/

Sleep deprivation.

It has a way of running you off track.

Making you grumpy.

Impairing your ability to drive.

Most people would say this is a bad thing.

Heck, even I, when my kid screams at 3am like the boogie man is at the foot of his bed and insists he cannot return to sleep unless I sit by his side for the next hour, have been known to utter under my breath, “This is a bad thing.”

But that’s just the sleep deprivation talking.

And why else would we have airbags except for sleep-deprived drivers?

Where was I? Oh yes, Ayn Rand.

I have it on good authority that Ayn Rand was most enamored of the work she wrote while sleep deprived.

Based on what I’ve sampled, I can only surmise she wrote everything while sleep deprived.

And now the more conservative readers of this blog are about to object.

Shut up, conservative readers. I’m about to sing the praises of sleep deprivation writing.

I used to have dreams of being a serious writer.

A literary novelist.

A man of letters.

And numbers (preferably prefaced with a ‘$’).

Alas, it was not meant to be.

The closest I came was to being a man of numbers with a ‘¢‘ at the end of them.

And if you’re familiar with the terms of Amazon and Barnes & Noble, a ‘¢‘ at the end of your numbers means you aren’t getting a royalty check.

Instead, I decided to write an absurdist noir sci-fi thriller.

It’s hard to write an absurdist noir sci-fi thriller when you’re well rested.

It’s hard to write one when you’re tired.

Or drunk (keep missing the keys).

Or bent (don’t SCUBA dive with a computer unless you know in advance it’s water proof).

It is easy, however, to write one while sleep deprived.

Sleep deprivation allows you to make intuitive leaps while circumventing that pesky reason thing. This is important, if not downright critical, for any absurdist elements you are trying to incorporate into your plot.

But I would argue that sleep deprivation helps for less lofty works of literature than absurdist noir sci-fi thrillers.

Sleep deprivation will unburden you from the tyranny of logic, from the insidious restrictions of continuity. It enables the sort of ‘outside the box’ thinking that is so popular in the business world, such as at companies like Wang Laboratories, Pets.Com, and AOL-TimeWarner.

Now I’m not saying that you can stay up for eight days in a row and crank out a masterpiece like Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

You can crank out the first draft of the Wheel of Time series in that time.

You then need to rest up, get lots of sleep, and edit that first draft.

This, you will be surprised to learn, is the real reason why it has taken so long for all of the books in the Wheel of Time series to come out. Jordan, and his successor, needed to do a lot of sleeping in-between books.

Writing and editing are two distinct phases in the writing process, and it’s best if they don’t mix. They’re like the Jets and the Sharks – when they run into each other, violence and catchy tunes tend to erupt.

The odds of this making sense while the reader is sober are currently at 0.0043%.

Sleep deprivation turns off what I call the “douchey Vulcan killjoy gatekeeper of awesome ideas,” or what NaNoWriMo calls the “inner editor.”

(Sadly, NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaisons aren’t allowed to use the word “douchey” in their regional emails, so the management suggested “inner editor” as an acceptable substitute. This completely waters down the magnitude of evil conveyed, accurately, by the phrase “douchey Vulcan killjoy gatekeeper of awesome ideas,” and I for one refuse to pull my punches.)

Sleep deprivation gets that Vulcan drunk off his (or her) ass, allowing flawed concepts and failed logic to slip by unnoticed, or at least with no more than a reproaching arch of the eyebrow, and onto the page.

How do you think the concept of imaginary numbers came about? I’ll tell you this: it did not involve a well-rested mathematician or a sober Vulcan. Square root of -1 my ass!

So you stay awake far too long, pound out a first draft unencumbered by sanity, and then, and only then, you sleep.

Sleep allows the Vulcan, or for the more timid among you, the inner editor, to sober up.

This is important. Do not skip this step if you’re a writer!

In the editing stage, you need that pointy-eared, green-blooded fiend refreshed and alert. He’ll make himself comfortable on your shoulder and the two of you will read that first draft.

You’ll fight and struggle to understand the intent.

You’ll moan and shake your head in wonderment and horror.

You’ll strive and strain to fit the imaginative, innovative workings on the page into a context that makes sense.

If you’ve slept enough, you will succeed.

If you haven’t, I recommend sleeping on it.

Turns out, the sleep deprived writing is the easy part. It’s the editing, the putting the puzzle together into a clear picture, that’s hard.

Is this John Galt?

Really hard.

And it is this stage, the sleeping and sobering up and thinking about what you wrote and how to shape the raw material so it makes sense, where, I believe, Ayn Rand dropped the ball.

But that could be the sleep deprivation talking.

—

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Reruns, Or Why Society Is Doomed If We Don’t Stop Them At The Source

The following is an encore presentation of a previously published blog post.

Funny, they don’t look like the sort of people to be undermining Civilization as we know it.

I hate reruns.

Can’t stand them.

With most television programs, it’s hard enough to sit through them the first time, let alone endure them again, usually in no particular order, for several months before finding out how that cliffhanger ending is resolved.

To add insult to injury, the commercials aren’t reruns at this point – they’re all new. And yet still just as annoying as their predecessors.

Screw you, television.

I find it strange, though, that this disdain for seeing the same material is largely limited to television.

Books, for the most part, are exempt from this phenomena.

I have books I love to re-read. I’ve even gone out of my way to buy rare editions of some books, which I tuck away in a safe location, along with ‘throw away’ copies that I use for actual reading purposes.

So clearly I am not suffering from some inherent inability to enjoy being immersed in the same material multiple times.

This suggests the problem lies elsewhere.

So what is it about TV that makes me hate reruns?

Or is that the right question? Maybe I should be asking a different question.

What is it about books that make me love them enough to read them again?

And again? And again? And again?

I suspect the two questions together provide the answer. The explanation lies in the mediums themselves.

The short answer is that TV is crap and books aren’t.

But that’s not the complete answer. Oh, to be sure, there is a lot of crap television out there. Mostly reality TV, but not limited solely to that genre.

And there are definitely horrible books out there, books that should never have been published, books that, by their very existence on shelves at the bookstore (or on Amazon), and by the number of people who have read them and recommended them, make me wonder what I’m doing wrong with my own books, which by any empirical examination are just as good as, if not better, than these popular abominations.

I offer, as examples, anything written by Stephenie Meyer and that fanfic Frankenstein of a book, 50 Shades of Grey.

And therein lies the true answer.

People.

People are why I don’t like reruns.

More specifically, idiots. The lazy people who glom onto a popular trend and crank something out to mesh with it so quickly they don’t have time to give the concept depth or heart. People who use the shortcuts of previously established characters, stereotypes, or a glamorized version of themselves to build a plot around.

Television seems more prone to this for some reason. Perhaps because of the commercial interests that fund the programs, forces that, in the interests of making as much money as possible in as short a time as possible, quash the writer’s creative control.

Because what writer, for television or books, who truly loves his or her characters, wants to have short, interchangeable story arcs for those characters? But to do otherwise is anathema to the network execs who want one-off episodes that can be run in any order once they reach syndication.

The profit-centric nature of television dooms most programs to be nothing more than flash-in-the-pan, wham-bam-thank-you-viewing-public short-term investments.

This is not to say that books don’t have commercial interests influencing them as well. The ‘gatekeepers,’ as they are sometimes called, who review potential books for both quality and salability.

That’s right, quality and salability. Some quality books don’t get picked up, or have a hard time finding an agent or publisher, because they aren’t considered commercially viable.

So yes, money does have influence when it comes to books.

But writing a book is an intensely personally endeavor, and in general, is done before the author seeks the approval of an agent or publisher. If the writer is good, the quality is there before the bean counters can step in and pervert the author’s vision in order to maximize profits.

Yes, editors will make suggestions and point out problems to fix. Yes, authors need editors to see the issues the writer is too close to perceive. But once your work has made it to the attention of a publishing house’s editor, it has already run the gauntlet, has pretty much passed the point of heavy interference by corporate accountants, and been found worthy enough in its current state to move forward.

Television writing can be like that, but rarely is. Because while books certainly aren’t cheap to make, television shows are profoundly expensive to produce in comparison. So all the stakeholders, including the bankrollers, insist on having a seat at the table.

This is an important distinction, in case you didn’t catch it:

Books are written.

Television shows are produced.

Which is a shame, because I think that leads to a lot of bland television programming designed not to offend or make viewers think too hard so they’ll have more mass appeal.

That’s not something you can say about books. At least, not yet.

The day all books are ‘produced’ is the day civilization as we know it, a culture striving to expand our wisdom and better ourselves, is over.

But perhaps that’s the direction we’re headed?

Up until now, if someone bought a book, they bought it for the intellectual exercise of reading it. They bought it to be challenged, enthralled, exposed to something new, to think about what they’ve just been exposed to.

That’s the noble nature of books.

Except erotica; most of that is written to get the reader off. While I won’t pass judgment on that final goal, I will say it is definitely, if the direction and flow of blood is taken into account, not intended to make the reader think.

But if people stop buying books for these noble reasons, if they just want the trendy titles on their coffee table so they fit in, or they’re hoping the visible spine of some profound novel on their bookshelf will seal the deal with that intellectual Liberal Arts major they brought home, then we’re already well down the path of produced books.

In which case, people are better off watching television.

Or reading erotica. At least erotica, if well-written, offers the promise of a happy ending.

—

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