So I (inadvertently) share a handle with a plant

[huinare]

Malvastrum coromandelianum, or false mallow, known in some areas of Mexico as huinare.

Apparently this thing is native to Central America and also likes to invade other warm places worldwide, and its habitat includes lugares perturbados en general.

LUGARES PERTURBADOS.


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For the record, my handle is a bad portmanteau of huinë + nárë and was thusly intended to mean something along the lines of "gloomfire." It was originally coined some months before I poked my nose into fandom, when a story got to a point where I perceived the need to coin a word for a phenomenon.  There was this fire that was mainly perceived as being darker than the darkness around it, but also somehow casting a sort of dull weird barely-comprehended light.  I might end up ditching that whole idea, being that very soon after I first implemented it I started rethinking the use of "magical" stuff.  Or maybe it's because at the time I was like "oh hey, I need a handle, how about that word I made up," and now if someone yelled it on the street I'd probably turn around like, "Yeah?"  So maybe I'm also just kind of soured on the fact that if I reread the thing I see my own "name" as it were flung around casually by the characters and that just looks very weird to me now. 

Comments

[engarian.livejournal.com]

I think the plant is quite awesome! Lucky you... I could see it as a gloom fire flower :-)

- Erulisse (one L)

[huinare.livejournal.com]

I actually do rather like the plant from the pictures I've seen, especially the one above.

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

Heh. Nothing like finding out that you're related to an invasive species. :^D

Huinarë is a perfectly acceptable and very appealing handle. Don't go second-guessing yourself. It's especially wonderful as part of the "Huinarium."

[huinare.livejournal.com]

Nothing like finding out that you're related to an invasive species. :^D

I know, right? =D

Thanks, though I don't know that I was second-guessing myself (this time. I know I do that quite a lot though.) The word no longer looks right in 'verse though, perhaps because it looks like a weird self-insert even though the inverse was true. Even more so the phenomenon itself. When I started writing this stuff, I had a tendency which I later identified as inconsistent, where I'd take pains to try and un-magic all the astronomical and geological stuff yet was perfectly content to have weird shit going on in every other field. If I can think of a good explanation for shadowy fire I might keep it, but otherwise it seems out of place now.

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

perhaps because it looks like a weird self-insert even though the inverse was true.

Sounds like second-guessing by any other name to me. ;^)

Even more so the phenomenon itself. When I started writing this stuff, I had a tendency which I later identified as inconsistent, where I'd take pains to try and un-magic all the astronomical and geological stuff yet was perfectly content to have weird shit going on in every other field. If I can think of a good explanation for shadowy fire I might keep it, but otherwise it seems out of place now.

Just an opinion here so take it for what it is worth, but why do you need a good explanation for shadowy fire? I love the idea! I can certainly appreciate un-magicing the astronomical and geological aspects of your 'verse, but if you un-magic everything, then you have no wizards, no elves, no trolls, no Rings of Power, etc. You have our primary world and our real natural history (which is more marvelous than any magic in my estimation).

Speaking for myself, I think one of the more enchanting and effective approaches that Tolkien took in the creation of his secondary world was to show real things (the constellations we know, trees and flowers that are familiar, landscapes - and rocks! - we can visualize) and then he added those unexplainable elements of Faerie (that weird shit :^D). I'd be inclined count shadowy fire among the latter: a wave of the wizard's wand, to paraphrase Guildford in "The Notion Club Papers" that goes toward the creation of your own tertiary world of JRRT's secondary world.

Or maybe I need more coffee to improve my reading comprehension...

[huinare.livejournal.com]

Sounds like second-guessing by any other name to me. ;^)

Argh! =P I prefer to think of it as re-assessing. Which, okay, it rhymes with second-guessing, I will grant you that.

I think your reading comprehension is functioning without the extra coffee. Although I suppose a caveat should be added to my original paragraph that I can't/won't eliminate all supernatural elements. I mean, shape-shifting is a huge thing in my 'verse, and I picture them as manipulating particles on both a subconscious and subatomic level to do this--and that is somehow "magic" I suppose, or at least to our understanding.

There is a certain level of consistency I've come to require of my work. If the Ainur in my 'verse do "magical" stuff, it has to fit into certain schematics. I think the above shape-shifting thing's a good example of what I'm going for; the characters can still effect things with superhuman powers, but it has to make some level of -sense- to me. If there can be some kind of substance that could absorb light around it, I'd accept that for weird fire, but I haven't got around to considering it much yet.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

A habit of invading warm places world-wide sounds pretty good.

Even if it does sound as if it is a description of the US government!

[huinare.livejournal.com]

Too true!

[hhimring]

Oddly, I'd always somehow assumed that as a formation "huinare" had something to do with crebain.
I guess I was simply associating your crow and magpie icons with it and perhaps Angandil.
The plant is a good namesake, though!
Your gloomfire sounds a bit like a black hole--on movie posters, etc. they used to have a sort of corona although I don't know what that's based on or whether it's just artistic licence.

[huinare.livejournal.com]

That's probably not too odd an assumption, given I think the first story I wrote publicly in fandom was the one with Angandil, plus my corvid icon tendency as you say.

I think the corona thing would sort of stand to reason, although I'm not quite what one would call learnèd in theoretical physics. I'd never thought of it that way until after I made a comment to Pandë above about the possible nature of such a "fire"--but yeah, that's where my mind went next. (The concept of mini black holes is something I could see myself spending weeks researching, were I to be in that sort of mood again..)