100 Things Blogging Challenge #3: Ratha
Aug. 16th, 2014 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
huinareMy topic: 100 Literary Characters Who Have Affected Me
Two years into the challenge and I'm already on post #3! Tremble in awe!
In the tag, I will be including the occasional "appendix" post as a shout-out to television/film characters whom I find personally meaningful for whatever reason. I was thinking of making those part of the challenge, but then I noticed that my topic as chosen two years ago was specifically literary characters. Just as well, really. The first literary character I blogged about was Bagheera, and already we have another sentient big cat coming down the pipe:
If there was one thing I loved as a kid, it was talking animals. I couldn't really identify with other human beings, so, to me, animals as characters were much more compelling and relateable. If we're to be perfectly honest, this affinity for talking animals must have stamped me permanently. In my Tolkien fic, my Maiar have a particular penchant for having perfectly human interactions while in animal form (what I've published is the tip of the iceberg...I've got drunken animal-formed Maiar having philosophical conversations and interpersonal dramas lurking on my hard drive).
Anyway, when I was about 13--during the era where I was obsessed with The Lion King and was reading a bunch of Kipling and Richard Adams--I ran into Clare Bell's young adult novel Ratha's Creature. There were several more volumes in the the "Named" series, and at the time they were too obscure to get hold of, so I don't think I read any of the others until some years later. Ratha's Creature and the subsequent novels center around prehistoric big cats who have formed a complex, stratified society which subsists on carefully maintained herds of quasi-domesticated hoofed animals. Ratha, the young heroine, challenges all the established laws and norms when she discovers how to tame fire.
I can't quite recall if it was Ratha herself who appealed, so much as Bell's whole world-building thing, but I guess the character must have had some influence on me as a writer (if not as a person); Ratha was incautious, curious, innovative, and pretty much threw a big "fuck you" to the established order as soon as her singular grasp upon a new technology enabled her to do so.
I started writing a novel about lions around that time--one of several I had going about talking animals--, wherein an adolescent lioness decided the traditional ways of the pride sucked, and went off on some quest to find the place where the sun set into the earth, dragging her brother and friend with her. The friend was killed by an eland early on, and then the brother quit the journey to take a mate, and then the protagonist continued bitterly on her own; that was where I ran out of steam on that one. So, clearly, there was some influence there. The concept of names also became very important to me as a writer, but that was much later in my life and more to do with LeGuin's books.
I suppose Bell's series might be worth a second look in my current phase of life, had I the time and energy. What I didn't realize at the time was that the author is apparently a rather eclectic lady and scientist.
Confession: I first discovered Ratha's Creature via an adaptation of it I saw on an episode of CBS Storybreak one Saturday morning. The episode oversimplified a book intended for teenagers and tried to make it into a cartoon accessible to kindergarteners, but I remember it as being good for what it was. There's a really low-quality recording on youtube, if anyone is interested. I've just started watching this; should be an interesting trip down memory lane.
[ETA - Holy crap, those videos of the CBS Storybreak thing were posted by the author, who is apparently doing a Kickstarter-funded project to make a graphic novel illustrated by fan artists, and has a video about the project.]
Two years into the challenge and I'm already on post #3! Tremble in awe!
In the tag, I will be including the occasional "appendix" post as a shout-out to television/film characters whom I find personally meaningful for whatever reason. I was thinking of making those part of the challenge, but then I noticed that my topic as chosen two years ago was specifically literary characters. Just as well, really. The first literary character I blogged about was Bagheera, and already we have another sentient big cat coming down the pipe:
If there was one thing I loved as a kid, it was talking animals. I couldn't really identify with other human beings, so, to me, animals as characters were much more compelling and relateable. If we're to be perfectly honest, this affinity for talking animals must have stamped me permanently. In my Tolkien fic, my Maiar have a particular penchant for having perfectly human interactions while in animal form (what I've published is the tip of the iceberg...I've got drunken animal-formed Maiar having philosophical conversations and interpersonal dramas lurking on my hard drive).
Anyway, when I was about 13--during the era where I was obsessed with The Lion King and was reading a bunch of Kipling and Richard Adams--I ran into Clare Bell's young adult novel Ratha's Creature. There were several more volumes in the the "Named" series, and at the time they were too obscure to get hold of, so I don't think I read any of the others until some years later. Ratha's Creature and the subsequent novels center around prehistoric big cats who have formed a complex, stratified society which subsists on carefully maintained herds of quasi-domesticated hoofed animals. Ratha, the young heroine, challenges all the established laws and norms when she discovers how to tame fire.
I can't quite recall if it was Ratha herself who appealed, so much as Bell's whole world-building thing, but I guess the character must have had some influence on me as a writer (if not as a person); Ratha was incautious, curious, innovative, and pretty much threw a big "fuck you" to the established order as soon as her singular grasp upon a new technology enabled her to do so.
I started writing a novel about lions around that time--one of several I had going about talking animals--, wherein an adolescent lioness decided the traditional ways of the pride sucked, and went off on some quest to find the place where the sun set into the earth, dragging her brother and friend with her. The friend was killed by an eland early on, and then the brother quit the journey to take a mate, and then the protagonist continued bitterly on her own; that was where I ran out of steam on that one. So, clearly, there was some influence there. The concept of names also became very important to me as a writer, but that was much later in my life and more to do with LeGuin's books.
I suppose Bell's series might be worth a second look in my current phase of life, had I the time and energy. What I didn't realize at the time was that the author is apparently a rather eclectic lady and scientist.
Confession: I first discovered Ratha's Creature via an adaptation of it I saw on an episode of CBS Storybreak one Saturday morning. The episode oversimplified a book intended for teenagers and tried to make it into a cartoon accessible to kindergarteners, but I remember it as being good for what it was. There's a really low-quality recording on youtube, if anyone is interested. I've just started watching this; should be an interesting trip down memory lane.
[ETA - Holy crap, those videos of the CBS Storybreak thing were posted by the author, who is apparently doing a Kickstarter-funded project to make a graphic novel illustrated by fan artists, and has a video about the project.]
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no subject
Date: 2014-08-18 09:13 pm (UTC)Well, I don't think you necessarily had to process it that way at the time...I just know that looking back at what I read as a kid, there are a lot of things that point towards my future interests, without me thinking of them in those terms as a kid (see: Tolkien). Though talking animals are always awesome. I'm still drawn to those now.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-19 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-19 03:22 pm (UTC)I wanted to be a lawyer (since I had already given up on theater, ballet, etc...stupid health problems). I find regular people in my day to day life boring (hence why I'm not a sociology major, I have no interest in studying people like me all the time), but people outside of my life fascinating, if that makes sense?
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 02:08 am (UTC)