Tagged: quotes

A NaNoWriMo scenario [cartoon]

Hi! If I’m writing this, it means I survived my first exam today! And guess what that means? I should be studying for my next one on Friday, but I have a minute now and this means cartoons! And what else would it be about than what is constantly on my mind at the moment: National Novel Writing Month? So, here’s my version of Nanotoons!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, this really happens. :P

Here’s a tip: don’t ever name a character Vivienne if you’re going to be typing her name in a hurry. It’s the hardest name ever to type. It’s like, left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand, left hand, double right hand, left hand. Bam. But now I’ve made that mistake and I’ve got to live with it. ;)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go write. I have 20,371 words so far and I need to hit 21,667 in one hour from now. I really don’t want to go. I’m aching all over and the last thing I want to do right now is exert myself further. It isn’t just that my arm aches from writing the exam (Though it would have been cool if the roughly 3,000 words [I'm deadly serious] I wrote in the exam today counted for NaNo. It’d give me such a boost! :P ), I also thought it would be a great idea to do a workout this morning because I hadn’t slept nearly enough last night and I thought it would wake my brain up. I haven’t done a proper workout since high school, under the death stare of the PE teacher… Well, it did wake my brain up. Unfortunately it also woke my muscles up. I didn’t even know you had muscles along the sides of your ribcage. Well, that’s where it mainly aches right now. You guys can tell I dropped biology as fast as I possibly could in high school and did history instead, can’t you? I’m clueless about anatomy. ;)

I’ve put in almost 14 hours of writing so far. For the first time, I’m keeping a log book of my NaNo and it’s very interesting. I’ve also been able to monitor that my morale hasn’t been very good so far this month:

I was so sick on the 6th, with a headache that I could hardly see, let alone type. I managed 779 words though. :) I need to fill in today’s. It’s probably about a five.

 

Okay. Ouch. Now I’m really going. Because…

 

 

I’ve leave you with the wise words of the wonderful Nanny Ogg:

“You ain’t going to lose, are you?”

– Terry Pratchett

 

Day 17 – Favourite quote from your favourite book

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This post is part of a month-long series of pre-dated posts running while I am on holiday. Feel free to comment, I’ll get back to you when I return!
Please note that any “reviews” I write here are simply my own opinion and that I am not doing any objective, informative reviews for this challenge. If there are any spoilers in a post, I will indicate it at the top.
I draw the book covers straight from Goodreads and you can click on the images to go to the book’s page on there.

*** I suppose this post has some slight spoilers about the ending of Lord of the Rings. ***

If you ask me what my favourite book is, I say “Lord of the Rings” without hesitation. And then I hesitate. Is it really? Really? Out of all those hundreds do I really have a favourite? Often I am not sure and I would rather make a list of favourite books than name a single favourite. But then, when I get to work on the graphics that I love to make so much and I follow the familiar pattern… taking several stills from the movies, layer masking, blurring, sharpening, colourizing, adding textures and finally a quote, usually from the book but sometimes from the movies… then I know from the warmth that I feel that this is my favourite story in the whole world.

There are so many wonderful quotes and moments in the 1,000 pages of The Lord of the Rings. This was one of the hardest choices that I yet had to make in this challenge, but I finally decided on a favourite from all of them. I love these Gandalf-quotes below. (I have no idea where I found this graphic, so I can’t credit it, sorry.)

And I also love this song by Sam which he sung when his life looked at its darkest:

However, my favourite quote is neither of these. It is

“They cannot conquer for ever!”, Frodo Baggins – “Journey to the Cross-roads”, Book IV, The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Frodo says this during a brief respite when hope blooms until the darkness of Sauron returns. You can read the relevant passage here. To me, this quote encapsulates one of the themes of Lord of the Rings: staying strong against adversity. As the narrator will later state:

“Frodo raised his head, and then stood up. Despair had not left him, but the weakness had passed. He even smiled grimly, feeling now as clearly as a moment before he had felt the opposite, that what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and that whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Galadriel or Gandalf or anyone else ever knew about it was beside the purpose.”

Spoiler alert: {Gandalf knew Frodo was doomed from the moment he accepted the burden of the ring. One way or another, he knew it would be a death sentence. Frodo himself later comes to this conclusion, but he also accepts it.} The task is too great and the risks too high. His success was highly unlikely. {Because Frodo ultimately does fail in his quest}, it only emphasises the courage with which he walked into Mordor. The hope for Frodo was very small, but ultimately, hope is always there. It may be gone for the moment, but evil cannot conquer for ever because the world moves in circles. Hope will ultimately return.

{One of the names given to Frodo by Gandalf wasn’t “Endurance beyond Hope” for nothing.}

Lord of the Rings is not about honour or glory or heroism, but about doing your small part, because even the smallest hobbit can change the world. Because Frodo accepted his fate with courage, he shows that there is true nobility and heroism in this too. This is existentialist fatalism at its very best, but Tolkien also undercuts it again by bringing in the theme of hope. There was always hope in The Lord of the Rings, even when circumstances appeared at their darkest. The environment is, of course, psychotropic and, in this case, hope is symbolised by light. In the quote, in the darkness a ray of sunlight fell through the clouds and it was that which led Frodo to exclaim that the evil in the world cannot conquer for ever. In this, Tolkien brings in a combination of fatalism and hope and I love it. I’m not too fond of fatalism in literature and neither am I too fond of works that preach that you should never lose hope. What if hope gets taken away from you? What if you can find no hope to hold on to? Tolkien answers these questions by saying that you will still find the will to find your way, because you have a duty to do, even if you cannot find the hope that is always there behind it all. I don’t really want to bring religion into this, but I firmly believe that you will always find the strength to go, hopeless or not, because that is the way that God outfits us: strong enough to face the future he plans for us.

 

This one’s mine:

This favourite quote shortly precedes what has to be my favourite chapter of Lord of the Rings: “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”. It’s a pity they cut this part out of the movie, but at least they included the message in other parts.

 

The great stories always go on.
History ever moves in cycles. Hope will always come again.
And never dismiss the Gollums of the world.

 

Tomorrow’s post is about a book that disappointed me.

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Awards

Well, hello blog. Yes, I am still alive.

 

Kreativ blogger

 

Remember that I said I still have to acknowledge all of the people who are far too good to me and decided to honour me with awards? No? Well, it has been far too long ago. Anyway, whether you remembered and anticipated or not, this is that post. Yes, just like that.

First up, the Versatile Blogger Award. (Which I keep referring to as the Awesome Blogger Award and then embarrassing myself.) After Freshly Pressed, three people decided to overwhelm honour me with this award. However, as I’ve said before, I received this award once before and it feels too odd to do the whole acceptance post-thingie all over again (also, I’m lazy), so you can just go and read my gushing post of last year. However, I am very grateful to those three people, Char, Yoongz and Showard76, for thinking of me and I thank you all humbly.

 

Secondly, and last for this post, at least… The Kreativ Blogger Award, awarded to me by Justin Kirby. Thank you so very much!

So now, the rules:

1) Thank the blogger who presented you with the award.
Check!

 

2) Post a photo of the award.
Oooohkay. Let’s Google it:
Kreativ blogger

Oh! I like that wallpaper! It looks almost like fleur-de-lis. Or some heavily stylised plant anyway!

 

3) Share ten things about yourself readers don’t know.
Darn it. Right. Okay.

Char helped me out again a little here, by giving me some questions to answer in my last post. (I tell you, she’s far too good to me!) Thanks, it helped a lot!

1–What are you majoring in?
Pure languages. Winking smile My personal focus is on English editing, because that is what I want to be when I grow up (Why do I keep on using that expression? I’m 20, for cat’s sake!) – an editor. Well, actually I want to be a writer, but I need a day job as well!

2–What food disgusts you?
Ugh… my mother would tell you in detail what a picky eater I am. I don’t think I’m that bad, but there are still some things that I refuse to eat. Tomatoes are one of them. But the chief thing that I cannot believe how people can eat it is offal. Oh goodness no, the smell alone is enough to send me running for the hills. Blergh!

3–What’ the scariest thing that’s ever happened to you?
Fie, fi, fo, fum, fo, I don’t know. When I was 14, my father had a heart attack. That scared me badly and I had to grow up fast, but it could not beat what would happen later. In the subsequent years he had several illnesses. When I was 18 and writing my final exams at the end of high school he was in hospital again. He had a bad reaction to the intravenous antibiotics and spent a very bad night. The next morning, when I had to leave for school to write History, it was still too early to call the ward to hear how he was. So I had to go without news until the afternoon. Actually, I was pretty convinced that he was dead, that’s how bad he’d looked the previous evening. I’ve never been so scared before.
(He’s fine now, by the way.)

*puts on thinking cap*

4. I’m a teetotaller and have been one since I was about 16. No, I did not have a drinking problem before. Smile with tongue out

5. I had braces when I was 13-14. Some of my teeth are still crooked, but at least it’s better than it was before!

6. I recently made this key ring and I’m very proud of it!
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7. I’m counting the days until the release of the Hobbit-movie. Ack, it’s still over 200 days. So far! Such torture!

8. I own 16 of the Discworld-series stories by Sir Terry Pratchett. (16/39 – yay!) Well, actually it’s 15 books, because my first two stories are in the omnibus edition.

9. I still have some of my soft toys that date from my childhood on my bed. I’m not getting rid of them, whatever anyone says – they’re way too much a part of me.

10. Measured from the top of my head, my hair is about 12 inches (30 cm) long.

 

Bleiighdsfo, why was that so hard?! I’d rather talk about books than about myself.

 

4) Choose six people to present this award to.
Let’s pretend I cannot count…

Well… I did better than last time! See? Come comment and I’m going to consider your blog for merit. Now you know how to get your blog nominated for awards! Winking smile

5) Let the six bloggers know they have won!
Check! Now I’m officially going to be outed as a stalker! Winking smile

 

And that wraps this humongous rambling post up! I’ll try to be back soon with some drawings, but until then: keep safe everyone and be creative!

 

PS. This was my table in the library today. Thought you’d enjoy the amount of thick books that just suddenly materialised on it.

 

Now I’m going to go break my head over some more Middle English. (Not really. I’m probably going to go to sleep.)

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