01 February 2012

The Film Script is "Mostly Complete."

Reason #47 to fear the multi-novel epic fantasy: danger lurks in its trope of the everyday person hailed by fortune/history/the Gods/secret birthright/leprosy to become the Chosen One to fulfill a grand and world-shaking density.

This trope appears harmless. Yet throw it into the fire, and secret characters blaze forth:

<Tolkien voice>This trope may inspire a person to plan, and possibly even execute, a multi-media fantasy project, whether or not that person has any business attempting such a project. Under the witchery of this trope, a workaday mortal may come to believe that he or she has been Chosen to create the Next Big Thing in epic fantasy.</Tolkien voice>

This is not to say that I think we should cast all multi-novel epic fantasies into the volcanoes in which they were writ, but caution is in order:

"The stage of Genie: The Beginning is set in the medieval time period where it shy's away from a traditionally strong Arab heritage from which the normal storytelling evolves. The battles are unique and suspenseful."

(That's a relief, about the battles.)

The reward for big donations should be the airbrushing of this image on the donor's vehicle.

According to the creator of the project, "The amount we are seeking is the minimum amount necessary of the approximately $25,000 we intend to invest in hiring a professional book writer to assist in the writing of the book as well as the first round of publishing."

Consider: what is a "professional book writer," after all? If the creator of this project kept the $25,000 and wrote the book himself, would he not become a professional book writer? Cannot $25,000 hail the everyday person, and name him the Next-Big-Thing-Bearer? (This is the stage of the monomyth that Joseph Campbell refers to as "the Call to Rejection Slips.")

Postscript: I suspect that the woman depicted above is the protagonist, Kacie, but I hope her name is Genie.

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