5 Reasons Why Drow (Dark Elves) Are Awesome and make Great Villains

          The Drow, or Dark Elves, and their society are one of the main focuses in the book Homeland by R.A. Salvatore. There a generally evil race from the fantasy realm called the Forgotten Realms, and they live in a place called the Underdark. Drow are so cool, and everyone should know why they are.

1. They worship a half spider, half woman goddess

        An evil race that lives underground has to have some sort of evil leader they look up to or worship. Lolth, also known as The Spider Queen, is the fictional goddess that the dark elves worship. She being of great power but also of great evil, she is most commonly depicted as having the lower body of a spider and upper body of a woman. Lolth promotes chaos into the drow society, dark elves make plots to kill their rivals so Lolth will favor them. "They had gathered there in solemn prayer every night since Matron Ginafae had learned that she had fallen into Lolth's disfavor." Page 25. Since Ginafae had lost Lolth's favor it meant her house could be attacked by another house if they wished to plot against them. Lolth is a awesome with a great design and motives, which makes a great pair for the evil dark elves.

2. They live in the Underdark

        What is the Underdark? Well its a secret underground world under the surface of the Forgotten Realms. Its a well kept secret that not many people on the surface know about. "whose sky is a ceiling of heartless stone and whose walls show the gray blandness of death in the torchlight of the foolish surface-dwellers that stumble here." Page 2. The fact that the Dark Elves live in a dangerous place like the Underdark is really cool. It makes them harden warriors and having to live in such a dangerous place proves means they always have to be on guard.

3. There Laws are Interesting

           Drow still have rules they have to follow in their society. They still get punished for committing murder openly. However if they can pull off something quickly with out much attention nothing much is done about it. "Investigation is not the forte of drow justice." Page 1. There willingness to bend the rules if someone commits a murder rather successfully is fascinating. It presents a more fresh look on how an evil society is ran.






4. The Nobles don't need Stairs

          Pretty much all nobles in the Drow society can do magic like summoning shadow orbs, or seeing in the dark. However the coolest thing they can do is levitate. They don't even use stairs they just float to their next destination.  "Drow nobles needed no stairs; another manifestation of their innate magical abilities allowed them the power of levitation." Page 14. Its little things like this that make Drow even cooler than they already were.

5. They are Survivors

         Since they live in the Underdark and everyone in their society is always looking for a chance to stab them in the back, you better believe they are good survivors. "The drow are the survivors, and this is the Underdark, the valley of death—the land of nameless nightmares." Page 2. Them being good survivors means they are strong fighters and villains.

Me writing this doesn't mean I like and want to be a drow, they are evil and look down upon all races. However, a hero is half as good as his villain, so having a great villain is very important.

Truth In Memoir

Truth In Memoir

To me a memoir has to be almost 100% accurate, with a few exceptions here and there. If a few minor details are changed or left out i'm okay with that, but when the author puts themselves in situations that never happened to them, then I have a problem. Especially when that situation is serious like a car crash or death of a person. 

Half-truths are okay if you tell the reader that some of the details in the story were altered to make the story more interesting. There not okay when you claim these things actually did happened to you when really they did not. If they bend the truth but still claim it actually happened then its not okay.

I think David Shields idea is interesting however I still think we need genre labels like fiction and non-fiction. There will always be people who want the hard facts, and people who just want to hear a good story. Having non-fiction and fiction helps people determine what they want so getting rid of these labels seems rather pointless.

The King's Speech Adaptation

               Since the The King's Speech is already a movie, I think another interesting way to tell the story would to make it a TV show. A television show would allow for telling the story in much more detail than the movie. You could dedicate whole episodes to showing of the Duke and Logue's life before they met each other. Also if you need more time to tell the story you could split the series into two or three season, considering if you need to. 

              The soundtrack or music for the show would be orchestra based music, with a couple songs with someone singing in them. Music would play in scenes when it shows the characters getting ready to do something or moving from one area to the next. In scenes with the characters speaking dialogue music would to be completely absent. This is because the show is about a man trying to get over his speech problems, hearing what he does to get over it is really important.  

              The final thing that would be important is capturing the feel and the way people acted during that time. You can't have them say anything that only we would say today because that would be unconvincing and very immersion breaking. Of course most of the characters would have to speak with British accents, so you would have to get British actors, or people who can do a really good one. 

That is how I would make The King's Speech into a TV show.

Post 3: Book Project 1: 11/22/63 Video Game

11/22/63

                Now that you have read the book, it’s time that you live through it. Coming to X-box One, Playstation 4 and PC is the new 11/22/63 action RPG video game. Create your own personal character and take part in an alternate time line were Jake trains people to go back in time to change history, for better or for worse. Play through many events such as WWI to stop Hitler for good, or even stop the death of Abraham Lincoln. However not all of your choices will make the future better, some might cause WWIII or even another great flood. If you don’t like you’re out come you can also go back into the portal and try again. However you should only use this sparingly, doing it too much will start to damage time itself, causing strange happenings to occur. Fight many types of foes like soldiers, mobsters, or even time police.

                The discovery of the first time portal was made by Al Templeton when he opened his dinner called “Al’s Dinner”. According to Al every time you go back into the time portal you start at the exact same time, September 9, 1985 at 11:58 A.M. “And when you go down the steps, it’s always 11:58 A.M. on the morning of September ninth, 1958.” Due to Al’s failing health he wants Jake to finish something he never had a chance to do. He wants Jake to go back, wait until the year of 1963 and prevent the death of John. F. Kennedy. “You can change history, Jake. Do you understand that? John Kennedy can live.” Jake is hesitant at first but does eventually agrees to Al’s last request to go back and stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing JFK.  Since Jake has to wait a while until he gets a chance to save JFK he decides to make a new life for himself. Throughout his new life he falls in love with a Sadie Dunhill, who eventually helps Jake with stopping Oswald. Jake does end up saving JFK’s life but at the cost of Sadie’s, so he decides to go back to the portal and see how his decision changed the future. Before he goes back in, a man with a green card stops to talk to him. He tells him that is part of a group that watches time portals like the one if Al’s dinner. He tells Jake that Al’s belief that every time someone steps back into the portal is a complete reset was somewhat wrong. Instead it creates separate timelines were events are changed a little or hugely effected. “Each trip creates its own string, and when you have enough strings, they always get snarled.” Jake decides to go into the portal and see how his action changed the future. When he returns he finds out that America was ravaged by a nuclear apocalypse due to the Civil Rights act never being signed. Jake decides to go back into the portal and reset the future back to its original state. In the end he meets up with Sadie as an old woman, and share in one final dance together. Now the reason the timeline your character starts in exists is because it’s one of the many timelines Al or Jake created as they traveled in through the time portal. Also there are many different types of time portals, so you don’t just go back to 1958.

                Fans of 11/22/63 will really enjoy this video game because it expands upon the idea of time travel Stephen King created in the novel. In order to give the book attention as well, the video game will feature a lot of the characters from the book. You will be able to interact with them by asking them questions, doing tasks for them, or getting to know them better. Plus that’s not all, Stephen King himself will be writing a lot of the quests and dialogue you will hear and go on throughout the game. If you love 11/22/63 and want to continue the experience, then buy the video game! Release date 11/22/2016.

What Is A Book?

A book is paper object that contains words, characters, stories, or whatever the author of the book wants. However its not the books itself that matters, its what is inside the book that does. Some people think they are better since they still read from paper or hardcover books, while everyone else is reading from their electronics. These people are full of themselves, without the writing, a book is just a worthless collection of blank papers. You don't judge a book by what form it takes, you judge it by the material it contains.

I agree with the opinion of Joe Meno and Victor LaValle, mostly with LaValle's opinion. Joe Mono talks about how a book is an idea and how it does not matter what form the "book" takes. While I see what he talks about, I don't label the idea of a book a book. I think the material written inside the book and the book itself are two separate things.

I agree with Victor La Valle's opinion a lot more than I do with Joe Meno's. Victor believes that books are nothing more than mass produced objects, and anyone who values them as some sort lost object is wasting their time. What matters really is the idea the author puts inside the book, not the paper object itself. The same thing could be said with other ways of reading like on your computer, or i-pad.

The two opinions I do not agree with at all are Nancy Jo Sale's and Tom Piazza opinions. Nancy claims her life would not have been the same if she read on a i-pad or tablet. It does not matter how you read the writing, if she were to read it on a I-pad so many years ago, she would have valued the writing just as much as she does today.

That is what I believe a book is.

Why I Read

I don't read books that often, the only time I do read is when we are assigned them in school. I always read the books we are assigned, yes even the ones I don't like. However the best school projects are the ones when we get to choose our own book. That is when I get a chance to choose a book from one of my two favorite genres, fantasy and science fiction. I have never been too much of a fan of realistic fiction, I read books and watch movies to escape from reality. Fantasy and science fiction give me a chance to escape my world and explore a much more interesting one. Some of my favorite fantasy worlds are Middle Earth and the Forgotten Realms. Even though they aren't sci-fi worlds from books, some of my favorites are Star Wars and the Aliens Universe.  That's not to say I don't enjoy realistic fiction, I love books like How To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher In The Rye, and Of Mice and Men. But I could live without realistic fiction, I couldn't live with out pure fiction. However I do like when our world mixes with the fantasy one, stories like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and even Marvel and DC comics do a good job at this. That is why I like to read.