Post
by Paty » Mon Jan 31, 2005 8:21 pm
:mags
well... as you can see, dave and I don't exactly keep the 'ON TOPIC" rule as strictly as others... we're sooooo easy...LOL
the skywise plot that Richard liked involved, if I remember it aright, skywise being injured and actually getting out of his body and exploring the spaceways..acually travelling to the stars, following a voie from the ether that said his place was truely out there. Leetah finally coaxed his spirit back to his body and healed it...and we were left with skywise going out each night to look at the stars and cry.
the other storyline involved the finding of another high one... called Eea. He came with the original settlers who formed the ancestors of the different tribes of elves... and who like some of the Blue Mountain folk, were tall and imposing and very magickal. this one got separated from the others, nearly died and fell into a pocket of wild magick like the one that created any nujmber of big, nasty beasties like the one...Madcoil? that killed Cutter's father. Anywaay, that pocket of bad mgick ended up making Eea a vampire. He needed elf blood to live...specifically, female blood taken at the time of mating. He wiped out a whole tribe before he evolved it enough to live on only a small amount... but it so horrified him that he ran away... sailing over the sea to another continent... an ilsand... where he helped the human inhabitants to evolve faster and with a more advanced civilization and society than their mainland counterparts. but his need for elf blood was still there and he feared that if he came into contact with his own kind ever again, that he would slaughter them... having not had any for centuries. Also at this point, he is wasting away and dying because of that lack. His human servitors and people love him for his gentleness and being the founder of their society... he is kin to a god as far as they are concerned... so two of them go, unbeknownst to him and in violation of his orders, in search of others of his kind, hoping they might have a cure for their "Lord". they end up on the mainland where tales of pointy eared, three fingered monsters in the forests pique their interest. they speak some elvish.... having learned it from Eea...but hide this fact ... along with their reverence for these creatures... from the human folk around them. They go into the woods to find the monster's tribe... and are found by the wolfriders. taken back to the holt, simply because they speak elvish... which is a wonder to the wolfriders...they are brought before Leetah and cutter...who question them on their aims and motives for searching them out. On hearing of another "old one" Leetah and cutter determine to go and try to heal him and establish contact. Of course skywise comes along to protect their back... grumbling about trusting humans all the way. they return with the humans to their ship and sail into the vasdeep sea towards the island kingdom. when they get there, Eea already knows they are coming... against his orders to his humans to try to find others of his kind...because he can smell Leetah's blood. He welcomes them to his island, and tells them they must flee for their lives and not to speak with him again and then goes into his quarters and slams the door...leaving the others wondering what the hell? the humans don't know of Eea's need for elven blood... there having been no other elves on the island...but they do know, because Leetah told them so... that she is a healer and they know their Lord is dying... and they beg her to save him! She agrees. she goes into Eea's chanber to face him down and finds out his terrible secret. to live he must drain her blood while he makes love toher...he has become a monster that kills in the moment of giving life. He wishes to die and to spare the world his curse... which he cannot, to his knowledge, pass on... but which is death to any he could love. At the same time, both he and Leetah, "recognize" each other as good mating potential... which wendy says is not unusual in her elfdom... and which other stories pointed out. recognition just happens...sometimes between lifemates and sometimes between strangers... it doesn't affect the living arrangements of mated pairs... it just brings a special elfchild into the family picture. Meanwhile, cutter, sharing a paychic bond with Leetah, knows something's wrong and decides to crash the party. the humans are staying out of the way of elvish business...wisely... and don't stop them. they bust in and see Eea holding an unconscious Leetah...who has blood allover her. He begs them to take her while she still lives and go. He calls his human servitors and bids them take the elves back to their holt... which they do. On the ship, Leetah comes to herself again and tells cutter and skywise what happened...how they mated and he drank her blood... how Leetah now carries a child of this High one... and how she healed him... but obviously he doesn't know this. Her blood will give him life for centruies more, she says... and hopefully he will realize he is cured...or take the final steps within his own psyche to complete his cure... which is up to him. they go back to the holt. The story edns with Eea sitting huddled in a darkened room , conjuring an image of leetah and crying because he knows he can never see her again...because he doesn't know he's cured and wouldn't believe it if someone told him... but also knowing that her blood has doomed him to centuries more of a lifehe has grown weary of but cannot take other than by letting himself die of starvation... which didn't work due to the love and vigilence of his himan friends and servitors.He's trapped for what he thinks is a loveless and lonely eternity...and he sits in the drkness with Leetah's image in front of him and weeps. And that's how I ended it.
the guys at the offices loved it. I thought it was an OK story. they said the implications of that storyline would and could really inject some really good storylines into the elfworld... and I thought so too. when I asked the staff if they thought Wendy would let me do it, they said"No way! it is too good!"
Hmmmm...OK...I had spoken to Wendy about some of the salient points of the plot and she had said that they were well within the mythos and were interesting and she would like to see a story treatment. so I made the story as good as I could, not wanting to tamper toomuch with established mythos... with subtle nuances and implications and emotional involvement as well as action and character interaction as much as possible. It was a self contained story and basically, except for intorducing a new elf baby... something Wendy had said she was not loathe to do... would not have disturbed the ongoing storylines. All of which the staff agreed with. They all said that Wendy wouldn't use it because it was TOO good! Go figure...
Wendy and I came to a parting of the ways later because of an incident that happened at the office. It was hunting season and I was itching to get into the woods, but I also had to deliver a batch of pages that I had done some coloring changes she had wanted. I went out early, cuz the offices didn't open until nine thirty... and I was in the woods, dressed in my red plaids and hunting boots and such... by five thirty AM. at nine, I came in and drove over to the offices... a drive of about an hour or so...to deliver the pages. then I was gonna go back out hunting for the evening hours until sundown... when you had to quit, cuz among other things you couldn't see what you were shooting at! LOL. so I get into the offices , looking like a giant red teddy bear... and ask if she is there. No... she is out to lunch with a guy from Hollywood whom she is discussing a movie deal with. Now, this guy is a gobetween... not a mover or shaker... he's feeling her out to see how much he can get for how little...they abound in Hollywood...but to wendy he was sa foot in the door.Actually... she had a hot property, and should have gotten herself a good agent to run blocker for her and help her over the pitfalls... owhich Hollywood is famous for. But she was bound and determined to do this herself. OK... so I wait for them to come back. and when they come in, Richard goes to his office and I am standing there in my hunting togs with the pages she wanted to see. I want her to check them over and OK them before I head out. she introduces me to the yoyo and he looks me up and down and what he sees is this little ol' granny lady in red. He doesn't see that they are hunting togs or see the pacs I am wearing on my feet or even the hunting license on my back... all he sees is this little ol lady in red. When I tell wendy I would appreciate if she looked at the pages cuz i wanted to get back into the woods, he asks why? and I say I hunt. He looks at me and says "I don't believe that for an instant." Wendy knows what is about tohappen I think... she gets this "OMG!" look on her face, cuz she knows I do not suffer asswipes lightly. This dodo has just met me and basically, within thirty seconds calls me aliar. I turn to him and ask what kind of idiot is he? A regular one or a flaming one...I vote for the latter. Doesn't he see the hunting gear? doesn't he see the hunting pacs, the license on my back... which had been at one time, turned to him as I spoke to Wendy... I tell him I have personally taken and gutted and dragged out more deer than he has ever seen in his miserable stupid life and if he doesn't make sure his brain is engaged before he puts his mouth in gear here on the EAST coast, he can get his miserable stupid self killed. We aren't as laid back as the west coast...and people on the east coast take offense at being called a liar to their face when you don't know dogshit about the person you are calling aliar. I was hot. If I hadn't had the flu and had been feeling a bit better, I woulda mopped up the damn floor with him. As it was, I just dressed himdown royally...letting himknow this ol granny lady could gut him before he could say another stupid word and would if he tried.
Wendy rushes me into another room ... babbling to the guy to go into the conference room and she would be right with him. She closes the door and proceeds to have a hissy fit jumping up and down and saying the pissant was an important person and all. I told her I didn't think so...he didn't have the look... or the intelligence. He wasn't that important if he didn't know enough not to be as stupid in what he said to people as he obviously was. I mean... I was perfectly willing to be nice until he called me a liar to my face thirty seconds after he met me. So wendy at that time, decided, I guess, that she couldn't control me... something she had never been able todo anyway, ut had tried hard to do. several times, to no avail...and decided not to give me any more work. She didn't tell me, however... saying the next book wasn't ready yet and I would have a week or so until it was... which suited me fine, it being hunting season and me being in the woods most days, anyway. When I checked in with the office later, the office manager sorta strung me along for a while...until I cornered him and asked if the little scene had put wendy off and she wasn't gonna give me any work... and he sorta hung his head and sid yeah... so I said OK...her loss...and didn't blame him, for which he was very grateful... but it wasn't his doing. Wendy went west not long after that, looking to find a movie deal for the elves...Richard stayed on the east coast, putting out the books. To my knowledge, she is still searching out a venue for her property... don't know what Richard is doing with the publishing end...haven't seen an elfquest book for a while... and every time I check Previews, I don't find the imprint or company listed.
Wendy and I butted heads more than once. She loved Hawkeye, I loved the Vision...LOL...she pranced around in her Red sonja suit, pretending to be a warrioress... and I was the one who didn't mind having hot blood running down my arms and who would kill you if you got out of hand... and she knew that. But she wanted the movie deal so much, I think, that she was willing to take a lot of shit from anyone she thought could help her in this. I think if she had laughed and told the guy that he had to watch himself with the creative crew around here... she might hafve gotten a bit more respect from the dodo. As it was, he could see her hunger for a deal and I think he played that fiddle like a pro. I still haven't heard of an Elfquest movie deal... although it would be a very hot property. Of course they would have to deal with Wendy, who controls every facet like an iron maiden.. and that is not really how you get things done in Lala Land. so maybe that's the reason we haven't seen an Elfquest movie... Every once in a while,you hear rumors of "Oh, yeah... Elfquest movie..." then you don't hear anything else... so who knows?
As I said, if anyone knows if they are still publishing I would be interested to hear of it. The whole universe she created had a lot of possibilities...none of which,I think, were completely developed. which is too bad. You only control all aspects of production if you do everything yourself...when you start bringing in other artists, you are gonna have to deal with their "takes" on the characters. their stylistic approaches to art, coloring or storytelling. The only entity that has controlled their artistic representations completely is Disney. Otherwise you just goetta sorta judge where to fudge the boundries between what you want or would do yourself and what you are gonna get from others.Either you can live with it or you can't. Wendy had this problem, that her audience loudly wanted HER art and storylines...but they wanted more books than she could produce herself... so she had to open the gates to other artists and writers and let them into her universe. which was OK... eventually the audience accepted that and gleefully read elf books. It wasn't WENDY... but it was better than nothing. Then, as the artists involved got a handle on the characters and got better and better, it seemed that Wendy didn't want them to be SO successful in replacing her... so you couldn't please her she wanted seasoned pros right at the offices so she could keep what they were doing right under her thumb all the time... and that just didn't work with the artists and inkers and colorists... who preferred to work freelance. It was just a weird setup. I think richard would have mede it work if Wendy hadn't had this "iron fist" policy with regard to the pros she got to work for her. she knew their capabilities.. what their work looked like... and it seemed that she wanted to change their work to mimic her own... but that she didn't want them to be TOO good at it. If that makes any sense. Some of us stood for it... some of us didn't.
But that's that story...LOL...moral: don't dis da witch if you don't want to get handed your head ...or other tender parts...on a platter... fricasseed!
LOL...honestly... I 'm really even natured and good tempered...um...right...heheheheheheheeeee..
Paty
:mags
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