maeter - Profile (original) (raw)

on 16 June 2002 (#596134)

This community is a collective for my writings and artwork. I write fantasy and historical fiction, and I like to sketch and paint. I started writing at about age 8, and while I make no claims about being good at it, I do love writing. I've been called a "gritty" writer, whatever that means. I love psychological drama, and real life is my bread and butter. Life doesn't sugar-coat things, and neither do I in my writings. Also, I love research; I spend a lot of time researching my stories, and it's important to me to know what cultures I'm drawing from, and have some form of mastery over what I'm writing about. It just makes it flow better.

I like the universal themes in life: birth, initiation, transcendence, death, and many more. They always find a way into my stories, and so does the idea of belief. Belief can manifest in lots of ways, and brings with it a lot of drama. Not always bad, but it's a fascinating read to see the psychology of human belief. I can write on just about every faith except Judaism, which I frankly get confused with. It fascinates me, but it boggles the brain--I guess learning Hebrew would help? I think religion can be taken both ways--as a positive, and as a negative. I'm all for flipping the coin on people.

Languages rock my world. I try to use Japanese rather unsuccessfully, as well as Classical Latin and Spanish. I try not to be insulting in my use of words from the language; I have way to much respect for other cultures to just drop words like an elitist. I like the concepts behind the words. I'm used to italicizing the words not in English, and to me it shows respect. So there. Along the lines of language, I love names and what they mean, and I can geek out reading baby name books for hours on end.

My interests are Japanese history, other races (and by this I mean like aliens and elves), world mythology, religion and archetypes. I love games like Fatal Frame and Silent Hill, and they've influenced me a lot in how I write. There is also Xenosaga, which is off by itself. Heh. Most of my stories have a central theme: darkness is not evil, some things don't need to be fixed, and there usually aren't happy endings unless you're living in Happy Cracksville.

I like a wide variety of authors in a lot of genres. I stick mostly to fantasy, but lately I've been reading a lot more manga--Angel Sanctuary, Ryo, Ayashi no Ceres and the like. I like manga with a historical basis, and I think if someone ever made a manga out of Lord of the Rings, I'd squee myself to death. My favorite authors are Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, Dion Fortune and Gael Baudino, to name a few. JRR Tolkien goes without saying, but I like his works more from a creation/research aspect than from storyline. Manga artists include Yuki Kaori, Naoko Takeuchi, Miwa Ueda, and others that are slipping my mind right now.

Disclaimer: All original works are copyright BLM, and plagarism will be prosecuted. Don't steal or my man-eating cat will chew on you. Savvy?

anime, aztec, carol gilligan, chrono trigger, creative interpretation, critical thinking, criticism, crono cross, debate, derrida, diction, dion fortune, divine unconscious, edna st. vincent millay, epistomology, fables, fairy tales, fantasy, fatal frame, final fantasy, fullmetal alchemist, gnosticism, historical drama, historical fiction, inca, inuyasha, jane mead, japanese history, kant, manga, mayan, metaphysics, moon magic, mythology, nietzsche, open minds, paganism, painting, penmanship, plato, pretty soldier sailor moon, psychology, qntal, religious drama, religious mythology, research, silent hill, sketching, south america, vincent van gogh, xenosaga