Incentives

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Battle Royale, book, books, fiction, hunger games, If I Stay, Lord of the Rings, LOTR, quotes

“Guilt and bribery are the glue that have held parents and teenagers together for generations. Don’t fight tradition.”

–If I Stay (Movie)

If you’re a frequent reader, you know of my vendetta against passive characters. Things just happen to them, they aren’t driven to act.  It’s a little ironic that I work in marketing for an incentive card company. We research what motivates employees to be more productive and how to incent consumers to perform an action. Maybe that has bled into my writing and reading because I love paying attention to the different incentives used to motivate characters.

In Battle Royale, the threat of death motivates students to kill one another, similar to The Hunger Games. Fear can be a strong motivator and so can love. In If I Stay, Mia has several reasons to stop fighting and pass into the afterlife. Her body is in shambles after a car accident that killed both her parents. If her younger brother hadn’t survived, the book would have been over faster than if Elrond just tackled Isildur.

After hearing this quote, I tried to think of characters motivated by guilt or bribery. Somehow, I’m drawing a blank. Help me out by leaving a comment.

-Eliabeth

How Well Do You Know Lord of the Rings?

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books, eagles, Lord of the Rings, movies, reading

When I watch a movie, I don’t usually notice plot holes. They have to be pretty glaring because otherwise, I just suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy the fictional tale. I realize I am in the minority on this, especially for certain fandoms.

For example, I didn’t realize how big a fuss people made about the Eagles in Lord of the Rings until I showed the following pin to my roommate (who has read the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion multiple times).

Plot Holes

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battle plan, fantasy, Lord of the Rings, plot, Sauron's battle plan

I bought several audio books on Cyber Monday (MAJOR SALE) and had high hopes for them. So far, Mount Dragon has more plot holes than Sauron’s battle plan.

__book fan merchandise: underwear?

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books, buy, clothes, deathly hallows, fan, fashion, Harry Potter, hunger games, jewellery, Lord of the Rings, magic, pendant, photography, shopping, underwear, writing

Have you ever bought merchandise from one of your favourite books? I have a pack of Harry Potter-Themed cards and always seem to fall in love with Harry Potter style jewellery such as the Gryffindor House Points necklace to the right or the Deathly Hallows pendant below. Have you ever indulged in fan merchandise? Hunger Games bottle cap clip? Lord of the Rings underwear? 😉 Share your fan goods that you have bought or are on your wishlist here today!

– Ermisenda Alvarez

Does power really corrupt? Examples from books and movies.

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authority figures, books, corruption, Lord of the Rings, LOTR, media, movies, power, Simon R. Green, The Good The Bad and the Uncanny, Tolkien

Does power really corrupt?  I’m sure there are plenty of examples through history where a ruler has “become” corrupt, but was that the power or was that a flaw in the person’s personality that was exaggerated under the stress of wielding power?

Media certainly portrays power as something that can corrupt anyone.  in the Lord of the Rings movies, both Gandalf and Galadriel refuse to take “the one ring” because they know that despite their desire to use it for good, the ring would do bad through them.  Then again, is it power that corrupts or is it the ring itself as an evil object?

In the October book review of The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny, you will meet John Taylor, a P.I. in the tucked away part of London called the Nightside.  When the dying Walker, the man who keeps over in the Nightside, goes to John to offer his position to John, several other characters have something to say about it.  Razor Eddie the Punk God of the Straight Razor warns John, “[d]on’t be fooled into thinking you could take this power and not be touched by it.”  An internal tug of war rages as John weighs his options.

What do you think? Is power always a corrupting force?

Book or Movie?

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books, Ella Enchanted, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, movies

Which do you like better, the book or the movie?

I’ve figured out for me, it is usually the one I am exposed to first.  I cannot watch the movie as a movie without comparing it to the book.  The first Lord of the Rings, I read the book first and was upset the movie left things out, never mind how long the movie was.  The second and third movies I saw before the books and complained that the books dragged.

Sometimes, I can enjoy both.  The seventh Harry Potter movie (both parts) I enjoyed more than any other movie because on previous movies, I had read (or reread) the books recently and could not help but gripe about how the movies blundered things.  For example, the devil’s snare, why would you need the relax part of the movie, what did it add?  I purposely did not reread the seventh book before watching the movie and enjoyed it much more than any of the other movies.  My mom on the other hand, had finished the book days before watching the seventh movie and launched into a diatribe about the inaccuracies. (So as you can see I come by it genetically.)

Other times, it does not matter how long it has been.  Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine is one of my favorite books and I liked Anne Hathaway.  How could they possibly make a bad movie combining the two?  Well they did.  It was horrible!  Even though it has been years since I’d read Ella Enchanted, I picked up the book again to make sure I was justified in my indignation and I was right, the movie was no comparison.  I realize comparing a movie to a book I hold in such high regards is probably not fair to the movie, but too bad.  I had high expectations that were not met.

I’m now afraid to read The Princess Bride because I liked the movie.  I used to watch it on repeat, same issue with Stardust because I’ve been told the story lines are completely different.

What about you?  Are you able to enjoy both mediums separately or do you end up comparing them and liking one ore than the other?  Were there books or movies that did not hold up to your standards after being exposed to the story in the other format?