The Silly, The Sad and the inSANity...

[capri0mni]

• The Silly: In my last post, I made reference to my "Official Elf Name." I got it from the Elf Name Generator here. I had to include my middle name with my first to get the cool moniker "Tumbleflump" otherwise, I'm just plain "Lucky," which makes me sound like an old-time baseball player from the Triple A leagues, or something.



• The Sad: So -- here's the "official" obituary composed by my cousin Toni and me; mostly it was written by her, and I corrected some things. I wish I could remeber the years he worked at Eastern, served in Greenland (and the name of his ship), and graduated from Rochester.
  
  I had to ask Toni who the nine nieces and nephews were, and in the process, I learned some more about the running fueds between the siblings that would have contributed to the reasons why I'd never met them, or couldn't remember them. :::Sigh::: Humsns are such bundles of contradictions, aren't they?
  
  Lincoln Clark Magill, 79, passed away on Monday, November 20, 2006 at White Plains Hospital Center. Lincoln was a graduate of the University of Rochester, where he majored in optics. He served in the Coast Guard, serving in Greenland aboard an ice cutter. After retiring from his position of captain for Eastern Airlines in 1987, Lincoln remained active in the local community, volunteering for the Putnam County Cooperative Extension, as well as serving on the Board of Poughkeepsie Day School, during their critical transition to their Kenyon House campus. He lived a life of peace and serenity on his 27 acres of woodland in Putnam County, New York. His love of life and all living creatures created a special quality in him that attracted every person who met him. He is survived by his daughter, Ann, and nine nieces and nephews.



• The inSANity: I refer, of course, to my NaNo-vel. Unlike last year's final product, I am actually considering laying my eyes on this thing again, and revising and completing it (maybe in time for next year's Christmas Season). But even now, I think there's so much revising to be done, I may end up basically starting over from scratch.
  
  I was going to give a full overview of the plot as it exists now, but this post is long enough already, and I want to log off and order dinner. I will, however, tell you how I ended up resolving the two main questions I had about the story, and posted polls about, here:
  
  
  1. What do the other people, left behind after Bad!Kid is snatched, think really happened? Okay, so it turned out there was a major scene where Bad!Kid snaps, and all his frustration toward his little stepbrother explodes, and he's about to shove the embodiment of sweetness an optimism head first into a snowdrift. But then, the stepfather comes home right at the critical point, and so the Bad!Kid stops and plays the innocent. In the original version of reality, the stepfather does not see the violent act. But after the Bad!Kid is snatched, the elves implant the idea in the parents' heads that Bad!Kid was caught, and shipped off to a boarding school immediately. But the little stepbrother, who still believes in Santa, and is hiding out in the living room, to try and catch Santa in the act, sees the whole thing go down, and knows the truth. Meanwhile, both versions of reality compete momentarily for space in Bad!Kid's memory, until he dreams he's in the boarding school, and wakes up at "The Workshop" (until that moment, he'd been insisting to himself that the Santa Claus bit was all a dream, because he couldn't accept the reality). And that was the point where I chose to end it last night, as it's a definable moment of transformation in the main character, even if it's not the complete tranformation I was aiming at in the beginning.
  
  
  
  2. What do the elves do in the workshop, in these modern times? "The Workshop" is more like a modern, high-tech factory than the images of the workshop we usually get. And the core company of elves are ancient, powerful creatures, and are really the Powers That Be, in that space (the human kids that get snatched are basically secondary workers that are brought in each year; the elves probably don't need the kid labor, but fixing "broken" kids before they become adults is also part of their job).
     
     Technically, they work for "The Nicholas," but as the winter gift-giver is more like a force of Nature than an individual boss-type-man, they work for him in the same way that a forest ranger works for a forest, if you know what I mean. Their society is somewhat beaurocratic (after all, they have a lot of work to do, and it must be done precisely, if Christmas is to work, each year), but it is still founded on the laws of generosity.
     
     What they do is fashion the ideas for toys, each year -- things that are tangible in that dimension, but when they are sent to people on Earth, they become the hot new ideas for toys -- the ideas get planted in the engineers' heads in a a bit like the way that the idea of the alternate reality got planted in Bad!Kid's parents' heads.

I go eat, now.

Comments

[brassfire.livejournal.com]

Sweeeeet!

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Well, the chocolate chip cookies I got for dessert tonight with my calzone certainly were sweet, but I'm not sure if that's what you meant.

To which of the above were you referring? ;-)

[pedanther]

...just a second: If the elves' creations are sent out to the toymakers, sufficiently in advance for the toys to be made in time for Christmas, what is the actual point of the Nicholas' round of house calls on Christmas Eve?

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

The special little extras. Haven't you noticed that there always seems to be that one box at the bottom of the pile, behind the tree, that no one notices until all the other boxes have been opened? The Claus (or his one of his elves) is also very good at forging handwriting on the gift tags. And since his elves are also good at implanting vague memories with the power of suggestion, there's none of those awkward: "Hey, wait a minute, I never bought that!" moments. There's also the issue of apprehending the children who need rehabilitation.

Also, the sacks he carries (made, ostensibly, from animal hides) are actually dimensional portals -- they're empty until he reaches in for a present. And each family has a sack assigned to it. After the toys come out, the kids go in...

[pedanther]

If there's a sack for each family, the sleigh is still going to be heavily overloaded. Or is there a single master sack that he pulls all the other sacks out of?

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

yes, but remember, all the sacks are empty until he gets to the house, and they actually weigh no more than an ordinary empty leather bag.

The way I see it, this way, his sleigh carries a lot less weight than it would if it were loaded down in the conventional way with a physical gift for every Christmas(Yule)-celebrating, Santa-believing child on Earth (as in that image of the giant sack at the end of Polar Express).

[pedanther]

I got that. But several thousand (million?) sacks is a big load, even if they are all empty.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Indeed, but even so, it could be no more diffecult to load the sleigh thusly than it would be to load tens of times as many physical toys onto one sleigh...

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Of course, we could just say that his sleigh is just a kind of TARDIS... that would explain a lot -- especially in the way he arrives at every house precisely at midnight...

;-)