Elijah David

Yesterday's prompt for the April Fae art challenge was Portal. Since I've been doing a poem a day this month as well as the art challenge, I started brainstorming what a portal poem might be like -- and what portals have been special to me over the years. The tendency in fantasy movies and shows like Once Upon a Time is to have a swirling vortex as the gateway between worlds. (I'm not immune to this image. In fact, the main method of inter-world travel in the Non de Velai books is a shimmering silver pool, though it often appears between two trees.) But the portals that appear in fiction are often more varied than that. The first portal stories I can remember seeing were The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland . The portals in these stories are naturally occurring phenomena: a tornado/twister/cyclone (whatever term you prefer) and a rabbit hole. While tornadoes weren't common where I grew up (outside of hurricane season), holes in the ground were common enoug...

I recently finished going through the Doctor Who spinoff Class , and I confess to having mixed feelings about the show. Although for the most part it scans as a DW-themed Buffy-style show about high school kids dealing with supernatural events, its failings fall into two categories of my personal pet peeves: wide open finales with no promise of renewal, and bad Narnia references. I'll deal with the first briefly before diving into the titular error. Wide Open Finales I'm not opposed to a good cliffhanger for a TV show's current season. In fact, they're often a good way to get me excited for a show again after slogging through 20-some episodes on a weekly basis. BUT using a cliffhanger in place of wrapping things up when you have NO guarantee of returning next season ticks me off. Class 's finale ends with literally no denouement. It ends with a joke. There's no time for the characters to recover from the deaths and destruction of the last hour. And the B...

April Fools' Day is just behind us, so I thought today I could list some of my favorite tricksters in fiction. Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Quite possibly the first trickster I encountered, the Cheshire Cat is one of my favorite characters, especially Disney's manic version portrayed by Sterling Holloway. The right balance of wise and demented, the Cat acts as both guide and roadblock on Alice's journey. He's the epitome of the trickster in that way. Bartimaeus, the Bartimaeus Trilogy The initial narrator of Jonathan Stroud's fantasy trilogy, Bartimaeus is the sarcastic and slightly unreliable djinni at the heart of the books. Beneath all the snark, he has a heart much bigger than he wants you to think. His friendships with his masters make him one of the most complex characters in YA fiction. Robin Goodfellow/Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream I love him so much I put him in the Albion Quartet. 'Nuff said. The Marqui...

My friend Mirriam  recently blogged about her top ten on-screen characters, and I was inspired by it despite not having seen most of them in action. Here, in no particular order, are my current* top 10 on-screen characters. Captain America/Steve Rogers (Marvel Cinematic Universe) – Steve Rogers is the man I wish I could be – so devoted to his ideals that nothing (not HYDRA, best-friends-turned-assassins, or even bullies on the streets of New York) can stop him from defending and realizing those ideals. He isn't perfect, but he strives to hold himself to his code of truth and freedom, seeking to punish bad guys and save good guys – and maybe even redeem a few of those bad guys along the way. He's not afraid to confront those he disagrees with, but he never quite crosses the line into showing disrespect (unless he's dealing with Tony Stark, in which case that's the only way to be heard). Merlin (various works, including Disney, Hallmark, BBC) – Merlin is my absol...