Eorling Mead Hall Planning/Discussion Thread

[Ealasaide]

Sorry, Lhunardawen, I had intended to wait for you to post, but the thread has moved on. I need to get a post in there for the outlaws. Looking forward to hearing from Ginna when you get the chance!

[Nogrod]

Looking good indeed!

Only please Eala could you consider one minor correction to your post as I don't think the first description one would come up with Stigend is "young man"... Okay he's only thirty and thence quite young at least if the outlaws are clearly older (and in that case it's allright to me surely if the older outlaws think of him as a young man).

In principle I quess Stigend would not have taken the steps forwards because the best position for him surely is standing at the doorway - not to say that he would have given Ghem a chance to sneak behind him and bolt the door... but as it is good for the drama here I'd say let's leave it like it now is. This way we have more options open I think.

Let's see how this plays out...

[Ealasaide]

At the age of 43, I consider any gentleman under the age of 35 as a "young man." But I will make the correction. For future reference, what descriptive would you prefer?

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Ealasaide

At the age of 43, I consider any gentleman under the age of 35 as a "young man."

Soon celebrating my 40th birthday myself I tend to think the same in RL... it just looked to me like you were talking about a twenty-something there. That may be a language-issue as well as in Finnish a "young man" is much more twenty - even younger - than thirty...

Indeed that raised the question of how old people in the Mead Hall are in the first place? I remember that Garstan is 35 (and Modtryth is few years younger than Stigend eg. 27-28) but how about Garwine or Thornden? Lord Eodwine needs to be a mature person I quess as well as Falco, right? How about Ginna or Kara? Or the newcomers?

For future reference, what descriptive would you prefer?

Honestly I have no idea... But now as I think of it I can see one more reason why the "young man" kind of bothered me. For I have myself always thought of Stigend to look a lot older than his age because of the hard wandering life, tough manual labor in construction sites, defending his odd family from peoples scorn and sometimes violence...

But you couldn't naturally know that as I think I haven't talked about that too much after my first postings here. So sorry about the inconvenience.

[Ealasaide]

No inconvenience at all! But thank you for the explanations. I have to confess thinking, my goodness Nogrod is picky! "Young" seemed like such an innocuous adjective. Now that I know your reasons, it is much more understandable. All I had to go on really was the following:

Stigend....age unknown... an Eorling journeyman carpenter, whose wife is Modtryth, and son, Cnebba

Since he seemed to be acting like an impetuous young fellow, charging all alone into a room full of cutthroats, I suppose I did make the assumption that he was not so weathered and experienced as you now point out he is. Apologies!

Perhaps we should have a link somewhere to a more comprehensive set of character portraits so as writers we all have some sort of quick reference that we can go to when dealing with another writer's character. I don't even know what most of the characters here look like aside from male/female and a rough age estimate. It makes for much more colorful writing when we can make use of accurate detail.

As for the ages of my characters:
I see the outlaws as being in their early-to-mid-30's. Ulric may be slightly older (Elempi -- correct me if I am wrong. You were writing Ulric before I got my hooks into him. )
Elián is in his late twenties, probably 27 or 28.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Ealasaide

Since he seemed to be acting like an impetuous young fellow, charging all alone into a room full of cutthroats, I suppose I did make the assumption that he was not so weathered and experienced as you now point out he is. Apologies!

No need for apologies... I tried to wrote it into my post that he was enraged (that's the charging-part) because of how the outlaws actions had affected the children - and yes that's Stigend's soft spot - his child with whom he is overprotective... Modtryth snaps him for it every now and then... But that also can be known only if one is familiar with the earlier phases of the characters...

Perhaps we should have a link somewhere to a more comprehensive set of character portraits so as writers we all have some sort of quick reference that we can go to when dealing with another writer's character.

There indeed is a list of the names of the persons in the Mead Hall and with many their ages and a sentence-worth of description in the post #1 of this thread. But they sure are no descriptions in any thicker meaning of the word.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Ealasaide

Perhaps we should have a link somewhere to a more comprehensive set of character portraits so as writers we all have some sort of quick reference that we can go to when dealing with another writer's character.

Tell you what: we do have a character list; it would be no problem for me to add anything like age, basic descriptions, and so forth, to what's already there. Just let me know and I'll add it. Some of the characters already do have ages attached to them in that post. See the very first post of this discussion thread for the link.

As for the ages of my characters:
I see the outlaws as being in their early-to-mid-30's. Ulric may be slightly older (Elempi -- correct me if I am wrong.

I'd say you're right about the outlaws.

[Nogrod]

It would be nice to know when Lhuna has time to write. I think she promised this weekend. Here in Finland (+3GMT) it's late Saturday evening - like 10PM - so with Lhuna it's even later. So I gather she will not post in the next few hours...

So maybe I can post something within an hour or two to build up the situation? Let's hope Lhuna gets online after she wakes up on Sunday (it's probably Sunday there already but anyway).

I'll start thinking a post...