Crabbit Faery Tales and Folk Tales of Forumshire

{{ I fail to see what your 'pot' problem has to do with things- and you ex-polis as well, its disgraceful well if you do get round to it I would recommend the reedited version- has some small additions but they help a lot, and its a smoother read in general and better laid out.
But in general I'm just teasing a little (except the Odo bit, I meant that!) I really do appreciate anyone who finds the time to read my stuff in a busy world. }}

Since I lost track of the updates as you were writing this I'm going back and reading from the beginning of the re-edited version. Hard to believe it was a year and a half ago that I read the original version of the opening! Still making my way through but just wanted to say that it's a great read and a really impressive accomplishment by you.

Now back to for me

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Finally done, well for now at least! Here is the link to the finished version.
If anyone is feeling brave enough to subject a friend to it I would be curious what someone with no familiarity with this place or its ways were to make of it. }}

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2678c57O-0LUEROYml2NTFEUTQ

*claps hands* YEEEEY!!!

Might just print that and take it with me on holiday. (...) 184 pages. Think I need to buy more paper first.

Hard to believe it was a year and a half ago that I read the original version of the opening!-Eldo


{{Yeah hard for me to believe it was that long ago I started it- with no more idea of what I was going to do than a retelling of the Goldilocks and three bears story- it only had four characters in my head at that point- Figg as Gingerlocks, Maw, Paw and Petty as the three McTyrants, and the only other character planned for was Azriel- but her role in the end was completely different (the earliest version of the original tale have an old witch in the Goldilocks role not a young girl- my original idea was Azriel was going to try to thwart Figg at every turn because she had been usurped from the lead role by a child- none of which actually made it in in the end at all as the story developed into a road/heist tale.

' Still making my way through but just wanted to say that it's a great read and a really impressive accomplishment by you.'

Thanks Eldo, I appreciate that- hope it holds good for you till the very end. And seems somehow fitting, or appropriate that I should end up writing a full tale for Forumshire, especially by accident- thats so Forumshire!  


'Think I need to buy more paper first.'- Amarie

If anyone knows how to make kindle style versions  to save on all that paper feel free to do so and post it up for others- I havent a clue.
Also the layout is wrong on the google drive display, chapters not starting on a new page ect- if you download the file however and open it in open office before printing it should be laid out properly.
Hope you enjoy it Amarie- you have a reasonably large part in proceedings (and you also have a short, but still my favourite scene in the entire thing. In fact Ambassador Amarie is one of my favourite characters to write as being from the DP she has an inbuilt potential for duplicity and separate motivations that make her fun to write- plus since Ally left us Ambassador Amarie is easily the coolest character in these tales. }}

I will be needing a lot of coffee and somewhere comfy to read this.

{{{And possibly something for your blood pressure! }}}

{{Thanks to Amarie we now have a PDF version of the Gingerlocks tale available- see sig below- which Amarie reliably informs me (and who am I to doubt an Ambasador of the DP!) can be converted to kindle use by witchcraft or possibly technology, hard to tell them apart.
I'll leave the explaining to her as she actually knows what she is talking about whereas I am just drunk.   }}}

Ahhh yes, this type of witchcraft does not come cheep. Just don't google for a solution, that'll... um.. jinx it and seven years of bad luck and.. uh.. such. *shifty eyes*

Ha ha, I see the coven will out



Pass the Babycham

I finished reading this last night but wanted to wait until I was a little more awake before trying to comment. It's a really great story, Petty! I had previously read up to just before the heist began, but I like that there was so much going on towards the end and how many characters came back for the climax and denouement. The final couple chapters and epilogue were a great touch too. I like "thorough" endings like that and you tied up all the loose ends (even Forest, who I was thinking about just before he showed up; loved his "hut" also ) and concluded on a perfect note. I'm glad that you decided to spend so much time and effort on a Forumshire tale in order to turn it into our first novel. An inspiration to our community and the Creative Corner.

{{Thanks Eldo really glad you enjoyed it right to the end.

note- I should point out any discussions from here on in regards the Gingerlocks tale will probably be spoilery- so if you haven't read the tale and plan to then please dont read these posts- you'll only ruin the surprises for yourself. And I worked bloody hard on those surprises!!

When I was writing it, from approx where you first read too, I thought- fine just got to write up the heist, wrap it up job done- but when I actually came to write it up I realised there was a lot I really didn't want to just leave hanging- what happens to Norc and Ringo and Norc's Dad? What happens to Pretty and Malky? What happens to the Eye of God Norc stole- and just what did happen to poor Forest left without a cart?
The bit with Paw and Odo was conceived off from almost the beginning, well from at least the moment I decided to go down the coal scuttle plot route, which as I was writing was about where Azriel first appears. Though it was modified slightly in the end by having both Azriel and Amarie also working for Odo so they had to get their little final bits too.
This is my excuse anyway for why from about 6 chapters from the end I kept thinking it was nearly done when it wasnt!

Hopefully the new layout though, and the way the chapters are set out now dispels somewhat the 'too many endings' feel Halfy got when he read the original.}}}

Talking of coal skuttles.............. Ive got one A bit battered but.........

your cat could use some perking up as well.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Hopefully the new layout though, and the way the chapters are set out now dispels somewhat the 'too many endings' feel Halfy got when he read the original.

I've always enjoyed all the endings in Return of the King, so take this for what it's worth, but I thought the denouement was a good length and didn't feel that it dragged at all.

what is it with coal skuttles?

{{ They're magic Read the story and you'll find out! (Actually I wonder when the coal scuttle first appeared- somewhere in the lost depths of the old forum I believe) }}

I know the coal scuttle conflict was well-established enough by January 2012 that I wrote a Needlehole Mystery about it and everyone understood the references. I did a bunch of Googling and the earliest reference I could find on here was from June 2011 in which Petty explained the backstory of the scuttle to Odo, and its properties as described were similar to the current story. I'm not certain if this is the origin point of the coal scuttle though; it's fully possible there were earlier references on here that I didn't pick up. I tried doing a site search for Planet Tolkien too but that didn't return anything. However, the nascent alternate world of Forumshire largely took shape in threads in the old Other Fantasy Stories forum (predecessor to the current Arts and Entertainment forum), but the original version of that was never imported to PT. So there may have been references from before February 2011 that are now lost. That said, IMO the discussion from June 2011 kinda reads like a new element of the Forumshire universe being introduced and explained for the first time.

http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/t13p575-howdy-from-needlehole

Pettytyrant101 wrote:((((Now I am not one to call odo a liar, never. But the truth is it can't rust- don;t tell anyone but its magical. It was made by one of the ancient Buckie Brewing Wizards, he was trying to make a bottle of infintie buckie spell, but unfortuntely he was already drunk on buckie when he thought of the idea and in his drunkeness he missed the bottle when he cast it and it hit the coal scuttle, so it now fills back up with coal whenever its empty. sadly for the wizard he lost the scuttle in a game of 'kilt flipping' with my great-great-great grandfather the very next day. And secondly, having come to know we Tyrants and MacTyrants as you have, do we strike you as the sort to go around giving stuff away!))))))

The matter of the scuttle arose during a discussion of a similarly purloined handkerchief; this particular quote came on the page after the one I linked to above. And if anyone is wondering why the encryption brackets are parentheses rather than curly brackets: those were their original form. IIRC the change to curly brackets was an ostensible upgrade to try to stop unauthorized members (non-mods/non-royalty) from cracking them, but that didn't really stop anyone.

Actually, poking around on Archive.org, it turns out there was an even earlier version of encryption that didn't involve brackets at all! And the Tower of Lore was originally called the Fortress of Lore. The things one forgets. Wasn't able to find any mentions of coal scuttles, though Archive.org didn't pick up most of the pages from longer threads.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100822054909/http://the-hobbit-movie.com:80/forum/missing-hobbit-odo-570.html

{{{I cringe at some of my posts from when I was 15 but I suspect I'm not the only one to enjoy the nostalgia too.}}}

Eldo goes all Christopher Tolkien on Forumshire!

{{{I cringe at some of my posts from when I was 15 but I suspect I'm not the only one to enjoy the nostalgia too.}}}......... Eldo.

Cripes, if I had just a penny for all the cringy, dumb, embarrassing, foot-in-mouth remarks Ive made Id be wealthy enough not to give a dam

{{ Great digging Eldo - I have no idea if the bit you found was the first- I suspect so, sounds like it- my vague drunken memory is that it was in conversation with Odo in the Duck 'n' Muck, back before Odo caught Eru and Respectability and still went for a buckie and a duckie.

Interesting too I contracted MacTyrant and MacBanks to McTyrant and McBanks at some point. They mean the same 'son of' and in fat though they are now pronounced differently (Mack and Mick ) originally they were just different ways of writing it down and also included M' as an acceptable form.

I still quite like that origin story for the scuttle. I'm tempted to adapt it and slip it into the Gingerlocks story- first panel on the tapestry in the Scuttle Museum would be the most obvious place to include it. }}}

{{Now I've had a chance Eldo to take a nosey through that link I dont think that was the first example of the scuttle appearing after all.
As a little further back in the exchange I asked Odo if he thought I had forgotten about the coal scuttle incident- implying an earlier reference to it somewhere. }}

Does this mean Eldo is an archivologist now?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Now I've had a chance Eldo to take a nosey through that link I dont think that was the first example of the scuttle appearing after all.
As a little further back in the exchange I asked Odo if he thought I had forgotten about the coal scuttle incident- implying an earlier reference to it somewhere. }}

Could be. The similar backstory to the handkerchief under discussion makes it sort of seem like a direct precursor to the scuttle, though it could just as easily have been the other way around I suppose. Odo also prefaced his explanation of that tale by saying "in case you decide to plead ignorance, I'll tell you the tale again"; given the context I interpreted that statement (as well as yours) as a rhetorical flourish/bit of worldbuilding rather than a reference to a previous thread on the forum. I can't recall or find any earlier reference to the handkerchief either. But there might be something that I just haven't found.

In any event, if your memory that the coal scuttle emerged before Odo found respectability is accurate, than the tale probably did begin on the Old Forum, since Odo's conversion to respectability had already begun by Dark Planet Day, though it accelerated considerably after his stint in the Lockholes following the post-DPD party in Rushock Bog, as chronicled in the first ever edition of the Daily Purist.

http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/t13p325-howdy-from-needlehole#1857

(The depravities themselves can be found several pages back in that same thread. Also, "two in the bush is better than one in the hand for Odo" is still one of my favorite bits of Forumshire newspaper copy ever. )

Amarië wrote:Does this mean Eldo is an archivologist now?

Well I have to try to stay in practice before I start on my degree in the fall.

Odo had definitely sunk into the depths of respectability by the time I joined the Old Forum, which was at least a year before Dark Planet Day. In fact, I never realized there was a time he hadn't been respectable.