The Wizard Of Oz Best Scenes

[Marketta Filipovich]

Iwant to create a setup wizard for a swift application. I have done this several times before but every time I make this by creating several scenes with several view controllers. This time, I don't want to make it this way. I want to have web view control in the background that will contain GIF and I want this GIF to be playing across the whole wizard lifecycle. This means that I want One Scene with One Viewcontroller and when the user swipes or presses next, The questions should swipe leaving the background GIF playing. I want to know the best practice for doing such thing. I have seen it in several apps. I thought about creating one large view and adding a gesture recognizer and when the user swipe I would animate it to the right or left. Please note that my questions in the wizard are dynamic and every page should have totally new format of questions.

Last week, I wrote tips for writing battle scenes. This week I thought I would talk about magical battles because any good book about sorcerers or wizards needs at least one magical duel.

Writing a magical battle can be tricky. Even though this is a battle of magic in a fantasy world, you still have to follow rules that make sense. (Need help on that? Check out my blog on creating rules for magic.) What good is it if your wizard can cast a spell to kill all enemies? There simply would be no conflict. As with all magic, everything has to have limitations and consequences. Make sure those are reflected in your duel.

But unless you want your sorcerer to always win, you need to have them have a weakness or a way for the other side to combat the spells. In my The Elemental trilogy, if the wizard loses their concentration, their spell is broken. But perhaps in your story, using spells may drain the user. Or someone with an innate magic may be limited by their surroundings.

Here is an excerpt of a magical duel from my current work-in-progress, Destiny: Book Three of The Elemental. In this case, Selda uses spells but Lina possess an innate ability to control the elements.

Selda scrambled out of the hole. Her face was contorted with fury. As she glared at Lina, Selda quickly released her next spell. Lina started to rise but suddenly was slammed back to the ground. She turned her head, catching sight of a red vapor in the form of a long coil. It slithered over her like a snake, pinning her to the floor. Lina called the wind to brush away the vapor, but it continued to hold her firmly to the ground.

The words she heard Selda begin to murmur filled Lina with fear. She had heard them before. Selda was performing the spell that would release her Elemental powers. While Selda would gain the power, Lina would lose more than just her power. She would lose her life. She unleashed a wall of fire right in front of Selda, who stumbled backwards in surprise.

Since the reunion of the famous trio and more stars is coming to the TV on New Year's Eve, I thought it would be a great idea to review the famous chess game from the Harry Potter series. If you are a huge Harry Potter fan, you must have remembered this scene. In the first movie, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, there's actually two chess scenes.

The first one, not so popular, was the one where wizard's chess has been introduced. It was Ron playing against Harry in the hall, while Hermione was calling the game ''barbarian'' since the pieces were not captured but destroyed. Anyways, we did not got much from that game, since it was really short scene but a good one.

After some time, the trio of Harry, Ron and Hermione went off, looking for the Philospher's stone. Facing many obstacles, they find themselves on the massive chess board, playing against self moving pieces. They could not cross to the next room until they defeat the self moving pieces. That's when the fun starts. Ron, as the best of them three, decides that Hermione should be the rook, Harry should be the bishop. He decided to be a knight.

The game started, and it was Scandinavian defense. Ron was calling all the enhanced pieces to move, playing very sharp line. The trio played as black in this game. Since Ron was the one making the moves, he sacrficed the queen, and after some time got into the position shown below.

In this moment, after sacrificing a rook to deflect the enemy queen and protect Harry, Ron decided to give a check to the white king himself. This way he sacrificed himself, but his calculations were right. After Qxh3, there's Bc5#. That was Harry's move and he played it, winning the match and moving on in the next room searching for the stone.

The protagonist, Ged, is born with the gift of magery, a great power that is grounded in words and speech. Unwisely, he abuses that power by channeling it through pride and hate, unleashing a dark shadow upon himself and the world. Crippled and humbled, he begins a journey of traveling the world to undo what he has done. Through his travels and experiences, he comes to understand that power must not be wielded without understanding the consequences. At the conclusion of the story, Ged realizes that the evil he brought upon the world is in fact a part of himself, his inner darkness. Only in this understanding and acceptance is he finally able to heal himself and the world.

The central conflict of the book is internal. Ged needed to overcome his pride, understand the purpose of his art, resist the temptations of power, and acknowledge his dependence on friendship and kindness. The abuse of power is what got him into this situation: More power is not the solution. The climax of the story is unique in that it does not culminate in a show of force to defeat external evil, but in accepting responsibility for the darkness within him.

There is an implicit ethical responsibility towards maintaining the Equilibrium. Even small deeds can have unintended consequences on the greater whole. The school on Roke is built upon the principle that learning to harness the gift of magic is not enough; pupils must acquire the wisdom of if and when to use it. Students learn how to apply their disciplines and hone their craft, but more importantly spend time learning how to think critically and ethically about its applications. As the narrative unfolds and Ged unleashes the shadow that scars him and kills the Archmage, we recognize the disastrous consequences of using that power inappropriately.

Embedded within the narrative of Wizard of Earthsea is a deep and inherent appreciation for nature and its mysteries. There is an exchange quite early on between Ged, still an impatient apprentice, and his taciturn master Ogion, which provides an excellent example:

Wizard of Earthsea introduces the Immanent Grove, located on the Isle of Roke where Ged attends the school of magic. It is depicted as an uncanny stand of trees that is always more than meets the eye, and is never quite what one expects. It represents the source of magic and power in the Earthsea universe. Within it resides the Master Patterner, a mage who spends his entire life attempting to discern and understand the pattern of the world. The Grove is best described in the third book in the series, The Farthest Shore:

It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

Wizard of Earthsea conveys the notion that there is much to learn from the Other; wisdom can come from a wide array of unexpected sources, including the natural world. We must be open-minded enough to learn from them in order to fully understand ourselves. This central theme is revisited in the last book of the series, The Other Wind.

Ged is a character that comes to understand and accept integration and balance within himself. It is my opinion that we would all do well to look within ourselves and think about what virtues are necessary to make us better, more resilient, more integrated, and mentally healthier people that can live more sustainably in our complex world today.

This is one of my favorite stories and the first text based book I read when I was little. Rereading it over and over through the years I am continually struck by the unsaid, but clearly specified details of her world. Ursula K. Guinn had someting of an unfair advantage in writing and envisioning societies. Her father was the renowned California anthropologist Krober (most of us know him vie Ishi: Last of His Tribe) and her author mother who did the actual writing of the people and myths Krober studied.

Dear Isaac,

Tell me more about the epigram at the beginning of Earthsea. I find it rather awkward to translate (remember I am translating it into Arabic. Actually finished a very potent draft and editing it these days)

Can I hear what you have to say about these lines?

Thanks

Mona

I appreciate your comment. Rereading my comment, I think your take gets closer to the truth of what is being expressed. Opposites provide contrast, and in that contrast lies clarity and wholeness. Meaning is independent of those elements, or is a step removed from the process.

This is well written and well supported without being the blind veneration of a fervent fan. You point out the strengths - and I agree with you in regards to the action scenes that worked and didn't work. And I liked the provocative temptation of Ron - but I wish there had been more of that, in a shorter, tighter movie, or in a final chapter done in one film.

Sorry, this is too long and drawn out for me, with dramatic moments cut short, and boring dialogue delivered slowly, ever so slowly and thoughtfully. I have faithfully seen all the movies with my daughter, who loves them, but I am no longer enchanted by the series, if I ever was.

I find, and this is more a criticism of Rowling, that the plot is too much of a conglomeration of devices that seem picked out of a hat. Reminds me of the line in Life of Brian when Brian is pretending to be the soothsayer; John Cleese says, "He's making it up as he goes along!"

To me, it's a lot of random elements of magic and hocus pocus, and elements borrowed from other sources (you yourself seem to allude to the carrying of the horcrux as the bearing of the Ring in Tolkien), that it's too complicated and arbitrary for me to find it enchanting and engaging. I wish this had been the final movie, all in one. In the Star Wars franchise, you could at least count on each movie to have at least one chase scene or duel, as well as one battle, that were memorable set-pieces. For me, all the movies blur together and I don't find them very memorable.

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