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rosenritterThe stars have aligned and I actually finished the interlude chapter before April! But before I post that, time to yammer a bit about the previous chapter!
First off, yes, that was Freddie Lounds grifting on Fox & Friends. Just like Beverly says, she doesn't believe what they're paying her to come on and claim, but she does believe in getting paid. The fact that I have now technically written Fox News fanfiction makes me want to take the world's longest shower.
Witches and Eldritch Locations
I really got to indulge in some of my favorite bullshit this chapter. Let's kick it off with Witches and magic.
In His Dark Materials, all the Witches we see (at least as far as I can recall) are adults. As a result, we don't really see how Witches learn their magic, though the general "vibe" I get from their magic is that it is likely something practiced but not studied. By that, I mean the kind of magic that you feel innately and hone as opposed to the kind that you pursue academically. A good example of what I mean here would be the practical, discreet, rural magic of Discworld witches vs. the elite, frankly often silly, urban magic of Discworld wizards. HDM Witches feel very much like they belong to the former category.
Some of the things that Calanthia (and Will to a much, much lesser degree) does in this chapter are straight out of HDM canon: flying using a branch of a magic tree and feeling the sensation of the light from the moon and stars as physical sensations. I've chosen not to limit Witch abilities in this story to things only seen in HDM, but I am trying to take care that the additional abilities don't feel out of place. For instance, Calanthia's little trick of seeming to phase through the glass is inspired by a canonical ability: that Witches can enter a mindset that allows them to move about so stealthily that they are nearly invisible.
Next: my completely inescapable obsession with places that are either subtly or very dramatically Off. The place that is just not quite fully normal is one of my favorite tropes of all time, and stories which feature it are often some of my favorite media out there (for example: the Southern Reach trilogy and to a lesser degree the film Annihilation, Tarkovsky's Stalker, some of Junji Ito's works like Uzumaki and The Enigma of Amigara Fault). I wanted the places in the world where people can end up separated from their daemons to have an element of this eldritch location trope. Since Will is particularly sensitive and a little paranoid about it, his perception of that slightly Off feeling is that this world's Death Valley and the land around it is sinister and suspicious. But for someone with a different mindset, they might see things differently...
I'll say more about that in next chapter's notes. ;)
On Specific Daemons/Characters
I'm not counting this chapter as Freddie's main intro, since her daemon isn't named this chapter. We'll get back to her soon.
Dwight Meacham/Jessamine: Unfortunately, we've all known a petty tyrant like Dwight. The kind of shitty guy who isn't even a big fish in a small pond, but more like a snapping turtle in a mud puddle. That's about all the commentary he deserves, frankly. His daemon is a coyote because as someone who has lived in extremely rural Texas as a child and who loved our chickens and barn cats, I have a personal vendetta against coyotes.
First off, yes, that was Freddie Lounds grifting on Fox & Friends. Just like Beverly says, she doesn't believe what they're paying her to come on and claim, but she does believe in getting paid. The fact that I have now technically written Fox News fanfiction makes me want to take the world's longest shower.
Witches and Eldritch Locations
I really got to indulge in some of my favorite bullshit this chapter. Let's kick it off with Witches and magic.
In His Dark Materials, all the Witches we see (at least as far as I can recall) are adults. As a result, we don't really see how Witches learn their magic, though the general "vibe" I get from their magic is that it is likely something practiced but not studied. By that, I mean the kind of magic that you feel innately and hone as opposed to the kind that you pursue academically. A good example of what I mean here would be the practical, discreet, rural magic of Discworld witches vs. the elite, frankly often silly, urban magic of Discworld wizards. HDM Witches feel very much like they belong to the former category.
Some of the things that Calanthia (and Will to a much, much lesser degree) does in this chapter are straight out of HDM canon: flying using a branch of a magic tree and feeling the sensation of the light from the moon and stars as physical sensations. I've chosen not to limit Witch abilities in this story to things only seen in HDM, but I am trying to take care that the additional abilities don't feel out of place. For instance, Calanthia's little trick of seeming to phase through the glass is inspired by a canonical ability: that Witches can enter a mindset that allows them to move about so stealthily that they are nearly invisible.
Next: my completely inescapable obsession with places that are either subtly or very dramatically Off. The place that is just not quite fully normal is one of my favorite tropes of all time, and stories which feature it are often some of my favorite media out there (for example: the Southern Reach trilogy and to a lesser degree the film Annihilation, Tarkovsky's Stalker, some of Junji Ito's works like Uzumaki and The Enigma of Amigara Fault). I wanted the places in the world where people can end up separated from their daemons to have an element of this eldritch location trope. Since Will is particularly sensitive and a little paranoid about it, his perception of that slightly Off feeling is that this world's Death Valley and the land around it is sinister and suspicious. But for someone with a different mindset, they might see things differently...
I'll say more about that in next chapter's notes. ;)
On Specific Daemons/Characters
I'm not counting this chapter as Freddie's main intro, since her daemon isn't named this chapter. We'll get back to her soon.
Dwight Meacham/Jessamine: Unfortunately, we've all known a petty tyrant like Dwight. The kind of shitty guy who isn't even a big fish in a small pond, but more like a snapping turtle in a mud puddle. That's about all the commentary he deserves, frankly. His daemon is a coyote because as someone who has lived in extremely rural Texas as a child and who loved our chickens and barn cats, I have a personal vendetta against coyotes.
