rosenritter

And then my monthly goal was not just broken but shattered. Hoo boy.

The past few weeks have been a really tricky time for me. I’ve not only been really busy with work and personal life stuff, but I also had some pretty bad depression weeks in there. There were times when I wanted to write, but I just couldn’t get things going. Every time I thought I was back on top of things, something else would come up to completely throw things off. Fortunately things are going a bit better right now, so all I can do is try to make the best of that. Thank you to everyone for being patient with me!

Now on to chapter notes. There aren’t too many this time around.

First of all, the museum that Will and Hannibal visit is very loosely inspired by an existing museum - the Mütter Museum. I’ve never been personally, but it’s a place I’d love to visit one day. Of course the daemon museum and the Mütter museum aren’t all that similar, really, since the Mütter museum focuses on the history of medicine and there’s a bit of psychology going on with the daemon museum, but it was an inspiration nonetheless.

Some of the darker history we see in this chapter concerning daemon prejudices and “treatments” for having an irregular daemon are based on some of the stories I’ve heard about mental health treatments during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, lobotomies being a major example. (I’m also fairly sure that the description of intercised people in His Dark Materials is meant to harken to the practice of lobotomization as well. Hell, it might be literal text.) Getting into the history of medicine in that time period is fascinating, but it’s also brutally upsetting in many different ways. I recommend the podcast “Sawbones” if you’d like a not-so-viscerally-depressing introductory look at some of those histories and topics. It’s not JUST dedicated to that time period (there’s also a lot of stuff about the wild world of ancient medicine), but because we have a lot more material preserved starting from that time period, it comes up a lot.

On Specific Daemons

Abel Gideon/Medea - Gideon’s daemon is a mockingbird. I chose this form for a few reasons. First and foremost, mockingbirds are famous for imitating the vocalizations of other animals, just as Gideon has been made a crude imitation of the Ripper by Chilton’s psychic driving. Another minor reason is just a pun - the “mock” part of the word referring to Gideon’s sharp tongue and ability to snark at everyone around him. The name Medea comes from the Ancient Greek figure who in the play of the same name by Euripides, murders her ex-husband Jason’s new wife, his new father-in-law, and the children that she had with him in revenge. In the chapter, when Gideon refers to his daemon’s name as “wrathful”, that is why.

As I mentioned a while back on my twitter (@rosenritter42), my goal is to have at least one chapter per month. And because my last chapter was on January 1st, that means that there was a chapter in January! Haha... ha... hhhhhhh.

But I mostly kid. Beating myself up over delays is what got me into a writer's block funk with Dies Irae. I'm trying not to get down on myself if I take a while to get a chapter together, since doing so seems to make my productivity worse. But that's enough of that! Let's get to the nitty-gritty with some notes about the previous chapter!

Witches

In the original His Dark Materials books, Witches appear to only live in what we in this world would call northern Scandinavia. They're all female, and new Witches are born when a Witch has a daughter with a human man. If a Witch gives birth to a boy, he is a normal human. They can live for hundreds of years (sometimes over 1000 years if I remember correctly). They have some magical capabilities, such as being able to fly with the use of the bough of a specific tree (the cloud pine), some weather controlling powers, the ability to become nearly imperceptible and move about undetected, and a few other things. At a certain point in their life, they undergo a trial that allows them to travel far distances from their daemon (more about THAT coming up in future chapters, so I won't be touching it here). They're pretty cool, and seem to be criminally under-utilized in daemon/HDM AUs.

Now, I'm keeping a good chunk of those things, but I have also altered them in order to fit both the Omegaverse stuff and for my own personal gratification. They still have certain magic abilities and an incredibly long lifespan; those are the things I've touched the least. But instead of being located entirely in Scandinavia, there are Witch clans scattered across the world. Every continent has at least a handful of clans, and they all have their own unique beliefs and cultures. Some clans are more open-minded while others are insular.

In this story, Witches exist outside of the Alpha/Beta/Omega system. We'll get more into the ramifications of that in a specific chapter later on. Witches can't sire children, but they can give birth to children sired by either Alphas or Betas regardless of of the sire's gender. If a Witch-born baby is assigned female at birth, they will have the abilities of a Witch and will lack an A/B/O dynamic. If assigned male at birth, they will not have Witch abilities and could be an Alpha, Beta, or (extremely rarely) an Omega. Because His Dark Materials never even acknowledges that trans and non-binary people exist, that is something I'll be dabbling in as I show more about how Witches work. Like Calanthia mentions in this chapter, some clans will allow a trans woman daughter to join her mother's clan. We'll also see how things can be for trans men born to Witches.

Omega boys born to Witches are incredibly, incredibly rare. Several decades can go by without a single Witch-born Omega alive on the planet. More on what that means for Will later.

On Specific Daemons/Characters

Calanthia/Ambrosios - I enjoy making utility OCs. When I write OCs in fanfic, I want them to be enjoyable, but not distracting enough that they take away from what the canon characters are up to. So, like a trash can at Disney World, my job is make something that is there mostly to serve a purpose and blend into the scenery. I hope I'm able to accomplish that with any OCs that I drop into the story. Anyway, Calanthia is more or less a magic cop with a snowy owl daemon. The name Ambrosios comes from a Greek name meaning "immortal". She might not be immortal, but she's been kicking around for a long time.

Clarice/her daemon - First off: fret not, folks who are not interested in Clarice/Hannibal, Clarice is not going to be playing a large role in this story. She's mostly here as a wink because I am a monster who thought the last name "Starling" was just too juicy of a pun to let slide. I like the idea that she'll grow up to be even more interested in the FBI than Calanthia is, and will be a world-class, grade-A magic cop. Because she's a kid here, she is unsettled, but I'm pretty sure her daemon's preferred form of a Hildebrandt's starling will be a keeper. I haven't named her daemon yet, but if she shows up later down the line, maybe I'll get around to it.