Fey in the Anitaverse: A Blow by Blow of Bloody Bones

[a_sporking_rat]

Basically, I reread Bloody Bones in order to revisit the Anitaverse fey, and write down everything we found out about them that isn't already on the AB Wikis that I use, and my ponderings thereof. Why? Because I'm just super-intrigued by the AB fey is all, and there was much hinted and implied and all of it raises more questions than it answers and oh my gosh guys I wish she'd kept them yet at the same time I'm so glad she didn't because she'd ruin everything potentially awesome about them.

So if you feel the same way, follow along with me as I hunt down facts, or just ideas, about the Fair Folk!



- I go to the part in BB where Anita first sees the two humans, Magnus and Dorcas, who have fey ancestry (we never see a straight fey, as I've said before--either it's human hybrids, a fey who has been made a vamp like Xavier, or a boggle like Bloody Bones)and they're described as having 'triangular, exotic, catlike" faces and the male, Magnus, is so androgynous that Anita thinks he's a woman at first. He's also described as 'dark" in appearance, though I think that and the 'exotic" bit might be because their human heritage includes Native American ancestry (yes, she's described Native people as 'exotic' before--oh the irony.) But yeah, could be a good indicator of what the Anitaverse full-blooded fey, or at least the Daoine Sidhe ones they're descended from, look like. I definitely always picture fairies in general as pretty androgynous myself, so I like that idea.

- When Anita is trying to tell Larry they're part-fey, she says "What looks like Homo sapiens, can breed with homo sapiens, but isn't homo sapiens?" and then he gets it. So apparently even full fey look human (barring boggles) or at least close enough.

- Also I rolled my eyes when she said vampires can do mind tricks that make Magnus's glamor look like amateur stuff. If he'd just been part-fey I wouldn't have minded because I wouldn't take it as a commentary on how full fey measure up against vamps, but she earlier observed that his glamor was so powerful and could affect so many people that he could only be related to the Daoine Sidhe, because only they're that powerful

...so she just said vamps, just basic fucking vamps, can out-glamor the most powerful in the fairy fucking court.

FUCK YOU LKH

MAKING THE VAMPIRES ALWAYS WIN OVER THERIANS WAS BAD ENOUGH

BUT DUDE

FUCKING FEY FOR CRYING OUT LOUD

COME ON

Writtenelision pacified me with this explanation: "She's been mind-muddled by the vampires, so she HAS to think they're the best. And everyone else is totally chill with it, because 'hey, while she's thinking we're weak, we can get away with SO MUCH!'. "

- Okay, so remember my character Lucretia? Not to be confused with the similarly-named and also-blonde Lucille? I want to keep her very much a mystery throughout whatever she appears in, but drop hints that she...

....was an Ostrogoth or Visigoth
...even more ancient than that
...is fey (fey vampires, as we saw in BB, are possible, just covered up)
...is fey-related in some way
...is something at least Not Human and was so even before she became a vampire
any combination of the above
...all of the above
...none of the above

I was thinking about how tall/thin/elongated/inhuman she looks tends to vary. Sometimes she seems an impossible elongated giantess with humanoid but very alien features, sometimes she's a very tall and thin woman but still within the range of easily human with a touch of Uncanny Valley, and sometimes she's just a slim lady of almost ordinary height. Kind of like the progression of the Other Mother in the Coraline movie. Given vampire mind tricks (or perhaps...fey glamor?!) this would be easy for a vampire of her hugely powerful level, and the question would be which one is her real form. Does she create the illusion of looking like a monster to intimidate others? Or is that her real form, and the normal-looking ones are the illusion?

As it happened, the same evening I thought of this, I later got to the part in Bloody Bones when Anita first sees Xavier, the fey vampire.

"The thing in front of them didn't look much like a vampire. It looked like a skeleton with muscle and flesh stretched over a bone frame. It was stretched impossibly thin and tall."

"The thing turned on me. I had a glimpse of a fase that was neither human nor animal, but stretched thin and alien...it shrank, and skin flowed over the bare flesh, covered in nearly naked bone. I'd never seen anything like....I was looking into what could have passed for a human face. Long white hair framed a fine-boned face, and it ran..."

Anita later "described the thin, skeletal vampire" to Jean-Claude. "It was almost like a form change. He changed back in seconds. Once he changed back, he could have passed for human in dim light. I've never seen anything like it."

JC says that he's only encountered that ability once, in a single vampire. Considering that this vampire is also the only single example we've seen of a fey vampire, I don't think it's a stretch to say this is probably related to his fey aspect as much as his vampire one.

And doesn't it sound a hell of a lot like what I had in mind for Lucretia?

So that'll be one hint dropped that she might be fae/potential explanation put forth to explain her changing appearance. As for just what the truth is regarding her true form and what she is and what her past is...I plan to never confirm it one way or the other. I've actually vowed to try and remain permanently undecided so that I don't start dropping one type of hint more than others (I am already failing at this and leaning heavily towards her being a fairy or somehow related/connected to them)

- Speaking of Xavier, fey vampires are not supposed to be possible. JC admits that their existence is covered up because they are "too dangerous and too exotic to be revealed to the general public. If mortals found out we could have among us such things, they might turn on us all together." Makes you wonder what else about themselves that vampires have kept hidden and what other "rules" about their species are in fact only farces kept in place to keep the humans calm?

- "Even vampires couldn't work mind control on me without my knowing it. That Magnus could made me nervous." Well, duh, you're an animator. Vampires are dead. Animators can't control them like necromancers (as you become/actually are) but they do have a little edge with that in the form of minor immunities to their lesser mind tricks. Magnus is a fucking fey. But I may I just point out HEY DIDN'T YOU SAY VAMPS MADE HIM LOOK LIKE AN AMATEUR? HUH? HUH? Suck it.

- Anita first realizes that Magnus is not only part fey, but that part must be Daoine Sidhe, when she sees how strong his glamor is. The instance in which she sees it is when he makes everyone in the bar look like total babes. This is "lovers night" which he does every Friday for the locals who believe it to be love charms. In his words, "I make everyone beautiful or handsome, or sexy, tonight. For a few hours you can be the lover of your own dreams, and someone elses's. Though I wouldn't spend the nigh. The glamor doesn't last that long."

Anita says then that the Daoine Sidhe is the fairy high court, divided into, of course, Seelie and Unseelie courts. She thinks Magnus must be part Unseelie because "the seelie court of fairyland" HOLY SHIT IS THERE A FAIRYLAND? "doesn't interbreed with mortals often. At least not commoners. The unseelie court, on the other hand, does."

Magnus argues that "the unseelie court is evil, cruel. What I do here is not evil" and that "if I were descended from the dark side of fairies, would I do anything to bring pleasure to so many?" and Anita said an unseelie would if it suited their needs. Later she finds him all hyped up with loads of power and realizes that "You feed off your customers. You don't just do it for business. You siphon them; that's fucking unseelie court." He just shrugs and says "I am what I am."

Okay, so firstly, the unseelie court are apparently like the fear/lust/anger vampires? As in, they perform glamor to give people their desires, and somehow they feed off that to temporarily up their own power? How does that work? What is it that they're feeding on from the humans?

Also, I feel like "seelie are good and nice or at least neutral, unseelie are evil and cruel for kicks" is a very...human way of looking at them. Not to mention human-centric, since it seems to be a judgement made, in this universe, based solely on their treatment of humans and nothing else. Personally, I reckon there's no such thing as a nice fey just based on the legends of them in general, but I also think ascribing human standards of good and evil to them is silly given those same legends. Especially if you're not just doing it for individuals, but for entire species, which the Seelie and Unseelie are here; they're not divided based on politics or beliefs, but on breed, and that makes "these ones are like that, these others are like that" really fucked up to the point of easily being fantastic racism. It suggests biological essentialism, as if good or evil is something simply inbred and inherent to each breed.

For example, Magnus only has unseelie ancestry, he wasn't raised by unseelie or in their court, and yet, somehow, he is just automatically 'unseelie' in his behavior because, well, genetic destiny! That's really not a view that I take too kindly to, so I'm going to just go on the idea that it's not as cut and dry as it seems. Namely, we get all this info from the point of view of a human, Anita, who says she's only read about the Daoine Sidhe, Seelie or Unseelie, probably in books written by and for humans, and from Magnus, who was raised in a country where fey are not native, where Unseelie specifically are barred from immigrating to in modern times, by people who, though part fey themselves, are part human too and living in human culture at large. There's no evidence there's any fey groups out in the Ozark Mountains where he is to teach him different. I think that he was taught a lot of the same stuff Anita believes about his Unseelie heritage, he internalized it, and he uses it as an excuse to do shit like this--"Well, I'm part Unseelie, so I'm just like this, I might as well, it's not my fault." Except that it doesn't seem irresistible at all to his sister Dorcas, who does not do it and downright does not approve. If it's just biological destiny, how come she's clearly able to make a choice? And she definitely sees herself as fey (she uses "us" and "we" and "our people" when talking about them) so it's not like she's likely ~repressing her heritage~ or something.

I can see the case being that the Unseelie sub-species is just biologically inclined to be more aggressive, or that they have different cultural standards for what counts as ethical treatment of humans, but this is just...yeah. Hell, even the original legends of Seelie and Unseelie court weren't so black and white; Seelies weren't always benevolent to humans, Unseelies weren't always malevolent to them. And again, judging them as good or evil based solely on their attitudes towards humans is flawed as hell, so yeah, I'm just going to take this information as biased, since it comes from a human who has never encountered any herself and from someone raised in human culture away from any others of his kind as far as we know.

- Also, how does this siphoning harm the humans? If the Unseelie are so wicked and cruel, and siphoning off human energy or whatever is going on (it's...not clear) is something only an Unseelie would do, shouldn't it be really harmful to the humans in question somehow? Because nothing bad seemed to happen to them at all. They get a fun and romantic night to be beautiful, he gets a power boost, everyone is benefited, this is wicked and mean how? Why is Anita so mad about it?

- Using glamor on cops, at least to escape, is a felony. I guess since a lot of people in American have fey blood (which is stated earlier) and it's clearly something even hybrids like Magnus can have, that 's something they run into a lot.

- "Oath to one of the fey is a serious matter, Ms. Blake. Lying to us tends to go badly." I wonder greatly if the 'badly' part that results is something the fey themselves do, or if things are just...unlucky...for the liar afterwards.

- When Anita finds out that Dorcas and Magnus' fey ancestor, Llyn Bouvier, captured and brought Bloody Bones to America with him, she's surprised as to why because "That's a nursery boggle; why would your ancestor want to capture one? They don't have any treasure, or wishes to give out." and Dorcas says that she is "quite correct. Bloody Bones has no riches or gentle magic to grant wishes."

I think that phrasing pretty clearly indicates that there *are* fey who *do* have treasure and *can* grant wishes!

- As for why Llyn brought BB over...

D: "Most children born of human and fairie blood don't have a lot of magic." (interesting to know!)
A: "That's what the legends say, but Magnus proves that wrong." (Um, if having fey blood is common, why do you need to rely on legends?)
D: "Llyn Bouvier made a sort of pact for himself and his descendents. We would all have fey power, at a price...My ancestor imprisoned Bloody Bones so he could make a potion of its blood. But the potion had to be remade periodically, retaken, or his magic deserted him."
A: "How did the other fey take this little idea?"
D: "He was forced to flee Europe, or they would have killed him. It is forbidden to among us to use each other like that." (SO WE KNOW A FEY SPECIES RULE NOW!)

She then says that this pact enabled the Bouvier descendents to have glamor, so does that mean hybrids, even Daoine Sidhe hybrids, usually don't?

She also says that at its full size, Rawhead and Bloody Bones is "bigger than a person, almost as big as a giant." Does this mean giants are real in the ABverse too? Because the way she says that, comparing it to a giant, sounds like how one would talk about something real that has a defined size, like comparing something to an elephant or a truck.

- Is it weird to anyone else that Llyn was converting Native Americans to Christianity? I'm not saying a fey could never be Christian but it just seems...off somehow.

- As Dorcas leads Anita and Larry to where Bloody Bones is buried, Anita notices that the trees and roots that trip and snag her and Larry don't get in Dorcas' way at all. "She was obviously familiar with the path, but it was more than that." Do fairies have some minor powers over nature, or at least are in tune with it in such a way that it never bothers them? Or are the plants in a place with fairy magic, such as that which binds Bloody Bones, aware in some way, given how the bluebell flowers covering the ground over where he is trapped all moved out of the way as Larry and Anita walk through them so that they don't get stepped on? I would love it so hard if a tree limb was smacking Anita on purpose, damn.

- Dorcas also says that the trees further up the path are just illusions, not solid. So does that mean that their glamor is so damn strong that they can keep an illusion in place even when they themselves are not there? Just leave it standing and it'll keep?

- When they get to where Bloody Bones is buried, they find Magnus there. He's been drinking the blood of Bloody Bones in order to gain power, just like his ancestor Llyn. That's why his glamor has so much mojo. More proof that Dorcas values her fey heritage and its rules ensues when she calls this "Blasphemy!"

-She also points to bite marks on his neck and says that it's why "one of the Daoine Sidhe, even a half-breed, is called by death" meaning that his breaking fey law is apparently why the vampire Seraphina is able to control him via having bitten him, just like she'd be able to control a regular human. Very interesting.

- Anita also notes his ears are not pointed, and hints that even full-breed fey don't have that feature (in contrast to the Merry Gentry series, where full-breeds also don't have pointed ears, but half-breed, like Magnus and Merry, do)

- "You can't bleed a fairie, in the flesh or not in the flesh, without ritual magic. I've read the spell, Magnus. It's a doozy." Holy shit, so that means a fairy can't be bled either by a physical attack like a knife, or by the nonphysical psychic power that Serephina and some other masters have shown to draw blood from a distance, that is, telekinetically inducing cuts on their victims. Meaning that ritual magic would have had to have been done for Seraphina to have bitten him at all as she clearly has...and that there had to be a similar spell for Magnus to take blood from BB. And apparently he did just that, using said ritual magic to "tie myself to the beastie. I had to give him some of my mortality in order to get his blood" even though the spell technically "isn't meant to help you gather blood. It's to help the fairies kill each other." I LOVE THAT FAIRIES MADE UP STRONG RITUAL MAGIC JUST TO KILL EACH OTHER VIA BLEEDING THEM TO DEATH. Because you know they could kill each other in about six dozen ways that didn't involve blood at all, but they just wanted to be nasty.

- In giving BB some of his mortality, Magnus also got some of its immortality. Boggles have been established earlier in the book as being really, truly immortal. As in, they can't be killed. This distinction suggests that all or most other fey are ultimately mortal, not just the half-breeds like Magnus, since if all fey were truly immortal, it would just be assumed that boggles were, it wouldn't have to be stated.

- Part-fey are at least long-lived, since Magnus says Serephina wanted to drink from him badly in particuliar because "She's afraid of death. She says drinking from something as long-lived as I am helps her keep death at bay." Is this just Serephina's delusion, I wonder, or is in fact true? Can drinking from naturally long-lived creatures like fey, merfolk, and lamia help a vampire get closer to true immortality? Serephina at least believes that drinking from BB, a real immortal, will make her one too, and I'd be very interesting in knowing if she has some precedent to base this idea upon.

- Boggles are also supposed to scare/kill/eat bad children. It is confirmed that BB has done just this. I wonder why? Why do they do that? Maybe they can only eat 'bad' children? Even though they don't need to eat, being immortal, do they still feel hunger then? And what constitutes a 'bad' child?

- So it turns out the human baddies who want the Bouvier land know about BB and want it loose so they can use the land it's buried/trapped in to build their hotel on. How do they know? BB came to them in dreams and promised them the land if it could get free. So boggles, even those physically trapped by magic, can enter dreams. Damn.

- Anita sees Xavier again and knows he indeed is a fey-turned-vampire because "no one who had ever been human had red irises." So I guess LKH, biology degree or not, doesn't realize albinos exist? Granted, most human albinos actually have blue eyes, but some do indeed have red or reddish eyes (some also have violet, hazel, or even brown, depending what type of albinism it is) Also, have we ever seen an albino character other than Xavier? Given the "evil albino" stereotype in media, having a character has albinistic coloring portrayed as not-human even among vampires and as a villainous pedophile has some Unfortunate Implications, to say the least. But then, the two times she portrayed someone with dwarfism, they were both villains (Nicky Baco and Mr. Oliver), and the only time we saw disabled people they were either evil (Gaynor, Cecily) or the victims of the evil ones (Wanda), and come to think of it, I think the only Native American character we've seen that wasn't a bad guy is Bernardo, with all the others being evil Aztec vampires (Alejandro, Obsidian Butterfly).

Anyway. This does make me wonder...are full-blooded fey all white-haired and red-eyed? Or is Xavier just an albino specimen on top of everything else that makes him rare? Or does turning a fey cause them to develop albino coloring when they didn't have it before?

- ""A hand came out of the darkness, large enough to palm my head. The fingernails were long and dirty, almost clawlike. Ragged clothes clung to huge, square shoulders. The thing was at least ten feet tall. Its huge, oversized head had no skin. The flesh was raw and open like a wound. The veins pulsed and throbbed with blood flowing through them, but it didn't bleed." FUCK YEEEEAH RAWHEAD AND BLOODY BOOOOOOONES!

Comments

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

The more I see of early Anita Blake books, the more they look like 100% White Wolf fanfic, but with vampires placed uber alles and every non-human being having nearly all their weaknesses removed. Everything made more simplistic as well, but that's characteristic of bad fanfic.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

You know, I've heard some people say that before, if you have the time and inclination do you think you could elaborate? I'm only barely familiar with White Wolf.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I just lost a big long reply to this so I am now grumpy. To put it really shortly LKH's books came out after Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. I don't know how much she cribbed from W:tA, but the inspiration from V:tM is glaring. Jean-Claude is a Toreador, pure and simple, though I think most Toreadors would laugh in his face about his try-hard clothing. Vampire society has its own rules and organization and is very obviously still working in a masquerade mentality in LKH's books, just as is the case in V:tM.

Bloody Bones came out the year after Changeling: The Dreaming, which is too huge a coincidence for me to think was a coincidence. The Seelie would appeal to LKH because they adore their own reflections and think beauty can be objectively defined and is a virtue. The Unseelie, being pro-change and not buying into the Seelie Court's wank over its own perfection, would be something LKH would think was evil. (Obviously I am strongly biased here -- Unseelie can be extremely scary and nasty, but at least they're honest about it. The Seelie are anything but honest, imo.)

Changelings are necessarily interested in humans to some degree because they have to live in human society. The Sluagh (my favorite) live as apart as they can, but they are still dependent on humans to produce, and help them produce, glamour. What Magnus is doing is exactly what a changeling (especially a satyr) might do to replenish himself in the game. Changelings need to sort of "feed" on human emotion -- whether lust, fear, admiration for art, love, joy, hatred, etc. Sluagh like to creep people out, Eshu like to tell stories, Boggans like to make people feel cozy, Redcaps like the pure terror of death, etc. (These are all just tendencies and you can easily make a Redcap who is very nice to people.) If a changeling doesn't get enough of this, they lose their connection to the Fae and become the most banal type of human. Changelings all cast a glamour to look human in most instances, though some of what they really are shines through. Trolls, for instance, look like really huge hulking humans.

I'm okay with LKH having been extremely inspired by White Wolf. I actually wish she'd kept to that -- it would have stopped her vampires from becoming so powerful and her therians from becoming so weak and everyone in her books from being so obnoxious generally. The inspiration is just glaring, and this makes it especially annoying when LKH runs around claiming she invented or pioneered the genre.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I just lost a big long reply to this
UGH THAT IS THE WORST, I AM SO SORRY DX

Bloody Bones came out the year after Changeling: The Dreaming, which is too huge a coincidence for me to think was a coincidence.
yeeeah, I agree. Especially since a lot of her stuff seems to be released after something similar---Skin Trade came out after another UF heroine had a book about Vegas and werecats, and after the angel Uriel starting paling around with Harry Dresden (hence the out-of-left-field Angel Michael appearing to save her in that book as well). Wicked and Truth also showed up after the film version of Lord of the Rings, and some fans think they might be Aragorn and Legolas, since they're got long brown and long blonde hair, wield swords, and one walks around in a boiled leather medieval fantasy outfit.

What Magnus is doing is exactly what a changeling (especially a satyr) might do to replenish himself in the game. Changelings need to sort of "feed" on human emotion -- whether lust, fear, admiration for art, love, joy, hatred, etc
WELL WHADDYA KNOW, EH?

Yeah, I agree now, at least in regards to this book most definitely

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

I was obsessed with W:tA for about ten years, so I'll give it my best go - I don't think she was terribly interested in that aspect of the WoD at all. Actual player-character Garou tended to run in small packs that cooperated and had leaders based on merit simply because making it too much about dominance and who kowtowed to whom would ruin gameplay and nothing would ever have gotten done. There were politics at the local and national level because there were thirteen tribes, all of whom had different charateristics and goals and ideas about how the Garou Nation as a whole should be handled, but it depended a lot on your campaign how much that interfered with what your players were doing. You could just spend all your time taking on the Wyrm and trying not to get noticed by humans and not ever have to worry about whether or not the next pack along was going to be bothered. They were usually too busy fighting for their lives too to care.
You didn't see a lot of civil vamp-were interaction, nor can I imagine a situation where a lot of it might have occurred- vamps always registered as having Wyrm taint and that did not endear them to the Garou. If they tended to help humanity I think they read are more Weaver than Wyrm, but even then it's only Glasswalkers that are going to be totally okay with that. It was pretty much a decided thing that a single Garou could rip a low to medium-level vampire several new ones; they were built for combat and got lots of Soak right off the bat and didn't take any agg damage that wasn't silver. However higher-level vamp characters with a lot of dice in combat disciplines could deal with the damage and inflict their own, especially if you had a player or DM who knew how to use their mind skills properly, so the older and wiser the vamp got the more it equaled out (and eventually tipped in the vamp's favor if it was old and wise enough.) You definitely wouldn't see the Garou (or any other of the shapeshifters) automatically working with vampires or pimping out packmates for favors from the local vamps, or asking for the same in return. Which was still happening in the early AB books; Raina and Jean-Claude traded personnel (and themselves) back and forth like baseball cards to grant favors purely on sexual merit.
I think in the end LKH's estimation of wereanimals begins and ends on the words "flunky" and "sex toy" and that absolutely would not fly in the WoD.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I know very little about W:tA, so thanks for the info! I knew werewolves were far more powerful in them than portrayed in LKH's stuff, but that would be a good assumption even if I had known literally nothing about them XD. I only knew about White Wolf stuff in the first place because of my first boyfriend, and he was into Vampire more than Werewolf. (Yes, he was darkity dark and I found him deep, I was 19.) Then we went to the RPG store one day and found that White Wolf had just released a book about fairies, and I latched on ecstatically. But only to fairies, though I read my boyfriend's V:tA book a couple times. Tbh, I have never been better than vaguely interested in vampires; now I hate them passionately, thanks to their popularity and how they're portrayed. I think werewolves can be cool, though they're almost always portrayed in annoying ways. They sound pretty cool in W:tA,

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Between the red iris thing, and the Micah's pee eyes could get him shot thing, and the everyone is amazed at Nathaniel's purple eyes thing, and Jean-Claude's we will talk for a whole paragraph about their blueness thing, I guess they never invented colored contacts in the Anitaverse. Meanwhile our world has had them readily available for decades.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

APPARENTLY NOT! God I'd love it if Nate turned out to just be wearing those all along and has decided it's in the best interest of his meal ticket to not let Anita know.

....you know what, that's going in SvS.

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Lol, awesome!

[nanoquill.livejournal.com]

Here's what I remember of my take on the things you bring up:

she said vampires can do mind tricks that make Magnus's glamor look like amateur stuff.
That felt to me like she was saying, 'Apples aren't as sweet as cakes' - it's true, but you're comparing two different things. I thought the point of that (I cut LKH rather more leeway than she deserved, in hindsight) was that Anita was talking about mind tricks, and what the fey do isn't - quite - the same thing. (As proven by the illusory trees later in the book.)

That whole business with the Seelie/Unseelie? I came away with the impressions that 1) being able to feed on humans like that was Unseelie, so it didn't ping me as humanocentric; 2) he was feeding off their energy, which could potentially mean he could drain them till they were comatose or dead.

Llyn being Christian, however, just seemed like an attempt at 'My fae are different!'

...Something that didn't occur to me until now - where did Anita read the spell to bleed a fey? Why are there fey spells lying around for any interested human to read - or was it a human spell in the first place, in which case why would she have ever had reason and opportunity to come across it?

As for the boggles - belief is already known to be a very powerful force in this world. I pictured it as related to that, with not being thought of as 'good' leaving children unprotected, while being specifically defined as 'bad' (either their opinion or local community) would make them stand out to the boggles as prey.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can see what you mean with apples and cakes...the way she phrased it was just like she was trying to find a way to talk about how much cooler and better vampires are than fay, so that even if she was technically right, she was still wrong because fey can do a bunch of other things better, so yeah.

That whole business with the Seelie/Unseelie? I came away with the impressions that 1) being able to feed on humans like that was Unseelie, so it didn't ping me as humanocentric; 2) he was feeding off their energy, which could potentially mean he could drain them till they were comatose or dead....I pictured it as related to that, with not being thought of as 'good' leaving children unprotected, while being specifically defined as 'bad' (either their opinion or local community) would make them stand out to the boggles as prey.

I can go with both of these! Works for me.

Llyn being Christian, however, just seemed like an attempt at 'My fae are different!'
Yeah, I'm not saying no fey could ever be Christian, but that PLUS giving a shit about converting humans, as if our souls are significant enough to save (going from the POV most fairies seem to take of man in a lot of lore)...I feel like there should be a shitload of a story around that to explain it, but no it's just "Yeah, he was a fur trapper who came to the US to hunt beaver, was also a Christian who converted some Indians too" and it's just...such a HUMAN story. (And, of course, the Dances With Wolves colonialist crap of him coming in, proselytizing the Natives, taking a wife from them, and then something he brought--Bloody Bones, because smallpox and such weren't enough--killing the whole damn tribe is never talked about as a historical injustice in-text at all.)

Something that didn't occur to me until now - where did Anita read the spell to bleed a fey? Why are there fey spells lying around for any interested human to read - or was it a human spell in the first place, in which case why would she have ever had reason and opportunity to come across it?

ooooh! Very interesting question indeed!

[uf-addict.livejournal.com]

...Something that didn't occur to me until now - where did Anita read the spell to bleed a fey? Why are there fey spells lying around for any interested human to read - or was it a human spell in the first place, in which case why would she have ever had reason and opportunity to come across it?

I used to know this woman that was a pathological liar. She was very very good at it. Mostly it manifested in having to say that she also did something that you were talking about - except better. It was weird. If you mentioned something about seat belts, she would wax on about getting a ticket for not wearing her seat belt as a passenger. If you talked about loving SciFi Fantasy books - she collects rare first editions. If you would mention watching a movie about K2 - she would tell you that she was part of a team that climbed K2. After a while you figured out that this woman had problems.

Anita reminds me of her. If there is a fancy ritual - she read about it. If someone talks about a demon, she once helped the police with a demonic possession. If someone talks about giants killing people, she once had to hunt one down and execute it. If someone somewhere came across a rare beastie that took an entire SWAT team to bring it down, she did it alone last year and it was 2 rare beasties.

Anita is a one-upper. I think there is an SNL skit???

[nanoquill.livejournal.com]

Except that in-story she never gets tripped up the way that real-life one-uppers do, so it's LKH being a one-upper by proxy, which is...
ANITA: I have all the rare-and-useful knowledge of this world!
READERS: Of course you do, LKH, you're the author.

[tarawyn.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of Topper from Dilbert.

[mitrian.livejournal.com]

Re: Magnus feeding off his customers....

He casts glamour to make them all beautiful or handsome or sexy or whatever, and they all go off and happily boink. He then siphons off or somehow 'eats' their energy. That this only happens AFTER he glamours them is significant, I think.

If he could get the same energy without going to the effort of the glamour, wouldn't he simply do that and not spend the time and energy required for glamouring a group of people? That he does not do this at other times implies, I believe, that he needs to glamour them first. Then the people get up to naughty behavior, and it is that specifically sexual energy that he 'eats'.

How is this different from JC's ability to feed the ardeur from a distance? This is why he has strip clubs after all.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

So it's sort of like how flies have to pre-digest their food by vomiting on it first before they can eat it. Only magical.

How is this different from JC's ability to feed the ardeur from a distance? This is why he has strip clubs after all.
OH GOD PLEASE NO FAIRY ARDEUR NOOO DDDD=

[mitrian.livejournal.com]

But that does lead to a question.... If the fairies have the ardeur, and we know there have been fey vampires... Did the vampires actually get it from biting a fey? Or did it become a vamp ability after a fey was turned, and then it was passed to those turned by the fey vamps? (So then the vamps can't take credit for it being an ability original to them. Hah.)

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Vittorio claimed that Belle Morte wasn't a human even before she was turned, and she's the originator of the ardeur...shit, that could be it!

[mitrian.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, I'd forgotten that. It makes way too much sense.

Do you think LKH planned it, or this was an accident?

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

My guess it was an accident, since she'd retconned the fey out by then, but it works so well it's my headcanon now anyway!

HOW COULD I NOT SEE IT BEFORE, GIVING SOMEONE LIKE ANITA THE ARDEUR IS TOTALLY WHAT THEY'D THINK IS FUNNY

OH WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE...ESPECIALLY THAT ONE WITH THE T-REX ARMS LOL

AT FIRST I WAS LIKE LOL VITTORIO UR FULL OF IT...HE WAS RIGHT, BELLE IS ACTUALLY FEY, SHE BROUGHT THIS THING INTO THE LINE, AND SHE'S LAUGHING ALL THE WAY

OMG BELLE YOU EVIL FAIRY GENIUS. YOU MADE THE LINE OF FROOFY LONGHAIRED SEX VAMPIRES AND IT IS YOUR PERSONAL JOKE ISN'T IT. BLESS YOU.

[mitrian.livejournal.com]

OMG. Headcanon accepted: Belle the Evil Fairy Genius!

She's probably watching Anita and laughing her evil fairy ass off.

[writtenelision.livejournal.com]

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU TO POST THIS!

In no particular order...

I still like my idea of what Lucretia's up to. I personally think it fits pretty well with what you've got going on with her.

That idea of the vampires keeping all sorts of things hidden is a brilliant one. It makes wonderful sense and actually makes inconsistencies within the stories make more sense. And yes, I am devoted to attempting to make these books make sense.

FAIRYLAND!

The 'classic' division between the two courts is a very human divide. There are some books which do a brilliant job of making a divide which isn't a human one.

A. We're trusting Magnus and Anita to know what they're talking about. We shouldn't. We don't know if Magnus was raised by/among fae, so it's entirely possible he's just bullshitting. And Anita's doing the same. How on earth does she know ANYTHING about them? I have no doubt they're even more secretive than the vampires, and if I were in the 'good' court, I would HAPPILY be spreading rumors about how the divide works. How better to keep myself safe?

Expect more after I get food.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I still like my idea of what Lucretia's up to
As do I!

That idea of the vampires keeping all sorts of things hidden is a brilliant one. It makes wonderful sense and actually makes inconsistencies within the stories make more sense. And yes, I am devoted to attempting to make these books make sense.
Agreed! Especially since I keep trying to do that too XD

The 'classic' division between the two courts is a very human divide. There are some books which do a brilliant job of making a divide which isn't a human one.
I've always thought that if I did a book with it, my version would be that only the Seelie fairies use that divide. They're obviously Seelie-centric in their outlook, so to them, all fairies can be divided as either Us or Not Us. Since they interact the most with humans for whatever reason, humans learned this view from them and think that it's fact rather than just the Seelie POV. And because humans are of course going to be human-centric in their own POV, they then twisted that to be centered around friendliness or hostility to humans.

I have no doubt they're even more secretive than the vampires, and if I were in the 'good' court, I would HAPPILY be spreading rumors about how the divide works. How better to keep myself safe?
Yes, yeees.

[gryphonsegg.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this post! The fey lore in Bloody Bones is fascinating and genuinely scary!

This is why I can't let go of this train wreck of a series. Wasted potential gets to me in a way that something that's crap all the way down never could.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I'm the same way! I've never had a hate-on for a series like this, even though there are far worse ones out there, because I loved it so much and then everything good was snatched away :C

[gryphonsegg.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is, I now have to wonder how many of the elements that make the early books work as well as they do really were part of the author's original intentions, as opposed to things her editors or her old writing group pushed her to add in order to cover plot holes or answer their questions. I mean, I know that no one could write that many books and have them all be of the same level of quality, but I just don't understand how the same person who wrote something as perfectly creepy as what the part-bloods pull with boggles in BB could also think the non-plots of Micah and Affliction were fit for print.

[cygnusrex.livejournal.com]

Y'know, given that Bloody Bones is fifth in the series, and her work started to go downhill five years later with book ten, Narcissus In Chains, I bet you she pissed off a real fae or something. One that likes the number five. (I know it's both a lucky and unlucky number in some cultures, so there's that too.)

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Hahhahaa, I like this idea!

[patina.livejournal.com]

Yes. Perfect.

[patina.livejournal.com]

Too bad this isn't more like the old White Wolf's canon. Fairy blood was like an extreme hallucinogen for vampires. Fun times.

I...guess a fairy could be Christian. It's maybe not so weird for his time period that he'd try to convert the Indians, but I find myself wondering how exactly Llyn himself was converted and how much of it he understood at the time.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't mind the idea in itself, I just wanna know/why it happened.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Religious ecstasy would be a glorious "battery" for fae in Changeling. So, if LKH fae are as similar to the changelings in that game that I think they are, he could have used it cynically. Or he could have seen it the way many fae see art and artists in Changeling: as a truly wonderful thing that provides all these emotions, and isn't it great how humans provide such wonderful stuff? (That just happens to recharge fae batteries.)

[patina.livejournal.com]

Good explanation.