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a_sporking_ratBasically, 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!
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!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-10-17 05:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-10-17 07:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-10-17 07:29 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-10-17 09:13 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-10-17 09:38 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-10-18 02:28 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-10-18 05:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-10-18 11:14 pm (UTC)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.
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