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truepennyI'm going out of order here, because this is a follow-up question to yesterday's:
Q: I still think that you wrote more into Mildmay, magicwise. Xanthippe said the casting Thamuris worked normally took four celebrants and a caster and Thamuris just used Mildmay. So either Mildmay is a hellofa big anchor or he could access something four celebrants together could do. Also, why did the Kloidanikos notice Mildmay at all, let alone create a link to him in the garden of dreams and then keep the link going for years after Mildmay had left the physical garden? Third thing I am wondering is, I think it was the Tibernians who defined the Virtu as a monumental working of noirant and clairant magics or some such, should go dig my book out and check, but, well, it's late. So when noiarant Felix went to fix the Virtu, he would need access to a clairant channel or something he did not have to fix the damn thing, wouldn't he? And he told Mildmay he only needed him. Why was that? Anyway, thanks for all the lovely books and for being accessible to your fans and I look forward to reading your books in the future.
A: That's supposed to point you toward something important about Thamuris's power, not Mildmay's. And the symbolic link between Mildmay and the Khloïdanikos is via Felix, probably partly because of the binding-by-forms (and Thamuris's symbolism). (Also, that's dreamwork, not necessarily magic, and everyone in the Doctrine of Labyrinths has symbolic dreams. It's the way my fiction works. See also The Bone Key.) Felix explains why he needs Mildmay to mend the Virtu on p. 347 of The Virtu (394 of the paperback), and it's explicitly because he isn't a wizard. It's not about noirant/clairant, it's about having enough psychical/physical reserves that Felix doesn't, quite literally, kill himself in the process. Also, noirant and clairant aren't immutable categories and don't work quite the way you have hypothesized. (Remember, it's all metaphors. None of it is literal truth.)
I really don't want to get into the technical nitpicky details of the magic system, especially when I can't guarantee that I remember everything accurately (seriously, I had a hard time articulating it at all, and still have to walk through it in my head to remember which is thaumaturgical architecture and which is architectural thaumaturgy).
Your original question was, why don't Mildmay's magical powers show up in Corambis? My answer is, because he doesn't have any. I understand that I cannot control how you interpret the text; all I can tell you is that your interpretation has no relationship to what I intended for the books, and there's no argument you can make that can convince me I intended something else.
Okay. Back to answering in the order in which questions were received.
Q: 1. Will Stephen continue to want Mehitabel as his mistress now that he knows about Hallam, and apparently is sympathetic to her love for Hallam? Do you know more about his future? (Oddly enough, he was always one of my favorite characters, even in the opening of Melusine when we mostly saw him as an unpleasant person.)
2. How is the Mirador/Coeurterre/Bastion situation going to resolve itself?
3. What's going to happen to Sebastian--and, for that matter, Gordeny Fisher?
A: As I've said in answer to similar questions, I don't know. I don't know anything about what happens in Mélusine after the end of The Mirador.
I know this is completely unsatisfying, and I'm sorry. But seriously. If I knew, I'd be writing that book.
Q: You mentioned teaching in your answer regarding your academic past, and I was struck very strongly in Corambis by the recurring role of teaching-- Felix teaching Mildmay to read, Mildmay's insistence that Felix really likes to teach, the attempts to get Mildmay to teach about Melusine. This leads me to my question. Do you/did you enjoy teaching? Is it something you'd want to do again or are you happy with it being part of your past?
A: My attitude toward teaching is very conflicted. I do enjoy the actual act of helping someone learn. I think that's awesome, and there's some evidence to indicate I don't completely suck at it, although I'm not a gifted teacher the way my friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heresluck is. But I came to hate teaching when I was a teaching assistant--and I mean real, visceral, miserable loathing. The work load was back-breaking; the position pinned between professor and students, neither quite one nor quite the other, was uncomfortable; and the responsibility imposed by the grading system was insupportable--not to mention the effect it had on the students' attitudes.
I've had the chance to go back and teach since I got my doctorate, and that semester was actually much more enjoyable--and (probably not coincidentally) much more about actual teaching. But I could feel the old anxieties crawling up to get their stranglehold around my neck toward the end of the semester. And for me, teaching is very hard work.heresluck finds it energizing; I find it draining. And when I'm teaching, the work of thinking about my teaching expands to use all the available resources in my brain, and it gets harder and harder to find the time and the energy to write. And not writing makes me profoundly and chronically unhappy.
So for one semester every two or three years, it's okay. And my answer might be very different if the system were different, if both teacher and students could concentrate on the learning process instead of on jumping through these stupid quantifiable hoops.
Q:You said, in Q&A 5 that your architecture always has some source of meaning. Can you please delve into this? Are these meanings based on scholarly ideas(i.e. the genders of Greek Columns? Or the use of the Gothic Revival in the Nineteenth Century?) or more of an emotional basis
A: I meant mostly, though not exclusively, that labyrinths and mazes are a dominant motif throughout the books. And also, the idea of thaumaturgic architecture/architectural thaumaturgy means that human-made structure are always important. However, it's also important that the Mirador has no external windows, that almost all buildings in the Lower City have roof accesses, that the Mirador in itself is an archaeological dig waiting to happen. I'm not, myself, well-versed enough in architectural schools and history to go much farther than that. (Although, when I said the churches in Mélusine are Gothic, I should add that St. Kirban's is definitely Romanesque.)
Q: I know you have a broad understanding of the Latin language. Can you tell me how this effected any of the Doctrine of Labyrinths.
A: Well, there's the geeky multilingual puns (Virtu, Cade-Cholera, etc.). I also use Latin to represent the principal language of most of Kekropia (Troian (Greek) is really only spoken along the coast), and thus the lingua franca of the international scholarly community. (Ergo, the book titles in Latin.) So, yeah. Pretty much woven into the fabric of the books, would be the answer.
Q: Is there any truth to Malkar's contention that Felix is instrumental to the Mirador's stability? The conversation Lord Stephen has with Mehitabel in _The Mirador_ seems to hint that there may be some link between Felix's arrival and Stephen's accession to the throne, so I am curious if there is anything to it, or if it's merely, as Felix puts it, a rationale to explain Malkar's desire to destroy Felix. Or is this a question to be explored in a future book with a new story arc? (I can hope, can't I...)
A: The only link between Felix's arrival and Stephen's accession is that Malkar was using the cover of the political turmoil to slide under the radar. So, no. Malkar is obsessed, and a liar.
Q: Does Shannon really love Felix? The way that I understood his character, he did really care about Felix, but wasn't really mature (or stubborn?) enough to see through all of Felix's BS the way that Mildmay and Gideon do, and Felix couldn't quite trust him enough to be honest about all of his multitudinous issues. However, having now read Corambis, the references Felix makes to his relationship with Shannon have me really wondering if I have just entirely misread Shannon's character. Did Felix have it right when he said Shannon just wanted him on his string?
A: Okay, unreliable narrators ahoy! You can't trust what Felix says about Shannon, any more than you can trust what Shannon says about Felix. Yes, Shannon did genuinely care about Felix, just as Felix genuinely cared about Shannon, but that was tangled up in so many other things (Felix's issues, Shannon's issues ...) that there was no way for them to be in a relationship that was not severely dysfunctional and very bad for both of them.
Q: Pure curiosity here, but did you ever consider/do you think that in the future Felix and Murtagh would ever have a more involved relationship? I cannot see a Felix/Kay pairing at all (and so am delighted that you elected not to do that to them, poor things) but for some reason I can't quite elucidate I can envision Felix and Murtagh much more readily. On the other hand, it could just be that I thought Murtagh was an extremely interesting character, and I just wanted more of him (since if I have one quibble with Corambis, it was that I wanted to hear more from/about Murtagh and Corbie).
A: Felix certainly wouldn't mind. *g*
Q: Nitpicky detail, but is there any backstory to Felix's last name? I've always been a bit curious about it, especially given the references to Melusine's gates, both in reality and in Felix's oneiromantic forays. Since some Lower City denizens have surnames and some don't, did he make it up himself or did someone else (his keeper, Lorenzo, Malkar) name him?
A: I've answered this one before (that's information--you can go look for the previous answer--not me whingeing)--Malkar gave it to him; it's Caloxan. It's also symbolically and thematically appropriate to him, and, yes, that pleases me.
Q: Likewise, an unimportant detail but one that still plagues me: what, if anything, happens to Kolkhis? It isn't mentioned at the end of _The Mirador_ if she was to be exiled like Hugh Chandler or executed like Ivo and Robert, so I have always wondered.
A: I expect she lay low in thebriar patch Lower City and the Dogs never found her to arrest her. But that's speculation on my part, not something I know for sure.
Q: You mentioned in the recent crapstorm about Amazon that you don't like them- do you mind me asking why? I've heard some anti-Amazon sentiment in the past, but it started when I was in high school and I thought it was the best thing since the printing press. However, if it is bad for writers and/or readers etc I will stop giving them my money.
A: I don't like Amazon because I don't like their privacy policy and I don't like their business practices (i.e., the infinite expansion of the products they sell, their schlumphing over ABE Books like a Gelatinous Cube, etc.). I prefer to buy books from people who care about books, which I don't think characterizes Amazon at all. (Support your local indie bookstore!) But this is all purely on the personal level as a consumer. To my knowledge, Amazon is no worse for writers or readers than Borders or Barnes & Noble.
However, if you would like an alternative, may I suggest Powell's?
[Ask your question[s] here.]
Q: I still think that you wrote more into Mildmay, magicwise. Xanthippe said the casting Thamuris worked normally took four celebrants and a caster and Thamuris just used Mildmay. So either Mildmay is a hellofa big anchor or he could access something four celebrants together could do. Also, why did the Kloidanikos notice Mildmay at all, let alone create a link to him in the garden of dreams and then keep the link going for years after Mildmay had left the physical garden? Third thing I am wondering is, I think it was the Tibernians who defined the Virtu as a monumental working of noirant and clairant magics or some such, should go dig my book out and check, but, well, it's late. So when noiarant Felix went to fix the Virtu, he would need access to a clairant channel or something he did not have to fix the damn thing, wouldn't he? And he told Mildmay he only needed him. Why was that? Anyway, thanks for all the lovely books and for being accessible to your fans and I look forward to reading your books in the future.
A: That's supposed to point you toward something important about Thamuris's power, not Mildmay's. And the symbolic link between Mildmay and the Khloïdanikos is via Felix, probably partly because of the binding-by-forms (and Thamuris's symbolism). (Also, that's dreamwork, not necessarily magic, and everyone in the Doctrine of Labyrinths has symbolic dreams. It's the way my fiction works. See also The Bone Key.) Felix explains why he needs Mildmay to mend the Virtu on p. 347 of The Virtu (394 of the paperback), and it's explicitly because he isn't a wizard. It's not about noirant/clairant, it's about having enough psychical/physical reserves that Felix doesn't, quite literally, kill himself in the process. Also, noirant and clairant aren't immutable categories and don't work quite the way you have hypothesized. (Remember, it's all metaphors. None of it is literal truth.)
I really don't want to get into the technical nitpicky details of the magic system, especially when I can't guarantee that I remember everything accurately (seriously, I had a hard time articulating it at all, and still have to walk through it in my head to remember which is thaumaturgical architecture and which is architectural thaumaturgy).
Your original question was, why don't Mildmay's magical powers show up in Corambis? My answer is, because he doesn't have any. I understand that I cannot control how you interpret the text; all I can tell you is that your interpretation has no relationship to what I intended for the books, and there's no argument you can make that can convince me I intended something else.
Okay. Back to answering in the order in which questions were received.
Q: 1. Will Stephen continue to want Mehitabel as his mistress now that he knows about Hallam, and apparently is sympathetic to her love for Hallam? Do you know more about his future? (Oddly enough, he was always one of my favorite characters, even in the opening of Melusine when we mostly saw him as an unpleasant person.)
2. How is the Mirador/Coeurterre/Bastion situation going to resolve itself?
3. What's going to happen to Sebastian--and, for that matter, Gordeny Fisher?
A: As I've said in answer to similar questions, I don't know. I don't know anything about what happens in Mélusine after the end of The Mirador.
I know this is completely unsatisfying, and I'm sorry. But seriously. If I knew, I'd be writing that book.
Q: You mentioned teaching in your answer regarding your academic past, and I was struck very strongly in Corambis by the recurring role of teaching-- Felix teaching Mildmay to read, Mildmay's insistence that Felix really likes to teach, the attempts to get Mildmay to teach about Melusine. This leads me to my question. Do you/did you enjoy teaching? Is it something you'd want to do again or are you happy with it being part of your past?
A: My attitude toward teaching is very conflicted. I do enjoy the actual act of helping someone learn. I think that's awesome, and there's some evidence to indicate I don't completely suck at it, although I'm not a gifted teacher the way my friend
heresluck is. But I came to hate teaching when I was a teaching assistant--and I mean real, visceral, miserable loathing. The work load was back-breaking; the position pinned between professor and students, neither quite one nor quite the other, was uncomfortable; and the responsibility imposed by the grading system was insupportable--not to mention the effect it had on the students' attitudes.I've had the chance to go back and teach since I got my doctorate, and that semester was actually much more enjoyable--and (probably not coincidentally) much more about actual teaching. But I could feel the old anxieties crawling up to get their stranglehold around my neck toward the end of the semester. And for me, teaching is very hard work.
heresluck finds it energizing; I find it draining. And when I'm teaching, the work of thinking about my teaching expands to use all the available resources in my brain, and it gets harder and harder to find the time and the energy to write. And not writing makes me profoundly and chronically unhappy.So for one semester every two or three years, it's okay. And my answer might be very different if the system were different, if both teacher and students could concentrate on the learning process instead of on jumping through these stupid quantifiable hoops.
Q:You said, in Q&A 5 that your architecture always has some source of meaning. Can you please delve into this? Are these meanings based on scholarly ideas(i.e. the genders of Greek Columns? Or the use of the Gothic Revival in the Nineteenth Century?) or more of an emotional basis
A: I meant mostly, though not exclusively, that labyrinths and mazes are a dominant motif throughout the books. And also, the idea of thaumaturgic architecture/architectural thaumaturgy means that human-made structure are always important. However, it's also important that the Mirador has no external windows, that almost all buildings in the Lower City have roof accesses, that the Mirador in itself is an archaeological dig waiting to happen. I'm not, myself, well-versed enough in architectural schools and history to go much farther than that. (Although, when I said the churches in Mélusine are Gothic, I should add that St. Kirban's is definitely Romanesque.)
Q: I know you have a broad understanding of the Latin language. Can you tell me how this effected any of the Doctrine of Labyrinths.
A: Well, there's the geeky multilingual puns (Virtu, Cade-Cholera, etc.). I also use Latin to represent the principal language of most of Kekropia (Troian (Greek) is really only spoken along the coast), and thus the lingua franca of the international scholarly community. (Ergo, the book titles in Latin.) So, yeah. Pretty much woven into the fabric of the books, would be the answer.
Q: Is there any truth to Malkar's contention that Felix is instrumental to the Mirador's stability? The conversation Lord Stephen has with Mehitabel in _The Mirador_ seems to hint that there may be some link between Felix's arrival and Stephen's accession to the throne, so I am curious if there is anything to it, or if it's merely, as Felix puts it, a rationale to explain Malkar's desire to destroy Felix. Or is this a question to be explored in a future book with a new story arc? (I can hope, can't I...)
A: The only link between Felix's arrival and Stephen's accession is that Malkar was using the cover of the political turmoil to slide under the radar. So, no. Malkar is obsessed, and a liar.
Q: Does Shannon really love Felix? The way that I understood his character, he did really care about Felix, but wasn't really mature (or stubborn?) enough to see through all of Felix's BS the way that Mildmay and Gideon do, and Felix couldn't quite trust him enough to be honest about all of his multitudinous issues. However, having now read Corambis, the references Felix makes to his relationship with Shannon have me really wondering if I have just entirely misread Shannon's character. Did Felix have it right when he said Shannon just wanted him on his string?
A: Okay, unreliable narrators ahoy! You can't trust what Felix says about Shannon, any more than you can trust what Shannon says about Felix. Yes, Shannon did genuinely care about Felix, just as Felix genuinely cared about Shannon, but that was tangled up in so many other things (Felix's issues, Shannon's issues ...) that there was no way for them to be in a relationship that was not severely dysfunctional and very bad for both of them.
Q: Pure curiosity here, but did you ever consider/do you think that in the future Felix and Murtagh would ever have a more involved relationship? I cannot see a Felix/Kay pairing at all (and so am delighted that you elected not to do that to them, poor things) but for some reason I can't quite elucidate I can envision Felix and Murtagh much more readily. On the other hand, it could just be that I thought Murtagh was an extremely interesting character, and I just wanted more of him (since if I have one quibble with Corambis, it was that I wanted to hear more from/about Murtagh and Corbie).
A: Felix certainly wouldn't mind. *g*
Q: Nitpicky detail, but is there any backstory to Felix's last name? I've always been a bit curious about it, especially given the references to Melusine's gates, both in reality and in Felix's oneiromantic forays. Since some Lower City denizens have surnames and some don't, did he make it up himself or did someone else (his keeper, Lorenzo, Malkar) name him?
A: I've answered this one before (that's information--you can go look for the previous answer--not me whingeing)--Malkar gave it to him; it's Caloxan. It's also symbolically and thematically appropriate to him, and, yes, that pleases me.
Q: Likewise, an unimportant detail but one that still plagues me: what, if anything, happens to Kolkhis? It isn't mentioned at the end of _The Mirador_ if she was to be exiled like Hugh Chandler or executed like Ivo and Robert, so I have always wondered.
A: I expect she lay low in the
Q: You mentioned in the recent crapstorm about Amazon that you don't like them- do you mind me asking why? I've heard some anti-Amazon sentiment in the past, but it started when I was in high school and I thought it was the best thing since the printing press. However, if it is bad for writers and/or readers etc I will stop giving them my money.
A: I don't like Amazon because I don't like their privacy policy and I don't like their business practices (i.e., the infinite expansion of the products they sell, their schlumphing over ABE Books like a Gelatinous Cube, etc.). I prefer to buy books from people who care about books, which I don't think characterizes Amazon at all. (Support your local indie bookstore!) But this is all purely on the personal level as a consumer. To my knowledge, Amazon is no worse for writers or readers than Borders or Barnes & Noble.
However, if you would like an alternative, may I suggest Powell's?
[Ask your question[s] here.]
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 06:42 pm (UTC)Not that Felix wants or needs my stamp of approval on his interests. =>
(Also: no _way_ Kolkhis would let herself be arrested. She's still out there, all right.)
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 07:27 pm (UTC)I ask because as the semester winds to a close I am becoming increasingly obsessed by the question of how to improve the experience most particularly for our TAs, but also for our students, and desperately seize on all opinions, however tangential. I apologise if it's an impertinent question or one you're not interested in getting into.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 07:44 pm (UTC)I found it increasingly horrible to be responsible for a portion of my students' GPAs, especially knowing that some of them wanted to go to med school or law school, or were trying to get into the School of Education or the School of Journalism (both of which, on the UW-Madison campus, are highly competitive). I didn't want to judge them, and I didn't like the fact that my judgment of their performance (based on nothing more than a midterm, a final, two papers, and in-class participation--and this when I might be teaching 60 or more students a semester) might have some very direct bearing on whether or not they would be able to pursue their particular dream.
Also, of course, I hated the inevitable conflict with students who thought they should get higher grades than they in fact earned (I had one student, my first semester of teaching, tell me that he shouldn't have gotten a B because "a B is an average grade and this is an above-average paper." Which it wasn't.) I hated having students crying in my office. I hated being the bad guy, and the grade-based system of education means that, yes, I was the bad guy a lot.
I hated the way students fixated on grades and the way their intense anxiety about same interfered with their ability to learn. (In revisions, for example they would get focused on trying to give me what they thought I wanted--answering my feedback at the most literal level--instead of trying to understand the principle of argumentation (or whatever) that I was trying to teach them.) And I hated it especially because I was mostly teaching English to non-English majors; they didn't have any reason to be there BESIDE the grade, and that made it really hard on all of us.
(The other side of the coin is that I was just as utterly, miserably grade-obsessed as any of them, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student--it's very easy for overachievers (like me) to get obsessed with the external validation of a 4.0 and thus miss the point of education in the first place. But I still have anxiety dreams, four years after finishing my Ph.D. and almost ten years after the last course I took for a grade, about messing up my GPA. And the fact that I never did, that I maintained a 4.0 all the way through, is something that in retrospect I think would have been better honored in the breach.)
I don't know if any of this is helpful to you--I hope so.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 08:06 pm (UTC)The stress this puts on the TAs is something I also hadn't considered. (I am opposed to the TAs being solely responsible for grades, but principally because many of them don't seem to take it seriously.) Unfortunately, I'm no closer to knowing how to deal with any of this (though getting rid of grades features regularly in my fantasies...) but this gives me additional considerations to ruminate over.
Thanks again.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 08:18 pm (UTC)But, yeah. I don't have any answers. I wish I did.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 02:05 am (UTC)Anyway, just dropping in to thank you for The Bone Key. I finally got to read it and "There were fingers in the wall" is the best opening I've seen in a long time! I seriously loved the entire collection and I'm recommending it to my friends now.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 10:53 pm (UTC)What I meant to say, replying to this comment, is that being able to buy books online with little effort is very nice, if you live in a place without bookstores. (I'm not arguing here, by the way, just conversing.) For some people--I was going to say maybe even for me, but the last few days may have proved me wrong there--it may even result fewer unnecessary or impulsive book purchases. When I was a kid, Before the Internet, every now and then my dad and me would pile into the car on a Saturday and drive to Someplace With Bookstores, and spend the day going to them. There were several such places within an hour or two's drive, and my dad knew where all the bookstores were. A typical day's trip would involve three or four used bookstores, a remainder store, and end up with a visit to one of the big chain stores, usually Borders. If you found something good, you had to buy it then, because who knows when you'd have another chance? (I remember one time my dad didn't buy something, regretted it, and we went back on the Sunday to get it, but I think that only happened once.) Now we both do most of our book-shopping online, and there isn't the same sense of urgency and scarcity. (Not that we never got books by mail in those days, but the arrival of the book catalogs--I remember Hamilton Books, which was a remainder distributor with a densely-printed catalog that resembled the classified section of the paper, and the Small Press Distributor catalog--was kind of a big deal, necessitating several days of going through the catalogs with a highlighter and strategically planning what to order.)
So my point is...did I have a point? I think it was that the "Shop at your local indie bookstore!" meme can be a bit troubling in that it ignores the fact that a lot of people live in places without local bookstores, indie or not, and some of us buy books. And for us, the advantages of the big chains, online and not, are pretty significant.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 11:10 pm (UTC)My dislike of Amazon, as I've said, is for personal reasons; ditto my dislike of Barnes & Noble and Borders (they drive me nuts because I go in and am surrounded by books, but never the books I want). What I should probably have said is, "Support your local indie bookstore if you have one and if it's a good bookstore & worth supporting. And if not, be aware that Amazon is not your only option."