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truepennyQ: My question is, what is the etymological relationship between "Virtu" (as in Melusine's big important magical work) and "Virtuer" (as in Corambis' big important magic workers). Is it an old term that dates back to their shared origin, did one borrow from the other, or did both borrow from a third party? Basically, what is the cultural history that resulted in the semi-cognate?
A: Clearly, the reason you can make a Midlander/Marathine pun on virtus/virtue/vis AND that the Corambin word vi means magic and virtuer means magic-user, is that there's a Cymellunar root word back there somewhere from which all of these words derive.
Q: Now that both brothers can read, do you think that either of them will ever write? And if so, what would they write?
A: If Felix wanted to write, he would already have done so. He'll probably end up writing a lot of letters, though, to keep in contact with the virtuers in Esmer, and will almost certainly start publishing articles in Corambin academic journals.
I doubt Mildmay will start writing. He's a story teller. (Writing a story and telling a story are actually quite different actions.)
Q: Felix seems to have some interest in botany. Will he ever get the chance to keep a garden or something like that? I'm thinking it would be difficult near a lighthouse, since those are usually built in sandy or rocky areas. Would he have to settle for tormenting Mildmay with houseplants everywhere?
A: I love the houseplant idea. I don't know, though, whether Felix actually wants to grow plants.
Q: Is there ever a chance that Felix and Kay will end up having relations of a sort? Everytime they met I could almost feel the tension...or was I just imagining it?
A: As I've said in earlier Q&As, a relationship between Felix and Kay was originally part of the plot--so it's certainly possible. I don't know if it will happen, though. It would take a lot of negotiating.
Q: Could you elaborate on the scandalous Melusinian novels that Felix can't bring himself to read? I know you wrote about them in such a way that the reader could make a guess, but the idea just amused me so much that I had to ask.
A: They're clearly the paranormal romance/"urban fantasy"* version of Mélusine.
Q: What was family life like for Shannon, Stephen and Victoria as children? Were their relationships as we see them in the books shaped more by upbringing/personality or by later events such as Stephen becoming Lord Protector or Shannon coming out (assuming he did, and that he didn't just leave people to find out)? Urgh. I realise I'm not putting this very well.
Stephen and Victoria's mother died when they were not very old--and died in such a way that they probably never got a decent explanation, and probably weren't even allowed to talk about her. When their father remarried, he chose a beautiful, vain, and rather silly woman vastly his junior who would have made no effort to ingratiate herself with her step-children, since she was plotting to usurp the Protectorate for her own child. She gets burned at the stake, and their father forces through the legal adoption of Shannon--the spitting image of his mother, remember--into the Teverii, and shortly thereafter dies. He never got over Gloria Aestia. The fact that the three Teverii of this generation speak to each other at all is a testament to the determination on all sides not to take out their parents' mistakes on each other.
And, yes, Shannon was very in-your-face about his sexual orientation when he decided he liked boys.
---
*I put "urban fantasy" in quotes because--as we discovered on a panel about it at OddCon--whatever that genre is, "urban fantasy" is a misnomer. Urban fantasy is fantasy about cities--which the panel also discovered is a flourishing sub-genre including authors like China Miéville, Ellen Kushner, Fritz Leiber, and Terry Pratchett--but "urban fantasy," while very distinctly a genre, really needs a different name. (Oddly enough, both genres are clearly influenced--if not outright founded--by Charles de Lint and Emma Bull). I write urban fantasy; I do not write "urban fantasy" and couldn't if I tried.**
**This is not a slam against "urban fantasy." It is very much Not My Thing, but dude. Neither is hard SF. The fact that, obviously, I want to reappropriate the term "urban fantasy" for something else isn't because I think the books being called "urban fantasy" somehow don't "deserve" the label, but because, as a genre theory geek, I am frustrated by the fact that the term is being used to label a genre it doesn't describe, while a genre that it does describe, and which I think is really cool, doesn't have a label at all--or much recognition as a genre. From the genre-theory-geek perspective "urban fantasy" is actually really interesting, because what makes it a genre is the melange of genres it offers--fantasy, romance, mystery, action-adventure, maybe a little horror--but while the urban environment, or at least the postmodern cosmopolitan sensibility, is necessary to the genre, it's not really what books in this genre are about. Carole Nelson Douglas' Midnight Louie books are another example that fit into both genres: they're "urban fantasy," with the romance element and the mystery element and the fantasy element, but they are also distinctly about Las Vegas, and therefore are also urban fantasy. I realize this is all high-geek nitpicking, but, well, hi. Welcome to my brain.
And, okay, I have now used up my entire quota of quotation marks for probably the next week.
Q: Did you do any research on various forms of mood disorders and mental illness for this work? Because except for the hallucinations and more or less complete functional incapacity he suffered, his period of insanity reminded me a lot of my more unpleasant (and thankfully not nearly as common as they used to be) depressive phases, If you did do research, you absorbed it well; if you didn't, well, good job with what my signif other calls "imaginative sympathy", cause you got it right.
A: Thank you! I didn't do any formal research, no, so I guess if I had to offer an explanation, it would be that I spent a lot of time very carefully thinking through the consequences of what I'd set up.
Q: One of the things that really drew me in to the Doctrine of Labyrinths series was the way in which you had incorporated elements of Classical (Greek, Roman, Minoan) cultures. I am curious - how extensive is your background in Classics?
A: I majored in Classics as an undergrad at Case Western. (Okay, full disclosure: I double-majored in Classics and Literature, which was a cross-disciplinary program between English and Comparative Literature, and minored in Women's Studies.) So I took three years of Latin, two years of Greek, a variety of associated courses, and wrote a departmental honors thesis on Ovid's exile poetry. And before I went to grad school in English, I did the 6 week summer session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, which was a crazy-intense crash course in both archaeology and Greek prehistory.
And, of course, the years when I was doing all this were the years when I was writing Mélusine, so it's not surprising that it all ended up in there.
[Ask your question(s) here.]
A: Clearly, the reason you can make a Midlander/Marathine pun on virtus/virtue/vis AND that the Corambin word vi means magic and virtuer means magic-user, is that there's a Cymellunar root word back there somewhere from which all of these words derive.
Q: Now that both brothers can read, do you think that either of them will ever write? And if so, what would they write?
A: If Felix wanted to write, he would already have done so. He'll probably end up writing a lot of letters, though, to keep in contact with the virtuers in Esmer, and will almost certainly start publishing articles in Corambin academic journals.
I doubt Mildmay will start writing. He's a story teller. (Writing a story and telling a story are actually quite different actions.)
Q: Felix seems to have some interest in botany. Will he ever get the chance to keep a garden or something like that? I'm thinking it would be difficult near a lighthouse, since those are usually built in sandy or rocky areas. Would he have to settle for tormenting Mildmay with houseplants everywhere?
A: I love the houseplant idea. I don't know, though, whether Felix actually wants to grow plants.
Q: Is there ever a chance that Felix and Kay will end up having relations of a sort? Everytime they met I could almost feel the tension...or was I just imagining it?
A: As I've said in earlier Q&As, a relationship between Felix and Kay was originally part of the plot--so it's certainly possible. I don't know if it will happen, though. It would take a lot of negotiating.
Q: Could you elaborate on the scandalous Melusinian novels that Felix can't bring himself to read? I know you wrote about them in such a way that the reader could make a guess, but the idea just amused me so much that I had to ask.
A: They're clearly the paranormal romance/"urban fantasy"* version of Mélusine.
Q: What was family life like for Shannon, Stephen and Victoria as children? Were their relationships as we see them in the books shaped more by upbringing/personality or by later events such as Stephen becoming Lord Protector or Shannon coming out (assuming he did, and that he didn't just leave people to find out)? Urgh. I realise I'm not putting this very well.
Stephen and Victoria's mother died when they were not very old--and died in such a way that they probably never got a decent explanation, and probably weren't even allowed to talk about her. When their father remarried, he chose a beautiful, vain, and rather silly woman vastly his junior who would have made no effort to ingratiate herself with her step-children, since she was plotting to usurp the Protectorate for her own child. She gets burned at the stake, and their father forces through the legal adoption of Shannon--the spitting image of his mother, remember--into the Teverii, and shortly thereafter dies. He never got over Gloria Aestia. The fact that the three Teverii of this generation speak to each other at all is a testament to the determination on all sides not to take out their parents' mistakes on each other.
And, yes, Shannon was very in-your-face about his sexual orientation when he decided he liked boys.
---
*I put "urban fantasy" in quotes because--as we discovered on a panel about it at OddCon--whatever that genre is, "urban fantasy" is a misnomer. Urban fantasy is fantasy about cities--which the panel also discovered is a flourishing sub-genre including authors like China Miéville, Ellen Kushner, Fritz Leiber, and Terry Pratchett--but "urban fantasy," while very distinctly a genre, really needs a different name. (Oddly enough, both genres are clearly influenced--if not outright founded--by Charles de Lint and Emma Bull). I write urban fantasy; I do not write "urban fantasy" and couldn't if I tried.**
**This is not a slam against "urban fantasy." It is very much Not My Thing, but dude. Neither is hard SF. The fact that, obviously, I want to reappropriate the term "urban fantasy" for something else isn't because I think the books being called "urban fantasy" somehow don't "deserve" the label, but because, as a genre theory geek, I am frustrated by the fact that the term is being used to label a genre it doesn't describe, while a genre that it does describe, and which I think is really cool, doesn't have a label at all--or much recognition as a genre. From the genre-theory-geek perspective "urban fantasy" is actually really interesting, because what makes it a genre is the melange of genres it offers--fantasy, romance, mystery, action-adventure, maybe a little horror--but while the urban environment, or at least the postmodern cosmopolitan sensibility, is necessary to the genre, it's not really what books in this genre are about. Carole Nelson Douglas' Midnight Louie books are another example that fit into both genres: they're "urban fantasy," with the romance element and the mystery element and the fantasy element, but they are also distinctly about Las Vegas, and therefore are also urban fantasy. I realize this is all high-geek nitpicking, but, well, hi. Welcome to my brain.
And, okay, I have now used up my entire quota of quotation marks for probably the next week.
Q: Did you do any research on various forms of mood disorders and mental illness for this work? Because except for the hallucinations and more or less complete functional incapacity he suffered, his period of insanity reminded me a lot of my more unpleasant (and thankfully not nearly as common as they used to be) depressive phases, If you did do research, you absorbed it well; if you didn't, well, good job with what my signif other calls "imaginative sympathy", cause you got it right.
A: Thank you! I didn't do any formal research, no, so I guess if I had to offer an explanation, it would be that I spent a lot of time very carefully thinking through the consequences of what I'd set up.
Q: One of the things that really drew me in to the Doctrine of Labyrinths series was the way in which you had incorporated elements of Classical (Greek, Roman, Minoan) cultures. I am curious - how extensive is your background in Classics?
A: I majored in Classics as an undergrad at Case Western. (Okay, full disclosure: I double-majored in Classics and Literature, which was a cross-disciplinary program between English and Comparative Literature, and minored in Women's Studies.) So I took three years of Latin, two years of Greek, a variety of associated courses, and wrote a departmental honors thesis on Ovid's exile poetry. And before I went to grad school in English, I did the 6 week summer session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, which was a crazy-intense crash course in both archaeology and Greek prehistory.
And, of course, the years when I was doing all this were the years when I was writing Mélusine, so it's not surprising that it all ended up in there.
[Ask your question(s) here.]
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 07:14 pm (UTC)The two types of urban fantasy, on the other hand, I find fascinating: I'd be loathe to take that label away from de Lint, Bull, etc., just because that definition came first, generically speaking, and could/would not be easily redefined. But you're quite right that the other kind, the writing imaginary cities from scratch, China Mieville, K.J. Bishop, *you* kind of urban fantasy needs a separate nomenclature. Hmmmmmm ....
no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 05:30 pm (UTC)*Or any other environment where one cannot completely lose oneself in one's book for fear of, say, missing one's plane. They're like the marshmallow Peeps of detective fiction--fun and silly but without a lot of substance and one is slightly embarrassed to admit that as an adult one actually likes them.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 05:52 pm (UTC)It's true! It's pretty much piles of Laurell K. Hamilton ripoffs and the Dresden Files.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 05:59 am (UTC)As a fan of both (all?) kinds of fantasy, I thought that - for instance - Carrie Vaughn's Kitty and the Midnight Hour, the cover of which did in fact feature a woman facing away from the reader, was a pretty awesome book with a great sense of place.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 12:53 pm (UTC)I've actually had people say exactly that to me regarding high fantasy. I just laugh at them. :) But I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 02:08 pm (UTC)I know I have seen covers where the ladies sported tattoos they did not have in the text, sadly! Clearly marketing, infinitely mysterious that it is, has decided that the people like tattoos.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 03:24 pm (UTC)Tattoos are pretty cool, though.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 06:18 pm (UTC)Q: Did you do any research on various forms of mood disorders and mental illness for this work?
That. That was another question i meant to ask and for whatever reason never did. i've found that books typically resonate the most with me based on how much of my own 'real time' experience i can see mirrored in the book. Pretty typical stuff, really.
i've mentioned before that i'm a nearly lifelong submissive, though i did dabble with switching a time or three. Like Felix, though, i learned that i could not handle the power and/or keep control, so i have since stayed happily ensconced on the right side of the slash.
i relate to Felix so well, and it's not just because of the D/s element. i, too, had my share of mental "adventures" and saw a great deal of that echoed in Felix throughout the course of the series. Add on his "lessons learned" - accepting that the past is the past, knowing you have to move forward, don't punish others for your own mistakes, etc. and there is so much there i totally "get."
Then there's the Malkar/Felix dynamic including nonconsensual activity, enforced addiction to phoenix, the love/hate quandary, and living in perpetual fear. i had a significant other (who was really more like an Owner/Handler) for a lonnnnnng time. i met Him when i'd just become addicted to cocaine and meth and He happily kept me supplied so that i'd be that much more compliant and biddable. i loved Him and hated Him alternately. So much that after awhile, the line blurred and i no longer recognised (or cared) that there even WAS a difference. Through mental and physical control (including using my addiction against me in every way possible), He pretty much ensured that i wasn't going anywhere.
When i decided to quit cold turkey, it entailed leaving Him and everything i'd come to know as familiar (if not always pleasant). It took a long damn time for me to be sure that the break would hold, and i spent a good 5 - 6 years constantly looking over my shoulder, expecing to find Him. About the third time i read Melusine i got hit between the eyes with just how horribly wrong it all was, and how closely it echoed my own experiences. i had one of the most cathartic cries of my life as i realised just how far i've come from the broken shell that i'd been.
This got a lot longer than i'd intended but i felt i had to say "thank you" one more time for writing such a lush and beautiful series, and explain why it was such a moving experience for me to discover it.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 02:58 am (UTC)When it comes to reminiscing about folks better left unremembered, however, it's a bit more problematic. In my head, i don't capitalise his name or any of the personal pronouns. When it comes to writing, on the other hand... Well, it's somewhat automatic, sadly, even if the individual is completely undeserving of the courtesy.
This too shall pass, i suppose.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 08:49 pm (UTC)It's such a delight to realise that just when i think i've gotten everything figured out, i'll read a book or even just a single passage that helps me evaluate my experiences in a whole new light. i consider that an unexpected and priceless gift from a phenomenal author.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 10:59 pm (UTC)I tend not to worry about naming the subgenres so much as describing them these days.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 01:41 am (UTC)Props for doing anything on Ovid's Exile Poetry. We read some in my fourth semester Latin (that was, of course, right after we read Catullus, who is far more fun) and we all cried. Ovid was way to 'oh woe is me' for any of us.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 02:28 am (UTC)An alternative would be to float another, SMARTER, term to describe fantasy that meets your criteria of what it's about (rather than just where it's set). Some suggestions:
1 Polisfic
2 Stadtfic
3 Urbfic (or Urbfan?)
4 Villois (pl Villoix)
Zaf
no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 05:57 pm (UTC)I've been confused by the 'paranormal romance' label since I saw it above some shelves in Borders a while ago. Maybe I should just pretend the labels aren't there and go back to my 'like' and 'don't like' piles?