edenfalling: headshot of a raccoon, looking left (raccoon)
[personal profile] edenfalling
Yuletide reveal day!

I only wrote one story this year -- so much for grand intentions! But that single story is about eight and a half thousand words long, and I was sunk in a slough of depression for a good chunk of what should have been my prime writing time, so I count it a successful year nonetheless. :-)

Dreams From My Mother: Wilhelmina Benedict never knew her mother. That didn't stop Adria from shaping her daughter's life. (8,700 words) Written for [archiveofourown.org profile] Morbane.

Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series is one of my beloved guilty pleasures of the past decade. It has its fair share of issues, plot holes, and utter ridiculousness, but it hits a lot of my buttons Just Right, and so I forgive the world and the characters pretty much anything. *hands* What can you do?

Anyway, Morbane provided the following prompt: I would really like worldbuilding. The books focus on very high-powered characters, and I'd be delighted if you would instead explore life for Landens or lighter-jewelled Blood. The books cover a lot of mythical realms, a lot of major political shifts, and dramatic events - ways of life and changes to ways of life that affect everyone. Tell me some of these stories. Original characters very welcome! But if you have favourites among the nominated characters, take your favourite and write me an interaction with an obscure corner of canon.

I requested "any", and I realise you may have signed up to specifically write about Lucivar, or Surreal, or Wilhelmina, and OCs may not be your cup of tea. So I have optional thoughts on each of the nominated characters in my letter on livejournal.


With that in mind, I initially thought about hauling out and reworking a massively self-indulgent story set in Hayll after the end of Queen of the Darkness, which would need a LOT of fixing to make it compliant with the incidental world-building in The Shadow Queen and Shalador's Lady, but that's a novella-length story at the very least so I set that aside and started hunting for very minor canon characters and/or places where I thought an OC-centric story might illuminate something interesting about the world of the series. And for a while I was going to write about Lady Broghann (whose name you will not recognize because she was on-page for all of, I think, two pages, in "Zuulaman," which is a prequel story about Saetan's past contained in Dreams Made Flesh -- she is Mephis and Peyton's governess), but somehow I ended up thinking about Wilhelmina's mother instead.

Adria-of-no-canon-surname is mentioned in passing on one page of Daughter of the Blood, when Jaenelle is telling Daemon a little about her family situation and mentions that not only is she not the child of Robert Benedict, her nominal father, her half-sister Wilhelmina is also not Robert's child -- that Wilhelmina's mother, Adria, was a broken Black Widow who used her little store of remaining power to cast a dream web and enchant Robert's half-brother, Philip Alexander, into fathering her child instead. Which is... um... dubious consent at best, but in her place -- it's not stated outright, but there's some situational implication that Robert may have been the one who broke her (i.e., raped her and destroyed her ability to use magic) -- I can understand why Adria was willing to do whatever she could to even slightly lessen the horror of her fate. Then she died anyway, whereupon Robert promptly made a politically advantageous second marriage. That always seemed somewhat suspicious to me.

Long story short, I decided to write about Adria from Wilhelmina's point of view, via stories people told Wilhelmina about her mother over the years. Initially this was going to extend all the way through "Kaeleer's Heart" (a story in Dreams Made Flesh, set about a year after Queen of the Darkness) and end in Scelt with Jaenelle finally telling Wilhelmina about having met Adria in Hell, and maybe an exchange of a letter Adria had written for her daughter before she returned to the Darkness, but as I wrote the timeframe of the story compressed itself a LOT and I wound up ending on what, in my original outline, was the fifth of nine planned scenes. The story also ended up being much more about Wilhelmina and her family in general than about Wilhelmina and her mother specifically, but I like to think that Adria is still a notable presence (or absence) throughout the fic.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-02 04:11 am (UTC)
krait: a sea snake (krait) swimming (Default)
From: [personal profile] krait
Oooooh, Adria! I am going to go read that as soon as I'm off work... :D

Meanwhile: yay, Black Jewels!stuff on my friendslist, what better way to start the new year? SUCH a beloved guilty pleasure fandom (except I'm not guilty), and I would love to read your Hayll fic with or without the extensive Shalador/etc.-compliant edits! :D

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-03 04:31 am (UTC)
krait: a sea snake (krait) swimming (Default)
From: [personal profile] krait
I figured Priestesses were like Black Widows -- anyone can learn the basics, but some have an innate calling. There's an explicit divide in canon between "natural Black Widows" who are born with the skill/drive to perform that sort of magic, and those who "trained" in the Hourglass's craft but don't have any innate connection to it (see: Alexandra Angelline, who studied for a few years, quit, and aside from one dream web seems never to have touched the demesne of the Hourglass again). I always figured Priestesses were in the same vein -- anyone can learn to doe some of their basic functions by rote (open/close the Gates, perform yearly rituals), but those who are born to the caste have a strong inner attraction to the craft, and an affinity for the kinds of magic involved that would develop with or without training. I would definitely be interested in seeing your take on them!

Of course, I also suspect that Dorothea & Hekatah had to be some non-Queen caste that wasn't Black Widow, because AIIIEE, superpowered unstoppable villains, much?! Just imagine if they weren't dependent on the quality of dream weaver they could coerce...

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-05 05:16 am (UTC)
krait: a sea snake (krait) swimming (Default)
From: [personal profile] krait
They also maintain the Altars, and seem to serve as unofficial judges of anyone who wants to use an altar (and, therefore, wants to cross realms); I seem to recall that being vaguely implied when Surreal meets Cassandra (maybe?), and anyway it sort of follows logically (if you know how to open a door, and are in charge of opening a door... you decide who you will and won't open a door for!). And "maintaining" is pretty vague, but given the other sorts of places that the Blood use for ceremonies, I'm betting there are regular rituals/ceremonies/gifts of blood or power that go into keeping an Altar functional and, well, 'healthy'? Powered?

I thought Saetan was the "High Priest of the Hourglass", though, which is a Black Widow thing rather than a Priestess thing. I guess calling him a 'widow' just sounded funny, and because it's such a female caste they(or he, since I don't think he had a lot of formal training?) had to make up something to signify his status as "fully trained, not an apprentice, dangerous!" and, well, "Black Widower" also sounds stupid, so they chose Priest?

That's my theory, anyway, since we don't really know how Priestess and Black Widow stack up against each other as a caste, but we have seen that when two castes are slightly uneven, the male of the lower caste is equal to the female of the higher caste (a Warlord is equal to a witch), so... maybe Priestesses (being less dangerous in general) rank below Black Widows, and thus male of Priestess caste = female of Black Widow caste, and there is a word for a male Priestess!

("High" Priest, because he holds the highest ranking among Priests -- easy, when there's only one! -- the same as Dorothea the "High Priestess" holds the highest ranking among Priestesses.)

Er. Yeah. I have thoughts about this series, did I mention? *grin*

There's also some of the intriguing suggestions of that "sings to him in a specific way" concept as regards his status as the High Lord! All the stuff in the later novels/stories, about Daemon being his "true heir", and being drawn to/linked with Hell? Or the Darkness as it manifests/is a part of Hell? Yeah. So I do think that being a Priestess comes with some kind of innate draw toward the Dark Altars and the magics involved, same as Queens have an innate draw toward the land; it's part of what identifies their caste, and -- if there can be 'learned Priestesses' vs. born Priestesses, the way there are 'learned Black Widows' and 'natural Black Widows' -- there's some difference in the level of instinctive understanding one has for those kinds of magics.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-03 12:11 am (UTC)
lady_songsmith: owl (Default)
From: [personal profile] lady_songsmith
I only just read the Black Jewels books recently after hearing of them peripherally throughout my fantasy-devouring phases. The first was on sale as an ebook, I had a kindle giftcard, and what-the-hey. So I devoured them all in a weekend not long before Christmas, and have been disappointed to find little fic and less that's interesting. Your piece hit all the right buttons, and I was so pleased to see it. Thank you!

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-02 02:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bluejayfic.livejournal.com
Hm. I'm not familiar with the canon, but maybe I should change that. What buttons does it hit for you?

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-05 01:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bluejayfic.livejournal.com
Hm. I'll think about it. None of these are dealbreakers in and of themselves, though how they are managed matters. I like characters being morally questionable, for example, as long as it doesn't degenerate into Protagonist-Centered Morality.

Profile

edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Elizabeth Culmer

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  1 2345
6789 101112
1314 1516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags