and they will turn me in your arms into a newt or a snake

[ontology]

As I continue work on the Evangeline story, I realise how much I still need and want to learn about the era I'm writing in. It bothers me, for example, that all characters, major and minor, are automatically white in my head, because I don't have any real concept of racial diversity in 1912 England, but there has to have been a fair amount, because this is the British Empire that the sun never sets on, and inter-global travel is just becoming a real possibility with trains and steamships and everything. And if people from the further reaches of the Empire come to London, what roles do they play in society? I also don't really know what it would be like, really, to walk down a main street -- there are vendors, right? What sort of food and wares are they selling? What's the motorcar-to-horse-drawn-carriage ratio? What does everything smell like? What sort of music did people really listen to? (Props for finding popular songs that do not make me want to stab my eyes and ears out; I paged through a book of popular not-folk-songs from the early twentieth century and the lyric quality was atrocious. Clichés breeding like horny rabbits, nauseatingly sentimental concepts, incredibly lame wordplay... awful.) I've found a source for researching food, finally -- my grandmother gave me a cookbook of Yorkshire food, with historical notes and pictures and things, and the author has got a whole series of similar books, one of which is on London. Hurrah! Camilla does a lot of cooking, and the evening meal really is the heart of the Nox family day, and yet I'm still very unsure as to how experimental people got with food back then, how much the cultural exchange affected what people ate -- curries are popular in England now, but were they a hundred years ago? -- how much food cost, how likely desserts or snacks would be, what people ate for cold lunches and things.

As for the I-should-have-known-this-all-along Tam-Lin elements, Evangeline and Mr Caruthers fit pretty strongly into the Janet/Tam-Lin roles. Which reminds me, one of the reasons Tam-Lin is so awesome -- and why, I suspect, it attracts so much exploration in fiction -- is because Janet is one of the earliest kickass heroines of (Western?) fantasy. Janet saves her man. I love it. Also, I remind myself, just because you're exploring it here, doesn't mean you've used up all of your Tam-Lin credits and can't ever write another riff or adaptation -- Robin McKinley did two Beauty and the Beasts, remember? And Beauty and the Beast crops up again in Sunshine, in both obvious and subtle ways. And they're all awesome books. (Only... I am not Robin McKinley. She is way cooler than me, although she may be one of the few people I write faster than.) The vampire woman who coerces young Mr Caruthers into Some Vampire Nonsense is the Faerie Queen, I think, except I also think she's dead(...er) by the time Our Story begins. Maybe all of the vampires operate as the Faerie Queen, because there really are no vampire leaders, although there are probably a few especially powerful or charismatic vampires who are looked up to by the tribes at large.

The tithe... I think I'm getting closer and closer to understanding this bit. The woman on the library steps... I said that I realised she wasn't a warning but a ritual? I'm beginning to understand that she's only the first. I think people start turning up vampirely dead all over London, and this is primarily what Evangeline is recruited to stop -- probably because she was so good at accidentally destroying a whole room of vampires the time they tried to lay siege on the library (still trying to work out why any of that happened). It's something to do with the Industrial Revolution, or the war that maybe only they know is coming (also need so badly to read about the cultural climate that lead to the Great War), and they're trying to stop it happening? Stop it encroaching on their way of, erm, unlife? And Mr Caruthers, for one reason or another or perhaps a whole host of them, is the required -- wow, I was about to say Final Sacrifice, but, um. (Rowsdower Rowsdower Rowsa-rowsa-rowsdower!) And I've always liked the concept at the end of the ballad, where the Faerie Queen turns Tam-Lin into various things and Janet has to keep hold of him, and remember that he is the man she loves, and not to be decieved by the Faerie Queen's illusions, and I'm interested to see what I could do with that in this story, with Mr Caruthers (becoming various versions of himself, past, future, and purely speculative?).

Note: the element in which Janet is pregnant by Tam-Lin is not at all present in this story. In case you were wondering. :/ Also, I'm intrigued by the last line of the ballad, where the Faerie Queen says that if she'd known that all of this would have happened, she would have turned Tam-Lin into a tree -- in my 'verse, trees are sort of the antithesis of evil magic, which is why wooden stakes kill vampires. Trees equal life.

Comments

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia, as always, arrives to be your best friend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry#British_cuisine). Sounds like it wasn't as popular and pervasive as it is today, but it was still a significant part of British cuisine. (As an added bonus, it's a good excuse to use another Nancy Elizabeth song in any future Evangeline mixes.)

As far as other food, Wikipedia is still your best friend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_cuisine#Dates_of_introduction_of_various_foodstuffs_and_methods_to_Britain). Ooh, and Food Stories (http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/foodstories/index.html) looks good too. I know from personal experience that Turkish cuisine is big there, roughly parallel to what Mexican (rather, "Mexican") is here, and actually that's true all over Europe...not sure when that started though. This page (http://www.resthof.co.uk/otherethnichistory.htm) has some info on ethnic cuisine in Britain, although it doesn't look overly helpful...looks like most of the Turkish cuisine came in with Turkish Cypriots in the 60's and 70's, so it's more recent than I thought.

As for other things...I dunno, I'm guessing London would smell rather worse than it does now but not all that different from most of the European cities I visited, just because--and I suppose this is probably true of big American cities too--there is a very distinct rotting-sewer kind of smell coming from all the manholes and grates and things in the street. Plus you'd get more horse manure, and...probably more narrow, twisty streets? I assume London has as many funky little alleys and closes as Edinburgh, for instance, and they're pretty awesome. Also cobblestones. And smoke, lots of it, from chimneys and factories and people smoking, because freaking everybody smokes all over Europe, so I imagine that would have been true then. And...huh. Apparently London didn't pass a clean air act until the 1950s? I don't know how bad the air pollution would have been in 1912, but I'm guessing pretty significant.

Janet has to keep hold of him, and remember that he is the man she loves, and not to be decieved by the Faerie Queen's illusions, and I'm interested to see what I could do with that in this story, with Mr Caruthers (becoming various versions of himself, past, future, and purely speculative?)

Ooh, I like. That would probably be her first time really seeing what he used to be like and what he could have become, and even if everything ends well Mr Caruthers will probably be all "Now you know what a horrible person I am, I can't even look at you again, I know you can't possibly love me," and she'll be like "...You're an idiot."

[starongie.livejournal.com]

I think, that maybe you should visit London? It won't ever be like it was in those times, but it'll help you get a taste of England. And it's always great to chat with English Ole'timers, most would always have a story, and it'll really be first had documentation of how they remembered it when they were, say, your age. It's lovely, all the history that they hide in the wrinkles of their skin and behind their eyes. A lady, 80-something, very french, once told me how Paris always used to smell like cigarette burns and something thick but, always fresh, that she swallowed those smells up when they were poor and hungry, and I think I was in tears at the end. She, she was just so descriptive, and I loved everyone that day.

Maybe all of the vampires operate as the Faerie Queen,

This sounds, a lot more original, actually. It sounds like it can be marvelously unique to pull off, in a way? Like you can dig deeper into how, why, twist some questions to go off somewhere that wasn't expected but not outrageous either?

Also, I'm intrigued by the last line of the ballad, where the Faerie Queen says that if she'd known that all of this would have happened, she would have turned Tam-Lin into a tree -- in my 'verse, trees are sort of the antithesis of evil magic, which is why wooden stakes kill vampires. Trees equal life.

Huh. When I was younger I had a theory that all the bad people sent to hell would be turned into trees. Because, it's just, the trees are always stretching forward, above, and it'll just be, such a painful circular payback, rigid, and a way to make them useful at the same time. I was young, and thought myself very wise when I talked about it.


Um. Hi. xD I'm a new lurker, and suddenly feeling rather awkward. But many complimentary phrases to you and your writing!

[take-a-sadsong.livejournal.com]

This is probably really bad advice, but since you are writing in an alternate universe where vampires haunt London, you could probably take some liberties with some historical facts. Unless you intend for vampires to be the only quality making Evangeline Project London different, then yeah, I can understand the need for extensive research.

TAM LIN INFLUENCE IS REALLY AWESOME. :D Oh, and, while reading the post I had sort of an idea but because I enjoy overdramatic stuff (), it may be interesting if the Faerie Queen character/vampires take hold of Mr. Caruther's emotions and/or personality. So instead of morphing into say, a newt, he turns incredibly emotionally sensitive, or becomes angry over everything, or complains incessantly. He could change to the point that he begins to no longer be the person Evangeline knows, and she has to realise it's not really him but the vampires influencing him.

Though honestly I think it's more interesting if he goes back and forth between past and future like you said, especially if his future is a darker person (maybe what'd he'd be like if the vampires took entire control over him), and Evangeline must do something before he really becomes that person.