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caper_estKiller-Kate and Luke Lackland: Worked on geography and finished notes on the Witchy Wizardy subplot. Overall sense is that it needs a deal of work - but that work done, it could smooth off some of the other plotlines and ideas as neatly as sandpaper.
This large plotline is the most organically grown of all, having been completely unimagined in the story's origin, and by degrees become central to it. It centres around the three pure magic-specialists in the younger generation: Flashy Elder Brother, the virtuoso wizard; and Bonecold Refugee and her friend whom we might call Knife-Rede, the inexperienced witches. The subplot coalesced around a datadump excuse; the need to win two nonmagical tricks in order for Kate to challenge the Dull Tower; and an intended romantic tie-off at the ending, which has now grown implicit and ambiguous. Much was revealed in the telling, as its three central characters came out of the shadows and spoke to me.
In looking back on it and teasing out its strands, I improved my sense of why magic in the Kateverse, and particularly in the dale-country, is not particularly good at bestowing power or status. Its tendency in human terms to insanity and excess, combined with the extravagant costs of brute-forcing solutions with it, makes all but its tamest or most devious uses deeply suspect, and frequently unhelpful. Bonecold and Knife-Rede don't accomplish so much more than all the rest of Langdale's witches combined (who are no help worth mentioning) because they just happen to have enormous natural talent. They do it because they're desperate enough, and Bonecold is also clever enough, to do a lot of things that no better-educated or more sensible witch would consider for a moment. A proper witch would have run away, which most presumably did. And to say they wouldn't have managed even in the medium term without the Fairfielders' help is understating things: as it is, each comes within an absolute hairsbreadth of destroying her soul in nasty ways.
Yes, the peasant revolt only succeeds because with Katy & Co. behind it, it has such overwhelming magical superiority. But by itself, that wouldn't have been close to enough. The Kingdom of Morgander has defeated the combined forces of Elfland at least once within recorded history, and part of every sane agenda in this story is to avoid any possibility of a rematch. Its northern rival, whose kings and clan-chiefs do use combat-oriented warlocks - heavy-duty ones: at least two exist whom Katy explicitly has no confidence of beating in any direct clash - is neither a particularly healthy nor a notably prosperous society, partly because Morgander has eaten a lot of its richer and more fertile lands after beating big barrels out of it militarily, economically, and culturally.
Combing this plot has straightened me out on a lot of the details as to how this works, socially as well as magically, and satisfied me that my uses of magic in the Rising aren't just magus ex machina. If they come across that way in the tale, it will be solely because I've bungled the telling.
A more dangerous potential case of magus ex is the way the Big Bad gets defeated. Getting that right depends on a lot of incluing, not all of which I put in the first time around, because I thought it was going to happen in another way which I came to feel lacked both sense and poetic power. Here we touch on a problem, because at present I'm counting more than I'd wish on the reader's poetic sense to have a lot in common with mine. However, in this magical review, I hit upon a dangling detail of a main character's experience elsewhere which can be nicely tucked up to foreshadow - even perhaps to incite - the eventual masterstroke. That also by happy chance partly fills an unfortunate blank spot in Three Katherines as a whole, which the story was not otherwise inclined to do. If I can pull this off, my reasons for being so cryptic about it will emerge. Anyway, I'm seriously pleased to have found this new angle on it.
Finally, I've sorted out a bunch of details and raised a few more questions about Bonecold Refugee (by far the most pivotal character of the three, as things turned out), and the relationship between the various known approaches to the Art Magic in the Kateverse. One thing I should certainly have picked up without waiting for the revision for it to smack me between the eyes: Bonecold has the training and the turn of mind to be a most formidable witch - in many ways she is like a Katy Elflocks who got smacked with the predictable reality instead of the fairy-tale - but she doesn't really think in witchy terms more than she can help.* I think her true vocation is wizardry, even though she doesn't know or do any, at least in the main course of the tale.
Wherein it is seen that even the author can miss even the most blatant incluing threaded throughout their own text. Repeatedly. Extensively. D'oh!
* ETA: "turn of mind to be a most formidable witch... doesn't really think in witchy terms" appears to make no sense. What I was trying to say is that she has a mind that can wrangle witchy magical concepts and entities very well - but the directions she takes them in, given any choice in the matter, aren't very witchy at all. Gah, that was clumsy of me!
This large plotline is the most organically grown of all, having been completely unimagined in the story's origin, and by degrees become central to it. It centres around the three pure magic-specialists in the younger generation: Flashy Elder Brother, the virtuoso wizard; and Bonecold Refugee and her friend whom we might call Knife-Rede, the inexperienced witches. The subplot coalesced around a datadump excuse; the need to win two nonmagical tricks in order for Kate to challenge the Dull Tower; and an intended romantic tie-off at the ending, which has now grown implicit and ambiguous. Much was revealed in the telling, as its three central characters came out of the shadows and spoke to me.
In looking back on it and teasing out its strands, I improved my sense of why magic in the Kateverse, and particularly in the dale-country, is not particularly good at bestowing power or status. Its tendency in human terms to insanity and excess, combined with the extravagant costs of brute-forcing solutions with it, makes all but its tamest or most devious uses deeply suspect, and frequently unhelpful. Bonecold and Knife-Rede don't accomplish so much more than all the rest of Langdale's witches combined (who are no help worth mentioning) because they just happen to have enormous natural talent. They do it because they're desperate enough, and Bonecold is also clever enough, to do a lot of things that no better-educated or more sensible witch would consider for a moment. A proper witch would have run away, which most presumably did. And to say they wouldn't have managed even in the medium term without the Fairfielders' help is understating things: as it is, each comes within an absolute hairsbreadth of destroying her soul in nasty ways.
Yes, the peasant revolt only succeeds because with Katy & Co. behind it, it has such overwhelming magical superiority. But by itself, that wouldn't have been close to enough. The Kingdom of Morgander has defeated the combined forces of Elfland at least once within recorded history, and part of every sane agenda in this story is to avoid any possibility of a rematch. Its northern rival, whose kings and clan-chiefs do use combat-oriented warlocks - heavy-duty ones: at least two exist whom Katy explicitly has no confidence of beating in any direct clash - is neither a particularly healthy nor a notably prosperous society, partly because Morgander has eaten a lot of its richer and more fertile lands after beating big barrels out of it militarily, economically, and culturally.
Combing this plot has straightened me out on a lot of the details as to how this works, socially as well as magically, and satisfied me that my uses of magic in the Rising aren't just magus ex machina. If they come across that way in the tale, it will be solely because I've bungled the telling.
A more dangerous potential case of magus ex is the way the Big Bad gets defeated. Getting that right depends on a lot of incluing, not all of which I put in the first time around, because I thought it was going to happen in another way which I came to feel lacked both sense and poetic power. Here we touch on a problem, because at present I'm counting more than I'd wish on the reader's poetic sense to have a lot in common with mine. However, in this magical review, I hit upon a dangling detail of a main character's experience elsewhere which can be nicely tucked up to foreshadow - even perhaps to incite - the eventual masterstroke. That also by happy chance partly fills an unfortunate blank spot in Three Katherines as a whole, which the story was not otherwise inclined to do. If I can pull this off, my reasons for being so cryptic about it will emerge. Anyway, I'm seriously pleased to have found this new angle on it.
Finally, I've sorted out a bunch of details and raised a few more questions about Bonecold Refugee (by far the most pivotal character of the three, as things turned out), and the relationship between the various known approaches to the Art Magic in the Kateverse. One thing I should certainly have picked up without waiting for the revision for it to smack me between the eyes: Bonecold has the training and the turn of mind to be a most formidable witch - in many ways she is like a Katy Elflocks who got smacked with the predictable reality instead of the fairy-tale - but she doesn't really think in witchy terms more than she can help.* I think her true vocation is wizardry, even though she doesn't know or do any, at least in the main course of the tale.
Wherein it is seen that even the author can miss even the most blatant incluing threaded throughout their own text. Repeatedly. Extensively. D'oh!
* ETA: "turn of mind to be a most formidable witch... doesn't really think in witchy terms" appears to make no sense. What I was trying to say is that she has a mind that can wrangle witchy magical concepts and entities very well - but the directions she takes them in, given any choice in the matter, aren't very witchy at all. Gah, that was clumsy of me!
