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Old 03-04-2016, 07:52 AM   #21
jason taylor
 
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

It seemed to me more like my reaction on seeing that painting.
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Old 03-04-2016, 09:19 PM   #22
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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There probably aren't very many if any Sidhe artists in either Court. Why do I say that? Well, Summer has the creative spark, no doubt. But on their own, Summer caprice would tend to produce...well, chaos. Pure Summer music would be discordant, probably loud, but with no order, just pure self-expression. A Summer Sidhe singer might simply break into primal screams in the middle of the song just because he felt like it. Pure Summer painting would probably bear a notable resemblance to a toddler's crayon marks all over the wall...and it might be hard to keep a Summer Sidhe focused on a project for long.
Although note that in actual folklore, fae music is not only pleasing to the ear, but literally enchanting. Maybe it makes you unable to stop dancing, or draws you in to your doom towards some bloodthirsty nymph intent on drowning you and stealing your soul ... or maybe its just good for partying and feasting (never mind that when you leave the feast, despite seeming only one evening, the world will have aged by hundreds of years and everyone you knew and loved will have long since died. Oh, and if your feet touch the ground, all that time catches up with you and you crumble to dust).

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Old 03-05-2016, 12:28 AM   #23
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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Although note that in actual folklore, fae music is not only pleasing to the ear, but literally enchanting. Maybe it makes you unable to stop dancing, or draws you in to your doom towards some bloodthirsty nymph intent on drowning you and stealing your soul ... or maybe its just good for partying and feasting (never mind that when you leave the feast, despite seeming only one evening, the world will have aged by hundreds of years and everyone you knew and loved will have long since died. Oh, and if your feet touch the ground, all that time catches up with you and you crumble to dust).

Luke
Yeah, but is that music or magic? And if it really is real music, did the Fae create it?
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Old 03-05-2016, 02:08 AM   #24
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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Yeah, but is that music or magic? And if it really is real music, did the Fae create it?
Or they could be amazed at humans' ability to make lasting and visual arts.

All fairy music is improvised, pleasant or otherwise. "I don't know how your musicians do it, creating the same songs century after century. I can see the marks on the paper but how can you have a written language for music?"
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Old 03-05-2016, 01:46 PM   #25
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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Yeah, but is that music or magic?
With the fae, is there a difference?

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Old 03-05-2016, 08:24 PM   #26
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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With the fae, is there a difference?

Luke
That's a good question, actually.

The fae are alien, and the folklore isn't entirely consistent in describing them. It's not hard to imagine them using music created by others, their skill in playing it making in enchanting.

Or it's not hard to imagine that they take music from other places, and imbue it with magic.

Or maybe the time differential in so many stories has nothing to do with the music, but is something to do with the world of Faerie itself.
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Old 03-05-2016, 09:45 PM   #27
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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That's a good question, actually.

The fae are alien, and the folklore isn't entirely consistent in describing them. It's not hard to imagine them using music created by others, their skill in playing it making in enchanting.

Or it's not hard to imagine that they take music from other places, and imbue it with magic.

Or maybe the time differential in so many stories has nothing to do with the music, but is something to do with the world of Faerie itself.
Some reading I was doing touches on this. In the Eddas, by the act of murdering the god Kvasir, some treacherous dwarfs managed to brew the god's blood into a mead that gave poetry to the world, where previously it had been absent. In this way, these fae were not only creative, but responsible for the birth of one of the arts celebrated by mankind.

It is worth mentioning, though, that the only reason poetry reached mankind was because the dwarfs were forced to pay the mead as weregild, and eventually it ended up in the hands of the gods who doled it out to men at their whim.

There were also the muses. Part fae, part divine (with the Greek myths, there was never an obvious divide), they were the very genesis of creativity for mortal artists.

Chiron was also noted as a fine musician. Pan, of course, invented the pan pipes.

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Old 03-06-2016, 07:20 PM   #28
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Some reading I was doing touches on this. In the Eddas, by the act of murdering the god Kvasir, some treacherous dwarfs managed to brew the god's blood into a mead that gave poetry to the world, where previously it had been absent. In this way, these fae were not only creative, but responsible for the birth of one of the arts celebrated by mankind.

It is worth mentioning, though, that the only reason poetry reached mankind was because the dwarfs were forced to pay the mead as weregild, and eventually it ended up in the hands of the gods who doled it out to men at their whim.

There were also the muses. Part fae, part divine (with the Greek myths, there was never an obvious divide), they were the very genesis of creativity for mortal artists.

Chiron was also noted as a fine musician. Pan, of course, invented the pan pipes.

Luke
I don't see how we could call the muses 'fae', though they had some mythic role in common. They were divinities. Pan looks a little closer, though.

On balance, though, I'm not sure Classical Civilization even had a concept like 'fae', as such. Centaurs, river gods, etc., yeah, but the context was rather different than what we think with the word 'fae', though modern Westerners sometimes throw in entities from Classical belief, like fawns and centaurs, with the fae in fiction.]

The 'context' that we think of as fae seems to be a specific element of Western Civilization, derived in much from northern Germanic ideas and reshaped by contact with Christianity.

Most of the Germanic languages of northern Europe have, or once had before it was displaced by the English import, a word that is cognate with 'elf', and that carries some of the contexts of what we call 'the fae'. If we can trust our very limited sources on the matter, the pre-Christian Germanic peoples seem to have made a distinction of some kind between gods and fae, too.

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Old 03-06-2016, 09:05 PM   #29
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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I don't see how we could call the muses 'fae', though they had some mythic role in common. They were divinities. Pan looks a little closer, though.

On balance, though, I'm not sure Classical Civilization even had a concept like 'fae', as such. Centaurs, river gods, etc., yeah, but the context was rather different than what we think with the word 'fae', though modern Westerners sometimes throw in entities from Classical belief, like fawns and centaurs, with the fae in fiction.]

The 'context' that we think of as fae seems to be a specific element of Western Civilization, derived in much from northern Germanic ideas and reshaped by contact with Christianity.

Most of the Germanic languages of northern Europe have, or once had before it was displaced by the English import, a word that is cognate with 'elf', and that carries some of the contexts of what we call 'the fae'. If we can trust our very limited sources on the matter, the pre-Christian Germanic peoples seem to have made a distinction of some kind between gods and fae, too.
The minor Greek divine beings (nymphs, satyrs, nerieds, dryads, etc.) tended to play the same role as the fae in more northern Europe - capricious nature spirits who embody wildness not just in terms of place but also in character, such as in opposition to civilization and civil mores (giving us, for example, nymphomaina). The differences between a nymph and a huldra, or a siren and a rusalka are minor and largely cosmetic.

But if you still reject Greek sources, note that the dwarfs of Scandinavian mythology displayed abundant creativity in the realm of invention and construction. Of their own device and volition, they produced Mjolnir (Thor's hammer), Gleipnir (the ribbon that bound the Fenris wolf), Skidbladnir (a magical ship that can fold up and fit in a pocket), Gungnir (Odin's spear that never missed), Draupnir (a golden armband that could multiply itself), and many others. They were renowned for their craftmanship even among the gods.

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Old 03-07-2016, 10:43 AM   #30
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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The minor Greek divine beings (nymphs, satyrs, nerieds, dryads, etc.) tended to play the same role as the fae in more northern Europe - capricious nature spirits who embody wildness not just in terms of place but also in character, such as in opposition to civilization and civil mores (giving us, for example, nymphomaina). The differences between a nymph and a huldra, or a siren and a rusalka are minor and largely cosmetic.

But if you still reject Greek sources, note that the dwarfs of Scandinavian mythology displayed abundant creativity in the realm of invention and construction. Of their own device and volition, they produced Mjolnir (Thor's hammer), Gleipnir (the ribbon that bound the Fenris wolf), Skidbladnir (a magical ship that can fold up and fit in a pocket), Gungnir (Odin's spear that never missed), Draupnir (a golden armband that could multiply itself), and many others. They were renowned for their craftmanship even among the gods.

Luke
Celtic fay were a little different from Germanic not so much because Fae and Alvar were all that different but because Teutons had more to say about Dwarves. Celts liked it misty and a little spooky in feel a little like Slavs. Teutons could often be harder and sharper in the feel they want to convey.

An instance of that is in the Isles. When trolls migrated to Scotland they gained a little of the subtle fearfulness of Fair Folk instead of being the more muscular Scandinavian trolls.
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