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Old 02-26-2016, 10:16 PM   #11
jason taylor
 
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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But there shouldn't be any leftover humanity in them, not after the passage of thousands of years as Faerie Queens. The magic should have devoured that long since. (We don't know just how old Mab and Titania are, but IIRC Titania mentioned that they were alive in 1066.)
Really? How did poor King Harold manage to annoy them THAT much?
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Old 02-26-2016, 11:07 PM   #12
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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I've read some of the Feywild material from D&D 4E, and I just finished Dresden Files' Cold Days.

I think it'd be kind of cool to adapt the Faerie Courts to elves, as a way of giving them a different "axis" (instead of the good/evil and law/chaos axes).

I know that the Winter Court are all about predation and survival, which can lead to cruelty, but it's rather a harsh pragmatism. As Titania says, Winter is about rationality.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around how to twist the Summer Court from the good/evil axis to the Blue/Orange axis. I know that, in the books, Summer tends to be more nurturing, wanting things to grow (and not caring whether that's a puppy or the newest super-plague that might wipe out all of humanity). As Titania says, Summer is about emotions.

How can I twist Summer more?
It's not necessarily a good idea to "twist Summer more". Just understand that Summer sees whatever increases biodensity as good. Summer's ideal world is tropical jungle from pole to pole.
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Old 02-28-2016, 02:41 PM   #13
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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Really? How did poor King Harold manage to annoy them THAT much?
Perhaps it wasn't him. Or perhaps the whole thing was a proxy - England moving from one faction's sphere of influence to another. Or maybe they just had a bet on the outcome.

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But then...Mother Summer shows up, and the subsequent sequence is weak. She acts too human. She reveals that Mother Winter talks a good game, but cares underneath. Etc. The alien coldness of Mother Winter and the wild caprice of Titania are undercut by this sequence. The Mother Winter of the encounter in the cottage is Winter Fae. The Mother Winter described by Mother Summer is more like a human in a costume, or so ISTM.
Maybe they're playing good-cop/bad-cop or alien fae monster/human fae? Or maybe Jim just misjudged getting his exposition in...

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Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 View Post
But there shouldn't be any leftover humanity in them, not after the passage of thousands of years as Faerie Queens. The magic should have devoured that long since. (We don't know just how old Mab and Titania are, but IIRC Titania mentioned that they were alive in 1066.)
Thing about immortals is, they change really slowly. They have to otherwise they'd go mad. Or madder anyway.
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Old 02-28-2016, 07:14 PM   #14
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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It's not necessarily a good idea to "twist Summer more". Just understand that Summer sees whatever increases biodensity as good. Summer's ideal world is tropical jungle from pole to pole.
If biodensity is the goal, maybe wild nature isn't the best thing going. Pit natural prairie against the same land with planted with corn genetically engineered for massive growth, aided by industrial fertilizers and highly capitalized irrigation systems, and I'm pretty sure which one yields more biomass per hectare.
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Old 02-28-2016, 07:28 PM   #15
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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If biodensity is the goal, maybe wild nature isn't the best thing going. Pit natural prairie against the same land with planted with corn genetically engineered for massive growth, aided by industrial fertilizers and highly capitalized irrigation systems, and I'm pretty sure which one yields more biomass per hectare.
But not replacing prairie with dense forest. Also course they want their biomass to be diverse.
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Old 02-28-2016, 10:00 PM   #16
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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It's not necessarily a good idea to "twist Summer more". Just understand that Summer sees whatever increases biodensity as good. Summer's ideal world is tropical jungle from pole to pole.
And add in that Summer is just as much about decay as it is growth. Summer embodies rotting meat, flies in decaying carcasses, infected wounds and so forth, just as much as it does forests and meadows. Summer is about life but overheating can kill as well.

Whereas Winter is clean, it'll kill you too, but it also preserves, freezes, purifies. A snow covered landscape can be bleak...or beautiful and restful. Snow can cover the scars of summer. Summer is activity, fulfilling and exciting perhaps but also exhausting and draining. Winter can be the time of calm rest, the bear hibernating, the armies encamped.

The 'themes' of Summer and Winter are both a mix of beneficial and harmful, life and death. Even emotions. If Summer is passionate romantic love, and Winter is calm and cold...well, there are even times when romantic love becomes a destructive force, passionate hate is also of Summer. While Winter might embody the calm and peace that follows when the passions have faded.

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Old 02-28-2016, 11:35 PM   #17
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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Perhaps it wasn't him. Or perhaps the whole thing was a proxy - England moving from one faction's sphere of influence to another. Or maybe they just had a bet on the outcome.
Kinda like fay-cockfighting?
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Old 03-03-2016, 10:30 PM   #18
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

To amplify on the point about emotional themes: it's interesting that both the Summer and Winter Courts can embody both love and hate as themes. Summer is about passionate love and passionate hate. It's not a coincidence that we use heat and fire as a metaphor for both love and hate in their passionate forms, in part because either one can burn you.

We're mostly familiar with the idea of 'cold hate', the Winter mode of hate. But we tend to overlook (in part because it doesn't lend itself to romantic fiction) that there is a Winter mode of love, too.

The cold form of love, Winter's love, is the love of a parent who refuses to bail out a child, or give them money, because they know they're financing an addiction or the kid will leave the cell to get into worse trouble immediately.

Cold love is the husband or wife who refuses to help their spouse do something stupidly self-destructive, even at the cost of that spouse's anger or the risk of losing them. Note that Winter love might be most necessary when the spouse in the grip of Summer's passion for something.

Or, Winter's love might lead someone to leave the loved one, for his or her own good, in defiance of the Summer love that insists that reality doesn't matter. To use a (rare) romantic-fictional example: in Casablanca, Elsa loves Rick with Summer's love at the end of the movie. Rick is displaying Winter's love for Elsa when he ends their relationship, because he knows that down that road lies only pain for her, and others as well.

Cold love is the friend who must, in Tolkien's phrase, 'rebuke a friend's folly'. Again, this might well take the form of Winter love against Summer passion.

"I love Diana, Mike! Nothing's going to keep us apart, it's destiny!"
"She's married, Joe. And her husband is fifty pounds heavier than you, it's all muscle, and he's already spend ten years in Joliet for assault and battery. Put the guy in a wheelchair. Think Diana would stick with you if you in a wheelchair, Joe? Really?"


Those various forms of love aren't usually passionate, though they may be deep. Winter's love is usually more painful than joyful, but no less love for that. Winter's love may be less passionate, but it's very often more clear-eyed.

As someone noted above, we have a natural perceptual bias in favor of Summer. But Summer and Winter are not good and evil, they are Summer an Winter. Their respective Sidhe should reflect those themes.

Mortals mix the themes of Summer and Winter. That might make us as confusing to them as they are to us, for that matter. How can the same being be passionate and cold, rational and capricious? They are opposites, yet almost every human is both.

Our civilization reflects our mixed nature, from their POV. For ex, we build fires to warm ourselves in winter, a group of humans sitting around a fire in the middle of a snow-covered landscape is bringing little Summer into Winter. Summer, on its own, might produce weed-tangles, mortals apply a little Winter rationallty and order to convert such into orderly but still living, thriving gardens. We might be very, very confusing to the Sidhe because of that mixed nature.

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.

(Or a Summer Sidhe might fixate on something in defiance of all rational motivation, immune to logical entreaties, too. "I am TOO going to paint the entire State of Colorado orange with this tiny paintbrush!")

A Winter Sidhe could stay focused, and probably draw and play music well...but it might well look or sound a lot like a computer-rendered reproduction. Technically perfect...but no more. Perfectly orderly, perfectly logical...and lifeless. A Winter Sidhe orchestra could probably play Beethoven's Fifth with a perfection possibly beyond human ability...but likely couldn't adapt a ditty to save their lives.

But human artists and musicians combine Summer spontaneity and Winter discipline to create art and music. Which might well fascinate Sidhe of either Court! A common theme of legends about the Sidhe is that they are uncreative. That Summer/Winter divide, their inability to be both spontaneous and disciplined at the same time, might account for that.

Both spontaneity and discipline are utterly indispensable to art. Without Summer spontaneity nothing can be created. But without Winter discipline the creation is literally meaningless.

A painter who suddenly thinks, "I'll just throw in some random purple and green splotches here just because I like purple and green right now!" is likely to produce a very odd painting, especially if this happens when he's 95% finished with the picture. The musician who refuses to consider constraining things like meter, chords, coordinating notes and lyrics, etc., will produce not music but meaningless noise.

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Old 03-04-2016, 03:45 AM   #19
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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.
Your analysis fits pretty well with the folklore - the fae were infamous for abducting mortal artists and were generally said to be unable to create properly for themselves...
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Old 03-04-2016, 04:25 AM   #20
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Default Re: [Spoilers?] Blue and Orange Morality: Adapting the Faerie Courts

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A painter who suddenly thinks, "I'll just throw in some random purple and green splotches here just because I like purple and green right now!" is likely to produce a very odd painting,
You can kinda have a whole style made of randomly sploching what was originally humanoid images. It seemed quite successful.
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