Oh, dear, my imagination got loose again...

[elfs]

So yesterday I was plot noodling with pen and paper, since that's mostly what I have when I'm not sitting at my desk at home and since I don't dare put any of my fiction-related intellectual property on my machine at work for all the usual reasons.

And I hit upon this rather silly idea. There's a place in chapter three of my Romanesque fantasy where the captain of our (anti-)hero's commerce vessel, says as an aside, "I have seen the cat people of Southern Egypt." They're never mentioned again and they don't appear anywhere within the first ten chapters, and I have my doubts that I'll ever use them, except perhaps as color, in the stories.

One of the common ideas of the novel is that magic is weaker now than it used to be. There is a wholly naturalistic reason for this, too: the solar system is currently passing through a region that conveys upon conscious beings the power to change the configuration (but not the nature) of reality through sheer force of will. (This is not like the magic system in Aimee', where there also exist supranatural conscious forces and a lot of magic is done via negotiations.) By the opening of the novel, we have started to move out of that region.

So, anyway, while I was playing with ideas I had the notion of a fin de siecle story, using the "cat people of Southern Egypt" as a focal point, and involving the return of magic to the world. This would not be Teenage Catgirls in Heat, although obviously sex and catgirls would be features. But I figure that I might be able to handle it more seriously, more sensitively; what would it be like to be the most minor of minorities? I think most people can agree that, in America after the Civil War, there was very little "exoticizing" of other races in the midst, but what if there had been?

So now my thougts have exploded into a three-way storyline featuring a young catboy whose mother has talked her wealthy American keeper into providing him with schooling; a young catwoman who is the kept plaything of a Paris art financier; and a pair of British explorers in Africa who have stumbled upon the last "wild" catperson tribe in the world.

And then the magic comes back...

Must write faster.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

May I commend to your attention the book "Lovers on the Nile" by Richard Hall, a biography of Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, the first Europeans to see Lake Albert and the Murchison Falls, one of the sources of the Nile.

Their real lives would be more than enough for a novel, and their explorations in Africa, and their later return, would seem to pretty well cover the geography you might be interested in. Sir Samuel was for a while the Governer-General of the Equatorial Nile Basin, a region that would be largely cut off from the outside world by the Mahdist Rising which killed his successor, Gordon, at Khartoum.

There was, apparently, some slight contact with civilisation through the Congo, at that time the personal domain of the King of Belgium. Read "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, and recall that Conrad had captained a steamer on the river. If you want horror in Africa, the Congo has more than enough for any man.

Depending on just when you want to set your story, anything might happen. Exploration, colonisation, or the long brutality of the Congo?

And cat-people too... Oh joy!

[rapier.livejournal.com]

One of the common ideas of the novel is that magic is weaker now than it used to be.

Wow. See, now, "Magic is weaker than it once was" is a common theme in stories and role playing games, but it's good to see a naturalistic reason for it! I really like that idea, and I shall endeavor to not steal it. Not that I'd do anything half as artful as some of the things I've seen you write, but there you have it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/dominic-m-/]

I must say this/these ideas sound quite interesting. I cant wait till they come to fruition.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I don't do well without naturalistic explanations. And what really piqued my idea was the notion that we are currently floating through an area of spacetime where "dark matter" is denser and moving faster (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/040325071616.htm) than it is in other places in the universe, a huge "river" of it moving past us. So we've dipped into a weird part of spacetime. In other universes, that might have real consequences. When did we enter this region? When were we last in one like it?

In the Aimee' universe, magic is pervasive. Magic is like engineering-- do the right thing and you get the desired effect. Most magic-users, however, negotiate with Powers, and the Powers do the engineering. The price for the Powers' services can, obviously, vary, but there's always a naturalistic, stochaistic process going on for someone.

Dark Matter ....interesting.

[flying-pegasus.livejournal.com]

Your words, ""dark matter" is denser and moving faster than it is in other places in the universe, a huge "river" of it moving past us. "

That right there sound more into the concepts of Parallel Universe between time and space. Quantum Theory on different points Triangle flowing through as the gravitational pulls as you said "a huge river".

To I dark matter isn't denser, it's just not see-able, there for your blinded. Of course it's faster in movement, for you can't tell where it's coming from. Basically "How life is", in your darkest times, you never know when it's going to hit. For it's not see-able. A) becomes a gravitational pull to pull you under. B)You feel like your in another concept of time, cause you yourself don't want to believe it's happening.

Interesting concept you got going on with your stories, I like it..

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

[slutdiary.livejournal.com]

You don't happen to have a copy of that Troma film laying around a buddy could borrow, do ya?


:}

Dark Matter River

[(Anonymous)]

I briefly skimmed the article in question at the Archive (www.arxiv.org, look in the Astrophysics section for Newberg).

What they are claiming is that the Sagittarius stream could contribute between .03 and 25 percent of the local dark matter density. This is not a great deal, especially since it is more likely to be on the lower end of that range.

-Malthus