more deformations in spacetime

[mrissa]

Sometimes the smallest fact-checking pushes pennies that should have dropped months ago. This morning I was verifying that the Vihan Veljet or at least the AKS had persisted to the end of the Continuation War*, and I didn't run across anything I didn't know already. I was reading along, yep, anti-Russian propaganda, yep, ended in '44, yep, swore a bl...oh shit. Swore a blood oath against Russians.

See, this is a fantasy novel. And when you swear in blood in fantasy novels, you can't just shrug and say, "Meh, changed my mind." Or at least you oughtn't to be able to. So there is a subplot suddenly much, much clearer here, and it ought to have been ages ago.

Ah well; better late than etc. etc.

And in some sense it's been there all along. There's all the groundwork for this to make sense, all the framework to make it go. Spacetime is deformed in all the proper ways, so I shouldn't be surprised that a planet has popped up. Wave nature has asserted itself thoroughly enough that particle nature is ready to come out and play now.

It's all there in Einstein. What do they teach them in schools these days. Of course my physics major was useful! Extremely useful! Absolutely vital for my way of writing novels, if not for the content of them. (Maybe occasionally for that, too.)

I still don't know how the hell I'm going to get Ansa Nikkanen out of the jam I've got her in (timprov: "Don't." Me: "I have to. She's alive later in the book." timprov, shrugging: "It's a fantasy novel.") In fact, from some perspectives I have created more problems than solutions this morning. But that is silly: if I wasn't doing this stuff, the warped geometries would hurt people's heads when there wasn't a planet there, and then they'd be mad at my book, and rightly so.

I mean, I know I would, and we all generalize from one...right. I have started channeling Vlad Taltos; it is time to back away from the lj.

*There is a good reason purely Finnish or Finn-focused sources do not refer to WWII: Finland fought two separate wars with a gap between them in that period, and was cobelligerent with Germany, not allied. So when I say "Winter War" and "Continuation War," I am not just being a silly hypertechnical Finnophile: the phrase "during the Second World War" would be almost as confusing and uninformative regarding Finland's actions as "during one of the World Wars" would be regarding other countries'. Obviously there are situations where the phrase "during one of the World Wars" would make sense, and that's the case here, too, but it's not nearly as generally useful.

Comments

[iagor.livejournal.com]

"Swore a blood oath against Russians."

:arches her eyebrow:

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And you are arching at me for why?

[(Anonymous)]

When being sworn a blood oath against, one must at least arch an eyebrow. To do less would be not be proper.

[iagor.livejournal.com]

Also logging in prior to comment replying is polite too :P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, the Vihan Veljet are all long dead, so far as I know, so I don't think you should worry too very much on either count.

It would be nice to say that all Finns in history distinguished between the behavior of the Russian people and the behavior of the government ruling the Russian people, but it would also not be true. The AKS and the Vihan Veljet were a pretty nasty bunch.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I knew this about Finnish history, but not enough to make any qualified statements. Thanks for the clarification. I need to read more about that period.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I need to write more about that period. Specifically, I have a YA fermenting called The Winter Wars, featuring some of the characters from Thermionic Night and Sampo in their younger days.

Name magic

[(Anonymous)]

Well, one WOULD expect tricky fates for person whose name - Ansa - means snare or trap, would one not? Was that not what you intended from the start?

Aet

Re: Name magic

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if Ansa Nikkanen is more sinned against than sinning, and in that vein I'm not sure if she's more ensnared or ensnaring. But the meaning certainly plays into things, yes. Just...more often than I expected.