Since A Builder of Dreams is so much shorter than my average book, we’re already almost halfway through. I’ve been working hard to finish the first draft this month, and will be sending the book off to my editor tomorrow. After that, I’m going to take a couple days super easy to recover.
I’ve definitely been pushing a bit too hard, but I’m stuck with Amazon’s preorder deadline. In the future, I don’t plan to set up any preorders with them until the book is already finished.
I have a list of chapter titles that I can pull from if I ever have trouble coming up with one, or that I simply think are cool and want to work into the story at some point.
”Three Black Beans” is a chapter title I’ve had on that list ever since I wrote Chapter 8 - “Lino-Wharton Messenger.” It’s been waiting for many years to see the light.
Discussions, theories, and random thoughts welcome!
Out of all the chapters so far, this struck me as the most cruelly written for poor Siobhan, even though she had obviously been through worse. Please write her some nice things sometime. (The game was a nice attempt, but it is feels like gloss over a deeply broken thing.)
A reader
Ps.: I love swings, and it brought me some joy, that Siobhan likes them as well.
I was just about to turn in for the night when I checked my emails on the off chance that a new chapter was out - and so it was!
Poor Siobhan. She’s “already” thirteen, she says while we grieve for her being just thirteen and having to deal with all this.
I’m too tired to write anything coherent (the problem with reading chapters at one in the morning) but I was just struck by how sad and scared and alone she is, even if she doesn’t realise it.
I’m glad we’ll be back to present day soon(ish), but this foray into her past has been enlightening.
It’s just the tragedy of Siobhan Naught, isn’t it? She’s have such a terrible time, and there’s no one to really help. I don’t believe for a second that the Raaz went to find the Red Guard. He’s in his workshop trying to get control of this disaster.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? We look at Claudio and notice what a liar he is, how suspicious, how manipulative.
But she’s only thirteen. I wouldn’t say I was very gullible at thirteen, but I trusted adults like teachers, my parents, my family - if they told me things I’d usually believe them.
You tend to trust the people that a trusted adult introduces you to. Siobhan at thirteen is way less wary of Claudio than Siobhan at twenty would be - because Siobhan at twenty has experienced the untrustworthiness of adults.
Also, damn her worthless sperm donor to the depths of hell. I’m eternally reminded of how useless he is every time I read one of these chapters.
How dare he not tell her he love her in his letter? Even if he can’t be there, even if he’s grieving, even if he feels not up to raising a child, how can he just withdraw his love like that. Selfish, useless bastard. He’s an absolute waste of air.
I somehow know he’s going to end up showing his face again in the future. It’s just totally in keeping with his character and self delusion. I hope she punches him so hard on that day.
It may have been just me but this was a bit of a implicative inflection point for me as a chapter. Forgive my deluge of thoughts if it offends or overstimulates. It feels like a inflection of kind of helping to finish some thoughts on the spirit world and its implications.
Spirit World thoughts
Summary
Mainly in that my current model of things is essentially the spirit world is something akin to akashic record of stimuli and qualia from all living beings, which then brings results of it shifting as in many ways the majority of information of what constitutes a being is symmetrical. A individual thing keeps itself such by maintaining certain levels of discontinuity with the broader scope of the world.
I think the general issue of being in the spirit world and of places like the black desert is one of symmetry and scale. The spirit world from implication would hold information of beings from across time, and much of that would be alike in various ways. Thus the fluid nature of spirits and their permutations, how dissimilar is one rock from another at a given space? How different the air and water you breath with your lungs to that of a birds? So in that wide pan of like calling to like, its easy for one to dissolve, puddle entering the ocean. In principle then with the right dream, ie. The right arrangment of symmetrical qualia one may move to more stable parts where the exchange isnt alienating or slower. But if one didnt prepare themselves and they go to a place of great difference from their baseline that yet holds much symmetry, for in the vastness of the world that exist with symmetry will outweigh a individual, then they may suffer great alienation and not return as they were, if they can even maintain a fashion that lets them slot back into their body…which in retrospect is kind of the problem spirits already in the spirit world have with gaining a shell for themselves in the mortal realm
It is interesting to think that on some level these rituals may work, or at least leave indents in the spirit world. And that those idents could then be used to define the kind of topological space of qualia in the spirit world to offer places of succour. There is a actual curious point, if say one could get everyone to dream the same, could you make protective rituals locally or would such just risk a much more mired interaction in the spirit world due to messy boundaries? After all, the impressions of people onto that place Still I wonder if echoes of such activities may have enough symmetry that if you could do both you could probably define out space and patterns in the spirit world. Habit and repetition are not so far from ritual which is not so far from a story of how the world should be.
I wonder if such may not be in part why, if it worked such a thing may have worked on the Brillig. I still suspect them to have parts of themselves be more active and aware in the spirit world. They may even effectively ne a naturally stabilized form of a spirit with a physical shell. And so stories relating to them may in part be binding, such that to deny the ritual would defy the stable conceptual patterns of themselves on a literally spiritual level. I wonder how easily such things might be bridged to other spirits.
Thoughts on Raaz and Claudio
Summary
Frankly if one was going to explore the spirit world using others, using their dreams to help make a pattern of protection would be smart. I dont quite think thats how things are going even if it could have been a part of the original plan between Raaz and Claudio. It would at least seem the grandfather had wards prepared after a fashion, and so perhaps claudios stated role was both in aiding in basic identification of aligned variables in the mortal and spirit worlds as well as helping to use the village as a search vector and hopefully at least also putting protections on them throuh those dreams whether by shaped habit or as a woven part of a wider ritual
Regardless, Raaze and Claudio are definitely searching in the spirit world, and to some degree being influenced by it. But now I am curious though, is Raaz’s goal mostly simply mapping and alingment for proper thaunaturgical progress while Claudio is seeking some specific knowledge or spiritual assemblage at this given area of the spirit world? And if Claudio has been seeking something for a long time, were his dreams effectively guiding people into areas of the spirit world that alienated them enough to mix and break? It would explain the Red Guard seeking him.
I wonder what Claudio sees, beyond a manipulation target when he observes Siobahn, I do wonder if he thought she would actually be a alright Shaman.
I don’t think there are any clues about this in Chapter 8, just to be clear. I was searching up components that might be useful and thought the lore around black beans was cool, if I remember correctly.
But black beans have been mentioned a couple other times in Book 1 in ways that are tangentially relevant to their mention here.
I don’t know how I managed to restrain myself from immediately looking for these references.
The study group dispersed, Moncrieffe slouching off with Gervin, and Ascott muttering something about getting black beans from the kitchen to make an offering to a spirit. Ana smiled and thanked Sebastien for joining them, while Westbay hurried ahead.
And this spell:
Light pulsed through the lines drawn on the floor in wax and blood, like the heartbeat of a mammoth animal. She recognized some of the components, like the silver mirror, five knots of wood, five finger bones, and the dead fox with large black beans where its eyes used to be and in its mouth.