random brain dribblage

Weird dream last night.

Part of it involved sitting next to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a train, trying to get our lunch that we ordered. He had that really creepy "I'm going to eat you" smile on his face the entire time, but was very friendly. There were some fans of his on the train and I kept on trying to find them but I couldn't.

Other side of things, I'm really glad I have insurance. My mom and I went to fill the Licoderm patch prescription yesterday. I'd been using samples until then. The cost was a little over a hundred for three boxes (or one box apparently o_O). When we asked how much was it without our insurance it was seven hundred dollars. So, yeah.

Came up with a LOLcat macro idea when looking at Chaucer this morning with my mind drifting back to TVtropes epileptic trees. A serious looking cat with the caption of "Why so Serious Serious Cat?"

Elves and Technology

Brain Chewage.

Not quite an essay rant thingy.

A friend of mine, obadiah gave me some critic on the three chapters of the novel that I'm going to send out to the Tor editor. One of the things that he mentioned in the critic was how the magic of the world felt "humdrum". It was an every day thing that everyone had and everyone used. He wanted to have the magic more magical and fantastic. For it to be more mysterious. He felt it would make it more exciting. For me though, I want the magic to be purely a "background" thing taken for granted. That way the threat of having the magic taken away and not being able to do things like turn on lights would be more acute. And besides the non-wizarding lands aren't so magic reliant.

But it got me thinking. If in a technology heavy world magic is seen as amazing, wouldn't it be the same the other way around? If magic were everyday then technology would be a novel thing. In my world technological growth has been seriously stunted by the fey. The fey fear that technology will lead to greater iron usage which would prevent them from manipulating and existing in the "human" world.

Which now that I think about it is rather opposite of what other fey and elves do where instead they generally allow themselves to fade away and be trapped in Fairie because of the iron that men make. My fey actively cause technology to not be worthwhile to keep their hold on the human realms. Basically if anyone starts making a big production with iron the fey send them a warning of stop. If that doesn't work BOOOOOOM. After all if the fey are so powerful, why would they just let themselves go and fade away? I mean humans wouldn't do it. It's rather suicidal of the fey/elves to do such things. (My elves are different?)

Anyway, I digress. So I think I will try and make technology the sort of magic that a magic user would find magical and novel. Alec's older brother, Greywolf, is already fascinated by technology and is a tinker. Which will likely lead into trouble. But he's one of those people who want to know how things work. So, I'm going to try and interject that sort of thing into the world as the writing progresses.

In the mean time, I got one of the new eggs!