Mooretoons

The politics of the court system of the Otherworld remain pretty vague in this story, I admit. I have kept it that way to focus mostly on the drama of Fetch, his family, and the various magical folk crowding his house. So far we have learned more about civil war in Hades and gentrification in the Autumn Court. But the actual politics of the Seelie and Unseelie courts will start to emerge as this story goes along. 

Finding any folkloric literature on these politics has been a bit confusing, I think mostly because that’s just how folklore goes—there’s no central body of literature or Ur-text to unify the mythology, a common trait among most of the mythologies found around the world. We in the West tend to look for One Big Text because we have grown up on the traditions of large centralized institutions like The Catholic Church (which for many centuries until the Reformation was The Church), or the King James Bible, and the tendency toward homogenization that imperialism fosters. But the Irish, the Scottish, the Celts in general — like so many populations in America, Asia, and Africa that certain imperialist forces have tried to colonize — resist this pressure to maintain the integrity of their local traditions and beliefs. It ain’t easy. The colonizer has pretty powerful means of propaganda on its side.

Popular fiction tries to simplify the division between Seelie and Unseelie courts in Manichean terms: Seelie good, Unseelie bad. Hack writing, IMHO. It grafts human values onto magical beings who tend to be different species altogether, although in some cases a fairy will defect from one court to the other. I came across this interesting essay on the Fae court system based on the writer’s “unverified personal gnosis” (UPG) that describes divisions based on seasonal dispositions and philosophies: Spring is about creation, Summer is about maintenance, Fall is about destruction, and Winter is about stasis — to oversimplify, but you get it. In my little story the main divisions are about class and respectability politics, as well as dispositions regarding individualism and collectivism — the solitary vs trooping fairies W.B. Yeats et al described. But I like this seasonally-influenced approach, because it provides a basis for culture. So you might see its influence pop up as the story unfolds. I have also been digging more into Katharine Briggs’ Dictionary of Fairies (long out of print, but PDFs are available), which is pretty amazing.

And that’s my production notes for this week. (Bows)