Draconic Lore

It's June, so you know what that means...

30 Days of Pride Books with me & @draconiclore!!!

Day 1: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

It's the first in a trilogy (and part of a larger fictional universe) about a person who used to be a spaceship. Also war and power and imperialism and stuff.

Here's the author on the subject of gender in these books: "...they really don't care about anyone's gender, and don't mark it socially or linguistically. So, they're humans, and as such come in all sorts of genders, and they know gender exists, but it's not really a thing they care much about. They care about it, maybe, as much as we care about hair color."

The true origin of the phrase belongs to celebrated author Tamora Pierce, in her 1983 novel Alanna: The First Adventure, when Gary says, "Still—what can Alan do for you? He's just a little guy"(49).

Thus, whenever we say of someone or some creature that they are "just a little guy," what we are really saying is that they are a short redheaded knight-in-training with some sort of Gender going on who will kick your butt given half a chance.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. May we all be the little guys we wish to see in the world.

It’s come to my attention that many people don’t know about the Basil of Baker Streets books, nor the insanity contained therein. With this in mind, please enjoy some details from Eve Titus’s Basil of Baker Street books

Basil is consciously copying Sherlock Holmes

Basil and Dawson get tired of trekking to spy on Sherlock Holmes in the snow, so they construct an entire town in the cellar of 221B and move in along with no fewer than 44 families

The town is called Holmestead, and it has shops, a school, a library, and a town hall

Basil and Dawson live together with their mousekeeper, Mrs. Judson

Basil has a tailor copy Sherlock Holmes’s entire wardrobe so he can dress like Holmes

Basil tried to make a mouse-sized violin, but it sounded so bad that Dawson made him stop and he stuck to playing the flute. He uses the flute to charm snakes

Basil keeps a collection of Holmes souvenirs, including “scraps of paper his hero had written upon, old pen points he had used, a torn blotter, a broken pocket lens, a whittling of Holmes done by Basil himself, and other odds and ends.”

Basil practices his archery indoors

Basil has a mouse-sized microscope

Basil dresses up as a sailor by the name of Captain Baker, and Dawson disguises himself as his first mate, Mr. Street. They practice talking like sailors together

Instead of Scotland Yard, they have Mouseland Yard

Dr. Dawson heals the niece of the Loch Ness Monster, who was suffering from a cold.

Basil leads an expedition up Mt. Emmentaler, past the Bachenreich Falls, and discovered the Adorable Snowmouse

Professor Ratigan is a mouse, not a rat. Ratigan has a Moran, whose name is Doran

Basil solves the theft of the Mousa Lisa

Basil visits a remote island, uncovers artifacts, and takes them back to the British Mousemopolitan Museum

There is a mouse Irene Adler. Her name is Mademoiselle Relda, and she disguises herself in drag to adventure with Basil when he says women can’t climb mountains

Basil discovered penicillin and communicated this to Alexander Fleming

Basil is an amateur archaeologist

Basil and Dawson are both strongly pro-women’s suffrage, but Basil is generally sexist and Dawson is more progressive

Dawson thinks that Holmes knew Basil was listening to him, and “that it pleased him to pass his methods on to a mouse.”

okay lads i spent an irresponsible amount of time making these, please enjoy them

See, part of the conceit of the PotC trilogy is that all myths are true. Nearly every supernatural element in the franchise has a root in some real world mythology or pirate lore, although some of them are mashed together.

Another thing is that they take place at the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, and the more the map gets filled in, and the more the Royal Navy takes power, there less room there is for the mystical and supernatural in the world. This is explicitly called out in At World's End with the death of the kraken:

Barbossa: The world used to be a bigger place. Jack: The world's still the same. There's just... less in it.

The only way to access the world of the supernatural is through the supernatural itself. You can only get to the Isla de Muerta with Jack's compass that points to whatever you desire, or if you already know where its is. You need Tia Dalma's map to find the edge of the world. To access the supernatural, you need to already be immersed in it.

When we go to Tortuga (or any pirate controlled space) we leave behind the sensibilities of the real world and enter this bizarre perpetual revel of debauchery and violence that could never sustain itself in a world bound by sense.

That makes Jack our Puck character, a trickster of tricksters who can invert your fortunes just by letting him talk to you.