Lily Out of Water: Series Notes

[dragonyphoenix]

 

How my universe differs from Buffyverse:

• Angelus does not love Buffy. He has Angel’s memories of loving Buffy, but that’s it.

• Vampires, even if had potential or actual witch power as a human, have no access to witch powers however some vampires can sense power in a human.

• There is no Judge demon.

 

lily:
out of water...
out of itself

 

Lily Out of Water 1: The Bloom on the Rose

How Angelus is referred to:

• The Watcher's Council refers to him as Angelus.

• Vampires always call him Angel.

• Willow refers to Angelus as either Angelus or Angel, depending on how she’s feeling about him at the moment.

 

This is where the comment about Lancelot came from: Go to this website and search on Lancelot.

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2007/11/lb-buckys-in-lo.html

 

The poem Willow reads in graffiti, that starts “Where demons slink and slither” is from Robert Anton Wilson’s book Masks of the Illuminati.
 

Drusilla's prophecy (spoilers for the series):

• “You give me the bright, shiny, blessed sun”. Spike convinces Drusilla to walk into the sun at the end of the series.

• “Angel sings dirges to the cruel, cursed moon.” The moon represents the dark night of the soul or meeting with the Dweller in the Threshold – the giant force of accumulated evil, the hideous part of the self that a person would rather not look at, the demon that must be integrated into the self in order to establish wholeness. (Discussion of the Moon tarot card from Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess through Myth, Art, and Tarot by Vicki Noble.)

• “Puppy dog eyes are watching” basically means that Xander, and his death, is constantly on Willow’s mind.

• “Sacred bonds are severed” and “all the pretty petals spiraling out, dancing away, drifting apart in the wind.” Spike leaves the group, taking Willow with him. Angel not motivated to cater to Drusilla, he’s used to having Spike around for that. When Angel and Drusilla get their humans souls back, she can’t stand to be near him.

• “The guardian is dead” refers to Paul Smith from the library. His death motivates factions in the Council to try to kill Willow, Spike, Drusilla, and Angelus.

• “Annabel is dead. The gatekeeper is dead.” Annabel is the name of one of Drusilla’s sisters, killed by Angelus. The gatekeeper refers to Nancy, the young girl Drusilla kills at the start of Touching the Ashes of Fallen Flowers. In Drusilla’s madness, she thinks Annabel and Nancy are one and the same. “Annabel Lee” is a poem by Edgar Allen Poe about a woman whom Poe loved even after her death.

• “The center cannot hold” is a quote from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.”

• “The trigger is pulled; the arrow flies forth. The stars align against us”. Factions in the Council have decided to kill Willow and the vampires.

• “The stars quarrel amongst themselves.” Refers to inter-faction fighting in the Council.

• “Angels in heaven and demons under the sea conspire and quarrel.” This is a reference to the Council conspiring to kill our heroes and Council factions fighting.

 

After I wrote this scene where Willow accepts the tattoo, I read the following in Battle for the Mind; has interesting correspondences with what I wrote:

“Gustaf Bolinder, in Devilman’s Jungle, describes how West African boys are taken away from their parents to an encampment in the woods, where all their clothes are removed and they are subjected to conditions of severe physical hardship. ... Next comes the ritual bath.” What the boys think is a real demon approaches; each boy, “in turn is seized by the demon’s assistants and, almost unconscious with fright, lifted up and put between his jaws. They are then rescued and immediately given extremely painful ritual tattooing. ... the boys begin a prolonged training in the camp intended to make them useful members of the tribe and society in which they are now adepts.”

 

When Angelus is explaining the paradoxical phase, Spike refers to it as “pair of doxies.” I ruthlessly stole that bit from Robert Heinlein.

 

My friend Charlie Butler wrote the incantation; each line is associated with one of the sigils from the story. If the young woman had witch power and the spell had worked, the speaker would have been taken up and the sigils would have disappeared.

 

Quatros cruzados veem ca me.
Ventro da lua traz me.
Luz da lua desperace.

 

Four crossroads come here to me.
Womb of the moon encompass me.
Light of the moon disappear.

 

The scene where Angelus displays Giles and Buffy is from one of the Norman Rockwell paintings displayed on this page:

http://www.normanrockwell.com/artwork/gallery_family.htm

 

While I don’t really think I got the brainwashing right, I did read a bunch of books with fun titles like Battle for the Mind; they are, pretty much in order of number of ideas used in the story:

• Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing by William Sargant

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

• Brainwashing by Taylor

• Dominance, Self-Esteem, Self-Actualization: Germinal Papers of A. H. Maslow edited by Richard J. Lowry

• Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China by Robert Jay Lifton, M. D.

 

Lily Out of Water 2: Where Candles Are Lit, Blossoms Fall

The scene where Spike whips Drusilla is based on the short story The Funeral by Kate Wilhelm.

I invented Diego's disease and cure. I based the disease on bilis, which is an imbalance of bile. The cure is based off of several cures in Torres and Sawyer's Curandero.

The name of the store Drusilla and Willow go to, J. F. Sebastian's, is based on a character in Blade Runner.

While hunting, Angelus quotes selected lines from the poem “All in green my love went riding” by e. e. cummings. There are a couple of more subtle references to this poem in the first scene of the sixth Lily Out of Water story.

Lily Out of Water 3: Paper Roses
Paul Smith is loosely based on Paul Linebarger who wrote excellent science fiction under the pen name Cordwainer Smith.

Lily Out of Water 4: The Scattering of Cherry Blossoms
After the confrontation with Angel, Willow quotes “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats to Spike in an attempt to explain what's wrong with her.

Willow’s transformation is loosely based on the scene in the House of the Catmaster from Cordwainer Smith’s Norstrilia. If you have not read that book, I urge you to run, not walk, and get a copy.

The quote at the end is from the song “When You’re Gone” off of Steve Strauss’ album Powderhouse Road.

Lily Out of Water 5: Falling Petals Carry Moonlight
The Fox and Badger is taken from Of Old Mystics, a series I like quite a bit that pairs Giles and Ethan.

I'm familiar with the version of “Hurt” as sung by Johnny Cash but it was written by a member of Nine Inch Nails.

The flower display Lady Marjorie is arranging is from A Fall Collection in The Cutting Garden by Sarah Raven.

Spike's actions in the bar, beating people up until he gets the information he's looking for, comes from two sources: Rorschach in The Watchmen and Marcus Cole in Babylon 5.

If you don't recognize them, the line Spike uses to convince Willow to give him his human soul back is from The Princess Bride, as is the line Willow uses to tell him she'll do it.

The poem William quotes at the end is a rewording of “Now, a new creature” by Jacopone Bendetti, which can be read at Poetry Chaikhana, a collection of sacred poetry.

Lily Out of Water 6: Touching the Ashes of Fallen Flowers
The opening quote is from the song “When You’re Gone” off of Steven J. Strauss’ Powderhouse Road album.

After I'd named the stories, I started wondering what the titles mean:

• The Bloom on the Rose: The idea of blooming maps to youth, innocence, trust, and naiveté and so to the idea that this is what Angelus is taking from Willow over the course of the story. However, this is also the start of the Willow and Spike romance. In my titles, flowers refer to union, coming together or falling apart, or to a group. So the bloom on the rose refers to the start of Willow and Spike’s relationship, love, romance. This story starts on the episode Innocence. The idea of innocence relating to bloom means the title is also a reference to that episode.

• Where Candles Are Lit, Blossoms Fall:

• Paper Roses: My mother had an album by Marie Osmond, who sings the song “Paper Roses”. Pertinent lyrics or, more likely, lyrics I actually remember: “I realize the way your eyes deceived me, with tender looks that I mistook for love. Take away the flowers that you gave me and send the ones that you remind me of. Paper Roses. Paper Roses. Oh how real those roses seemed to be but they're only imitation, like your imitation love for me.”

• The Scattering of Cherry Blossoms: Refers to the dissolution of the group.

• Falling Petals Carry Moonlight: Falling petals reiterates the idea that the group has fallen apart or is falling apart. The moon refers to the idea of transformation but specifically to fear of transformation.

• Touching the Ashes of Fallen Flowers: Came from a haiku: Touching the ashes of my father.

 

Thaumaturgy in my universe

Vague and up-in-the-air ramblings:

Qi

There are different types of chi, two of which are important to my stories: one relates to magic and the other to prophecy. The channel for magic enters the human soul through that person's Holy Guardian Angel (HGA), because magic is related to the natural world and the HGA connects a human soul to the world. When a person is turned, their soul is replaced by a demon and their soul's connection to the world, the HGA, is either replaced by a demonic equivalent or is blocked. Basically this is why, once a human magic user is turned, the vampire only has the ability to sense magic in others and cannot access human magic. So, vampires are not linked to the natural order of things, world, and therefore cannot use magic but some can sense magic and/or retain prophetic abilities.

 

Qi must be related to human soul because Angel practices tai chi with Buffy. So, humans and demons can access chi in different but overlapping ways.

 

Channels

Witchcraft is the channeling of aetheric energy to achieve specific and immediate tangible effects on the physical plane. The human body has intangible channels that allow aetheric energy to pass through it. In the Middle Ages, this energy was thought to be of either divine, or more often demonic, origin. The theories promoted by Malinowski in the early 1900's, that aetheric energy is inherent in nature, has gained wide acceptance and led to the current academic discourses over the true source of aetheric energy in Watcher and affiliated circles.

 

The channels extend beyond the body to bring in external aetheric energy. This energy seems to go through some sort of a filter. During the Renaissance, an elaborate system mapping different channels to each of the four elements was devised; because it became very convoluted (like planet orbital descriptions), it is now an outdated system.

 

Ability	Element
Perform Magic / Witchcraft	Earth, Ru’akh
Prophesy	Fire
Mesmerism	Controlling the mind so air
Sense Magic Potential / Power in Humans	Either fire or air, I haven’t decided. I would put it as fire because they are natural channels related to chi but we are talking about how they were categorized in the Middle Ages.
Detect Demon	Air because ability to sense a demon seen as a gift from God

 

Every Slayer has the detect demon ability. Angel has the power to sense magical potential in humans; this is why Angel is fascinated with human magic. This is why he has human victims perform rituals, as seen in Lily Out of Water 2, as well as why he wanted Willow’s power in the first place.

 

It is possible that the human ability to perform magic is transformed into the ability to sense magical potential during turning; vampires do not have the human ability to perform magic. If this is true, Angel was a potential mage before he was turned.

 

Turning

Much of this is from the seriously awesome webcomic Pillars of Faith.

 

The vampire is a Quipplothic shell and its power comes from the klippah principle in Tipheret also called hollowness or vacuum. The human soul (Ru’akh) is left behind when a human is turned and the energy generated when it leaves the body is used by the demon to take over and energize the body; the human spirit (Nefesh) is trapped in the body and this is how the vampire retains human memories. Ru’akh -> breath of God but I have also seen it described as an earth spirit.

Human	Vampire
Body	Quipplothic shell
Spirit (Nefesh)	Spirit (Nefesh)
Soul (Ru'ach)	Demon