and welcome back to Eldritch Girl. I'm really
happy that you're stuck with the podcast so far.
I really hope you're enjoying Yelen and Yelena
and if you are I'd love it if you'd also buy
a copy of Yelen and Yelena. Give it to a friend
or just read along and you can get it in print
or ebook anywhere you want. It's available from
print on demand Amazon and Barnes and Noble so
you've got that choice if you're not an Amazon
fan and you can get it from any ebook place as
well. Anyway, we're on Chapter 13, friends. Water
and Winter. So there are only 20 chapters, so
we are racing towards Part 3, The Rot, which
is coming up right after this chapter. So this
is the last chapter of Part 2. In terms of content
warnings for Chapter 13, there is bloodletting
and some ancient medical... equipment that is
used for that for blood transfusions by which
I mean needles and I understand that some people
just cannot do needles at all if that is you
do not worry if you look in the episode description
there will be a little note to say what time
to skip to so that you miss that part out and
if you're reading the book as a read -along you'll
know where it where it's coming and you can just
skip ahead a couple of pages and it'll be fine
So there we go. Those are the main content warnings
for this chapter, I think. Chapter 13. Water
and Winter. [The novel is the transcript for this read along section: please get a copy of that to read along].
This is a shorter one again, and I wanted to leave
it there because we're now going into part three,
The Rot, with chapters 14 to 20. But also I thought
I could do world building part two on the end
of this shorter episode. I'm going to talk about
some influences for this and also some of the
folklore that I used while I was worldbuilding.
So one of the most fun things about the worldbuilding
was riffing off the Beauty and the Beast story,
where Belle's father is a merchant who falls
on hard times and Belle's sisters want silks
and expensive gifts when he gets back from his
latest venture that's going to turn his fortunes
around. But all Belle wants is a rose. One of
my favourite live -action versions is the 2014
version with Vincent Cassell as the Beast and
Lea... Seydoux I think I said that right as Belle
directed by Christophe Gans in that one she falls
in love with him through her dreams of seeing
him interacting with his late wife which is gorgeously
French, and she literally just has these dreams
of him as a man and like he's married to the
love of his life and like she sees them interacting
and she's like yes that is the man that I want
to marry myself when She dies. And then like
when... she's awake she denies that she cares
about him because he's a beast and he's also
very annoying very grumpy and then he lands on
top of her during a chase scene and they nearly
kiss but they fall through the ice or something
like that and then there's a lot of fantasy elements
and it's a lot of fun but there's also a lot
more time given to the family back home and the
father's debts and the consequences and there's
like all of these shady gamblers and like debtors
going on and like ruffians and it's it's just
oh yeah i just really liked it as a as a film
because there's quite a lot of influence here.
And I wanted to switch it up a bit and have my
protagonist already on Hard Times. And I took
the merchant idea and I was like, what if it's
a world where merchants run everything? And so
it would make sense if my protagonist is not
part of that class at all. And I did kind of
toy with the idea of making her father a merchant
who is now not a merchant. But I kind of like...
the fact that he never ever got to be and so
that shapes Jelena in a different way to a way
you know where she potentially thought she's
owed something or she feels like she should be
part of that class but she isn't. I kind of wanted
her to be completely separated from it and have
to sort her own life out and have very little
agency and be very aware of the agency that she
doesn't have. So I knew that was the situation
I wanted her to be in and I built that world
for her to be at the bottom of the pecking order.
I didn't know anything about her really but I
wanted to kind of see how the world would shape
her, how the situation would shape her. And also
it's very difficult to build a Belle character
that isn't like a shell of a person from all
of the other stories. So I wanted to make her
kind of her own person. And I also use the Disney
animation version. So the songs about Belle being
from a poor provincial town as my setting inspiration.
I grew up in a very small place, which is not
really a town. It's in the countryside. I couldn't
wait to leave it. And I ended up basically back
there as an adult for the longest time. And I
know a few people who left and then deliberately
came back because they love it so much. And they
have many ties to it. And they literally can't
imagine living anywhere else because they love
it. Like they go away for university. They go
far away. They go to London. They go to like
other cities. They try life out somewhere else.
And it's just not for them. And they come back.
and that's what I wanted I wanted to kind of
honour that story of someone who loves their
village loves their community loves all the memories
that they've made there and then they have it
taken away from them piece by piece until there's
nobody left And everyone who is left is so busy
fighting for their own survival there that they'll
turn on each other. And it's kind of like this
deconstruction of a community and like that's
just had its heart and soul ripped out of it
just because everybody's moved away. A lot of
Jelena's family are all dead. That's just part
of my story and it's part of communities that
I know. And so I put all of that in there as
well because I kind of don't like the... naivety
I suppose of oh it's a poor provincial town and
I'm too good for it and I don't want to be part
of it and they're all really narrow -minded here
and they're all selfish and they're all you know
like it's just such a stereotype and I know that
there are also small towns like that but I don't
know man I think a community is what you make
it you know And I kind of liked the idea of there
being a community there that was worth going
back to. And so that was Jelena's story. And
I deliberately didn't want her to be conventionally
beautiful either, because I really don't see
the point of that. And I also deliberately didn't
want Jelena to be a Disney prince, even if he
changed back. Because again, I don't see the
point of that either. And I thought, you know,
if he changes back, he's going to be a fat man
in his 50s. not some ripped angelic looking 18
year old. And I really like that. So it's an
age gap thing, even if he hadn't been cursed
for 200 years. And I quite like that too. So
that's why Yelena then became a laundress and
a sex worker for fun and profit in her 30s. So
she's still quite young, but she's also not a
kid who doesn't know the world. She's had time
to build up some adult life experiences. She's
been beyond the village and come back. And she's
a much better match for Yelen as he is now than
a younger girl would be, so... as for the aesthetics
of it i think a lot of that are influenced by
the disney animation which i think sparked my
love of the gothic as a small child and also
of course Jean Cocteau's 1946 version which I
really love, but a lot of the village itself and
village life comes from Juraj Hertz's 1978 Czech
New Wave production Panna a Netvor, The Maiden
and the Monster or Beauty and the Beast and that's
the one where the beast has a bird head and is
a kind of like half man half bird and is really
weird like I really love that I think that's
probably my favourite film. So that's where a
lot of world building came from and I built it
from there. The Butterfly as souls is a piece
of real world folklore in Ireland white butterflies
were thought to be the souls of departed children
which is where I think I heard it first and I
couldn't remember the source for it so I looked
it up and it's everywhere so I didn't know that
there are butterfly legends in Mexico as well
it's an indigenous Mexican myth about butterflies
being the souls of the dead but I haven't really
looked into that and also it's in Japan too and
I thought that was really cool so I thought okay
I stuck with it as a piece of folklore because
of the European folklore connection, the Irish
connection, I kept that in. The wind was just
a random thought because of the way we anthropomorphise
the winds and the way the wind is described as
having a voice, it whispers, it screams, it cries.
So I thought it would be good to give it an actual
stream of voices to carry and make it part of
the fantasy afterlife and weave it into folk
belief and religion. And I thought maybe city
people can't hear those voices because they're
no longer attuned to them. And the provinces
are still one of the only places that you can
hear the dead voices on the wind properly above
the noise of life or what the industrial life
and urban life has become. And that might be
really fun to explore if I do anything more in
this world where the wind could be used to differentiate
the city from the country. I have mentioned As Below, So
Above before, and that also takes place in a
rural setting and it's all set in an alchemy
tower. So I won't be exploring the wind concept
there, I don't think, but we'll see. So I thought
it would also be nice to have the water carrying
something too and for there to be debate about
it. So that kind of... balanced out the wind
I thought we also need something else that's
more kind of grounded and again water is often
anthropomorphized as babbling, chattering, laughing
especially in mid -20th century children's books
that were read to me as a child like The Laughing
Brook, The Laughing Stream and I think I just
internalized that because that's what I instinctively
think of as an adjective I think of like you
know The Laughing Stream or something so it made
sense to have the water be the laughing element
that balances out the bad news of the air so
I think that's what I was going for and that's
sort of how my process went and some influences
that got me thinking about the layers I was going
to build on and where some of those ideas began.
I had a lot of fun building up my fantasy religions
as you might have noticed and the legends in
particular so I may talk more about that in future
episodes but for now. I will leave it there and
see you next time. Bye for now.