The Paradigm of Process (Mine)

[akirlu]

Pretty much how my writing brain works: I have a major revelation. About the metaphysics of vampires. And how they relate to demons, angels, and gods. And how all of this is just an instantiation of Thomist metaphysics, and accounts for the problem of vampire souls and disappearing gods in my story.

Inevitably, this occurs in a location where I am totally out of contact with the means to write stuff down as I think of it. Sometimes I'm in the shower. Sometimes I'm on an elevator. Or a very bumpy bus ride. This time, I was on the toilet. Okay, I guess there was paper. But no.

I would start carrying pen and paper everywhere I go, but my fear is, then I would stop having ideas altogether.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

No I hae the same process--I am so constantly interrupted, even in the middle of the night by the kids, dogs, etc--I cope the same way.

I mean what sounds like a similar realization about vampires, or rather the mythic understructure.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, that is pretty weird.

What I realized was that for my purposes, the conversion to vampire has got to be an alternate type of transsubstantiation -- what once was human undergoes substantial change to become a vampire, and that new substance is not a soul that has a collection of carnal accidents (there's a phrase for you), but rather another sort of immaterial non-soul that projects the outward appearance of many of the same accidents that the former human had. Vampires have no souls not because their souls went elsewhere but because their souls transmuted into something else altogether. Moreover, the rules for killing them are different because there is no actual flesh that the vampire spirit inhabits and depends on for incarnation -- for a vampire flesh and spirit is all one thing. Likewise, it's trickier to kill demons, angels, and gods than to kill men, because immortals have not flesh to discorporate from, merely the appearance of flesh. This also accounts for why the gods disappear after they die. They are translated to the afterlife in toto. "Eureka!" says I.

I have no idea how much of this will actually show up overtly in the book, but it helps me enormously to understand how this all works.

Notes to Myself as I think "Aloud"

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Oh. And of course, the reason why Catholic iconography in particular has an effect on vampires is because Catholicism regularly deploys the traditional kind of transsubstantiation in its rituals, and so the props of the ritual, especially much used ones, would have, over time, absorbed a great deal of that power over substantial change that the ritual produces. The tendency of Catholic holy objects is to partially reverse the substantial change the vampire has undergone. By extension, it would make sense that Anglican and Lutheran holy objects should also work -- maybe Eastern Orthodox also? -- as would those of any church that ritually converts ordinary wine, bread, and water into eucharist and holy water.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I finally found this...yes, I'd been thinking about Transubstantiation going awry as well.