#Innocent Sleep spoilers

[darkfrog24]

Your mouth is an international incident

SIMON: Patrick! You're not smushed!

PATRICK: Simon! *leSMOOCH!*

SIMON: Wutwutwhawhawhut?!

PATRICK: Smooch is what?

SIMON: I'm a married man!

PATRICK: I know. Hence smooch?

DIANDA: WHO DARES?!

TYBALT: The homophobia should wash right out, I swear.

[nymphilily]

"The Knight Of Dawn being a near exact copy of Silver is lazy!" You absolutely think the curtains are just blue, don't you?

[theallegedbird]

they’re just enjoying their midnight snack

[deweydecimalchickens]

I'm reading The Innocent Sleep at the moment and among all the murder, abusive families, disemboweling (twice! In one book! She got better), exploitation, etc in the October Daye series I am really, really having trouble with...

The Cait Sidhe struggling to feed themselves, their kittens, and the mortal cats under their protection.

The bit where October's cats cry to Tybalt that she's gone and they don't know who will feed and pet them fucking BROKE me. I had to go give Pinky and Perky extra cuddles.

[celaenaeiln]

Damian accidentally lets his smuggled snake loose on the plane

Air hostess: *screaming because there’s a snake on her head*

Other hosts and hostesses: *screaming to calm each other down*

Damian: *Trying to coax his snake Claudius back to him*

Kate: *drunk out of her mind and flirting with a brunette*

Bruce: *screaming at his kids for letting this happen*

Stephanie and Jason: *the first who helped Damian smuggle it on in the first place and the second who accidentally unzipped the carry-on both screaming back at Bruce that they’re innocent and Bruce only likes to blame them for everything and-*

Tim: *abandoning stealthiness to overtly dump boxes of peanut packets into his duffel bag for Kon who doesn’t get to experience the joys of flying*

Cass: *power posing in the bathroom and snapping Lady Shiva*

Duke: *decides that this would be the optimal time to check the safety measures forcefully*

Passengers: *screaming their heads off because there’s a snake on the plane*

Dick: *completely passed out*

60 mins later the snake is confiscated and the plane is doing an emergency landing

Dick: *waking up* oh we’re here already? That was a nice flight

Bruce: ……

Damian: ……

Jason: ……

Cass: …..

Tim: …….

Duke: …….

Passengers: ……

Flight attendants: …….

Kate: *slurred* hmmm?? Oh niiiccee hot date time

[yojfull]

I just did a reread of the entire October Daye series to look for breadcrumbs and hints in the earlier books towards some of the big reveals. The following contains spoilers for all books through An Innocent Sleep, so I’m hiding it all under a cut.

As of Book 18, we have found both Oberon and Titania hiding out in relatively minor characters in the San Francisco area, as well as Janet, and it’s clearly hinted that Maeve is also in the neighborhood. Janet was a housewife in Berkeley, Oberon was a cop in San Francisco, and Titania was October’s changeling friend Stacy. Upon rereading, there were more clues for Titania than Oberon or Janet, but there was also more time building that story. Accordingly, I think Maeve will have more breadcrumbs as well. The following is a list of potential candidates, and the arguments for and against them through the whole series.

There are clues scattered throughout, but especially in the last 3 books. From Be The Serpent - “[find] Mom lurking under a rock somewhere. Or maybe a pier. She always did like the water.” When we get to Sleep No More and An Innocent Sleep, the question is who has been shoved outside the main bubble, or is back when they should be gone?

Here is my list of candidates, in no particular order:

Lily

She’s a very rare type of fae, but her powers are extremely restricted by location. She’s strongly tied to water, and has been keeping an eye on Amandine and October for many years. Her court is one of the oldest independents in the region, but she stays out of politics. She also knows about Luna and her ties to Blind Michael. On the other hand, we’re pretty sure she died in Late Eclipses, which might be a problem.

Marcia

There’s a reason this seems to be the most popular fan theory. She’s a weak unspecified changeling who has been there from the very beginning, present at many critical moments, with often inexplicable immunity or reactions. She steps up to be seneschal of Goldengreen, she has no fear of the night haunts, she loves pixies, and resists transformation by Simon (One Salt Sea is a big book for Marcia). In Chimes at Midnight, she reacts to King Giliad discussions as if she remembers him. She is unphased by meeting multiple Firstborn (Ludiaeg and Amphitrite and Eira). Eira also fails to transform her, or she escapes the transformation somehow. We also never see a description of the smell of her magic. She does not appear in Titania’s mirror universe, but we don’t ever go to Goldengreen, so she may still be there. The only real argument against Marcia is she’s too obvious.

Marianne

We haven't met her directly in the novels, but the Windermere’s nursemaid comes up a number of times, saving Arden and Nolan from Oleander and death in the earthquake, helping hide them for years after. While she is missing, Nolan is convinced she is still alive, and brings Marcia to the Duchy of Ships to help him search for her. The biggest arguments come from the novella, Once Broken Faith, where Marianne tells a story with the sentence “because she was happy then, my sweet girl” in reference to Luidaeg, strongly implying Marianne has a sense of ownership. Titania is called “her father's other wife”, which again hints at Marianne being her mother.

Melly

Hob in Shadowed Hills, Kerry's mother. She fits the pattern of background characters close to October, but her inclusion in Titania's illusions makes it less likely.

Mary the Roane

Another background character with significant impact, but her level of contact with the Luidaeg as her mother makes her unlikely.

Julie

Another background character with strong ties to October, and changeling status, plus a transformation type. She does mysteriously vanish in the fight with Titania, but Seanan indicated in a Tumblr post that was an editing hiccup (or was that a false trail?) Her desire to kill October at various points is probably the biggest argument against her as Maeve.

January

One of the people Titania shoves out of the way in her illusion, but also, January *creates* things. She made the first cyberdryad. She died and was resurrected. October says “There had probably been some reason she needed Jan’s existence to keep her reality from crumbling, but i couldn’t think of what it might be”

Minna

Offhand mention in Sleep No More, she deposited servants at Dreaming Glass and vanished. Too offhand for such a major player.

Helmi

Maeve is a creature of the water and the deep, and the most maternal of the three - her presence in Saltmist still gives her visibility to the land, but keeps her safe in the depths, away from Titania’s purview. She's more background than some of the other candidates, with no real unexpected capabilities. Like Marianne, some of the strongest evidence is in the novellas.

My slightly more complicated hypothesis: much like Titania had multiple pasts, Maeve too has gone through multiple identities, in 1906, she was Marianne, the Windemere’s nursemaid, and she sacrificed that version of herself for their survival, becoming Marcia. This explains both why Marcia recalls Giliad, as well as some of the signs pointing to Marianne.

[leahazel]

The Innocent Sleep

Mild spoilers after the fold.

Back the fuck up.

[beccastareyes]

It's Time for Scream about New Book!

The Innocent Sleep + bonus Novella. But with spoiler tags, because I'm not a monster

(The tag lets everyone block things right? I am inexperienced at the Tumblr.)

I have a lot to say, and I'm glad we got the look at what the spell looked like from the outside. Some things I noticed:

Tybalt noted that Berkley was always independent, and that while most people assumed it was because of the university, it was not.

Confirmation that 'Eira' was Karen Brown, but a further mystery of what role Cassandra was playing.

It seems like Titania took three days to get some things straight; Raysel and Tybalt were booted as soon as possible, but the Cait Sidhe spent 3 days stuck in the Court before the 'we have always lived in the castle' thing hit.

For someone who was always about refinement, Titania really got lazy, or just assumed that since she caught Oberon and the Luidaeg off guard and Maeve continues to be MIA, she didn't have to care about the details herself since it was only 4 months. Because a lot of people seemed to key into 'this makes no sense' when confronted with it. As soon as Grainne realized the Cait Sidhe were alive, she connected 'that's why Candela can still access the Shadow Roads -- we couldn't be sustaining them ourselves. Gabriel noted that there shouldn't be this many thin-blooded changlings among the Cait Sidhe if they'd been trapped for centuries without contact with the mortal world. Even Toby herself -- with a double dose of the illusion -- had the realization that she would have had to have cut herself once during a childhood, but she never remembered it.

Since I assume Quentin was the intended sacrifice, having 'Evening' taking a more active role in his fosterage to create the illusion that he had seven years of paradise probably didn't help. (I also wonder if Titania edited out the memory of his sister; Quentin was pretty miserable in Shadowed Hills in canon because he knew what having someone close to you and equal enough to call you out on things was like, in addition to 'Sylvester is not doing well'. )

(I do appreciate the irony that Titania gave Amandine what she thought she wanted -- look, here your husband and daughters all love you, and everyone is willing to flatter and celebrate you... because you are the only one who can sustain Faerie as Titania made it, so get to work. Probably because Amandine's bloodworking meant she could penetrate the illusions, so she needed something to buy her off, with the promise that once the spell was anchored in the Heart of Faerie, they could reopen the doors to deeper Faerie and Amandine wouldn't be needed.)

... I probably should be breaking some of these up. This is getting long.

I also liked the novella. Which... Helmi noticed that the magical signature during the Earthquake was 'roses and wood smoke'... that's August's signature. (Well, roses and 'campfire smoke' but close enough. Unless the source isn't August but is part of the explanation for why Simon's magical signature is unlike Sylvester's despite them being twins.) (Also Mary stating that the Roane were only sure about Dianda's daughter after Simon started having sex with Patrick and Dianda, and the daughter's magical signature including whitebeam flowers when Simon's has whitebeam smoke seems to suggest that the daughter will be biologically Simon and Dianda's.)

[pennyroyalperfection]

honestly pretty dark theory based on the innocent sleep/sleep no more below the cut because i cant stop thinking about it

alright, so it's july and too hot to sleep, so that means spitballing theories instead of doing as either of these book titles suggest. and instead of continuing to bug my friend about it i'm gonna drop it here on the blog i continually forget i made for this express purpose

basically, a thought occurred to me a little bit earlier, and the thought was "wait, none of tybalt's titania-visions included toby, did they?" so i went and checked, and lo— cailin, colleen, jill, cailin the younger, chalcedony, anne, and september were all used as bait. october, his literal wife, was not. and that led me to a much worse thought

the very specific wording that titania used in the vision was that SHE would not harm toby or the baby (two things she is literally forbidden from doing anyway. i see you, villain), and that amandine had agreed to 'raise the child as her own.' which................ anyone else feel something crawl up their backs every time they see that? no? just me?

in any case, amandine likely meant to raise the child into what she thought toby should be, i.e. august's handmaiden/servant, the place toby had been occupying the last four months. except that she'd """do it right""" this time and make the subservience stick. surejan.jpeg

but toby..........

a little earlier, amandine mentions that only toby will be allowed to remember what happened before titania's faerie was implemented. but that's amandine. for all that she's a shitty person and a worse mother, she's incredibly possessive of what she thinks is hers. of course she doesn't want toby to die, that's her toy. she wants her around to punish for not doing exactly what amandine wanted her to do, not six feet under in an iron coffin

but titania (who assuredly doesn't run all her plans by her husband's youngest get to receive her stamp of approval before implementing them) makes no allusions as to what will happen to toby after that baby is born. and i have a very terrible feeling that titania was planning to kill toby in a way she couldn't come back from. and the proof of that is, very plainly, it would be far and away easier to successfully tempt tybalt into breaking the circle with his known weakness (wife he loves a lot and is honestly really intense about, plus getting to keep their yet-unborn child) than with a series of people who have been dead for decades if not centuries

but she didn't

and the only reason i can see that that was completely off the table as a persuasive strategy is if titania planned to remove toby from the board entirely, and the ritual magic of the ride breaking doesn't allow for titania to tell such an enormous lie as "oh, yes, step out and we'll let you and october go play happy houses somewhere"

titania cannot lay her hands on toby directly, but that didn't stop her from locking her in with her abusive mother for four months, and it wouldn't stop her from getting someone else to do it with explicit instructions to ensure success

so. tl;dr— titania was planning on offing toby, professional villain agenda wrecker, and so couldn't use her as a bargaining chip to break the circle during her ride, and that's why she pulled up all those people from tybalt's past to tempt him to break the line instead

[reviewsthatburn]

*This essay excerpt contains minor spoilers for Babylon 5 (S3 E4 "Passing Through Gethsemane"). 

The full essay (at this link) also contains moderate spoilers for the first sixteen October Daye books by Seanan McGuire, with major spoilers for SLEEP NO MORE and THE INNOCENT SLEEP.

INTRO

When reading SLEEP NO MORE and THE INNOCENT SLEEP by Seanan McGuire (the newest October Daye books), I was struck by similarities in the ethical framework of these two books and certain aspects of the 1990's sci-fi show Babylon 5, particularly the way that changes in personality or memories are treated with relation to assumptions of personhood. I am certain that Seanan McGuire is also very familiar with Babylon 5 because one of her telepathic characters in the Incryptid series uses specific aspects of Babylon 5 as a framework for ethical telepathy. 

THE DEATH OF PERSONALITY IN BABYLON 5

In Babylon 5, set in the late 2250's and early 2260's at a time when capital punishment is not in use by EarthGov, some criminals are sentenced to "the death of personality". In this punishment, a telepath takes the mind of the condemned and strips everything away, reworking and rebuilding them until a completely different person inhabits the body. They have killed the previous personality by overwriting them with a new one (hence the name). Whether this stays shy of murder is something the show grapples with on several occasions. There are two parts to this: did someone die, and was that death a murder? I tend to use the definition that murder is killing which is not sanctioned by the relevant ethical/moral framework. When the life of a body is ended, there’s often little debate over whether a death has occurred, but room for much ambiguity over whether that death was murder. In the case of the death of personality, there’s also room for debate over whether anyone died at all.

Outside of this punishment, there are several other instances where someone's personality is manipulated or rewritten against their will. It is, stripped of context, often thought to be kinder than murder of the body as well as the mind. However, by its very nature, if it's successful then the prior person is gone, utterly and completely. In at least one instance where the previous person could be partially recalled, the results were horrifying in their own way. The episode “Passing Through Gethsemane” involves a monk who begins having horrible dreams of death, and is threatened with violence in his waking hours. Towards the end of the episode, he is kidnapped and tortured. At this point it’s revealed that his previous personality was that of a serial killer, and his kidnappers are relatives of the victims. He dies (mentally and physically) as a result of his injuries, and his kidnappers/torturers are sentenced for his murder. The end of the episode shows the lead kidnapper after undergoing the death of personality himself. The new person is being sent far away, to live a life of service far from those who were harmed by the previous personality. It sets up a kind of horror in the final moments of the episode, as the circumstances which lead to the other monk’s torture seem to be now set up to potentially repeat. In the greater context of the show, it reinforces the concept that personalities can be changed or overwritten, but that each personality is treated as a new entity with their own moral history and responsibility. 

The key for me is that the loss of a previous personality is recognized, specifically, as a death in terms of punishment but not necessarily in terms of the law and the conscience of the telepath/executioner. There’s some ambiguity in the way that the new personality is sentenced to a life of service for something they didn’t do, rather than a judicial model focused on punishment long after the crime. Those who want to believe the person was punished can (hopefully) rest easy that the personality who committed some terrible crime is gone forever. Those who want to say that the executioners didn't actually kill anyone can point to the body who walks away to live a new life in a new place, with (hopefully) nothing to trigger the old memories. It allows for a social and legal fiction existing in a delicate balance, a kind of Schrödinger's murder where everyone has agreed not to look too closely at the same moment. 

Full Post at Link

[darkfrog24]

TYBALT: I must refrain from rescuing October for now, Raj. Should I appear in her bedroom, a wild stranger, and steal her away to a kingdom of ravenous cats, to be my prisoner? I ran it by her six months ago, and she was not into it.

[blueinsideout]

No context spoilers for The Innocent Sleep (October Daye Series) aka my new nightmare fuel.

[born-to-lose]

Missing people and regretting shit o'clock

[evebestt]

MELEYS MY DARLING

RHAENYS MY WIFE

[murdcck]

me watching she-hulk just for matt.  i’m sorry. i can’t take the cgi seriously.

BUT ALSO??? DID THEY LITERALLY HAVE MATT SNIFF THE AIR AND PUT IN A PRONOUNCED SNIFFING SOUND? LIKE DUDE RIDICULOUS.. YES, I am biased. I’m sorry. Netflix showed Matt’s abilities way more subtly than this SNIFF!! sdjkfsd.

[kdramacrybaby]

I’m sorry, is it not immediately obvious that a roomba dragged her blood around? Like why are they making this a whole deal about a murderer drawing something on the floor when there are obvious wheel tracks???