#newford

[transbrucewayne]

benmatt this benmatt that…what about newford

[a-ramblinrose]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || October 23 || Trickster:    Charles De Lint’s Newford is full of them!

[forest-of-stories]

Throwback Thursday, Fandom Edition: "Where ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world"

Pictured left to right are four of the recurring characters from Charles de Lint’s Newford series: Wendy St. James, Angel Marceau, Jilly Coppercorn, and Sophie Etoile. I probably drew this piece of fanart, which I didn’t yet know was called fanart, in the late 1990s.  I’d found paperback copies of the short-story collections Dreams Underfoot and The Ivory and the Horn on my older sister’s bookshelf after she left for college, and while not all of the stories made a huge impression on me, I was drawn back to other ones again and again. 

A lot of my reflections on Francesca Lia Block’s work, which I’ve talked about previously, could also describe de Lint’s.  I discovered both authors at approximately the same time in my life.  They both write fantasy with urban settings, where ordinary humans coexist – sometimes knowingly, sometimes not – with the supernatural and the unexplained.  They both value art and creativity and chosen families, and presented an aspirational view of adulthood to my barely-adolescent self.  They are, as it happens, both white writers who’ve attempted to integrate Native American cultures and myths into their fiction, with varying degrees of success that I do not feel qualified to analyze.  (Nor am I qualified to analyze the evolution of the term "urban fantasy" over the last few decades, though I'd love it if someone did!)

On the other hand, the two authors' writing styles are very different, and while Block’s work was marketed for teenagers, de Lint’s stories and novels (at least, the ones I was reading at the time) were not.  I won’t say that I was “too young” to be reading them – I think that different readers are ready for certain topics at different times – but, as a sheltered and sensitive kid, I was not emotionally prepared to process some of the real-life horrors that his characters experienced.  Although I still wish that I’d found different ways of coping with what I’d read, I'm not sorry that I read it in the first place.

Nor did it deter me from wanting to spend more time in Newford.  In particular, I loved, and still love, how de Lint’s supernatural beings interacted with the mundane* world.  Some humans could see fairies and goblins because they had Special Magical Blood or were “chosen” in one way or another (like Sophie, who – in one of my favorite stories – conjures first a bookshop and then an entire city out of her childhood daydreams), but others had simply taught themselves how to look for the supernatural and the unexplained.  “Just like we have to pay attention to each other, or we miss the important things that are going on there as well,” Jilly, an artist and a recurring presence in these stories, says at one point.  In the same scene, she says that she believes in magic, “but it’s not something I just take on faith.  For me, art is an act of magic.”  In this world, magic and creativity and compassion are all equally powerful and sometimes overlap, and an active imagination – which, by my early teens, I had been teased and criticized for possessing – is a strength, not a weakness.   

Earlier this year, in a turn of events that would not have been out of place in Newford, I found a copy of Dreams Underfoot in a Little Free Library.  It was the same edition as the copy that I’d taken from Older Sister’s bookshelf, and it was in much better condition.  I included it in her birthday gift package, and she texted me as she was rereading “In The House of My Enemy,” the story that I quoted in the paragraph above (which is one of the saddest and most brutal pieces in the collection, even if it does present that lovely thesis statement for its world).  She said that she appreciated “the combo of warmth and darkness,” in the series, and that combination is among the things that I value most about it as well.

*I’m using the word "mundane" even though I don’t usually like how it’s employed in speculative fiction or fandom contexts.  On a similar note, I’ve always appreciated that magic wasn’t hidden from the general population of Newford through the sort of organized conspiracy (which TV Tropes calls “the Masquerade”) that I later encountered in other, more famous works.  In what’s currently my only piece of de Lint fanfiction, a crossover that lives in a locked Dreamwidth entry, the POV character – who is from one of those other works – reflects that “he’s not quite certain that either [Jilly or Sophie] count as mundane,” because he’s visiting a world where the line between ordinary and extraordinary is often wondrously unclear.

De Lint has written at least one instance of memory erasure that feels like it would fit in with the Masquerade, but it arose from the memory-wiped character’s personal psychology rather than an overall “humans need and prefer to be ignorant” philosophy.  Most characters’ responses to their uncanny experiences existed across the entire spectrum of skepticism and belief, fear and acceptance and enthusiasm, which was part of what made them and their city feel so real.

[penelopecat]

Finished the latest Newford novel by @charlesdelint yesterday. I love everything that I’ve read by him, but there’s something particularly comforting about his books set in the city of Newford, revisiting the familiar cast of characters and meeting new ones. It almost doesn’t matter that these are fantasy novels. I just enjoy the depictions of friendship and love. That the stories blend in some real magic with the magic of everyday life is just icing on the cake. #thismakesmehappy #books #2022reading #bookstagram #fantasy #charlesdelint #urbanfantasy #newford #juniperwiles #juniperwilesandtheghostgirls #hellboy https://www.instagram.com/p/Cmj2qO_vj8Z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[kennyfabre]

Nice View of the New Ford Escape. #ford #fordescape #newford #newfordescape #beautiful #beautifulcar #beautifulsuv #hollywood #hollywoodfl #hollywoodflorida #hollywoodflo #florida #ford #escape #fordescape #fordescapese #kennyfabre #kenny #fabre #fabrekenny #kennyfabré #fabré #fabrékenny #kennyfabreford #kennyford #fabrekennyford #kennyfabrefordescape #fabrekennyfordescape #kennysford #kennysfordescape #kf (at Hollywood, Florida) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtUQW9WBjG7/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[enzoxhuxley]

You better have a goddamn good reason for bothering me.

Not to be a dick.

[sid-huxley]

Well... fuck.

[pandoraxharlow]

“I don’t need to be coddled.” Pandora could feel herself snapping, shoving the blanket that had been draped over her shoulders since leaving her apartment as she sat in a chair at the precinct. “I’m tired and I just want to go home.”

[ryan-addisonxvincent]

I’m sorry-- I really don’t have time right now. It’s my day to go see Drake.

[harrison-beckett]

I don’t care what anyone thinks-- I may look like a hobo, but at least I’m comfortable. This city doesn’t need anyone else wearing a suit.

[ramonaxvincent]

I’d like a second to appreciate how everything is right in the world before I’m reminded it isn’t.

[lux-gallagher]

Do you gotta be so annoying right next to me?

[sunkern-plus]

katherine and isabelle were so in love with each other she LITERALLY called the latter “ma belle izzy” like. how gay is that

[lolaxderavin]

Oh hell...

Here— I’m so sorry, let me buy you a new coffee.

[madysonxbeckett]

It’s not often I share my secret snack stash, so, in the wise words of Maui, you’re welcome.

[sixofravens-reads]

Finished Widdershins!

I loved it!! Really wish I'd read The Onion Girl first so I was more familiar with the events that were referenced, but it was still such a beautiful, intriguing story! What a perfect conclusion to Jilly's tale.

It's one of those rare books that's 500+ pages with probably 10 different perspectives, and yet takes place over just a couple days, that still works for me. There's enough different plotlines going on that it never feels like the story drags or there are too many characters. All the plotlines are somewhat related to the actions of the villains at the beginning, but are also united by the themes of loss and regret, mending things you messed up by accident, and coming to terms with wrongs done to you and choosing your own future over vengeance. I love the thought that you don't have to forgive in order to be a "good" person and move on with your life.