Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: geeky
  • Music: Delta Rae, "Bottom of the River."

"Rat-Catcher" open thread.

I have been asked to create an open thread for discussion of "Rat-Catcher." So here you go: here is an open thread.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.) I will be DELETING all comments containing spoilers which have been left on other posts. No one gets to spoil people here without a label.

You can also start a discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.

Have fun, and try not to bleed on the carpet.
Tags: open thread, short fiction, toby daye
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  • 24 comments

jane_dark

January 31 2013, 20:44:59 UTC 4 years ago

I loved hearing Tybalt's voice, which really did sound like Tybalt.

I was a little off-put by the history -- the Great Fire is thought to have had a relatively small death toll (only 6 recorded), though others must have died from smoke inhalation, or from issues associated with having to live in the makeshift shelters that were set up afterwards. And while there had been numerous small outbreaks of plague recorded throughout the years, before the last big outbreak that Pepys and others write about, the Great Fire is actually thought to have been the thing that eradicated enough of the contagion for those outbreaks to stop.

So I don't quite understand the sickness that the Roane mentioned -- is it the Black Plague? Something else, that would kill humans and Fae? Maybe we're supposed to assume that that was something that the Roane couldn't see clearly?

But I'm also intrigued, wondering if this is a set-up for something else that's coming and that we haven't learned about yet.

seanan_mcguire

February 1 2013, 16:41:56 UTC 4 years ago

In this case, it was "burning out the humans is going to fuck up Faerie." The Great Fire had a relatively low death-toll, but it had a very high pollutant index, even for the time, and there were ways for the air to get through the knowe doors, generally accompanying anyone who was in the "coming and going" process. Tybalt was fine, because he was so accustomed to mortal air. Add that to "all the knowes are on fire because Faerie has no fire service," and it's one of the rare cases of a human disaster being worse for the fae. The 1906 earthquake was similar.

jane_dark

February 1 2013, 17:02:00 UTC 4 years ago

Ah! A CLARITY, I has it.

Thank you very much for explaining, and for the open thread itself.

wendyzski

February 11 2013, 17:48:58 UTC 4 years ago

HAIL the explanation!

I also came here with that confusion, after finally getting a chance to read the story at Capricon last weekend.
(Where I met a very nice couple you should have dinner with - he's in biotech and is a CDC first responder, and she did graduate level work in parisitology. You could all discuss all KINDS of gross things together)