Ice palace novel: Butterhead Agnes

[pegkerr]

Perhaps I've not ever come right out and said this before, but I've been thinking about this since the State Fair is starting up.

Have I mentioned before that Solveig's mother, Agnes, is a former Princess Kay of the Milky Way? (That's the title of the "goodwill ambassador for Minnesota's dairy industry," sort of the unofficial State Fair Queen). One of the few duties of the Princess Kay is to spend eight hours in a freezer to sit for a portrait, a bust of her head which is carved out of butter.



So: A harvest queen, sort of a late summer queen, who enters a freezer, a winter environment, to have her portrait made. Suggestive, eh? [Edited to add: Okay, you're right, it's a fridge, not a freezer. Still, the fact the temperature must be lowered and something is sculpted is suggestive.] And you know that winter magic is all about solids, about form, about sculpture, as ice, the embodiment of winter magic, forms over the tops of lakes and ice is sculpted and shaped into ice sculptures and ice palaces.

Summer magic is about about the network, connections, the spaces-in-between. Winter magic is the solid, the sculpture, the form.

What do you want to bet that Agnes has kept that butter sculpture of herself as the summer queen in her deep freezer all these years?

And what do you want to bet that somehow that butter bust shows up at the ice palace at the climax of the book?

Don't know how I'll use it, yet, but I know I will. It's like Chekov's gun on the wall. I'll pull the trigger there, somewhere, somehow.

Maybe the cows, somehow, are plotting with the fish.

Comments

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I collapse in giggles at the idea that the cows are plotting with the fish. (This, btw, is meant to be a good thing. In that it means that it sounds like a cool idea. That it tickles my funny is just the weirdness that is me.)

[mayhap]

Hee! I love this! It's just such a ... writerly sort of idea, if you know what I mean. :)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

It *is*. And I not only love the very being of it, but I love that Peg's going to do something with it. Ehehehe. :)

[mayhap]

Yes! It makes me very happy indeed. :D

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Butterhead, good. It works well with your magic system. But anything that good isn't accidental. What's the real, what's the magical point of the ritual over the decades? I can think of both positive and sinister explanationss; I don't know which one you want.

"Maybe the cows, somehow, are plotting with the fish."

This takes more work to make work. Specifically, why cows and not pigs, sheep, or goats. Birds are the obvious summer magical animal; they leave in winter, for heaven's sake. Is there a land animal that is 1) given to hang around birds in the summer, and 2) prone to wander across the ice in the winter? Foxes?

B

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

"Maybe the cows, somehow, are plotting with the fish."

This takes more work to make work. Specifically, why cows and not pigs, sheep, or goats.

Yeah, that line was just sort of a throw away joke. I do want to keep it fish for winter and birds for summer.

I don't have the inclination to delve into the plots of cows, really. The fish are hard enough to figure out.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Oh, I get it. The cows make the butter that's carved into the heads.

Naa, I don't think that's worth getting into. I think the pocket of cold in the middle of the summer is good enough. Might the head carving be some kind of old magical ritual by which the elders test the magical aptitude of young women? Or is it a negative thing where the elders trap the magical abilities of them?

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

*Excellent*

I think that the carving room is not a freezer, but a fridge. You'd want to be sure of that... is there a thermometer in there? I hit the Fair twice but didn't make it to the Dairy Building (now known as Empire Commons).

K. [most Princess Kays use their butterheads at their hometown corn feed, their hometown pancakle breakfast, or as part of ther buffet at their wedding]

Cows 'n Fish...

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I dunno, from the cows I've hung out with at my brother's farm I don't think they've got enough smarts to do much plotting...

Dairy trivia: I don't know if this is typical, but my brother lets half of his cows (200 head, I think...) sorta "lay fallow" (or should that be "lie fallow"?) up in the summer pasture. I can just see the cows with the summer off using the time to "plot with the fish".

I seem to remember hearing about a former Princess Kay who served her butter head at her wedding reception & encouraged everyone to "eat her head". Also, I'm pretty sure the sculpting is done in a fridge, not a freezer. I have some footage I shot a couple of fairs ago. I could send you some shots from it.

re: "Chekov's gun on the wall". Was he the one who said that if you introduced a gun in the first act someone had better shot it in the second? That line came up in a sketch I was plotting out in my head. (We're planning a future episdoe of Channel Surfing Wipeout to start with either Sue or Chris making an announcement that this particular show was funded by a grant from the N.R.A. Someone off camera yells, "Don't you mean N.E.A.?" Nope, it's the N.R.A., and then we cut a a flurry of gun related sketchs...

Re: Cows 'n Fish...

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

Or the squid on the mantelpiece.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

What would happen if the butter head melted?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I will have to think about that!

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

What a brilliant idea; I can't wait to read this book!

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

*Groan* Of course, I have to write it first.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Yes, but when it's done, it's going to just *fly* off the shelves. :)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

OOh! I've very much enjoyed the plot and world noodling on this, and looking forward to the eventual end, too.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the summer magic is the wild potential (more chaotic and uncontrollable) and the winter magic is accomplishment and study and realization (more focused and/or results-oriented, and man I hate using those terms because they both sound dreadfully corporate-jargony, but you know what I mean I hope.)? The Princess Kay sculpture could then be a way of capturing or formalizing the wild-potential magic of late summer harvest in a more disciplined/structural magic related to the coming winter months.

(What goes on in Agnes's -- or any Princess's -- head while she sits for her sculpture, I wonder?)

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Harvest. Maybe summer magic is about harvesting things in their natural time and then feeding people (and animals, and the compost heap) with them. You know, the great circle of life thing.

In which case, winter magic might be an attempt to stop the wheel. Freeze it, "save" it - can a thing be saved if it is never used? What if it's intended to be used, but is instead frozen and hoarded, taken out of the cycle?

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm... like a preserving magic, stopping the natural flow (e.g., water to ice). Originally, perhaps, a way to keep enough magic/supplies to eke out an existence through the winter months, or to jumpstart spring (during the thaw)? And, as you point out, it's not a permanent solution -- hoarded frozen things do spoil, just more slowly. (I should point out that I live in Florida, so my understanding of deep freezing is limited to my freezer.)

[pameladean]

Indeed and truly, how could you do this book without the butterhead?

Pamela

[blackholly.livejournal.com]

You know how you were posting about writerly jealousy--this is so cool that it produces in me intense writerly jealousy of the most positive kind. Your book is indeed going to be fabulous.