He knew he was full of feelings.
APPLICATION!
[nick / name]: Jules
[personal LJ name]: scuttling
[e-mail]: saving.toads.for.the.french [at] gmail [dot] com
[AIM / messenger]: scuttling across @ AIM; thisguyaresick @ Y!M
[series]: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci
[character]: Eric Emelius “Cat” Chant
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Just before chapter 16 of The Pinhoe Egg, after Cat has petrified Gaffer Farleigh and put Klartch, his griffin, onto Syracuse, his horse, to resume his venture to Marianne.
[character history / background]: I am generally dissatisfied with what the internet summarizes! However, before launching into a hopefully not too tedious account of Cat's part in two books and one short story (with a mention of a kind in another), some world/universe/etc. information is necessary, which can be found here:
A to Z of the Related Worlds -- not the list of terms, but the first two quotes from the books.
Less pertinent to Cat's situation than either of the two Chrestomanci characters currently in Polychromatic is the intricacies of the various series and worlds and so forth. But what is, relevant, is that within a series there are usually nine worlds (I would raise my eyebrows at such a small number, all considering, but, let's go with it!) Within each of those worlds there is usually a double of a person (I mean, how we should assume that the same people always meet and fall in love, BUT LET'S GO WITH IT). When, for whatever reason, one or many of them are not born or die at birth, the abilities and lives of those who had not lived are transferred to those that did. Presumably - this is only really seen in the extreme case of Cat and Christopher and other Chrestomanci, where in each world Cat was not born, except for World A.
Cat was born with nine lives, and some serious magic to boot. However, he would remain utterly unaware of this for years, in large part due to the interference of his elder sister, Gwendolen. A time line will serve to shorten this wonderfully:
AGE -3: Cousins Francis and Caroline Chant marry against their family's wishes; they are disowned; Christopher Chant (Chrestomanci in Cat's stories) offers to make sure their children cannot use magic; Francis offends Christopher in return
AGE -2: Gwendolen Chant is born to Francis and Caroline Chant
AGE 0: Eric Emelius Chant is born to Francis and Carolyn Chant; he loses one life being born; 8 lives remaining
AGE 0 AND ON: Gwendolen uses Eric's magic, quite naturally usurping it; calls him Cat
AGE 3: Gwendolen uses Cat's second life to put all of Cat's lives into a matchbook for easier use; Francis writes to Christopher asking for help and is ignored; 7 lives remaining
AGE 9: The Saucy Nancy Disaster; Francis and Caroline drown; Cat loses his third life by drowning, probably at Gwendolen's expense (He believes that he survived by clinging to her, whom he believes could not die by virtue of being a witch; however his parents possessed good magic and drowned); 6 lives remaining
AGE 9/10: Gwendolen begins studying magic (using letters from Chrestomanci as payment); Cat has his fortune told by Miss Larkins, thereby letting Chrestomanci discover the next nine-lived enchanter; the Nostrum brothers begin planning Chrestomanci's downfall; Cat takes up violin lessons and though terrible enjoys them, until Gwendolen uses his third life to change the violin into a cat, claiming it sounded like one; 5 lives remaining
AGE 10: Gwendolen writes to Chrestomanci; Chrestomanci comes to fetch Gwendolen and Cat to Chrestomanci Castle; when forbidden to learn more magic until having proved worthy of it Gwendolen begins attempting to terrorize the Castle Family, but only really amuses them; Gwendolen is stripped of her magic and uses Cat's fifth life (and illegally bought dragon blood) to flee to another world in Series 12 (thereby forcing all her doubles in the various worlds to be yanked to the next one over); 4 lives remaining
AGE 10 CONTD: Janet appears in 12-A to take Gwendolen's place; Cat and Janet struggle to keep this secret due to terror of Chrestomanci; Cat accidentally turns Euphemia into a frog (Gwendolen left a spell with his magic), unknowingly revealing the extent of his powers to Chrestomanci and Michael; Janet and Cat are threatened by the dealer who sold Gwendolen the dragon's blood as her payment was no good; Cat is threatened by Euphemia's boyfriend; the Nostrum brothers arrive in the village and brief Cat on their plan (many lies!); Janet and Cat are discovered running away; Cat and Janet discover the matchbook, Janet deduces its purpose, Cat loses his sixth life by striking a match; 3 lives remaining
AGE 10 FIN: Cat and Janet steal powdered dragon blood from Michael's workshop and sneak into Chrestomanci's Garden to escape into another world; Nostrums and colleagues use Cat's signature to teleport into Garden (it is revealed Cat is meant to be killed to destroy the Garden and thus enable Chrestomanci's destruction); events of battle in Garden--Gwendolen's temporary return, Cat regains full use of his magic, Gwendolen flees and seals herself in her other world, Janet is permanently trapped in 12-A - and everything is neatly explained, Chrestomanci's relation including
AGE 10/11: Cat begins training as next Chrestomanci; Cat meets Tonino Montana, a younger Italian boy with unusual magic brought to the Castle for study of said magic; Cat resents Tonino for various reasons until they survive a dastardly plot at the hands of an Evil Enchanter; the Family + Tonino take holidays in France.
AGE 11: Chrestomanci buys a horse for the recently smitten girls (Janet & Julia, Chrestomanci's daughter), but Syracuse (the horse) proves unmanageable to all but Cat; Cat comes into possession of Syracuse!; Joe Pinhoe is hired as boot boy for the summer; When riding with the stableman Joss Callow, Cat and Joss meet and are threatened by Gaffer Farleigh in the woods, Cat notices an emptiness in the scenery; Cat loses his riding rights after taking Syracuse out for an unsupervised ride with Roger (Chrestomanci's son) on bicycle (Cat points on misdirection spells on the landscape to Chrestomanci); Joe Pinhoe and Roger spend their time working on a machine magics
AGE 11 CONT: Jason Yeldham returns to the castle with his new wife, Irene Yeldham nee Pinhoe; Irene invites Cat to help them select a house, and Cat takes to the recently vacated Woods House; Cat meets Marianne Pinhoe (Joe's older sister) and tells her she has enchanter strength magic and ought to have more confidence; Marianne gives Cat an egg they find in the attic, which later hatches into a baby griffin; Cat meets an old man with a unicorn while rescuing Chrestomanci from behind a barrier, behind which he was trapped after trying to sort the misdirection, and Cat is allowed to ride Syracuse again; Joe and Roger crash their newly invented flying machine over Cat's window; Marianne seeks help from Cat after his advice leads her to trouble
AGE 11 FIN: Cat sets out on Syracuse with a weak plan to help; encounters Gaffer Farleigh on the way, the flying machine, in which Chrestomanci has hitched a ride in order to examine the misdirection spells from air, looms overhead; Gaffer Farleigh fires at it and shoot Chrestomanci, and when Klartch (the griffin) shows up having followed Cat, he readies to shoot the rest of them (Cat, horse, griffin); Cat turns Gaffer Farleigh into a stone oak; Cat and Marianne set out to meet the old man behind the barrier and take down the barrier in the process; the old man is not-quite-dead Gaffer Pinhoe! and the unicorn guides Cat into tearing down what traps various magical creatures behind the nature's distance thus making the present foreground empty; Marianne and Cat return to Ulverscote to find the Farleighs launching an attack for things that have nothing to do with Cat; Wounded but living Chrestomanci sorts everything out per usual; Marianne and Joe are taken as students at the castle during the week
[character abilities]: Cat is a nine-lived enchanter, and in The Pinhoe Egg it is revealed that he also has strong dwimmer.
- Elaboration on Enchanter Magic in the Chronicles
- Elaboration on Nine-Lived Enchanters
Only, of course, there is no link for dwimmer. Dwimmer is a kind of natural magic, and explained in various ways in the story. From the book itself: "Dwimmer means that a person is in touch with the life in everything. They can bring it out even when its hidden." Though it also, Marianne implies, has something to do with outright growth and manipulation of nature, as when Cat grows immense amounts of ivy over the fallen barrier in an instant, Marianne attributes it to dwimmer.
As some fluke of being left-handed, Cat does his best magic with his left hand. Often, trying with his right hand won't work at all. He is also very slow to learn Advanced Theory, or theory of any kind, making it difficult for him to understand why and how things happen. This results in his sometimes doing magic without meaning to, and in things not always going precisely as he would expect. And it could prove quite dangerous, for obvious reasons!
Cat also gets carsick ): but he seems to be all right in trains.
[character personality]: Cat grows quite a bit over the course of a year. We meet him first as extremely dependent on his older sister. He admires her, and is thoroughly used by her. Janet accuses him of being far too obedient - whatever was requested of him he would do, without fail, quite natural in being bossed about. He spends much of his time being passively miserable; miserably homesick at the castle, made worse by Gwendolen's ignoring him to work her schemes, miserable when Gwendolen leaves and he must suddenly do the looking after, as Janet is hopeless in this new world. Of course, when Cat is miserable, it is not in an expressive, explosive way.
Half a year later, he is resenting a younger boy for being younger, and for being more miserable and more homesick than he, and thus getting more looking after by the rest. He resents being told to look after him - but winds up doing so, and in a few months time, come the events of The Pinhoe Egg, Cat has become a boy quite bored of everything, and quite impatient to be treated seriously -- not coddled.
In some ways, Cat retains the influence of Gwendolen. He does not mourn her, or continue to think of her once she reveals how very little she cared about him--he proves surprisingly resilient, and more than able to think for himself, finding he likes it, and likes having power and a bit of respect.
Yet, he exhibits a tendency to blame himself and feel guilty and responsible for things that aren't quite his fault. He will feel he should have done more, though it's also quite probably a result of his awkwardly developing conscience. Having been before so overlooked and so much of a nonentity compared to Gwendolen, he did not warrant much notice. He protests it as unfair when he is punished for not stopping Gwendolen (having sat and watched while she worked the magic for one of her uglier schemes). But, he later comes to feel guilty for Chrestomanci being shot, for being taken in by an Enchanter's spells, and for somehow not doing enough while there though the Enchanter is well-thwarted. That he feels like crying for not being able to, initially, help the creatures behind the distance, and responsible enough for his advice to Marianne to actively help her, shows that Cat at heart wants to be good.
His developing sense of right and wrong also causes him to worry that he is becoming an evil enchanter, by virtue of doing good things for wrong reasons, and feeling resentful of Tonino though he knows he's being stupid about it. He is legitimately worried about it, though not to a point where he is inspired to change without excessive outside influence, because Cat is very stubborn in a very passive-aggressive way.
Cat, really, internalizes everything. Even as he is forming a spine, he does not begin talking back. He simply feels frustrated and will occasionally act outside of his set boundaries, doing as he likes. When he is upset in any fashion, he takes it into himself, and feels it in a mild, sulky kind of way. He notes himself that the first time he is really, truly angry is when Syracuse is endangered by Gaffer Farleigh - until then, when things happened and he should have been angry, he only felt bewildered. Perhaps used to being muted when beside Gwendolen.
Though it is not entirely that, either. The author notes in an interview that Cat has a very mild form of autism, that makes it difficult, nigh impossible for him to tell things to people, especially if they are important. This is never outright said as autism in the books, because I doubt that World has it in that way -- it is only seen by something funny happening in his head, and Cat not being able to express himself. He is much more a doer than a talker, and utterly fails at explanations.
And yet, he does not have a real trouble getting along with people. He did have friends in his original village, with whom he scrumped apples. Really, Cat behaves often as an ordinary boy. He opens up to Millie immediately, chatting animatedly; he relishes horse chestnuts and treehouses, he is one of he children screaming in the pool in France; and when Joe Pinhoe dares him to prove he's an enchanter, he sends him to the ceiling and they share a grin over his threat to fly him into a tree.
His growing sense of self provides a gradual sense of humor. Cat is mostly completely confused by Chrestomanci's sarcasm. He takes things very literally, and is inclined to be practical and to the point himself. Marianne notes that there is no nonsense about him- the little words he uses, evidently, are pertinent. When asked if he wouldn't also like a horse or bicycle, he answers that there's no point-- he can teleport. Though he later relishes his rides with Syracuse, his initial reaction to an unnecessary "good" is a complete lack of interest.
All in all, Cat is a boy growing up and into himself.
[nick / name]: Jules
[personal LJ name]: scuttling
[e-mail]: saving.toads.for.the.french [at] gmail [dot] com
[AIM / messenger]: scuttling across @ AIM; thisguyaresick @ Y!M
[series]: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci
[character]: Eric Emelius “Cat” Chant
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Just before chapter 16 of The Pinhoe Egg, after Cat has petrified Gaffer Farleigh and put Klartch, his griffin, onto Syracuse, his horse, to resume his venture to Marianne.
[character history / background]: I am generally dissatisfied with what the internet summarizes! However, before launching into a hopefully not too tedious account of Cat's part in two books and one short story (with a mention of a kind in another), some world/universe/etc. information is necessary, which can be found here:
A to Z of the Related Worlds -- not the list of terms, but the first two quotes from the books.
Less pertinent to Cat's situation than either of the two Chrestomanci characters currently in Polychromatic is the intricacies of the various series and worlds and so forth. But what is, relevant, is that within a series there are usually nine worlds (I would raise my eyebrows at such a small number, all considering, but, let's go with it!) Within each of those worlds there is usually a double of a person (I mean, how we should assume that the same people always meet and fall in love, BUT LET'S GO WITH IT). When, for whatever reason, one or many of them are not born or die at birth, the abilities and lives of those who had not lived are transferred to those that did. Presumably - this is only really seen in the extreme case of Cat and Christopher and other Chrestomanci, where in each world Cat was not born, except for World A.
Cat was born with nine lives, and some serious magic to boot. However, he would remain utterly unaware of this for years, in large part due to the interference of his elder sister, Gwendolen. A time line will serve to shorten this wonderfully:
AGE -3: Cousins Francis and Caroline Chant marry against their family's wishes; they are disowned; Christopher Chant (Chrestomanci in Cat's stories) offers to make sure their children cannot use magic; Francis offends Christopher in return
AGE -2: Gwendolen Chant is born to Francis and Caroline Chant
AGE 0: Eric Emelius Chant is born to Francis and Carolyn Chant; he loses one life being born; 8 lives remaining
AGE 0 AND ON: Gwendolen uses Eric's magic, quite naturally usurping it; calls him Cat
AGE 3: Gwendolen uses Cat's second life to put all of Cat's lives into a matchbook for easier use; Francis writes to Christopher asking for help and is ignored; 7 lives remaining
AGE 9: The Saucy Nancy Disaster; Francis and Caroline drown; Cat loses his third life by drowning, probably at Gwendolen's expense (He believes that he survived by clinging to her, whom he believes could not die by virtue of being a witch; however his parents possessed good magic and drowned); 6 lives remaining
AGE 9/10: Gwendolen begins studying magic (using letters from Chrestomanci as payment); Cat has his fortune told by Miss Larkins, thereby letting Chrestomanci discover the next nine-lived enchanter; the Nostrum brothers begin planning Chrestomanci's downfall; Cat takes up violin lessons and though terrible enjoys them, until Gwendolen uses his third life to change the violin into a cat, claiming it sounded like one; 5 lives remaining
AGE 10: Gwendolen writes to Chrestomanci; Chrestomanci comes to fetch Gwendolen and Cat to Chrestomanci Castle; when forbidden to learn more magic until having proved worthy of it Gwendolen begins attempting to terrorize the Castle Family, but only really amuses them; Gwendolen is stripped of her magic and uses Cat's fifth life (and illegally bought dragon blood) to flee to another world in Series 12 (thereby forcing all her doubles in the various worlds to be yanked to the next one over); 4 lives remaining
AGE 10 CONTD: Janet appears in 12-A to take Gwendolen's place; Cat and Janet struggle to keep this secret due to terror of Chrestomanci; Cat accidentally turns Euphemia into a frog (Gwendolen left a spell with his magic), unknowingly revealing the extent of his powers to Chrestomanci and Michael; Janet and Cat are threatened by the dealer who sold Gwendolen the dragon's blood as her payment was no good; Cat is threatened by Euphemia's boyfriend; the Nostrum brothers arrive in the village and brief Cat on their plan (many lies!); Janet and Cat are discovered running away; Cat and Janet discover the matchbook, Janet deduces its purpose, Cat loses his sixth life by striking a match; 3 lives remaining
AGE 10 FIN: Cat and Janet steal powdered dragon blood from Michael's workshop and sneak into Chrestomanci's Garden to escape into another world; Nostrums and colleagues use Cat's signature to teleport into Garden (it is revealed Cat is meant to be killed to destroy the Garden and thus enable Chrestomanci's destruction); events of battle in Garden--Gwendolen's temporary return, Cat regains full use of his magic, Gwendolen flees and seals herself in her other world, Janet is permanently trapped in 12-A - and everything is neatly explained, Chrestomanci's relation including
AGE 10/11: Cat begins training as next Chrestomanci; Cat meets Tonino Montana, a younger Italian boy with unusual magic brought to the Castle for study of said magic; Cat resents Tonino for various reasons until they survive a dastardly plot at the hands of an Evil Enchanter; the Family + Tonino take holidays in France.
AGE 11: Chrestomanci buys a horse for the recently smitten girls (Janet & Julia, Chrestomanci's daughter), but Syracuse (the horse) proves unmanageable to all but Cat; Cat comes into possession of Syracuse!; Joe Pinhoe is hired as boot boy for the summer; When riding with the stableman Joss Callow, Cat and Joss meet and are threatened by Gaffer Farleigh in the woods, Cat notices an emptiness in the scenery; Cat loses his riding rights after taking Syracuse out for an unsupervised ride with Roger (Chrestomanci's son) on bicycle (Cat points on misdirection spells on the landscape to Chrestomanci); Joe Pinhoe and Roger spend their time working on a machine magics
AGE 11 CONT: Jason Yeldham returns to the castle with his new wife, Irene Yeldham nee Pinhoe; Irene invites Cat to help them select a house, and Cat takes to the recently vacated Woods House; Cat meets Marianne Pinhoe (Joe's older sister) and tells her she has enchanter strength magic and ought to have more confidence; Marianne gives Cat an egg they find in the attic, which later hatches into a baby griffin; Cat meets an old man with a unicorn while rescuing Chrestomanci from behind a barrier, behind which he was trapped after trying to sort the misdirection, and Cat is allowed to ride Syracuse again; Joe and Roger crash their newly invented flying machine over Cat's window; Marianne seeks help from Cat after his advice leads her to trouble
AGE 11 FIN: Cat sets out on Syracuse with a weak plan to help; encounters Gaffer Farleigh on the way, the flying machine, in which Chrestomanci has hitched a ride in order to examine the misdirection spells from air, looms overhead; Gaffer Farleigh fires at it and shoot Chrestomanci, and when Klartch (the griffin) shows up having followed Cat, he readies to shoot the rest of them (Cat, horse, griffin); Cat turns Gaffer Farleigh into a stone oak; Cat and Marianne set out to meet the old man behind the barrier and take down the barrier in the process; the old man is not-quite-dead Gaffer Pinhoe! and the unicorn guides Cat into tearing down what traps various magical creatures behind the nature's distance thus making the present foreground empty; Marianne and Cat return to Ulverscote to find the Farleighs launching an attack for things that have nothing to do with Cat; Wounded but living Chrestomanci sorts everything out per usual; Marianne and Joe are taken as students at the castle during the week
[character abilities]: Cat is a nine-lived enchanter, and in The Pinhoe Egg it is revealed that he also has strong dwimmer.
- Elaboration on Enchanter Magic in the Chronicles
- Elaboration on Nine-Lived Enchanters
Only, of course, there is no link for dwimmer. Dwimmer is a kind of natural magic, and explained in various ways in the story. From the book itself: "Dwimmer means that a person is in touch with the life in everything. They can bring it out even when its hidden." Though it also, Marianne implies, has something to do with outright growth and manipulation of nature, as when Cat grows immense amounts of ivy over the fallen barrier in an instant, Marianne attributes it to dwimmer.
As some fluke of being left-handed, Cat does his best magic with his left hand. Often, trying with his right hand won't work at all. He is also very slow to learn Advanced Theory, or theory of any kind, making it difficult for him to understand why and how things happen. This results in his sometimes doing magic without meaning to, and in things not always going precisely as he would expect. And it could prove quite dangerous, for obvious reasons!
Cat also gets carsick ): but he seems to be all right in trains.
[character personality]: Cat grows quite a bit over the course of a year. We meet him first as extremely dependent on his older sister. He admires her, and is thoroughly used by her. Janet accuses him of being far too obedient - whatever was requested of him he would do, without fail, quite natural in being bossed about. He spends much of his time being passively miserable; miserably homesick at the castle, made worse by Gwendolen's ignoring him to work her schemes, miserable when Gwendolen leaves and he must suddenly do the looking after, as Janet is hopeless in this new world. Of course, when Cat is miserable, it is not in an expressive, explosive way.
Half a year later, he is resenting a younger boy for being younger, and for being more miserable and more homesick than he, and thus getting more looking after by the rest. He resents being told to look after him - but winds up doing so, and in a few months time, come the events of The Pinhoe Egg, Cat has become a boy quite bored of everything, and quite impatient to be treated seriously -- not coddled.
In some ways, Cat retains the influence of Gwendolen. He does not mourn her, or continue to think of her once she reveals how very little she cared about him--he proves surprisingly resilient, and more than able to think for himself, finding he likes it, and likes having power and a bit of respect.
Yet, he exhibits a tendency to blame himself and feel guilty and responsible for things that aren't quite his fault. He will feel he should have done more, though it's also quite probably a result of his awkwardly developing conscience. Having been before so overlooked and so much of a nonentity compared to Gwendolen, he did not warrant much notice. He protests it as unfair when he is punished for not stopping Gwendolen (having sat and watched while she worked the magic for one of her uglier schemes). But, he later comes to feel guilty for Chrestomanci being shot, for being taken in by an Enchanter's spells, and for somehow not doing enough while there though the Enchanter is well-thwarted. That he feels like crying for not being able to, initially, help the creatures behind the distance, and responsible enough for his advice to Marianne to actively help her, shows that Cat at heart wants to be good.
His developing sense of right and wrong also causes him to worry that he is becoming an evil enchanter, by virtue of doing good things for wrong reasons, and feeling resentful of Tonino though he knows he's being stupid about it. He is legitimately worried about it, though not to a point where he is inspired to change without excessive outside influence, because Cat is very stubborn in a very passive-aggressive way.
Cat, really, internalizes everything. Even as he is forming a spine, he does not begin talking back. He simply feels frustrated and will occasionally act outside of his set boundaries, doing as he likes. When he is upset in any fashion, he takes it into himself, and feels it in a mild, sulky kind of way. He notes himself that the first time he is really, truly angry is when Syracuse is endangered by Gaffer Farleigh - until then, when things happened and he should have been angry, he only felt bewildered. Perhaps used to being muted when beside Gwendolen.
Though it is not entirely that, either. The author notes in an interview that Cat has a very mild form of autism, that makes it difficult, nigh impossible for him to tell things to people, especially if they are important. This is never outright said as autism in the books, because I doubt that World has it in that way -- it is only seen by something funny happening in his head, and Cat not being able to express himself. He is much more a doer than a talker, and utterly fails at explanations.
And yet, he does not have a real trouble getting along with people. He did have friends in his original village, with whom he scrumped apples. Really, Cat behaves often as an ordinary boy. He opens up to Millie immediately, chatting animatedly; he relishes horse chestnuts and treehouses, he is one of he children screaming in the pool in France; and when Joe Pinhoe dares him to prove he's an enchanter, he sends him to the ceiling and they share a grin over his threat to fly him into a tree.
His growing sense of self provides a gradual sense of humor. Cat is mostly completely confused by Chrestomanci's sarcasm. He takes things very literally, and is inclined to be practical and to the point himself. Marianne notes that there is no nonsense about him- the little words he uses, evidently, are pertinent. When asked if he wouldn't also like a horse or bicycle, he answers that there's no point-- he can teleport. Though he later relishes his rides with Syracuse, his initial reaction to an unnecessary "good" is a complete lack of interest.
All in all, Cat is a boy growing up and into himself.