PoW: notes post
Becasuse there are too many quotes throughout. This fic's really one giant in-joke with myself sometimes.
This fic can also be succintly summarized as: "In a post-apocalyptic world, Cameron's Coalition's autocratic tendencies are stopped by Labour and Clameron."
Fic title: A Parliament of Owls
- etymologically suggestive of "a parliament of fools/fowls"
- the "fowls" origin from a Chaucerian tale where a dreamer dreams of a council of birds where Nature presides the "pairing-off" of them (Clameron etc)
- also, my personal interpretation of the characterizations- symbolically wise, realistically dastardly (birds of prey sorts)
The chapter titles are all quotes from various works that are quoted/referenced within the chapter in one way or another
Chapter 1: Ithaka by CP Cavafy
Chapter 2: Kublai Khan (or, A Vision in a Dream) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Chapter 3: Richard II by Shakespeare (Act II...I think)
Chapter 4: The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 5: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Chapter 6: Double-Vision of Michael Robartes by W.B. Yeats
(the chapter also quotes Song of Songs by Wilfred Owens and He Wishes for the Heaven's Embroidered Clothes by Yeats)
Chapter 7: Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 8: The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats
Chapter 9: To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
Thames Barrier has a limited lifespan; according to Discovery Channel's it is built to last until 2030 if the ocean levels continue to rise. The newly revised figure is 2060. Presumably afterward new technology would take over...or they're giving up London.
According to the Internet, Bilderberg Group meetings are top-secret, involve very important people. In general, it's good for conspiracy-building. As far as the Internet knows, it is true that no delegates from Asian countries participates in them.
According to Google, it is possible to bake a Jaffa cake. It has no VAT because it is a cake, not a biscuit.
Eden Project is real and in Cornwall (SW England), but the Eden in this story is probably actually somewhere in west midlands?
I've no idea what George Osborne's watch actually is, I guessed from photos. Cartier tank watches are as described. The very specific novel refers to Vanity Fair where a character called George Osborne is a cad.
Doctor Who episodes near the end of Ten's tenure really were about earth being somewhere random in space courtesy of the Daleks.
Floating houses of Netherland are real. They are prepared for the floods...
The whispering chamber/gallery exists in St. Paul and in the Capitol Building in the US.
Xe Services LLC is formerly known as Blackwater USA, the private military company most notoriously employed in Iraq by US government/contractors. It's true that apparently they're in some sort of legal void at the moment.
The bleak scene Nick thought of before he left London is actually from a description of post-WWI scenario in Germany. The bit about about ration booklets being issued by the Chancellor before stepping on board a ship has precedent in Lamont, the British Chancellor during the recession of the 1920s.
1832 was the first Land Reform Act. It benefited the Tories more than the Whigs...
He heard a tremendous noise inside his head and startled awake.
- I realised it doesn't make sense to anyone who hasn't experienced it, but it's a real phenomenon known as "exploding head syndrome" possibly triggered by stress.
Contra mundum- against the world. (I wanted to make Brideshead Revisited allusion before being too obvious; in the book, it was "Sebastian, contra mundum" (with Sebastian, against the world)
A "knight's tour" is remembered and later revealed as a horribly geeky joke. David Miliband forced Nick to run around Europe as if he's on the board to solve a problem instead of playing the game until time was right. For the sake of completeness, the second part of the joke: English opening in chess is, essentially, an opening intended for attacking the center from the flank. Ed probably means that David is attacking the center of the Tory party from his left-leaning Lib-Dem ways.
John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty" didn't like Conservatives of his time. He also provides the Lib-Dem handbook. "Tyranny of the majority" is not reference to chaotic democracy, rather it's concerning the overwhelming political/social tradition.
The whole war storyline is derived from The Conflict of the Orders in the Roman Republic, representing the conflict between the patricians and the plebians which involved the plebs seceding from the state three times and gaining only a little from it. The first war in this story was based actually on The Social Wars which took place prior to the conflict of the orders. No one really knows how the conflict was resolved.
Finally, yet another disclaimer:
I took one introduction to macroeconomics class during undergrad. Everything about the economy in there is only at that level.
I'm not British. I actually didn't realise how much of a conceit it is to write an apocalyptic fic about floods when I began.
This fic can also be succintly summarized as: "In a post-apocalyptic world, Cameron's Coalition's autocratic tendencies are stopped by Labour and Clameron."
Fic title: A Parliament of Owls
- etymologically suggestive of "a parliament of fools/fowls"
- the "fowls" origin from a Chaucerian tale where a dreamer dreams of a council of birds where Nature presides the "pairing-off" of them (Clameron etc)
- also, my personal interpretation of the characterizations- symbolically wise, realistically dastardly (birds of prey sorts)
The chapter titles are all quotes from various works that are quoted/referenced within the chapter in one way or another
Chapter 1: Ithaka by CP Cavafy
Chapter 2: Kublai Khan (or, A Vision in a Dream) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Chapter 3: Richard II by Shakespeare (Act II...I think)
Chapter 4: The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 5: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Chapter 6: Double-Vision of Michael Robartes by W.B. Yeats
(the chapter also quotes Song of Songs by Wilfred Owens and He Wishes for the Heaven's Embroidered Clothes by Yeats)
Chapter 7: Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 8: The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats
Chapter 9: To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
Thames Barrier has a limited lifespan; according to Discovery Channel's it is built to last until 2030 if the ocean levels continue to rise. The newly revised figure is 2060. Presumably afterward new technology would take over...or they're giving up London.
According to the Internet, Bilderberg Group meetings are top-secret, involve very important people. In general, it's good for conspiracy-building. As far as the Internet knows, it is true that no delegates from Asian countries participates in them.
According to Google, it is possible to bake a Jaffa cake. It has no VAT because it is a cake, not a biscuit.
Eden Project is real and in Cornwall (SW England), but the Eden in this story is probably actually somewhere in west midlands?
I've no idea what George Osborne's watch actually is, I guessed from photos. Cartier tank watches are as described. The very specific novel refers to Vanity Fair where a character called George Osborne is a cad.
Doctor Who episodes near the end of Ten's tenure really were about earth being somewhere random in space courtesy of the Daleks.
Floating houses of Netherland are real. They are prepared for the floods...
The whispering chamber/gallery exists in St. Paul and in the Capitol Building in the US.
Xe Services LLC is formerly known as Blackwater USA, the private military company most notoriously employed in Iraq by US government/contractors. It's true that apparently they're in some sort of legal void at the moment.
The bleak scene Nick thought of before he left London is actually from a description of post-WWI scenario in Germany. The bit about about ration booklets being issued by the Chancellor before stepping on board a ship has precedent in Lamont, the British Chancellor during the recession of the 1920s.
1832 was the first Land Reform Act. It benefited the Tories more than the Whigs...
He heard a tremendous noise inside his head and startled awake.
- I realised it doesn't make sense to anyone who hasn't experienced it, but it's a real phenomenon known as "exploding head syndrome" possibly triggered by stress.
Contra mundum- against the world. (I wanted to make Brideshead Revisited allusion before being too obvious; in the book, it was "Sebastian, contra mundum" (with Sebastian, against the world)
A "knight's tour" is remembered and later revealed as a horribly geeky joke. David Miliband forced Nick to run around Europe as if he's on the board to solve a problem instead of playing the game until time was right. For the sake of completeness, the second part of the joke: English opening in chess is, essentially, an opening intended for attacking the center from the flank. Ed probably means that David is attacking the center of the Tory party from his left-leaning Lib-Dem ways.
John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty" didn't like Conservatives of his time. He also provides the Lib-Dem handbook. "Tyranny of the majority" is not reference to chaotic democracy, rather it's concerning the overwhelming political/social tradition.
The whole war storyline is derived from The Conflict of the Orders in the Roman Republic, representing the conflict between the patricians and the plebians which involved the plebs seceding from the state three times and gaining only a little from it. The first war in this story was based actually on The Social Wars which took place prior to the conflict of the orders. No one really knows how the conflict was resolved.
Finally, yet another disclaimer:
I took one introduction to macroeconomics class during undergrad. Everything about the economy in there is only at that level.
I'm not British. I actually didn't realise how much of a conceit it is to write an apocalyptic fic about floods when I began.