The Jade League || a novel by Tiffany Shih || v.2 fog

INSPIRATIONS

AP English Language: Odd as it sounds, it's true. I have to give credit to Mr. Jason Friend for planting annoying little weeds in my brain about metaphysics and ethics and who knows what else. Here's a breakdown of the major inspirations.
Plato's Metaphysics For a short time when I was developing this world, mages feared "drifting," which I considered the return to the Forms. Mages were like God's "mistake" and they were constantly being pulled back to their origins. Those who survived and pulled themselves back experienced a sort of enlightenment, having seen the ideal versions of everything (concepts like Good, Justice, Beauty, and Courage; and natural objects like humans, cats, and trees). I'm not sure what I was going to do with that, but Etienne had gone through seven drifts, and thus was viewed as the champion over fate. I threw this out eventually though.
Ethics This has been my favorite subject for ages and ages, even back when I was writing The Gathering. We did an entire unit in AP Lang on Ethical Decision Making, covering Utilitarianism (John Stuart Mills), Moral Rights (dignity and autonomy), Justice (distributive, retributive, and compensatory), Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant), and Virtue Ethics (Aristotle's Golden Mean). In debating these approaches during class, I thought a lot about how my characters might face these kinds of decisions. I realized a great deal of conflict arrives when you trifle with a person's right to life, which is far more applicable to the lives of characters like Etienne and Mira. This is the main reason I've been carrying around my Lang notebook.
Immanuel Kant There was a quote in one of our readings that I really liked, although I'm not sure how I'm going to use it yet. In The Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant wrote: "[Even with the qualities of good will] the coolness of a villain makes him not only far more dangerous but also more directly abominable in our eyes." In other words, the fact that someone with good will can still commit heinous crimes makes him all the more dangerous. Thought-provoking, isn't it?
L'Etranger (by Albert Camus) We read this in English, and I spent some time reading the French version. Our in-class discussions for this book brought up some questions I particularly liked thinking about. Is it really possible to know other people? Is it really possible to understand yourself? Do abstract concepts like love have any real meaning? Then there are some interesting quotes like, "It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot," and something along the lines of "he wasn't even sure he was alive because he was living like a dead man."

British Accents: MY GOSH. You have no idea how annoying it is to have British accents bouncing around in your head for days and days. In the end, the easiest way to get rid of them was to write up some dialogue involving a British character. Luckily, I'd already developed Evelyn Bennett, Etienne's Latin professor in secondary school. I wrote a few letters between the two (check Kethadros). Then I started spinning storylines for Etienne's high school (secondary school) years, including Olivier and a new character named Elizabeth. You'll meet them eventually.

Trench coats: I love trench coats. I think everyone should wear trench coats. The Gathering wasn't exactly the best place to put everyone in trench coats, but it's a task much more easily done in The Jade League. HEHEHE Trench coats for EVERYONE!!!

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