#madeleine things

[wasntthereyesterday]

Headcanon (kind of?)

Finally sat down and worked out a timeline for Madeleine's backstory. It's under a Read More because it turned out to be quite long.

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|   Madeleine Wetherell is born. She is a winter baby, born in late December. |   Madeleine is 4 1/2. Sarah is born in early summer. |   Maddy is 6 1/2, Sarah is is 2, and it is summer; from this time to the year the         Aunt arrives (3 1/2 years), the sisters manage to chase off six nannies. |   Maddy is 10, Sarah is 5 1/2. This is the winter that the Aunt arrives, bringing         with her her stories. The girls decide that instead of being partners-in-         -crime, they will be heroes. Maddy will be the greatest enchanter that         ever lived, and Sarah will be the second-greatest, or possibly a knight. |   Maddy turns twelve and decides to be Madeleine, not Maddy. This is the         beginning of Madeleine's angry period as well as Sarah's shy and uncertain         period. This is also the year that the girls (Sarah is 7 1/2) first meet the         Professor, who is eccentric and fascinating and studies all the different         kinds of magic there are. Also he is a cursebreaker. This is the first         Madeleine has heard of this profession. |   Madeleine, 12 1/2, has for some time been showing a great deal of promise         as an enchanter. Her parents are very pleased, almost enough to make up         for Sarah's utter lack of talent for magic. That summer the Aunt secures         permission to take the girls to her old home in New Mexico. The winter         following, Madeleine does a great deal of thinking. She comes to the         conclusion that she will not be like her parents and finds that she very         much wants to do something worthwhile with her talent. |   Madeleine is sixteen. She has been visiting the Professor, listening to his         stories of strange magics and far-off countries, and helping him with his         notes and experiments for several years. He offers her an apprenticeship:         the chance to travel the world and study magic in all its many forms. She         begins to make plans to cut loose from her parents' world. |   Madeleine is seventeen when her plans come to fruition. She finally provokes         an argument with her father bigger than any before, introduces the idea of         leaving, and is disowned. The following day, having been stripped of the         Wetherell surname, she changes her name to Ward. She and the Professor         sign an apprenticeship contract on New Year's Eve and leave for southern         Europe within the week.

|   In the course of her seven-year apprenticeship, Madeleine travels, learns,         studies, and meets people all over the world. |   Madeleine strikes up a friendship with Theo, a student of mathematical magic         who studied with the Professor for a few years before seeking instructors         nearer to his specialty. Madeleine and the Professor begin to make a habit         of wintering wherever Theo happens to be studying at the time. |   During the fourth year of the apprenticeship, it becomes clear that the Professor         is making a point, among the various people and places they visit, to seek         out unusual curses and magic users who break them. His interests lean         towards the anthropological approach, while his student is clearly aiming         at a more proactive career. |   Theo begins developing a set of fascinating new theories about the application         of modern physics to spatial magic, as well as exploring the field of         thopothesimorphology. |   Towards the end of the fourth year, shortly before Christmas, when Madeleine         is about to turn 21, she screws up the courage to write to Sarah, now 15 1/2.         She is very worried that her sister will never forgive her for having left and,         worse, for having failed to reestablish contact before, but it turns out that         Sarah is just delighted to hear from her again and has apparently grown up         and out of her preteen timidity and lack of confidence. |   Madeleine and Theo run experiments and test new ideas in the Professor's old         house in Campobasso, which contains a number of old magically-bent rooms         and passages. When their research runs out of space, they acquire an old,         magically-saturated building in San Francisco. This becomes home base for         all kinds of experiments; even the Professor takes advantage of the place         sometimes. |   Their first great triumph occurs when they manage to link the back hallway of the         research building to the side door of the library in the Campobasso house.         Over the following months, the building becomes a marvel of bent space,         containing rooms and bits of space from a half-dozen buildings in various         parts of the country. By the time Madeleine and the Professor depart in the         spring, Theo has flung himself into a new avenue of research: windows and         doors. It is the sixth year of Madeleine's apprenticeship; she is 22. |   Sarah lets slip that she is a dragon-slayer. This is news to Madeleine, and she         only comes down from her haze of protective fury when Sarah points out that         she is also really damned good at it. The Aunt, who knows a thing or two about         dragons, confirms this. Nonetheless, Madeleine finds new impetus to explore         protective magic. |   Madeleine and Theo discuss the possibility of entering private research after         they complete their education. After all, they already have the space, a fully-         equipped magical laboratory, and a research partner with comparable         levels of sanity. Also, they blow up the back room and replace part of it         with the front. |   Sarah writes that she intends to take a gap year after she graduates, in order to         travel. Madeleine resigns herself to having a little sister who habitually goes         around picking fights with things that would like to eat her. |   Madeleine turns 24 and, shortly after, graduates her apprenticeship. She and         Theo open a small magic shop in what used to be the back room of their         research building but, due to certain bends in the physical shape of the         building, is now an admirable front room with a Door that goes a great many         places. The Shop earns a capital letter by making very clear that, as they         suspected, it has a will of its own. This is not unheard of in locations that have         been drenched in magic for many years, and Madeleine at least is rather         pleased. |   Towards the end of January, they stand on a couple of hovering chairs and paint         in bright red letters, Drake & Ward Custom Spellwork and Misc. Magic. By         the time the paint has dried, the Shop has decided that it prefers to be known         as The Dragon's Lair.

[wasntthereyesterday]

...the whole point of magic is that it’s impossible, that it goes against how we know the world works, and that verses with magic are not ‘scientific’. But what defines a scientist is not the world they live in; it’s how they approach that world. It’s a point of view and a set of methods all wrapped into one. It’s the idea that anything can be understood, and just because something isn’t understood yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It’s the idea that anything can be studied, examined in a methodical and scientifically sound manner, can be subjected to some kind of tests and yield some kind of results, and that those data can be slowly assembled into a picture of how the thing in question works. And it’s the hunger for the unknown, the desire to find something that isn’t understood and investigate it, perhaps obsessively, until the dark rolls back and the puzzle is solved—not completely, though, because when you assemble one part of the puzzle you find that you haven’t yet reached the edge, and there are new frontiers, new questions to be answered, questions you didn’t even know to ask before.

[wasntthereyesterday]

Headcanon: Trend

Put a word in my ask and I will write a headcanon about it for my muse.

trend n. 1. a general direction in which something is developing or changing...

The Madeleine of eight years ago, or even of four or five years ago, was very different from Madeleine as she is today. Oh, the core content of her character is the same--compassionate, analytical, strong sense of justice, desire to make a difference in the world, love of taking things apart to understand their inner workings. But there are several trends visible over the seven years of traveling and learning.

Some of these are sharpening and refining of something that was already there. Madeleine wanted to make a difference in the world; over time, she came to understand and accept the fact that you can't help everyone. But she never, ever lessened in her determination to help someone, anyone she could reach, anyone she could find or see. She learned her limits, but this didn't just mean that she learned what she couldn't do; she also learned just how far she could and would go to help someone.

Others have to do with learning self-control and covering up something that itself didn't change. For example, her hatred of injustice and deliberate harm of the helpless never lessened; but she did learn to keep her mouth shut, her expression tranquil, and her voice gentle when dealing with the victims. No need to further frighten someone who's been hurt... better to save the fury or (at the very least) sarcasm for those that deserve it. But learning this was a gradual process, and even when the idea sunk in, it took a while (and not a few scorching rants that unintentionally petrified people she was trying to help) to develop the ability to put it into practice. A casual observer might just have thought that the 24-year-old is less angry than the teenager was. They would be wrong. The fire is still there; she's just learned to keep it at a slow burn, which is much more effective in the long run.

[wasntthereyesterday]

Headcanon

Madeleine is a magic user.

But Madeleine is a scientist.

Bear with me for a moment. I know perfectly well that the whole point of magic is that it's impossible, that it goes against how we know the world works, and that verses with magic are not 'scientific'.

But what defines a scientist is not the world they live in; it's how they approach that world. It's a point of view and a set of methods all wrapped into one. It's the idea that anything can be understood, and just because something isn't understood yet doesn't mean it's impossible. It's the idea that anything can be studied, examined in a methodical and scientifically sound manner, can be subjected to some kind of tests and yield some kind of results, and that those data can be slowly assembled into a picture of how the thing in question works.

And it's the hunger for the unknown, the desire to find something that isn't understood and investigate it, perhaps obsessively, until the dark rolls back and the puzzle is solved--not completely, though, because when you assemble one part of the puzzle you find that you haven't yet reached the edge, and there are new frontiers, new questions to be answered, questions you didn't even know to ask before.

So Madeleine is a scientist. She researches magic; she subjects it to tests, finds what inputs give what outputs, tries to reduce her results to rules or definable processes, asks questions. What is different about this and that? Why did I get a different result here--what changed, and what did I do the same? How does this work? How do these additional factors alter the process and the result? And she tries to analyze many, many different types and schools of magic to some simple, basic concepts. And she trained under a magical social scientist, so there are questions like: Here are the differences, but what is the same--what do all or most of these systems of magic have in common? And it's not at all out of the realm of possibility that she could come up with, if not a Grand Unified Theory of Magic, then at least two or three major, over-arching theories.

[wasntthereyesterday]

    You save everyone. It's what you do.

                               Not always. I'm sorry.

Then what is the point of you?

[wasntthereyesterday]

✿ ⌨ ✎ ✄

✿ - laugh

Very quiet, almost inaudible, even when she doubles over laughing.

⌨ - time-wasting habits

Tinkering. My word, tinkering. She’s constantly playing around with everything from the wards to ink-stain removing charms and everything in-between. Some of it turns out to be useful, like the spell-glasses for seeing the structure of magic, but a lot of it is entirely absurd. There’s a whole hall of nothing but windows behind the coat closet in the shop, from when she got into playing with how magic can be applied to glass. One of the windows shows the interior of a printing press in a museum in California. Another shows a side street, an alley, really, near the Boston door—but only the Tuesdays; every day it skips ahead a week, so now it’s showing Tuesdays from what appears to be a possible future some forty years ahead.

✎ - taste in music/literature

Most of what she reads is for research—old collections of particular types of magics, crumbling treatises on magical theory, accounts of unusual or remote styles of magic use, and pages of handwritten records from the experiments and observations of magic users of the past. But when she has a little time, she enjoys the sort of story where riddles are solved or loopholes are found in prophecies. Also, detective stories.

✄ - nervous habits

If she has a piece of thread or string or ribbon, she sometimes finds herself tying rows of tiny knots one-handed, knotting light-hearts and come-home-safe charms. They aren’t exactly real magic, just a tradition where she grew up, little things that children would learn from older kids, a habit she kept over the years.

[wasntthereyesterday]

Your fault, my girl, is too much compassion. Out of some foolish desire to heal their wounds you will sink yourself in the suffering of others; no one holding you under, you will drown.

"Seven Deadly Virtues No. 6"