#be the serpent

[yojfull]

I just did a reread of the entire October Daye series to look for breadcrumbs and hints in the earlier books towards some of the big reveals. The following contains spoilers for all books through An Innocent Sleep, so I’m hiding it all under a cut.

As of Book 18, we have found both Oberon and Titania hiding out in relatively minor characters in the San Francisco area, as well as Janet, and it’s clearly hinted that Maeve is also in the neighborhood. Janet was a housewife in Berkeley, Oberon was a cop in San Francisco, and Titania was October’s changeling friend Stacy. Upon rereading, there were more clues for Titania than Oberon or Janet, but there was also more time building that story. Accordingly, I think Maeve will have more breadcrumbs as well. The following is a list of potential candidates, and the arguments for and against them through the whole series.

There are clues scattered throughout, but especially in the last 3 books. From Be The Serpent - “[find] Mom lurking under a rock somewhere. Or maybe a pier. She always did like the water.” When we get to Sleep No More and An Innocent Sleep, the question is who has been shoved outside the main bubble, or is back when they should be gone?

Here is my list of candidates, in no particular order:

Lily

She’s a very rare type of fae, but her powers are extremely restricted by location. She’s strongly tied to water, and has been keeping an eye on Amandine and October for many years. Her court is one of the oldest independents in the region, but she stays out of politics. She also knows about Luna and her ties to Blind Michael. On the other hand, we’re pretty sure she died in Late Eclipses, which might be a problem.

Marcia

There’s a reason this seems to be the most popular fan theory. She’s a weak unspecified changeling who has been there from the very beginning, present at many critical moments, with often inexplicable immunity or reactions. She steps up to be seneschal of Goldengreen, she has no fear of the night haunts, she loves pixies, and resists transformation by Simon (One Salt Sea is a big book for Marcia). In Chimes at Midnight, she reacts to King Giliad discussions as if she remembers him. She is unphased by meeting multiple Firstborn (Ludiaeg and Amphitrite and Eira). Eira also fails to transform her, or she escapes the transformation somehow. We also never see a description of the smell of her magic. She does not appear in Titania’s mirror universe, but we don’t ever go to Goldengreen, so she may still be there. The only real argument against Marcia is she’s too obvious.

Marianne

We haven't met her directly in the novels, but the Windermere’s nursemaid comes up a number of times, saving Arden and Nolan from Oleander and death in the earthquake, helping hide them for years after. While she is missing, Nolan is convinced she is still alive, and brings Marcia to the Duchy of Ships to help him search for her. The biggest arguments come from the novella, Once Broken Faith, where Marianne tells a story with the sentence “because she was happy then, my sweet girl” in reference to Luidaeg, strongly implying Marianne has a sense of ownership. Titania is called “her father's other wife”, which again hints at Marianne being her mother.

Melly

Hob in Shadowed Hills, Kerry's mother. She fits the pattern of background characters close to October, but her inclusion in Titania's illusions makes it less likely.

Mary the Roane

Another background character with significant impact, but her level of contact with the Luidaeg as her mother makes her unlikely.

Julie

Another background character with strong ties to October, and changeling status, plus a transformation type. She does mysteriously vanish in the fight with Titania, but Seanan indicated in a Tumblr post that was an editing hiccup (or was that a false trail?) Her desire to kill October at various points is probably the biggest argument against her as Maeve.

January

One of the people Titania shoves out of the way in her illusion, but also, January *creates* things. She made the first cyberdryad. She died and was resurrected. October says “There had probably been some reason she needed Jan’s existence to keep her reality from crumbling, but i couldn’t think of what it might be”

Minna

Offhand mention in Sleep No More, she deposited servants at Dreaming Glass and vanished. Too offhand for such a major player.

Helmi

Maeve is a creature of the water and the deep, and the most maternal of the three - her presence in Saltmist still gives her visibility to the land, but keeps her safe in the depths, away from Titania’s purview. She's more background than some of the other candidates, with no real unexpected capabilities. Like Marianne, some of the strongest evidence is in the novellas.

My slightly more complicated hypothesis: much like Titania had multiple pasts, Maeve too has gone through multiple identities, in 1906, she was Marianne, the Windemere’s nursemaid, and she sacrificed that version of herself for their survival, becoming Marcia. This explains both why Marcia recalls Giliad, as well as some of the signs pointing to Marianne.

#october daye #dont read seanan #seanan mcguire #spoilers #be the serpent #an innocent sleep #one salt sea #chimes at midnight #fan theory #leaving off character tags that might be spoilers #the luidaeg #rosemary and rue #sleep no more #late eclipses #once Broken Faith

[darkfrog24]

Preexisting rampage

OCTOBER: Good news, Summer Queen. You might still be under a spell, but at least you no longer have to decapitate your own children. What are you going to do now that you don't have to act like a raging psychopath wearing a bra made out of fire ants?

TITANIA: I KEEL YOU.

OCTOBER: *pokes spell* Is this thing on?

#Be the Serpent spoilers #October Daye spoilers #lovable chumps #seanan mcguire #be the serpent #october daye #original posts

[dracothulhu]

Reading Be the Serpent

Man, Luna really said 'mortal' with the hard 'R' there.

#october daye #october daye spoilers #be the serpent #seanan mcguire

[booksandchainmail]

You say 'do no harm' to a hero and he sets his blades aside. You say the same thing to a villain and she starts looking for loopholes.

Be the Serpent, by Seanan McGuire

#be the serpent #october daye #seanan mcguire

[sithiegoodness]

Anyone else finish Be the Serpent?

#October Daye #Toby Daye #seanan mcguire #be the serpent

[living400lbs]

What Toby's built to do

Spoilers for A Killing Frost and later

"Look at the little hero, Dad, and tell me what her line was built to do," said the Luidaeg. [...] "Don't break her," chided the Luidaeg.

Oberon frowned. "The blood is there - a living hope chest, to replace what has been broken. An instinctive understanding of the balances and interactions between our different strains, necessary for the doing of what's she's made to do. Sensitivity to magic. More than I would have thought advisable."

"Because it isn't," said the Luidaeg. "When she was younger, I used to worry she'd walk into an illusion and have a stroke where she stood. It's too much for one line to carry, but it's hers, and has to contend with it. Look deeper."

It felt like telling him not to break me and then to look deeper in the same breath was a contradiction, but I couldn't say anything. [....]

"No more illusions than the least of us, so no flowers, and little connection to the water - all she has is the blood," said Oberon. He had the audacity to sound surprised about that, as if somehow I should have picked up magic from the Queens, even though they had no part of my family tree. "But the blood she has is more than sufficient to break the world. Is this . . . Can she truly unravel another's working as the blood implies?"

The Luidaeg looked almost smug. "She can," she said. "I've seen her do it. [...] She finds the rough spots in the spell, digs her hands in, and pulls it apart," said the Luidaeg. "I've seen her tackle things that should have been infinitely too big for her to handle. Hell, she reversed a full Actaeon. On herself."

From Be The Serpent by Seanan McGuire

#Be The Serpent #seanan mcguire #october daye #the luidaeg #toby daye #toby broke the fish spell herself

[grayintogreen]

Hold on. I need to get FULLY EMOTIONAL about the Luidaeg right now.

THIS WOMAN DID NOTHING- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING- TO DESERVE WHAT WAS DONE TO HER. She deserves to be free of her geasa. She deserves to vacation in the Marianas Trench for a hundred years and sleep off five hundred years of BULLSHIT. Everyone knows it.

But she says point blank "no don't release me because I know what I'll do if I'm freed and you still need me." She is WILLING to continue to be bound so she won't run away and hide (and no one would stop her because everyone who knows her ALSO KNOWS that she's earned this).

This is a woman who has been born of contradictions since the first book and she's just so open about it (yeah she can't lie but she also didn't have to say anything at all). "I want to help you, but if I'm not bound to stay then I will pick myself because I'm tired and if I'm allowed to choose then that's the only choice." So she'll take the torture to ensure she won't make the call she's EARNED. Like I hesitate to even call it a selfish decision to leave and not come back, because, again, she didn't ask FOR ANY OF THIS. She deserves to rest.

This is the woman that all of Faerie calls a monster. This woman who says "I didn't deserve to be bound like this. I didn't deserve anything that happened to me. I deserve to rest. But not yet. And I know I can't trust myself to keep going if I'm not bound. So I have to wait."

Just... GAH. This is why she's one of my favorite characters in anything ever. If you hate this woman, you're wrong.

#october daye #the luidaeg #be the serpent #be the serpent spoilers

[marzipanandminutiae]

Congrats On The Sex cake but it’s Congrats On The Secret Evil Character Not Being Anyone You Care About

#october daye #be the serpent #october daye spoilers #(kind of)

[blue-mood-blue]

Well.

That certainly was a book, huh?

And now that my emotions have possibly settled and I am not normal about everything that happened, I think it’s a good time to share some thoughts.

I mean, first there’s the big one, right? Titania. People called it, and I’m so impressed by that, but what I’m more impressed by is the fact that this was the plan from the beginning and the series seeded enough clues that we COULD call it - I love that kind of thing. I love that feeling of being rewarded.

And the thing is, even though it was predicted? The confirmation didn’t do a thing to lessen the emotional impact. Every single time Toby talked to Stacy in this book, I felt this pit of dread somewhere under my heart - not even necessarily because the risk of Titania was present, but because of the love stretched out over the pit of reality dividing them. I think that line, when Toby said that Jessica stopped her dancing and that she thinks Stacy might have, too, is exactly right. She’s talking to a friend who is already dead and gone, in a way, and just hasn’t realized it yet. Toby is talking to a reality that’s crumbling to dust in front of her. And I felt every agonizing moment of it - every last, stolen moment they managed to have.

Fucking hell, though, Titania. The fucked up situation that she’s been in. The fact tht it hasn’t changed her, not that we can tell. The fact that Toby managed to look at her and wonder what damaged her… there’s more there, I think. And there’s a very large part of me that wonders if the weight of so many remembered lives, so many people she lived as, so many deaths of her own children, won’t… change her, somehow, in a way that it hasn’t caught hold yet. That could be wishful thinking, but what a thing if love of a mother - all of those mothers - managed to sink under her skin.

Also FUCKING OBERON. Holy shit. I think I assumed what everyone assumed, that he was… recovering, or waiting for the right moment to reinsert himself in the lives of his people, but no. No, he would willingly have stood aside and watched them kill each other. Would have to the end, only talked out of it by his daughter, and he deserved every harsh word he heard. He deserves more than some telling off (and I am DELIGHTED that Toby immediately hones in on the highest authority in the room to yell at, even when that means yelling at god). There is so much about parents doing poorly by their children in this series, but I have to admit, I wasn’t waiting for it from Oberon. He seemed… benevolent, the way he was described, and maybe he was but that doesn’t forgive him being one hell of a deadbeat.

That said, I think all of The Three have failed as parents. I’m not excluding Maeve in this, even though we haven’t met her - she could be wonderful and loving and still have her faults, and at this point (and honestly, as a general concept) I think it’s dangerous to place any of them on a pedestal.

Cannot believe that there are four fucking Firstborn just. Around, now. Not only does Toby have many aunt and uncle Firstborn, she’s got niece and nephew Firstborn now, too. However the hell that works. They’re still calling her aunt, anyway. FOUR of them. And all seers. The hell are they supposed to see.

(And isn’t that interesting, the idea that Faerie is making what and who it needs. That Oberon had to pick apart Toby’s purpose, that he didn’t make her that way.)

I am extremely interested in some of the details we learned about Faerie, too! I am increasingly certain that it’s a somewhat-sentient force, and that Toby talking to the knowes is gonna translate to her talking to Faerie in its entirety. I feel like the Heart is going to be incredibly important, possibly requiring Toby to do something about that leak that it’s apparently sprung. (And boy oh boy am I feeling something about the “oh we definitely didn’t HAVE to sacrifice any humans to it, it just worked better, so we did”)

Sylvester. Can we talk about Sylvester? I spent many, many sections of this book side-eyeing him, hoping he was HEARING some things and chewing them over. First, hearing Simon’s side of things - knowing, without a doubt, that as horrible as what Simon did was, it was still a twisting of Eira’s words to protect Luna, Raysel, and Toby. I hope he heard what Simon said, and that it occurred to him that had anyone else been given that order, had someone who loved him less been pointed towards his family, it could have been so much worse. His loss could have been so much worse. Not that it forgives what Simon did, not that Simon would want easy forgiveness, but… that could have been so bad. And then Raysel, wanting the time away from his home, Toby telling him in no uncertain terms that what should have been her home has been withheld from her and that’s why he doesn’t know what her plans are, that she crept around Shadowed Hills like a criminal and looked for the quickest escape from him…

And more than that. More than that, stabbing Simon through the stomach. Because I’m sure that blade belonged to Sylvester, and that might be the first moment he knew, truly knew, what a fight it is to throw off a compulsion. How easy it is to destroy your own life, destroy the lives of others, when someone that much more powerful than you doesn’t give you a choice.

He’s got a hell of a lot more work to do, but it’s a start and I’m happy to see it. Also he should absolutely take Simon’s advice and get a divorce - I understand his loyalty to Luna, but he said outright she doesn’t and can’t love him anymore; he doesn’t need to sacrifice everything else for a loveless marriage. (And maybe now that he’ll have more people in his life, hopefully, he’ll start to understand that.)

(Speaking of people in someone’s life… I am thinking about found family. I am thinking about Oberon’s recognition of Toby’s found family as hers, written right into the binding he set on Titania. I don’t know what it means yet, but maybe it means something.)

Then, of course…

TOBY IS PREGANTE.

I mean, I figured during the scene with Melly - with the onions, but also Melly commenting about “so it’s a happy marriage is it” that made me start narrowing my eyes in suspicion. A little soft that Simon found out so soon, and extremely amused that so many people knew before she or Tybalt did. And what soft moments they could have! Preparing, telling the family, thinking of names…

AND THEN MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN TITANIA WALKS IN THE GODDAMN HOUSE. Tybalt got two minutes, tops, to be happy about being a father when October started screaming in his arms, and don’t think that’s not gonna feature in more than a few nightmares ahead of him.

I honestly have no idea what exactly that last chapter means. My immediate thought, what with “making Toby someone else’s problem” was that she got grabbed and taken back to Amandine to deal with - Titania does seem like the “teach your child some manners” sort, and Simon and August were out of the Undersea at that point so it’s not impossible they got grabbed, too. I’ve heard compelling arguments that she might be asleep, too, under a very intricate and heavy illusion (given that it was the queen of illusions who did whatever the fuck, and the next book’s title). Both options are agonizing - I don’t know which one I’m siding with (on one hand, Simon should not have to deal with that again, on the other, I am extremely tempted at the idea of August and Toby forming some kind of relationship), but I will be considering all possibilities because if I’m being honest. As devastating a place as that was to leave things, I do love the “trapped in an illusionary dream world” and also the idea of Toby maybe possibly getting a little bit rescued when things are usually the other way around (and listen, this is good for my angsty, fic-writing heart, let me have this).

No matter what it turns out to be, though? The line about the cat in the garden absolutely gutted me.

AND NOW. WE WAIT.

#october daye #october daye spoilers #be the serpent #AAAAAAAA #god #that was SUCH a book #i am feeling MANY emotions #and the immediate urge to write fic so we’ll see what comes of that?? #but MAN #many thoughts head full

[starburstdragon]

#october daye #seanan mcguire #be the serpent #be the serpent spoilers #bloomposting

[ninsiana0]

Read BE THE SERPENT (October Daye book 16) by Seanan McGuire if you love Toby, Faerie, having your heart ripped out, secrets, toxic polyamorous dynamics, family trauma, pancakes, the long game, ugly crying, hidden identities, origin stories, blood, and kitties.

#Seanan McGuire #October Daye #Toby Daye #Be The Serpent #book #books #bookish #bookworm #book nerd #book review #book reviews #book recommendation #book recommendations #novel #novels #read #reads #reader #reading #read more #readingissexy #readersoftumblr #booksoftumblr #bibliophile #book series #faerie

[tflatte]

“she always did like the water” i would just like to announce that if it turns out maeve has been in the koi pond(or been the koi pond) i’m going to Lose My Mind

#october daye #be the serpent

[alwaysbeyondhope]

WHAT IN THE FLYING FUCK

Still have the novella to read at the end, but OMFG I just finished Be The Serpent and I’m sorry WHAT

I…what?? WHAT.

#personal #seanan mcguire #october daye #toby daye #be the serpent #be the serpent spoilers

[booksandchainmail]

One of the few mercies of Faerie is that the purebloods like ritual and tradition so much that they have predetermined ways of saying almost everything from "Bob's dead" to "Bob's pregnant" to "Bob's overthrown the rightful ruler and if you don't recognize him as King right now, you're going to regret it." It's sort of like having a society run by greeting cards.

Be the Serpent, by Seanan McGuire

#be the serpent #october daye #seanan mcguire

[seawitchkaraoke]

List of people/things Maeve could be hiding as (feel free to add on):

Marcia (old theory, old news, probably true though)

Kerry/Julie/some other old friend of Toby (any thin blooded changeling is suspicioud now,and them being Toby’s friends makes them even more suspicious)

Mitch (making the Brown children the apparently first and only children of directly Maeve and Titania together, explains why they’re seers (Titania really didn’t want to make seers but Maeve does them a lot so here we are), also he’s a thin blooded changeling, also it would be really funny but also very sad like imagine Maeve waking up and realizing she could have saved Jessica if she only woke up earlier... ouch)

Danny (ppl who theorized him to be Oberon were wrong, he’s actually Maeve, Arden (who sarcastically asked him whether he was Oberon in disguise way back when she first showed up) is screaming)

A koi (toby met her already, they’ve been vibing together as fish and she never knew)

Simon (he resisted Titania so clearly he must be Maeve)

That kelpie that wanted to eat Toby way back in book 1

the rock Raysel picked up, that Danny then later interrogated and put in the sink when it mentioned it used to be in water

Firtha (somehow)

Lilly (she’s dead? lmao water doesn’t die and neither does Maeve)

#october daye #be the serpent #maeve #october daye spoilers #i particularily like the rock one #bc that would be the funniest shit ever

[living400lbs]

"Good. Focus on that. Focus on the idea that this would be a small crisis, something I could deal with that had upset [Karen and Cassandra] but wasn't going to be catastrophe. It wasn't going to be the end of the world."

Chapter 4 of Be The Serpent by Seanan McGuire

#seanan mcguire #be the serpent #october daye #toby daye #oh toby #girl you can hope but