Annotated 1-24
At one point, we had outlined Gravedust’s destination as “Rendorr, the Human Capitol of New Icarun.” I no longer remember why we instead settled on “Gastonia” as the name for the human capital. After Penny and Aggie‘s “Belleville,” it’s the second fictional city I’ve co-created that has a real-world American namesake, and since I have a lot of family in North Carolina, I’ve very likely driven through the other Gastonia at some point. We didn’t really sweat it once we realized that, though.
One influence on the name was likely Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. He’s strong and privileged, thinks he’s entitled to everything, takes by force what’s not given to him and schemes to get what he can’t take by force… generalize that behavior out to an entire government and what’ve you got?
There are a fair number of occasions in Guilded Age where humans and others use “Gastonia” to mean a nation, not just a capital city. Since the ghost automatically knows that Gravedust means a city, I think there might be some synecdoche going on there, but it rarely seems to be the source of any confusion.
Nice pull-away to emphasize the vastness of the desert. The whole sequence is lovely.
There are a few instances of cities and empires sharing a name… Rome, for one.
And the ghost’s comment doesn’t really fail to work if Gravedust is referring to the country. Not if the desert is a big as it looks.
And now I’m reminded of the ending of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. I still have a few of his books left to read, but I suspect that those last few paragraphs will remain my favorite bit of his writing.
One of my favorites. That and ‘Soul Music’.
Are we gonna talk about GASTONia and BELLEville?
Nice catch!
The odds of being from the culture descripted in works… I’ve read both works and never connected the dots? Gaston is for me like a typical airhead name (one from a humor song and one from Franquin’s comics where it depicts a peace n love lazy ass) and Belleville is… like this parisian suburbian areau with a proletarian tradtion…
I always had assumed Gastonia was a large city-state. So city & nation would be pretty much the same thing in most conversations.
^This
I had assumed it to be more like a Rome situation.
It could even be the case that at the time he became a ghost, Gastonia was only a city and that it grew to be a country by the time the story starts.