I suspect (but do not know for a fact) that Jim Butcher's initial ideas of HBCD & DF included a vague "Chosen One" concept. That he picked "Halloween" as "a cool date."
Jim was already a RPG'er, a LARP'er. Me may have had pagan friends... and even if not, the ideas of "Samhain" and the "thinning of veil between mortal and otherworld" had definitely seeped into geek/gamer culture by then!
indeed. And actually I'm thinking pagan is exactly the one he mentioned. Won't find it as a woj, possibly in a transcript, but definitely in old videos.(thinking post changes) about how he picks what mythology he's going to use in his books and it basically boiling down to what he knows, and what he has sources he can ask questions of.
I don't know if he had the "Starborn" notion, or any "the stars [specifically] are right." He could have been a "Chosen One" because of his bloodline, or because of some Sacred Chrism applied at birth, or any of several other ways; AFAIK, nobody has ever sought answers from Jim as to why he picked a "Starborn" / "conjunction" origin-story for his Chosen One.
(It could as easily have been something about that liminal, All-Hallows-Eve state and just a 666-year accumulation of supernatural potential that settles on one "lucky" mortal every 2/3-millenium...)
I can't say for sure atm, but hasn't it been confirmed to be a much larger number and most of them didn't survive to adulthood or gather enough power to actually matter?🤔 I recall reading people discussing it here and I THINK it was from an interview he did around PT, but I'm not putting any weight behind that until I figure out for sure.(they were theorizing the main turtle neck was a starborn and discussing the impossibility of 40k people all being born at exactly the same moment to BE starborn, trying to match his age with Harry's)
I have a guess at where he got starborn though it doesn't explain how he's actually using it. The 90's had a rather popular trope with hero's born from or becoming stars based on their actions(specifically that I recall offhand, dragonheart and the animated Hercules), I find it likely starborn has some ties with being born from or reborn into the stars. Or just celestial bodies period. Greek information on the stars had 5 satellites they could see unaided from earth(but didn't know they were stars or planets
The ruling planet of Scorpio is Pluto. Back the early 2,000 B.C. the outer planets, Uranus and Neptune were not yet discovered since the telescope had not yet been invented. Astrologers and astronomers could only work with planets visible to the eye.
eh, look at that Harry's ruling planet is the one most directly connected to Hades who according to Hades Harry has, alot in common with. Idk if Jim's a horoscope fan but the sign for someone born specifically on Oct 31, 1974 is water.. something Harry's supposed to actually be pretty good at...) but considering some of the ties with stars in the DF, specifically the 5 described as draped about the neck of lady night when Harry goes back to the stone table and the additional stars and stones. And the meta of the NN actually existing in a sphere around earth in the DF, outside specifically includes the stars.(can't remember but something about walking across the moon to the GK's domain too) take fact A. The NN is earth centric and B. stars are outside the NN, beyond it's activity as an immune system and you start to see a picture, if not an immediate answer.
I'm just going to assert that Jim didn't actually research that there was any "meaningful" or "significant" conjunction (in the conventional (i.e. astronomical or (more-likely) astrological senses of meaningful or significant) that happens on Halloween every 666 years, and no other times.
and I'm going to... Heavily agree with you lol. At least at first. Trying to rectify a 666 year cycle with anything I'd looked into previous just doesn't add up at all. It seemed like a complete shoehorn based on the original references to Yeats second coming and the gyre(a two thousand year cycle that should just be coming to a repetition) and had decided offhand it must be because he wants to reference the number of the beast specifically in relation to Harry.(I've previously made a case for Harry being the inversion of the antichrist... Or potentially JUST the antichrist, at least as described by Yeats)
But then I listened to other people trying to wrap the previous cycles date around Hastings to implicate Mab and Titania as Starborn(which I don't disagree with) and came to realize the problem. So 666 into 1332 into 1998. A year before SF and probably coincidentally when Murphy made captain. But then decided to play with the numbers a bit. Starting with subtracting from Harry's presumed birth year 1974, and then tried using TWC's actual birth as the reference and got nothing. 🤷♂️ My best guess is the starborn conjunction itself is a lot bigger than we realize and forms multiple moments where it's power is expressed and not just the one. Harry for instance was born at a time that makes him a potent destroyer, But Elaine was born in the spring, I'd bet at the opposite solstice. These two were born under very different yet significant dates and are both starborn. The exact reason is unknown for them to be starborn but I do not presume that everyone born between the two are automatically in the bracket to be starborn. That it must be something else we're not seeing. (Though I did find
https://www.space.com/22538-nemesis-star.html#:~:text=If%20Nemesis%20traveled%20through%20the,inner%20solar%20system%20%E2%80%94%20and%20Earth. This to be a possible inspiration around Nemesis as an idea in the DF.(which would perfectly fit the 'dark mirror' theory))
The expression of specific celestial bodies being in a position of power in conjunction with another that only comes around 666 years, a rarer body that's only around for the cycle. Which would place each starborn as a different potential avatar of their respective star, with the conjunction being the ability to express that potential on earth.
Anyway, I got lost back there somewhere so if you followed all that kudo's 👍
There is no there there.
He did a bunch of brainstorming, but I don't think he ever went back to these origin-story questions (or maybe he did... but could not discover such an astro<whatever> event, and he was stuck with some of his 1st-draft "early-episode wierdness").
that. Or he invented one so we couldn't research it to figure it out 😂 meaning the only meaningful thing about the 666 cycle is the use of the number of the beast.
Jim isn't actually addressing a "timeline" there, or specific & objective facts like birth-dates, and x-before-y-but-after-w sequences, &c.
indeed. But I don't see how it's existence proves he didn't research the specifics of Harry's birthday either. The ambiguity around his birthday specifically. How's it ambiguous in the timeline itself? Someone pointed out once, the day Harry was born also happened to be either the full, or the new moon(can't remember offhand which it was) I.. can't find coincidence in that. He planned his birthday, just not the details of his cycle.
Moon Phase Details - Oct 31st, 1974
Phase: Full Moon
He's talking about Harry's own memories of his life, and stories he tells about those memories, and the fact that people don't remember well, and are "unreliable narrators" (Jim repeatedly calls out Harry repeated as an unreliable narrator, to a degree that makes me suspect Jim sees Harry as less-reliable than average!).
He even states that Harry was narrating the story in ways to increase its emotional impact, "telling her what she needed to hear;" it was only "more or less what happened." It isn't really to the point of a "timeline" (or the consistency thereof).
oh absolutely. And I do think it's because of TT shenanigans that come later. I confess, when Jim said he couldn't keep track of what's happening in the DF because he'd wrote so many different versions and drafts I saw what he said a big different. As in with MM, he has multiple alternate realities/timelines set forth and what we're seeing from Dresden is what he remembers after sliding through them all. He doesn't remember QUITE what happened, because it happened to him more than once and the details changed.
Addendum-Comet Kohoutek would qualify as a significant astrological event directly preceding the starborn period of 1974 though no direct link to a 666 cycle. It even left behind some meteorites in our solar system.
*You got me interested enough to start looking again
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-CERN-have-666-as-its-logo that's pretty interesting if kinda nutty 👀 and it doesn't answer the question directly..
