This link randomly turned up on my reading list today: http://thecore.uchicago.edu/Winter2011/editors-note.shtml :
Sometime in the early 1970s or shortly before - around the time John Marcone was born - an intricate, astonishingly realistic tiger was drawn in chalk on a blackboard in a laboratory at the University of Chicago, as if it was stalking out of the darkness. The only clue as to the drawing's origin or meaning is a Chinese character for "King" worked in to the linework of the fur on the tiger's forehead, but for nearly forty years, the simple chalk drawing was left magically untouched by generations of students and teachers.
In 2007 - around the time Marcone became Chicago's freeholding Lord - an attempt was made to damage the drawing, and as a result, it was restored and protected by fixative and plexiglass.
I know! Like, maybe somebody decided that Chicago needed a Marcone, and if it didn't have one, they'd just make one? Or Marcone is some kind of tiger god/spirit creature who locked himself into a human lifetime through the drawing? Or maybe he's actually much more powerful than he knows, and somebody used the drawing to bind him when he was small, and the damage to the drawing was the first crack in the binding...
Crazy thought, but what if he's like Tera West, a tiger who learned to transform into a man, and he's been Mode Locked to human for so long, he's learned to be fairly human?
After reading the first two books, I was honestly confused if Marcone was supposed to be some sort of avatar of Chicago pretending to be a human or a human who wound up functioning an avatar of the city.
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timeasmymeasure
Tigers
Date: 2011-03-07 05:28 pm (UTC)Sometime in the early 1970s or shortly before - around the time John Marcone was born - an intricate, astonishingly realistic tiger was drawn in chalk on a blackboard in a laboratory at the University of Chicago, as if it was stalking out of the darkness. The only clue as to the drawing's origin or meaning is a Chinese character for "King" worked in to the linework of the fur on the tiger's forehead, but for nearly forty years, the simple chalk drawing was left magically untouched by generations of students and teachers.
In 2007 - around the time Marcone became Chicago's freeholding Lord - an attempt was made to damage the drawing, and as a result, it was restored and protected by fixative and plexiglass.
...surely this is not all simple coincidence?
Re: Tigers
Date: 2011-03-07 07:52 pm (UTC)omg what if Marcone is like... not exactly human, like the spirit of Chicago itself and is anchored to the city via that drawing...
Except less stupid. BUT AWESOME IDEA.
Re: Tigers
Date: 2011-03-07 10:49 pm (UTC)One way or another, it's clearly relevant!
Re: Tigers
Date: 2011-03-08 12:20 am (UTC)Re: Tigers
Date: 2011-03-08 12:45 am (UTC)Re: Tigers
Date: 2011-03-08 12:47 am (UTC)Re: Tigers
Date: 2011-03-08 01:06 am (UTC)Re: Tigers
Date: 2011-03-08 02:13 pm (UTC)