Beauchamp Grimoire: Mythology, Rules, and Retcons

[RachelKM]

I figured that based on the episode thread comments, especially Season 2, we need a thread for discussion of the series as a whole and the the mythology.  I'm pretty sure that making a flowchart to follow the mythology of this show would require actual wormholes  - or for Ingrid to put her hand on something - but I thought this would be a good place to try and keep track of (make sense of might be too ambitious) the rules.

 

For instance:

 

1.  Joanna and most other Asgardians we've met seem to be immortal, at least to the extent that they do not age or die naturally.  And I get that Wendy has a curse of 9 lives (though how she's used 8 of them when her peers haven't exhausted one is baffling) and Ingrid and Freya die before Freya gets out of her 20s only to be born again.  Fine.  So what's the deal with Dash and Killian?  

 

Freya's DiscoDash dreams have established that they are born over and over and are not always brothers, but always seem to meet her.  And Freddie got all pissy with Killian about whatever he did back in the day in Asgard but it seems it was another life for Killian. So are the brothers also cursed?  Do all Asgardians reincarnate? 

 

2.  In a related note, Joanna told Spikeoff that there were plenty of Asgardians running about our world for him to find love.  Are they all banishees?  Does the king just boot his rejects out to our world? Because if so, I'm going to start referring to him as King of Ass.

Edited September 10, 2014 by RachelKM

[Bill C.]

Joanna and company escaped to Earth from Bizarro Asgard because Grandpa Unicron apparently was a jerkwad dictator, but they seem to be the only ones labeled as such.  Every other witch or warlock that's been hanging out on Earth is apparently just...there...

 

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the headaches caused by trying to sort this show's crap out.  :)

 

The immortality/lifespan rule may well be one of the biggies, since it apparently works on three levels:

1. True "I can't die" immortality.  This term has only been used once in the entire show, and that was with Jonathan the lawyer back in season one.  I'm not sure if Spike, er, Tarkoff falls into this category yet, since he could have not died before getting better after Frederick stabbed him in this week's episode.

2. You have x many lives.  I.E. Wendy's curse.  And if she's been such a bohemian all her lives, at least her blowing through six of the nine of them makes a certain sense (the seventh apparently being when she was hit by a car, and the eighth having been due to Penelope, in the pilot).

3. Unusually/extremely long lifespans.  Joanna, Victor, Alex, Frederick, that one bald guy who was working with Penelope, Penelope herself and her father Archibald Browning, Wendy via technicality, and Wendy's ex-husband Ronan all fall under this category: they apparently don't age or do so very slowly past a certain point, and cannot die via natural causes.  However, they can still be killed; Victor was blown up, Penelope thrown into a furnace, Archibald was stabbed with a knife, and the bald guy was stabbed with a poker.

4. OCP-style special lifespan directive: forced reincarnation.  Ingrid and Freya are definitely the poster children for this: the curse Grandpa Unicron laid on them and their mother explicitly had them set up to die within one week of each other, and thus far before either of them reached the age of thirty.  And shortly after their deaths, Joanna would become pregnant with one or the other of them and the cycle would start all over again.  (Depending on how you interpret a couple of S1 episodes, this has been happening since at least 1692.)  Freya's twin Frederick is/was apparently exempt from this due to either his remaining in Asgard or because Grandpa said so or whatever.

 

And then there are Dash and Killian.  This is probably the big "Don't think too hard about this--look, cleavage!" thing the show's doing at this point; it had established that Killian and Freya knew each other in a previous life way back at the start of S1, but this season it explicitly had Freya say that they've known each other in multiple incarnations--along with Dash.  And, confusingly, they have not always been siblings.  So how do their apparently forced reincarnations work, and why?  Nobody ever said anything about Archibald being on Unicron's shitlist, or Penelope.

[Bort]

You have x many lives. I.E. Wendy's curse. And if she's been such a bohemian all her lives, at least her blowing through six of the nine of them makes a certain sense (the seventh apparently being when she was hit by a car, and the eighth having been due to Penelope, in the pilot).

Does the car-hitting count as being one of Wendy's used lives? Ingrid used a spell to bring her back for that one, it should be a freebie.

[Bill C.]

I had to look it up to be sure earlier: Wendy resurrected on her own for the car hit.  After that was when Penelope (disguised as Joanna) stabbed her, and that was when Ingrid resurrected her.  And I think it was a couple of episodes later when Joanna commented on her necklace changing from green to red, signifying she was on her last life.

[Bort]

I had to look it up to be sure earlier: Wendy resurrected on her own for the car hit. After that was when Penelope (disguised as Joanna) stabbed her, and that was when Ingrid resurrected her.

Ok, that's right, the car was when Wendy unzipped herself out of the bodybag. My question remains though: Ingrid resurrecting her didn't count as one of her used lives?

[RachelKM]

Ok, that's right, the car was when Wendy unzipped herself out of the bodybag. My question remains though: Ingrid resurrecting her didn't count as one of her used lives?

I don't think it did.  It wasn't explicitly said, but I understood Ingrid's consequence, i.e. someone she cared about dying to create balance, to be because she restored Wendy's life, or rather one specific life of her nine.    We don't actually know what life she was on when she arrived in the pilot, so there is no way to count, but that's how I interpreted those scenes.  Come to think of it, was "nine lives" ever said or did I just assume that from her having multiple lives and being a cat?Because it occurs to me that choosing nine was a bit funny for a god from another realm that would likely have no use for the myth that cats have nine lives.  Several cultures have myths about cats and multiple lives, but the number of lives is not consistent.