ETERNAL – Q&A

Questions from reader ShatterTheHeavens:

What will become of the relationship between Charlotte and the Guardians? Will she still be able to stay with Jack? Like is Manny gonna do something to reward Char for the things she's done?

Answers:

First off, thank you so much for your questions, ShatterTheHeavens (awesome username, btw!). Your questions are very interesting to me because they all focus on the future of these characters and their interactions. To be completely honest, they're actually things I didn't start thinking about until I you asked me. Because I don't plan on Eternal having a sequel, these questions made me think, but I think I've come up with some satisfactory answers.

I can imagine Charlotte's relationship with the Guardians not wavering at all with her age. In fact, I think Charlotte's growth will better their relationship—the Guardians are adults (and technically Jack is too, being 18), and they'll get along and be friends until the day Charlotte passes on. As for your second question, her relationship with Jack might get a little rocky, with Charlotte aging and Jack staying the same, but again, their friendship would stay strong because of their connection and devotion. (But I want to clarify: Jack and Charlotte are just friends, haha.) And finally, unfortunately, no, I can't imagine Manny rewarding Charlotte at all. In my mind, Manny and Charlotte don't ever really interact ever again. The most would be Charlotte looking up at him and smiling in remembrance of what he did for her in the past. To me, MiM can't really reward her because she's no longer a child, nor would he want to, because he has nothing he could give her that would make her happier than how she already is with her normal life back. MiM is a bittersweet character in the RotG world—he does what he has to do in order to do his job of protecting the children of the world, but that doesn't mean he enjoys what has to do in order to carry out that job. In his mind, Charlotte's reward for doing all that she did is returning to a semi-normal life with friends and family in tact.

Question from Guest:

You're an amazing writer, and if you have the given time, will you be writing another ROTG story? Not a sequel, but just a different one overall.

Answer:

Thank you so much for the compliment, Guest! It means a lot and I'm so happy you could have joined me on this journey. Regarding your question, I definitely will be writing more RotG stuff in the future. I have a couple Eternal One-Shots planned, along with any requests, and I currently don't have any plans for non-Eternal-related RotG stuff, but I definitely want to continue writing about this world. I just love it so much!

ETERNAL – TRIVIA

Two names considered for Charlotte in the development stage of the story were Darcy and Cricket. Because I started this story before Rise of the Guardians was released in theatres, Jamie's last name hadn't been revealed yet, so a temporary surname I used for Charlotte and Jamie was Farrow. Charlotte is a French-backgrounded name and is the feminine version of Charles, meaning "free man."

Sam Hain was originally supposed to be a girl, but I changed her to a him to have more male characters in the story.

There is a throwback to another RotG work I've done in Eternal: Safe, a One-Shot I wrote in December of 2013. The throwback is when Charlotte is using mango-scented shampoo in Chapter 29—in Safe, Jack remarks that he can smell Jamie's mango shampoo when he hugs him.

Originally, Eldrid was going to become the next Mother Nature, but I changed my mind and made all four Elemental Siblings a combined Mother Nature-esque figure because I thought making a definite new Mother Nature went against the entire point made by the tragedy that was Cicely's Mother Nature.

Charlotte is left-handed because of my own personal fascination with left-handedness.

Charlotte's white beret is inspired by a white beret I own.

Sam Hain's name is derived from Samhain, another name for Halloween.

Each of the Elemental Sisters' names are symbolic to their element:

"Eldrid" means fiery spirit in Norse.

"Nixie" is a German term for water spirit/monster.

"Xylan" is a more feminine version of "xylem," which is a biological term for complex polysaccharides in plant cell walls and algae.

"Aura" is the Greek divine personification of the breeze.

Throughout the months of development and year and a half that went into writing Eternal, Mother Nature's name of Cicely never changed or was reconsidered. It was the first name that popped into my head, and when I researched it, turns out it means "blind" in Roman.

Prior to seeing RotG, I didn't know Sophie was Jamie's little sister, so when I started writing Eternal, my original intention was to not include her in the story. After I saw the movie and realized she and Jamie were related, she was brought into the story to become Charlotte's little sister.

This is not mentioned in the story directly, but Lady Luck and the Leprechauns are able to use the rainbows and Cupid is able to control clouds because of their deal with Mother Nature to torment Charlotte.

The scenes when Xylan attacks Burgess High School were almost taken out because they reminded me eerily of school shootings, but the conflict was eventually kept in to heighten the level of danger to which the story was willing to rise.

The story of Eternal is a re-telling and elaboration of the princess-evil queen dynamic (Charlotte as the princess, Mother Nature as the evil queen). I wanted to take that dynamic and change the ending that typically followed such a relationship by making the two end up becoming friends and understand each other.

Cicely's daughter Sagebrush is named after the Nevada state flower.

Santoff Claussen was, at first, not going to be involved in Eternal because I didn't know, initially, how to explain why Katherine, Ombric, and Nightlight weren't present in RotG. But once I figured out how to explain it, I decided to combine the RotG world and the book world into one huge universe.

The woman and girl Izzy at the end of Chapter 20 are actually Sam Hain's human mother and sister.

Before and during writing the beginning of Eternal, I saw RotG four times in theatres for both enjoyment and research.

Another allusion to the princess-evil queen dynamic is done through the times when Sleeping Beauty is referred to (the Aurora-Maleficent dynamic).

Charlotte and Jack weren't originally going to be as close as they ended up being, but their chemistry came so naturally to me as I started writing them together that I decided to deepen their relationship throughout the story.

Many of the places discussed in Eternal are real places, like Paris, France; Carrauntoohil, Ireland; the Hürtgen Forest on the border of Germany and Belgium; and Salem, Massachusetts. Santoff Claussen, Sibera; Suncliffe, Nevada; and Burgess, PA are the only imaginary places.

Charlotte's favorite color is pink.

Charlotte's personal hot chocolate (just heated up chocolate milk) is something I do in real life.

Charlotte purposely has a personal moment with every Guardian of Childhood because I didn't want her relationship with all five of them to ever feel underdeveloped.

Jack is surprised at Charlotte's left-handedness in Chapter 4 because he knew that Jamie and Sophie were right-handed.

Charlotte's nickname of Snow Miser for Jack is derived from the Snow Miser character from A Year Without a Santa Claus.

The Elemental Sisters' personalities are designed to be exact opposites of their element: Eldrid (fire) is pacifistic, calm, and intellectual; Nixie (water) is temperamental, passionate, and belligerent; Xylan (earth) is unpredictable, crazy, and easily amused; and Aura (wind) is petty, easily jealous, and violent.

Pitch originally wasn't going to be as involved in the story as he is, but I decided to include him more due to popular demand.

Lady Luck's make-up is inspired by Lady GaGa's make-up in her Applause music video.

A lot of research was done to make the meals Charlotte experiences in different parts of the world true to their cultural background, like the Russian food being served at the North Pole in Chapter 42 and the Irish breakfast being served to the Leprechauns in Chapter 22.

Star's entire physical design was done in one sitting.

North's cuss of "BALAKIREV" follows in the tradition of his shouting Russian composers in times of high intensity—Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev was a composer in Russia during the 19th century.

Olympia, a.k.a. Mrs. Claus, wasn't the first name considered for her; other names I considered were Clementine, Elvira, and Sapphique.

Tooth was purposely made to be tougher in this story because I thought that side of her was lacking a bit in the film.

I almost took out the fact that Abby had died at the last second because it made me so sad.

The decision to make Charlotte on the cusp of adulthood was made to create an interesting scenario: the Guardians don't know how to interact with children, but they get along so easily with Charlotte because she's a teenager/almost young adult and therefore old enough to understand everything going on.

A scene cut from the story was Mother Nature visiting a tribe of mermaids, with whom she has a close relationship because of Nixie.

The dragon book Charlotte is reading in Ombric's library in Chapter 28 is an allusion to another favorite DreamWorks film of mine, How To Train Your Dragon.

I had finished reading The Guardians of Childhood: Sandman & the War of Dreams minutes before publishing Chapter 17, and had to go back and edit out Seraphina's name and replace it with Emily Jane.

Charlotte's stuffed lion Ouja is named after Charlotte finding him sitting on top of a ouja board when she find the stuffed lion at a yard sale when she was younger.

Pitch was originally going to be the one to go to Charlotte in Angel Falls in Chapter 32 and help her understand the concept of "floating," but I changed it to Sam to give him more of a point to the story.

The title of Chapter 33, The Battle of Three Armies, is an allusion to The Hobbit's Battle of Five Armies.

Nixie's physical design is inspired by the legends of Amazons.

While it's never outright said in the story, Nixie and Star's relationship can very easily be seen as a romantic relationship. They were a romantic pair in my original draft, but I decided to allow it to be up to interpretation.