I’m intrigued by this place, and its well drinks.

It’s also worth noting, as bittersweet as it is, Amanda and Trent are about the purest love story I’ve written in a long time.

(If you think this sense of “love as sacrifice, where one must endure with the thought of eventual reward keeping them on the path of the faithful” has anything to do with me waiting for the Department of Homeland Security to say my fiancee can live in the same country I do and marry me? Well, there is something to that, I would say. ;) )

However, I would argue Benjamin was never in love. He just thought he was.

And, after all, the essence of conflict is…. er… conflict.

Up in the initial list of Locii, you’ll notice the Viceroy of the Cul-de-Sac — a back reference to Gossamer Commons. Does this mean that Gossamer Commons and the Modern Mythology share backstory? Probably not, but it was hard to resist.

The Djinni of the Block: Obviously, this was a pun on “Jenny from the Block,” by Jennifer Lopez. While we’re some distance from the “Bennifer’ years, there is some parable involved here — up to and including the idea of a Locus who is herself ancient and powerful and very different in perspective having the seeming of a twentysomething liberal chick. Which in a way is the opposite of what “Jenny from the Block” was about — the idea that no matter how grand her life, Ms. Lopez was still just this girl from the Neighborhood. Not that anyone believed that.

I worked hard to make Jen essentially blameless. Her one major failing was in failing to recognize how little Benjamin had adapted to his new role and life to that point.

But then, one can say that was the major failing in the Lopez/Affleck relationship, too.

Benjamin: Obviously a back reference to Ben Affleck. And, rather like Affleck, Benjamin was a very normal, even nice guy who found himself catapulted into Hollywood. His fame (at least to date) and influence hit its pinnacle during his relationship with Lopez, but in many ways his career was badly damaged by that time and his reactions to it. Benjamin is the jerk of the relationship, which isn’t necessarily true of the Lopez/Affleck relationship (needless to say, I don’t know any of these people). The end is a reminder of what is probably the key ‘point’ of the Mythology — actions taken are never, ever limited to the circumstances they were intended for. Every action has repercussions. Benjamin is also a reference to Dale Benjamin, who is the Neighborhood Watch coordinator for Lansing Michigan, which was the first reference I saw to a neighborhood coordinator in a Google search, which led me to think “Ben Affleck,” which in turn led me to the “Djinni of the Block” pun, and hey we have a story.

Noa — a reference to Ojani Noa, the first husband of Jennifer Lopez. Noa is also a game of chance not unlike the old shell game — echoed slightly by Noa’s last solitaire game — and a reference to NOA, or Notice of Availability, which is an EPA term for a document that is issued when details about a given site become available. Which is an important aspect of cleanup efforts and city and urban planning.

Amanda M. Burden is indeed the current Chair of New York City’s Department of City Planning. My anticipation is having survived junior high school with that name (assuming it is not a married name), Ms. Burden is now capable of beating six people down with one hand tied behind her back.

Hima is an Arabic word that makes reference to conservation and environmental zoning — a part of Khalifa, which is widely regarded as the birth of City Planning and zoning in the modern sense of the world. Khalifa and Hima are both religious obligations — the observant Muslim must be certain to conserve the world and put proper activities in their proper places.

Matthew is a mild nod to Matt Damon — which is why he’s a minor daemon as opposed to a locus. You can’t really do a Ben Affleck story without Matt Damon. There’s a law.

If I have to explain why there’s a Fred driving a neighborhood trolley? I fear for the future of humanity. I threw in a rather explicit tie back to Psychopomp Station as part of it — more than I usually would (I expect any reference to mass transit will include a few souls on their way there), in part because one thing we have to explain is how the various towns without mass transit get where they’re going. The Trolley is one of those methods, which is a Neighborly thing to do if you think about it.