#a story about creating...

[sil3ntm0thart]

[beyourghost]

and obviously you find yourself thinking oh i do wish i could get severed to do this one thing. would you actually maybe not. but you do wish you didn't have to undergo medical procedures you do wish you didn't have to do the things that give you anxiety you do wish you didn't have to do tedious tasks that barely even require you to be present for them. it's tempting. that's why the premise works. but the premise is also that somebody has to do it. somebody has to go to the dentist and somebody has to get on that plane and somebody has to write those thank you notes. just like somebody has to clean the house and somebody has to harvest the food you eat and somebody has to make the clothes you wear. you can't eliminate inconvenience you can only delegate it. you can't eliminate suffering you can only delegate it. and always the easiest way to live with this is to see that somebody as less than. less than you less than people. and if that somebody has to wear your body to do it well maybe it's not all that different. they're not a person. you are. it's capitalism all the way down baby

[aurumacadicus]

I don't have the words for this but. Art and science are always hand in hand.

The perfectionism of artists has them researching stuff in a way that only scientists can compare. Some artists become experts in biology or anatomy. Other special interests have them going down rabbit holes to make them better at their art.

Disney animators said "we are perfecting the code for this snow if it kills us" and researched and invented code until it acted like real snow in Frozen and snow scientists were like hey. Did we just fucking solve the Dyatlov Pass mystery. And the animators answered no. We made snow. YOU applied the knowledge and did the experiments to solve what could have happened at Dyatlov Pass.

And it was a team effort because of course it was. You can't have art without science. And you can't have science without art.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars and Time!

[gooselycharm]

do you think love can bloom even on the severed floor?

[aethersea]

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

[razables]

echoes

create/destroy | corruption

[portraitofadyke]

The way Rose Tyler is the blueprint of every companion after RTD’s era. The way the show runners always try to copy the easy, impactful way she has woven herself into the Doctor’s heart. The way she was an imperfect working class girl and she changed the worlds by being just that. The way her and both her Doctors danced together so easily, changed each other, existed together like they should just melt into one being. The way she still haunt the narrative decades and multiple generations later like no other character. The way the beautiful storyline they gave her and the Doctor can’t be mimicked again, no matter how hard they try.

Rose Marion Tyler is the blueprint and nobody has owned the Doctor’s hearts the way she has

She stole the Doctor away and she will never return him no matter how long she’s been gone

[automatisma]

It's so interesting to me that Slay the Princess is the kind of art that leaves little room for structured interpretation of the text because it's so good at exploring what is it about (almost everything you want to say about it is already in the text! just go play it again), while easily supporting a lot of derivative reimaginings, remixes and fanworks.

[jayktoralldaylong]

I love that the villain of Mouthwashing is not some outer space monster, it's not a science experiment broken free from a lab, it's not even a man with an obvious stereotypical mental illness.

It's a man with self esteem problems. A selfish cowardly man who so badly wanted to be praised for doing the bare minimum. A man who let envy bite through the hand that fed him. Cause sometimes the worst monsters are the ones that are the most human. And everyone died and suffered because one man (Curly this time) kept making excuses for that one weak link (Jimmy).

I also love that the crew in Mouthwashing didn't die because Jimmy went around hacking them up. They died because of his poor leadership decisions. The leadership that he so badly believed that he could do better than Curly.

- Anya was already stressed out from the assault and she was on the edge of a mental breakdown, Jimmy responded to that by shouting at her. 💀 Girl chugged down that pill bottle like it was water.

- Daisuke was an intern, he just did whatever he was told, eager to impress Jimmy. Jimmy says climb the vents, Daisuke climbed the vents. The vents collapsed on Daisuke.

Jimmy then tries to disinfect the wound with Mouthwashing, mind you Anya had earlier mentioned that using the chemical would only make wounds worse. Swansea reminded him of this. Jimmy ignores him. Proceeds to aggravate Daisuke's wounds so bad they Swansea has to mercy kill him.

- Swansea is an old man and 'life in prison' does not mean so much to him anymore. Plus, Jimmy has stepped on his last nerve. Swansea tries to kill Jimmy. Jimmy shoots him.

A domino of events that look like accidents, all avoidable if Jimmy listened, if Jimmy calmed down, if Jimmy did not act so darned arrogant and demanding all the darn time. And now he's left in a ship of corpses, but Curly is still there........

So Jimmy does what he does best.

He blames Curly (and then Jimmy finally has a mental breakdown).

[rocketbirdie]

fateful encounter

[butter-n-breadrolls]

Bagginshield fanfics that have Bilbo use the mithril shirt and sting to kill Azog and save Thorin are just perfect. Perfect writing, another layer of heroism for Bilbo, another reason for Thorin to be madly in love with him, and for it to be super hard for untrustworthy dwarves to not accept him. Extra points if Bilbo tells Thorin he’s sorry that Thorin wasn’t the one to do it after everything Azog had done to his family, and Thorins just standing there thinking about how to convince Bilbo to marry him

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Don't worry, they're into that.

(Want to know if this ancient sea god of destruction gets more belly paps? Or perhaps...a kiss? Find out in Tiger Tiger!)

[forgettable-au]

Does Flowey exist in this au?

Yes, he does.

Everything's pretty much the same when it comes to the regular story in this AU. It's just the past, especifically Papyrus' past (wich we don't know much about to begin with) that changes

Actually Flowey is one of the main characters in the story! (the main story of this au is divided between the past before the game and a post-pacifist timeline:D)

He and Papyrus will have a fun dynamic

-some thought I had in tags behind the keep reading

Srry for the spelling mistakes in here but I can't go and fix tags because I would end up erasing everything😭tumblr struggles

[wishingstarinajar]

That there would be no Transformers One sequel was to be expected with how it was handled, but to have it confirmed is still a gut punch.

Thanks, marketing team, shareholders, and CEOs. You were awful.