#Fantasy Realization

[cloudmancy]

lucy, you're coming back to us too, right? to me?

[yuri-puppies]

another otta headcanon is that at least a couple of her femmes dated her as a middle age crisis thing where otta is the metaphorical pool boy to their upper middle class recent divorcee

so they get to feel like cougars while also reasoning that otta is 100+ years older than them so it doesn't count

and i think otta fell for this more than once because these 25+ year old half-foot women are more likely to be sexually forward and otta thinks she has to be a dom top to be butch but actually she really craves being told what to do

[melonsharks]

bad kidz cool kidz

[thefourofdiamondsart]

After the Quest

prints

[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.

[weavile]

junior year glow-up??????????

[hotshotriot]

i like how the twins each have a plot assigned freak uncle

[monstermonger]

Dragonsong War

[caemidraws]

Endwalker

[peculiarmarsu]

It's a long story...!

[shitpostingkats]

We're only halfway through junior year and already there are SO many quotes from this season that have rewritten my brain chemistry.

"In the marketplace of ideas, certainty and confidence will always find eager buyers. But that doesn't mean that they are always true."

"Agreements exist wordlessly, and they exist without acknowledgement or even consciousness on the part of those who have engaged in them. But agreements are at their most potent when they are conscious."

"The winds are cold and we are made to warm each other. And the night is long and that is why we keep the fire lit."

"There is no agreement we are more likely to break than one we have made with ourselves."

"The difference between an oath and rage is about. That thin."

"Your vision of thriving is like a garden that grows explosively in all directions and is flowering and da da da da. But there's thriving like a tall and ancient tree. There's thriving like grass."

"I just felt really weird about. Being mad. I didn't want to do it unless it felt, like, really necessary or justified."

[acourtoffeyandfables]

can't tell who's more mad, Riz or Murph

[bloodybellycomb]

I genuinely mean it when I say that life becomes at least 30% more manageable whenever you allow yourself to become obsessed with something that is a little bit silly

[palecryptid]

sad wizards + sweet warlocks >>>

[agendercryptidlev]

Thinking about how Riz is the one who first used he/him pronouns for Baron & what it's like being AroAce is a queer space. Thinking about Riz seeing the kinship that Raugh and Kristen formed over both being gay and wanting that connection, that sense of community, but holding himself back because while he wasn't "normal" he also wasn't like them. When you're gay you're family and when you're straight you fit in but what happens when you're neither? How do you categorize that.

Riz isn't afraid of his orientation because he's different by societal standards. It's not being queer that scares him no, it's the isolation of not knowing if anyone else feels the way he does. He knows that if he were gay or bi or pan his friends would understand, he'd be like them and be surrounded by people like him. But he's not like them, he is different in a way that seems entirely unique to himself.

So maybe he kind of wished he was gay, and that Baron existed because that was what he was afraid to admit. It'd be a lot less lonely than the truth.

[prinsomnia]

smitten 🦋