#blitheness

[unscramblerer]

Todays Word Of The Day is: Insouciance

Insouciance originates from the French word insouciance(carelessness). English usage of the word began in the late 18th century.

[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.

[draconym]

Hey how is youre incredibly petty bird named ripley i hope he’s doing okay thank you for making that comic about him saying no while touching stuff it made my day i love your art style btw!

Thank you and he's doing great. He's standing in the threshold between the kitchen and my art studio, repeating "step up? step up? step up?" and then when I stand up and offer him my hand to step up on he turns around and walks away. And when I sit down he comes back and does it again.

[radarsteddybear]

Hastings is such a fun character because you can see in real time the way that he DOESN'T think things through before reacting to them. He is 100% fully present and in the moment and has to actively remind himself to actually switch his brain on and use what he knows to figure out what's going on (except 90% of the time it's Poirot doing the reminding and Poirot is largely unsuccessful in that endeavor.)

("Dumb Witness")

[thefeastandthefast]

I'm OBSESSED with the terrifying Princess Wanning and want ALL the backstory about her time as a hostage and everything she did to survive (and possibly even thrive?) in such a situation. Please, drama, give it to me! (Do I feel fic urges coming on?)

She's over-the-top and openly, gleefully cruel and sadistic in a way that female villains don't often get to be, but the actress makes her chillingly believable. The actress Li Meng oscillates so naturally between all the minute shades of her many malevolent moods and is clearly having a ball playing her. Li Meng was great in The Bad Kids and now I know I will definitely be seeking out more of her work. Suggesting two men murder each other in front of her as a job interview is exactly the kind of unhinged psychotic creativity that I appreciate about Wanning.

[mercurygray]

Oh, we're really in it now. I'm writing fic for a show that has zero fic on AO3.

He had asked Tancredi, before that first visit, before Don Fabrizio had even thought of coming to their camp in the city, what manner of man his uncle was. “Well, that’s easy!” Tancredi had said, his laughter a bluster to cover the fact that he’d never before been asked the question. “He is The Leopard, the prince of Salina, and conducts himself accordingly. There is no one else like him in the world.”

He should have known then what would have awaited him at each of their other meetings - the royal bearing, the haughty eye, the absolute certainty with with the man stood and stared and spoke. Don Fabrizio moved in a world where he had never had to explain himself, or be explained - he was known to all, untouchable and unmoveable, and no man had ever before questioned him, or denied him what he desired. What he had desired then was to go to Donnafugata, as the family had done since Donnafugata had existed to be visited, and this no-name northerner of no account was standing in his way.

And he, Lorenzo Bombello, had been a fool and showed his hand a little too quickly then, and let his eyes linger a little too long on something the Prince could deny him - on Concetta Corbera, his daughter.

[caladblog]

im still working on my stupidly involved post about the stupidly involved process of doing laundry in victorian times (the followup to my guide to victorian clothing) but i'm pausing to laugh & point out

that unlike all of the legitimate sailors, there is a ZERO percent chance that cornelius "if that is ur real name" hickey knew how to wash his own clothes when he stepped on board hms terror

much less that he would be expected to do so

if he'd stabbed his way onto LITERALLY ANY OTHER SHIP IN THE NAVY he would've been the purser's favorite guy (because he is so unprepared & thus has to buy everything from the purser at the Steepest Markup Ever Invented), but alas he chose the HMS Even If This All Goes Perfectly It'll Be A Fight For Survival and i can only imagine the nervous laughter + growing sense of disquiet felt by his messmates about three weeks into the voyage when he started asking them where the laundress is at

"but he grew up poor so surely--" nope. it's women's work. i cannot impress upon you enough how much this was women's work, and furthermore the poor living in cities literally did not have enough space, or time, or water, or buckets to do their own laundry, even if they were inclined to take up this extremely arduous manual labor, which as we all know hickey loves bc it ennobles his immortal soul and cleanliness is next to godliness and all that :)