#extremely comprehensive

[taraxippos]

I think people tend to assume that any criticism of worldbuilding is ultimately a demand for a story to grind itself to a halt and give the reader 20 paragraphs of exposition, and like. Most of the time good-faith criticism of this nature is coming from a core aspect of the story not being grounded in the setting in a way that outright detracts from the story's quality. You fix it not by Explaining but by Showing it passively in the makeup of the world.

Like the last instance I saw this critique in was like 'you can't expect an author to stop and exposit the nuances of gender roles/Queerness in a fictional society' and it's like yeah I don't, and in fact this is actually one of the easiest things to show in the text without exposition. If a society has gender norms to begin with you'll see aspects of these norms baked into EVERYTHING. You'll see it in its stories, its religion, its taboos, its etiquette, its clothing, its family structures, its language, its insults, its labor, its leadership, etc. It will have massive impacts on how characters interact with one another and how they perceive themselves. It will help Shape your characters.

If you do this legwork to begin with for the core facets of your story, you will find very natural places for these concepts to be demonstrated without derailing the plot and with little to no exposition. THAT sort of thing is what's being asked of you.

[kiwis-kiwis]

lmao gottem

[sersi]

Scarlett Johansson as Kelly Jones in Fly Me To The Moon (2024) ↳ Costume Design by Mary Zophres

[thatscarletflycatcher]

"Everything went wrong after David Bowie died" "everything went wrong after the Reformation"

Me, whose Metaphysics studies and medievalist interests have been heavily shaped by Dominicans: everything went wrong after Ockham et al. sustained the primacy of Will before Good in the nature of God.

[danadiadea]

You can love Snape, but as a fan, I think it't undeniable that he had mouldy underwear and was so neglected that he likely overlooked many hygienic habits in childhood and adolescence, maybe even later on. You lot treat the fact that he was extremely poor and suffered the consequences as something that could never possibly have happened to the precious one lol

I have a whole ass meta on why him being unhygienic is not just "deniable", but highly unlikable and inconsistent with how he is portrayed. you are welcome.

also, the idea that all people who grew up in significant poverty are automatically unhygienic as adults is ridiculous and disgusting. saying this as a person whose mom grew up in Snape-like conditions.

[windsoflife]

Have you eaten today?

Have. You. Eaten.

I am not a cookie that needs to eat. So, no.

[onceinawhilemoon]

sure, sherry. your brother would just let M walk free after he literally checked every single box under Ways to Antagonize Mycroft Holmes by: killing his agents, actively fucking with intelligence and national security operations, being a literal threat to the nation, and committing the cardinal sin of stalking and threatening to hurt an overprotective mama bear’s cub (aka YOU), a crime easily punished by imprisonment, death, or worse (see: otto richter). but sure… 

[godsfavoritescientist]

I've been seeing a bunch of people adding disclaimers to their billford posts clarifying that they have critical thinking skills about abuse and abusive relationships, and I 100% understand that impulse. When I first made this blog I added disclaimers like that onto nearly everything. But, if it makes the folks adding those disclaimers feel any better: after I stopped writing essays trying to prevent people from taking my billford posts in bad faith, absolutely no one got mad at me in my inbox or on any of my posts, and I've been posting about billford for years now. In my experience the majority of people who are uncomfy with this ship nowadays will simply block and move on. Some folks will disagree no matter how many disclaimers you add, and that's ok

[starryeyed-seer]

The Forbidden Ship: All that is known (and a great quantity speculated)

Fallen London is wonderfully complex with its worldbuilding and history, allowing for a unique experience of discovery and coming to one's own conclusions. The complexity and scattered nature of this lore, though, makes learning certain truths quite difficult.

One of the most important aspects of Fallen London is the Forbidden Ship. One of the least referenced, defined, and understood aspects is the Forbidden Ship.

I'm going to go over everything we know, in a rough timeline, with a large number of quotes. I'll also give some commentary and interpretation, because as you'll see, it's kinda necessary.

This will contain major spoilers for a broad range of Fallen London storylines, from ES to seasonal events.

Okay? Okay. ☀️❤️🦀

The beginning

We don't know jack about how the sun and a crab fell in love, what their relationship was like, how long it lasted, or how either party precisely feels about what happened. Our main source for most of this is a play put on a billion years later by bohemians and various dreams/visions.

It's incredible how little the inciting incident both is everywhere and nowhere in fallen london. I admire it greatly.

One day, a Judgement/Sun (Sol) and a Messenger/Space-crustacean (the Bazaar) were in a relationship. This was illegal by The Chain, the oppressive law of the Judgements. The stars position themselves at the top, and gazing down at a lesser being for love? A crime!

Their relationship was secret, and comes with high stakes: they would both be punished with death, erasure, memory loss, or some other torture nexus esque suffering if discovered.

They had a child together, Stone. We don't know how this went down, though her birth is referenced once in Sunless Seas.

A sacrifice of Stones, with only one worthy. Perhaps Stone was not their first attempt, or the only successful hybrid between them. We do not know.

Stone, however, seems to have once existed on the surface.

This is from a lacre vision, which I'll refer to a few times. But with most sources, it's always unclear how truthful a memory/dream gleaned from huffing the Bazaar's tears (What lacre is) could be.

The suggestion of this text is that Stone, the Mountain, once lay upon the molten earth before the Neath existed.

Stone is illegal as her parent's relationship was: proof of her is proof of their crime, and she would similar be punished as part of this. The Garden now lies within Stone (did it always?) And Stone is full of jewels (once uncovered?).

The Neath is formed by Sol throwing the Shattered Herald against the proto Earth. Stone is inside the Neath after this— how she was moved, if the impact affected her, if the forming of the Neath was related to her needing to be hidden... is unknown. She is sealed away.

The Bazaar is aware of the Neath, and presumably Stone being there, as the Bazaar later moves there to start stealing cities.

The break

Sol and the Bazaar's relationship comes to an end, whatever it was. Specifically, Sol rejects the Bazaar after some line is crossed.

Here in mask of the rose, the Bazaar communicates Sol as "cruel, furious, rejecting"

A lacre vision of a gift being rejected:

Here in a Fading Wash of Sunlight, a brief retired event where the Bazaar speaks and asks for their 'trespasses' to be forgiven.

I will speculate on this later! There is no known answer to what happened.

After, the Bazaar continued to work as a Messenger for Sol. (This is an interesting detail, in the brutality of the High Wilderness: as much as the Sun was upset, it did not seem to punish the Bazaar at all for its indiscretion.)

Sol wrote a message to another Judgement, which the Bazaar delivered. The reply to this Message was No. It's presumed it was a love letter, but there isn't much to go off of.

Here, a voice seeming to be Stone's speaks of it:

The Message is also referenced here in the 7th letter, an apparently quite truthful forbidden play.

The Bazaar becomes certain if Sol receives this NO, he will die. This isn't out of question for Judgements, who are very hard to kill externally but definitely can die from the inside (poisoned words, great sorrow, trickery). (The Bazaar's assumption Sol WILL 1000% die from the Message might be a leap— we don't know. They might be overreacting, because it is obvious they aren't over their feelings for the Sun).

(It IS true a Judgement can die from an emotion such as heartbreak. Judgements have been killed by from within before, with poisoned words and paranoia-spiders— they may make manifest their worst feelings when over emotional? That's a pure guess. But there's is evidence suggesting Judgements are in some way gigantic souls, and we know great sorrow (lacre) can cause a soul to explode.)

(....lacre can cause a SOL to explode]

The 7th city scheme

The Bazaar cooks up the 7th city plan, of which London is the 5th: steal cities, study love stories, do something with the Message that means delivery will not prove fatal. We... do not know exactly what the Bazaar hopes for or is trying to do, but something like this.

This lacre vision seems related:

Messengers carry burning correspondence messages on their skin. The implication here of 'letters of shame' suggests a lot I don't have answers for (is their illegal love affair burned on the Bazaar? Is the NO message shameful? Could the other star see that the postman Sol sent was one he'd had an affair with, and that's why the rejection?)

The reference to birds from the sky is likely to the Masters, who are metaphorically occasionally owls. In fact, with the above and the below exerpt from 7th letter, I want to toss out a mini theory that Mr. Veils was the first Master.

It sounds like the Bazaar does not stop the Vake because it can't, perhaps because it was the first it made a deal with as part of being cloaked and escaping to the Neath.

The Bazaar entered the Neath through the Avid Horizon, a hole made by the Burrower Below and turned into a gate by the Masters.

The Avid Horizon exits into the King of Hours' territory before his death, and he was evidently aware of it.

(The Bazaar also stopped off at Axile, picked up some freaks, and left. It's interesting, but I'm not including it here atm)

The Bazaar in the Neath begins its mission. Here we are. What a ship.

Suncrabbing

There are many other details to be gleaned about the ship, about the goals of the Bazaar and the relationship itself. There are few which we can confidently say relate to what actually happened. Does the Sun love the Bazaar? Did it ever? Why was Stone born? Why does the Neath exist? What did the Bazaar do? What was the Message Sol sent? How long is it going to wait for its mail to return without growing suspicious?

And so much more! The story as you often hear it in the fandom is that the Sun is a cad who had a fling with some foolish postman who never got over it, that sending the Bazaar as the deliverer of this new love letter was a flex, that the Bazaar is yearning for a wretched thing it shouldn't be. And maybe that's true, but p much all of what we know is what I've shared, and it is ambiguous as hell.

I do think though there's something to be said for the "in matters of the Bazaar, look to love, always" ship to perhaps have been, believe it or not, love. Why not? Destructive, grand cosmic star-crossed love. What if it was love? What if the Bazaar yearned for something that truly had once been good? What if the Sun loved them back, despite everything? What if they could never be together, but goddamnit, it was love?

...who knows.

The Courier's Sin

We know nothing of the sun, really. The Bazaar though, for all its misery and nostalgia drinking, is interesting. Doing what it is doing is not a small feat: it is a Master of the correspondence, committing yet another crime.

actually, the bazaar does a lot of very illegal things. The highest rank of Hallowmas Knight references the Bazaar:

As does the highest rank of Scholar of the Correspondence.

I leave in the rank below, because that appears to refer to Judgements. A rung below. This crab is a mad scientist! It uses red science to alter its own eggs to make the Whitsun creatures. It rearranges the cities it steals according to some red science principles. It is giving itself a lot of new tattoos of love stories of all flavours. When it entered the Neath, it ripped off parts of its body with commands on it against doing stuff like this (NO LETTER LOST). It has a symbiotic (?) relationship with the Stone Pigs, which despise staying still— it has to drug them to sleep. It is not meant to do any of this and beating down every barrier to achieve it.

Why?

...It's probably love again, isnt it?

I think its sin was love, the confession and admittance of it. To name a relationship as such, to ask for it in turn when such a thing is so dangerous — that's my guess. In the Bazaar focused zee dream 'Betwixt us and the Sun', we are a Messenger in from the cold, interrupting a Judgement ball. Seeking one with a round mask, whose reaction is unknown. A confession is given.

After this, you the dreamer flees to a cold dark cellar— the Neath, then. (This is a dream, so if an equivalent confession moment happened, one would hope no other Judgements were present).

Why would this upset the sun? Well, let's guess!

Imagine it as a touch less cosmic horror. A king and a post officer have a secret relationship. They live in a society that will kill them and their hidden child if it was discovered. For the courier to ask for love, for some promise of the future or acknowledgement of what they have, is a big impossible risk. The King cannot marry someone of lower station, or risk elevating them. The King cannot pledge love to them if he is meant to love someone equal in rank. It is presumptuous of the Courier to ask for more or desire more, because they both know More is a dangerous concept.

Perhaps that's what happened. It probably wasn't, but who knows!

I've hit a better stopping point then here twice, but it's time. There's always more to say, but I hope this has been a helpful overview of what we know, and a little bit of poking at what it might mean.

There's honestly so many ways to read theor relationship and what it might mean. I love the idea of love, but there's tons of fun angles. Was the Bazaar an experiment, Stone the result? Was Sol studying love? How do Judgements express love? Can they even love? The power dynamic between "all seeing eye whose fiery gaze determines the chained nature of reality" versus "the crab who delivers his mail" is vast and adds all kinds of complications and intrigue.

Who's to say.

[ganondorf]

i think one of my fave loz fandom interactions is this person who claimed that i was genuinely saying zelink was incest because i made a joke about them looking like they'd be on the Siblings Or Dating insta when the joke in the first place was a jab at how bad botw's character design is

[statementlou]

https://www.tumblr.com/louisupdates/754934426217152513/goodbye-faith-in-the-future-world-tour-272024?source=share

did he or did he not lose fans then?

I will answer this because this anon actually brings a concrete question to the table rather than just "hurhur but you're a larrie??" (tell me you can't actually refute any of our points…). Anyway this post shows the decrease in Louis instagram followers between the screenshots taken directly after the release of Faith in the Future in Nov '22, when he changed his bio to promote that album and the tour tickets, and now, when he changed it again to mention the current release. But I'm putting that response under a cut because I'm tired of the actual POINT of all this nonsense getting lost in a sea of made up things people insist are important:

There is no rational argument you can make to say that Louis has less fans now than he did 2, 4, or 6 years ago. You don't need a spreadsheet of details you need to USE YOUR EYES! He has gone from filling theaters to filling arenas and stadiums. His second album made a higher chart position than his first album. His festival has doubled in size EVERY year of its existence. And for that matter: his insta post engagement numbers remain about the same (despite the fact that older posts should have way MORE likes due to having been there longer, even aside from follower counts.) SO WHO FUCKING CARES ABOUT HIS INSTA FOLLOWER NUMBER???? Serious question: what does the word "fans" mean if these things aren't what matters? ALL of this quibbling about what he should do to make things better and people can't even see that THINGS AREN'T BAD.

Anyway to address the specific question- (con't......)

NO- HE DID NOT LOSE FANS. HE LOST SOME INSTA FOLLOWERS. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME THING. As I said above, literally what does it mean to lose fans if that number change coincides with him having higher sales, more audience members, and higher engagement than ever before? Whatever he lost ISN'T FANS. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant factor was something like a bot purge, but also yes: I'm sure a lot of casuals followed him around the time of his big album release and later unfollowed him. That's extremely normal because that's how casual engagement works, and why the definition of fan really matters. Louis and his team understand this and have referenced it repeatedly, talking about how lucky he is to have *us* specifically, to have the kind of dedicated fanbase he has, to have the KIND of fans he does who will allow him to do what HE wants. @dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram named the issue of depth vs breadth with regard to fans a long time ago, and pointed out why having DEPTH is so much more important. It's like this- artists who are on top 40 radio have more numbers on things like insta follows, and for a time on sales and tickets. But those aren't FANS- they're people with a casual interest. And as soon as that person isn't being forced in their ears 10x a day, those people lose interest and stop supporting them, stop buying stuff and unfollow, and those artists end up doing the 'opener on the jingle ball' circuit rather than their own tours. One Direction as a whole, and Louis maybe most of all or near to at this point, have something MUCH MORE VALUABLE than that- DEPTH FANS. Louis has fans who will support him even if he takes years to release music, or stops parading around with a pretend girlfriend to stay in the headlines at least once a month, or completely changes his image and genre, and that is UNHEARD OF. It's ASTONISHING and worth SO MUCH MORE. And they get that! THAT is why he always bragging about us, why industry people he works with are always so agog about us, why he will do anything for US- not for randos. He is also growing his breadth- and it's OBVIOUSLY WORKING whatever his follower counts are, but that is always going to be secondary to doing things for THE FANDOM because that is his sustainable business model. That is what keeps him onstage and reaching number one. And not coincidentally, the things they do are also working to grow that- much more valuable- commodity. So the fact that that's exactly what these chuckleheads complain about- that he does things that are just fandom facing or serving rather than everything being aimed at recruiting casual fans- does nothing but betray how completely they, unlike Louis and his team, misunderstand the actual drivers of his (actual, existing, happening) success. Luckily for Louis, he and his team rely on their own data harvesting (they do a LOT of it) and growth metrics (they're off the charts) rather than the smug assumptions of random (mostly quite new to this) fans and the few bitter people leading the complaining about everything Louis does.

[character-kai]

Tales from the gas station fanfic named after lyrics from the Midwest emo song you got to to in concert and the lead singer said was about the keyboard player fucking his mom for 500

[vyborg]

[angelsdean]

personally i find the concept of a love transcending the confines of sexuality / romance / rigid definitions of language and categorical boxes uhhh positive, actually 😐

[paramountie]

Realizing while watching the show that I had a lot of trouble understanding the novel bc I kept taking Fei Du at his word. He’d be like “I’m not even sad about the death of my perfect angel mama” and I’d be like damn guess he isn’t sad???

[utilitycaster]

maybe this is true of other hobbies (in fact actually I know it's true of reading) but ttrpgs/actual play really an innovator in having works that I have zero experience with but knee-jerk detest because they have have been exclusively recommended to me utterly unsolicited in the dumbest possible ways by complete strangers