#magic rules ok

[dapper-lil-arts]

I'm not the kind of person that's like "Here let me fix the canon" usually but like holy crap gen 5 implied a lot of messed up shit about our hero Twilight Sparkle lmao

[vamptoll]

Saw a random post about Marx's concept of Value and oh boy if that didn't just teleport me back to first year of my Theory Class. And Like I have complicated feelings about the education system and how it operates But, I do have a solid grasp of Marx's theory of Value and how to apply it in my own work (Don't ask me to define Marx's theory of Value, it's not that great a grasp)

[rosemaze-reveries]

i had a dream about fellowyuu (im too far gone i fear)

[nonokoko13]

Rollo Flamme is autistic. I had suspicions about it but after reading his vignette I heard a voice in my head confirming it. God has told me the truth and I must spread the word

He would also be ok with Batman, if he's not his most favoured hero. Oh and he also probably has PTSD and depression. Thanks for coming to my ted talk

[eri-pl]

A highlight from a long reblog:

There should be an Ao3 tag for "Canon-typical level of cosmological exceptions"

[procrastinatorrex]

His hair was yellow– it waved like seagrass in the currents. The golden glimmer faded as he sank slowly out of the reach of the moonlight and the magic at his throat dimmed and retreated.

Myrddin frowned.

He didn’t want the light to stop… didn’t want the pretty play of light in the waving golden hair to fade.

He will rot away. His golden hair will flutter away in the current when they eat his scalp and scatter on the sand until nothing is left to shine.

Myrddin frowned harder. This land-dweller was pretty, his strength was admirable, and he did unexpected things. Rotting was expected and boring and all of the sudden Myrddin found himself wishing, for the first time in his life, that a land-dweller would live, rather than just die somewhere else.

Decision made before he’d finished thinking about it, the Merrow caught the land-dweller with one powerful movement of his tail. He caught the man by his armor and lifted him until he could see his full lips, oddly sensuous on such a strong jaw. They were pale in the cold water, but he wondered what they’d look like under the heat of the sun.

[layzeal]

im such in a funny spot regarding the donghua's portrayal of wwx's magic cause like. in one hand it looks COOL AS HELL and i love it. but also.... bestie what in the hell is that, that's Literally demonic cultivation. no, not guidao, ACTUAL demonic cultivation

[abyssmalice]

Yet another day, yet another bored Tonia. Today, she shall... hmm, what the hell is there to do even.

Maybe she should go steal her brother's Delusion and fiddle with it. Maybe even break it. Better than stealing his Vision, surely. In any case, best case scenario, she fiddles with it and figures out how the clothes-changing thing works.

So she can put him in a frilly dress when he uses it.

[imagineagreatadventure]

sometimes i think i should write an essay about why the nutcracker and beauty and the beast tales are the ones that stick to me the most esp. in my early childhood but then i decide to not do that

[livefinn]

he's so moved <333

[pocketramblr]

I am once again thinking about repeat castle escapee Hyrule

[performing-personhood]

Me n lots of ladies: I'm having a problem and it's very important that I handle this on my own, so nobody can know about it

Literally every guy I've ever met: I'm having a problem and I'm gonna tell fucking everybody

[alchemiclee]

4 and 20 for the Artist Ask Game! 👀

4. Fav character/subject that's a bitch to draw

not sure about character...but subject? probably poses/anatomy in general. still bad at it. brain can't quite comprehend shapes lol all the anatomy tutorials just go in one ear/eye and out the other. no brain process in between 😅 same with lighting/shadows. basic art things make me trip and fall

20. Something everyone else finds hard to draw but you enjoy

eyes?? do people think eyes are hard? I always enjoyed doing eyes. maybe hair. hair is fun but i've seen many people say it's hard

[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.

[ajdrawshq]

i finished 7th dragon a lil while ago n some of the worldbuilding is so funny i cant stop thinking abt it. why is the lost city of atlantis populated by catgirls

[catawonkus]

Ok I have read everyone’s thoughts and I think I get it, this is a compilation of my favorite smart things other people said. Writing it down so I can understand it.

73 yards spoilers

Break a fairy circle, get yoinked by fairies. That’s what happened to the doctor. Yoinked out of the narrative.

Everything else is Ruby. She had to make this make sense, she had to create rules to fix it. And she has magic.

So she created a time loop and placed herself as the haunted one. She heard the doctor mention a prime minister that nearly started a nuclear war and then 30 seconds later read the name Mad Jack, so she creates that story. She feels abandoned her whole life so she subconsciously “pushes people away”; she’s created her own perception filter that convinces everyone that she is what she fears she is— an unlovable monster.

The Woman perhaps was nothing more than that fuzzy filter (Carla says she is who she appears to be), which causes people to look at Ruby and then perceive her differently.

But then, in an act of self love, she brings the story home by catching up with the time loop, expressing affection for her young self and seeing herself as she really is. She places her old self a few seconds before everything went wrong.

It’s the equivalent of doing something dumb and thinking “man I wish I could turn back the clock 3 seconds” but she has magic so she can. Unfortunately she also has self image issues and she has to overcome them before she can help herself.

I’ve connected the dots. I’ve connected them.