#NEOWWWW

[ulyuxe]

In the past fifty years, fantasy’s greatest sin might be its creation of a bland, invariant, faux-Medieval European backdrop. The problem isn’t that every fantasy novel is set in the same place: pick a given book, and it probably deviates somehow. The problem is that the texture of this place gets everywhere.

What’s texture, specifically? Exactly what Elliot says: material culture. Social space. The textiles people use, the jobs they perform, the crops they harvest, the seasons they expect, even the way they construct their names. Fantasy writing doesn’t usually care much about these details, because it doesn’t usually care much about the little people – laborers, full-time mothers, sharecroppers, so on. (The last two books of Earthsea represent LeGuin’s remarkable attack on this tendency in her own writing.) So the fantasy writer defaults – fills in the tough details with the easiest available solution, and moves back to the world-saving, vengeance-seeking, intrigue-knotting narrative. Availability heuristics kick in, and we get another world of feudal serfs hunting deer and eating grains, of Western name constructions and Western social assumptions. (Husband and wife is not the universal historical norm for family structure, for instance.)

Defaulting is the root of a great many evils. Defaulting happens when we don’t think too much about something we write – a character description, a gender dynamic, a textile on display, the weave of the rug. Absent much thought, automaticity, the brain’s subsconscious autopilot, invokes the easiest available prototype – in the case of a gender dynamic, dad will read the paper, and mom will cut the protagonist’s hair. Or, in the case of worldbuilding, we default to the bland fantasy backdrop we know, and thereby reinforce it. It’s not done out of malice, but it’s still done.

The only way to fight this is by thinking about the little stuff. So: I was quite wrong. You do need to worldbuild pretty hard. Worldbuild against the grain, and worldbuild to challenge. Think about the little stuff. You don’t need to position every rain shadow and align every tectonic plate before you start your short story. But you do need to build a base of historical information that disrupts and overturns your implicit assumptions about how societies ‘ordinarily’ work, what they ‘ordinarily’ eat, who they ‘ordinarily’ sleep with. Remember that your slice of life experience is deeply atypical and selective, filtered through a particular culture with particular norms. If you stick to your easy automatic tendencies, you’ll produce sexist, racist writing – because our culture still has sexist, racist tendencies, tendencies we internalize, tendencies we can now even measure and quantify in a laboratory. And you’ll produce narrow writing, writing that generalizes a particular historical moment, its flavors and tongues, to a fantasy world that should be much broader and more varied. Don’t assume that the world you see around you, its structures and systems, is inevitable.

We... need worldbuilding by Seth Dickinson

[cheezyfucc]

hi guys heres my artdump

[realshadowfan07]

So like if luis worked in the umbrella lab in paris, does he speak french?? Does he have the oui oui?? I want his oui oui. But like is he fluent in french?? Did he have to learn french to work there or did they just speak english?? If so, would he have had to also learn english??? WHEN did he learn english? How did he even get to france? Did umbrella just find him and drag his smartass to paris? I need a whole game dedicated to this man's backstory. He actually drives me insane i need to study him like a bug

[temere-canis]

mrow

[wintersera]

oh i have the ot4 aespa pc too ^^

its in the back of my phone huehuehue

GIVE IT TO ME 👹

[alondra4why]

Imagine being obsessed with me lmao

No but like actually imagine it. Like right now. Do it for me please 🔫🥺

[mappingthesky]

why did they put nymphia in the back of the van

[chelseeebe]

ooooohhh charlie looked so good at his event last night hoooly shit

[natsboygirlfriend]

for some reason you can still put messages on my tree so go do it

[wikipediafag]

i want jollof

[deviousdayz]

NEW DINOSAUR JUST DROPPED

[blueliliesblueroses]

When does a Man become a Monster?

[festive]

viva 💗 i wish you a happy day, it's almost the weekend 👹 BUT i really wanted to know: who's your favorite star rail character? 🎀

My dearest yoruuuuu <333 I hope you’re having a wonderful Friday, I’m looking forward to the weekend so I can pre farm clorindes materials .. need to make sure I have everything ready 🙏🏽😓 my favorite character in star rail is definitely Yukong or Fu Xuan it’s hard to decide still salty I didn’t get fu xuan 😭😭😭 how bout you? 👀👀

[clingyduoapologist]

Thinking about the dsmp as a stage play is kind of the most mentally damaging thing on the earth to me

[a5tr0n0m1cal]

It’s that time of year where crying sounds so good right about now

[hoffmansgirl]

wooohhh i wrote a god damn paragraph under this post because i've been WAITING for someone to finally talk about it. this whole thing is so messy

& honestly i have a harrrddd time believing any of that stuff.

being a chavez girl has been HARD when all he receives is hate all over social media

also did yall see those blind items that said nick’s team got victoria to sign an nda…and also that he’s a scientologist……ANDDDD the tiktok girl who leaked screenshots of him saying he would fly her out….hard week for the chavez girls out here bro