#and thats Heavy so might as well use it to justify making blorbos fuck nasty style.

[bitchfitch]

idk man, I'm still running on fumes and am just talking out loud to myself like usual, but recently Ive been picking at the different Vibes of the politics in my projects. Not the philosophical stuff, but the actual mechanics of how these communities operate.

Most of my stories involve people in power because how someone acts when others depend on them is a fascinating thing to mess with and sets up points of strain just beneath the surface that can rupture in fun ways.

Specifically it's how the stories are influenced by the differences, between the Sun (the settlement in that post apocalypse thing) Maelgwn's pack (that giant wolf monster thing), and the Cu'Liona flock (Toi'uhla's home in that pirate thing) that have me interested. i

The Sun is at a point of expansion. The lands it controls dont have enough resources to keep their people comfortable and trade isn't covering the deficit. Their only choices are expansion, migration/colonization or becoming weaker until another settlement deems them a suitable target.

This leads to a constant undercurrent of "it's us or them" The Leader knows full well that what they're doing is at the cost of others. People die because the Sun needs the resources they defend for their own. and it's not fair. but it's us or them. and that base of thought leads to more and more aggressive tactics. It's us or them goes from justifying stealing crops and forcing starvation, to drowning another settlement under a redirected river, to active warfare. Is us or them is the underlying theme of the entire work. how much that mentality justifies and who gets looped under us or them is the only variable between the major players.

Maelgwn's pack isn't growing. theres an equilibrium between the number of members being born and the number dying overall, but any given year it's in flux. There's always that constant pressure of 'barely enough' where losses and gains are so tangible that they are the forefront of the strain on most of the characters. The sun can't know everyone who suffers and how they're suffering, but Maelgwn can. It's can't be reduced to just numbers for him. It's too small and too personal and the margins too slim.

The Cu'Liona flock is shrinking. There's more losses than gains. Even though the island is resource rich, the people on it are too vulnerable. Outside forces with interest in those resources "it's us or them" their way through the population. Starvation isn't an immediate threat, but it looms on the horizon as every year there's fewer hands to do the work needed. The population gets more insular and defensive and the island has to take to isolationism just to keep what little it has left secret enough that Maybe they might begin to be able to build back to stability. The threat of more being taken is the undercurrent that runs through the various lorinus characters. They're scared and defensive and distrustful because that's what their entire population has had to be for so long.

and like. idk man. it's easy to lump all a storys politics under the 'philosophical' umbrella and only play with the Ideas in your work, but sometimes it's fun to mess with things in practice and see how those ideas work under the strain of like the pragmatic reality of the setting.