#i love making up media for my worldbuilding project :)

[heycerulean]

and if i said 818 words of sy'TP-TC content? because i love these two dearly? (cw: mentions of an animal being injured, grief, angst) (song i was listening to while writing this)

"You didn't have to do all of this."

"Don't start with that."

There's no waver, in his voice. There never is. He's never seen Teq unsure about an offer, uncertain in his stance about something.

It's something he admires. Something he hates, sometimes. Something he can't help but find endearing, in this moment, as a bowl is placed into his shaky hands and another tear is wiped from his cheek.

Teq sits down beside him. Grabs his hand.

"He's going to be okay. You said it yourself, he's in the best of hands he could be in."

His voice is gentle, kind. It's low, like rumbling earth, like the pressure in your ears when you're far underwater- but it finds him like a homing missile, tearing into him, threatening to bring it all back.

"I know," Is all he can choke out in response.

Teq hums. The hand that had been on his own moves up, holding his chin, turning his face towards him.

"You need to eat, at the very least. You're not going to be able to do anything if you're not able to function properly."

"I told you, I'm not-"

"-hungry, I know. But you need to eat, Aetos. Please. If you can't do it for yourself, do it for me."

They stare at eachother, for a long, tense moment.

Aetos leans back, scoffs, and takes a reluctant bite of the food he'd made for him.

It's warm, comforting- cheese and potatoes, probably other various things, something Teq'd made before and that he'd liked before. Teq had a skill with making things, and it turns out that extended to more than just weapons and other machinery.

Their hands were back together, and it was quiet.

Too quiet.

Teq seems to sense that it's getting to him. He reaches for the remote that sits on the coffee table before them, turning it on, letting the hum of static and blue-tinted light of screen displays fill the room.

"Would we rather be watching the cave documentary or the classic jungle adventure movie?"

"Is there nothing else on?"

"There's an even more classic jungle adventure movie. I've seen that one. The 60's Caravan movie adaptation?"

"Atzia would kill you."

"It's not my fault they made a half-decent movie out of the book she was named after. The movie's nothing like the book, anyway, they butcher that character."

"I'm aware."

"Mhm. So. Up to you."

"...Which classic jungle adventure movie is it?"

"Clearer Waters- The original, too."

"'s that the one where there's... the thing with the plane? And the medicine?"

"Mmmhm. And the whole riverboat chase with the fossil snakes?"

"Saints, the fossil snakes. Yeah, sure, that one."

Teq sets the remote down. The noise from the TV does give his mind something to focus on other than the distinct absence of the three feet tall bird that's usually curled up on this couch next to him, and the fact said bird is fighting for his life because of him, and-

"Aetos?"

"...What?"

"I asked if it was alright if I turned it up a little."

"Yeah, that's- that's fine."

Teq nods, hitting the volume up a couple notches. It helps drown out the noise, just a bit.

Eventually, after eating just enough food that he can justify not eating more, he sets the bowl he's holding down, hands wringing themselves out without something to hold.

And Teq, without even looking, reaches over. He pulls him closer, tentatively, until Aetos gives in and curls up next to him, letting the man next to him lace their hands together. Teq's always ran warm, but the peace that calloused, calm touch brings is something he didn't know he needed until he had it.

It's only then, in the safety of those arms that he's seen burnt and battered and still kept gentle, that he realizes how truly, deeply, tired he is. It'd been a long mission before the incident, and if he had to count how long either of them had actually been awake, he...

Yeah. No, that's too much effort for a brain in his state, he's not doing that.

What's that Teq had said earlier, anyway? You're not going to be able to do anything if you can't function properly? Sleep is a requirement. And if he falls asleep here, well, he's had to fall asleep worse places, and it's not like it's hard to be comfortable in the arms of someone who'd made you dinner and insisted you go home and not just wait in your office all day for news on the bird everyone jokes is your son.

Teq is calm. Stable, steadfast, a respite in waters that keep moving when he'd much rather them not. And who's he to deny that? Who's he to deny that feeling of safety?

And so, he doesn't.

He just closes his eyes, and lets sleep wash over him.

[nyxshadowhawk]

A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

[a-dragons-journal]

Chicken or Egg: Causes of Fictionality

This post was crossposted to the Fictionkind Dreamwidth (linked above).

One of the questions I hear a lot about fictionfolk from outside observers, though less than I used to, is about whether a fiction-based identity can really predate the media it's based in. The answer, of course, is observably that yes, it can; many fictionfolk report that the experiences that lead them to a fiction-based identity long predate exposure to the media that finally made it all "click" and gave them a name. The other answer is that it doesn't matter - even if the identity wasn't present before exposure to the source media, it's still just as real and important as if it had been.

I don't think, however, that I've often or maybe ever seen discussion of the fact that sometimes it's just impossible to tell. I don't know whether my hearthome predates my exposure to Avatar. When I first watched Avatar, you see, I was young enough that I don't really have any recollection of it - a few vague impressions, and the fact that we watched it the first time on my aunt's brand-new widescreen TV (very exciting), and the fact that I immediately integrated a version oftsaheylu (the neural bond that Pandoran creatures can make with each other) into some of my worldbuilding projects afterward, and that's about it. I have a poor childhood memory (a poor episodic memory in general, for that matter); the only reason I know that my draconity is as old as it is is because I have childhood friends with a far better memory than I who remember me talking about feeling a tail when we must have been only eight or nine years old. I simply do not remember whether or not any experiences linked to my hearthome predate my exposure to Avatar, or whether Avatar caused them wholesale.

The fact of the matter is, it's probably a mix of both. On the one hand, Avatar is a piece of media infamous for creating hearthome feelings in people - there was a whole phenomenon called "post-Avatar depression" or "the post-Avatar blues" when it came out, where people worldwide got so invested in the world of Pandora that they fell into a legitimate depression episode because it wasn't real. (Real thing, look it up. News outlets reported on it and everything.) It is, in all honesty, almost designed to do so - the hearthome feelings, I mean, not the depression. Pandora is designed from the ground up to get people to fall in love with the world, and to then transfer those feelings to Earth and environmental efforts here. That's Avatar's mission statement - and it does it well. There's a reason literally half of the first movie is dedicated to just exploring and experiencing Pandora, and a reason that the game Frontiers of Pandora spends so much time and resources on the details of the world around you.

On the other, realistically, one must assume that Avatar hit me so hard because it was tapping into something that was already present to some extent. People connect to fiction because it speaks to something already inside them, as well as teaching them something new. What exactly that was in my case, however, I can only guess. Maybe it was the wildness and green beauty of the world; maybe it was tsaheylu and the intimate and complete connection that it provides; maybe it was the specific creatures and plants and some pre-existing connection there. I just don't know, and realistically never will.

And you know what? I'm okay with that. I don't know why Eywa'eveng is hearthome to me, and I'm fine with that - it is, and that's what really matters. I don't know what's chicken, what's egg, and what's the evolution that happens over cycle after cycle of both. Maybe I would have longed for something undefinable even if I'd never seen Avatar, or maybe I wouldn't, or maybe it would have latched onto some other fictional world (or real place, for that matter) instead. There's no telling now - there is only what is, and I find myself satisfied with that.

[sincerely-sofie]

I’m a skeleton gal who likes to draw and write! Currently I’m on a hiatus from social media until the start of 2026 so I can take time to work on stuff in real life. If you'd like to reach me to chat or just ask a question, my Discord handle is MerelyMoss!

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You can read more about me, my projects, and what I’m up to under the cut!

About Me:

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!

I’m interested in writing, making webcomics, game dev, 2D animation, character design, programming, singing, small business management, self-improvement, and all around way too many crafting mediums to count.

I like green, bugs, hot chocolate, kawaii future bass music, video essays, Ooblets, and Animal Crossing.

I have a pet blue death feigning beetle named Gamer Girl, sometimes fondly referred to as GG!

I make a lot of things. This blog is a way for me to record the various projects I create on my journey to be unashamedly sincere!

Some of My Projects:

Better the Wool: An in-progress Cult of the Lamb AU focusing on the Lamb and her relationship with Narinder as she works to resurrect the Sheep killed by the Old Faith. Has a dedicated tag on my blog. A written fanfic is in the works, and I regularly post art about it between writing!

The Present is a Gift: A finished, but still semi-active, post-credits AU and fanfic for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky which focuses on the hero taking in an amnesiac Darkrai. Has a dedicated tag on my blog. Also has a dedicated sideblog for chapters and can be found on Ao3, Tumblr, PMD Fanfiction, and Wattpad through there!

Mortality Exchange: A collection of “What-if” scenarios based on a piece of worldbuilding in my Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fanworks— if a Legendary pokemon dies, a nearby mortal pokemon will inherit their powers and immortality. Has a dedicated tag on my blog. There are no plans to make a long-form storytelling project of this.

Dugtrio Day: A time loop AU for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky that stars a prickly Eevee hero, a sociable Treecko partner, and a nihlistic Celebi. Has a dedicated tag on my blog. There are currently no plans to make a long-form storytelling project of this.

Common Questions:

My inbox is always open if you want to ask or send something in! I like to queue up responses to things sent into my inbox, though, so sometimes they take a while to get posted. You can always send a DM or additional ask about the state of the thing you sent in if you’re curious!

I don’t mind being tagged in things. It’s a great way to make sure I see something :>

Fanart and other works based on my AUs, original work, and persona are all things I love to see! If you ever make something along those lines, send me a pic or the link to where it’s posted! I’d love to be able to shout it out if possible!

If you want to voice act / do a dub of my work, the same rules apply from the above bullet point! I’d love to see it! Send me the link! However, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use AI to dub over my work. I’ve had my work stolen for use in AI dubs in the past, and I’d really like to avoid the stress of that happening again.

If you’re curious about something, send in a question, whether anonymously or not! You don’t need to be nervous or shy about it. I’m a pretty chill gal— I promise I won’t bite!

[late-draft]

My larger projects include #atla social media AU, #last air keyholder AU, (which is a sci-fi AU meant to be like an entire story) ; planning on doing a review of NATLA (sneak peek: I think its biggest problem is not writing, it's the directing. But generally I like it)

Hi guys, I'm super new to ATLA fandom, started watching in March 2024. for the first time. If I make any stupid mistakes or spelling errors, please feel free to correct me! I'm sorry for any mistakes I make.

I love the show, I'm also looking forward to watching NATLA too to see how it is. update WATCHED IT! Mixed bag but I'm glad it exists - I'll create posts to explain my thoughts!

I love worldbuilding and character-building and this show has a lot, but it also drops the ball in some areas or moments in writing, I feel (that's unfortunate but it's a normal thing that happens in writing)

I see there are fandom wars, but I hope I won't bother anyone. I am however, not averse to discussing Discourse topics (narrative), as I find them interesting! I just don't intend to attack anyone.

I'm a student of animation at a film school so I have a professional interest in this as well as simply for fandom (aka please colleagues, don't bully me for wanting to make animated shows, animation isn't just for children T_T)

My blog's title is a joke about how much worldbuilding I end up contributing to the cursed Fire Nation xd I don't actually cheer for the Fire Nation, I hope that's obvious. I just find that area of worldbuilding very fun

Heads up, if you can't take criticism of your favourite character(s) or are a hardcore maiko or kataang stan, this blog might not be for you, but you're always free to like/reblog anything from me that you like!

Please remember you can use Tumblr's tag mute feature and mute any ship or #anti ship/character tags, #atla discourse tag, and # critical tags of your choice!

[l1ttles3am0th]

To my fellow Smekday / Home fans concerned over one or the other and whether or not you have to choose:

YOU CAN LIKE BOTH.

I can’t believe this has to be said, but the amount of complaining I’ve seen for the movie that not only borders on stuck up and even elitist, but says that you literally can’t like the movie is quite irritating to me, and it’s time somebody says something about this. Before you get on my tail, I’ve read both books. The book and movie have their own unique plotpoints, their own flaws, one with flaws way more prevalent than the other, but you can still appreciate the movie for what it is.

As for the books, I heavily appreciate the lighthearted fun, dark undertones, and the fun story that’s attached to it. I like the designs of the aliens, and I like the stakes and real consequences involved. I love how the post-invasion world is described, how desolate and hopeless it all seems. I love the eerieness of it all, I love the development and worldbuilding of the boov themselves. I love how their history is laid out, I love the koobish, I love the deep, touching characters and their personal journeys, I love how the second book delves deeper into post-invasion Boovish society, I love how we get to explore their architecture, I love how the bees are described, I love how the silliness of the plot doesn’t distract from the seriousness of some aspects and scenes of the book, just all of it.

On the other hand, the movie, whilst different and considerably more flawed, is a personal favorite of mine, and I watched it at least 7x during my Home/Smekday hyperfixation. I do have a gripe with the title and it should have been more specific, and even considering its many flaws in comparison to the book, I love the campy fun of it all, I love the visuals, I love the music, I love the score (If you don’t think Frolicking in Paris is an epic masterpiece, then what kind of monster are you? /t /lh), I love how Dreamworks adapted the story in their own way, I love the design of the Boov, I love the play into shape language, I love how the Gorg were done (even if they should have been a different alien species), I love the underlying tone, I love how Oh redeems himself, I love how the two protags bond, just all of it.

The only piece of Smekday media I don’t fully like is the Adventures With Tip and Oh series, given its numerous flaws and cookie-cutter nature, but even then, it can still considerably stand on its own, and has some fun elements that make it unique in its own right. Hell, they even adapt some concepts from the book in greater capacity in the series, which I personally appreciate for that. BoyBoyGirl Band is a cool concept that something can be done with if elaborated on a bit more, and Sharzod is also pretty neat if you adapt them right.

Plus, pointing out the differences between book and movie whilst reading was really fun too, and looking into both gave me incredible insight into how both versions are done, as well as how they can be done further with a little bit of fanwork. Reading the books and watching the movie gave me a lot of fun and good ideas for an AU later down the line, and I can’t wait to fully get it off the ground beyond a few concepts I did. If you can’t pick one or the other, I think a fun little AU would be the perfect project to look into and use both (or even all 3 / 4) pieces of source material with in a way you see fit!

In conclusion, you can like both. It’s not a big deal, and while you can be mad about the movie and how it admittedly did kinda butcher a lot of the book in a few ways, that doesn’t give you the right to lord over what others can and can’t like, nor does it give you the right to shame others for liking the version that you don’t like. I do not want to have to argue over this, my stance is final.

In order to cement this as a Smekday / Home post, here’s a few images of boov.

[cy-cyborg]

So I'm one of those writers that falls into the trap of world building super hard. I have so many projects I spent months or even years creating, writing lore, doing art for, all kinds of stuff, but never end up telling any actual stories in so they just end up going ultimately unused. One I'm working on right now is likely to fall into this category.

The thing is, I've recently come to the conclusion I enjoy world building more than actually writing in a lot of cases. Don't get me wrong, I still love to write and tell stories and make comics, I won't stop doing that lol, but I also really love making worlds and settings just because I can.

The problem is though, without a story to attach to these worlds, I don't know how to go about actually sharing them in any way. It's fun making things, but to spending so long working on something that no one will ever see is starting to feel... I guess a bit tiering. A few I tried to use little slice of life stories or comics as a way to share the worlds and settings, but they never actually stay slice of lifey. The big comic I'm working on right now, Voidstar, was supposed to be one of these and at some point it went from "cozy space slice of life" to "gay aliens get imprinted on by a baby dragon god and travel the galaxy to fight the government" Needless to say, Scope creep is a bit of an issue for me lol and nothing ever gets done. I also tried making websites on a few occasions or showing stuff off on my portfolio website related to the worldbuilding projects, but that didn't end up working for a bunch of reasons (mainly that my portfolio is on Wix and they're stingy with space for pages/uploads). I also tried World Anvil, and used to really enjoy that, but they've locked way too many features now behind frankly ridiculous paywalls, so It's not really worth it now. Not to mention it was really hard to make WA sites decently accessible.

All of this to say, I want to start sharing these worlds (if nothing else so I stop vanishing from social media for months at a time when I get hyperfixated lol) but I have no idea how. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

[ao3legendarium]

Fic Spotlight: Flighty by altar_boy

Hi! Welcome to a new segment I'm doing, in which I promote a fic I've read and truly loved on ao3!

For this first instalment, we have Flighty by altar_boy (aka @okaynowwha-t here on tumblr). This phenomenal canon-divergence fic is in the Percy Jackson & Related Media Types fandom, and centers around the relationship of Nico di Angelo and Jason Grace in a world where the Trials of Apollo series never happened.

Overall, this fic is absolutely incredible, but I would like to specifically mention the worldbuilding and OCs. Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson novels and many others, already has excellent worldbuilding, but altar_boy extends that even further, introducing locations and characters that Riordan only mentioned. The fic also expands greatly on the potential of Jason's title as Pontifex Maximus, which was left criminally unexplored in canon.

Everything about this worldbuilding feels like it could fit seamlessly into canon, with no plot holes (a feat not even Riordan can claim). As for the OCs: they aren't simple filler characters, each with distinct personalities and lives outside of their interactions with the main characters, but they also don't take up too much attention. They serve a purpose in the plot and aren't boring, clichéd or stereotypical, which is better than many other authors are able to write their OCs.

I would also like to say a quick word about the sex scenes. Yes, this fic is rated explicit, with multiple sex scenes between Jason and Nico and one particularly memorable - and fateful - scene with the god Eros. (If anyone seeing this is going "but Jason and Nico are minors!" please chill, they are aged up to 20 and 22/23 in this fic and there is no underage sexual content.) I wanted to take the time to say that the first dozen or so fics I read on ao3, before I even made an account, were explicit Percy Jackson fics. I had little to no standards of what makes porn hot, so I should've been losing my mind, but I always read with more fascination than arousal. For some reason, porn with Riordan's characters never got me going the way other fandoms did. That is, until I read Flighty. altar_boy managed to not only make me dive back into a fandom I had left years ago, but accomplished something no other Percy Jackson fic had: I was absolutely combustion with horniness. Every sex scene was both smoking hot and packed with emotional significance. Truly magnificent.

Anyway, that's my glowing review of this criminally underrated fanfic. You can find the fic here:

Summary:

It's been over three years since Jason has gone missing. No explanation. No goodbye. The only way anyone knew if he was alive was through the beautifully elaborate shrines that appeared in New Rome overnight. Nico can't help but to hold onto the dying hope that they would cross paths again one day. But when that day comes, can Nico handle the answers to the questions he's held for so long?

If this fic seems like something you'd be interested in, please do check it out!

Thanks for reading this review!

[bluegekk0]

⇾ PINNED POST ⇽

Hi! You can call me Gekko. I make art, primarily for my Hollow Knight AU, named Feral PK AU, but you'll also find occasional dragon/dinosaur art or maybe even fanart from other media. I also reblog posts from various other things, so it can get a bit chaotic.

That being said, the AU is the main focus of this blog. It is a slice of life AU for my favorite characters which mostly takes place in Dirtmouth, though over time it also evolved into a personal worldbuilding and character driven project.

Just a heads up, it does stray quite a bit from the canon and many popular fanon interpretations, so please approach with an open mind! If you have any questions, check the FAQ below first and don't be afraid to send me asks about it!

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Other places to find me:

» twitter // 🔞

» bluesky

» ko-fi

Art tag: #gekko.art

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╚══AU LORE PAGE (WIP)══╝

╚══AU SHORT SUMMARY══╝

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► MAIN CHARACTER REFERENCES ◄

► SIDE CHARACTER REFERENCES ◄

AU RELATED TAGS:

• Main tags: #feral pk au | #modern fpk au | #dragon fpk au

• Character info: #fpk au: designs | #fpk au: character posts

• Character tags: Vyrm | Grimm | Lewk | Asta | Milo | Hornet | Holly | Zote | White Lady | Radiance | Ghost | Lurien | Brumm | Divine | Ogrim || (for other character tags search: #[character name])

• Main worldbuilding tag: #fpk au: worldbuilding

• Specific worldbuilding: wyrms | fauna | food | holidays | other lands | the troupe

• Locations: Dirtmouth | Hallownest | City of Tears | Godhome | Deepnest | Queen's Gardens | Greenpath || (for other location tags search: #fpk au: [place name])

• Other tags: ask stuff | gekko.txt | art guide

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(disclaimers about the blog and the AU below)

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DISCLAIMERS:

» Please do not reupload my art anywhere. I'm okay with people using it as their icons/banners, but please remember to credit me.

» Since this is a primarily AU related blog, anything I say about the characters is from a headcanon lens. A lot of my headcanons are quite different from the most popular fanon interpretations, so please be aware of that before you respond, especially in regards to fandom jokes and character hate.

» A large chunk of my drawings and posts features the ship Pale Nightmare, so if you dislike it I would not recommend following my blog. It's the only ship I'm invested in, and while I avoid ship discourse, there are some that I find uncomfortable, particularly those between the characters that I consider family within the AU (Grimm/Hornet and Grimm/Hollow being the primary ones).

» Although I might occasionally touch upon topics that are in the suggestive or sexual territory in regards to some characters, this blog is otherwise still meant to be SFW. I will not be posting any explicit artwork, and I try to keep the suggestive topics tasteful. If you are interested in my NSFW art, do not ask me about it here, instead head over to my Twitter private alt. I try my best to keep the two places separate.

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AU RELATED DISCLAIMERS/FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

» The AU takes place after the Embrace the Void ending, and so The Knight/Ghost is not present.

» The Pale King's name in the AU is Vyrm (an alternate spelling of Wyrm that he uses as his name), though I occasionally refer to him as FPK. I would prefer if he was referred to with this name. At the current point in the AU he and The White Lady are separated.

» Please keep in mind that the AU originated as something I found comfort in, and it remains that way. There may be inconsistencies, I might retcon things on the go, and some things may simply not be well written. I also have no plans to turn it into a fanfic or a comic.

» I'm always open to answer questions about the AU and the characters! So if you have any, please don't be afraid to send me an ask, I absolutely love responding to them. 💖

» I am currently working on a WorldAnvil page for a more detailed, wiki-like AU info, link at the top of the post!

[letsreadlotsoffanfic]

Words: 15,271 Rating: Teen Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Summary:

Brainstorm was silent, field indicating nothing. Perceptor calculated whether it would be more logical or illogical to wait, and concluded the latter. Brainstorm made rapid decisions, and had not formerly needed encouragement to voice them, but that had been millions of stellar cycles ago. “I would appreciate promptness in your rejection.”

“Who said anything about rejecting?” Brainstorm tipped his head to the side. “I’m just trying to make sure I’ve got this straight in my processor. You performed ethically dubious, untested, methodologically uncertain engineering on yourself. Because you missed me.”

Perceptor deleted all of his emotions for a reason. After the Quintesson threat leads Optimus Prime to push through the Autobot-Decepticon Alliance, that reason no longer applies. Fixing the situation is going to take some trial and error...and a self-proclaimed genius.

My Thoughts:

I'm a complete sucker for Brainstorm/Perceptor, so of course I jumped on this Transformers Animated fic. It's an ending AU where the autobots and decepticons end up teaming up to fight the Quintessons, but that's in the background (I really enjoyed seeing the bits and pieces of some other adventure the Detroit autobots are on concurrent to the plot, lol).

I also really like when authors dig into the implication behind "robots", to include programmable brains, emotions, and so on. I also liked Perceptor's assistive device to compensate for no longer being able to read emotions/EM fields, that was a neat bit of worldbuilding.

I love this author's take on tfa!Brainstorm and tfa!Perceptor (both of which draw upon their IDW/MTMTE selves, of course.

[rileys-battlecats]

omg?? i adore everything ab all of ur work, but especially ur warriors oc stuff. all the characters are so well-characterized and designed. and also the names?? did i mention designs?? honestly mudpaw is one of the most relatable characters ive ever seen. also i love that the other apprentices are actually understanding and more like actual children cats instead of existing to be mean. (ok that sounds like im saying children aren’t mean i promise some of them are)

but like, to the actual question/s. how did you come up with the concept and get it to this point? in that one commentary video you made, i remember you mentioning that he used to be mudstripe, and he was a serial killer (sidenote that’s actually so baddie) although you decided that you wanted to tell the story of a victim rather than a villian. but did it take a lot of thinking to get micaclan as a whole to this point, or did it just kinda come naturally? also im so sorry i typed an entire essay

WAAAAHHSVDJHSDJAB THANK YOU :') also you don't ever have to apologize for sending me essays in my inbox I love asks like this <3 <3

The story and world as they are now have developed incrementally over time. In the beginning, I never really intended to make anything more for this story beyond "Johnny". I had a very specific animatic visualized for that song (because I'd been listening to it on loop for days lol), and I made characters and a story that fit with the idea.

After making and uploading it, though, the characters and their story kept knocking around in my brain!! I wanted to expand on them, and to develop them more. If my memory is right, "Johnny" was the first time I'd ever made a video telling a story of my own making (previous projects had all been stuff from existing media), and I was excited by the idea of making more :) the storytelling aspect was really interesting to me!

I started coming up with more details in my head, things like character traits and names and the next story beats I wanted to portray. By the time I made "The Garden", I'd worked up at least a loose idea of the story in my head (though I wasn't sure where exactly I was going to take it in the end at that point), and I had designed most of the clan members (mostly to fill backgrounds tbh).

Then, some folks in the youtube comments started asking about references for the different characters, and I started this blog to share them! This is definitely the point where I got REALLY into worldbuilding and fleshing out characters haha. Each reference I posted included a little bit of text about the character, and I got to put to words some of the ideas I'd had previously. Or, it gave me the opportunity to come up with some character traits for background characters I hadn't given much thought to previously! Then people started engaging with the blog more, and having people ask questions gave me the opportunity to think about lots of different aspects of the story, characters, and world. From there, it feels like the entire story expanded, bit by bit, detail by detail. So it definitely took a lot of thinking, but that thinking happened pretty naturally over time, if that makes sense!

[wingedcatastrophe]

About Me

Hello! I'm Jinx (he/they), and I've been on and off writeblr for years now. Please don't mind the mess as I very slowly start to organize and clean up my blog! I live in a place with a lot of mountains, with my two cats who regularly commit tax fraud, among other crimes. By day, I do regular maintenance work on cars, by every-spare-moment, I scribble out nonsense scenarios for the little guys living in my head.

Alongside writing, I enjoy video games and overanalyzing my favorite media in my friends' DMs. I also, on very rare occasions, dabble in making art.

I do use my likes on my blog as a bookmark system, to keep track of posts I want to look at more in depth later or to reblog later when I'm off of mobile. If I've liked it, it'll go into the queue soon, I promise!

About My Writing

My favorite things to write are sci-fi and high fantasy, and sometimes I consider really convoluted projects that combine the two. I love some extensive world-building, and I regularly think about conlangs I would love to create. I stick with writing NA and general adult stuff, mostly novels with the occasional short story.

The Chaos In Justice

Sci-fi ; new adult ; new intro post coming soon A group of supervillain students set out to save their kidnapped headmistress, decide they might as well save the world while they're at it when they uncover a sinister plot.

Labyrinth

High Fantasy ; adult ; intro post As the sickness gripping the land worsens, three Guardians are called to enter the Labyrinth at the center of the kingdom and wake the gods from their long slumber.

What I Follow

I do tend to be pretty selective with what I follow. I'm here more for making friends than I am anything else, friends who share my interest with writing. Ask games, tag games, what-have-you, I want to engage with them all! I'm always willing to give my discord out to mutuals, and my Tumblr inbox is always open for chatting!

Same as my writing, I tend to prefer sci-fi and fantasy in what I want to read and follow from fellow writeblrs. If you've got some good hefty worldbuilding, I want to see it. I'm always open to looking at other genres, of course, those are just my favorite.

What I Don't Follow

TERFS, Nazis, any hate-groups, you're not welcome here.

I'm looking to ensure my writeblr remains focused on writing and art, and I won't be following any blogs that regularly post outside of that. I also don't follow writeblrs that regularly post self-deprecating/negative writing memes - if you enjoy them, more power to you, I've simply found that consuming too many of them tends to making writing harder for me.

And as I'm looking to foster engagement and connections, I only look at blogs that reblog this to follow.

[crowandmoonwriting]

Writing tip: Explorer Mode!

(Loosely based on Assassin's Creed's Discovery Mode)

Starting off a first draft? Not quite happy with your wording or the starting scene? Inclined to jump around the plot? No idea what the plot is, or who the characters are yet, but still determined to write?

Use Explorer Mode! Your story is an adventure in and of itself, and you are Indiana Jones in the Temple of your Creativity. Write notes, scenes, memes, character motivations, bits of poetry or prose from books or media that inspire you, doodle in the margins, but write. Draw a map from one scene to another. Document your journey, even where you fall into a plot hole full of snakes. You are here to find the story, not make a finished project. It's not so much a first draft as it is a draft zero.

How to switch into Explorer Mode:

It's best to have a dedicated journal to wreck, but you can use whatever writing software you like. Some recommendations: Obsidian, Notion, Campfire Writing, and World Anvil.

At the top of the page, write Explorer Mode, and use it as a header or footer for each page if you have to, to remind you.

Keep it loose. You don't have to keep anything you write in here, but try not to discard anything. Whatever you have might be useful for writing the first draft later, or laughing at with friends.

Make it multimedia! If it's a physical journal, decorate it, draw on it, paint on it, add stickes and fancy scrapbooking paper, pretty washi tape, whatever you like. Cut out pictures from magazines, or tear out pages from old books. Don't be afraid to get messy with it.

Music, music, music! Definitely write down some playlists, or put in some links if you're using a digital journal. Write down the actual names and artists of the songs, however, and when you listen to each one, take notes. What character or scene might this relate to? Who would sing it? What lyrics inspire you? When you close your eyes and just listen, what do you picture in your mind's eye?

Involve the senses! There is nothing so evocative for the memory as scent. Scent your journal, or your pages. Add in a perfume, a fragrance oil, and lightly dab a page. Make a small envelope for a sachet of spices or a scented bit of gauze. What does the scene you're writing smell like? If you're working digitally, write down the notes of fragrances, or which candle you'd like to burn while writing this scene. You can do this with taste, too. Have a few dedicated recipes, if you like to cook, or places to eat that remind you of characters, settings, or plot points. What are your characters' favourite foods? Their comfort foods? For more on food and worldbuilding see my post here.

Get crafty! Make artefacts from your world or story. Embrace other art forms to realise it in your own world. Once when I was taking a ceramics class, I made a series of cups, goblets, and tea pots in the style of one of the countries from my high fantasy world. I love to see them and hold them, and imagine my characters having items just like these (or pretend that these are the real items they used). Sculpt, sketch, make delicate jewellery, sew clothes or a quilt, look up some fun DIY projects on YouTube that might relate to your story or character's interests and give it a go! Remember this is an exploration, so these crafts don't have to be perfect. It's a good idea to have something physical to do, something that you can do while listening to your story playlists, something you can accomplish while you daydream.

And that's about it! Take breaks from Explorer Mode whenever you like, to either actually start work on the first draft because you now feel more confident and comfortable with it, or just to chill and not think of anything for a while. That's important too. Most importantly, have fun! This is art we're making here, and we are artists, but we are also archaeologists, anthropologists, scientists, historians, and explorers of every kind.

Now go out there and have an adventure!

[litsnobconfessions]

A Year of Animation Day 36: Ernest and Celestine

Date: February 5, 2025

Day: 36

Content Watched: Ernest and Celestine

Year: 2012

Rating: PG

Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

I had never heard of Ernest and Celestine until I started looking up movies to watch for this project. Right from the beginning, I love the art style, and I like how it introduces us to an artist with the other characters slowly being drawn in. I particularly like the shadows as the old mouse (did she call herself the Grey One?) tells them about the Big Bad Bear. As for motion, I would compare this movie to Nimona or Persepolis. It feels busier than either Sleeping Beauty or Korra. The mouse city especially looks busy as Celestine is running through it to reach the dentist's office. And considering how important teeth are, I like that there are multiple shots of mice fixing teeth, losing teeth, etc. We see it right from the beginning with our... teacher? Matron? Honestly, I'm not quite sure who she's supposed to be.

Some of the other scenes I really liked include the robbery of the tooth store (I don't think it's fair to call what she does dentistry), with Ernest and Celstine's sillouettes and everything outside falling apart as Ernest stomps around (followed by the line, "bears are heavy sleepers, especially at night") and Ernest trying to escape from... let's call it Mouseville, which reminded me of Judy running around with the shrews in Zootopia. I think I liked this scene more, but that's likely because I tend to prefer hand-drawn animation. Or maybe because I just really liked the music here. Celestine's nightmare, with the hundreds of mice forming the bigger is mouse, is also incredibly creepy, especially with various mice falling off the big mouse at times. It's kind of like Oogie-Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Though I wasn't a fan of Ernest's hands on the piano. They looked a little too human for me.

My favorite piece of animation was, to no one's surprise, the scene in which they brought Celestine's painting to life with Ernest's music behind it. As always, I love when animated media finds a way to incorporate different animation styles, so I like that instead of just cutting to a scene in spring, they used this as a transition to show the passage of time.

While the animation is great, I do take a minor issue with the worldbuilding. Maybe I just wasn't attentive enough (I only watched it once), but I wasn't clear or where Celestine was living. Is this an orphanage? A school? And why? I also wasn't sure how exactly she and the other kids ended up collecting teeth, especially seeing as it's only a small group from the orphanage/school. Is it only after you reach a certain age? And are you trained for the job? I dunno. I also thought it was really funny that the bear momma freaked out about a mouse right after she told her son about the mouse tooth-fairy. And the mouse tooth-fairy is kind of specific? So I wonder if the mice ever do leave coins for bears? I mean, it seems like a wacky coincidence that the parents would make up a story about the mice collecting their teeth when this is exactly what happens.

For similar reasons, I'm curious as to how Ernest and Celestine eat while they're hiding in his house during the winter, knowing the police are out looking for them. Ernest's house was empty of food, after all, and he didn't look like he took anything from the candy store. But I'm willing to overlook this for the sake of the story.

I do enjoy the characters themselves--this is obviously a story about two misfits who decide they belong together, and everybody needs that. I like Ernest's give-no-fucks attitude which leads him to eat the ticket he gets for panhandling (as the police call it later). I wish I had the audacity to just eat my tickets. Maybe I'm not hungry enough. I also like the bait-and-switch when he demands to know if Celestine painted him on the sheet and then immediately follows it by praising her artwork. 

And I like Celestine's bravery. In the opening scene, after being tormented by the Grey One for drawing herself with a bear, she calmly adds smiles to the picture as chaos reigns around her. Her argument telling Ernest why he shouldn't eat her is particularly audacious for a little mouse her age, and her ability to just keep popping out of corners when he keeps trying to lock her out of the house is a delight. (Though it does make me wonder why we have so many mouse protagonists in our stories. I don't like it in real life when mice do this, after all.)

Overall, it's a pretty cute story--like Romeo and Juliet, only with friendship. And a happy ending. Though I am curious if the two of them ever had to pay a fine or something for robbing the stores. I understand that we're not supposed to like the bears that sell candy only so they can also sell teeth, but the fact that they did commit a crime kind of got lost in there somewhere.

[ilovedthestars]

Hi Stars! I've been thinking some more about media with deep platonic relationships, and I'd like to recommend Victoria Goddard's Nine Worlds fantasy universe. She has several interconnected series set in different parts of the same world, most of which have a lot of "love as in significance" going on.

In particular, The Hands of the Emperor and its sequel, At the Feet of the Sun, focus on the deepening friendship between the Emperor and his personal secretary (later Lord Chancellor), Cliopher. The sequel makes it explicitly clear that Cliopher is ace and the relationship he dreams of having with the Emperor is a queerplatonic one. Both books are enormous doorstops, but I love their leisurely, character-focused pace and overall tone of compassion and hopefulness.

Ooh, thank you so much! I can enjoy a good doorstopper if it's well paced, and this sounds really cool. I went to go look up a summary on the author's website:

An impulsive word can start a war. A timely word can stop one. A simple act of friendship can change the course of history. Cliopher Mdang is the personal secretary of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Lord Magus of Zunidh, the Sun-on-Earth, the god. He has spent more time with the Emperor of Astandalas than any other person. He has never once touched his lord. He has never called him by name. He has never initiated a conversation. One day Cliopher invites the Sun-on-Earth home to the proverbially remote Vangavaye-ve for a holiday. The mere invitation could have seen Cliopher executed for blasphemy. The acceptance upends the world.

I can already feel the platonic pining, oh my goodness. That kind of imbalance, wanting to be close to someone who's revered as a ruler and a god, being devoted to them as both but also caring about them as a person--it's so juicy. I imagine this is why some people love bodyguard romances and similar plots, but knowing that the desited end state of this pining is queerplatonic makes it so much more exciting to me.

I read the sample on the website too, which is sizable and took me all the way up to the invitation. I'm intrigued by the worldbuilding, I love that the protagonist is a bureaucrat whose life's work is trying to help people and shift political systems to be better for the citizens, I love all the complicated emotions of his trip back home and trying to reconcile his two lives. I can already feel that compassionate, hopeful, contemplative tone to the writing, and I can already tell that this is a story that treats friendship with weight.

I mean, look at this:

He thought of his lord, pacing in his study, bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. Thought of how well they worked together, the enmeshing of respect and knowledge and good humour and experience. Thought of leaving his lord to the court. Thought of leaving his friends in Solaara-Conju and Ser Rhodin and Commander Omo-how none of them had families, had lost them in the Fall. Thought of leaving his work undone. All those projects slowly, delicately, unobtrusively transforming the government according to his vision of what the world could be. Thought of his lord, never failing to do his duty. Thought of his lord, with no one to joke with him. Thought of losing that—he could not call it friendship, could he? That implied a kind of equality, and there was no equality possible between the Sun-on-Earth and anyone else. But call it a relationship, that was permissible. He suppressed the wish that he dared call his Radiancy his friend.

And this:

"You saw this beautiful place, and you thought I would like it, and that I might enjoy a—a vacation after finishing up my present project, so you rented it for a month in my name, am I correct?" Cliopher swallowed. But his Radiancy said I, not we. He held to that. "I did not presume so far, my lord. It is in my name." His Radiancy continued to frown silently for several moments longer. And then he said: "Thank you, Cliopher." When Cliopher glanced up in surprise, for his Radiancy's tone had changed utterly, he saw that his Radiancy was smiling and there was even, oh just perhaps, the suspicion of moisture in his Radiancy's eyes, and Cliopher sank back to the ground in sheer relief and wonder and also a kind of pain, for he had seen that kind of surprised pleasure before in the faces of people receiving entirely unexpected but welcome gifts. And it occurred to him, somewhat later, after they had settled into their usual work, that if he, who was the chief member of his Radiancy's household, had never before dared offer a gift to his Radiancy beyond the tithes and service expected of him, then apart from his Radiancy's sister, who barely wrote and even more rarely came to court, there was no one else to do so.

I think I am going to LOVE this book. I've requested it from my library, and I can't wait for it to get here. Thank you so much for the rec!!

[tastesoftamriel]

I'm sure you're entirely sick of talking about this bc that initial anon was... dumb as hell and I too would like to forget about it if I were you lol, so feel free to ignore this ask!! but I just wanted to throw in my two cents as a fellow non-white non-American fantasy writer. cause fantasy as a genre is so insanely whitewashed, and even in settings like TES that have multiple different fantasy-cultures that are meant to draw inspiration from lots of different real-world-cultures, they tend to be shallow and lacking and let's be real, TES isn't getting any awards for being politically correct. I for one always get insanely hyped when I see more diverse takes on fantasy, whether thats in original fiction or fanfiction, cause 1) it just vastly improves the quality of the world building and 2) it creates more welcoming spaces for other bipoc to create more cool stuff. and also, it's just fun as hell to project your own culture into dope fantasy settings. I do it all the time and I fuckin love when other people do it.

I feel like that anon was just looking for a fight and intentionally trying to interpret your comment in the most bad faith way possible (classic tesblr behavior ngl). and like I get it, orientalism sucks ass, but I've followed you for a couple years now and I've only ever known you to be a super chill, super respectful person who (like I said before) creates a welcoming space for other bipoc in the fandom.

tldr: anon is a clown, representation is fun, your blog slaps

❤ from @reachfolk

Yes yes YES I could hug you! Inclusivity and breaking away from whitewashed fantasy is one of my main goals with this blog! My recipes and worldbuilding have me neck deep in exploring global cuisine and culture, but as soon as it's a picture then people go off about cultural insensitivity. Because reading comprehension is low here so most people barely glance at the worldbuilding posts.

Growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, as far as Asian actors in Hollywood went, you had Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan. There was that show about Imperial Chinese cats called Sagwa (傻瓜 shagua literally means "dumb melon" which is what you call a certified idiot). Mulan (forever my favourite). Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? But that's it. Seeing Michelle Yeoh winning everything recently makes me feel proud to be Asian. I cried when I saw Over the Moon.

If just ONE person looks at this blog and goes "cool, I learned something" or "cool, my culture is being recognised and represented as a form of inspiration", then I have done something right. Other Chinese/East Asian people in the past have applauded me for bucking the western "Asian" stereotype, simply because I express my love for my culture differently.

I'm no less Chinese for being fluent in English (which is actually my mother tongue btw thanks colonialism), or being a goth, or an author who happens to be atrocious at math. I just am. And I want everyone to just be too. To embrace their otherness, to rejoice in the diversity of the human experience, and to learn to live together. And most of all, I wanna see more awareness in writing (especially fantasy) about non-Global North cultures and the people who represent them. I'm sick of being a media cliché.

If you're a POC and you're looking for your sign to delve into fantasy worldbuilding, this is it. Go write. Create. Destroy. Build the world you've always wanted to see through the lens of your heritage, use your history as a lesson, use your language as a weapon. ~Tal