#like in a gnomish neighborhood of a bigger integrated/ human city | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blujayonthewing · 1 month ago

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gnome culture emphasizes playfulness and a good sense of humor partly because gnomes are physically small and vulnerable and tend to settle in wild places with a lot of hazards and if they had to take every completely real threat to their safety seriously while also Taking Them Seriously they'd just be paralyzed by fear

#take it easy but take it #good and healthy to be afraid sometimes but you gotta learn to laugh about it too or you're gonna implode #turning this over in my mind with the half-cooked concept I was thinking about the other day #about a gnomish (philosophy? saying? entire parable?) about how the More you live the closer you are to death #not as a cautionary tale against doing stuff but as a cautionary tale against avoiding danger at any cost #the world is too full of risk for a gnome to live like that! if you're not taking any risks you're not really living!!#you learn riddles and practical jokes and illusions and trickery because you'll need those skills to survive #and you're going to remember them and get good at them and not become obsessed about catastrophizing over them because they're FUN #the world isn't full of Terrible Dangers to Fear the world is full of THRILLING CHALLENGES that YOU can be clever enough to overcome!!#you're going to cheat death again and again so that when she finally catches you you giggle like a child and say 'good game!'#gnome stuff #worldbuilding #felix insp #idri insp #melliwyk insp #<- this applies to mel the least because the Culture is still there for her but she grew up in a very arcane modernized city #like in a gnomish neighborhood of a bigger integrated/ human city #so the survival value of this was less a factor for her #than for my blorbos who had to grow up with the extremely real possibility of getting eaten by wild animals

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