#love me some watsonian worldbuilding

[valakiir]

So i was looking at the official moorbounder art and it's starting to bug me. It's a really cool design, don't get me wrong, i do like it, but the length / positioning of the tusks just seemed off to me for some reason. I think i finally figured out why!

(Official art above)

((The biologist in me is speaking now, prepare for me to dive into the practicalities of dnd monsters))

The moorbounder's tusks arc up and back, appearing to grow from the lower jaw. They seem to spiral a little like ram horns imo. Looking at them, trying to infer what their purpose is, there are a couple options. The curve of the tusk means it doesnt work well as a cutting or holding feature -- the tips are pointed too far back and around bc of the spiral shape. Assuming they are like ram horns, they could be used similarly in territorial fights. They could also be used, in a similar vein, to bludgeon opponents with the side of their heads. Again the curve of the tusk means it wont pierce anything in front of it. It would be difficult to pierce /anything/ with them.

My second thought was that they were used for defence. Looking at where that curve places the tusk in relation to the rest of the head, it could easily function as protection for the eyes (this could also be why their pupils are such a unique shape -- to avoid having a massive blind spot on the sides of their heads). Moorbounder eyes, looking at them now, are not actually placed forward on the head, the norm of ground predators (birds of prey have their own reasons behind their anatomy). This means they are likely not the top of the food chain -- even that they have a different creature predating frequently on them that they need to watch for. The small ears imply they do not rely heavily on hearing (they have little to help funnel noise into the ear canal), so im going to make the assumption they rely primarily on scent to hunt -- but this is getting off topic. The lack of large ears may also have developed due to their agressive nature -- less skin to get caught or torn in a fight. The tusks might be a large enough curve to protect the ears, even. It is difficult to tell exactly from the art. Another point toward the tusks acting as a guard for the sides of the head.

Another option is that they are used to attract mates. Natural selection just encouraging larger tusks until we have what is shown in the art.

This is not what bothers me. The problem I have is how far the tusks extend /forward/. From what I can tell, the forward curve of the tusks reach about the tip of the nose. This is another hint that they might be used in a forward bludgeoning motion, however there is a problem with this. How are they supposed to bite? The tusks would press against anything the moorbounder is reaching for and hold it away. There are long whiskers extending from the nose, I'm assuming, with great confidence, to feel past those tusks.

My theory is that the curve of those tusks, while /natural/, is not actually observed in wild moorbounders. My guess is while those tusks grow continuously throughout the moorbounder's life, they are worn down through use. Captive moorbounders would likely not have to grind down on bone or protective plating -- their food is provided for them. Nor would there be any need to, say, mark territory by scratching the tusks against trees or other landmarks. If this is the case, wild moorbounders would have much shorter tusks, tusks that would actually be useful in biting, cutting, and holding. Moorbounders are agressive enough, filing their tusks down would be very difficult -- down right dangerous -- and because they are used primarily as mounts, not pit-fighters, the chore is easier neglected.

Another option, of course, is that the full curve of the tusks is a mark of age, and only seen in captivity because moorbounders don't live that long in the wild. This would be because it gets more and more difficult to catch prey as the tusks grow. The oldest moorbounders would essentially die of starvation. This means they live /much/ longer in captivity.

Yet another possibility is that the tusks are not teeth or horn -- they are like antlers. If those large tusks are grown and shed in a mating season when they are most aggressive, it would make sense that they would want to protect the head. It means moorbounders would not be able to eat during that period of time, but this is not unheard of in nature.

If the tusks grow from the upper jaw, this whole arguement is rendered largely irrelevant btw, and i will hide in my corner in embarrassment if that was actually addressed. They would still be inconvenient, but not prohibitive.

Overall, i am of the opinion wild moorbounder tusks are much shorter due to use, and irresponsible ownership is the reason we see the large curving tusks in the official art.

I appreciate you coming to my TED talk.

[incandescent-creativity]

Aright, I'm a third of the way through Eragon and my thoughts are: the worldbuilding is pretty great! The writing style is fairly bland. Ah, the irresistible temptation to just name stuff that will never be mentioned again because fantasy names are cool...my beloathed, and beloved, but more so beloathed.

Angela. Like. He just really wanted this unrelated magic user who I'm pretty sure is supposed to be an insert for his sister to be in this story even though she is entirely unneeded. I mean, I love her. But she's completely superfluous to the plot like, 98% of the time she's on page. She's just there to be cool and mysterious. I love her, but the writer I am now can't help but notice how out of place she is.

Also I forgot we had all this ancient language existing in a world with names like Trevor.

Eragon does still feel like a fifteen year-old. Sometimes he's so young and other times he isn't, and it works I guess.

This book is a lot of pages but it's so, so easy to read. There's all this lore stuffed in but it's approached in an oddly juvenile way. I don't feel very serious about this serious quest we're on. Which, is how I felt the first time I read it, so props to past me for recognizing that.

I'll report back in later when I've made more progress.

Alright you're probably farther into it now that it's been a week but! A response <3

I can't really argue with you about the writing style being bland, but I do think it allows the reader to exercise their theater of the mind a lot more freely. Like that illustrated version of Eragon that came out is beautiful! But it would also provide a concrete visual for, idk, like the Ra'zac as an example.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does take away the opportunity for the reader to fill in the gaps that Paolini's "summarizing plus some description for spice" approach allows. Which I kind of like! It won't work for every reader, but I'm personally pretty prepared to be forgiving of the blandness.

Angela... is a very obvious sister-insert. I think it's admitted as much in some author's note or acknowledgements somewhere. BUT I also cannot criticize her in good faith when I also appreciate the "just put cool shit in!" approach to writing fantasy. Like is she a narrative version of the DM's favorite NPC they keep shoehorning in? Yea. Am I entertained by her regardless? Also yes.

I also want to tie your "I don't feel very serious about this serious quest we're on." comment in to Eragon feeling like a 15yo. In Doylist terms, the lack of weight that the tone of the book attributes to the stakes may come from Paolini's own age at the time of publishing, but I think there's a Watsonian interpretation, too. Eragon is! fifteen! He knows enough about his world to name the major players, but he simply doesn't have the experience to know what he's getting into.

He will tho >:)

[dragonsfromthemoon]

ON ASOIAF, AGE GAP AND RHAELYA

This is a topic discussed over and over on fandom spaces. Often it is brought up by antis as a “gotcha!” against the fans of certain fictional couples — and on this meta, my focus is mostly on Rhaegar and Lyanna, though some arguments can be used for other ships as well.

That said, we have two ways of looking into this subject in the context of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Parting from a doylist analysis, we could rightfully criticize George R. R. Martin for his approach to age and relationships, especially regarding his female characters. In Rhaegar and Lyanna's case, we could object him putting an underage girl in a relationship with a married man about eight years her senior. If I were the one writing this story, I would have aged Lyanna up; there is no narrative/worldbuilding/plot reason for not doing that. Alas, I am not George R. R. Martin, the story does not belong to me.

The gist here, however, is reprobating the author's conscious choices, nor the characters themselves or their relationship. Rhaegar and Lyanna cannot make decisions or be held accountable in the real world, as they are only fragments of George R. R. Martin's imagination and words on a blank paper. The same is valid for any other relationship featured on Planetos.

Nevertheless, a doylist analysis is bound to face some questions and run into some issues as well. The first being, who is the one raising the objections? The answer is crucial, because the objector parts from their own vision of the world — which is dictated by one's upbringing, moral and culture. Needless to say, all of these things vary from person to person. Different fans will approach the matter of age gaps differently, based on their own opinions and experiences. The second one is, who gets to judge what is right or wrong? And this is followed by the question: what is the the acceptable age gap — 10 years? 5 years? 2 years? 1 year? Months? We would debate over it endlessly, because there is really no right answer, and everyone would apply their own biases to the issue. Thirdly, why did the objector decide to engage with a material that features such age gaps in the first place? We have the power over what we read and watch, over the fandoms we join; as well as the power of not engaging with triggering content for us anymore. Sanitizing fiction is not the way to go, because it brings more harm than good in the form of persecution and harassment of content creators and censorship (again, who gets to decide what must be censored and why?)

There are two more intertwined factors to take into account when discussing a doylist perspective: George R. R. Martin's historical inspirations and worldbuilding. Though so many times exaggerated and factually wrong, the fact remains that he draws inspiration from the European Middle Age (with focus on England) to build Planetos. And that reflects directly on the issues of age in his work. Childhood, adulthood, marriageable age, age of context are notions that differ drastically from our contemporary ones. We are talking about distincts periods of history, with distinct approaches to social and cultural norms, after all. Here the author himself discusses the issue of ages, if one would be interested to read on the topic.

Which brings me to the watsonian analysis part of this essay. Above all, the in-universe context matters here. And if we hope to understand the characters, their actions and views on relationships in a deep level, we cannot dissociate them from their historical and social in-universe background.

By the time Lyanna met Rhaegar, she was 14 and already engaged to Robert Baratheon. Her fiance Robert, by the way, was also older than her. By all accounts he desired her and claimed to love her, constructed an image of her in his mind. It is safe to speculate she would have been expected to marry Robert not long after Brandon Stark's marriage to Catelyn, if her elopement with Rhaegar and the Rebellion had not happened. My point here is, this was hardly a frowned upon marriage arrangement in A Song of Ice and Fire. Except for Lyanna, that is, as she did not desire Robert nor this marriage. Even so, her issue was not with his age (her distaste for Robert is a whole other discussion).

Well, when Lyanna starts her affair with Rhaegar de facto, she is about 16 (not 14, as antis like to claim; let's get our facts straight). By Westerosi standards, a woman grown, apt to marry and bear children. Rhaegar was about 24. Thus they have a 8 years age gap. This is hardly a remarkable age difference in Westeros, as so many couples have it even bigger. Almost all of romantic entanglements in this story have an element of age imbalance. I will not name these examples; I trust the readers to come up with their own.

My point here is, through watsonian lens, the age gap between Lyanna and Rhaegar is scarcely a problem or something to be particularly condemned. And quite frankly, there are other aspects of their characters and their dynamic that are more relevant to discuss, if we as readers take upon us to analyse them.

[alliluyevas]

not to devote extensive worldbuilding analysis to the scintillating film Alien versus Predator but here goes:

I was actually thinking a bit about gender in the two franchises wrt the human characters already, because even the original Alien features the iconic Ellen Ripley, who is very much a different type of action lead than Arnold Schwarzenegger. I haven't seen all the Alien films, but of the ones I've seen even the non-Ripley-centric films have a female human protagonist. The Predator franchise, with the exception of most recent entry Prey, is generally much more male-centered.

One thing I'd found interesting wrt gender in the Alien movies is that there are several prominent characters who are androids but they are all male, at least in the films I've seen, which is a bit of a bummer for me because I love the Alien androids and I like female characters. This is interesting and in some ways a little surprising because Ridley Scott also made Blade Runner, whose replicants deal with a lot of the same themes around synthetic humanity as the androids in Alien, and 2/3 of the prominent replicants in Blade Runner are female. (Unless you interpret Deckard as a replicant as well, but that's a matter of debate and personally I think the movie is more interesting if he's not.)

So I'd already thought a bit about the treatment of gender for both human and human-adjacent characters in both franchises, and then Alien versus Predator raised further questions. AVP, which I guess we consider both an Alien movie and a Predator movie, also features a female human protagonist, which is typical for Alien movies but I believe was the first entry in the Predator franchise to do so. It also really leans into something else that I had already thought about when comparing the titular monster from both franchises: the comparative anthropomorphism of the Predator species as opposed to the insectoid and much more animalistic Alien species.

And this made me consider for the first time: do the Predators have a concept of gender? As in, within their own species?

The Alien species is pretty clearly modeled off of hive-based insect species like ants and bees, with a "queen" Alien that is much physically larger and produces all the eggs, and a much larger number of smaller drone or soldier aliens that perform most of the colony tasks.

The Predators, on the other hand, appear to be more mammalian, and even humanoid, in their appearance and their traits/abilities. Which begs the question: are the Predators, like most earth mammals, also sexually dimorphic? Most of the Predators we see in the films appear relatively similar, and certainly more "masculine" by human standards in terms of their build (male-presenting Predators, lol). I don't want to project human body standards onto an alien species, but are all the Predators supposed to be male? Are the female Predators all back on Predator Homeworld and don't go on hunting trips? Or are the Predators we see in the films a mixed-gender group and that's just not visible to a human audience? They could definitely also be a species that produces both "male" and "female" gametes and reproduces in a way that is foreign to earth mammals.

In terms of how Predators interact with male and female humans, they definitely seem to repeatedly underestimate female humans or perceive them as unthreatening. In the original Predator movie, the Predator essentially ignores Anna because he does not see her as a threat. (From a Watsonian perspective, this could be just because she's unarmed, because she's physically smaller than the men in the film, or because he perceives her as female, or some of all three. From a Doylist perspective, it's a male-centric action movie made in the 1980s). The Predator in Prey also underestimates Naru and initially judges her as unthreatening. (Again, because she is female or because she is young and small?) In Predator 2, a Predator spares the life of a pregnant woman, which indicates that Predators possibly have an understanding of pregnancy. They could have this because their own species experiences it, or alternately because they've observed it in other species. They clearly see pregnant women as weaker and more vulnerable (ie, not honorable prey), but that doesn't necessarily indicate that they see this difference between them and male humans as a gendered marker.

(Of course, this is an alien species and I don't want to assume that even if they are sexually dimorphic that they have a system of gender roles that is at all comparable to humans, even if they are obviously humanoid in many ways. After all, most earth mammal species have sexual dimorphism but they certainly do not have a human concept of patriarchy in any sense.)

My final thought on the matter: in Predators, there are three main Predators hunting the human characters. They discover a smaller Predator tied up in the other Predators' camp. At the end of the film, the humans free the captive Predator and it helps them defeat the larger Predators. It seems like most interpretation of this is that the two "types" of Predators are members of different tribes or subspecies. On the other hand--is it possible that the smaller Predator which is being held captive is actually just a female?

[marypsue]

Re strangerthingsposting, what do you think of the lore additions in s2? Like the hive mind vines and the Big Bad with a goal and stuff. I was uhhhh not a fan but I'm open to being convinced.

So, thought number one is: I like it when a story keeps its lore open, or at least partly open. I hate it when a story tries to stitch absolutely everything up with a single connecting thread. As I understand it, this is different from telling a coherent story where things string together logically and are connected to what came before, and I will try to demonstrate the difference through the use of examples:

Fig. 1) Gravity Falls has a town which is a magnet for weirdness. This is a central connecting thread and also the premise of the story. Throughout the story, we learn that many of the weird things about the town are connected to a mysterious Author who left behind a series of journals (this is also part of the premise) and we find out more about who the Author was and why and what the causes and history behind some of the weird things in Gravity Falls are. However, crucially, not every weird thing in Gravity Falls is forced to be attributed to or even part of the larger overarching Author mystery (beyond being documented in the Author's journals). And in the end, the reason behind Gravity Falls' weirdness magnetism is just never explained. It's just one of those things! It's part of a world that is very, very big, and has a lot of things in it, and not all of those things exist solely in service to the plot, and not all of those things can be connected to one another in a direct 1-1 way or even completely explained. I love this kind of story. It makes the world of the story feel big, and convincing, because in the real world it's actually very rare that there's a neat explanation for everything and that all of those things are directly connected! Some people think this kind of open worldbuilding is a 'plot hole'. Those people are pedantic and wrong.

Fig. 2) Somehow, Palpatine has returned. (i.e. everything has to be in some way connected back to the main plot and everyone has to be related to someone who's important to the main plot and nobody and nothing is allowed to be important unless it turns out they are Sekritly Important To The Main Plot. I do not like this kind of storytelling, especially when it's clear that the storytellers did not set out with a specific endpoint in mind. Imo it really closes down the story and the world, and shuts me, as a member of the audience who is not and physically cannot be important to the main plot, out.)

Thought number two: Stranger Things season 2 is, by necessity, falling a little into the second camp. There was a plan for one season of the show, and then they got a sequel, and it's completely different from everything they had in the pitch bible about what a sequel season might look like. So they obviously made it up after the first season had told its self-contained story.

Personally, though, I think it works. Mostly because we never actually get an explanation for the Mind Flayer (at least, not in season 2); it just turns up one day and starts causing trouble, and the best explanation anyone can offer is one that Gary Gygax or one of his collaborators made up. The idea of the Upside Down as a parallel, possibly even mirrored dimension, alien and inscrutable but ultimately neutral, with its own rules and its own ecosystem (even if that ecosystem is 90% stolen from Alien and 10% handwave), is one of my favourite parts of season 1. The Mind Flayer and the idea of it as a central Big Bad in control of the entirety of the Upside Down could be really disruptive to that. But that kind of works - if you take that disruption as Watsonian instead of only Doylist.

Personally, I like the idea that the Upside Down's Mind Flayer is, actually, from yet another dimension and is an invasive species to the Upside Down (a theory that's a big part of the backbone of the road goes ever on, which yes I am shamelessly namedropping yet again), because that makes a lot of sense to me and also opens up the worldbuilding even more.

I think it especially works taken in conversation with season 3, specifically because we've never (again, prior to about halfway through s4, which is as far as I've gotten) been definitively told where the Mind Flayer comes from or how it works. In season 3, we see it taking over the bodies and minds of humans in our own dimension in a bid to gain a foothold and control here. Heck, even in season 2, it's possessing Will and has some control over his actions, with the implication being that if it had been left unchecked, it would have erased his personality and taken him over completely. It's not a huge leap to the interpretation that the Mind Flayer did the exact same thing to the demo-creatures in the Upside Down, that 'enslaved to a single conquest-driven overmind' is not the natural state of affairs over there. It still gives plenty of room to read the Upside Down as just another place, another world, opens up the possibilities of parallel dimensions, and reduces the Mind Flayer from 'the reason why all of this is happening' to 'just some guy'. Which is why it works for me.

(And why season 4 doesn't, yet, because it very definitively is saying 'no it's all connected to this one Main Important Plot Thread, and also the Upside Down and everything in or from it is Always Chaotic Evil, anything you don't understand must be evil and trying to destroy everything you love, what do you mean we're unironically recreating the thinking behind the Satanic Panic in the first place, look we specifically said heavy metal and tabletop games aren't evil and people are stupid for thinking they are! Unlike us, the smart guys!' But that's another, largely unrelated rant.)

[tiodolma]

it's the overall problem with the magic worldbuilding in this show tbh. Some of the spells only need the user's own magical reserves while some require more tangible things like items, bodies, souls.

To me, "Dark magic" is heavily regulated by high priestesses and forbidden by the more normal users such as Gaius because practicing these already crossed the line between life and death. I do not think practicing dark magic made users inherently evil, it's just the sense of morals/ethics become more questionable the more they practice it. A dark magic user would have had to justify who are what to sacrifice for them to reach those goals.

To me the reason Morgana has gone mad is because she's too far gone sacrificing living things to amplify her magic without regard, even at the cost of her own body (usually her blood).

But that really does not answer the question Merlin's powers right? I'll have to go full watsonian here and put forth this theory: He has infinite magical reserves since he is Magic himself. He can create life because he is the only one with enough energy to do so. That's his only visible consequence.

It's an easy theory tbh. Though to me that theory is too convenient and very plot armor-y of him. I honestly don't like it because he can just do and make stuff while everybody struggles to accomplish even half the things he could do.

I like to think that every time Merlin brings back Arthur or anyone from certain death, the fates play a role in killing someone he loves later to keep the balance. Gaius had repeatedly warned him against his arrogance, playing god and tempting fate but Merlin still did it with heavy losses. In some ways, Merlin was already dabbling in something akin to dark magic, though they just didn't have the terminology to define what.

Of course these are all just fringe theory (and very watsonian and headcanony). With or Without magic, Merlin and Morgana could have just succumbed to their own egos and turned mad (in their own right) because they are inherently human and have flaws.

I headcanon that the more Morgana used dark magic, the more she became mad. They never really explained the prices she paid just to get those magics to work. I know it was implied in the show but it would have been interesting if the show also dug more on "equivalent exchange” especially regarding to alchemy and forbidden magic, etc.

[sandraharissa]

So I haven’t been in this fandom for YEARS but I just came across smth that always bugged me so ig I’m venting.

So the fandom has always been very critical of Odin but I always found it to be to a fault. I’ll generally see very exaggerated, not canonically supported takes on Odin that paint everything he ever did in the worst light possible. To the point where it’s just extremely boring to me. Odin being pure evil is infinitely less interesting than him being gray flawed-but-loving parent. Now I realise a huge chunk of the fandom would love a ‘Loki realizes Odin will never love him and gets over him’ narrative but I find it 1) personally extremely emotionally unsatisfying 2) waaaaay beyond a story that could ever be handled well and with enough nuance by the mcu 3) a bit too not complaint with the first movie and in general with the framing in all of these movies to truly stick the landing.

For example, ppl would often try to turn the information that was stated in canon that ‘Loki got adopted’ into ‘Loki got kidnapped’. The problem with that is that it’s solely based on headcanon. From a Watsonian perspective you can try to argue that Odin could be lying but from a Doylist perspective this is the only time we’re given information on that matter, and if the truth on such a crucial aspect of the story was different then it’d be extremely important to reveal the real truth to the audience at some point, but the writers never do that. Actually there’s a deleted scene found in the script where Loki reveals to Laufey that he’s his son, where Laufey explicitly agrees that he abandoned Loki, calls him weak and ‘a bastard son’. Now this is a deleted scene so it’s not canon, ig we could say it’s soft canon, but either way it gives us insight into the writers’ original intent behind writing the whole script including the vault scene and it presents the more fleshed out version of the story, where such a crucial information as Loki’s origin is indeed double-checked by Loki with the ‘original source’.

Next matter, the writers never thought through the story nearly as much as the fans do. The worldbuilding, history and lore of this world are next to non-existent. We don’t know anything about the Jotun culture, so who knows maybe leaving someone of royal blood in a temple was done for their own protection or maybe it was a sacrifice to their gods or smth, or maybe it has no meaning at all and he was simply left behind anywhere when others were fleeing. Similarly we don’t know anything about Asgardian customs so maybe the party at the end of the movie was smth disrespectful toward Loki’s recent presumed death or maybe it was exactly how they do it. We’re just left to either take the framing at face value even tho the framing is sometimes noticeably faulty or come up with headcanons.

And speaking of that party scene, along with weird assumptions about Asgardian culture I’ve also seen weird reading of Odin’s behavior. Now Anthony Hopkins clearly never cared about this role and in most scenes he barely even moves so I know that probs doesn’t help the perception that Odin the character doesn’t care about what’s happening around him, but we also do get some things out of him like this:

He's shown alone and isolated from the rest, staring blankly at the Bifrost where everybody thinks Loki died and it seems he can barely speak, but that somehow translates into ultimate proof that he’s happy/indifferent that Loki is gone, like ??? Absolutely bizarre takes. I would often see ppl scrutinize Odin’s behavior like this like they’re body language/human behavior “experts” or whatever, as tho it’s not the case that all the characters often appear to be underacting/underreacting when intercut with Loki’s drastic and often very realistic looking displays of emotion. And even with that in mind there’s always enough obvious cinematic language used in those scenes that you can clearly tell the authorial intent. Like you’d think somber music and sad faces and staying away from the party, in contrast to all the partying guests, would make it clear enough that Loki’s family is mourning. But ig they’re not mourning visibly enough for some ppl’s liking.

There’s more scenes like that that really convey the love between all the different family members, but then we also get these confusing scenes like ‘your birthright was to die’ or ‘am I not your mother’ or ‘That hope no longer exists to protect you. You betray me and I will kill you.’ that just kinda happen but then nothing ever gets explained or resolved. Unfortunately it’s likely the writers just think there’s nothing wrong with this kind of behavior and that the characters were justified/right in saying those things. So the fandom’s stuck not being able to just ignore the worst of it, and for me also not being able to ignore all the framing and writing that conveys real love within the family that I want to root for.

In broader strokes I would say the first movie is the most defining for the franchise and the characters and that’s the one that has me rooting for Odin and Loki’s relationship. Then came TDW and it was the real beginning of the end, not TR. This movie was the first that tried to simply sweep under the rug all the interesting drama the previous movies built. They find a way to get rid of Frigga, they get rid of Odin and rush his arc to its end (originally with no intention to bring him back ever again, according to interviews) and they also tried to get rid of Loki for good and rush his arc to its end. Leaving Thor free from having to deal with all the family drama ever again that ig powers that be decided no one wanted to see, until changes were made. With the third movie continuing to axe everything that’s left from the Thor franchise and continuing the task of writing out Thor’s family members, bringing Odin and Loki back, giving them both more flattering conclusions and then killing them off again. And what a pity cos the bones for great arcs for these characters are all there. If only there was a single cohesive vision for the franchise that allowed for continuous cohesive arcs throughout the trilogy.

Anyway, ig I still had some mourning to do for all that development that never happened and that at this point we’re way beyond ever getting.

[wolfeyedwitch]

BBU and Pet Welfare

So to preface this, I love the BBU. It's a fantastic shared sandbox with tons of amazing ideas and some really fantastic stories. It's a look into what human greed and corruption can produce when left unchecked, when you start seeing people as commodities rather than as people.

That said. I do have one issue. And I didn't even come up with this myself; it was brought to my attention by my lovely SO. I was trying to explain what the BBU was to them, and all the abuses that the pets experience.

SO, who is a vet student: yeah, except pets don't work that way.

Me: ???

SO: there are animal rights and animal welfare groups going nuts about our animal pets. There would absolutely be pets' rights/welfare groups in that setting.

Which. Is absolutely sound logic, and also something that I had never considered before. Because we don't just let people do whatever they want with their pets. There are groups like the ASPCA and RSPCA that go in and get involved if pets are being abused or neglected. They will seize animals that aren't being properly treated.

So why wouldn't there be anything like that for Pets?

Looking at it from a Doylist perspective, it feels like the answer is "because that doesn't make for as good of whump". But what's the Watsonian answer? What's the in-universe reason why there aren't protections for Pets? I find it hard to believe that WRU would manage to squash all of the dissent; in fact, it could be good for their image to help Pet welfare groups (or at least look like they're helping them). It could make people believe that they really do care about the pets that they train.

Obviously, having Pet welfare groups wouldn't solve everything. It would get really murky with Romantics, because consent from a brainwashed pet is... dubious at best. But I have trouble seeing any reason why Pet welfare groups wouldn't step in for things like physical abuse, or 'dog' fighting rings.

Is there a reason already developed about this that I just have missed? Or is this an avenue that the BBU could expand in?

Tagging some BBU writers that I know have great worldbuilding: @maracujatangerine, @ashintheairlikesnow, @haro-whumps, @the-host-and-colton, @cubeswhump

[time-variance-archive]

Welcome to the Time Variance Archive blog

This archive is dedicated to analysing the Disney+ Loki series and its various narrative themes.

Most of the posts here will be mine, but I'll also reblog and share posts and articles from other websites that I find interesting.

If you want to join me on this adventure, I'll be more than happy to publish your asks and submissions as long as you follow the guidelines.

Master list of my posts :

What makes a Loki a Loki ? a metaphysical response to the nature of variants

Hard worldbuilding vs soft worldbuilding

“There are no Time-Keepers” : why does it matter ?

What Sylvie (and Sylki) means to me.

Character appreciation post : He Who Remains

He Who Remains is the embodiment of the statu quo

Ramblings and predictions for season 2 regarding the multiversal war

Doylist analysis of the time loop scene : what narrative purpose does it serve ?

A short analysis of Loki and Mobius

Me infodumping about Ravonna Renslayer's story in the comics

My stance on the Loki vs Sylvie battle of opinions

Loki's fear of uncertainty and chaos

Sylvie and the devil symbolisms

Theory : all the Lokis in the Void are redeemed Lokis

Another analysis of Sylvie’s arc : understanding the complexity of systemic issues

Trying to explain some "plot holes" with evidence and complete bs of my own invention ^^

A heartfelt tribute to Victor Timely

Tags :

general writing : posts about creative writing and litterary analysis. Not directly related to the Loki series.

watsonian analysis : analysis from an in-universe pov

doylist analysis : analysis from a writing pov

headcanon : theories and personal interpretations not directly confirmed by the show

metaphysics : meta posts using metaphysical concepts (hey, my philosophy degree didn't get me a job, but at least I can flex on Tumblr)

loki series criticism : negative aspects of the show and potentially triggering materials

character analysis

tags by characters

Rules :

This blog is a drama-free zone. We're here to share our love for the Loki series, not our bitterness towards the fandom.

Sometimes, analysis includes criticism, and that's okay. However, all criticism must be in good faith : bad writing isn't the same as not liking something, and not every unexplained thing is a plot hole.

No ad-hominem attacks, either against other fans, cast and crew member or characters. All characters matter and they're all beautiful pieces in this narrative machine.

While it is important to acknowledge social issues in fandom, this blog won't include any controversial topic. The reason is simple : minorities aren't monolithic blocks. I've met all sort of poeple with all sort of opinions on the Internet, and while trying to validate someone's grievances, you might end up hurting another person. Also, I don't have the authority to talk about those issues, and might accidentally say something offensive. If you are curious about those issues, I would invite you to visit other blogs curated by poeple personally affected.

Finally, this is a nerdy blog. Media analysis doesn't always have to be factual and serious. Go wild and put on your tinfoil hat !

About me :

My main is queen-of-meows. I created this side blog because the tagging system on Tumblr is bad and I often lose my own posts. Also, I wanted to have a clean blog where I can curate a masterlist.

A few infos about me, so you know where I come from.

Other fandoms : Doctor Who, Final Fantasy VII, Puella Magi Madoka Magica. I also like Steven Universe. I am not really a MCU fan. I watched some of it in a casual way, enjoyed part of it, got bored with other parts. This is not a MCU negative statement, I just don't really vibe with everything. I am more into some specific comics (generally linked to the Loki series).

Music : I really love Nightwish. It's not really relevant, except when I will randomly post Nightwish songs that remind me of the Loki series, or quote Nightwish. That's how my brain works. I also really love Akira Yamaoka, many independant artists I know from Youtube and some old Lana Del Rey songs, as well as game and movies OST.

Books : I love Neil Gaiman and my new year resolution was to read all of his books, including the least famous ones. As a teen I was obsessed with His Dark Materials. Parallel dimensions ? Multiversal love story ? Mission to kill the supreme creator . Hmmm, maybe there is a pattern somewhere ^^.

My ships : Sylki is my main ship. My other main ship is Ravonna/Mobius. It's a very rare pair but have my reasons to ship them. But I also enjoy reading Lokius fanfictions, and looking at cute Lokius fanarts. I'm a multishipper and I don't mind the ship as long as I enjoy the story.

@ladylowkeyed

@bushs-world

@mareebird

@spoonietimelordy

@asgardian-viking

@storyplease

@honeyx666x

I might add poeple if I see you liking my posts !

[autisticandroids]

Unrelated to evil tfw love triangle but what besides evildeancasnatural are the supernaturals you are watching? Is institutionnatural its own thing or is that just a rewrite? What are some supernaturals that exist outside the ones you’re watching?

the primary supernatural i am watching, more than evildeancasnatural or even regular ol’ destiel natural, is deangenderstudiesnatural.

dean winchester appeals to me as the ULTIMATE closet narrative and, broader than that, as an extremely compelling tragedy about the trauma of masculinity as a disease inflicted on both self and others. like, it really is that simple. this is the thing about spn, above all else, that’s compelling to me. like, i love cas, and i have an intense emotional connection to him, and in a sort of.... fannish? context? where i decontextualize and play with characters for fun? cas appeals to me the most because he is easy for me. dean is too complex for me to play with without worrying that i will break him, and he is too intensely tragic for me to WANT to play that much. this is why a lot of my casposting is more on the fun side and a lot of my deanposting is more on the analytical side. because i like to think about dean, yes, but i need some distance. 

if we’re talking about actual things that i pay attention to in my supernatural, and not necessarily stuff i think about, the second supernatural that i’m watching, still actually above destielnatural, is..... funnynatural. like, i like it when spn is stupid and fun. i will forgive a character or episode almost anything if i think they/it are funny. this is why i’m such a big fan of the late seasons, or, one of the reasons: i think spn SHOULD be dumb. i HATE when it’s serious. like, for example, ketch annoyed me until the time when he tried to lie about being his own evil twin, the absolute funniest thing a character on spn has ever done, and now i like him. like, for me spn can should and does operate primarily on rule of funny. like i do occasionally enjoy a bit of serious spn, i like very serious dean gender episodes, or very serious destiel episodes, and sometimes even very serious episodes about other shit! but most of the time i would rather there be jokes. not that the jokes always land! there are plenty of absolutely rancid attempts at humor across spn’s long runtime. and not that jokes never fuck up worldbuilding in frustrating ways. i can’t think of an example but i’m sure there is one. but i like spn to be silly, most of the time.

the third supernatural i am watching is OF COURSE destielnatural with a (not exclusive by any means!) focus on evil deancasnatural.

and here is a list of other themes (some interrelated, some not) and concepts that are in my brain when i think about or watch supernatural:

- dean always being right

- the erotics and eroticization of violence; supernatural is about sex

- angels and heaven and All That; i wish supernatural had institutions; i wish supernatural had interpersonal politics; institutions are impossible on supernatural because supernatural is a libertarian fantasy, interpersonal politics are impossible on supernatural because only dean can truly be a person

- the dynamics of abuse

- worldbuilding on a very watsonian level: how to make this world work, how to expand our vision of it beyond this insular two brothers against the universe viewpoint

- deviance; why must we, over and over again, kill this monster for the crime of its own existence

- supernatural should be an ensemble cast show; i love [xyz side character]

- late season supernatural as a parody of supernatural or a show about supernatural, even before the chuck stuff

and here are some supernaturals that i know other people watch that i do NOT watch, even though i enjoy watching other people watch them:

- faithnatural; supernatural is about the reverence of the authorfathergod and its loss. i’m really not interested in that one because there’s sort of..... two paths you can take? in reinterpreting supernatural to make it less of a mess? one path is to make the world more fantastic, the other is to make it less so. faithnatural wishes to make the world more fantastic, a world in which the concept of a god worth worshipping is compatible with the worldbuilding of supernatural, a world in which angels are more than what they seem. but i want to make the world less fantastic. i want a sociological reading. i want to know how these people live in a society. i want the material conditions. i would like to hear about the logistics of monster grocery shopping, how many bits of godstiel stained glass exist and what people think about them, how normal society is affected by the increased number of murders and disappearances caused by the widespread existence of monsters. this makes a supernatural where things are more, rather than less, than what they seem, unappealing to me. i don’t think these two things are necessarily incompatible but for me they are. i don’t think a world in which god is unequivocally real is the appropriate world in which to tell a story about faith. maybe it’s because i am an atheist.

- americanatural; supernatural is about america. this theme is fascinating when other people look at it and i love to read posts but it simply does not, rustle my jimmies, as it were, on my own.

- sammynatural; sorry samgirls i recognize your efforts but he’s not my scene, i’m a deangirl through and through. i begin to care about him in the later seasons but not until then

- brothernatural; i’m interested in the winchester brothers’ relationship as it pertains to their own individual characters, but i don’t, say, have specific episodes i like to rewatch to feel emotions about the brothers, or stuff like that. maybe it’s because i am an only child. but i think their relationship was NEVER the driving force of the show for me, dean’s damage was. and the brothers’ relationship is part of dean’s damage but it’s only one part, out of many.

[firelxdykatara]

So I was at work thinking about Zutara (as you do) and my mind drifted to a kat@@ng argument I tend to see a lot of. About how Aang would be so sad if Katara never returned his feelings and therefore Zutara 100% //can't// be endgame which... a) homeboy is literally 12 and would get over it, and b) BUT WHAT ABOUT KATARA THO. But it got me thinking. Is there even any evidence in canon that Air Nomads believed in wholesale monogamy or marriage? I mean, Aang never knew his parents (1/2)

(2/2) -and Aang was raised communally by the Air Nomad monks and nuns. So like, why would being with Katara (specifically JUST Katara) //forever// be something he'd hyper focus on so badly? Also, Aang is shown wanting to adhere pretty strictly to Air Nomadic teachings but in this instance he gets a pass? It just boggles me tbh. Anyway, your meta and responses are just plain amazing and would love to hear your thoughts on this.

I’ve actually talked a lot about Aang’s willful disregard for his people’s culture and customs when it clashes with something he wants, but I think most of these discussions have happened in private server spaces and I haven’t actually spoken much about it here, so let’s remedy that!

You are absolutely right--Aang’s lifelong monogamous relationship and Katara being his ‘forever girl’ clash with literally everything we actually know about Air Nomad culture. And it’s actually kind of frustrating, because this would have been an excellent chance for some worldbuilding--speak about how the Air Nomads did not hold with typical family structures, that monogamy simply wasn’t done because they practiced detachment and while that doesn’t mean they couldn’t love one another (Gyatso loved Aang a great deal, for example) it means they most likely would not have practiced relationship exclusivity.

Honestly, it would have been really cool to see a culture where monogamy was not the norm, and we get hints of it--Aang never knew his parents, and he wouldn’t have been discovered as the Avatar until years after his birth (I believe they do the toy test when the kids are toddlers or older), which means he was likely removed to the Air Temple shortly after being born. His parents most likely lived at separate temples--nuns had their own, as the temples were separated by gender--and its not a stretch to believe they didn’t have any sort of monogamous relationship. One theory I’ve seen proposted is that the AN practiced something like a yearly or bi-yearly fertility festival, where adults from the temples came together in celebration--of life, of love, of their people, of the element they breathed that informed every aspect of their lives--and I’m not suggesting wild orgies, but that many would pair off, have their own smaller celebrations, and return to the group, and this is where most pregnancies would happen.

That is, of course, pure speculation, but it would be a lot more in keeping with what we do know of the AIr Nomads than Aang deciding, at the ripe old age of twelve, that he’d found his ‘forever girl’ and he would be with her, and only her, for the rest of his life, no matter what.

It’s also very... odd, though, that Aang would even come up with this idea on his own. It’s not like there are tons of examples, as the gaang travel the world, of aggressively heterosexual couples pairing off and spending Forever together, because, well, they’re in the middle of a war and everyone has more important things to think about. And Aang’s crush, while cute and seeming more like puppy-love than anything else book 1 and most of book 2 (he literally imprinted on the first girl he saw when he hatched from the iceberg ok), becomes almost disturbingly possessive in book 3, and it really comes out of nowhere. When did Aang decide, without ever once asking, that Katara must return his feelings? And why? Because, as established, it makes absolutely no sense given what (admittedly little) we know about his own culture and how he was raised.

I realize that the Doyalist explanation is that Bryke are, themselves, aggressively heterosexual, and had decided from the jump that they wanted Aang to Get the Girl in the end, and so were determined to Make It Happen even when, given the story and how the characters had developed, it no longer made any narrative sense. (And yet they never thought to make Katara’s feelings a focus when trying to force Kataang to happen. Odd, that. Or maybe not so odd, considering their treatment of Katara in LoK. But I’m stopping myself here cause that’s a whole other rant.) But the Watsonian one paints a very unpleasant picture, especially given Aang’s actions towards Katara in book 3--during EIP in particular.

And it’s funny how Aang’s complete and total disregard for his people’s beliefs and culture, when it would deny him something he wants, is never mentioned in those ‘but Aang couldn’t kill Ozai, it goes against his culture’ posts. If Aang had demonstrated any willingness to uphold his people’s beliefs before this--like, say, following through on letting go of his attachment to Katara and understanding that if she didn’t feel the same way he did, he was not entitled to her affections and would be able to move on--then I’d be much more inclined to give those arguments credit.

As it is, however, the only reason I agree that Aang shouldn’t have had to kill Ozai is because he was just a child, and he should have been able to preserve the innocence of childhood as long as possible--but I still dislike the way his battle with Ozai ended, because he had disregarded his people’s beliefs over the entire book, he had done nothing to regain the Avatar State except get slammed against a pointy rock, and energybending was handed to him on a silver platter by a lionturtle who literally came out of nowhere to give it to him.

Not only that, but the discussion about what he would do once he actually faced the Firelord came much too late--the subject wasn’t even broached until The Southern Raiders, and thus Aang’s insistence that he can’t possibly take a life seems to come out of left field because a) he never felt any guilt over the lives he took while in the Avatar State at the end of book 1 (and this isn’t to say he was at fault for what Koizilla did while he was fused with it, but he has felt guilt over his actions in the Avatar State that were just as uncontrolled before this, and you’re telling me that he wouldn’t have seen any of that as blood on his hands? that if he killed Katara, or Sokka, or Toph, in one of those rages, he’d have just shrugged his shoulders and blamed it on the Avatar State? no), and b) there was absolutely no discussion of this before the eclipse, leaving one to wonder what, exactly, Aang was planning to do in that eight minute window where Ozai would be powerless. I don’t think it was a dance-off in the cards, that’s all I’m saying.

I’m sorry, I got incredibly off-topic. but the bottom line (TL;DR:) is: I absolutely agree with you. And it’s suspect, from both a character arc and a worldbuilding perspective, that Aang is only committed to his people’s beliefs and his culture in the one instance where he might have been asked to do something he didn’t want to, but not at all when following his own culture might have meant losing something he wanted. This not only paints him as incredibly selfish (something that is hard to dispute when looking at his behavior in book 3, though I would point out that if his arc actually followed a natural progression from books 1 and 2 he would have grown up rather than... that), but puts his culture in an incredibly simplistic light. We never get any deeper insight into what his people believed or how they lived, because Aang latches onto the first girl he sees and is determined to make her his ‘forever girl’, and there’s never any talk of how he was raised or what his people actually believed.

And even when he meets the Guru--someone much more well-versed in Air Nomad culture than Aang is, because Aang went into the ice at twelve years old and never had an opportunity to understand his culture--he almost immediately disregards what the Guru told him when it conflicts with his own desires. Sure, he says ‘I’m sorry, Katara’ when letting her go at the end of the finale (although....why he’s apologizing to her, when he’s had no indication she has feelings for him, and he certainly never asked, is beyond me), but come book 3 he’s right back to wanting to have her, and assuming he will just because he kisses her--without preamble, without any discussion of feelings, without even asking if she wants to be kissed--and flies off before the invasion.

Any way you slice it, it really doesn’t make sense, unless they wanted Aang to come across as selfish and pigheaded throughout the entirety of book 3. But I suspect that isn’t actually the image they wanted to project, and it makes me really sad when I think of what his arc could have been if it weren’t for Bryke’s insistence that he get the girl at the end of the story.

[shadowmaat]

I love AUs and fix-its as much as the next nerd, but it really bothers me when fic writers take some great achievement accomplished by the protag and give it to someone else. Or make them have help. Like, from a Watsonian perspective I get how a protag’s situation becoming a little less dire by having someone else there is nice, but from a Doylist view it just feels... rude? To take away something that was so important to a character’s growth by implying they couldn’t do it on their own. Or that someone else entirely did it for them. I’m just not sure what the appeal is in de-fanging characters in situations like that.

Character A takes on a whole gang and manages to scrape through and secure the prize. This is what happened in canon and while it’d be nice to spare them their injuries, it wasn’t anything lasting and they’re fine.

Character A takes on a whole gang, but has help from Character B. And the Scary Moment where A was almost killed by Gang Leader is subverted when B killed the Gang Leader. Together they retrieve the prize. This is a somewhat woobified AU that shows how much B cares about A, but also implies that A would be in trouble without B’s help.

Character A is given the prize after some handwavy behind-the-scenes actions that never become relevant to the plot. WHY. WHY would you do that? You just gutted A’s entire story arc. A’s fight was PIVOTAL. It was worldbuilding, story building and character building all in one. And you just... hand over the prize like it’s nothing.

Ehh, like I said, it just feels rude to me. Mileage varies, of course, but it’s like getting a piece of popcorn stuck between the teeth of an otherwise good story.

[rawliverandcigarettes]

I've been reading your Mass Effect posts as I've been replaying the games and really appreciating them! You have a deft hand at writing and worldbuilding that manages to go into the more scientific areas that Bioware overlooked without coming off as "What does Tali's sweat smell like?" I really appreciate your writing on Salarian reproduction as well.

As a question, how often do you use Doylist viewpoints in your writings as opposed to Watsonian? Cuz I feel like a lot of the issues with Mass Effect (in particular the treatment of the Batarians and Vorcha) make sense from a game design perspective, and a lot of the series issues do come up as the writers failing to align "serious science fiction" with "shooty bang bang action game."

Hey, thank you so much for the ask and the kind words, I'm really happy you enjoy my little words on the internet!!!

As for your question... I don't know if I really completely use that mindset at all? There are issues that are indeed inherent to videogame production and that I am completely willing to accept as the easiest solution to implement in a context that I can only imagine to be impossibly chaotic and difficult to manage. I don't even want to think about the amount of crunch involved with getting the Mass Effect trilogy on the shelves. And while we're at it, I am still trying to figure out how to express my opinions in a way that is at once fair for the devs and truthful to my perspective.

(sidenote: there is a trend among gamedevs -in AAA principally- that, because we are intimately aware of what it takes to get anything out, we shouldn't criticize anything and just move past what bothered us as "not for us" and only celebrate; it's a perspective I understand but don't share, but I also don't want to be vitriolic towards the devs that, most often than not, have almost nothing meaningul to do with the end result and still busted their ass off trying to execute the mangled vision of 5 different people better paid than them all infighting about what that vision should be at all. To clarify my words in general: if I have a harsh word about something present in-game, this is about the actual result and never a judgement about the capacities/moral character of the gamedev behind it. All the love in the world to that gamedev in particular actually! But we also all make an oopsie from time to time, or a decision I find poor -which is not a sin!! it's actually very normal, I have hyperspecific understandings of things and it's not a fair standard to anyone who isn't me-, or sometimes we have to push stuff in the game and we disagree with it and that sucks and that's not on you, or make a compromise that's a way better version than what almost was and nobody will ever know that and criticize you still and that super sucks, and, and... you get the gist)

I guess that, as a narrative designer, I not only believe in the possibility of aligning the two perspectives (Watsonian/Doylist), but getting at close to this, hm, synthesis as possible is actually my whole job! So it's hard not to think of media that way.

While I understand why some decisions were taken due to constaints, I will still critique the way they were implemented; this is exactly in these moments some biases get to the surface and should be examined the most (for example with the batarians, their implementation reveal, in my opinion, a lot of undigested american exceptionalist mindset and white myths about PoC cultures. The premice in itself isn't "bad" and could be a neat jumping point for future subversion, but the fact that 3 games later this premice isn't recontextualized at all and is consistently used as a way to vindicate the player in various ways becomes an actual flaw to the games in my opinion, as it over-simplifies and caricatures an otherwise rich world that presumes to be the opposite of that).

I guess I am driven towards thematic reasonance and vision over lore consistency, for example, but I don't think convenience of function in game design should ignore the message it's still crafting (and I know from personal experience that game designers tend to get away a whole damn lot with not thinking about their game mechanics and what they imply about the game as a larger object, and it's very annoying and makes my job harder!!).

I'm sorry, it's a mess! I don't know if that's helpful at all! If it's not, feel free to send another ask and I'll try to do a better job ;_;

[solacefruit]

Not an ask from the ask game - but do you mind explaining how you came up with some of your worldbuilding for MAMS?

- The Elders arranging pairings for genetic fitness

- the winds

- Housekeeper names

And which piece of worldbuilding has you feeling the most of that 'smug these things fit together in a logical and intriguing way I haven't seen much of elsewhere' feeling?

Hello there! I don’t mind explaining the thought process behind these, so sure, I’m happy to chat a bit about these world-building features. This will all go under a readmore as usual, so answers below!

The elders’ role.

It’s my opinion that elders would be highly valued in every clan, although their specific duties and cultural role might vary. Even before I started writing fanfiction for Warriors I always intended to give elders significant political and cultural weight, and I had a collection of little thoughts about how that might look like. For many years, one of the things I knew Windclan elders did was essentially host a micro-democratic system--i.e., they would vote on issues after a long debate, so as to give each cat an equal voice in the final decision. 

Some elements of Windclan life are decided exclusively by the elders in this way, and the arrangements are one of those elements. The arrangements came out of two thoughts for me: the first being that Wind (the founder) is a mother and a leader simultaneously, which I felt set a precedent for Windclan to allow mollies to have litters and hold power; and the second being the canon visitors to Windclan, whose purpose there was very unclear and honestly not really plasuible to me. In canon, they just come chill for a while and there’s not really any benefit to Windclan allowing them to do so. 

So from those two thoughts, I went: okay, what do the visitors offer the clan that would incentivise Windclan to invite them back every single year? And the answer is fresh bloodlines, particularly as the cats of the visiting group change so frequently as they are joined by newcomers. Likewise, I considered what impact it would have for Windclan to have a leader who also had experience raising kittens, and the answer was that she had the insight to know an insular, unmoving clan would not last. Hence why she also came to an accord with the barn cats of the nearby farmlands.

The combination to those two factors made it clear to me that Windclan’s tolerance--and even enthusiasm--for the visitors came from early in their history as a failsafe against inbreeding, and it seemed right to me that the elders--who long ago would probably have been Wind’s closest friends, the cats who helped take on some responsibility while she raised her litter--are the ideal thinktank for tracking bloodlines and deliberating on appropriate matches for warriors. It seemed like a neat and realistic solution for several problems. 

The nine winds. 

I knew I wanted to include a significant and unique element of Windclan culture in m.a.m.s. because it’s the ideal environment to do so, being a bigger story than my previous ones. The nine winds developed out of both Doylist and Watsonian interests for me. 

The Doylist (in-universe) reason is that canon suggests Windclan views themselves as intensely spiritual because of their position as closest to the stars and/or Moonstone (?)--but that didn’t really click with me, because all the clans feel they have a deeply personal, powerful relationship with Starclan. I felt there had to be more to their everyday relationship and “we sleep under the stars” doesn’t actually cut it for me as a notable cultural practice that justifies that feeling of connection. I wanted to be true to Windclan’s sense of being in conversation with Starclan, in a way that most suited their lifestyle and territory. Hence, the wind as divine messenger. 

The Watsonian (out-of-universe) reason is that I considered Windclan’s supposed connection to Starclan and stars, and then I thought of astrology, and then I thought of “what if astrology but actually interesting and potentially valuable?”, and then I devised the nine winds. Sorry to anyone who finds astrology fun or valuable, but for me, I don’t really find it compelling conceptually because (and obviously this is a super basic, watered down definition, forgive me) it is predominantly about explaining who you are based on when + where you were born and accounting for why you act or feel the way you do.  

That feels stagnant to me, so I wanted to take the concept of astrology and go, “what if it tells you who you can/should become?” and that felt very right and much more in line with stories I like to tell. I loved the idea of life as a work-in-progress, nebulously guided by ancestors, and I enjoy the difficulty in disproving the nine winds: either the wind is right because you could stand to be more x, or the wind is right because you became very x (as you should have). An emphasis on interpretation was important too, so that each cat has a personal relationship with 1. their own harbinger and 2. the day-to-day movements of the wind generally. 

As a side-note, I was also aware that systems of categorisation--Hogwarts houses or whatever else--are very appealing to readers, and I had a feeling people would go a little wild for the nine winds as a concept. I’ve so far been pretty good at predicting what it is that people really like in my work, especially as far as world-building goes, and it always makes me excited when I know I’ve about to share something new that I think everyone will go a bit mad for. 

Housekeeper names.

I wanted to achieve a few things with Cypress in m.a.m.s., and one of them was that I really wanted his relationship with Talltail to develop out of a cultural miscommunication that only becomes visible to both parties in hindsight. In the end, of course the relationship is very real, but from Cypress’ perspective, I needed something to push him to take the leap into the unknown, because I felt just curiosity and a desire for adventure weren’t quite enough to make him leave the comfort and safety of his home. But a noble, handsome traveller who turns up on his doorstep with interesting stories and a quest, who almost at once offers his name to Cypress in gratitude for his hospitality? The boy thought he’d fallen directly into a cat romance novel. 

I also felt that the sacred secret of one’s name is a super interesting cultural counterpoint to the clans, whose names and naming system exist to be known and as a way to identify each other. I got the idea initially from Old Possum’s Book of Cats, actually, a long long time ago, and have always found the thought of every cat (and particularly pet cats) having a private name pretty delightful--especially as kind of this last fierce independence, the one thing that is theirs and theirs alone. 

Personally, I also just love any kind of ritualised social conduct--another reason I love court intrigue. The sharing--or not sharing--of names has so many subtle little ramifications, and while I didn’t explore those in m.a.m.s. I love to think about it. 

And which piece of worldbuilding has you feeling the most of that 'smug these things fit together in a logical and intriguing way I haven't seen much of elsewhere' feeling?

I think they all go together really well and a lot of what makes this story feel unique is the combination of all these little things happening concurrently--or at least that’s my theory! I think of all the things I’ve written in m.a.m.s. the nine winds are probably the most intriguing, though, by virtue of implying much but sharing only a fragment of the whole? But that’s just a guess. 

I think the nine winds as a concept is the thing that is most specifically a me creation and probably the most unlikely to have been developed independently by someone else, so I’ll go with that! Admittedly I very rarely read Warriors fanfiction, so I can’t be sure, but I don’t think there’s anything quite like what I’m doing out there at the moment. 

Frankly if there was, I like to think I’d already know about it, because I’d be their biggest fan. Thank you for asking, and I hope these answers are interesting!

[mappinglasirena]

Mapping La Sirena

Welcome one and all to the Mapping La Sirena Project!

If you are a fan of Star Trek: Picard and you would like to know more about the show’s most prominent ship, to check out floor plans and screencaps, and to discuss theories about the layout of this magnificent vessel, this is will be the place for you!

(Long, slightly rambly introduction and masterpost after the cut ;] )

Hi! My name is Lili and I’ve been a fan of pretty much all things Star Trek ever since I started watching Voyager at the tender age of 6. Besides the sometimes goofy, often brilliant storytelling and the wonderful characters, I always loved the worldbuilding of these shows - and in particularly the starships.

When Star Trek: Picard started airing a  few months ago, I was immediately drawn to the main ship, La Sirena. The mixture of the monumental physical set, judiciously used CGI, and sheer attention to detail made me fall madly in love with this little mermaid, and I wanted to find out every little thing about her that I possibly could. And since I imagine, I’m not the only one who feels this way, I decided to take you all on this journey with me!

What am I doing here?

As a reader and writer of fanfic, I know how helpful it can be to have a clear sense of the location your story is set in. When I realized that a good month after the final episode of ST:PIC season one aired, there still was no floor plan of La Sirena easily found on the web (easily = using my very limited googling-skills), I figured somebody had to sit down and do it. And apparently, that somebody was me. (May the gods help us all =D)

So, I sat myself down, and over the course of a few long days screencapped every single last scrap of Sirena that appears on the show. I now have a library of reference images and will post my progress as I work through them, trying to determine questions about the general layout of this ship, the details of its architecture and furnishings and all the questions that still remain. By the end of it, I am pretty confident that I will have a mostly accurate floorplan of the set that was used on the show (at least the parts of it that were shown to us thus far). We might even end up with the basis for a plan of the ship as it would exist in-universe (more on the movie set vs. “real place” issue later).

The following soon-to-be-links might give you an idea of what I plan to post over the next few months and I’ll keep adding links to this post as I go. So, without (even more) ado: Have fun exploring La Sirena!

Schematics & Floor Plans

A very crude first sketch

Official Set plan

We finally have an official set plan from the Ready Room!

A First Deeper Look at the Ready Room set plans

Centred Floor Plans from Set Me Up + cross section & more designs

Layout of the Captain’s Quarters

Shape and size

How large is La Sirena as seen on the show and is she larger on the inside?

Upper Deck

The Bridge

Where is the Holodeck?

Picard’s Study

Transporter Pad and Engine

The Trouble with Locating the Quarters/Conference Room

Crew Quarters

Captain’s Quarters

A closer Look at the windows

Conference room

The Mysterious Back End of the Ship

Crates, Tanks, Boxes, and Miscellania

Lower Deck

The Mess

Sickbay: Pt. 1: Size and Construction; Pt. 2: Furniture

So Many Nets

The Wall Problem, aka. Mysterious Nonexistent Corridors

Cargo Bay and other Speculative Spaces

Is there a dedicated cargo bay at the back of the ship?

Where are the rest of the crew quarters hidden?

Overall Design and Technological Aspects

A quick rundown of the Engine placement and history

Some Considerations

Tv Set vs . Starship

The set of La Sirena is just that, a tv set. When building a set, there are many constraints of time, budget, and practicality that will force the creatives to make decisions that will not always make sense when mapped onto a “real” starship. Take, for example, the fact that the Captain’s Quarters and the Conference Room were likely filmed in the same physical set, just redressed for the occasion.

Of course, there can always be Watsonian explanations for these kinds of incongruities and I’d love to hear people’s takes or read fics about them (after all, the entirety of La Sirena is apparently equipped with holoemitters, so I suppose technically, anything is possible).

But I am sticking with the Doylian “it’s a movie set” approach and will generally ignore these kinds of problems when trying to draft an in-universe-accurate floorplan of what we can know of the ship so far. I will be very diligent about pointing out whenever I handwave anything, though, so if you want to stick as closely to what we actually see on the whoe, you’ll know which parts of my analysis/headcanon to disregard ;)

Questions about “silly little details”

I have spend a ridiculous amount of time on this little project so far and in the course of it have gotten pretty familiar with a lot of aspects of the interior and exterior of this amazing starship. If you have any questions regarding details about what we can see of La Sirena on the show, please ask me and I will do my best to help! I absolutely love digging into the really nitpicky, tiny little scraps of information, and at this point, I can probably tell you straight away which scene might provide the info you’re looking for or whether there likely is no answer and you’ll have to get creative. So if you don’t feel like scrubbing through the entire 10 episodes of Picard to find out, say, the colour of the plates produced by Sirena’s replicators, please shoot me an ask, I’m always utterly delighted to help! (They’re white, btw.)

And just to make clear what I mean by “tiny little details”: in the course of writing some of my stories, I have collected answers to such important questions as

On which side of the desk does Rios have his chair? (Both)

How many cups are on the shelf next to the replicators? (4, even when one of them is currently in use)

Could a football roll under the railing on the upper deck and fall down into the mess hall anywhere but where the stairs go down? (No, there is a raised edge all around the rim that would catch it. Bouncing would work, though, since the space between the railing bars is large enough.)

Could I just say “Fuck it, I’ll just write it however, because it really doesn’t matter at all?” Yes. Would it be better for my sanity? Probably. Will I still keep trying to figure out as much about this crazy little ship as I possibly can at every turn? You betcha! So, no question is too silly, please ask away!!

A Quick Thought on Fanfic and “Accuracy”

This whole project started because whenever I write fanfic or make up stories set on La Sirena, my brain keeps insisting that we need to know which side of the mess hall the replicators are on! We need to know where exactly the holodeck is located and whether a football could fall to the lower deck through the railing. I would never hold anyone to these standards of “accuracy” - in fact I frequently don’t hold myself to these standards. Fic is for creative expression, so if in your imagination, La Sirena is twice the size of what we see in the show and has a ton of additional rooms and features, I would love to read that story! I want to create a resource for anyone looking for Sirena references to get inspired, not to point out inconsistencies or canon-divergence in lovingly created fanworks. I hope it comes across that way =)

[firecoloredwater]

Dragonflight Chapter 1 Commentary

And, after way longer than planned, I have finally gotten that commentary written for the first scene/chapter of Dragonflight.  Under a cut because this is long, and both spoilers and tangents abound.

(This is also being crossposted on pillowfort here, so if you have an account please consider this encouragement to comment.)

Plot Events

Lessa wakes up with a bad feeling and tries to figure out what danger is approaching.  She fails and resolves to wait.  The watch wher adores her.

Worldbuilding Details

Lessa trusts the watch-wher to be very aware of/sensitive to danger, so that her sensing something it doesn’t is very strange.

The watch-wher has an “odorous lair” and is kept on a chain in the courtyard.  Also: clipped wings, a scaly head, and pointed ears.  It flees into the den when the sun rises.

Kitchen drudges all sleep together in the cheese room; Lessa is described as “curled into a tight knot of bones” so presumably drudges aren’t fed well (at least in Fax’s Ruatha).  They have sandals and sleep on straw, but apparently do not have any means of brushing their hair (or else Lessa hasn’t been making any use of it, and this isn’t terribly unusual for a drudge).

When describing Ruatha’s deterioration, it’s referred to as “the once stone-clean Hold.”

“Hold” seems to be roughly equivalent to a castle; Lessa refers to the “paved perimeter” of the Hold, as if a Hold is a very physical thing, more a place than a culture or a city which can expand just by building houses/roads/shops.

“the craftsmen’s stony holdings at the foot of the Hold’s cliff” implies that the Hold is built into a cliff, and that craftsmen have stone houses/shops/both that are built at the foot of but outside the cliff.

Lessa’s Hold is initially referred to as “Ruath Hold,” with “Ruatha” used in a way that seems like it might be more equivalent to “America.”

There are a lot of tales and ballads about “the dawn appearance of the red star.”

“Milchbeasts” are probably milk cows, but I suppose could also be goats or other animals used for milk.

The watch wher seems to be able to understand speech, though it doesn’t speak itself.

Commentary

I had forgotten how Anne McCaffrey began every book (every chapter?  From the format it looks like it’ll be every chapter, but see, I don’t remember) with an in-universe song excerpt.  Not that I wouldn’t have recalled when reminded, but without prompting I wouldn’t have come up with it.

As a result of this feature, the very first words I ever read of Pern (and, of course, the first in this reread as well) were not prose, they were lyrics:

Drummer, beat, and piper, blow, Harper, strike, and soldier, go. Free the flame and sear the grasses Till the dawning Red Star passes.

I like the lyrics, and I think they’re fitting for my experience of enjoying Pern.  These lines are very imagistic, very emotional; it’s a remarkably martial feel, considering three of the four characters/archetypes in the lines—drummer, piper, harper, and soldier—are musicians, and only the last is, well, the soldier.  It gives me the feeling of all of Pern together gathering themselves and preparing and marching to war… which is what F’lar ends up spending most of this book trying to make happen.

It’s also deeply ironic, considering that I think soldiers exist in Dragonflight and Dragonseye and… well, some of the colonists in Dragonsdawn are retired former soldiers who don’t want to talk about it.  But as far as I remember, soldiers just flat out don’t exist in any Pern book other than those two three.  Even guards, and the concept of guards, seems to vanish.  I’ve heard that national leaders are under much tighter security now than they were a century or two ago—which makes sense, it’s a lot harder to keep an assassin with a rifle out of murder range than an assassin with a sword—but medieval leaders still had guards.

Pernese leaders, on the other hand, seem to be operating under the philosophy that if you can’t personally defend yourself from assassins, then you kinda deserved it anyway and the assassin will probably rule better than you did.  You’d think that people would at least be a little concerned about what happens to Jaxom considering he’s the sole possible heir to Ruatha once Lessa and her descendants are ineligible due to dragons, and I can only guess what sort of political mess would result if Jaxom died.  But off he goes, wherever he feels like at any time, with not only no guards but not even a ‘visiting my secret girlfriend on her farm, send a search party if I’m not back by the morning’ note.  Which I believe of Jaxom easily, but why does no one worry?  Why is there no Zazu trying to make Simba-Jaxom behave himself?

And F’lar!  Okay, sure, he has a great big dragon to protect him, but on the other hand so did his father, who was assassinated.  I think it’s implied that F’lar put extra effort into learning knife fighting so that he could defend himself if someone tried to murder him like F’lon, which is… something, anyway… but F’lar, have you ever considered asking any of the hundreds of men in the military organization you have absolute power over to, say, do literally anything other than stand aside and watch when someone tries to murder you?

Now, to be fair to F’lar (and to all his subordinates who never suggest such a thing) the murder attempts were usually narratively framed as duels (even though they were never initiated with the formalities that would surround dueling when it was a thing in real, Earth cultures).  Between that, F’lar’s pride, and the culture just not having the concept of guards, I have no trouble believing that F’lar wouldn’t come up with the idea.  But how did we get to a culture that doesn’t have a concept of guards for world leaders?  And how come no one else ever tried to interfere?  Stab the evil Oldtimers in the back if you must!  They went through zero formalities, they just pulled out a knife and aimed for murder, this is closer to a tavern brawl that an honorable duel.  The other Oldtimers who value tradition so highly are not gonna side with the guy who tried to murder his peer just because he used a weapon to do it!  Hell, Lessa can just psychically smack them down and be done with it, no death needed.  Have Ramoth order their dragon to yell at them until they cut it out, just do something.

…Alright, I’ve gone on for a full page and not even read an actual sentence yet.  Time to move on.

…Soooo am I the only one who just kind of… forgot that Lessa can see the future?

Okay I didn’t forget forget, the explanation for it is half the plot of the book, but I don’t think it ever quite clicked for me until rereading that Lessa can see the future.  The very first thing that happens in the first chapter of Dragonflight (and therefore the very first thing that ever happened in all of Pern) is: Lessa has a bad feeling.  She immediately interprets this bad feeling as an indication that something dangerous is about to happen and tries to figure out what it is.  The next few chapters are about F’lar and Fax arriving, both of whom are dangerous to Lessa and her plans in different ways.  Fax is the usurper who killed her family and would kill (or perhaps forcibly marry, then kill) her if he knew who she was; F’lar immediately takes her away from the Hold she just won back after (I think) a decade of hiding and plotting, and ensures that neither she nor her children can ever rule it.  For a good cause and all, but still: pretty dangerous for Lessa’s plans to rule Ruatha.

I’ve gotten off track.  Back to the point: Lessa can see the future.  Or sense it, anyway.  More interesting to me is the fact that she never questions her ability to do this.  We know that she went back in time twice to give herself these feelings, to save herself from Fax as a child and to sense incoming danger at the beginning of the book, which is where these feelings come from and why they’re right.  I don’t question her trusting it as a scared kid, but as an adult who’s just expecting danger and not yet in it, I’d expect a little more skepticism.  Some degree of ‘hm, what if this bad feeling is in fact not world-changing prophecy, and instead is just about the way my boss seemed stressed yesterday and tends to kick me when he’s in a bad mood?’  Or, ‘what if this is just residual feelings from a nightmare, since I just woke up and the watch-wher isn’t bothered?’

Doylistically, the answer is that Lessa is right, her sense of danger establishes suspense for the first few chapters, and ‘but does the danger Lessa sensed actually exist?’ is not a subplot that fit into the rest of the story or that Anne McCaffrey had any interest in.  (Presumably.  Maybe there was a draft where Lessa doubts herself until Fax arrives, but I doubt it.)

I like Watsonian explanations better though, so let’s look at it that way.  The degree to which Lessa trusts this sense of danger makes it seem to me like she’s experienced this before, and probably several times; one distant, panicked memory from when she was a kid is not good evidence of having a reliable, invisible ability that no one else does (or, probably, has ever even mentioned as a fictional concept, considering that Pern doesn’t seem to have fiction beyond slight inaccuracies in historical ballads and maybe room for the possibility of made up characters for love songs and similar).

It’s also fairly plausible that Lessa could have psychically sensed danger before it arrived previously.  Her immediate interpretation of what happened, after all, was not ‘I traveled through time and read my own mind’ but ‘I sensed malice from someone with my telepathic powers’ which is definitely a thing she can do, since she spends the next several paragraphs psychically searching for the danger that woke her up and confirming that it’s not anywhere she checks.  A handful of instances of that happening (and her actually finding the source of the menace) would give her a pretty good reason to trust her ominous feelings, and might explain why neither Fax nor any of his cronies ever found her.

Lessa has spider sense, is what I’m saying.  Go forth and crossover, fandom.

Anyway, Lessa spends a few paragraphs scanning the surrounding area, which is used to give us a sketch of the setting: Ruath Hold is a place contained by walls and set into a cliff; outside it is a paved area and stone buildings where craftsmen live, and a causeway to “the valley.”  Wind blows to Ruatha from the shores of Tillek, which seem to be pretty close.  Further out is the Pass, which is further than Lessa has ever psychically scanned before.

Then we get a slight detour as Fax is mentioned.    He’s described as “the self-styled Lord of the High Reaches” and Lessa is pleased that he’s infuriated by Ruatha’s deterioration and hasn’t been there in three turns.  Turns is capitalized for some reason.  Was that a thing in 60s scifi?  Capitalizing words that replaced ordinary words to draw attention to how scifi the vocabulary is?  I remember between always being italicized, and I think I’ve seen similar italicization of new words in fantasy series, but at least ‘between’ is a new use of a word for a new concept.  Turn is just an invented synonym and capitalizing it makes no sense at all.  I just… don’t know what she could possibly have been thinking, much less what her editors were.  Maybe she had an editor who knew nothing about scifi and thought that was a thing?  I think I’ve heard that she originally wrote romance, so maybe she just kept a romance editor who’d never read scifi before and decided that fake it til you make it was an acceptable strategy.  It’s the closest I have to an explanation.

Moving on, then Lessa gets up.  She finds her sandals, brushes straw out of her “matted” hair, and twists it into a knot.  I… I have objections to this.

I actually can and regularly do put my hair in a knot at the base of my neck without using any hair ties or anything other than the hair itself to hold it, and doing that when my hair is badly tangled doesn’t work.  It’ll go into the knot, sure, but it’ll also just come undone in a minute or less.  Getting it into a knot that it will stay in for any length of time requires either something to hold it in place or getting the balance exactly right, and you can’t do the latter with tangled hair.  A few small tangles, sure, but anything approaching matted is just… not going to work.  If I can’t run my fingers through my hair, it won’t stay in a knot.  (Also, ‘matted’ makes me think of fake “dreadlocks” and that there must be mold growing in her hair, but that’s probably more that the connotation has shifted over time.  At least, I hope.)

Also, humans are primates that like grooming ourselves and each other; even if for some bizarre reason it’s illegal for drudges to own combs, the drudges should just be finger combing their own and each others’ hair.  (Or cutting it all off.  Or hiding illegal combs in that straw they sleep on.  Whatever.)  The matted hair is there to indicate that Lessa is living in a really bad, physically deprived, barely surviving situation, same as Lessa waking up on straw in a cold, smelly room full of other drudges, but that really should’ve been done by making her hair oily or something.  She’s going to wash it in a few chapters anyway, at the same time as she combs it.

Granted, I don’t have much trouble imagining Lessa shunning all the other drudges’ company during hair combing time so that she can plot vengeance more, so maybe it’s just her and all the others have only slightly tangled hair.

Anyway, Lessa goes outside.  She interacts fondly with the watch-wher, in a very similar way to how a person might interact with a dog, though the watch wher is probably meant to be a bit smarter than dogs are.  Then she climbs up to the ramparts and we get a little bit more of the setting: the Hold has a massive gate, and the Pass is within sight.

(How close is Tillek?  Technically it said that the danger ‘didn’t scent the breezes from Tillek’s cold shore’ but I refuse to interpret that literally, Lessa is not psychically smelling emotion on breezes.  I can only assume that she psychically scanned a significant part of the way to Tillek’s shore, if not all the way there.  That was within her ‘I’ve gone this far before’ range while the Pass wasn’t, and now she can see the Pass.  Mountains can be seen a pretty good distance away, but ‘the stony breasts of the Pass rose in black relief’ sure doesn’t sound like a smudge on the horizon.  How close is Tillek?  I’ve been thinking of Holds as capital cities controlling small-nation-sized areas of land, even if most of the land is unpopulated, but this is making them seem more like small towns with barely any space between them.  Could I walk from Ruatha to Tillek in a day?)

Lessa stares into the east, then the northeast, and notices the red star (which isn’t capitalized even though it’s clearly a proper name like the North Star, which I just googled because this made me doubt myself, and North Star is indeed supposed to be capitalized.  I can’t just have a really old and unedited version, this is the omnibus, there was time to fix this, where is her editor).  The sight of the Red Star makes a bunch of “incoherent fragments” of stories about the Red Star at dawn flash through her mind too quickly for her to make sense of them, which conveniently leaves us with the ominous feeling we were supposed to get and no distracting other details.  On the other hand, I’m now wondering if all those Red Star story fragments were projected by future!Lessa, so maybe there’s some foreshadowing along with the narrative convenience.

Lessa’s instincts tell her that while there is danger coming from the northeast, the danger from the east is more important, so she goes back to staring that way.  But then the warning feeling fades away, presumably because future!Lessa finally figured out what was going on and went back to her own time.  Present Lessa accepts that she’s been warned, and just has to wait to see what she was warned about.

Then she looks over the valley a bit and muses about how Fax gets no profit from Ruatha, never will while Lessa lives, and has no idea that she’s the source of this.  She smiles and stretches, then panics when a rooster crows and she worries someone might have woken up and seen her with uncharacteristically confident body language, so she lets her hair back down and reassumes “the sloppy posture she affected.”

Okay, I have several questions.  First: if she’s that worried about being seen acting uncharacteristically, wouldn’t it make more sense to just return to her normal pose and not whirl around like she has secrets?  Yes, she was startled, but she’s been doing this for years.  I’m sure she’s had moments where she thought she almost got caught before, she’s had a chance to practice subtlety.

Second, are there really so few drudges that Fax’s cronies can recognize individual drudges and their usual behavior, or does Lessa think some other drudge would tell Fax who she is because they saw her standing up straight with her hair pulled back?

Third, why were there no guards to see her?  Fax slaughtered her family at this same time of the morning several years ago, and I remember a specific mention of the guard who had been paid to not sound an alarm.  Why does Fax not have a guard now that he rules the place?  Lessa was on the ramparts over the gate, she should’ve been easy for a guard to see.  She should have been standing next to a guard.

Fourth, I’m pretty sure that after years and years of “affecting” a sloppy posture, that would just be her normal posture.  I can accept the “princess is forced to work as a servant, is eventually revealed to be a princess by how her skin is just as pale and her hands are just as soft and her dancing is just as graceful and her singing is just as sweet as if she had grown up with nothing to do her entire life but perfect those things, because it’s just the inherent nature of princesses to be naturally perfect in those ways” conceit in a fairytale, but this is a novel and it bothers me.  Both because there are whole worlds of classism going on in that concept which I may not be qualified to analyze but can sure side-eye with a double dose of irritation, and also because it makes no sense.

Lessa is Cinderella (with spider sense and dragons) but she’s supposed to be more plausible, and she’s also singlehandedly sabotaging an entire Hold (however much ‘a Hold’ actually is) while maintaining a cover as an overworked and underfed servant.  Her posture is not her priority, and there are no perfect posture genes to be passed down royal lines.  Lessa slouches.  Probably she gets in a bunch of passive aggressive battles with R’gul and then F’lar over it.  That is the only reasonable option.

…Moving on from that rant.

Lessa hugs and pets the watch wher, which is at least as ecstatic about this attention as a dog would be after being left alone for a week.  Lessa thinks about how the watch wher is the only living creature that knows who she is, and also the only one she’s ever trusted since her family was killed and she survived by hiding in its den.  She reminds it to be vicious to her if anyone else is nearby, it’s reluctant but promises to obey.  The sun rises, the watch wher runs back into its den, and Lessa sneaks back to the cheese room.  End of Chapter 1.

So, uh, another question: why didn’t Fax just kill the watch wher and replace it with a watch wher bound to him?  I can’t imagine there were none available in however many years it’s been, even if watch whers were originally conceived as nighttime guards for Holds and nothing else.  I also can’t see Fax being inclined to spare it out of pity or similar.  Did all the watch wher breeders refuse to let him have an egg?  Couldn’t he have made a breeding pair out of all the watch whers from all the Holds he rules and used eggs from that to replace the watch whers bound to families he’s usurped?  Is this another example of ‘Fax doesn’t even want to think about Ruatha’?

Anyway, now I’m going to go even deeper into English major mode.

I really wish I could give this to one of my old English professors and see how they critiqued it.  This chapter is a bit under two and a half pages long in the book I have, I’d guess no more than five pages in a regular sized paperback format.  There’s no dialogue and very little action.  There are several points where the phrasing seems like it’s trying too hard to me, though I suspect that that is due to changes in what’s considered standard in the last fifty years.  I kind of suspect that if I had turned in something similar to this for a class, it would’ve been ripped to shreds, mostly on the basis of having lots of exposition with no dialogue and little action.

Despite that, this chapter does a lot of things in a very short time.  It introduces us to the setting: we have a decent idea what a Hold is and that a properly maintained Hold is supposed to be clear of grasses, and we have a decent idea of what drudges are and how they’re treated, and we have a sketch of the surrounding landscape and significant nearby locations.  We have a pretty good idea of Lessa’s character and motivation, and we know that Fax is an enemy of Lessa’s and that he goes around conquering Holds to add to the one he rightfully inherited.  We know the Red Star is ominous.  We have pretty good foreshadowing for the discovery of time travel.  We know that watch whers have scales and wings, live in dens, and are vicious to most people but adoring of a few, which sets us up pretty well for the dragons that appear next (who might not be strange to us now, but which would have been a lot stranger when this was published).  We know that Lessa has psychic abilities, and a broad range in which she can apply them.  That’s pretty good for a few pages.

We also have an established tone, and Lessa acting in contrast to it.  The scene puts a lot of emphasis on how cold everything is, and how much stone is around, and generally works to make the reader feel how chilled and oppressive and deteriorated everything is.  For the first half of the chapter Lessa fits into this: she’s bony, she’s huddled on the floor, her hair is matted and full of straw.

Almost exactly halfway through Lessa starts moving, and she glides.

There have been indications that Lessa rules Ruatha already; she’s psychically tracking everything, to start with.  But that is the moment where Lessa breaks out of the general cold-decay-oppression and is shown as a ruler, in secret or otherwise.  Starving, oppressed servants don’t glide.  Queens do.

The rest of the scene continues to present Lessa as powerful; she stands above the gate and muses about how Fax will never get any profit from Ruatha, and will never know that Lessa is behind it.  She tells the watch wher what to do and it promises to obey even though it doesn’t want to.  And then she vanishes back into hiding, biding her time.  The next chapter will be F’lar’s POV, and this one does very well at establishing Lessa as someone lurking in Ruatha, ready and motivated and able to screw up F’lar’s plans.  F’lar doesn’t know she’s there, but we do and are waiting for the collision.

I’ve seen people call Anne McCaffrey a bad or even a terrible writer, and… I suppose it’s possible this chapter is an anomaly, but I’d call this pretty good.  Old fashioned in some ways that make it seem pretentious or overdone by modern standards, but we can hardly blame her because styles changed over time.  I certainly have objections to her characterization of many characters, and I’d say that her worldbuilding consists of cool ideas which were warped by various prejudices, and there are several details which were glossed over for narrative ease that I wanted more realism on (which I think is partly an example of shifts in what’s considered standard over time).

But when it comes to the actual, literal, technical writing?  Anne McCaffrey knew what she was doing.  There were a lot of things that she had to accomplish in this scene, and I think she did them all pretty well, and for the most part pretty subtly.  She knew how to communicate what she wanted to; just because we would’ve liked her to communicate something else doesn’t mean she was bad at communicating.  There’s a reason this series created a fandom which is still going a full half a century later.