#not realistic at all

[extrarosie]

I hate that I start wishing things I never once wished. Or worse, I start wishing things I despised before. What do you mean I’m crying on a Sunday afternoon because I just imagined how nice life would be living on a cozy home in my town and married to the guy I’ve been liking for an insane amount of years?

[tchaikovskyed]

"Realistic take on arthurian legend" uhhhh no thank you. I would like my arthurian legend to be full of whimsy and unserious gags. Stop giving us that zero lighting game of thrones-esque gritty nonsense and give us more arthurian legend in all their extravagant colours and silly quests!!!

[aethersea]

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

[tippenfunkaport]

You know, it would be amazing if Hollywood learned the right lesson from the success of Nimona. Something like "Hey, maybe don't throw out a nearly done movie as a tax write off" or "people want queer stories" or even "don't be afraid to take some storytelling risks and be original" but you just know they're going to come away with some absolutely batshit takeaway like, "next time delete all the evidence and burn it to the ground so the gays can't make us look bad!"

[oscorp-lawsuit]

Headcanon that all spider people get what’s called the “Spider-Zoomies” (which is a sudden burst of energy but it’s expressed through Spider-like behavior) except for Miguel because he didn’t get bitten, so every time he makes the mistake of going to HQ in the middle of the night, he gets jump scared by at least one Spider-Man:

Scuttling across the ceiling (Pavitr)

Hissing into the void (Miles)

Bench pressing a building (Peter B)

Jumping fifty feet into the air without warning (Margo)

Building some intricate contraption in complete darkness (Hobie, emphasis on trap)

Running extremely fast without making a sound so you don’t know they’re there until it’s too late (wtf Mayday)

Or crouching into a corner, completely still like a predator watching its prey, and the moment he gets close to them, they whisper “Hey” making him scream so loud that he throws his empanadas in their face (Gwen)

It’s essentially like you’re walking through a building full of eldritch horrors, and you don’t know where any of them are, but they all know exactly where you are, and they win bonus points if they scare the shit out of you. Miguel hates it here.

[ankahikoibaat]

Star Wars was and has always been meant to be hopepunk and good vs evil at its base, not grimdark and 'morally grey' and 'subversive', and this is a hill i will die on

[undertheredhood]

the rest of the justice league: hey man, we get that he’s your son and all, but shouldn’t you do something about him?

bruce ‘that’s my precious baby boy’ wayne: i’m sorry, did you have to hold your son as he was dying in your arms? did you almost k*ll yourself trying to follow him to the afterlife? i don’t think so.

[factual-fantasy]

@somewhereinthewoodsalone

I shall not show the original artwork, for it is not my artwork to share... but the image was disturbing enough for me to want to recreate it XDD

[bixels]

tarpit site.

[trans-axolotl]

saw a post the other day that said that psych survivors were overexaggerating and fearmongering for saying that people should be aware that having diagnoses on your record can be a danger + impede your life. and the more i think about it the more annoyed i am. because i think people need to know that there are exceptions to health privacy laws that can make having psych diagnoses and psych hospitalization history on your record risky depending on your circumstances. diagnoses follow you through your health interactions-you do not have to consent to have your information shared between providers. judicial proceedings are also an exception to the HIPAA privacy rule, so for things like custody battles, guardianship, getting orders of protection--the court can petition for medical records. there's so many other situations where even if they can't legally access your information without your authorization, people will require you to disclose diagnoses, records, previous hospitalizations and refuse to give you services/hire you/whatever unless you share that information with them. for example in many states anyone (a provider, a cop, friends and family) can disclose that you have certain psych diagnoses like bipolar to the DMV which then might require that you undergo drivers license review as frequently as every 3 months. my university is actively trying to kick me out right now because i had to disclose my medical record, psych diagnoses, and hospitalization history to them as a requirement to stay enrolled.

and i don't want to scare people or make people think that having a diagnosis on their records is automatically going to mean that it is weaponized against us. because i do know plenty of people who have never faced issues with their records. but i do expect that the community supports the people speaking out about the ways that we have been harmed by diagnoses creating barriers to accessing necessary parts of our life. instead of attacking us or saying that we're lying about things we are currently experiencing.

[cookinguptales]

I MEAN but wouldn't that be an incredible isekai series??

a modern princess whose job is basically just being a beautiful figurehead

grows bored with her vapid role in life and withdraws from society, riddled with ennui

only to fall into a fantasy realm where princesses have real political power

as well as important responsibilities that her subjects depend upon

and at first it's a comedy of errors as she realizes that none of her training prepared her for this

but then she grows as a person and applies herself to learning how to guide and guard this kingdom

and becomes the powerful and just princess she was always meant to be

...so I guess apparently my new favorite conspiracy theory is that kate's shoujo manga just underwent a MASSIVE genre switch.

[steakcreature]

My main problem with minecraft trailer:

I mean seriously, who tf thought this would be a good idea??

[turtletoria]

man having the worst day of his life about to have the second worst day of his life

[tshortik]

I love you messy artstyle i love you visible brush strokes I love you textures and rough edges I love you imperfections I love you roughness and colour blobs I love you scratchy sketches and bold stylisation and dirt and imperfections I love you ugly and raw emotion!!!!! ❤️

[front-facing-pokemon]

[lutheban]

None of them are equivalent to eachother but you get the point