#talking with: alex

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Hey Pax talk more to me about fantasy computers plus 👀

HI HELLO i posted that snippet and that call for discussion and then promptly got distracted, went to bed, and forgot to check tumblr pretty much all day. i wasnt sure id have much to say on the matter but i ended up rambling only half-coherently so <3 no hard feelings if its Too Much to read, let alone comprehend. im not proofreading it myself so good luck and thank u for prompting me to ramble <3<3<3

BUT

FANTASY COMPUTERS

aka normal real-world computers shoved into classic high fantasy land because i like to fuck with genre expectations like that. except like cyber/solarpunk future computers because again. genre is fake

anyways. the goblins of the ehlverse are a) the only people without either a magic source (see: elementalism, human blood runes, dwarven metallurgy, etc) or an inherently magical biology (see: dragonkin being literally made of magma, shara'i being feathered and mammalian and terrestrial and eyeless a la moles, etc) AND B) have been thus excluded from much of the world's politics and power due to magical inability for literally tens of thousands of years

so of course they invented computers and robots and sustainable electricity and gadgets and such that are capable of not only emulating certain commonly useful aspects of magic, but also of doing things no magic can, just to keep up

something that i've had in mind while building out the stories in the ehlverse (mainly TMS but it impacts whispers too) is the like. meta level of How the World Works. and technology like computers and such being a big huge useful innovation in real life!! and how to justify only the goblins and a scattered few other people around the world actively using them. and how politics and superstition and practicality for the majority all intertwine into the situation as it is in TMS and whispers

and like. a lot of the politics on ehl are like normal politics with magic added to the resources/skillsets of certain groups. so like that shit impacts trade and warfare heavily and it's basically useless to ally with another political entity that has nothing to offer you of the most important thing in the world, right? and so when it comes down to it, half of why computers aren't nearly as widespread as they could be is because the people in power in a lot of the world simply don't care to start trade negotiations for things that scribes and scrupulous bookkeeping and massive libraries can do just fine. because outside of the goblins, no one cares about like. the internet. the most enticing things are databases

superstition-wise, there's a lot of thinking in certain communities on ehl that if you spend enough time with goblins and only goblins, you lose your magic. and like there's no proof of it, but people believe it anyway, and oftentimes they extend that belief to anything goblins make, too

and THEN. practically speaking. the vast majority of ehlves (who are the global majority, probably ~70% of the people on ehl have recent ehlven ancestry) are fire, water, earth, or metal Elementalists. and guess what? elementalism means you have fun(!) ambient effects on your environment. like, say, a fire mage immediately overheating any computer they come in contact with. or an earth mage getting upset and causing microshakes that mess up the delicate stability instruments inside robots. or a metal mage's inherent magnetism completely ripping a phone apart from the inside out. or water mages doing some magic nearby and not realizing they made a full cup of water condense out of the air right onto their keyboard. and thats not even getting into light (aka electricity) mages and every way they can make things go wrong, even as a relative minority compared to the above

and until the superstitious (xenophobic) and political aspects get resolved, it's not likely that the practical ones will be solved. purely because you need lots of people to test these things to see if the solutions work

(there is a solution. it will revolutionize all of the ehlverse once it becomes widespread. it is found out in TMS and present in whispers if you think about a very specific detail when you come across it. but it will rely on governments getting their shit together so anything i write using that specific state of the world will require it being much further down the timeline than ive explored so far so)

[manichewitz]

i think about this post like. at least once a day

[cozyjo]

Alex Hirsch talking about why he couldn't be at The Art Department Eindhoven irl, he slipped a disc and boy did he come prepared to talk about it jdjdhshs

also an image that now exists: bill cipher breaking alex hirsch's back

[vraska-theunseen]

DID YOU ALL KNOW THAT YOU CAN DO WHATEVER UOU WANT WHEN YOURW MAKING ART ISNT THAT WILD

[iishifishii]

okay but can we talk abt the minecraft movie’s complete erasure of the personality of steve???? like that is not even steve minecraft that is just fucking jack black with a blue shirt on.

have yall have seen the cinematic trailers for mc updates? steve literally has a completely different personality. steve is just a silly lil guy. hes just a curious dude who loves building and exploring! hes not jack black, or a wackjob who went crazy from being isolated for too long. he loves and parktakes happily in the world hes in.

i know we only saw one real scene, but i can already tell that jack black is not going to be playing steve minecraft, he is just going to be playing jack black. its so intensely disappointing when they had the opportunity to employ a new actor to bring to light like. imo steve minecraft should have been cast as just an average looking guy. just some random dude. BC THATS LITERALLY WHAT HE IS.

anyways tdlr the real steve minecraft just simply just a lil guy and he is NOT JACK BLACK

[willgrahamscock]

no greater tension than two mutuals who want to talk so badly but are afraid to so they like each other’s post until the end of time

[alexandraisyes]

It's not normal to send people death threats over fiction 👍

If you're so bothered by a piece of fiction maybe you should go to a therapist and talk about why it bothers you

Not send death threats

Authors and artists are real people, not machines for you to abuse

[actual-changeling]

and so it begins.

Edit: If you plan on disagreeing with me just fuck off and make your own post, I'm getting tired of it.

[aritany]

I'm sorry your writing strategy is WHAT?? I'm going to need a thorough explanation of this because I'm FASCINATED

[brian murphy voice] I DIDNT SAY ANYTHING WEIRD!!!

okay i did. but also! if it ain’t broke…

here’s how this crumbles cookie-wise. sometimes (as is currently the case) i feel like i am trying to hold onto a whole novel in my brain at once. this does not feel particularly good because the novel doesn’t belong in my brain it belongs Out There. so i make a very detailed outline and then i start at chapter 1, and i write to 100 words (give or take a few). then i move on to chapter 2 and write to 100 words. then to chapter 3 and so on until i have at least 100 words in each chapter. then once i’ve run through the whole book, i go back to the beginning and make sure each chapter is up to 200. then i’m usually in the Meat of each scene so i’ll get everything up to 500, then 1000, then 1500 and then usually i clock out of chapters around or just under the 2k mark.

this appeases the hyperactive part of my brain by making sure i’m never bored, and helps the project manager in my brain so i can keep track of many moving parts in the novel and also ensures that scenes at the end speak to scenes at the beginning since i’m (sort of) writing the whole book at once.

NOTE: sometimes i get lost in the sauce and write way past 100 or wherever im at, and that’s fine. it just means i probably skip that chapter during my next pass since it’ll be past my goal wc for each chapter of the run.

that is all. try it, if you want. i honestly don’t know how to write books any other way

[bowcard]

diversity win! LA’s most notorious and dangerous crime boss is bisexual!

[georgerussellls]

this tiktok is my roman empire

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Pax my friend let's talk food for wbw!! Are there any cultural dishes in your world that you feature in your projects? How do food cravings/traditions change as the year goes on? This ask brought to you by me fuckin dying for avgolemono and spanikopita lately btw.

HI ALEX happy wbw!!! I had never heard of either of those dishes before but now I am So Hungry they look so so good :O I hope you get some soon!!!

As for cultural dishes in the Ehlverse,,,,, well. Despite my affinity for food irl, im. not super creative when it comes to food in fiction. There are, so far, exactly two (2) meals I describe in any of my Ehlverse books. One of them is in Whispers and actually relevant to the plot.

The OTHER is a traditional meal that Veratrum cooks for her grandkids when they're in Tal'Ren in Firebreathers! It was mostly borne of me thinking over what kinds of food are available in the bayou, so it's a cuisine with lots of fish, rice, and citrus, as well as naan-like flatbread that I imagine is made from wetland-based grains instead of, like, wheat.

And since my personal WBW engagement challenge today is to draw something for each answer that I can, here's my (admittedly very basic-looking) rendition of that meal!!

As far as holiday foods go, I really should put more thought into that sort of thing. I've been playing with religious worship differences throughout the Ehlverse on the backburner for a while - I think Deltierin would put a lot of importance on food and drink, especially in terms of fasting and feasting and offerings. They'd probably have a period of fasting and a period of feasting each year, though probably not back-to-back. There's probably feast days every couple of months in the Maelands, and two per year in Sieril but they're HUGE and everyone in the land is invited to Tal'Ren. And Emarye probably used to absolutely pop OFF with feasts but with industrialization hitting them at the same time as huge surges in criminal activity that uh. Probably fell off to the wayside a bit.

Thank you for the ask!! <3<3<3

[manichewitz]

i think its funny how everyone in the fandom calls magneto all his different names, like he’s magneto and he’s also magnus and he’s also erik, but i rarely hear anyone actually call professor x professor x, like no, that’s way too formal. that man is Charles

[yrsonpurpose]

He [Henry] knows that this is the most meaningful relationship that he's ever had. And he's probably been the happiest he's ever been in his entire life. And Alex knows that too because he knows him in and out now. - Taylor Zakhar Perez | TV Insider

[vraska-theunseen]

A Very Normal Orange, vraska-theunseen, 2024

[blairdii]

alex putting logan in his end of 2024 dump. i'm gonna sob, aren't i? 🥲