#this is absolutely has no sense nor appeal and was written exclusive for the enjoyment of myself and eska specifically

[randomwriteronline]

The trees were very small. Which was weird, because they were pine trees, and last time Eska checked he could not tower on pine trees by just standing. The treetops were a few inches beneath his chin, and  he had no clue where he was.

A small voice reached his ears: “Hey, you up there!”

His back scrounched as he bent between the pine needles to greet whoever had called him.

A little man dressed in green, with a large wide hat, a big backpack, a strangely shaped nose and a relaxed look in his eyes looked up at him: “Say, is it dawn yet?” he asked nicely.

Holy shit, Eska thought. That’s Snufkin from the Moomins.

“Hm.” he nodded.

“I should probably hurry up then,” Snufkin from the Moomins said, “My good friend Moomin is waiting for me. He misses me a lot during the winter, you know.”

“I know.” Eska replied.

“Oh? Have you already been to Moominvalley then?”

“No. Tiny brother told me.”

“How nice of him. My sister Little My is probably already at Moominhouse by now - she quite likes to stay over.”

“I know.”

“Well then! I better be off, Moominvalley is a long way from here. It was nice meeting a giant for the first time. Have a good day!”

As he started leaving Eska hummed a whine to keep the little creature around for a moment more, and Snufkin turned towards him again.

The factotum fiddled with his overalls a moment: "Can I come too?" he finally asked, gravely voice rumbling through the trees.

"I can't see why not." Snufkin replied. "But you'll have to walk slowly, as my legs are much shorter than yours."

"Have an idea," Eska offered.

He grabbed the little man carefully, with both hands, and raised him into the air so that he could sit on the skeletal shoulder. The Snufkin wiggled his arms about for a moment before regaining his balance, and held tight onto the worn fabric and brown hair so that he would not fall.

"This is a good idea indeed," the little one concluded as he watched the horizon from above the treetops. "With your long steps we'll arrive in no time. There, I can almost see the river to Moominhouse already!"

Following the direction the little finger was pointing towards and taking care not to accidentally destroy any pine tree on his way, Eska began walking.

It wasn’t long before the blue building appeared on the newly green backdrop of seemingly endless pastures, and from the distance it looked just like a well-crafted wooden toy he himself might have sculpted. It  brought him a strange sense of familiarity, as if he had been coming over for years, always at this time. It was nothing like recognizing something from the cartoon or a commercial: it was like walking back home, or slinking through the vents, or curling on the couch; it was like thinking ‘this is the place: this is where I am and where I like to be, and I am right where I should be when I come back here’.

The Moomins did have that effect on people.

On Tove Jansson’s characters more often.

Was he a Tove Jansson’s character? Probably not (because he didn’t have paws or tails or lovely weird Finnish names), but he wouldn’t have minded if he was. He liked them a lot. It would have been fun to live in Moominvalley. He just had to hope Mymble Jr didn’t fall in love with him, or that would have been a sad deal for her, poor thing. Otherwise it would have been fun.

“Do you mind music?” Snufkin asked, fetching his harmonica.

The answer was a grunt that sounded like ‘no’.

“Good! I would have played regardless, since the weather is good for a song this morning. Maybe Moomin will hear it as well and come to meet us.”

Moomintroll running out to see a just returned Snufkin would have had to brace himself, Eska thought while the Mumrik played a ditty and the distance between them and their destination shortened and shortened, because he highly doubted the little white thing would have expected to see a lanky skeleton bear about the size of his house. Would he have freaked out? Usually people freaked out even when he wasn’t the size of a two story house. Hopefully he wouldn’t. He would have liked to touch a Moomin. They seemed really soft. Maybe if Moomin didn’t freak out he would have held him in his hand.

The harmonica sang near his ear, and he hummed softly in tune, shaking the earth beneath him.

By the time they stopped at the bridge that led to the blue house a little round snout had already appeared from the tallest window, disappeared from it, and darted as fast as it could on its little white legs to greet them.

So Moomintroll didn’t freak out. Or if he did he was very good at hiding it.

“Snufkin!” he called very loudly. Snufkin waved at him and began climbing down on his own; eager not to see the little anarchist splat on the ground by accident Eska got a hold of him and crouched horrendously into a vaguely box-shaped squat, making the green clad lad land safely on the fresh grass.

The troll hugged his friend dearly, overjoyed: “I’m so glad to see you!”

“I’m glad to see you too,” the other replied, calmer yet just as giddy.

Moomin’s attention turned to the placid gigantic corpse still sitting by them and basking in their friendship: “Is this a friend you met on your travels?” he asked, a little intimidated.

“You could say that, I guess,” Snufkin replied: “He was in the forest around the valley, just standing between the trees, and he asked if he could come to Moominhouse with me. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not really, but I wonder what Mamma and Pappa will think.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to worry about. He doesn’t look like he’s one to cause trouble - and he’s rather quiet anyways. I even forgot to ask for his name.”

“Eska.” the factotum rumbled helpfully, making the ground under himself shake from the vibrations of his voice.

Moomintroll offered him a careful paw: “I’m Moomin,” he said. “And this is Snufkin - if he didn’t tell you before.”

Eska shook it with his finger: its palm was the softest of things. ”I know.”

“Would you like some breakfast? Mamma makes pancakes at this hour. They might be a little small for you, though.”

“ ‘s fine.”

Eska laid across the river like a gargantuan lizard and pulled his legs back inside his ribcage once he was no longer suspended over running water; Snufkin and Moomin just used the bridge, because they were of a reasonable size and not as long as an Aztec feathered serpent god.

“What is that?” a tiny voice that seemed like it should have come out of a rachitic old lady asked.

“Hello Little My,” Snufkin greeted back. “That is an Eska.”

The little bastard that was his half-sister ran on her little legs all the way to the factotum’s hand and looked at him up and down, as if evaluating him. If he had grabbed her she might have disappeared in the folds of his palm, but also she would have bit him bloody, so he just let her do  her thing.

“You don’t look like much!” Little My grinned at him, ignoring the human skull-shaped mask on his face.

“You look like Tiny Brother,” Eska replied, ignoring how Thaische looked nothing like the young Mymble.

“I’ll go ask Mamma if she can make some langer pancakes for you,” Moomin distracted him briefly, thus allowing Little My to start climbing all over him. “Please don’t mind Little My. She’s a menace.”

“I know.”

“And don’t try to crush her,” Snufkin added as he followed the troll inside: “It’s very much useless.”

“I know.”

By the time the two came back outside with their plates and Moomin’s curious parents in tow, Little My had tried to poke his eyes out twice, scavenged all of his pockets, slipped into his bib thrice, and almost gotten lost within his hair.

When he had fished her out of it she had asked: “Why do you have so much, anyways?”

“Keeps warm,” he had answered, and she had immediately tried to drown in it again like a little mischievous weasel.

Moominpappa looked at him with a hand under his snout: “What a curious thing you are,” he said pensively, “I’ve never seen such a creature before.”

That was a common thought for people to have when looking at Eska.

Moominmamma handed him a carrier tray full of very small flat circles:  “I’m afraid none of my pans were big enough to make larger ones,” she apologized nicely, “I hope you will still enjoy them.”

He would have picked up the whole tray and slammed the whole thing in his mouth in one go, inedible parts included, but the object was probably the only one the Moomins had. So he picked the minuscule pancakes one by one and nibbled onto each individual one.

They were so good.

“They’re not very filling, I’m afraid,” Moominmamma continued, blissfully dragging around a trembling Sniff trying to hide behind her with his long ears held so far back that they seemed to join on his nape.

Eska gave a long purr that gently shook the entirety of Moominhouse: “ ‘s fine,” he rumbled delighted while his hands began kneading dough on his knees.

His knees seemed much softer... Their texture like that of a duvet.

The air was warm, warmer than spring.

A not necessarily large paw slapped his face.

Ah, he thought with a sigh as he dived into the clicking mass of grey and white fur that was Søppel while she pestered him to be fed.

He felt around for the coffe table where his mask was sitting to slip it on his face, stretched his horrendously long limbs out of his big warm blanket, and slowly emerged with a loud murp. While the opossum wrapped around his neck, an unspecified amount of lizards climbed all over his skeletal frame and into his hair (it was getting so much longer already, he would have needed to trim them again) and little Burkāns snuggled against his side really hard so that he would pick her up. Luna Gealach yelled a goodmorning at him before perching on his head and alerting the whole house by screaming some more.

Perhaps it was the hooded crow’s wails that was stunning him stupid, perhaps the fact that he was already holding a bandicoot in one arm; either way, as soon as Thaische appeared before him to go have breakfast, he swooped them up in a one-armed hug, rumbling for LG to quiet it down (which she did afterwards) and stumbling towards the kitchen like a very strange chimera.

Thaische did not object to the treatment.

“Dr’m’d ‘bout Moom’ns,” he mumbled to his little sibling, who hummed in reply. “W’s big ‘s Moom’nho’s’. ‘n’ Sn’fkin tal’ed t’ me, ‘n’ I tho’t, holy sh’t, ‘s Sn’fkin from th’ Moom’ns. ‘n’ ate... P’ncak’s.”

“Make those.” Thaische said.

“Hm-hm.”

Eska settled down the whole zoo at the table (only exception being Søppel, who permanently resided around his neck at any and all times), leaned his head forward until it was sustained by the wall, and got to making pancakes.

He was about a dozen in when Kim appeared with his hair undone, which meant practically blinded by his own curls.

“You didn’t have to...” his father mumbled.

“Dream’d ab’t Moomins,” Eska replied without stopping. “Snufkin took me to eat p’ncak’s at Moominho’se. There w’re Moomin an’ Little My too.”

“Did she look like me?” Thaische asked.

“She did.”

Kim yawned out a sigh, dark hand covering his mouth because politeness is one hell of a habit to break: “Sounds like a good dream...”

Big corpse pale arms wrapped around his middle, and his wife’s forehead rammed itself right into his ribs as she wasn’t nearly tall enough to reach his scapula. He held  her back as lovingly as their half-asleep state allowed him while she grumbled some kind of affectionate greeting to her adopted sons.

“Met the Moomins tonight,” her oldest repeated while mindlessly keeping on making hordes of breakfast disks.

Niamh’s face peeked from behind her husband: “I think they were the lizards crawling in yer duvet,” she asserted sleepily.

“Met in dream,” Eska rectified. “Snufkin took me to eat pancakes. Am making them now.”

“Ah... I’m glad ye had fun,” his mother opened her eyes fully and looked at the stack of soft round sweets he was readying. She counted thirty-six of them as the vaguely humanoid creature finally came to a stop.

Ah, fuck it.

Saturday breakfast can be insane.

As a treat.

[accelerando]

thoughts on worldbuilding as art and worldbuilding as ancillary to narrative, not a vauge but a slate of thoughts i’ve had after reading a friend’s post

-- (edit) to clarify beforehand, not all of this is a direct response to my friend (pazi, whom i recommend you follow cause shes a rly cool SF author) i'm partly responding to notions about worldbuilding that i’ve heard from other people and partly elaborating my general thoughts about worldbuilding here, so dont take this as a rebuke of what she’s written on the subject but more as a reframing of the concerns from a worldbuilding-to-worldbuild author’s perspective

i agree there's other ways to go about writing a good story and that worldbuilding in itself doesn't make things inherently more consistent-feeling or less contrived and self-servey feeling but i find it useful

ofc i enjoy the research and so on in itself, and like, learning about these different fields and stuff that i read on and compose my thoughts about... also it's been an important thing in my personal approach of like expanding out in my personal horizons of like... what could be possible. what could we look forward to. though certainly i’m not infallible but i like to think about it from that angle

and ofc not everyone is going to have that goal, or need it. its naive at least for sf/f spaces to try and convince people that if your story is in need of fixing up, what it absolutely/foremost/at root level, needs, is better worldbuilding. i think worldbuilding CAN produce interesting ideas and concepts but its not inherently about that

certainly people who aren’t that into math but don’t know better can get caught up spending ages calculating the exact orbits and day cycles of their fictional planets and such or trying to break into conlang because they think they have to do that. and like tbh... no, but a lot of “smart SF” resources tend to emphasize these kinds of details and like it looks cool to have little number statistics on everything so surely itd be even cooler if those were all worked out to minute accuracy, right?

not necessarily; if your story doesnt absolutely depend on little details like that i do think you can afford to fudge it at least somewhat. an SF story doesn’t have to be a meticulous after-action report of the technical failure of some spaceship, which is often based on wildly fantastical technology anyway, even if NASA scientists wrote a paper on it at some point. the Orion Drive is case in point of this imo; a speculative engineering project based on “existing tech” that never got further than cold war paper in the 50s and yet people claim we could build them “like a battleship” with no ill effects. where are all the tried and trusted Orion shipyards then? how about the completely harmless nuclear tests? who can promise shock absorber technology capable of shielding a ten thousand ton skyscraper against a nuclear bomb every second?

these kinds of inconsistencies show up all the time in hard SF and “hard fantasy” as i might call it, and “good worldbuilding” often gets related to the ability to throw up lots of little details, calculations and citations of physical principles or complex self-consistent magic, which can go unquestioned as long as nobody in the audience has any better idea of what the author is talking about, or cares enough to pick it apart. but calculation without purpose does not necessarily make a story feel more in context or less contrived

that in mind, i find worldbuilding useful. it is an art in itself for one, and (to clarify for my own sake) worldbuilding is enjoyable to me just because it is interesting for its own sake, to me. and at some point, any world implies stories to be crafted, can give good guidelines and details to draw upon. i don’t think that that promise of worldbuilding is inherently vapid, nor that worldbuilding and firming up the setting of a narrative are unrelated. RPG settings of course can give good examples of this; one is given a setting rubric with which to guide the establishment of a finer narrative

and certainly this can become a trap when presented as an ideal, that one must have a setting in order for good stories to spring forth, with background worth exploring. even for those who want to worldbuild, few can give a concise answer as to what “good worldbuilding” entails besides basically, “study more”, and “good worldbuilding = good writing”. study more planetary orbits, more orbital physics, more biology, more linguistics. few can give general roadmaps to aid worldbuilding for creating a... setting, rather than a mess of disparate and unconnected details. so what if the orion battleship’s engine and aerodynamics and life support are meticulously worked out if your story is about a greater interplanetary war and you can’t describe the first thing about what life is like under the war or make the story’s conflict more reasonable and interesting than “good american colonial marines analogue” versus “bad socialists / insectoid aliens” etc? what is the (hi)story tying these things together?

imo, worldbuilding is a strain of storytelling at a different scale - fictional groups and factions and things interacting in fictional relations. and like writing a good story that lends itself to inspiring interest and like, fanwork and headcanons and fanworldbuilds etc, writing an interesting and compelling world that inspires smaller-scale stories is not a mutually inclusive or exclusive separate skill. we don’t have to try and be meticulously dialectical, and account for all relations in the world that led to the realization of each event in the story, although imo it is certainly interesting to see what people come up with in trying. but what makes a world compelling depends on who you ask, and being able to graph out the daycycle of a planet indeed does not correspond to universally increasing appeal, or even making your setting more internally consistent. meticulous and well-connected and interesting/wanted are not, universally, mutually inclusive. ultimately, a story needs to be something you want to write

and personally i do want that. i like exploring how futures or other worlds could come to pass, what conditions might enable them to come to pass, in ways that relate to what i know of “reality”

i also think though, that again, a lot of worldbuilding focuses much on detail over general connectedness, which is important to creating a world that feels... compelling imo. the story of the world becomes disparate as effort is concentrated in unrelated elements.

and i try to connect the elements of my world... how are things in the world constructed, in a general sense? details are important too, but they’re not all-important; there are places they are needed and places where they aren’t. a lot of things can be generalized, which doesn’t necessarily equate to oversimplifying. you can just say “there were multiple factors involved here, but the general arc was ____” rather than “the Zorgon empire did ____ and that was the whole story of it”. it’s like how we don’t have to write out the characters’ detailed lives on all the days between when interesting stuff happens in a novel.

(though claiming realism can easily be disingenuous certainly. if we take studies and accounting of existing “real” things as the rubric for our worldbuilding and storytelling, even people at the “forefronts” of study and thought constantly disagree on and find uncertainties in their interpretations of the world. even if it doesn’t “march on”, science and study are not objective, etc)

but yeah. it’s fun and interesting to me... worldbuilding can be fulfilling, but it isn’t necessary to make a story fulfilling. worldbuilding for a story can have you vastly extending the scope of the story you’re aiming to tell, and not everyone wants to or needs to do this to make a good story about individual people. though i do wish i could get into less meticulous material more easily, or other material in general

what’s the takeaway from this? i guess mostly that imo worldbuilding and storytelling draw on the same skillset of being able to relate actors in a story, although in worldbuilding there are ofc also many minute fields one may be expected to specialize into to create details about the “actors” (factions, machines, etc) in question. and so i agree on the notion that creating a compelling story does not depend on a compelling world, though from the standpoint that i enjoy worldbuilding myself and do think it can produce interesting novel concepts - but you have to be writing with the intent of producing interesting concepts. worldbuilders whose main intent is to remake your standard Colonial Marines but with more NASA are probably going to produce mainly Colonial Marines with more NASA

ultimately a compelling story or world or both is going to be a matter of combining and interacting ideas in interesting ways or ways that speak to you