#this was supposed to be about books

[scorpiomindfuck]

I'm going to read The Hunger Games for the first time

I've decided. Initially, I never read it because I wasn't even in double digits when the movie came out, i didn't care for any deeper meaning. Even by the time the last film came out, I wasn't quite ready to dive into all the complicated shit that i already knew came in the books. I can kind of feel myself slowly becoming more and more cynical with the state of the world.

I've always felt more attached to books. I feel like if I get into something that is pretty clearly a statement on the nature of existence, humanity and survival, I might find inspiration in myself to not always remain passive when i find myself able to act in some way.

I can honestly say that my one goal in life is to not let myself become numb to the world, and i can also say that at 19 - turning 20 - I feel like I'm already failing.

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Physically? I am sitting in my bedroom. Mentally? Spiritually? I AM DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! THESE TWO HAVE KILLED ME!!!!

(Another drawing! This was originally attempt #1 at drawing stan, and then fiddleford just showed up. Kinda feels like them five minutes after the above acting like nothing happened though, so it works sdjkgkjfshj)

[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.

[posalis]

"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself." Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

[turndecassette2]

[egophiliac]

YOU MANIFESTED THE TWEEL CARDS CONGRATS

YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYBODY!

seriously though I was probably like. 60-80% thinking we'd get at least one tweel for chapter 10. but I was NOT expecting it so soon! both of 'em! in August! a shame we're not getting a Coral Sea event after all...but I guess I can be resigned to that and ALSO excited for getting shiny sparkly glowing(!!!!) mertwins along with Azul fighting his inner demons and going right for the eyes! AHHHH I CAN'T WAIT

(also heeeey I recognize that rowboat... 👀)

[sassaffrassa]

It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the hollow of the queen’s shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day.

hi, i'm very cool and normal about these books, don't worry about me

on ao3 here

[benevolenterrancy]

honestly. if you decided to create giant fucking corpse-head-spiders to populate your world with then this is exactly what you deserve.

[mint-fixates]

There's this weird take I've seen floating around on TikTok that Bill doesn't actually care about his family/dimension or Stanford at all; that we're supposed to take everything in TBOB as non-canon basically because he's lying to garner sympathy from reader to make a deal with them. I'm all for having your own interpretations of media, but I just don't think this idea that Bill is a completely heartless unfeeling creature is supported by canon at all. In fact, it kind of feels like the opposite of the point of the book.

Like, yeah, most things Bill says should be taken with a grain of salt because he lies a lot, but he's not actually a very good liar? It's usually pretty easy to clock when he's full of it. But okay, even if we assume every word Bill says while trying to recruit the reader is a lie, there are three major things that this doesn't account for.

Bill is not the only source in the book. The lost Journal 3 pages were written by Stanford, we only know about the interdimensional Taco Bell incident because of an included police transcript, etc.

Even once he's lost any chance of making a deal with the reader to escape, Bill is having a complete breakdown and mentions all the people he so totally doesn't miss for real you guys. Why bother with reverse psychology double-lying for sympathy once his shot at getting the reader on his side is already gone?

Trying to garner the reader's sympathy makes sense to a certain extent, but why go out of his way to make himself look pathetic? Does revealing that he got drunk and cried over his ex in a fast-food drive-through really help his cause if that cause is to convince the reader he's still a powerful being capable of starting the apocalypse again so they can rule with him?

And that's all without even mentioning that, as previously stated, I think the entire point of the book is missed if we're interpreting Bill as having no genuine feelings or attachments. The book ends with Stanford healing from his past by being open about what he went through with his family and accepting their help, while Bill insists he doesn't need anyone and refuses to heal, actively making himself worse in the process. The clear theme imo is that accepting your past and accepting help from people who love you is essential to healing, while denying those things just makes everything worse. If Bill doesn't actually care about his family, his dimension, Stanford, or anything/anyone else, he has no trauma to heal from or regrets to learn from that he's refusing to accept and deal with, and the entire meaning of the book is made moot.

[binkyfishy]

She nan on my tucket til i. She Ishmael on my Queeqyeg til i. she moby on my dick til i

[moodyseal]

"What happened between book 4 and 5?" lots of shenanigans that's what ‼️

[weirdglassthing]

LOA Shiptober Day 4: How They Met

October content month was ambitious..

This one took me. Shockingly long. Whoops! I’ll probably end up jumping around the prompt list and it might extend into November 😋

I’ll try to do day 31 on the actual date of Halloween though 🫡

[ashleyloob]

I randomly got dragged to Mormon church and met the illustrator for A Series of Unfortunate Events who is apparently a bishop at the church, and now we are Instagram mutuals. today was so bizarre

[peppermint-jade]

Thinking about him again...

(the K-9 bag from the official Doctor Who Pattern book from 1984)

[jellybeandrawsthings]

Tall, sunshine and pastels werewolf and her smol goth girlfriend

[greatstrangerdinosaur]

They're cute