#well... READ ABOUT IT!

[flaming-toads]

I think Hecate and Ada should kiss under the book arch in s4e9 but that's just my professional opinion

[maidenvault]

Not “Only my reading of canon is correct” or “Interpretations are subjective and all valid” but a secret third thing, “More than one interpretation can be valid but there’s a reason your English teacher had you cite quotes and examples in your papers, you have to have a strong argument that your interpretation is actually supported by the text or it is just wrong and I’m fine with telling you it’s wrong, actually.”

[chongoblog]

WAIT

I JUST REMEMBERED HEARING AN ELON MUSK QUOTE WHERE HE TALKS ABOUT HOW HE BELIEVES CHESS IS "TOO SIMPLE" OR WHATEVER AND HE SAID HIS FAVORITE GAME WAS A GAME CALLED "POLYTOPIA"

I JUST REMEMBERED THAT IVE PLAYED POLYTOPIA

It being Elon's favorite game (or at least one so important to him that his biographer dedicates a lot of time to it) is.....really really funny.

Basically, imagine Civilization, but as a mobile game. So like if Civilization Revolution was even more dumbed down (that's a Civilization insult. That's devastating. It's devastated right now). For what it's worth, it's not a bad game. On the contrary, from what I could tell in the little bit of time I played it, it's a perfectly competent game with good design. But it's not a deep game by any means. I played through it once, won easily on my first go, then saw that the other playable characters had barely any differences between them.

Like, not to imply you can judge a book by its cover, but here's what it looks like

I came across an article by Dave Karpf discussing this exact thing, and I think it describes it wonderfully

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[aphel1on]

i have such a love for characters who descend into madness or villainy out of deep, deep empathy. characters who fundamentally cannot cope with the cruel realities they find themselves in and blow up about it in spectacular fashion. fallen angel type characters with tears of outrage in their eyes. characters who break before they bend, and break so badly they splatter blood all over their noble ideals. every variation on it gets me so good

[ciderbird]

academic bias is so funny because you’ll be reading about the same historical event and one person is like “Despite the troubles that befell his homeland and near constant criticism of the court King Blorbo remained strong in the face of adversity” and the other one is like “after letting his people carry the brunt of his cringefail decisions Blorbo the Shitface refused to listen to any reason and continued to be a warmongering piece of shit. Also he was ugly.”

[words-writ-in-starlight]

honestly my mother was a huge champ about her eight-year-old asking to be bought an unabridged edition of the Odyssey for a birthday present, and then she was an equally huge champ about reading her eight-year-old the unabridged Odyssey as a bedtime story and pausing every four lines to define something for me, and let me just say that I have fucking TREASURED the opportunity to reverse that old tradition by more or less forcing her to sit on my couch and listen to Epic and pause it every four lines for my dissertation

[sunburstsandmoonshadows]

but will you punch 'em so hard they fly straight to japan?

[stil-lindigo]

the vulture.

a comic about cycles.

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creative notes:

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[cheriafreya]

Ratio and Aventurine before Rota Fortunae's events

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

It's just guys night talk! Don't worry about it!

(Read Tiger Tiger and shake this man awake so he can finish that thought!)

[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.

[cj-the-random-artist]

Is this my best comic ever?? Nope. Do I think I characterized either of these two particularly well in this comic?? Not really. Did I spend an unreasonable amount of time on it to the point that it would be a waste to not post it?? Yes, yes I did.

I really committed to this one, spent a lot of time on those backgrounds and treated myself to ample suffering with the perspective, which is not my strong suit but I am happy with how it ultimately looks. Yay perspective and background practice!!

(Tbh I shouldn't talk like I think this one sucks, I think I've just been staring at it for so long that my brain has decided it's not good and it's actually way better than I think it is, and honestly I am quite happy with it. The artistic process really is something, isn't it?)

The inspiration was basically me reminding... myself... to take breaks sometimes... by drawing for several hour stints during my only little bits of free time. Which totally tracks. Probably. But I've been rolling around in my brain this idea that Lambert is a very uptight people pleaser and anxious workaholic, but Narinder, at least since adjusting himself to the circumstances (which probably took at least a century, maybe two) has discovered the joys of self care, and has made an active effort to chill tf out. This has not made him any less terrifying to the cultists (save for Lambert's closest disciples), nor has it made him friendlier to really anyone but Lambert (and maybe his siblings), but he sure has found some serious peace of mind. That said, I can't place what his motivations are here. Perhaps he is secretly concerned about Lambert's sanity, because he doesn't want them to turn into what he was, or maybe he's just trying to steal away some quality time with his one and only friend, but regardless of the reason, I spent too much time on this for nobody to see it, dang it.

That said. Enjoy this silly little comic that I spent way too much time on, and I hope this silly comic brings you some joy today.

[autumn-may]

Mostly spoiler free summary of my viewing experience

[sunderwight]

Scum Villain AU where Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu transmigrate by swapping lives (i.e. Shen Yuan wakes up in Shen Qingqiu's body on Qing Jing Peak, post-fever, while Shen Jiu wakes up in Shen Yuan's body in a hospital in modern China) but it doesn't quite work right.

The system glitches or something and they end up having to jointly time share their lives. Every time a certain moon phase or something (cyclical) comes around they abruptly switch back.

So they spend the entire time trying to undo everything the other one has been up to while everyone around them is just desperately attempting to figure out wtf is going on. Shen Yuan does the skinner quest and stops Luo Binghe's abuse, and Shen Jiu gets a job with a rival company and starts showing up Shen Yuan's brothers. Then they switch back and Shen Jiu is like "it's woodshed o'clock for the beast" and Shen Yuan resigns. Then they switch back again and Shen Yuan saves Liu Qingge's life and gets poisoned defending Luo Binghe, and Shen Jiu creates his own start-up and blackmails his eldest brother about the mistress he's just uncovered. Then they switch back and Shen Yuan gets his brother and his sister-in-law into couples counseling and Shen Jiu embarks on a quest to either cure himself without Liu Qingge's help or die trying.

Eventually they just start leaving bitchy messages for one another to find and doing things that won't cause lasting damage but are incredibly petty. Shen Yuan keeps trying to tell Shen Jiu to read PIDW but Shen Jiu takes one look at his merch-filled bachelor pad and immediately decides that his opinions aren't worth anything, so it takes him a while to actually do it (he is really mad about this when he finally opens the novel and it turns out to be extremely relevant information).

[lgbtlunaverse]

There's a version of the "don't go grocery shopping while hungry" rule specifically for writers where you should never under any circumstances be allowed to touch your draft within 3 hours of reading a really good story. Because sometimes when you read something great your head goes "fuck this is so much better than my stuff I should make that more like THIS instead!" Look at me. That's the devil talking and you should close the document NOW.