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the snow & stalled sea

@swallowtailed / swallowtailed.tumblr.com

Marsh, they/them. field science fiction. elanoides on ao3.
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luthienne
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disruptiveempathy
At times, the original flora [of Palestine] manages to return in surprising ways. Pine trees were planted not only over bulldozed houses, but also over fields and olive groves. In the new development town of Migdal Ha-Emek, for example, the JNF did its utmost to try and cover the ruins of the Palestinian village of Mujaydil, at the town’s eastern entrance, with rows of pine trees, not a proper forest in this case but just a small wood. Such ‘green lungs’ can be found in many of Israel’s development towns that cover destroyed Palestinian villages (Tirat Hacarmel over Tirat Haifa, Qiryat Shemona over Khalsa, Ashkelon over Majdal, etc.). But this particular species failed to adapt to the local soil and, despite repeated treatment, disease kept afflicting the trees. Later visits by relatives of some of Mujaydial’s original villagers revealed that some of the pine trees had literally split in two and how, in the middle of their broken trunks, olive trees had popped up in defiance of the alien flora planted over them fifty-six years ago.

—Ilan Pappé, from The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

#palestine#ecology
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wondersmith-and-sons
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blacksailsgf

the spear cuts through water — simon jimenez

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swallowtailed

[text: “…. That the road was but pain and glory. Sometimes, perhaps, life whittles itself down to these essences. Sometimes there is nothing we can do but sit in it." She took a long drag and blew gray smoke up into the ceiling, where it lived like an opaque and swirling cloud of shape and texture. "But listen well when I tell you that your father, and your granjo, are wrong." What were they wrong about? you asked. She shrugged. "This is a love story to its blade-dented bone.”]

#books#have a huge soft spot for ‘this is a love story’ being used as a lodestone#whether sincere or deconstructed#and in this book it absolutely whips
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knowlesian
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iamthedukeofurl

Everybody acts like each new Game Changer is a new level of betrayal and psychological torture from Sam towards his friends. Did we forget that the very first game changer was "Sam wheels out a strange machine and asks the contestants embarrassing personal questions, the veracity of their responses is judged by the Machine. The machine is actually controlled by the contestant's significant others who have been made accomplices. Forcing their loved ones into revealing shameful truths for internet broadcast." And sure, he's gotten a bit more personalized with these, constructing a variety of torture chambers for Brennan Lee Mulligan specifically, putting Grant O'Brien in various situations and then bringing his mother onto the set. But deception and betrayal were part of Game Changer from the beginning. So, when I hear people say "I can't believe Sam WENT THERE" about something all I can do is think to myself He went nowhere He's been there the whole time

#it’s a classic episode too.#game changer
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citadelofswords
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esoteric-goblin

on worldbuilding, and what people think is going on

there is one facet of fantasy worldbuilding that is, to me, the most interesting and essential but i don't see it come up in worldbuilding guides or writing prompts or anything, and that is the question of:

what do the inhabitants of your world believe about how the world works, and how are they wrong? a lot of fantasy media will set up their cosmology, gods, magic systems, planar systems, concepts of the afterlife, &c., and proceed as though the inhabitants of the world know and understand them.

from someone whose entire academic career is focused on studying human culture in various regions and time periods, with a focus on belief systems (religion, occultism, mythology, folklore): that sort of worldbuilding is unrealistic and missing out on so much fun.

people are always seeking new understanding about how the world works, and they are mostly wrong. how many models of the solar system were proposed before we reached our current one? look at the long, turbulent history of medicine and our various bizarre models for understanding the human body and how to fix it. so many religions and occult/magical traditions arise from people disagreeing with or adapting various models of the world based on new ideas, methods, technologies. many of them are wrong, but all of them are interesting and reflect a lot about the culture, beliefs, values, and fears of the people creating/practising them.

there is so much more to the story of what people believe about the world than just what is true.

to be clear: i think it's fine and important for the author to have a coherent explanation for where magic comes from or who the gods are, so they can maintain consistency in their story. but they should also be asking what people in the world (especially different people, in different regions/nations and different times) think is happening when they do magic, or say a prayer, or practise medicine, or grieve their dead. it is a rich vein for conflict between individuals and nations alike when two models of the world disagree. it is fascinating how different magic systems might develop according to different underlying beliefs.

personally, i think it is the most fun to spawn many diverse models of the world, but give none of them the 'right' answer.

(bonus points if you also have a thriving academic system in the world with its own theory, research, and discourse between factions! as an academic, it is very fun to imagine fictional academic debate over the topics i'm worldbuilding. sometimes i will be working out details for some underlying mechanic of the world and start imagining the papers being written by scholars researching it)

#yep!!!!!!#rhr runs on no one knowing why the apocalypse happened#also my most recent short fiction sale is in the tradition of fucked up teleporter scifi#where no one knows exactly what happens to you when you teleport#writing#sff
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eternalgirlscout
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hologramblue

unless i'm just completely up my own ass then dungeon meshi is at least in part about the limits of fantasy (in both the directly meta sense of speculative fiction like DM itself, and the broader sense of myths people believe about the world they live in) as a tool for understanding/engaging with material reality, which makes the typical fandomy shit particularly ironic

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hologramblue

that one short comic of kui's with the kids writing the antiracist animal people story. laios and kabru's everything. DM is just kind of dripping with, like, the tension of being someone whose curiosity was nurtured and whose eyes were opened to so many things about the world through speculative fiction and fantastic allegory, and knows how imagination can be a bridge you cross from isolation into love for life, but who has also run up against the walls inherent to studying allegory as a substitute for reality or endlessly imagining a better world in place of improving the real one

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hologramblue

like - the dungeon makes all things possible because the dungeon is limitless possibility. the reason marcille couldn't get what she wanted through the dungeon wasn't because the core of that desire was something she was wrong to want, it's because the dungeon isn't real/isn't in correspondence with reality and what she would actually ultimately achieve through it would never resemble the thing she actually wanted to do

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wisdomlikethis

Hell, I'd argue this understanding of the dungeon as a thing that is both an idealized wish-fulfilment engine which occupies a metaphorical space equivalent to what fantasy as a genre can do and something which is essentially an intrusion into reality that, because it isn't 'real', ultimately does more harm than good if it begins to replace understanding of the real world... is really essential to understanding what it represents for Laios' arc and where he ends up. Without that layer of subtext, Laios' ending might feel disheartening, but with it, you can start to get at why it's ultimately a win for him more than a loss. Even as it kind of hurts in some ways.

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hologramblue

[points] correctamundo

also grabbing these tags because this is also [points] correctamundo and i didn't think to make that connection and it's so true. it's in that one panel in The Backstory, you see someone asking for "longevity for my people"; the trick there is that the definition of my people in the pre-dungeon world (and in the real one) is a social one, not a biological one, until the dungeon gives someone the power to shape reality to make it so. the fantasy races reify human racism because they quite literally came about through people using a wish-granting machine to reify racism.

#ooh ok. thinking thoughts#dungeon meshi#dungeon meshi spoilers
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