Bodies of info, performing such miracles

[magistrate]

Current media consumption:

- CohhCarnage's Let's Play of Red Dead Redemption 2

- The Better Angels of our Nature, by Steven Pinker

- This thread on how environment influences human-available nutrition, by SarahTaber_bww

- Aloha Ke Akua by Nahko and Medicine For The People, on loop, forever

Current mood:

- I want to write an epiclong sprawlingbigplotfic set in a post-Fall-Of-Rome (ish) Wild West (ish) world with dangerous residual magic (yes) animal shapeshifters (ish) and coordinated Recivilization Efforts (yes) and themes of sacrifice and betrayal and loyalty and deception and ecological symbiosis vs exploitation (yes, many). And capaill uisce (ish). And femslash (absolutely and unambiguously).

Current mood (addendum):

- I AM GOING TO FINISH AT LEAST ONE PROJECT IN 2019 SO HELP ME GOD

Comments

[tomakeanoffer]

I...I would so be here for that thing.

Just saying.

(If you start writing it, please feel free to throw bits of it at me. I will welcome it with open arms.)

[magistrate]

I'll probably end up posting bits here, as my attention can be marshalled to the task.

[tomakeanoffer]

Yessssss *bounces at you*

[rachelmanija]

I would be SO down with that.

[magistrate]

I'm so excited for it!

Now the trick is to get that excitement marshaled into an actual finished work, and not 30k of unfinished scrappy bits.

Taber

[brainwane]

By the way, did you see this collection of Sarah Taber threads I made?

[magistrate]

I did! That's actually how I ran into that thread, and it struck me as something really cool from a worldbuilding perspective. Beyond even just how humans adapt to the environment, right down to how environment affects the physical composition of plants, and how that radiates out in its implications for land use, plant use, etc.

[sholio]

OMG, that sounds AMAZING. /is no help

[magistrate]

Instigators, the lot of you! ...I say like I haven't already self-instigated to the tune of 2,600 words of fic and 3,600 words of meta.

Why do I lack moderation?

[sholio]

\o/

Self-instigation is the best instigation.

[auto_destruct]

First off, your current mood is a Big Mood (tm).

Secondly, Sarah Taber is awesome and I'm trying not to get too sucked into incorporating a bunch of things from her threads into Angelspeakers because if I do I will never finish the damn rewrite.

[magistrate]

(Replying from phone, so autocorrect is in full play...)

All of her stuff is SO FASCINATING. I need to listen to her podcast. And it's so cool that so much of it reads like worldbuilding, too.

The other non-recent but very relevant thing that's been on my mind is "The Worst Hard Time," which is a haunting book about the Dust Bowl and is straight-up apocalyptic in parts. I can't remember if I recced it to you or not, but as I was reading it, I definitely had the thought "I need to rec this to L" at multiple points.

[auto_destruct]

Honestly I think the fact that a lot of it reads like worldbuilding (and that it's in twitter thread form) goes a long way toward me being able to read and absorb it in a way I might not if I were reading an essay or a book. (Though I have yet to come across a book that reads like worldbuilding and is nonfiction, so hey, maybe that would help with the retaining of information.)

You have not! But I will plop it into the TBR pile and see if the library has it once I'm back in town after the holidays for sure. That title does feel familiar, but not in a "someone has told me about this" sort of way, just in a "I probably eyeballed it at a bookstore once" sort of way. Yes, these are separate sort of vague senses of deja vu, shhh.

[magistrate]

I'm'a quote you the first bit of the introduction to The Worst Hard Time, because it got me right in the feels in a way that not a lot of nonfiction has. And for some reason, I've been reading a bunch of nonfiction in the past little bit. (Also potentially a recommend: Dead Mountain, which is about the Dyatlov Pass incident, and which contains the memorable line "I don't remember Sherlock Holmes ever mentioning what you are supposed to do when you’ve eliminated everything improbable, and nothing is left.")


Anyway, the first bit of the introduction to The Worst Hard Time:

ON THOSE DAYS when the wind stops blowing across the face of the southern plains, the land falls into a silence that scares people in the way that a big house can haunt after the lights go out and no one else is there. It scares them because the land is too much, too empty, claustrophobic in its immensity. It scares them because they feel lost, with nothing to cling to, disoriented. Not a tree, anywhere. Not a slice of shade. Not a river dancing away, life in its blood. Not a bump of high ground to break the horizon, give some perspective, spell the monotone of flatness. It scares them because they wonder what is next. It scared Coronado, looking for cities of gold in 1541. It scared the Anglo traders who cut a trail from Independence to Santa Fe, after they dared let go of the lifeline of the Cimarron River in hopes of shaving a few days off a seven-week trek. It even scared some of the Comanche as they chased bison over the grass. It scared the Germans from Russia and the Scots-Irish from Alabama—the Last Chancers, exiled twice over, looking to build a hovel from overturned sod, even if that dirt house was crawling with centipedes and snakes, and leaked mud on the children when thunderheads broke.

It still scares people driving cars named Expedition and Outlander. It scares them because of the forced intimacy with a place that gives nothing back to a stranger, a place where the land and its weather—probably the most violent and extreme on earth—demand only one thing: humility.

[auto_destruct]

Welp, that's pretty great and I just plopped it on hold for pickup at the library. (Parts of that are also familiar -- I wonder if you've quoted it at me before, if I've gotten this recommendation from someone else too, or if I've just seen it around and been intrigued. Either way, all or any combination of the above is a good reason to snag it, regardless.)