J.P. Kyle's Literary Services

An Australian Creator blogging about Random Junk she found on the Internet

[cosed]

there is no temptation greater on earth than that of museum gift shops

[headspace-hotel]

narnia has actually way too many completely devastating concepts in it that are not explored At All

[headspace-hotel]

We talk a lot about how in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children live full adult lives as kings and queens of narnia before stumbling out of the wardrobe by accident and being children again after like 15+ years. But I’ve never seen the same level of analysis devoted to how in Prince Caspian they return to Narnia and discover that over 1,000 years have passed in Narnia since their last visit.

Imagine undergoing the grief of losing an entire life you lived in another world, being forced back into the body of a child and to grow up all over again without the ability to even talk about what happened in the decades you lost. Every person you knew and loved, vanished, leaving no indication they were ever real and no guide for how to move on.

But returning to that world where you were a King or Queen and discovering that centuries have passed without you and that the people you lost are not only dead, but mostly aren’t even remembered? That’s almost worse.

[headspace-hotel]

That series is really something for “worldbuilding threads picked up and never touched again” too like

in the silver chair it’s confirmed that deep underneath the earth in narnia there’s a molten, fiery abyss world called Bism that is apparently populated and also apparently gemstones are living creatures that live there, and what we understand as diamonds, emeralds, rubies etc. are just the discarded husks of once living creatures

Jadis is actually not originally from Narnia, but accidentally gets sent there at its creation (making her one of the oldest beings in narnia) and she annihilated all life in her world of origin. she also very much does go to literal actual London and terrorize people. she is like 7 feet tall and can tear iron with her bare hands like it’s taffy.

Jadis makes it “Always winter and never Christmas”…what the FUCK is her beef with Father Christmas. I know it’s supposed to be like a metaphor or some shit but I’m imagining what exactly the fuck must have happened between them for jadis to specifically want to prevent him from coming to narnia to the extent that her powerful seasonal-change-stopping magic also includes a “fuck that guy in particular” clause.

like think about it, Jesus is not a thing in narnia, he’s just aslan. and aslan did not get born. ergo, the origin of such a concept as Christmas is the entity Father Christmas. Christmas is not a religious holiday to Narnians it has no symbolic meaning it is just specifically the time of year when Father Christmas fucks around across the landscape giving children gifts, such as very deadly real weapons. There’s no reason for him to do this. It’s just what he does. And Jadis fucking hates it.

another thing from the magicians nephew that is never brought up again is that Polly and Digory don’t go directly to Narnia, they end up in this intermediate place between the worlds that’s like a forest full of pools leading to other worlds, potentially infinite other worlds, and they end up in Narnia pretty much at random.

I think it’s also confirmed that Archenlanders were originally from Earth, and are the descendants of a small group of people who traveled to Narnia by accident and got stuck. One wonders why Aslan didn’t whisk them back out. Or why being too old wasn’t a problem for them.

I think this is early installment weirdness but there are Roman gods in narnia. ?????

stars are sentient???

narnia is flat. this is not actually an unresolved thread but I don’t think it’s common knowledge even though in one of the books they literally sail to the edge of the world. caspian specifically thinks it’s super cool that the earth is round

[athoughtfox]

I LOVE the whole concept of Bism. Like Lewis really just said oh yeah there’s a whole world under Narnia where people live and jewels are alive too actually you wear dead ones in your jewellery and then no one ever spoke about it again, not even the fandom

No wonder this series infuriated Tolkien so much. Lewis just threw paint at a wall and jokingly asked the man who’d spent a decade on a single painting if he liked it.

[fireladyofink]

Holy shit there is a lot about Narnia I don’t know.

[marlinspirkhall]

Writer’s block? Why not try peppering panpsychism into your atheist-turned-christian young adult literature and never addressing it again?

[narnia-renaissance]

So many fics, so little time.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Fun fact about the woods between worlds thing and what the inspiration behind it was:

This is an illustration of it from the book.

And THIS is a forest full of shell craters from WW1. Which C.S Lewis fought in as a teenager.

[bllbabaggins]

I’m sorry @stargirl-and-potts I couldn’t leave your tags there 🥹

[washedupslapper]

It makes me think of one of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite books as a child, The Secret Garden, which similarly takes the position that it doesn’t matter so much what you’re praying to, only that you do it out of joy, because joy is the common element of all true faith:

Do you believe in Magic?“ asked Colin after he had explained about Indian fakirs. “I do hope you do.”

“That I do, lad,” she answered. “I never knowed it by that name but what does th’ name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i’ France an’ a different one i’ Germany. Th’ same thing as set th’ seeds swellin’ an’ th’ sun shinin’ made thee a well lad an’ it’s th’ Good Thing. It isn’t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. Th’ Big Good Thing doesn’t stop to worrit, bless thee. It goes on makin’ worlds by th’ million—worlds like us. Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it—an’ call it what tha’ likes. Tha’ wert singin’ to it when I come into th’ garden.”

“I felt so joyful,” said Colin, opening his beautiful strange eyes at her. “Suddenly I felt how different I was—how strong my arms and legs were, you know—and how I could dig and stand—and I jumped up and wanted to shout out something to anything that would listen.”

“Th’ Magic listened when tha’ sung th’ Doxology. It would ha’ listened to anything tha’d sung. It was th’ joy that mattered. Eh! lad, lad—what’s names to th’ Joy Maker,” and she gave his shoulders a quick soft pat again.

[elumish]

One method for worldbuilding that I find helpful, especially if you are ending up with a world that feels ungrounded or superficial, is to work your way backwards and ask what was needed for us to get here?

Let's say your character is a weaver.

They would have at least one loom. What kind of loom(s) do they have? Do they make their looms or purchase them?

Let's say their purchase their looms. Did they purchase it from someone who makes looms specifically? From the equivalent of Target or Amazon? From a shop where they live or one far away?

Let's say they purchased a large loom from somewhere far away. They would need to transport it somehow. How is transport of large goods done? By car? Plane? Magic? Would they have transported it themselves, or would it have been delivered?

What powers the mode of transportation that they use? Do humans pull carts? Do oxen? Do horses? Do they have cars that run on gasoline or diesel? Do they have teleportation powered by the mass sacrifice of mosquitos for blood magic?

Let's say they have teleportation using mosquito sacrifice for power. Do they breed mosquitos? Gather them? Can they also sacrifice leeches?

Are there ethical debates about sacrificing mosquitos? What about leeches?

And so on.

You can go as deep (or not) on any point of your worldbuilding, and then you can go four steps back and take a different branch. If we go back to the question of them buying the loom from far away, then we also have the question of how they bought it. Did they travel? Order it online? Use a mail-in catalog? And so on.

This can also show you pressure points for your story, things that you can poke at and add tension, either in the foreground or the background. What happens to weavers needing to receive new looms if the wizards start running low on mosquitos?

You don't need to answer any of these questions if you don't want to, or include answers even if you have decided them, but this can be a way to give your world more depth as it needs it.

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Sidekick Notepad by Cortex Podcast

Sidekick Notepad is designed to sit comfortably with you and your keyboard. It’s ready and waiting for whatever you‘re working on. Captur

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[70sscifiart]

There are two types of skull planet.

Art by Ray Feibush (left) and Bruce Pennington. Check out these illustrations along with 400 others in my new art book - "Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s" is out now!

[70sscifiart]

Reblogging a few book promo posts because... my art book is out in the UK for the first time today! Buy a copy here and tell all your European pals!

[english-history-trip]

A Break from the Lawn

A new study at King's College, Cambridge reveals the striking benefits of letting lawns go wild. But can others be persuaded to break with a

In 2020, for the first time since being laid in 1772, a section of a King’s College lawn the size of just half a football pitch was not mown. Instead, it was transformed into a colourful wildflower meadow filled with poppies, cornflowers and oxeye daisies.

[Researcher Dr Cicely Marshall] found that as well as being a glorious sight, the meadow had boosted biodiversity and was more resilient than lawn to our changing climate. The results are published today in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence. Despite its size, the wildflower meadow supported three times more species of plants, spiders and bugs than the remaining lawn - including 14 species with conservation designations, compared with six in the lawn.

The meadow was found to have another climate benefit: it reflected 25% more sunlight than the lawn, helping to counteract what’s known as the ‘urban heat island’ effect. Cities tend to heat up more than rural areas, so reflecting more sunlight can have a cooling effect - useful in our increasingly hot summers. “Cambridge has become more prone to drought, and last summer most of the College’s fine lawns died. It’s really expensive to maintain these lawns, which have to be re-sown if they die off. But the meadow just looked after itself,” says Marshall.

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97% of companies think spying on their remote workers makes them more productive. But many employees end up getting fired for it—or quitting

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