Planned Suburban Communities: Maybe Not Always Boring as Hell?
One reason things have been stuck in neutral recently is that I’m not entirely sure how to proceed with my setting. Namely, Gala Heights/Gala Hills (not sure which one sounds better), the planned community founded by the protagonist’s grandfather. On a meta-level, I know I want it to almost be a character on its own, in the tradition of Hogwarts or Ankh-Morpork (apparently I should name it something pig-related).
On the object level, of course, a Florida suburb built from the ground up in 1989 cannot, by definition, be an ancient rickety place of stone and brick full of shadowy little back-alleys and primordial secrets and etc. etc. so I’ll have to rely on different tropes and images to establish it.
I want to play on the inherent appeal of such a place, especially to a family from an ugly, polluted, and dangerous neighborhood, (it’s so new and clean! There’s flowers and lakes and fountains! You can walk outside at 2 AM if you like!) with the sort of things that have made suburbia an object of loathing in so much media, especially to teenagers; the boredom, the conformity, etc. As the title implies, I’m trying to tip the scales a little more in favor of the suburb this time.)
A few things that pretty much have to be true, from a story perspective, and their immediate implications:
1) From an in-universe perspective, it’s a new Wonder of the World and a model for the future; no one thought it was possible to Ward an entire town until Florian did it. That makes him and his allies very protective of it and its image. And given that Florian more or less runs the town he basically only sells to the rich and successful; it’s a very upper-class sort of town.
2) Non-humans can’t enter, at least not without help; Lind is stuck outside until Tabby finds a way to break the Warding and let him in. Yes, combined with humber one, obvious metaphor is obvious but I promise you this whole thing isn’t just more immigrant moralism. (There will be Dark Undertones, but not quite the obvious ones.)
Things that I’ll probably do but am not necessarily married to:
3) While alternative urbanism/New Urbanism is only a minor interest of mine, it is an interest, and the time and place would be right for Florian to be aware of those ideas: Seaside, Florida was something of a cause celebre in the 80′s, and Celebration didn’t come much later. Perhaps the protagonists expect some 50′s Stepford kind of thing but what they get is more quirky and artsy.
4) On that note, perhaps a sizeable artsy/new-agey community in town; maybe Florian even marketed to them specifically, thinking that even if they’re mostly full of shit, some aren’t. Or maybe the Sedona crowd are actually the Keepers of Secret Knowledge in this ‘verse. Again, 1998: the time would be ripe for it.
Some more specific ideas for this green-livable-but-weirdly-sinister magical-realist place:
-True to its inspirations, curvy, meandering streets that are hard to navigate, perhaps resulting in a spatial loop or some other weirdness.
-A house at one end of town that looks exactly the same and houses the same family as a house at the opposite end.
-A widely-mentioned, ominous-sounding, but unseen HOA whose targets tend to disappear quickly, but there’s no hard proof of them actually doing anything to anyone.
As usual, I’m just spitballing here and would appreciate feedback from my readers.
Reading The Butchering Art, with its record of snarky arguments in medical journals, gave me an idea.
The setting for my stories about Miska, along with all the various Andre & Jerome stories I have, is a complicated one. It’s big, in-depth, and just enough like our own world that it regularly leaves people guessing when I try to explain it. Perhaps I should try to simplify some of the setting,…
On the 11th I posted the first of my background pieces on the Elven Progenitors setting. Now I’ve got more material for you.
Last time I covered city names, the names of bodies of water, the basics of city-states, mother-daughter city relations, Elf-home, the Northmen, and the return of slavery. I still need to talk about the divisions amongst the elves, the cold war, where people get their…
