Dear Crispin: (A warning in advance as this will be long)
I write to you now at the edge of my consciousness, my body in a fugue state of transitional absentmindedness. Before long I will likely assume a different state, and as consequence lose my creative drive and passion for a short time. This is to say that I sympathise with your artist’s block, as something not so dissimilar blights me every few days.
Particularly, it centres around roughly a dozen individuals (separated into 3 stories) and their attempts to survive in this world. For the most part, this story and setting differs little from our own Earth, with the key difference of two things: the provable existence of the divine, and the existence of North and South Tasmia islands (existing in the stead of Australia).
These gods interact with the physical plane via two methods, each corresponding to their own methods of feeding. The gods grow in power as they are thought of more, growing in conceptual strength as they take up more space in the collective consciousness of mankind. So when they wish for good, consistent growth, they form contracts, granting mortals a fraction of a piece of a drop in their sea of power in return for a variety of sacrifices or rituals that bolster that god’s place in the common memory of humanity.
And when they are starved, seeking that rapid, growing, violent growth of fear and hatred. They create Saints, living, breathing conduits of their divine fury that render the earth asunder and fell cities in their footsteps. Both are methods of forcing more of humanity to think of them, and by cause grow in power, albeit one through love and the other through fear.
Gods exist for everything, hence their abundance. As Alek, a character in TLS once said,
“There is a god for everything. One for the chair your sitting on, one for the air you breath, one for the right root of your left upper premolar, like I said, for everything. As long as there is an idea for an object, like the idea that fire hurts, there is a god for it that can be worshipped and contracted.”
Furthermore, there exists the Lower Worlds, oft considered the realm of these gods, an infinite realm of infinite floors and no rules, each floor corresponding to a unique “frequency”, not unlike a radio, and each frequency applying to its given god.
But this very feeding method of the gods is the subject matter of my writing to you today, and explaining how it works. One of the many reoccurring concepts of TLS is the variety of explanations for these gods, how they so easily disrupt the laws of physics and why they function as they do.
Some argue that they are manifestations of some dormant force within the mind. Some argue that the Lower Worlds consist of a mirror matter, our minds paying off the entropic debt into this matter. Others that the gods are simply beings of a different dimension, poking their fingers in and spilling their rules into our own.
The issue is found, not in these solutions, but in the fact that each and every one of these interpretations works. They are all completely plausible explanations for every facet of the divine, each and every solution. This raises the question, which is the right one?
The answer, is all of them. You see, it is revealed late into the story that the Lower Worlds behave like quantum particles, their contents and rules existing in a superstate. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it means that these worlds, and by extent the gods that are formed from them, are multiple things at once until observed, at which point they collapse into one possibility.
In other words, the Lower Worlds have no set rules, logic, or systems, only the ones we apply when we attempt to reconcile it. It is an amorphous sea of possibilities, collapsing into whatever form we grant it.
Like a liquid, it fills the container it is in, morphing to whatever people consider it to be. This is why the Lower Worlds lack the logic and reason of our world, for so many have differing views on its functions and logics, resulting in an ostensible lack of order.
This is why every solution to the gods works. This is why gods are intrinsically linked to concepts and how we apply to objects. This is why gods can so easily ignore our rules.
This dimension is one of undefined energy and possibility, a sea of potential superstates and wavelengths, collapsing in the exact moment a link between idea and thing is formed into one constant state, that state being a god.
When a god, or concept it thought of, it expands the definition and dimensions of that concept, granting it a “larger container” for it to inhabit, and by consequence granting it greater power.
If you link the ideas of fire and pain, as one so often does, a new god is birthed, one of painful flames. As more people grow to fear and love this god, more conceptual “mass” is granted to it, more access to the unending undefined energy within the Lower Worlds, expanding its reach into the infinite, explaining how they feed.
Apologies for both the length and strangeness of this rambling, as I had written this after many a month of conceptualising, and desperately desired some form of sharing this work of mine with a fellow mind.
Kind regards, Valerie
(PS: I truly pray non-religiously to whatever limbo of superstate energies hold power in our world that you may be free from that cursed block, and that the waters of creativity my flow in your fields once more)
dearest valerie,
