If You Ever Find Yourself in a Relancii Isekai, You Will Know All About Warks
I am in the process of adapting my old Curious Tale Saturdays essays on the warks of Gala into the ATH manuscript, because why not make people read an entire encyclopedia article in the main text?
These days, we as audiences are so far removed from the reality of fantasy and sci-fi settings that there is no general expectation of practicality in these works. (Not to be mistaken with realism, which does occur.) This loss of verisimilitude is kind of sad, I think, and it isn't true of all fiction. In westerns, for instance, the story will often delve into dissertations on the practical: animal skins, watering holes, knifework, and so forth.
Warks—large ridable birds—aren't all that important to the ATH story. They're definitely present, but they're not linchpins. There's no need for an entire encyclopedia article on them in the main text of the story. And yet...this is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say that I want The Curious Tale to feature first and foremost an interest in showing off the beauty of the world of Relance. The idea of giving the reader—not just the characters but the reader themselves—a practical education in warks, even though it is ridiculous insofar as the reader has no need for such a thing, is so satisfying to me. The idea that if you were somehow dropped into Relance you would know a little bit about warks...just makes me happy. I recognize that even I can't afford to do this with every topic, but, since I'd already written this stuff in years past, and since there was a spot in ATH Chapter 1 where it was perfectly natural to introduce a discussion of warks, I decided to go for it.
