still fucks me up what a bad rap coyotes get in peoples eyes. like ive talked to people who see em as like. gross pests who should be culled. theyre literally just as cool as wolves just a lil smaller and less confident. i love them with all my heart to balance out all the coyote haters out there, coyotes rule theyre doing great
this post was so fucking funny I literally was just like “I like coyotes I think they’re cool” and so many people fucking hated it. Shut up I’m trying. To enjoy animal
If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.
"I hate how American media will just make up a European nation rather than do any research, so I'm going to get back at them by writing a story set in a fake American state" like, do you have the slightest idea how much American media is set in a geographically impossible fictional small town located in no particular state and characterised entirely by some guy from Los Angeles' collection of half-remembered stereotypes about the American Midwest? They've already got the "lazily inventing fictional parts of America" bit locked down.
No, if you want to play the Uno reverse card on American media, what you need to do isn't to make up a fake state: you specifically need to wilfully misrepresent southern California.
There's a whole book or even multiple sagas to be written around the question of "why do adventurers exist in this world at all". I hate the term "murderhobo" with a passion but there is a lot, a lot to talk about what kind of society hires wandering questing warriors to solve problems and where do those "adventurers" come from and what role do they have in society.
Lots of people have talked about this but I would like to point out this essay on ACOUP that starts with seemingly a semi-related matter (why gold coins in fantasy don't make sense in historical societies) and ends with a very revealing insight... gold isn't the reward that "fantasy adventurers" should seek. It should be power and influence, noble titles, a comission in the local army, land.
This week on the blog I want to take a brief detour into discussing historical coinage, particularly in the context of modern fantasy and ro
As usual and expected from a blog titled A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry, it does take a long (but very interesting and worth reading) read to get to that point, but I'll point out the interesting thing in this context:
Here, "Big Man" is a stand in for the nobles and rulers and landowners of agricultural societies. While more urbanized and industrial societies may have a use for coinage, what do these societies based in interpersonal relationships can give you as a reward for a quest, as a reward for solving a problem? Social power; a title, a relationship, a promise of support. And not only that, but this isn't often a reward but a necessity in the first place. To have a horse, to have armor and weapons and the means to wage war (go adventuring) in the first place, you don't go to the medieval store and buy them with 20gp, you often have people supporting you and even , you are a man-at-arms, part of a noble retinue a noble yourself, maybe part of a holy order, or in more early-modern scenario, part of a mercenary group.
However, this doesn't happen often in fantasy because of these reasons reasons:
The idea of the selfless hero who doesn't choose glory or fame but instead continues questing endlessly to do good or defeat an ultimate evil. Making a hero have a patron feels like selling out (but I will address that)
Even with those characters who aren't selfless and would probably take the power and titles, it seems to tie them down to a place or obligation and this makes adventures boring (but I will address that!)
Dungeons & Dragons
People say that every generic fantasy world is inspired by Tolkien but I will argue that he's the grandfather of modern fantasy, the father is Gary Gyax. The ideas baked in D&D have been present in ALL over popular fantasy for decades now, even more prominently than Tolkien (and of course D&D 'borrowed' a lot from Tolkien). Now what this means in this particular case is the idea of wandering "adventurers" solving problems for "gold" in "dungeons", often with the undertone of a frontier or decaying civilization full of monsters and bandits to be killed and tamed into civilization (some other people have written about this better than me)
Nevertheless, even beyond the setting implications, there are deep gameplay implications that have filtered down popular fantasy. Dungeons and Dragons is a survival/combat game. It's a survival game because you have to rely in your abilities and limited equipment (which you buy with gold) to survive in a dungeon, through combat. Of course you can do a lot more than that, but this is the core of the game, what it was designed for: buy equipment, go into a dungeon, survive, get treasure, use it to buy equipment, go into another dungeon. Here "dungeon" can mean many things... combat, travel, puzzles, but the loop is clear.
There is no "gain a patron and get social capital" loop in the game, though it might be simulated, it isn't fun. So there is a lack of interest on exploring this, or really, anything beyond the "quest". And since again, it's D&D, not Tolkien, that shapes most popular fantasy, we see popular fantasy repeating this deeply baked in idea of fantasy once and again and again and again. Sometimes even making them into actual, literal points inside the world: making literal worlds with Adventurer Guilds and Dungeons and Quests and sometimes even Levels and XP as part of society (they're only lacking the dice... and that's because D&D is also the main influence behind videogames).
Is EVERY SINGLE FANTASY WORLD like this? No, not at all. But I want to talk about where does this idea of "gold" and "adventures" comes from, and it's NOT medieval or historical inspiration, and it's NOT even Tolkien. It's D&D.
“About twenty years ago, I attended a lecture by a Harvard professor who talked about how corporations operate like modern-day kingdoms. At one time, she said, people believed kings ruled by divine right, and today we seem to believe the same thing about corporations. Toward the end, she asked, “Do you know what it is that allowed people to let go of, overcome, and reject the notion of the divine right of kings?” I held my breath and got ready to take some notes. Her answer: “They just stopped believing in it.”
