Can't settle to one thing

Today I keep picking books up and reading a couple pages and putting them down and trying a slightly different book. I have so many books. This could go on for a while.

I think I want to read something with swords but also by a woman. I'm not coming up with titles right now. Like I'm sure I own something that fits that description. By a woman and about a woman and lacking sexual violence kind of narrows it down a bit. But I'm still not remembering which ones.

There should be a bit where she stays behind alone to cover the escape of someone much more vulnerable, and they go and rally a rescue party and come back and save her from the dungeons. And possibly she should be like a bodyguard type who ends up doing the actual stabbing parts of defeating the bad guys but in true lawful good fashion does not do it for reward but because her Queen needs her.

... I'm pretty sure I haven't read the queer romance version of all that but I'd quit like to now I think of it.

Something something trade talks something something diplomacy something something tapestry was actually pretty cool respect the fibre arts omg do you not realise how central they were to the economy?

Don't think I've read that one. I've read a bunch where there was a weaver who did magic with weaving, that's cool, but also, like, additional and on top of what I mean. Like, it's all very well being feminist by saying women can do traditionally masculine things, but I feel like I want that alongside the version where traditionally feminine things are actually super important. Like, one of each at least. That seems like fun.


I have so many shelves of books yet I'm only thinking of ones that aren't quite the thing. I'll probably end up reading some Gemmell again, there's swords and famous last stands and suchlike in there.

I don't particularly want to read about vampires at the moment and am realising that limits my reading quite a lot. And I'm not in a Doctor Who mood, somehow, so that's... wow that's a lot of things not quite the thing today. And I have listened to the Pathfinder audios and they would be close if they were more fanfic and with feelings? More like the later ones I guess. And... I have so many things that are not the thing.

And the really annoying thing is I'm pretty sure I could pick up a book that exactly and precisely fitted what I'm looking for
and I'd still read ten pages and put it down
because I'm just Like That today.



So.

That's happening.


Um, what else?


I've been trying to design a system of worlds or realms or dimensions, because once you have someone specialise in Gate magic you either have a very fancy teleporter or you need weirder places for them to go. And I like systems, so making up individual realms as I go along doesn't feel thorough. Even though it would mean only making up exactly what I actually use.

So I was thinking of Shadow and Mirror and what kind of places they would be.

Because it irritates me that Shadow is evil in so many setups. I mean, it's all 'twisted' and 'corrupted' a lot of the time, and I am increasingly annoyed with those words because they tend to mean ablism with it's moral model hat on. Like, what do they even mean, twisted? Different? What's wrong with different?

So Shadow and Mirror realms ought to be steps away from ours, but not so judgey. Like, obviously there will be ones that are uncomfortable to visit, but I'm not calling entire realms evil.

I'm not even keen on calling entire realms hell. You know there's afterlives as didn't do that? Sure there was the corner for jerks who needed a lesson, but the underworld was just the underworld. And like, the eternal hellfire bit really bothers me. Like, humans can make up a story about what happens After, and that's what they make? And it's pretty popular. There's all sorts of stories about what happens to Those People after. And it's like, the more we learn about prisons and how to have minimal reoffending, the further away from miserable we make them? People need to learn stuff but torture don't teach them. Say no to cruel and unusual. Hell would be worse than useless. So how about an afterlife designed by someone who knows what they're doing? I'm not saying everyone there would have fun, because Hi You Were Wrong About Everything is not a fun theme, but I don't see where the pitchforks need to come in.

So.

... I keep seeing about Good Omens on tumblr and things keep getting theological.

I like the idea that the only thing wrong with hell is it's crowded and a bit rubbish and everyone there is mean to each other. I mean, that's sufficient, you know? That logically follows from putting all the mean people in the same office.

ANYway.

I was thinking of mirrors. And how every you in a mirror is standing there in the same place, but, if we're playing with magic, we don't know they got there the same way. ... mostly I was thinking about Seanan McGuire sending Velveteen through her hall of mirrors. So like, all the mirror worlds would be elseworlds, where everyone in the mirror exists in the same room with the same view, but they got there through a whole other history.

And Shadow worlds could just be, like, the past? But once you get there it happens different? And there would be worlds that people had visited before so they had changed them and they'd keep going their own way and oh hey turn into a Mirror worlds.

And then there'd be a Light world that's just like, all the futures. All. That's why it's so bright, there's so many possibilities they stack when you try and see them.

So then Shadow is time travel with an option on alternate universes, and Mirror is alternate universes, and Future is time travel with the whole branching model built in.

aaaaand then I wonder why I need this to be magic if we're just doing that?

Like, the metaphor levels and the playing around with possibilities isn't in there at all.

Looking glass worlds of high nonsense or pure whimsy do not come out of this system with the logics.

Huh, Order and Chaos isn't exactly Logic and Nonsense, but the versions of Shadow Mirror Light here are very high Order. So there'd be also the high Chaos versions of it all. Dream and so forth.

Actually Mirror ought to be where the nonsense alternates come in, like the normal world has a big mix of order and chaos, the mirror worlds do too.


But then there's nothing fundamentally different about one normal now. Prime Material is a fancy position within the scheme of things, Here and Now is not.

So you'd be left with the problem of navigating home.

And also the cost of knowing every time you leave you make a gap so there's whole branches where you don't get back. And whole universes with two of you.

... and it's still not fairytale logic or metaphor magic.

I end up with a very science fictional framework with some magic sounding words stuck on it.

Nope, need to start with myths and dreams and afterlives and so forth.



... all of this is because there was an Ethan Rayne fic once where he's got two doors in his afterlife and he gets to choose where he goes but really he goes exactly to that room with the choice in because he refuses to limit himself to one eternity. Trap. So there's a person in my head who gets to choose his afterlife, but there's doors and they keep changing and he never chooses because what if the next one is better and he needs to know more before he can choose.

Also because the difference between alive people and dead people in this story is the dead are just memory, they can't learn. So his first reaction is his forever reaction, because he only has short term memory any more.

Big trap.

So I start thinking what all is through the doors and come up with so many possibilities I could never choose neither.

... funnily enough...

*sigh*



It's all just this twitchy unsettled mood that wants Something Different but not any of the myriad somethings I happen to have.

So.

That's my day.

Hope yours goes okay.