#Like they'll change the most arbitrary shit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nautilusopus · 3 months

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worldbuilding for my one fucked-up dude in a hyperspecific context

so like the distinction between the fair folk and humans you usually see is that in the human world shit like physics and biology are absolutes. i can't drink transmission fluid and have it taste like baja blast no matter how much i want to taste the forbidden soup, and then afterwards i'll vomit up my organs and die even if i disagree that that should happen. however, things that are more abstract or part of a social code tend to be fairly arbitrary -- i can lie and say transmission fluid DOES taste like baja blast despite that not being the case even remotely, and maybe someone will even believe me, and all this time the properties of transmission fluid have not and will never change.

in contrast, the physical nature of the fairy world is usually heavily vibes based and runs off dream logic 90% of the time, with things like time and the physical properties of objects being highly subjective; but most social rules are as ironclad as something like gravity is. if you say you'll do something, you'll have to do it even if it's just by technicality. you can't NOT do it. if a social debt is incurred, it has to be repaid, the same way if i drop an object it has to fall. things like names and memories and years have concrete value and can be traded. so on and so forth.

which makes me wonder where gender falls on that spectrum. on the one hand, with a world full of creatures that are famously horny and not too picky (for better and for worse), and can look like literally anything they want, you'd think they wouldn't give a rat's ass about it, if they could comprehend what it was at all.

on the other hand, gender is another one of those social constructs that holds a lot of weight despite it being arbitrary and relative, like love or honour or the nature of an agreement, and so maybe it'd be the other way around and they wouldn't even really comprehend the idea of gender being fluid or arbitrary or an extricable part of your identity.

but also if they don't really follow the same rules biologically and wouldn't have the same social impetus to create those constructs, what is gender even built on top of for the fair folk if they do have an understanding of it? but also if the social framework exists in some capacity then they'll have to engage with it whether they like it or not and so how would they engage with that if it's a very real concrete thing for them but just kind of some shit we made up as a social framework for us that doesn't even maintain the same standards from location to location?

buhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

#i don't think pinion needs a gender crisis on top of everything else and i already wrote tni i don't need to write it again lol #but i DO wonder about it #you make up rules for a thing and then you have to think about them it's awful #i still need to make a tag for this loser #would be vaguely interesting if the folk were the ones shitty about gender for once ionno #but then also there are Catholics #tag for The Boy

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