seaglassgarden

smth ive been thinking abt a lot is the balance between telling a slice-of-life story and building a world that is full of Stuff, full enough that many other, perhaps more heroic stories, could be told. to that end ive been thinking hard abt the political situation in vi's world, especially abt the political crises that don't have a huge impact on her life

i had the idea of a growing problem of human children running away and forming their own haphazard societies. many of these children are "vein-touched," meaning that they're sensitive to the veins of magic running through the earth. why are they running away? why are they, specifically, sensitive to the veins? what do the various human governments want to do about it, and are their ideas any good?

these questions are interesting to me (and tbh id love to follow up on them in a companion novel, if i ever get that far), but what im rly playing around with is how to make this issue a part of the world without taking over vi's story. vi doesn't have any family (her backstory involves being separated from her caretakers when she's scouted to become a botanist, her first vocation), and she doesn't personally know any kids. she doesn't have a reason to care deeply about the issue. she hears about it from time to time, but she doesn't act on it other than feeling vaguely bad and unsettled that something like this is happening close-ish to where she lives

im trying to capture the feeling of like, living ur life and focusing on only one or two political issues so that you don't get overwhelmed by the complexity of it all (which is what i do, personally). vi can't save these kids. her priorities were determined the moment she met helix and the moment he died. she doesn't have the space in her heart for anything else

but i still want the reader to get a sense of how bad this problem is. i want there to be hints of it in the narrative, maybe even conversations with people who are taking an active role into investigating what's going on. ive also been thinking of how the nature spirits' various governments react to the issue. humans aren't the default group on the planet—that's the plant spirits—and the plant spirits' councils are incredibly haughty about how horribly the humans are handling the situation, according to them. but are they helping? not really. the most they do is offer shelter to groups of human kid runaways, but they otherwise leave them to fend for themselves. which, in turn, offends the human representatives!!

many thoughts. head full. this world is feeling more alive the more i shake it like a snow globe and see how all the pieces fall