Entry tags:
WorldbuildingEx 2019: Author's commentary edition
So, ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
worldbuildingex is a fanfic (and original fic) exchanged focused on worldbuilding - people can make nominations and requests that include characters, but the prompts are generally about the world behind that. (And "Any or no Characters" is a thing, as are things like in-universe meta, etc.)
My past works for this exchange include an email discussion list about the Leverage folks Pseudonyms are Expected, and a collection of notes and documents found behind a desk in the Rivers of London universe, Ephemera, Librarian. (And I've gotten some great gifts and have lots of recs you can find from this tag.)
Someone nominated the concept of "Goose that chases you toward your soulmate" for this year's round, and both I and my recipient apparently saw that in the nominations list and went "Oh, huh, fascinating."
Local Customs is the result. Imogen, hapless geology professor from Great Britain, goes to the Isle of Birds (imagine it roughly near Gotland, a series of linked islands with a lot of birds, a strong Scandinavian influence, and a lot of geese references.) Imogen is on sabbatical, she's busy, and mostly she cares about rocks. Geese are not rocks.
Read on if you're curious about how the story got like it did, and some of my thoughts on worldbuilding details that didn't make it into her POV. (It got several comments with questions and responses to bits of the worldbuilding, so this is also my post for explaining this in hopefully coherent order for the people who like that sort of thing.)
When I started poking at 'what shape is this story?', I fairly quickly realised I wanted to do it from the point of view of someone who was not from that culture, and who for various reasons did not pick up on a whole bunch of cues.
(I think Imogen is definitely neurodiverse, but it's not part of her internal self-image particularly, so it doesn't come up in point of view directly. She is just herself, and she does rocks. Very well, thank you.)
Obviously there were going to be geese, and obviously there were going to be some sort of soulmates, but I wanted to riff on the idea that that doesn't necessarily mean 'madly in love romantically', but more the idea of 'person who matches you in a variety of ways, and improves your life.'
At that point, I started writing.
I kicked around some ideas for how this works - and decided I wanted to go for something contemporary but not well known (so not an entry into fairyland, not an entirely new fantasy world, but one of those 'you go to a new place, and some stuff just isn't well explained'.
Like some of the people who've commented, I find the soulmate without recourse thing a fascinating trope - and especially if one looks at the slightly darker side of "Do you get a say in this?"
Probably the easiest way to do this is commentary as I go through the story. (If you haven't already read it, that might be handy before you continue here.)
One of the things I wanted to play with (because it ties into some of my other writing projects) is thinking heavily about POV, and what the POV character does and doesn't care about.
Imogen is pretty heavily focused on her particular things (geology, her academic projects) and while she likes some kinds of cultural exploration, there are others she just doesn't care about and shrugs off. So there are details that, with a different protagonist, would have come out differently, and she just blew right past.
The woman was small and dark, tight curls close against her head, a contrast to most of the people around them who were taller and tended to be various shades of blond.
I wanted an early note that clearly some people not from the island settle there. (One of Melissa's parents is from elsewhere and not of the same ethic background as the majority of the country.)
Melissa wore what Imogen understood was a common outfit for younger people of knee-high boots, thick trousers or skirt, and a tunic of thicker fabric that came down nearly to the top of the boots.
Geese can get downright nasty. If a goose might come after you at any point, you want to be prepared, so the common outfit for ungoosed folk is tallish leather boots, thick wool trousers (or sometimes jeans, but jeans are less practical for a climate that gets damp and cold), and things to protect your various sensitive bits.
There had been a piece of paper in amongst the others. She remembered the goose on the letterhead. But the customs interviewer had said it was just a formality. Especially since it was only a semester, she'd be gone by the late spring. The guard had said something about there usually being a video for anyone here more than four months, and Imogen's trip was right on that line.
Imogen is arriving at the beginning of the semester (late January) and will be leaving by the end of May, so roughly four months and a week or two.
Why does four months matter? It takes a month for your average goose egg to hatch, and three months for them to reach sufficient adulthood to be self-propelling toward their person. (Thank you, several sites I used for research on goose biology!) Most people who are from outside the islands who visit for four months will not have a goose show up - it's a much smaller fraction who need to worry (at least unless they decide to stay long term, when the odds start to go up.) Maybe 1-3% of visits under 6 months get goosed. Sort of like how you get cholera or malaria preventatives if you're travelling certain places, but it may never actually be an issue.
My thought - though this doesn't come through in the story text - is that if you show up on the island, and there is a possible mate for you, an egg is laid that might have your goose in it. If you are still there when the egg hatches, the resulting goose becomes more and more attuned to you (handwavey magic and/or mysticism here.) and by the time it can self-propel to find you, it is firmly attached to your future.
If you are still there when the goose is self-propelled, the goose comes and finds you. If you leave before that point, your goose partner (the human one) may never find their partner, but nothing further horrid happens (they have already not had a partner.) It's only if you try to leave once the goose has made a beeline for you that the particularly unpleasant consequences start for them.
It's worth noting here that I don't think there's only one possible goose partner pairing. The pairings can be entirely platonic, so it could be someone in a very different generation, it could be that as people age they have different possibilities than when they were younger. It could be that you are a good match for someone who comes to visit the island much later in your life, etc.
Short version: Imogen was not terribly worried about the geese because the paperwork presents it as a "We are informing you just in case, but the actual likelihood of this affecting your life is relatively small."
The video, on the other hand, goes on for a bit about the centrality of the geese implications to social and cultural life. And that's the part that she missed, and no one was quite sure how to explain, because it's like fish in the water or birds in the air to the people who live there, of course there are geese and this is how they work. Which is why everyone she asked about it went "I don't even have words, um." with a side of "And this is a bit crass, to say these things, and you are an honored guest and authority figure so how do I say that?"
Finally, Matilde said "It's the house of the Engingaes."
One of the later additions to the story, this was a result of me talking to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kiya about some of the implications of this trope. And of course one of the first questions is "What happens if you don't have a goose partner?"
One possible option is that you have a restricted life. You want to be somewhere a goose can find you. The geese do not have vocabulary, so it's not like people can ask them what the requirements are. They know that sometimes the geese fail and that causes problems. They know that in an increasingly modern world (with cars and planes and speed boats and glacial melting, and...) the longer the goose has to look for you the greater the risk something will happen to it. So if you live within a narrowish radius of where you work, in a place that has space for geese to roost, and watch for you, that's better.
(And since people who are ungoosed can't own property the same way, it provides a convenient solution for where they live. Basically, there's one or two of these buildings in each neighborhood, and you live in one that's near your work.)
They were if anything a bit more advanced than much of the United States. They'd come later to technology than some places, so they had leapfrogged the early clunky tech and moved much more easily into national wireless access in many places,
This is pretty much taken from a conversation with a Latvian friend about her visit there a few years ago, and how the technology basically jumped from early Cold War to modern infrastructure very rapidly without the intervening steps.
"You're not used to guard geese, Professor?"
There are places that keep guard geese! You can't train them exactly, but they do make lots of noise if you disturb them, and sometimes that's what you need. (Geese have nasty bites!)
"You are... is this your goose?" He said the words carefully, like it was a sentence practiced out of context from Duolingo, like "My dragon is red" and "The insect likes potatoes."
I just mostly adore the Duolingo line.
I do also love Karl's "I am totally out of my depth, but there is a hotline for these situations, I will call it now." approach to life. (While at the same time, he must be so relieved there's a goose partner for him, and so baffled by her confusion.) And he is so very attuned to what to do if his goose finds him, because the ungoosed housing has periodic mandatory meetings about things you should do in case of goose.
(I have a vague idea that they also do the "Here, improve your life in case that will encourage a goose to find you." so there tend to be periodic health and fitness kicks and improving lectures, and encouragements to see a therapist if you have lurking things in your past that you need to resolve. In that well-meaning but sinister way that sometimes happens.)
Esther shook her head. "Here, if you are meant to be matched to someone, a goose hatches. It - encourages you toward your partner. It is permitted to have other lovers, other friends, other companions. But that is the person with whom you build your nest. The place you return to." She waved a hand. "It sounds absurd, I know. But the geese pick well." And at that, she looked over at Hildegard, and it was clear that was partnership and love, both.
So, there's a question of 'what are the geese picking for', and the short answer that is in the back of my head is 'a stable nest'. That this is someone who will support you in the bad times, celebrate the good times, bring skills to the partnership that you don't have.
Imogen is a mediocre cook, but really good at organizing things and wrangling other people's requirements and Karl is a good cook who is not great at some organization and planning skills, Imogen can get entirely too stuck in her head or her work, Karl has a really strong work ethic about making practical things beautiful and useful, but he will knock off and go do something else when the work day is over. They both love being outdoors. And so on.
This is not further developed in the story because I looked at it and went "Getting to a point of showing that will take another 3-5 sections, and this is already nearly 5K, and more to the point we are rapidly approaching the deadline." And I wanted to end it somewhere that felt like a reasonable end point with some open questions, rather than botch the ending.
I also wanted to leave it open about how their relationship goes - in my head, Esther's description is pretty accurate. Some people end up romantically and sexually involved (maybe a third to a half of couples) and for the rest, it's a platonic relationship where they become close (best friends, or very close friends, seeing each other and talking regularly) The geese tend to get antsy if you have unresolved issues that mess that up.
But a lot of the houses are duplexes (so each person has their own space). A lot of social circles are based around where you live, so you get chains of goose partners and romantic relationships where person A is goose partnered with person B, and person B is romantically involved with person C, and person D is their goose partner and realises they want to be romantically partnered with person A (and person A is also for that). Which can get messy, but often works out well.
(The geese do not dictate romantic or sexual relationships, but they do have strong opinions about some people, and you are unlikely to date someone your goose hates. For purely logistical reasons like "Getting a date past the angry goose in the front garden is highly challenging and not very fun", besides the cultural stigma against it.)
Anyway, glad to discuss further, if people have other things.
worldbuildingex is a fanfic (and original fic) exchanged focused on worldbuilding - people can make nominations and requests that include characters, but the prompts are generally about the world behind that. (And "Any or no Characters" is a thing, as are things like in-universe meta, etc.) My past works for this exchange include an email discussion list about the Leverage folks Pseudonyms are Expected, and a collection of notes and documents found behind a desk in the Rivers of London universe, Ephemera, Librarian. (And I've gotten some great gifts and have lots of recs you can find from this tag.)
Someone nominated the concept of "Goose that chases you toward your soulmate" for this year's round, and both I and my recipient apparently saw that in the nominations list and went "Oh, huh, fascinating."
Local Customs is the result. Imogen, hapless geology professor from Great Britain, goes to the Isle of Birds (imagine it roughly near Gotland, a series of linked islands with a lot of birds, a strong Scandinavian influence, and a lot of geese references.) Imogen is on sabbatical, she's busy, and mostly she cares about rocks. Geese are not rocks.
Read on if you're curious about how the story got like it did, and some of my thoughts on worldbuilding details that didn't make it into her POV. (It got several comments with questions and responses to bits of the worldbuilding, so this is also my post for explaining this in hopefully coherent order for the people who like that sort of thing.)
Where I started from
When I started poking at 'what shape is this story?', I fairly quickly realised I wanted to do it from the point of view of someone who was not from that culture, and who for various reasons did not pick up on a whole bunch of cues.
(I think Imogen is definitely neurodiverse, but it's not part of her internal self-image particularly, so it doesn't come up in point of view directly. She is just herself, and she does rocks. Very well, thank you.)
Obviously there were going to be geese, and obviously there were going to be some sort of soulmates, but I wanted to riff on the idea that that doesn't necessarily mean 'madly in love romantically', but more the idea of 'person who matches you in a variety of ways, and improves your life.'
At that point, I started writing.
Where and when
I kicked around some ideas for how this works - and decided I wanted to go for something contemporary but not well known (so not an entry into fairyland, not an entirely new fantasy world, but one of those 'you go to a new place, and some stuff just isn't well explained'.
Like some of the people who've commented, I find the soulmate without recourse thing a fascinating trope - and especially if one looks at the slightly darker side of "Do you get a say in this?"
Commentary
Probably the easiest way to do this is commentary as I go through the story. (If you haven't already read it, that might be handy before you continue here.)
One of the things I wanted to play with (because it ties into some of my other writing projects) is thinking heavily about POV, and what the POV character does and doesn't care about.
Imogen is pretty heavily focused on her particular things (geology, her academic projects) and while she likes some kinds of cultural exploration, there are others she just doesn't care about and shrugs off. So there are details that, with a different protagonist, would have come out differently, and she just blew right past.
The woman was small and dark, tight curls close against her head, a contrast to most of the people around them who were taller and tended to be various shades of blond.
I wanted an early note that clearly some people not from the island settle there. (One of Melissa's parents is from elsewhere and not of the same ethic background as the majority of the country.)
Melissa wore what Imogen understood was a common outfit for younger people of knee-high boots, thick trousers or skirt, and a tunic of thicker fabric that came down nearly to the top of the boots.
Geese can get downright nasty. If a goose might come after you at any point, you want to be prepared, so the common outfit for ungoosed folk is tallish leather boots, thick wool trousers (or sometimes jeans, but jeans are less practical for a climate that gets damp and cold), and things to protect your various sensitive bits.
There had been a piece of paper in amongst the others. She remembered the goose on the letterhead. But the customs interviewer had said it was just a formality. Especially since it was only a semester, she'd be gone by the late spring. The guard had said something about there usually being a video for anyone here more than four months, and Imogen's trip was right on that line.
Imogen is arriving at the beginning of the semester (late January) and will be leaving by the end of May, so roughly four months and a week or two.
Why does four months matter? It takes a month for your average goose egg to hatch, and three months for them to reach sufficient adulthood to be self-propelling toward their person. (Thank you, several sites I used for research on goose biology!) Most people who are from outside the islands who visit for four months will not have a goose show up - it's a much smaller fraction who need to worry (at least unless they decide to stay long term, when the odds start to go up.) Maybe 1-3% of visits under 6 months get goosed. Sort of like how you get cholera or malaria preventatives if you're travelling certain places, but it may never actually be an issue.
My thought - though this doesn't come through in the story text - is that if you show up on the island, and there is a possible mate for you, an egg is laid that might have your goose in it. If you are still there when the egg hatches, the resulting goose becomes more and more attuned to you (handwavey magic and/or mysticism here.) and by the time it can self-propel to find you, it is firmly attached to your future.
If you are still there when the goose is self-propelled, the goose comes and finds you. If you leave before that point, your goose partner (the human one) may never find their partner, but nothing further horrid happens (they have already not had a partner.) It's only if you try to leave once the goose has made a beeline for you that the particularly unpleasant consequences start for them.
It's worth noting here that I don't think there's only one possible goose partner pairing. The pairings can be entirely platonic, so it could be someone in a very different generation, it could be that as people age they have different possibilities than when they were younger. It could be that you are a good match for someone who comes to visit the island much later in your life, etc.
Short version: Imogen was not terribly worried about the geese because the paperwork presents it as a "We are informing you just in case, but the actual likelihood of this affecting your life is relatively small."
The video, on the other hand, goes on for a bit about the centrality of the geese implications to social and cultural life. And that's the part that she missed, and no one was quite sure how to explain, because it's like fish in the water or birds in the air to the people who live there, of course there are geese and this is how they work. Which is why everyone she asked about it went "I don't even have words, um." with a side of "And this is a bit crass, to say these things, and you are an honored guest and authority figure so how do I say that?"
Finally, Matilde said "It's the house of the Engingaes."
One of the later additions to the story, this was a result of me talking to
kiya about some of the implications of this trope. And of course one of the first questions is "What happens if you don't have a goose partner?" One possible option is that you have a restricted life. You want to be somewhere a goose can find you. The geese do not have vocabulary, so it's not like people can ask them what the requirements are. They know that sometimes the geese fail and that causes problems. They know that in an increasingly modern world (with cars and planes and speed boats and glacial melting, and...) the longer the goose has to look for you the greater the risk something will happen to it. So if you live within a narrowish radius of where you work, in a place that has space for geese to roost, and watch for you, that's better.
(And since people who are ungoosed can't own property the same way, it provides a convenient solution for where they live. Basically, there's one or two of these buildings in each neighborhood, and you live in one that's near your work.)
They were if anything a bit more advanced than much of the United States. They'd come later to technology than some places, so they had leapfrogged the early clunky tech and moved much more easily into national wireless access in many places,
This is pretty much taken from a conversation with a Latvian friend about her visit there a few years ago, and how the technology basically jumped from early Cold War to modern infrastructure very rapidly without the intervening steps.
"You're not used to guard geese, Professor?"
There are places that keep guard geese! You can't train them exactly, but they do make lots of noise if you disturb them, and sometimes that's what you need. (Geese have nasty bites!)
"You are... is this your goose?" He said the words carefully, like it was a sentence practiced out of context from Duolingo, like "My dragon is red" and "The insect likes potatoes."
I just mostly adore the Duolingo line.
I do also love Karl's "I am totally out of my depth, but there is a hotline for these situations, I will call it now." approach to life. (While at the same time, he must be so relieved there's a goose partner for him, and so baffled by her confusion.) And he is so very attuned to what to do if his goose finds him, because the ungoosed housing has periodic mandatory meetings about things you should do in case of goose.
(I have a vague idea that they also do the "Here, improve your life in case that will encourage a goose to find you." so there tend to be periodic health and fitness kicks and improving lectures, and encouragements to see a therapist if you have lurking things in your past that you need to resolve. In that well-meaning but sinister way that sometimes happens.)
Esther shook her head. "Here, if you are meant to be matched to someone, a goose hatches. It - encourages you toward your partner. It is permitted to have other lovers, other friends, other companions. But that is the person with whom you build your nest. The place you return to." She waved a hand. "It sounds absurd, I know. But the geese pick well." And at that, she looked over at Hildegard, and it was clear that was partnership and love, both.
So, there's a question of 'what are the geese picking for', and the short answer that is in the back of my head is 'a stable nest'. That this is someone who will support you in the bad times, celebrate the good times, bring skills to the partnership that you don't have.
Imogen is a mediocre cook, but really good at organizing things and wrangling other people's requirements and Karl is a good cook who is not great at some organization and planning skills, Imogen can get entirely too stuck in her head or her work, Karl has a really strong work ethic about making practical things beautiful and useful, but he will knock off and go do something else when the work day is over. They both love being outdoors. And so on.
This is not further developed in the story because I looked at it and went "Getting to a point of showing that will take another 3-5 sections, and this is already nearly 5K, and more to the point we are rapidly approaching the deadline." And I wanted to end it somewhere that felt like a reasonable end point with some open questions, rather than botch the ending.
I also wanted to leave it open about how their relationship goes - in my head, Esther's description is pretty accurate. Some people end up romantically and sexually involved (maybe a third to a half of couples) and for the rest, it's a platonic relationship where they become close (best friends, or very close friends, seeing each other and talking regularly) The geese tend to get antsy if you have unresolved issues that mess that up.
But a lot of the houses are duplexes (so each person has their own space). A lot of social circles are based around where you live, so you get chains of goose partners and romantic relationships where person A is goose partnered with person B, and person B is romantically involved with person C, and person D is their goose partner and realises they want to be romantically partnered with person A (and person A is also for that). Which can get messy, but often works out well.
(The geese do not dictate romantic or sexual relationships, but they do have strong opinions about some people, and you are unlikely to date someone your goose hates. For purely logistical reasons like "Getting a date past the angry goose in the front garden is highly challenging and not very fun", besides the cultural stigma against it.)
Anyway, glad to discuss further, if people have other things.