SuperMaus

dinner dress, 1887 by White Howard & Co.

this dress is made of black silk

Theme: Education/Schools

What are the basic skills required of the society? Who takes the role to teach children these skills? How much of it is in education?

Where are people taught? Are schools built as buildings? Are schools always in the same place? What do the average schools look like/do they look the same for every location?

What type of individuals are teachers? What are teachers called? (mentors, sanseis, teachers, etc.) What are they like?

What are the classes and topics taught? Why are they taught? (Think about what the people of that society need to know to live in that society, and whether those are taught by their parents or schools)

How do students feel about school? What keeps them in school? How do they get to school?

Are there any major problems or controversies with schools? How is everyone reacting to those? (Propaganda, depressing atmosphere, not helpful, dangerous)

Are they effective? Are there various levels of school? Is it required?

Does everyone have the same access to education? Is school unfair to certain demographics?

How do non-students view school? How are schools funded and built? What regulates them?

What happens to those who don’t attend school? Are there alternative options to school? If so are these effective?

Ladies of honour visiting Emperor Wilhelm II in Krefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Bird vessel, German, Nuremberg, ca. 1580. Rock crystal, with gilded silver and rubies.

Pharmacy of the hospital in Mâcon, Burgundy region of France

From the Gothic novella "The Vampyre" by John William Polidori.

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

I think it particularly comes up the moment an author includes any sort of marginalisation/oppression for their fictional/fantasy world. I've lost count of the times now where I've seen people read a book on, say, the terrible oppression of the Gwyllion, and immediately gone "Oh, so the Gwyllion are a metaphor for the real world X people, either deliberately or accidentally through the author's inherent racism. This is therefore super problematic because the Gwyllion are also described as Y, which means the author is also saying that about X people."

There will always be real world parallels when discussing oppression. Always. But that's because oppression is oppression - precise details may vary, but it follows the same pathways the world over, and that will naturally be copied into fiction as well. This does not mean the author is intentionally telling the exact allegory that you've projected onto it. If that's how you read everything, then yeah, everything becomes super problematic, but also, why are you reading any fiction that isn't solely about real world historical events? It's clearly not for you

And, you know, obviously there are works that are racist/misogynistic/etc, including deliberately so. But I really don't like the way people have started going "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY here, I'm ever so smart" and acting like they're the cleverest little critic that ever lived. You have to meet a work on its own terms. Lovecraft was a big ole racist, sure. Someone who has written a book about the oppression of magic users in their fantasy world, however, is rarely writing a story about how queerness lurks in family lines and must be controlled; they are way more commonly writing a story about a world with magic that they then wanted to take seriously, and while there might well be elements of queerness there, those magic users are not a 1:1 replacement.

Sometimes these lines are blurry! But we're going way too far to one end of that spectrum

The post that got me thinking about this yesterday was someone talking about how they'd love to write a vampire story exploring vampirism as a disability (dependence on a substance to manage the condition, blindness/weakness in daytime, can't enter buildings without accommodation, etc). But, they said, they can't, because they don't want to be making the point that disabled people are parasites, and vampires are generally considered parasitic.

And like. What an incredible shame. That we'll lose that, because they're already afraid of the "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY" crowd. That would be a great story for exploring disability themes, OR just a great new take on vampires, and either of those things would be so good to read. But there would be so many people who would jump in with "So you think disabled people are draining the life force of the ableds around them?", never stopping to actually think "Vampires are not a 1:1 stand in for real world disability because they are fictional and do not exist."

Trees in pink morning mist (originally: Fák rózsaszín hajnali ködben) 2026 Watercolour, ink, and mica on paper

This was inspired by the appearance of condensation running down the glass door of a sauna room. I immediately thought it looked like trees, and I also immediately knew I had to paint it, and finally I got around to it.

They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?

Portuguese Compass Box, late 18th- early 19th century