Worldbuilding Month Day 7: Strands and more Strands

March is Worldbuilding Month! Leave me a question about any of my worlds, and I will do my best to answer it!
šŸŒ
This seventh one is from [personal profile] inventrix:
Does everyone who does magic work with Strands? Corollary: if there are people who think they donā€™t, is it just like how Autumn uses ink – itā€™s their approach, not the fact that itā€™s different magic?

Also, what ARE Strands, anyway.

Okay!

So, in Stranded World, everyone who works magic is working with the Strands. Like Autumn and sometimes Summer, they donā€™t always directly manipulate the strands, and some of them donā€™t realize what theyā€™re doing at all, but all magic involves manipulating or reading (or cutting, although I guess thatā€™s a manipulation) the Strands.

So, yes, a psychic might be using tea leaves or a palm-reading, but what they are actually seeing is the way the Strands seem likely to move in the near future.

And the Strands areā€¦ the world.

Autumn sees primarily the Strands that are connections between people, because thatā€™s her strong suit. She visualizes them as lines, and there are indeed Strands connecting people – love, hate, co-workers, family – everything that makes people touch and make a connection, even eyes meeting across a subway, causes some sort of strand.

They are the actions of people, too, past, current, and potential, streams of movement running through the world; they are the connections people make with things and things make with things.

Some philosophers haves suggested the whole world is just composed of Strands upon Strands. They may be right.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1278011.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *