%% parent:: [[2022-01-05 The Magic of Marsh Protection (FF)]] market:: [[The Iceberg]] %% This story and its forthcoming spinoffs were directly inspired by a bunch of articles I stumbled across (thanks to a discovery engine called [Refind](https://refind.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=barter&utm_campaign=Mn6vY1aQFu5DtmSrH9P7sg), actually). My favorites were about how [indigenous people are best placed to protect the environment](https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-returning-lands-to-native-tribes-is-helping-protect-nature) and therefore [stave off climate change disasters through conservation efforts](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/25/indigenous-peoples-by-far-the-best-guardians-of-forests-un-report). Although climate change is not a threat facing the inhabitants of Verraine (the setting for all my "high fantasy" stories) at this particular time in history, conservation is still important. The mass destruction of biomes has all sorts of implications for destroying people's way of life. The indigenous people of the eastern marshlands aren't fools; the marshes protect them from neighboring states, which would love to drain the wetlands and fill them with taxpaying citizens. The locals would prefer to preserve their own culture, and have a sense that their way of life is healthier for the land in the long run — which matters to them a great deal. As part of my day job as a Social Studies teacher, I teach a unit on the Amazon Rainforest and its importance, but also the hard ethical questions involved in preserving it. Economic challenges are always at the forefront of those discussions, but in many ways that's because money is at the heart of modern power, especially at the nation-state level. My question was: what would conservation look like in a world where _magic_ is power? What threats could conservation efforts reasonably face, that might actually be interesting to write about in a fantasy world? I settled on invasive species. When I first wrote those stories, I hadn't put much thought into Surzi's biology or role in the ecosystem. The imagery just kind of came to me. Since then, I've been trying to fit that piece into the wider puzzle for months. Everything in the universe of Verraine has to fit together somehow. I asked myself: how could an immortal creature immune to magic could possibly have come to exist? Almost by fluke, a subscriber actually gave me the last piece of the puzzle I needed: axolotls. They came up in reference to a totally different storyline I was working on, involving a swamp city located on an artificial island. A young man winds up fighting marsh monsters while performing his labor tax for the local government, and I wanted the marsh monsters to be interesting. Axolotls are native to Mexico, and the Aztecs did their farming on artificial islands called chinampas. Axolotls, which I mentioned in the [Bones](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/bones/) %% ( [[2021-11-22 Bones]] ) %% edition, are native to that region of the world — and have a lot of cool quirks, especially in terms of regeneration and neoteny. But the more I read, the more I realized what a perfect opportunity I had to connect up a bunch of other, half-formed ideas I had floating around. For those, I was mostly riffing off of some scary childhood experiences with big snapping turtles. I'd also read about how [saltwater crocodiles are so aggressive they sometimes charge boats](https://godownsize.com/do-animals-attack-boats). The big ones will even attack humans. I was also brainstorming sea monsters for some stories I wanted to take place at sea. It turns out that orcas are one of the only animals that actually attack a ship on purpose (more on this Monday!). Most of the other "sea monster" myths come from malformed creatures. Animals with birth defects often star in folkloric stories, for example those I mentioned in the [Cat Tales](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/cat-tales/) %% ( [[2021-05-17 Cat Tales]] ) %% edition of this newsletter. So I sort of put all that together and came up with the idea for a [[snapper]]. I look forward to sharing more stories about them with you.