ABOUT THE BLOG

What's this whole thing about?

Terra Somnium means, in some rough butchery of Latin, "dream world."

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I've been drawn to dream worlds my whole life: fantastic worlds in speculative fiction, the cooperative narrative worlds of tabletop roleplaying games, and the utopic visions of better possibilities for the world we live in now.

Dream worlds are any imagined realities different than the one we live in day to day. They're often derided or championed as escapism; places we go when the real world is too much to handle. Dive too deep into them, and lose touch with what really matters.

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There's some truth to this, of course, but I find the barriers between dreams and waking, stories and lived experiences, to be flimsy. A dream is a story, and stories shape our world just as surely as a river shapes a valley. Dream worlds are reflections of the real world, but they are often predictions, blueprints, or warnings of what's to come.

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There is no dream world wholly separate from the real one, and no conception of the real world that doesn't have its own hidden gates to some place other.

This is a place to put my thoughts on all of these dream worlds. Expect writings about fantasy and sci-fi stories (books, film, TV, video games, etc.), thoughts on tabletop roleplaying games and design, and essays both political and personal. And probably some year-end lists, because nothing calms me down more than a good list.