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2024 Reader Question 175

2024 Reader Question 175 published on 18 Comments on 2024 Reader Question 175

There’s also the sticking point that there’s not a ton of communication between Avalons, so Elder Brimble saying Wonderland is the biggest by area has a big caveat of “that I know of” because she most likely doesn’t even know about Dogpatch.

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Considering that Ike’s willing to consider the rumoured cities on the bottom of oceans “avalons”

https://www.skindeepcomic.com/reader-questions/2024-reader-question-12/

I’d say that those stand a very good chance at being the actually largest, be it by area, volume (most sea creatures can move in 3D), or population. Not being required to be a location hidden from its immediate surroundings, only from the occasional surface-bound passer-by, helps a lot there.

Might be mixing up story settings in my memory, but always thought SD’s Wonderland was actually a sub-dimension that hung off from the main plane of existence. So it couldn’t be eligible to be the biggest Avalon in the world, as it technically exists outside it.

I believe that the running theory in-universe is that Wonderland does actually exist somewhere in the general vicinity of Britain, but it’s been layered with so many spells of different kinds over the generations that it’s both an entirely separate ecosystem and completely impossible to detect or access from the outside. So yes and no. Technically it’s not a sub-dimension, but in practice it works in pretty much the same way.

Is there a correlation between the general human* population density of an area correlate with the size of its local Avalon(s)? Or do most big cities (ex. London, NYC, Los Angeles) just have a lot of small Avalons interspersed throughout?

*includes unturned and human-passing nonhuman folk

That would make sense, but there have been references to *The* London Avalon. Alec Hyde’s dad is a liaison from there, and Ike’s parents recently moved from there. (I’m sure it’s nothing like Diagon Alley.)

Maybe there’s a “main” Avalon in the heart of a megalopolis, and smaller ones in some surrounding burghs and suburbs? There may be a semi-official rule about not placing them too close together, for secrecy’s sake?

wait, wonderland bunny is briMBle, and a she? i thought they were briNDle and a he… that’s what the ‘characters’ link says… or are those two different characters and i’m a horrible person…

*”that I know of” feels very very important here. Like, how much communication do mythical communities have with each other?

For all we know the actually-biggest-Avalon could be in the deep into South America, Africa, or Asia, which would have very different cultural traditions than anything that developed in the West. I would put money on it being somewhere in the mountains of China or the Amazon. And if we’re talking “close to human society” I’d bet somewhere in India.

The Liverpool Avalon is still probably very impressive, but it and Wonderland are more, like, “top 10”. VERY large by anybody’s standards, but at the same time… who’s to say when secrecy is and always has been the name of the game?

That’s actually very unlikely. Avalons are a distinctly European necessity and likely a distinctly European phenomenon. It was the human hunting of mythical creatures that forced them into hiding, and forced them to congregate in ways that they probably wouldn’t without extreme duress. Without those circumstances other mythical species probably wouldn’t have a need to form the same kind of hidden, mixed communities we see in Britain and the US.

It’s even less likely in locations where the local residents didn’t have medallions made for their species.

Unfortunately for the mystics the europeans got around a lot, and at least it the era the comic is set in, with digital cameras and tourism and the ever increasing spread of cities and agriculture, “avalons” would more and more become a worldwide necessity for species who can’t hide in plain sight. Habitat loss is a major driving force of extinction, and nonhuman sapients are no exception.

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