What else than hero stories?

Anna Tsing describes interspecies coexistence in her book "The Mushroom at the End of the World." While there is often much discussion about competition between species, she highlights how interspecies collaboration can emerge in ecosystems, often influenced by disturbances, around which new types of ecosystems and livelihoods develop. Examples of such co-operation are various symbiotic combinations of fungi and other organisms.

When it comes to the margins of familiar structures or emergent forms of agency, traditional ways of perceiving may not help in noticing what is happening. According to Tsing, new arts of attending and a polyphonic understanding of time are needed. They facilitate seeing how "countless futures bubble up into the realm of the possible."

Stories are entangled with things, objects, histories, and a variety of more-than-human bodies. For Indigenous peoples and ancient Finns, stories have been vital for survival. Stories are woven into everything: they are generated from the world and they create worlds.

Ursula Le Guin has spoken about how the heroic tales of hunters overshadow other kinds of stories. She highlights stories that are scattered and not grand, and yet can store energy, those of gatherers. She describes the telling of such small, non-linear stories with the term "carrier bag stories." According to Tsing, it is necessary to tell true stories in new ways—stories that are both real and magical. Like mushrooms in a forest, stories gather into open formations and point to somewhere where there is always more.