#I'm new to worldbuilding or is it worlds merging?

[kidokear]

I promise I'm still cooking this AU/crossover thing.

[booksandchainmail]

Hugo Best Novel Finalists 2024

I've read all 6, so here's my impressions and loose ranking. The numerical ranking is only approximate for now, I'm going to pin it down once we get closer to voting closing. I could see the top two books switching places, or any rotation within books three, four, and five.

The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera This was one of my top books of last year and one of my own nominations. It's a very strange book, twisty and creative, and left me with a lot of thoughts, particularly about how it handles government. I appreciated the mishmash of worldbuilding, all sorts of things that felt incongruous next to each other but somehow fit together. It also felt more literary than most sff novels? I am not normally deeply noticing of language, but I kept coming back to individual turns of phrase here. All books should have a 50-page chapter in the middle where the protagonist wanders through a neverending surrealist prison land.

Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh Another of my nominations, this is a more straightforward exploration of, essentially, the deradicalization of someone raised in an authoritarian military camp. I respect how this book lets Kyr be awful, be completely convinced she is correct, and be defensive and lash out when confronted with her home's issues. I think the ending stumbles a bit, but really I mostly wanted this book to be much, much longer and have Kyr's character arc spread out more. Also, the choice of title and epigraph is excellent.

Translation State, by Ann Leckie Not much to say here, it's a new book in the Imperial Radch universe, I read it when I came out so don't remember detail. I liked the different intersecting plotlines, and particularly the Presger merge-and-devour adolescent instinct

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty This one I hadn't read before but enjoyed. I don't know how deep I'd say it is, but it's fun, a good classic adventure story with a putting-the-crew-back-together plot common to heist narratives. It benefits a lot from its setting: my main takeaway was that the Indian Ocean in medieval times is a criminally underused setting for any kind of nautical/swashbuckling/adventure story.

Witch King, by Martha Wells I read this one when it came out, and remember liking it a lot. The two intertwined narratives, set centuries apart, worked well for me to let the backstory unfold to inform the main plot as it progressed. I think I preferred the backstory narrative? But that might be due to also having the present narrative, since my favorite part was seeing how the echoes of relationships are still going on centuries after we get to see them form

Starter Villain, by John Scalzi I did not like this. I had some criticism last year for Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society, on the grounds that it was fun but not substantive enough for an award. But at least with that one I enjoyed reading it! My main thought while reading Starter Villain was "Well, at least it's short." I think my main problem with this is tonal: it doesn't commit enough to the over-the-top goofiness of "guy inherits his uncle's supervillain empire" and keeps trying to ground it in what an actual secretive genius billionaire pulling strings behind the scenes for his own nefarious purposes might look like, but then any attempts to actually be serious with the grounded stakes and world established kept running into the fact that it also featured sentient cats and talking dolphins! Also, I couldn't stop noticing that the protagonist talks the same way as the major supporting characters, which is the same way the protagonist talked in KPS last year

[theresattrpgforthat]

Heya, I'm going to do a one shot session for my birthday and I'm looking for recommendations! If you're up for giving me some pointers, I'd be super happy. I'll be playing with people who have no experience role-playing, and I myself have little experience and I've never DM'ed. It needs to be easy to understand and the rules need to be easily readable for the players. It can be GM less (doesn't have to be) because I'm also really excited about playing :) It should be creative and not to combat heavy. Aesthetic wise I'm flexible, I like magic and fantasy but I'm not at all set on that, just one thing: I made a mysterious notebook (dark academia style) that I want to use during the session, it documents "secrets" like maps and drawings of plants and old photographs, nothing's legible in there, I just want people to make up the secrets that have been discovered within this book. So the notebook needs to somehow fit into the game, but the setting in general does not need to be dark academia style.

Wow that's a really long ask,I hope you're not seeing it as me feeling entitled to a super specific recommendation. Just if you want to give me and my inexperienced friends a hint for my birthday afternoon, anything at all, I'd be super happy

Theme: New Group Friendly, Fantastical Mystery

Alright, so for this answer, these are the following concepts I tried to consider:

Guidance for the GM

Friendly to new players, easy to teach

Creative with a de-emphasis off combat

magic, fantasy, mystery, a little bit of darkness

something that encourages the group to flip through some kind of oracle

GM-less is welcome but not necessary

All of these games have GM-less as an option, but I recommend that if you're the one picking the game, that you read through at and be ready to facilitate, as you'll know a bit more about what's going on.

A Land Once Magic, by Viditya Voleti.

A Land Once Magic is a Post-Fantasy worldbuilding game to help create unique worlds based around deconstructing and evolving fantasy tropes and creating unique magic systems that are built from the ground up. Using only random tables and a deck of cards you'll be able to create a wholly original post-fantasy world!

If you want to specifically use the mysterious notebook to add to the game you are playing, I think a world building game would be a great way to incorporate it into the setting itself. A Land Once Magic asks you to create a world together and come up with your own ideas about how magic works, using a deck of cards and random tables. However, for a game like this, you could use the book that you have to give you ideas about how to answer questions in the game. For example, to answer the question about what cost magic has, flipping the book to a page with a botanical drawing of flowers might inspire the character to talk about the the bond between magic and living things, or how flowers fail to bloom where magic has been cast.

I like the fact that this game is GM-less, giving everyone the same creative agency, and that it structures play using cards, so you should always have an idea of what you can do next. At the end of it you’ll have a completely unique setting where you can imagine the potential of future stories and adventures!

Goblin Market, by Kestrel Eliot.

Every solstice, the veil thins between the worlds, merging mortal world with fae realm. Some time ago, the goblins started a market on the solstices to encourage friendship, trade, and storytelling between the worlds. Play to get to know your characters, meet fae beings, and ultimately decide where you belong.

Another game that uses a deck of cards as prompts for telling a story, Goblin Market explores the story of mortals trying to decide if they run away into the fae realm or not. You’ll spend the game in three different phases: setting up character backstory as they explore the market, diving into the personal struggles and connections of each character as the are confronted with the magical food of the Goblin Market, and then finally a choice - do you stay, or do you go? What does this mean for you in the future?

This is another game in which you could use the book as an oracle. You could flip to different pages to help characters answer questions about themselves if you like, or even use it as inspiration for what happens once each character makes their decision. This game definitely provides the structure a first-timer might appreciate, while encouraging each player to put forward ideas and create the Goblin Market as you play.

Beating Heart Bargain, by Charlotte Laskowski.

Beating Heart Bargain is a rules-lite tabletop roleplaying game made for one to three players, with or without a GM.  You play as a Wizard who has traded a piece of themselves in exchange for more power, and now you seek to retrieve what you had once bargained away. Heavy inspiration is taken from Studio Ghibli films, especially Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away.

This game has such an enchanting theme, and provides all of your characters with short but evocative options to create their wizards. This game can be GM-less, but it doesn’t have to be. If you play without a storyteller, the players will take turns describing the environment around you, the people you meet, and the creatures and details that will show up as problems emerge. You could use your book as a kind of “grimoire” in this game, possibly as an oracle to fill out parts of the setting, or perhaps the pages leave clues as to how to return your missing piece.

This game is extremely creative and really encourages you to avoid combat if possible. I strongly recommend that you check out this game!

EYE: A Murder Mystery Generator, by Zak Makes Games.

EYE is a cooperative mystery solving game for one to six players. Players take on the role of detectives, hunting down suspects, evidence and clues in order to solve a randomly generated murder mystery. It’s up to you and your friends to make sense of the information presented and get to the bottom of each mysterious case!

This is a setting-agnostic mystery game, so if you would like to use it for a fantastical setting, you absolutely can! Players will use a random word to generate the premise of the mystery, and then interview suspects and uncover evidence to determine who the murderer actually is. You can use the book as a way to come up with clues, and perhaps even make it an integral part of solving the case! This game is totally co-op, and the pieces of evidence that are required give everyone a concrete goal to pursue and points the group in a specific direction. Worth checking out!

Games I've Recommended In the Past

Research Arcanum, by J. Evan Nyquist.

[piratesexmachine420]

Been playing around with the "smudge" tool in GIMP, trying to improve this magazine cover I made a while back w/ Inkscape.

Obviously, it's a riff on Time magazine. I liked the idea of a publication of record with a "handprint" motif, since some of the oldest records of human civilization we have are handprint cave paintings, and there's kind of a poetic symmetry in the idea that the first and last records of our existence on Earth might be sort of the same.

The specifics are all part of one of my ongoing worldbuilding projects that I've been kicking around for a long time--some small bits I've posted before. The lore is in constant flux, but the gist is this:

On December 5th, 2012 an alien spacecraft crashes into Inner Mongolia at an appreciable speed of light. The collision is so violent it knocks the Earth partially off its axis and destroys most of East Asia. In addition, the collision produces some kind of global EMP that sets a lot of the world's electrical infrastructure on fire.

Everyone panics, things are very bad.

It's discovered that something the spacecraft did shortly before impact has eaten a hole into the Earth's magnetic field.

Two years later, another, similar spacecraft is detected. The United States manages to damage it with nuclear weapons before it crashes into the North Pole. There's no EMP pulse, 'cause of the damage inflicted, but the North Pole is melted and Earth's axis is further disrupted.

A lot of international politicking occurs. The UN forms an international military alliance (UNIMETS) to protect against further a potential Third Contact and any further Contacts. The United States and some other nations leave the UN and sort of mangle NATO into a second, competing international military alliance (GDTO).

A third spacecraft does indeed appear in early 2021, and the GDTO and UNIMETS are unable to coordinate sufficiently to destroy or damage it. It crashes into Fennoscandia, and the EMP from First Contact repeats itself. Much of Europe is destroyed.

UNIMETS and the GDTO merge into a single world military government for the purpose of planetary protection. This alliance is named SEGh, for the proto-indo-european word meaning "to hold" or "to overpower".

More spacecraft continue to appear, with a period of roughly five or so years. Not all of them target Earth--Fourth contact hits Mars, for example--and the world's nuclear weapons stocks are quickly depleted. North America is destroyed, SEGh headquarters retreat to Antarctica (now free of ice and much warmer, as the Earth tumbles in all three axes). The Bureau for Experimental Warfare (BXW)--SEGh's primary weapons R&D team, operating under the Department for Preservation of Life (DPoL)-- develop an interesting new technology allowing them to alter the relative rate of time within a small radius.

It is determined that very, very few people can withstand extremely high or low relative rates of time. Something about souls? IDK, I haven't worked it out yet. DPoL officials decide to kidnap conscript the three potential candidates they identify.

The rate of time altering technology (now called Time Optimizers) are put to use building special space combat suits (Strategic Time-Optimizing Powered Suits, also STOP Suits or occasionally STOPSes), and our three heroes are put to work trying to destroy the alien ships. Much drama, much tragedy. If this sounds a lot like I'm just ripping off Evangelion...yeah. Pretty much.

Eventually the last (Thirteenth) Contact is prevented, and then a lot of the lore starts to be very in-flux. There's a civil war between DPoL plus some other government organizations against the rest of SEGh when they refuse to stand down. Our heroes are made to pick a side. Eventually, the "rest of SEGh" side win, and our favorite global military dictatorship immediately dissolves itself in 2062.

Things are bad for a while. None of the newly-independent SEGh member states were prepared for autonomy or sovereignty, and things are even more bad for a couple of years. Lots of infrastructure failure.

Subsequently, the now-independent SEGh member states form a council to create a new--hopefully benevolent this time--world government. (Worth noting that the global population is way, way smaller now. Less than a billion. And a lot of land area is uninhabitable, either because it's just gone or because there's no magnetic field there anymore.) This is the first Working Group on Government.

More murky lore stuff I haven't decided yet. WGoG reforms once or twice, a space program begins (using an offshoot of Time Optimizers than alter distances instead of durations; these are called Space Optimizers) under the auspices of the Space Tele-Transport Board (STTB), Proxima Centauri b is terraformed, and most of humanity leaves Earth for it. Our heroes do... something.

The colony on the surface of Proxima Centauri b is named "Monument to the Living" and the orbiting space station supporting it is named "Monument to the Dead", thus the above magazine title.

Then it gets even murkier. I think I might have some kind of space war between the aerospace companies and the Space Board? 'Cause only the STTB is allowed to operate spacecraft with Space Optimizers and they want to start their own private colonization efforts? IDK. Our heroes are involved somewhere. Maybe they'll still have their STOP suits, maybe not. IDK.

[lexiklecksi]

Writers Q&A (tag game)

Thanks @hyuccubus so much for tagging me!

What motivates you to write?

My characters are living rent-free in my head and when they get too loud and demand their stories have to be told I oblige and put pen to paper (or fingers on the keyboard for that matter). My poetry is just a form of self-therapy and suffices to make sense of my feelings and thoughts.

A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not, maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

It's difficult to find a writing snippet that makes sense outside the context of a story or poem, but here is one. No English translation would do it justice, so I hope my German readers enjoy reading it. Also here is the full snippet written from the pov of my phoenix oc.

Die Zeit zieht an mir vorbei, sie berührt mich nur selten, viel zu oft vergesse ich mich. Zeit verliert an Bedeutung, wenn man schon so viele Leben gelebt hat wie ich. Zeit ist ein Konstrukt für die Sterblichen, es schafft Ordnung in einem Universum voller Chaos. Doch letztendlich ist ein Leben so kurz im Vergleich zu dem Baum des Lebens, so bedeutungslos wie ein Sandkorn im Wind, nur ein Wimpernschlag in der Geschichte der Welt. Man werfe mir Verdrossenheit vor und man möge Recht behalten, doch nur wenige können nachvollziehen, wie es ist, solange zu leben. Nur wenige fühlen meinen Schmerz, denn sie sterben nur einen kleinen Tod. Der Tod hat mich schon unzählige Male in die Arme genommen, hat mich vergessen lassen, wo ein Leben beginnt und ein anderes endet.

What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

Writing dialogue comes naturally because I can weave in my weird sense of humour. It's so much fun to write my characters talking to each other! Also, I love making up new words, word plays and metaphors, especially in German.

What do you enjoy most about the Writeblr community?

I love the writeblr community for the lovely feedback and ongoing inspiration! Writing can be quite a lonely hobby, so joining writeblr opened my eyes for how wonderful it is to share my stories with others and be inspired by their stories. I am very thankful for my writing family @writeblrcafe which is a safe space for writers that I co-founded. My favourite writeblr activity is collaborations! I'm always up for merging my writing style with others and create something beautiful together!

A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

I love using Bibisco! I'm writing my wip Drachenbrut in it. I can highly recommend this novel software, it has a timeline, character profiles with questions for better character development, character relationship diagrams, notes, chapters, scenes, location and object pages, an analysis tool for everything, statistics about your writing progress and it exports your book document in pdf, docx and epub files.

A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

My magic system is that different fantasy species have different kinds of magic. In short, there is intuitive magic, chaos magic, elemental magic, spell casting, potion making and everyday magic.

What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

The world needs to hear your stories, so write them. And even if only one person reads your story and gains a new perspective, it was worth writing it, because you have changed the life of someone with your words, and what's more powerful than that?

What motivates you to write?

A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

What do you enjoy most about the Writeblr community?

A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

I'm tagging @the-down-upside-finch @charlies-storybook @aether-wasteland-s @akiwitch @joswriting @basalamander-corner @betweenthetimeandsound @sodaliteskull (template under the cut).

[genesisgijinka]

I'm going to apologise in advance for the wall of text I'm about to curse your inbox with. I kind of want to ramble about your world.

With the introduction of a new... Species? Some worldbuilding questions come up.

PART 1: LEGENDARY GIJINKA AND POKEMON _________________________________________________

There's of the two lore posts Explaining Gijinka and the internal Power system

This raises some Questions about legendaries in general.

How many are there, and Which Pokemon does not have a Gijinka version/vice-versa

This can change depending on your headcanons. Good example of this is the SpaceTime Trio.

You as the player get to catch Dialga, and Arceus, and whoever the fuck else controls fundamental things in the world. But I don't think any ordinary person in a realistic-ish world would ever get close enough to... Let's keep Dialga as an example, to ever get fused during the catasrophy. Nor do I believe that Dialga lets themself get overpowered by a flower gun.

So depending on what you as the artist believe, There could or could not be any Dialga gijinka. Or any other Legendary deity pokemon Gijinka for that matter.

PART 2: HUMANS AND SOCIETY _________________________________________________

In the Second worldbuilding post, we're shown the power caste and it's mentioned indirectly that humans are firmly at the bottom.

Now, coming from IRL, where marginalisation and discrimination run rampant: Humans are at an innate disadvantage, They're outnumbered by a lot and outright less powerful. How does society deal with that? Does the kids game energy of pokemon take the upper hand, or is there a reason that Sinnoh has a 1:7 Human to Gijinka rate.

PART 3: THE EVIL TEAMS _________________________________________________

The brainwave that spearheaded this pile of garbled ramblings.

Would there be any differences in every gen's evil team with the introduction of gijinka.

Like obviously there will be the assortment of goons that are a Gijinka instead of just dudes with rattata.

I want the Sytstemic differences. I want the LORE differences behind these teams.

Ok back to racism. The thought that made me start this entire debacle was this:

What if, instead of being assholes that exploit and abuse pokemon, Team neo plasma members are surpremacists on top of their usual shenanigans. With Ghetsis being a truly evil maniac that wants to wipe out the other race.

from there I kind of expanded my questions to other parts of the world.

Moral of the story: I like your worldbuilding. Where can I see all of it?

Hope y'all are ready for a long post lol

How many [Legendaries] are there

Box legendaries and some like Kanto's birds and Sinnoh's lake trio have one singular individual (these aren't all of the solo pokemon, but just a sample)

Which Pokemon does not have a Gijinka version/vice-versa

See above answer. When the weapon went off, only people and pokemon who had a close bond were merged. There are known accounts of some of the mythical pokemon having multiple members, like mew, and some of these were merged into gijinka. Brooke was descended from one of these original gijinka. The mew that is used in the class 8 example of the caste system is actually one of Aiden's half-brothers ;V

Building off of this, no one had a close enough bond to pokemon like Arceus or the spacetime trio to be gijinka fused, or any of the other class 9 Legendaries for this very reason. There's also the fact that the weapon was only fired once which resulted in the gijinka fusion (and Xerneas was the one used 3,000 years ago. Lysandre used Yveltal). There was only a very narrow window in which the fusion could have happened. There simply wasn't enough overlap between closely bonded humans and the firing of the weapon for any of the big Legendaries to get gijinka'd.

How does society deal with that? (in reference to humans and discrimination)

A level 5 human is still a force to be reckoned with. Humans can also gain a fighting or psychic typing. Just look at the black belt or psychic trainer classes, respectively. It's kind of a regional variant sort deal, but less restricted to region. Also, other weapons (and pokemon trainers) still exist in this world. Humans were never fully defenseless. Of course, there were still many wars fought over this, especially early on during the chaos of what the gijinkafication did to almost everyone.

As for how does society deal with discrimination, it depends on the society. Just like IRL society, things are messy and are different across different cultures. Who is considered an "other" in one region, isn't in another.

Sinnoh's gijinka population is so high because in such a harsh region, pokemon and trainers had a very strong bond, so many were gijinka'd. Unova on the other hand, while they had a similar ratio to begin with, mostly only "human passing" gijinka still live there. There's a reason why Unova doesn't have a gijinka league. Again, it's been 3,000 years since the gijinkafication of the world, and that's a long time for people to either have been chased out or left for greener pastures.

Would there be any differences in every gen's evil team with the introduction of gijinka.

Not particularly? Admittedly, I haven't thought about other regions very much, but after a few minutes of pondering and talking to the rubber duck, I could see maybe Cyrus believing that gijinka are of dual spirits and that it causes conflict in a single being, which causes emotions or whatever deal he had going on. You bring up Ghetsis, but I always saw him in bw/2 as going for a power grab, world domination style, and he'd use gijinka just as well as pokemon to do it. Archie from team Aqua would probably be expanding the ocean to make way for more aquatic life, both pokemon and gijinka (since some water type gijinka have gills and can live underwater)

I like your worldbuilding. Where can I see all of it?

Thank you! As for where to find it, hopefully I was able to remember to tag everything with the world building tag here on tumblr. There's not much unfortunately, when it comes to the Official stuff ^^;

[neteyammeowmeow]

I MAY or may NOT have am thinking about post-merge ocean worldbuilding... Considering how the merge happened and all of those realms end up being in one world (if I'm right) that would include the ocean, and if an ocean-realm existed previously that would make everything so much more interesting

I'm imagining nations and kingdoms rebuilding or even new underwater societies that gather others who were lost and found in the merge... Or even new environments and laws of nature...

Anyways, Merlopia being a kingdom named after Mermaids + Olympia (if I'm right) -- plus the character Nyad (totally a reference to the Naiad) would make such a good inspiration that the underwater world is inspired by Ancient Greek mythology

[anneapocalypse]

They’re all pretty related, so in case you want to merge or skip some: I’m curious about 9, 20, 21, and 22 for 🔥 choose violence 🔥

For the 🔥choose violence 🔥 ask game!

Disclaimer: provocative name aside, I am not actually trying to be mean here, these are just my opinions offered for Entertainment Purposes™️, and I’m not mad at anyone who has a different opinion.

9. worst part of canon

The lack of forethought about representation when the series began. The first game was like, "Seven skin tints! The dark ones looks Bad in our engine! Your family is white no matter what! Brown people are from Over There somewhere! Asians????" Since then, I think the games have each improved on that situation, with increasingly better character creators, more diverse companions, and a more diverse world generally. But I think that there's still a lot lacking, and part of that is because the first installment laid a pretty weak foundation, so all subsequent canon is having to correct for better representation rather than building on a strong start. A few big things I would love to see in DA:D are a better variety of hair textures and styles, a better variety of Asian features in the CC, and more Asian (coded) characters in the world generally since that's an area where it's really been lacking. (Lighting that doesn't wash out medium skin tones to ghosts wouldn't hurt either 😉 but when it comes to video game lighting I assume that we'll just be trading one problem for another. I look forward to experiencing a New Problem.)

20. part of canon you found tedious or boring

Inquisition's Too Many Collectibles. I don't mind collectibles, especially when there's an actual reward for collecting them, but Inquisition just has too many. Was it really necessary for us to discover landmarks and regions? Like, could those not have been the same thing? It's fun to treasure hunt and everything but did we need to hunt for astrariums and shards and mosaic tiles and bottles? None of those things are bad on their own, but there's such a thing as Too Much, and I think Inquisition crosses that line somewhere.

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

Marrying Alistair to become Queen! Like, that's fine if that's the ending you want. Me, I've romanced Alistair multiple times and I've never felt like becoming Queen Cousland was like, the Ultimate Ending to that story. My first ever Warden, Jolene, was a Cousland who romanced Alistair, and while I'd watched Mr. Apocalypse play parts of the game, I was unspoiled for the romance, so I wasn't gunning for any particular ending, and because Alistair clearly didn't want to be king and because he seemed so uncertain of what would happen to their relationship (despite her being a perfectly valid candidate for queen), Jo ended up deciding to let Anora keep the throne and ride off into the sunset with Alistair. I wanted a happy ending for that first run and to me, that seemed the happiest for both of them.

Since then I've also done a tragic Alistair romance with an Aeducan, who starts out a real asshole and has kind of a redemption arc as a Warden, culminating in her giving Alistair the throne because she believes it's his destiny, and sacrificing herself to kill the archdemon because she knows she can never be his queen. I loved that one too! It was so juicy.

I'm not opposed to Queen Cousland or anything, I just remember a time when it was so venerated as the ending for Origins. Really, I just don't think of any outcome in an RPG that way. What I enjoy is exploring all the possibilities.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Once again, consider "everyone" to be a bit hyperbolic, but I am really, really interested in the politics of the setting, something I think maybe a lot of fans consider to be boring or "not that deep." 😂 Dragon Age does not always handle its power and oppression narratives perfectly, for sure, but I also think a lot of the worldbuilding shows a level of understanding of structural power that it maybe doesn't always get credit for. When a group is marginalized in this setting we can identify actual systemic barriers to social advancement for that group, not just "people being mean" on an individual level like you sometimes see in lazier narratives. Orlais isn't just fancier and snootier than Ferelden; it actually has more barriers to upward mobility in place! Society is more stratified, and power is more concentrated, even though both nations are monarchies.

I love the fantasy politics--of people in day to day life, of factions, of nations, of religion. I love it because, at its best, Dragon Age does have some interesting things to say about the nature of power. It's easy to say "Chantry bad" or "nobility bad," but to me it's much more interesting to explore why these institutions function the way they do, the ways in which they concentrate power, and the means they employ to keep it. And controversial statement, maybe, but you can't effectively explore the politics of revolution and social change without understanding the structures you're trying to change. Sera's right about one thing: it's not as simple as just lopping off the top.

[frightnightindustries]

The Evil Firestar AU, or the Firemask AU, is a warrior cats alternate universe

Everything goes as normal, but when Rusty joins the clans, he is apprenticed to Tigerclaw (who is very unhappy about it). Ravenpaw is the apprentice of Bluestar. Meanwhile, Mapleshade is very interested in this new kittypet in ThunderClan (who starts talking his way in and out of trouble and saying very radical ideas about unifying the clans), and begins teaching him how to lie in the DF. There's a subplot of DF politics, but mostly things go as normal. Firepaw manages to convince Tigerclaw not to kill Ravenpaw for finding out about Redtail, and the apprentices all get their warrior names after rescuing the kits from ShadowClan.

Firepaw is named Firemask for the darker orange mask around his eyes.

Tigerclaw ends up killing Bluestar, and naming Darkstripe as deputy. Firemask kills Darkstripe. During that time, Cinderpaw has her accident in a trap that was set for Firemask. Tigerstar acknowledges the game has begun, and after that Swiftpaw and Brightpaw end up attempting to lead the dogs to Tigerstar. They fail, and both are badly wounded, Tigerstar killing Swiftpaw and leaving Brightpaw to die. Firemask and Ravencall (Ravenpaw's warrior name) bring her to the RiverClan border, telling her to run.

Firemask starts his own little group of his supporters.

With great reluctance from everyone involved, Cloudkit is brought to ThunderClan. Firemask starts worrying, and this gets worse when Graystripe and eventually Sandstorm leave for RiverClan (Sandstorm was going to have his kits, and didn’t want them to grow up there). After the TigerClan merges with ShadowClan, he stuffs deathberries in Tigerstar's prey, and that takes his second to last life. Then BloodClan attacks, along with RiverClan and WindClan. This time Scourge doesn't really care about taking over the forest, he just wants to kill Tigerstar. In the midst of the battle, Scourge and Firemask kill Tigerstar a second time, and the TigerClan cats are matched into the RiverClan camp.

Firemask manages to convince Leopardstar not to exile him, and gets passive aggressive nine lives. He is forced into picking Greystripe for his deputy (Ravencall was his first choice). He's not pissed, but not overjoyed at it.

He sort of reconciles with Sandstorm, and that's how the first arc goes. Mapleshade is clowning on Thistleclaw at the end.

That's the basic summary of the first arc, but there is a lot that I didn't go into.

This is the masterpost for those changes!

AU CHARACTER CHANGES

Major changes to characters in the AU/Rewrite.

Nightsong (Nightheart) |

Bumble, and A Little Tom

Canon LGBT+ Characters

Consequences of Firemask's Actions

Ten Major Quotes

THE WORLD AROUND

Worldbuilding, and general clan culture.

Clan-Exclusive Ranks: ThunderClan

Clan-Exclusive Ranks: ShadowClan

Clan-Exclusive Ranks: RiverClan

Clan-Exclusive Ranks: WindClan

Limbo (Kittypet, Rouge, Loner Afterlife)

The Dissatisfied

Psychiatry in the Clans

StarClan Guides

[Insert Prefix Here]Kin

DARK FOREST

I'm giving the Dark Forest a major heap of lore, this is inspired by Residents of the Dark Forest which is linked below.

Basic Politics in Hell

HOW I WOULD FIX

Issues in Warrior Cats, bad writing, all that stuff. This is how I would fix these issues.

Waterfall (Tribe of Rushing Water)

Spottedleaf's Life

Bumble's Bad Writing

Medicine Cat Ableism

Inspired by @bonefall

Check out @residents-of-the-darkforest for amazing warriors content

[tanadrin]

Considering your recent musings on worldbuilding, fantasy, and magic realism, would be interested to hear your thoughts on superhero worlds, where practically all those subgenres crossover (soft science fiction for the technology, dark fantasy/horror for the magic, high fantasy pantheons loosely based on mythology and entirely made-up and genre-busting ones, space opera for the occasional interstellar travel, etc.) and yet from some point on it gets merged into the background of an universe supposed to be just like our world until noted otherwise (particularly in social trends, etc.), in true magic-realist fashion.

i gotta say, superheroes are just... basically uninteresting as a concept to me. whether you're deconstructing or reconstructing or playing it straight, you have to torture basic narrative plausibility (irrespective of SF/fantasy/realist plausability) to make the genre function that i simply tend to lose interest.

also, i don't think "a universe supposed to be just like our world until noted otherwise" is a very good definition of magical realism. magical realism is, IMO, about emotional logic overwhelming other systems governing the narrative at specifically heightened points, in a way that should break those systems (but apparently does not). but not everywhere in the narrative (that's more like surrealism), and typically not in ways that are marked as unusual within the narrative (characters don't go "wow, that was weird/amazing/terrifying!"). your definition seems to me to be a better definition of "low" or "urban" fantasy, or certain kinds of near-future science fiction, than magical realism.

because in superhero fiction, the weird/amazing/terrifying nature of the fantastical elements are part of the point. superman is a hero because he is remarkable and, well, superhuman. it would only be magical realism if clark kent was an ordinary guy who one day caught a building that was collapsing and saved lois lane because of his overpowering love for her, and his sense of personal alienation from the rest of the human race, and everyone acted like this was pretty normal and it was never brought up again. as soon as you make him an alien, as a causative factor in his supernatural abilities, you just have regular science fiction.

i do think it's kind of fun that the superhero genre is one of those genres that borrows freely from others--narratives where tropes from horror, fantasy, and science fiction can coexist comfortably are neat. i have friends who are english major types, you know, real insufferable book nerds, who speak of the superhero genre not unlike you do: they evoke the image of a febrile amalgam of different artists in the same shared universe, where the contradictions and paradoxes only add to a kind of semi-surreal character; and of more independent auteur-style projects like Watchmen and Worm which comment cleverly on established tropes of the genre.

but whenever i dip my toe into superhero fiction of any flavor, i feel less that i'm sampling from a roiling cauldron of imagination too rich to be contained by any single narrative approach and more that I am tasting a bland wafer of something whose foundational characters and stories were almost instantly converted into an undifferentiated paste by particular commercial and cultural demands; and rather than injecting new and exciting material into that paste, most innovations in the genre have taken that paste and tried to sculpt it, like making little sculptures out of spam and calling it cuisine.

this is not to say i have never enjoyed a superhero movie; just that even the works praised as daring innovators within the genre seem to me to be basically more of the same. like licensed star wars media or video game tie-in novels, it's incredibly difficult to transcend the limitations of your genre when the thing that crystallized the genre in the first place, the thing that has your audience present in the first place, are those limitations. i don't think it's possible to make a superhero story very interesting for the same reason it's not possible to build the burj khalifa out of spam: spam is not steel, and in order to make spam have the properties of steel, it would have to cease to be useful as spam.

[biggreenstache7]

Yeah

(for context)

YAY!! I'll keep this brief because i'm already planning on writing a huuuge txt file with all of The Lore I Have In My Head in case i never actually write it into a story but still want people to know more about my favorite guys ever BUT here goes a Nick Birth: This Has Almost Nothing To Do With SiIvaGunner

so the whole universe is like . just A World where robots are created and have been being created for ages to fulfill specific purposes like attack and defense and whatever . and in very specific instances either by contact with the outside world or pure chance they have like a really low chance of becoming sentient. this was never planned but at some point a few decades in people sorta start accepting it and treating them like. Normal Society Members. but the ride to that point is uber hard and the woodmen came to be like fairly early so they still had to deal with that shtick

ok worldbuilding over. nick himself was created on may 17th 1965 and in a moment where, because the factory he was made in was super fucked and where malfunctions constantly occurred, most of the robots made in that brief period came out broken right out the gate, and the ones that didn't were highly damaged, nick included. (hence his broken chestplate that he has no way of fixing)

Since the few robots that did "survive" could barely fulfill their designated purposes of attack if any at all, experiments began being ran on them to see if they could serve any other purpose, mainly that of defense and, most importantly, fire protection. this also went uber wrong and resulted in (atleast for nick) growing flowers sometimes out of her control and a weird sort of attraction to fire while still being Very Definitely able to be harmed by it.

so those were the first 17 years or so of non-sentience and robot shit and whatever until one day the factory was set ablaze in a freak accident of unknown origins and nick was one of the only robots to actually make it out, with that probably being the moment he gained his consciousness. then immediately fell from a great height into a trash chute and definitely forgot about anything that had happened to him for the past 17 years, having it only vaguely appear in dreams and such for the rest of her life and proto haunting her forever. tldr sentient robot whose factory was FUCKED UP

after that he spent a few years wandering the streets of new age (city that got 'turned' into grandiose city waay later on) fumbling jobs and just sorta living anywhere and everywhere and constantly trying to learn more about the world & arts & herself until Uno Dia wandered into a library where the dude who ran the place thought she could be like a janitor and that's where she stayed for the next like 2 years until actually becoming a librarian himself.

then also met john there not long later cause john was looking for law books and BOOOOOOOOO GAY PEOPLE GTFO 👎! you know the drill also it's 1989 . and ignoring the literal 30 years of story i have in the middle they are both in the here now. noooo way. somehow even as a tldr for the Absolute Origins this is pretty big. also it only actually merges with siiva in 2016 meaning that they have almost 30 years of history together before that LOL.. its a lot. but then in siiva uhhhhh i just pretended that she was there all along in like kfad2 and john just had her secretly working as a cameraman because he didnt wanna have to fill forms for a plus one and have to come out as gay in the process. and in spooktacular iii hes not there physically but john is always calling him like every hour and shit because hes clingy. as fuck. wahoo

so much shit i missed but that was sort of the point i guess. so #notsiivagunnercore

[berrymascarpone]

Finally got some time and motivation to watch the new episodes of TYBW, so I thought I’d write down my thoughts, starting with..episode 2, which I think raises a lot of interesting worldbuilding questions.

1. Ukitake!!!! hope he gets to do more in the anime

2. So Shunsui left some traps...i don't remember exactly if they get Seireitei back at the end but if so I hope he disarms those traps soon…

3. The Quincy used reishi to create their palace? Does this mean they are all made of Reishi? Have they done the thing where they turn their bodies into reishi through some kind of converter like the Karakura gang had to do in the Soul Society arc? Are they all in that undead/not quite living state? Would explain how they've been around for so long without dying like regular humans. Which would also make Ishida one of the only really ‘alive’ Quincies, i.e. someone who hasn’t been made of reishi for hundreds of years.

4. So from what I understood, the Quincies were already standing in the corresponding locations in the Wandenreich when they merged the two worlds (the shadows/Wandenreich with Soul Society/Seireitei), which means the Quincies had to have positioned themselves around where their targets were (especially Jurgem, he appears in the 1st division pretty quickly). Also makes me wonder if some unfortunate shinigami just happened to be standing where a wall was and got, uh, embedded within.

5. “I don’t mind absurdity,” Mayuri says, while dressed as a giant glowing sunflower.

6. Ok, so they came from the literal shadows, and you're telling me all the shinigami needed to prevent this was a shitton of LED lights? And Mayuri told no one, and only modified his own lab? Though, considering how much weird and useful stuff he has in his lab it's probably one of the key places to save, but a heads up for everyone else would've been nice!

7. Love the scene with Hitsugaya accepting Matsumoto's help. Good on him for not buying into all that toxic masculinity that so many people in the Gotei seem to be espousing. Also their combined technique is actually pretty cool, using the laws of physics to give them an advantage. I just wish there was better payoff than: psych! your physics trick has nothing in the face of my pure overwhelming power!

8. Putting aside why BG9 seems to be one of the only Quincies so far to advance to modern weaponry, I'm also kind of surprised that Omaeda and Soi Fong knew what machine guns are. They don't seem like the type to keep up with living world trends like that. I'll just hand wave it away with the rest of the examples of living world culture bleeding into Soul Society.

9. A post credit scene!! With Ichigo!!! He is once again undergoing a mysterious trial where no one has told him the rules (I assume), so business as usual. I don't remember this part in the manga, so I'm interested to see what they add. I assume there was some extra training after he fixed his bankai, and this is it? Irazusando is a pretty ominous name though...I fear that our boy might have some suffering ahead (as usual). Also interesting, because there is a distinct Shinto theme going for the Irazusando (the torii gate, the shide streamers), while Ichibei is clearly a Buddhist warrior-monk inspired character, though I suppose there is a lot of crossover for those two religions in Japan.

[acertainmoshke]

Hello, your w.i.p.s all sound interesting! Hope you don't mind questions! I love worldbuilding and To Die Among the Stars has really caught my attention. It sounds like a sci fi/found family type of story. Do you know why the first FTL test was a disaster? I'm hoping they tested it remotely/without humans before testing it with humans. Judging by your use of “mental wellness centers” I'm guessing this isn't a particularly nice future for some people. So probably not. Was the new crew briefed on why the first one failed, to try and avoid the same mistakes? Have they tested FTL on sentient androids yet or are they like Data from Star Trek, rare and highly experimental? Why did they choose to combine cat and human DNA to get Peppermint? (Not judging, I'd love to read something with a catgirl in space!) Have they tried merging other species with humans before? Oh noo, have they tried bringing back dinosaurs and mammoths? XD Has Space Jurassic Park happened? Sorry for all of the questions, your story blurb there just really intrigued me! I couldn't help myself.

Please please please don’t be sorry!! I love questions and talking about worldbuilding. So, in order:

1. The first test was a decade before the story and it was a huge disaster in the news because it was manned. It wasn’t technically the first test, though. They knew the technology worked and had run small scale tests around the solar system in tiny unmanned crafts. However, putting it together into a system that would work long-distance was too expensive at the time to plan for very many tests. They tested each part but not everything working together. Several trained astronauts and scientists were killed. It has been a while, so things are less expensive now and have been improved. However, this one is manned so they have the data on how people physically and psychologically react to FTL. I don’t want to be too spoilery but…it’s still not perfect.

2. The new crew did have a few weeks of training, much of it on the reports they’re expected to prepare, but also some cursory knowledge of ship upkeep and planetary life should they get that far—for liability reasons, mostly.

3. Both Void and Peppermint are dubiously legal experiments. Void is arguably the first provably sentient android and was kept quiet because they were unable to repeat their success. Also, important to note, unlike Data it doesn’t look human at all. It was like the 30th test and they were running short on funds, so it’s housed in a clunky metal body and honestly is a bit goofy looking.

4. Peppermint is…ok, meta explanation is I wanted an excuse to have a catgirl in space. But this type of genetic experimentation is banned because of eugenics (cruel, futuristic society still has some standards). So January, the scientist who designed both of them, had to keep them quiet too. Nominally, the point was to create a human enhanced with animal abilities, and they tried a bunch of different types. Peppermint was the only one to survive past infancy, and while they are basically a person with cat traits, there are downsides that make it currently unmarketable, either for military or private sector uses. January doesn’t care, she is kind of a mad scientist who does things to see if she can. Technically Void and Peppermint belong to her, so she brought them along to space. They’re the only ones who didn’t actually volunteer.

5. Ok space Jurassic Park has definitely happened NOW. I honestly didn’t consider a lot of the worldbuilding for this story outside of technology and living conditions (I did the least planning for it yet somehow I’m a third of the way through and have barely started the others). But yes this is a world where the justice system is like now but worse, same with healthcare and other factors of life for regular people. But if billionaires in real life can fund random space travel, rich people in my story have definitely funded extinct genetic experiments (which are legal because they aren’t on people). There have definitely been incidents, both with exotic extinct pets and with extinction zoo experiences, but on a less centralized scale than in Jurassic Park.

Thank you so much for this ask and feel free to send more if you have thoughts or questions! I love being made to actually think about the logic of my world!

[dark-bear-productions]

History Is Not a Straight Line -- This Week in Hunting Darkness

Hello Hunters, Darkhearts, and Beasts!

I've been doing quite a bit of research this week. Some for the worldbuilding for Season 2 of From the Bay of Fangs, but most to give myself a timeline on the development of the Hunters' gear through the years. I like using historic weapons and I like those weapons to be used in roughly accurate order.

But what I've noticed this week is that 19th century gunsmithing was really quite messy. The smoothbore Brown Bess musket was used until 1867, well after rifling became common. The Chassepot initially used paper cartridges in 1866, even though metal cartridges had been around for years. Revolvers produced in 1836 were used alongside revolvers produced in 1861. Sometimes guns were designed and produced in the same year, sometimes there were years -- even a decade -- between the two steps.

It got me thinking how we -- or at least, to my knowledge, most people -- tend to see history as a straight line. I think in recent years we've gotten to the point where we no longer speak of linear progress because, well, some things are getting worse, or just bad in different ways. But I also think we still speak in terms of linear development and although I think that's more accurate I still don't think it's fully accurate.

History is a mess. Historians like to point out anachronisms in people's perceptions of history, but history is often anachronistic. The world is large and humanity is diverse. Ideas don't naturally go from one step to the next, like some deterministic walk along a single logical path. Ideas clash and jostle and mingle and merge and fall in and out of favour in different places and communities.

The modern world -- shaped so heavily by globalisation and colonialism -- sometimes seems to be turning homogenous. Many people think the patriarchy is and has been a global given. Same with heteronormativity. Old and problematic stati quo that have to be overcome by new thinking. And maybe in some ways that's true, but people also seem to keep rediscovering ways in which the precolonial, pre-Christian-Missionary'd world was often not quite as patriarchal and not nearly as heteronormative as we now take for granted.

That's fascinating to me. I'm thinking of reading some more books delving into that subject matter, maybe use it for Hunting Darkness beyond what I've already done to question patriarchy and heteronormativity in my worldbuilding.

But first, I'm going to see Jesus Christ Superstar.

Kinda ironic, that.

Daan

[darkwithasharpenededge]

A "I Can't Believe I Finished This Book This Fast" Bitch's Review of Magician: Master by Raymond E. Feist

Rating: 70/100

Summary: Finally deviating from its tropes, Magician: Master brings the plots set up in Magician: Apprentice to their rather too tidy conclusion.

Remember how I said yesterday that I wasn't going to read this book for a while? Yeah not even I really understand what happened to that. I read one chapter last night, and I picked it up to read another chapter this evening, thinking that I might as well get through it. And then I got through it. Review contains spoilers, blah blah blah.

Plot: Pug: Pug is the reason I read this book as fast as I did. It was my interest in Pug's plot that kept me going, and the scene where he was being trained to be a Tsurani Great One was the best scene in the entire book, and was singlehandedly responsible for this book receiving a 70 instead of a score somewhere in the high 60s. As much as I hate to admit it, it fucked.

Plot: Tomas: More on this in the romance section, but I had mixed feelings about Tomas' plot. I thought that some of the worldbuilding with him having to merge himself with a long-dead member of an ancient violent race was pretty neat, but the actual resolution of the plot was not to my liking, especially with how much it tied into other aspects of the unsatisfactory ending.

Plot: Politics: The politics stuff was shit. It had some really interesting bits with the feeling of the civil war from the first book finally possibly coming to fruition, but I was sorely disappointed. The king died, he named a "good guy" his heir, there was a bit of brief succession drama at the end with the bastard brother to one of the main characters, it was all extremely convenient and sucked. Tempted to go back and knock my score down two points just because of how much I hated the politics stuff.

Plot: Resolution: Extremely convenient and everything worked out for everyone with no bad consequences. I have a feeling that if I end up picking up any romance this year as part of this challenge, I'm going to have this same problem again.

Pacing: I didn't note this in my previous review, but this problem was also prevalent in my read of the first book: The book often had extremely large timeskips that made it difficult to gauge how much the characters had changed in the offscreen time. For example, at the beginning of this book, we're told immediately that four years had passed, and then later in the book, another four years passed? The reader is told that it took nine years in total for the events of the first and second book to transpire, but I'm not sure that the time scales all add up.

Also the book often felt slow, but that was partially down to writing style. Prose Quality: I didn't pay as much attention to it this time, partially because I was reading noticeably faster. Still serviceable, still fairly heavyhanded in some places, with a tendency to spoonfeed the reader that I don't care for.

Characters: My attachment to Pug as a character kind of dwindled after the two giant timeskips, and as Tomas mutated my attachment to him dropped as well. I liked Amos (the pirate captain), he had some extremely funny lines and brought some much needed comic relief, but I didn't find anyone new to latch onto.

Worldbuilding: The Tsurani are imo pretty clearly Asian-coded, and honestly I find that a sign of weakness in an author. Imagine being so uncreative that the most exotic thing you can think of for your invading army from another planet is just "what if they were Asian". Boring. What if your main characters were Asian and they were invaded by Stock Standard Medieval Fantasy World, that would be WAY more entertaining.

But I will give some credit to the worldbuilding for Pug's scene where he learned the entire history of the Tsurani in one go. That scene was in fact really good and I really enjoyed it. Best scene in the entire book. No I won't shut up about it.

Action Sequences: The combat sequences in this book were still pretty meh, but there were some decent chase sequences, one on land and one on sea. And if Pug's scenes where he was learning the Tsurani ways of magic count as action sequences, well, then, this book can get some points back for that too.

Romance: Awful no good very bad evil. I wrote in the margins when I reached certain scenes between Tomas and the Elf Queen that every day I respected Paolini more and more for having Eragon and Arya not get together at the end of the story. Awful horrid choice. Hatred forever. We love to see a thousand year old queen accept emotional abuse from her boyfriend. /s. Also the whole "oh what if he becomes king by marrying her" plot is INSUFFERABLY stupid. Just don't get married! Not getting married was always an option!

Female Characters: What female characters? Every woman who appears on the page is someone's romantic interest.

Gay?: I wish.

Was It Worth It?: Yes, if only for that single chapter where Pug was attending Tsurani wizard school. That was the good shit.

Will I Continue The Series?: Nope.

Final Verdict: If something freakishly similar to Pug's scene in Tsurani wizard school appears in my own writing, well, you didn't read this review, shhhhh. The conclusion of this story was kind of awful and full of extremely convenient events and manufactured succession drama that nobody had any reason to give as much of a shit about as they did, but whatever. I did it. I have knocked this one off my list in record time.

Review Word Count: 969

[finsterhund]

Thank goodness for Sly. Love my Special Sly.

Idk just this guy is such a huge comfort to me right now. I want to feel bad about hugging a stuffed animal goodnight every time I go to bed who had a 1998 retail price of 300 USD but he's just such an incredible toy.

I know he was made to be loved. That's important.

Still world building for a story inspired by him. I kinda want to come up with a new name for him for the story so I'm not just stealing the character made for the toy. But idk. Sly is just a perfect name for a conniving vicious-servant-esque slithering under the bed monster.

For my story I'm making enough design changes I think to be its own thing also. But man is his design super comfy to me.

I wish I could see a giant version of him. I've already been thinking a lot about making my own quilts. Quilted under bed monster. 🥹 Like the only thing that'd make him a better cuddler was that he was bigger. We're talking Lifesize/sleepingbag sized. Lol imagine one so big you can actually fit inside his pajamas bag tummy.

Idk so positives are Sly. I love my Special Sly. Still been unable to write or draw but with the world based on him world building documents come easily.

I wish I could do art fight. I want to get art I want to draw for friends. But grief and pain is just too much. I'm getting familial trauma and childhood pain dragged up a lot in my brain. I guess that's to be expected when I'm struggling with similar pains. I just wish I could have a relationship with my grandparents without all the baggage. Part of me fears what if they weren't good people like I remember. Because I was so small. Because there's people still around who aren't good people. But I know they were good. I can feel it. Idk. I wish I could start again have a new life be born to new parents and have a childhood that wasn't torn asunder by grief and abuse and trauma, you know? Imagine how I'd grown up if so. I'd actually have grown up for one thing. Not stuck in trauma child limbo.

Idk. Just hugging my Special Sly. Thank you Fishy for helping me get my hands on him.

Apologies as part of this Tumblr ate my gotdang post so I tried to the best of my ability to replace what was lost but it's not going to feel as complete as it should be.

I have been thinking about how wanting to create comes easily with Sly because my world for him to inhabit is simple and childish and a sort of dreamland esque thing. My magnum opus I've been working on since I was little is a gargantuan undertaking tied to my childhood and trauma and it's just so daunting to touch it. And I both want to change it and don't want to change it. It's literally grown up with me and it's become so much an untouchable thing. But with Sly I can go "hehe ho childlore HoDcore under the bed monster dimension go brrrrrrrrr"

My main fictional universe is very much if you didn't already know the result of the mythology esque "constellation creatures high fantasy" world of my earlier years mashed together with the "sci-fi post apocalyptic mutant and/or bionic dogs on what is almost certainly some form of Earth" world of my elementary school years that over the course of time I've been functionally merging the two at times conflicting concepts. And it very much is something I feel I still struggle with the balance of. Sometimes I feel it's way more obvious than others.

I've just put so much into this world that if I go in to change literally anything there's a domino/ripple/butterfly effect that happens where I've gotta extensively go and ensure there's consistency and that "nothing breaks" the established worldbuilding and planned plotlines and such in doing so. Which is pretty fucking exhausting.

But I mean that's what happens when there's over a decade of a child retreating into this fantasy world. A lot of time has passed, a lot of areas for growth and change. In real life I am stunted and didn't grow, but my world sure as hell did. Tired (and weak)

Idk if I'll ever be able to even publish book 1 (pretty much done in draft form except for when I feel compelled to overhaul shit) or book 2 (predominantly done but less than 1 and I have the same problem where I keep wanting to add and change) and I don't want to end up being a George Lucas about it and then not commit to it once I do publish and insist on changing and republishing ad nauseam forever. I'm gonna die before my life's work ever amounts to anything 😔

If you reduce it to the bare bones what has been set in stone is essentially Heart of Darkness but the boy and his dog are natives of the alien planet in question and it's at the point in history where the dark force is attempting to achieve purchase within the world rather than it already having largely taken over and deposed any and all opposition. But of course I have an unkillable Tolkien approach to the whole thing and I just have to have that encyclopedic brand of autism where I have to ensure consistency with everything from the way the world is designed to the way the damn physics works in relation to how physics works in the real universe. I was talking about this to some friends on discord and I joked about how this neuroses of mine could outcompete the entirety of Wookiepedia. Which is not exactly a healthy thing considering that Star Wars EU was the product of many people and Wookiepedia itself is the product of many people. And I'm just one immensely fucked up little boy with a special brain.

Creators, I want you to take your biggest longest worked on specialest project and I want you to seriously narrow down just how big of a world you've made for it. Is it a town? Is it a kingdom? Is it a continent? Is it a planet? Is it a galaxy? Or are you like fucking me and you've got in some capacity at least four goddamn star systems and while you do only largely focus on the one planet you feel compulsively the need to develop it as much as fucking possible and also to worldbuild stuff that you may never even get to in a similar degree with every other fucking planet? Bruh I've got a whole fucking potential universe to work with and my brain absolutely won't let me forget it even though a human brain really isn't equipped to process an entire universe. And I post none of this online because I've had people steal my shit literally since the third grade (Fuck you Jarod) and also where the fuck do I start with the posting? And once I post things god forbid I retcon it because not only do I need to alter things internally but publicly now too.

Yes, the only things I ever share at a bare minimum must be stuff I know isn't going to fucking change six thousand times over the course of the month. The only things I let other people see are the stuff where changing it would be sacrilege. Like Red Spot is always going to be a red eyed doberman with cropped ears and a docked tail and wings and a star collar. Orion is always going to be a little blue-tinted albino emperor penguin boy. And for 99% of people who know anything about my shit that's pretty much all they know, all they're ever going to know, and all I'm ever going to tell them. Because that at this point would never change. (If you knew me in school you may be aware that Red Spot has flip-flopped to some extent in turbulent mistake-ridden points of my life but shut up no he didn't. Forget that. What do you mean he had red-toned constellation coloration at one point rather than the black and rust typical doberman coloration??? Shut the fuck up I am gaslighting you. Forget. Forget. Forget. Forget.) (Also an aside but the whole finsterhund lichthund wing morphology thing only initially was a thing I decided needed to exist because of how the type of wings Red Spot had was inconsistent. I built an entire fuckton of shit that has significant thematic impact and worldbuilding lore and societal connotations and etc. etc. because little baby Andy couldn't decide between dragon or eagle wings. Just to give a small example of why this monster has taken years and years and years and it is STILL FUCKING IN DEVELOPMENT HELL CHRIST MAN WTF SOMEBODY HELP ME)

So I've burned out almost completely with my beloved world. It sucks. I don't even know how to proceed from here. An obvious answer is just to strip away everything save for the bare minimum and start over. But I don't want to abandon my fucking child. And I know I'm just likely to do it all over again even if I managed to commit. Which I wouldn't in the first place. Friends tell me "oh just focus on books 1 and 2 and work with anything else later" but you don't understand I need to make sure that I never contradict myself ever and that even the tiniest thing within books 1 and 2 remain canon compliant permanently and inscrutably. God.

I do not have this problem with my Heart of Darkness headcanons. I feel more restricted with HoD. More restrained. Because I am violently picky about something potentially being an aberration or inconsistency or ruining the canon. I can't just harass Eric or Fred every hour of the day about shit I can't infer from what's present in the game itself so I am on a leash. Which in and of itself is stressful because I do wish there was encyclopedic levels of autistic worldbuilding that was canon that I knew for a fact was what Eric and Fred and Christian intended.

How do I let loose and have fun? Well the answer it turns out is Underbed.

My whole concept of Underbed is that it's some sort of backrooms esque nightmare realm where monsters from under the bed, in the closet, etc. live. And akin to the whole backrooms concept it's not like it's a planet or universe all its own. It's like a parasitic pocket dimension to Earth. Which Earth? It doesn't matter. It's implied to be powered by childlore and childhood dreams, imagination, fear, etc. So it can bend and stretch and fluctuate and I don't have to worry about how quilted patchwork creatures are "alive" or how things can travel between the two spaces or anything. And I haven't yet felt the compulsion to over explain and set compliancy rules in regards to lore, physics, etc.

Of course I do want to do crossover stuff with HoD, but not seeing Underbed as its own distinct planet like where the Darkland is does make this easier. I only have to worry about one of the locations having its "black hole at the heart of the planet how does this dictate how things work there" lore. Underbed gets to be "idk magic quilt lol" about the whole thing. The most I've gone into more realistic concepts is that perhaps it's implied the childhood creatures may have once been flesh and blood but were cursed somehow. Maybe.

I think that acknowledging how creating to me is a tiresome burden because of the state of my brain is a good first step but I don't know where exactly to go from here. I do wish I could just not give a shit but unfortunately my entire childhood has drilled into me that there are consequences for not covering your bases at all times.

I ended up contacting the surviving daughter of the designer of the original Sly, who is also the person who wrote the little beanie babies esque story on the tags to see about officially getting her blessing to make my own story based off of my Special Sly but I'm currently waiting on a response.

I do think that what I want to make is its own distinct thing to the point that I surely have every right to do it. I mean he's not even going to fully look like the original toy design and people make stories based on their childhood toys all the time but I'm so self-conscious and paranoid about the whole thing.