#but i think in this fantasy esque story it is a human world that is completely disconnected from like. actual real life

[specialagentartemis]

Black Women writing SFF

The post about Octavia Butler also made me think about the injustice we do both Butler, SFF readers, and Black women SFF writers by holding her up as the one Black Woman Writing Sci-Fi. She occupies an important place in the genre, for her creativity, the beauty and impact of her writing, and her prolific work... but she's still just one writer, and no one writer works for everybody.

So whether you liked Octavia Butler's books or didn't, here are some of the (many!!! this list is just the authors I've read and liked, or been recommended and been wanting to read) other Black women writing speculative fiction aimed at adults, who might be writing something within your interest:

N. K. Jemisin - a prolific powerhouse of modern sff. Will probably have something you'll like. Won three Hugo awards in a row for her Broken Earth trilogy. I’ve only read her book of short stories, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? and it is absolutely story after story of bangers. Creative, chilling, beautifully written, make you think. They’re so good and I highly recommend the collection. Several of her novels have spun out of premises she first explored through these short stories, most recently “The City Born Great” giving rise to her novel The City We Became. Leans more fantasy than sci-fi, but has a lot of both, in various permutations. 

Nnedi Okorafor - American-Nigerian writer of Africanfuturism, sci-fi stories emphasizing life in present, future, and alternate-magical Africa. She has range! From Binti, a trilogy of novellas about a teenage girl in Namibia encountering aliens and balancing her newfound connection to space with expectations of her family; to Akata Witch, a middle-grade series about a Nigerian-American girl moving to Nigeria and learning to use magic powers she didn’t know she had; to Who Fears Death, a brutal depiction of magical-realism in a futuristic, post-war Sudan; to short stories like "Africanfuturism 419", about that poor Nigerian prince who’s desperately sending out those emails looking for help (but with a sci-fi twist), and "Mother of Invention" about a smart house taking care of its human and her baby… she’s done a little bit of everything, but always emphasizes the future, the science, and the magic of (usually western) Africa.

Karen Lord - an Afro-Caribbean author.  I actually didn’t particularly like the one novel by her I’ve read, The Best of All Possible Worlds, but Martha Wells did, so. Lord has more novels set in this world—a Star Trek-esque multicultural, multispecies spacefuture set on a planet that has welcomed immigrants and refugees for a long time, and become a vibrant multicultural planet. I find her stories rooted in near-future Caribbean socio-climatic concerns like "Haven" and "Cities of the Sun" and her folktale-fantasy style Redemption in Indigo more compelling.  And more short stories here.

Bethany C. Morrow - only has one novella (short novel?) for adults, Mem, but it was creative and fascinating and good and I’d be remiss not to shout it out. In an alternate-history 1920s Toronto, scientists have discovered how to extract specific memories from a person—but then those memories are embodied as physical, cloned manifestations of the person at the moment the memory was made. The main character is one such “Mem,” struggling to determine who she is if she was created from and defined by one single traumatic memory that her original-self wanted to remove. It’s mostly quiet, contemplative, and very interesting.  (Morrow has some YA novels too. I read one of them and thought it was okay.)

Rebecca Roanhorse - Afro-Indigenous, Black and "Spanish Indian" and married into Diné (Navajo). I’ve read her ongoing post-apocalyptic fantasy series starting with Trail of Lightning, and am liking it a lot; after a climate catastrophe, the spirits and magic of the Diné awakened to protect Dinetah (the Navajo Nation) from the onslaught; and now magic and monsters are part of life in this fundamentally changed world. Coyote is there and he is only sometimes helpful. She also has a more traditional second-world epic high fantasy, Black Sun, an elaborate fantasy world with quests and prophecies and seafaring adventure that draws inspiration from Indigenous cultures of the US and Mexico rather than Europe. She also has bitingly satirical and very incisive short stories like “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience” about virtual reality and cultural tourism, and the fantasy-horror "Harvest."

Micaiah Johnson - her multiverse-hopping novel The Space Between Worlds plays with alternate universes and alternate selves in a continuously creative and interesting way! The setup doesn’t take the easy premise that one universe is our own recognizable one that opens up onto strange alternate universes—even the main character’s home universe is wildly different in speculative ways, with the MC coming from a Mad Max-esque desert community abandoned to the elements, while working for the universe-travel company within the climate-controlled walled city where the rich and well-connected live and work. Also, it’s unabashedly gay. 

And if you like audiobooks and audio fiction (I listened to The Space Between Worlds as an audiobook, it’s good), then Jordan Cobb is someone you should check out. She does sci-fi/horror/thriller audio drama. Her works include Janus Descending, a lyrical and eerie sci-fi horror about a small research expedition to a distant planet and how it went so, so wrong; and Descendants, the sequel about its aftermath. She also has Primordial Deep, about a research expedition to the deep undersea, to investigate the apparent re-emergence of a lot of extinct prehistoric sea creatures. She’s a writer/producer I like, and always follow her new releases. Her detailed prose, minimal casts  (especially in Janus Descending), good audio quality, and full-series supercuts make these welcoming to audiobook fans. 

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Nalo Hopkinson - a writer who should be considered nearly as foundational as Octavia Butler, honestly. A novelist and short story writer with a wide variety of sci-fi, dystopian futures, fairy-tale horror, gods and epics, and space Carnival, drawing heavily from her Caribbean experiences and aesthetics.

Tananarive Due - fantastical/horror. Immortals, vampires, curses, altered reality, unnerving mystery. Also has written a lot of books.

Andrea Hairston - creative and otherworldly, weird and bisexual, with mindscapes and magic and aliens. 

Helen Oyeyemi - I haven’t read her work but she comes highly recommended by a friend. A novelist and short story writer, most of her work leans fairytale fantastical-horror. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is a collection of short fiction and recc’ed to me as her best work. White is for Witching is a well-regarded haunted house novel. 

Ashia Monet - indie author, writer of The Black Veins, pitched as “the no-love-interest, found family adventure you’ve been searching for.” Magic road trip! Possibly YA? I’m not positive. 

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This also doesn’t include Black non-binary sff authors I’ve read and liked like An Owomoyela (“All That Touches The Air” still haunts me!) C. L. Polk, and Rivers Solomon. Also Nisi Shawl who I initially mistakenly included on the list of authors above, who primarily writes short stories that lean literary. Their one novel that I’ve read, Everfair, is an alternate-history 19th century that asks, what if the Congo had fought off European colonization and became a free and independent African state? Fascinating book, unique and thought provoking.

And this list is specifically about adult sff books, so I didn’t include Black women YA sff authors like Kalynn Bayron, Tomi Adeyemi, Tracy Deonn, Justina Ireland, or Alechia Dow, though they’re writing fantasy and sci-fi in the YA world too.

And a lot of short stories are out there in the online magazine world, where so many up and coming authors get their start, and established ones explore offbeat and new ideas.  Pick up an issue (or a subscription!) of FIYAH magazine for the most current Black speculative writing.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

There's a recurring issue that keeps happening in fantasy discourse that keeps happening to creators where including monsters in your worldbuilding gets distorted into a sort of fascist intent as people get gradually lore desensitised to said monsters and they become more and more a "mundane" or "natural" part of the fictional world in people's minds.

Here's how it works, from my observation.

The monster, as a concept, is an ancient mainstay of all fiction as it is a mainstay of the human psyche, representing primal fears and the abstract (unrealistic!) horror of the other. It has carved out an important role in media as an element that is broadly understood to be a thrilling antagonistic force that is removed from anything in the real world.

An author wants to write a story about heroes who regularly encounter and fight multiple monsters, because this is mechanically important for the type of media or narrative (maybe a video game world needs many creatures to fight, the high fantasy protagonist needs a "monster force" to threaten the world, the ghost hunter type hero needs various ghosts and ghouls to fight off each week.

The story gets released into the world and people become used to the monsters existing, to the extent that they begin to lose the narrative lens of the monster in their minds. They begin to treat the otherworldly monster as an element of the world, and then the idea of the monster as a purely antagonistic or evil force begins to sound absurd, as it is for any type of being in the real world, especially if the monster is intelligent. People get interested in subverting these elements of the monster, and derivative works including the type of monster begin to explore stories in which the monsters are actually neutral/good, but misunderstood, actors, due to their monstrous appearance or similar.

This interpretation of the monster as another kind of person, or benign animal, becomes widespread, with the monster solidified as a concrete part of the world in a way that is divorced from their conception as an unrealistic, otherworldly threat.

People look back at the original source work, and go, "hey! Why was the author so intent on displaying this group of creature as inherently gruesome and evil? This sounds like fascism!" And it makes sense why they think that, except that they have forgotten that said author was writing about a type of monster instead of an analogy for a human group or race. As such, with enough time and reinterpretation, people can find grounds to accuse authors of fascism for the crime of merely writing about monsters, which kind of sucks as a thing to do, in my opinion.

I think the Tolkien/D&D style Orc is the prototypical example of this, although there are many others, really it happens to some extent with any sort of "monster species" where there is more than one horror creature in your world. This is not to say that you can't interrogate issues with how certain monsters are portrayed - why evil orcs are portrayed with darker skin colours sometimes, for example, or... Pretty much everything going on with a lot of goblin-esque creatures, but I think it's important to remember that this is a different sort of criticism from, for instance, "Tolkien and the D&D people believe that certain types of being are inherent evil and need to be wiped out".

Because we can't forget that they were not writing a real type of person or creature, but a type of monster, and monsters are understood to be an unrealistic, otherworldly narrative contrivance. You have problems making them fit into the real world with a just mindset because they do not exist in the real world, they exist as monsters, and were written with this understanding that there is a common understanding of what that means and how it should be understood.

I feel like people need to keep that in mind in their analysis, else pretty much any creative can be smeared retrospectively for writing about monsters whatsoever. I think monsters are pretty cool in fiction and important to the human psyche, and think that they have a crucial place, as long as we remember the lens through which they should be considered in their conception, which is inherently outside of material reality.

That's also not to say we shouldn't subvert and interrogate and adapt monster tropes either, but doing so doesn't mean throwing out the original ideas as having gone rotten.

[entropyvoid]

Honestly with all the overlap between sci-fi and fantasy fans, I’m really surprised that “high fantasy in space” isn’t more of a thing.

There are some things generally assumed by most to be sci-fi that I’d personally label space fantasy, like Star Wars, where the high tech is just there as a backdrop to a classic heroic story of good guys vs. bad guys, who are definitely doing magic (by using the force). The point of Star Wars isn’t the tech or anything, it just happens to be a tale told in space. It contrasts pretty starkly with something like Star Trek, where the vast majority of episodes revolve around exploring whatever scientific or philosophical concept the writers thought would be kinda neat that week, using established characters as a vehicle for said exploration.

I think one of my favorite things about Honkai Star Rail is that it freely and unabashedly mixes sci-fi and fantasy. It just goes “You are a walking neutron bomb. Also turns out your bestie is from a self-reincarnating race of dragon people with powerful water and illusion magic. They live on this big, planet-sized ship that’s dedicated to hunting down this one cosmic horror that cursed all the ship’s inhabitants with immortality, under the banner of this other cosmic horror that exists solely to kill the first cosmic horror. Let’s go on vacation to the theme park planet, the actual resort is technically an Alice-in-Wonderland style dream triggered by the same kinda cosmic-horror-gifted bomb as you. Your new friend is a meme. By the way, did we tell you about the one time this super-genius harnessed the power of *imagination* to build a death ray that instantly obliterated a bunch of planets? That was kinda fucked up, huh.” Sometimes Star Rail tries to give explanations for its tech in a way that seems believably sciencey. Sometimes shit’s just straight up called magic or it’s from some deity or another and none of the characters present have a good understanding of why, so you all just go about your bullshit. It makes it work within the context of its established universe.

Cosmic horror in general is often (but not always) found in sci-fi, but where the point of sci-fi is to expand on and detail a concept in a believably scientific way or explore the impacts of a scientific thing, the point of cosmic horror is that there is a Thing that is beyond human understanding or comprehension. Sci-fi is a fun thing to insert it into, because the more scientifically sensible and well-understood elements of the world you have, the more jarring that becomes.

Then you’ve got things like Dungeon Meshi, which exists in an inverse of something like Star Rail: it takes a very Tolkien-inspired Dungeons and Dragons-esque setting, and then details it in a very scientifically sensible way. There is magic, and there are these fantastical monsters, yes, but the monsters are parts of their own delicate and intricate ecosystems, they are edible, and they have very particular nutritional values and ways you can cook them! The protag’s biggest strength lies in him being a nerd about monster biology. Magic, too, by the end of it, ends up with a plausible enough explanation as well. And the explanation is a cosmic horror! In this way, Dungeon Meshi, despite being built entirely off of very easily recognizable and classic fantasy tropes, is probably more accurately classed as sci-fi.

I just love all of it. Can I get like 50 more of these fucked up lil mixtures of science and magic please?

[alittlebitofwonk]

@bonesandthebees has me thinking about book recs, so I’m posting some of my favorites in case anyone wants something new to read!

FANTASY

Priory of the Orange Tree: This is a BRICK of a book. The hardcover would make a good weapon. But it’s also an incredibly good read. A well built fantasy world, dragons, sapphic romance, and it centers WOC characters. The prequel, A Day of Fallen Night, is also amazing.

Legends and Lattes: This is such a cozy little book! It’s fantasy, sent in a DND inspired world where a retired orc mercenary opens a coffee shop. Also, sapphic romance side plot. It’s very cute.

A Thousand Steps Into Night: A Japanese folklore inspired novel where the protagonist must make bargains with spirits to avoid becoming a demon. I learned a lot about Japanese legends and folklore in this one, and the protagonist, Miuko, is just so earnest and lovable.

SCI-FI

Project Hail Mary: Andy Weir does it again. A fantastic novel featuring a struggle across the galaxy to save earth as we know it, the most endearing alien EVER, really cool futuristic science, and a reminder that humanity also instills in us all a sense of good.

The Kaiju Preservation Society: This book is so much fuuuun. It’s just a blast. Inter dimensional travel, giant monsters, conservation, and a protagonist that had me cackling with laughter the whole time.

MYSTERY/THRILLER

The Final Girl Support Group: When the survivors of several horror-movie esque massacres are all targeted by a new killer, how will they survive? A really awesome story about a bunch of badass middle aged women who kinda hate each other teaming up to identify their would-be killer… before it’s too late.

Gone Girl: Nick Dunne didn’t kill his wife. He has no idea where she is, or what happened, and he swears he didn’t hurt her… but no one really believes him. Meanwhile, the truth is far more interesting, and a testament to the phrase “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” This is THE female rage story.

[ideotape]

Consider... what if you just.. tell us about your OCs 👀 (I would like to hear it)

me pretending i haven't been trying to get someone to ask this for my entire life

i know i should talk about one of the ocs i've actually posted art of on here but i recently(as in since 2 days ago) have been thinking nonstop about the very first oc i tried to make an actual story for, eve,

this is the only drawing of her i have access to right now and i'm going to be redesigning her soon but, for now, this is her, my darling baby eve<3

the world she lives in is a pretty standard fantasy/dnd-esque setting, but there's currently a bit of a magic drought. any beings without an internal source of magic either can't access magic at all or if they can it's only small flickers and it's a big strain to reach even that. but eve, despite being a human, who should not have a natural internal magic source, very much has access to magic. it's clumsy and all over the place but it's there. so having lived her childhood with her non-magical adoptive father who tries his best but can't really help her in this any more than he already has, eve sets off to find a magical tutor. and maybe figure out why she was discovered as a baby in the middle of a forest surrounded by, sprites? pixies? something like that. they were little and magical that's all her dad knew. but that's not important, surely.

[vacantgodling]

i am back to do another round of (mostly) answering all the questions of an ask game and this time it is @ink-flavored's fantasy ask game! i’m gonna be doing this for my GIANT fantasy wip the chronicles of lathsbury (tcol) bc uh this story is just fucking massive and i never give myself excuses to talk about it so i’m gonna. as per usual, i'm not gonna answer ALL the questions; if i don't have a good answer or it doesn't apply i'm just gonna skip the question :)

if you’re curious of tcol’s actual plot (becuase there is one, surprisingly) have a little blurblet here:

Piper Fairwind (she/her), Deux Undershield (she/her), Sandra “San” Dearborn (they/she), Clear Brightendale (he/him), and Forte Symphonia (he/him) are the newest contingent in The Aegean Guild of Explorers. They all are chosen for various reasons, and begin their hopefully promising career at literally the same time that The Labyrinth is beginning to grow more restless than it ever has been before. Why? The Demon King, Lord Evondra — unbeknownst to anyone yet, is beginning to awaken from her 300 year long slumber and she’s out for blood. Her very presence amplifies the power of monsters and beasts within as her hatred of all Terraneans seeps into The Labyrinth’s very core. The five of them get swept up in the mix, because destiny’s knocking and they have no choice but to answer the call.

but without further ado:

📚What “type” of fantasy is your WIP? High, low, urban, historical etc.?

high fantasy through and through lmao. i really don't usually tend to dabble too hard in other types of fantasy ig? i should at some point but high fantasy just has my whole kokoro tbh.

🌍Does it take place on a fantasy planet, or somewhere on Earth (hidden or not-so-hidden)?

it takes place on a separate planet, technically, though i'm thinking of planet more in the fantastical way and not planet in a sci fi sense. its got a lot of 'western fantasy' / tolkien esque elements yknow. like in lotr, arda is a planet but you don't really think about it in that way, yknow what i mean?

💭If your WIP doesn’t take place on Earth, where did you draw inspiration from to create your new fantasy world?

a lot of it is lotr not even gonna hold you. technically the two largest inspirations for tcol are lotr & the jrpg game etrian odyssey bc that's when i first created the characters, and that's why there's a labyrinth mechanism that holds monsters in this wip at bay.

when it comes to the actual locations... good question. it kind of is very generic 'western fantasy' vibes which again kinda comes a lot from tolkien (i still have a documentary i have to watch regarding what fantasy was like before lotr kinda shaped the entire genre, and maybe whenever i do it'll influence how i go about writing and shaping my fantasy wips.

i guess the other inspiration i can say would be my desire to have a black-centered fantasy story. all the characters in tcol are black (as with many of my wips unless i specify otherwise)--but when it comes to adding blackness to my stories, the jury's still out on the best ways to do that. i'm not gonna fully delve into my racial issues in this post cuz that literally has nothing to do with anything but just know that everyone in tcol is black LMAO (theres another word i wanna say but i never use aave online unless im talking to other black people whoops)

🧝Do other fantasy species exist in your WIP? Describe them! & 🤓Are there any intelligent magical creatures, ones that can communicate with language? How do they interact with wider society? & 👹Are there monsters or other dangerous beasts in your WIP? How are they differentiated from standard wild animals, or other magical creatures?

the main breakdown of "beings "species" or "beings" in this wip are:

terraneans -> they're what i call humans to the left. they are humanoid and mortal, but they have differing features and slightly different biological characteristics than humans generally speaking (ie: terraneans have a lifespan of 150-200 years, they have pointed ears, and their whole sana/cava/ars thing. basically, terraneans are very similar to the half-elf dnd class with more words PFF. also they can't be pale unless they're dead or have died for a certain amount of time. everyone is tan or darker :>). terraneans are what most of the main cast are and most of the varying stories of this wip center around terraneans and their connection to the land and the gods. and speaking of gods

gods -> deities play a huge role in tcol because i think pantheons are interesting. they're more of the greek-mythos variety of deity in the sense that they are imperfect beings; they simply hold a lot of power and the ability to create and destory the cosmos as we know it. there's a lot of messy drama among some of them and the main deity of this world, IISIDIA has unintentionally caused many MANY issues but she pretends to not see it. cough. there have also been instances of terraneans being venerated to being gods (beings such as MARTH, The Lady of the Mists, and EFFE, for instance), and some deities have alters or basically, parts of themselves that are still them but have split off into different beings with different roles (ie: IISIDIA has a known alter, IDMIR; MIRANKA has a known alter to kisks called RANKIMA, etc).

guardians & oracles -> because deities cannot directly interact with terraneans, there are 'in betweeen' beings, or (kinda) essentially "demigods" if i were to put it in laymans terms. guardians can only be venerated once every age (and when the main story starts we're in the fourth age, and then the second book goes into the fifth age, and each age's ending is marked when a guardian is venerated. so far the guardians are lath (who if you know anything about me, i'm insane about him), immordia, and arian :> when it comes to oracles, that's a bit more complex; they're not fully demigod-esque, but they do have divine inspiration basically. there's 3 major kinds of oracles and i won't fully get into all the weeds of them but there are oracles of the deities: MUINENS, MIRANKA and YLENE, called OOMs, OOMIs, and COHs/Champions.

monsters -> monsters are essentially flora and fauna that have been touched by The Hands of Qhozion (aka chaos magic which is a corrupted form of the deep magic, cantillo). most people just call it chaos bc for many plot reasons, no one but MIZDARR knows that QHOZION exists. and this basically corrupts them into corrupted and twisted creatures of rage, fury, and power. all monsters (now) reside within The Labyrinth, which was the feat that got lath venerated to the first guardian. but again this is so many weeds so i'll cut it here. basically they're fucked up with no rhyme or reason lmao.

beasts -> are different than monsters; sort of a Next Stage in evolution to monsters: they are creatures who were touched by chaos, but they have ars which is magic and/or sentience. meaning that they are stronger, more cunning, and are able to speak etc. the strongest of all beasts is called The Demon King and they rule over monsters and beasts alike from within the Labyrinth. the current demon king and main antagonist of the first story is Lord Evondra; who ate her father after he was killed in The War of the Seven Sons to ascend his position.

🤝Are the different fantasy species all living together, or does everybody keep to themselves?

pretty much separately though there are certain junctions where the they can cross paths.

there are 3 major continents on terrae (the world) where terraneans reside: mainland terrae (where the kingdom of lathsbury and all of her constituents reside in city-states loyal to the crown), diisai (a large island that lays to the west of the eastern sea, where the federation of diisai resides; they do not have a major empire/kingdom in the same way mainland terrae does, but they do have a close relationship with the kingdom and are essentially considered a vassel state), and kiskkaddon (which is a northern badland desert peninsula that sticks out from mainland terrae but is wholly cut off from the mainland's culture by the desert and mountains that separate the two regions).

within terrae exists The Labyrinth; there is one large opening in the capital city of Lathsbury, but there are hidden entrances throughout mainland terrae. this is where all the monsters and beasts on the continent reside including The Demon King; as they were corralled by the gods (mainly MUINENS) and the first guardian lath and his sword/companion, ensio. the labyrinth is only able to be traversed back and forth by terraneans; gods are unable to enter (though their power can penetrate through it in certain instances and one exception technically, MIZDARR for... reasons cough), and monsters aren't able to leave the labyrinth's walls. beasts are also an exception to this and can travel back and forth but that's not really known knowledge--it really depends on how much ars/power they have tm.

related to The Labyrinth the three exceptions where beasts and monsters live are Diisai/Kiskkaddon -- because those landmasses were never corraled into the labyrinth proper however only monsters exist in those areas and they are SIGNIFICANTLY weaker than the monsters/beasts of mainland terrae due to being further away from The Hands of Qhozion. the origin of chaos in terrae actually lies in MIZDARR's domain, The Thicket, which is an island in the middle of a saltwater lake. the other origin point is the fallen city of Argos, for reasons in the first age. technically monsters and beasts exist in another place too, Lapsundi, the hidden world, but like again this is already so long so i'm not gonna get too into that.

gods exist outside of the realm of terrae--the sky, in the hidden places, or the bowels of the earth (or characters like MIZDARR who do have specific areas associated with them). they are unable to interact with terraneans or the world directly, except through prayer and divine inspiration and most of their work is carried out through guardians--who actually don't usually interact with terraneans either, though they can. oracles are usually the main go between. and because gods can change shape, sometimes they hide in plain sight to observe terraneans.

☮️What are the different fantasy species’ customs and cultures? How well do they get along with each other, if at all?

this is too long of a conversation to get in depth and the cultural aspect of things is something i'm still working on because each individual city-state has their own culture LOL. i have a city building questionnaire saved to do for all of the cities that i literally just haven't gotten around to bc its SO MUCH. cough.

either way though, to answer the second question monsters and beasts don't get along with terraneans at all and vice versa; monsters are fueled by chaos and kill each other and terraneans virtually indiscriminately, which is why The Labyrinth was created--terraneans were basically on the verge of extinction due to them in the first age, which then lead to the rise of The Demon King. when terraneans learned about beasts and The Demon King and their sentience, they did try to come about creating a peace treaty... but that led to the War of Seven Sons so.... you can see how well that went LMAO.

the gods in general have mixed views about chaos--there are those like IISIDIA and MUINENS who outright detest it and find it to be an abombination (and MUINENS specifically has made it her misson over the past thousands of years to try and figure out where chaos is coming from, why, and how to curb it) meanwhile there are others such as YLENE, YUTARA, and MIZDARR that are more neutral/benevolent about it. chaos is apart of the world so much as chaos is, so we cannot fully stop it from existing but instead learn to live with it. this is a big plot thread within book 2 of this series, so i won't go into much further depth but YEAH.

terraneans amongst themselves is a mixed bag as any human esque society is. there hasn't been a grand scale war among terraneans since the War of Lathsburian Succession in the second age, and this is mainly because IISIDIA, in a rare showing, possessed an OOM and basically said "if y'all mfs ever war with each other again i'm blowing this bitch UP" and no one wants to test the literal most powerful deity in the universe to see if she's joking or not LMAO-- this doesn't mean that there isn't strife and tensions and that war hasn't come close before. ie: before the 7 sons incident, terrae almost went to war due to a coup, if it wasn't stopped by a mentally unwell duchess in a murder-suicide. so uh. yeah. and even in the fourth age now, there's whispers of another coup forming up but this one is very very much unchecked and has been in the works for several decades so hashtag yikes :D

⏳Are there any dramatic lifespan differences between your fantasy species and humans? How does that influence their societies and relationships with each other?

taking out the second half of that question bc humans don't exist on terrae LMAO. but yeah. to be very general:

terraneans -> 150-200 year lifespan. basically double that of a regular human tm. the one exception is guilders tend to have shorter lifespans and usually die around 30s-40s bc traversing the labyrinth is not a fucking game LMAO

monsters -> too varied to put a number to it, but they're essentially immortal, but mortal (as in they can be killed)

beasts -> same hat, immortal as in they can live forever, however are killable. same thing goes with The Demon King, its the only "mortal" deity.

gods -> immortal and unkillable but can be injured

guardians -> immortal and unkillable but can be injured

oracles -> same lifespan as terraneans bc they're the same thing basically

👑What’s the political configuration of your WIP? Kingdoms, nations, something else?

one major kingdom (The Kingdom of Lathsbury) comprised of city-states and two vassel states that are technically independent but like are they really lmao. so each city is ruled by a duke/duchess that are either appointed by the king, or are handed down through bloodline (which is easiest) unless they decide to abdicate. the king (all rulers of lathsbury, regardless of gender, are called kings) is chosen by an OOM and they have to be 30 years old before they can take the throne. there has only been (1) exception to this, and that was king mitica the nomad of the first age, but that was also when terraneans were on the verge of extinction so desperate times call for desperate measures. anyway, he was chosen at 18 instead of 30, and had the longest reign of any terranean king, dying at the ripe old age of 148 LMAO, so 130 years lmao.

diisai and kiskkaddon operate a bit differently; diisai has a council of elders who make decisions jointly and they all have to be unanimous to make decisions though there does tend to be one "speaker" who speaks for the entire nation. kiskkaddon is more similar to how kings of lathsbury are chosen, and is done so by oracle however it is done by oracle of RANKIMA (aka MIRANKA) instead of an oracle of MUINENS like lathsbury. RANKIMA is also all about partnerships, so technically kiskkaddon always has 2 rulers at once and they have to work together to rule.

and very very technically snake's canyon is a bit different because they don't really have specific duke or duchess that rules anything but everyone just kind of. exists. there. cough.

⚠️What’s the political climate of your WIP? Are nations on the brink of conflict, or enjoying many years of peace?

conflict has mostly always been between beasts/monsters and terraneans, and while things since the labyrinth was constructed have been like. relatively okay, realistically only the second and third ages were truly peaceful. at the end of the third age with the veneration of arian to guardian status, that's very much the major catalyst to the war of the 7 sons, so the fourth age started off with a BANG. but after that was over for the most part, its been 300 years of "relative peace".... but all that's about to change LOL.

✊What’s the social climate of your WIP? Are people struggling against inequality or war?

generally speaking terraneans have always kind of been a struggling sort and its only been in the past few hundred years that everyone has FULLY begun to prosper. there's more trade and innovation than ever; more and more people are leaving their homes to continue to build the guild system and cultivate fame and riches from it, and guilds are becoming the backbone of the kingdom in terms of generating wealth, commerce, trade, and general wellbeing--despite the usual short life expectancy of guilders tm.

things are brewing underneath the surface however. just before the beginning of book one, the oracle chosen king luther, was killed in a freak accident, and the OOM did not choose a new king yet--in his stead his youngest brother, aran, is ruling as the duke of lathsbury, and this is the first time something like this has ever happened. because of that, there are murmurs among nobles to try and depose aran from the throne (which makes me mad LEAVE HIM ALONEEEE). theres also concern regarding the growing power of guilds in general--elites don't like them LMAO. so. there's some tension, but it hasn't reached its peak yet. BUT OH IT WILL.

🏰Are there royals and/or nobility in your WIP? How do they treat the common people? What do the common people think of them?

there are! it varies from area to area, however, because of how the kingdom's king is chosen there's actually more of a 'lax' cooperative nature between many people and those of a higher ranking (if they are good rulers but there's always bad eggs). the reasoning is because oracles choose kings, anyone that you speak to could at any point be chosen to be king, so it makes sense to respect everyone. PLUS comraderie in terraneans is one of their biggest tenants; as they came into the world of terrae having to rely on themselves and the gods to survive, so there's a deep generational disposition to help others. most nobles are very respectful of the common folk and use their leadership and positions to help others; a good example is duchess aria lathsbury of wish of palanthia, who is beloved and adored by all of those under her.

however, with the growing wealth and prosperity that the labyrinth is beginning to afford, it is causing larger gaps between the upper and middle class, and so cracks are slowly beginning to form. greed is the source of all evil as you know. so, things haven't fully gotten to that point yet by the time of the first book but things are beginning to slowly shift.

💎What are the hallmarks of a higher-class person in your WIP? What marks someone as lower-class?

ummm honestly its hard to say as each noble is different. some nobles are down to earth and hardly distinguishable from their common class peers (such as lord kiba; most people forget his status because he doesn't carry himself in that way), meanwhile others make it their personality that they're noble (such as lady illiana, his stepsister). as society is generally prosperous, its not necessarily about what they wear or how they dress though those can be indicators; as well as their weaponry, or homes, which can also be indicators. but a lot of people say that those who are nobility (if they are or otherwise) is their leadership abilties. characters such as sir keevan are generally thought to be nobility, though he actually isn't at all--but his gregariousness, leadership and prowess make him appear noble-like to others.

i think the best way to explain it is that people view nobility as people who are leaders, and not people who have money or material wealth. and even though some people can be nobilitiy solely through material wealth, they won't be respected or thought of as someone of noble ranking if they don't have those leadership qualities.

🙇Are the common people expected to serve the higher class in some way, explicitly or implicitly? Are some kinds of service more respectable than others?

societally, they aren't 'expected' to serve the higher class in a sort of reverent or 'because they're better than you' kind of way. there's a lot of "respect is earned" vibes throughout the entire wip and just because you're born into high class, if you want people to listen to you or respect you, you do have to earn their trust. this is why there's a lot of cooperative society vibes around class and class in general in terrae is much more fluid-its much easier to learn a trade or interact with people if you're earnest about it; and things like schooling and housing don't cost money in a traditional sense. most people aren't extremely bad off (nowadays) so honestly, the court of public opinion determined by what you do for your constituents is more important than actually having wealth. that's what the current underbelly coup against duke aran has been taking so long; its not about using money or force to depose him, its about turning the tide of the public against him.

generally speaking though, there aren't really any like, jobs that are "more respectable" than others. while individual opinion will obviously differ, as a whole, terranean society is of the mindset that every sort of occupation is necessary for the betterment of society. a knight, a duke, a guilder, a prostitute, a doctor, and a farmer are all the same level of valuable to society. what matters is if you use your role for betterment or to be a piece of shit lol. i suppose the one exception to this is oracles, as they have divine inspiration and they speak directly to the gods which is extremely important. so they are held in a slightly higher regard than other occupations tm.

🪖How are wars fought in your WIP? Swords and spells, firearms, war machines?

*whispering so IISIDIA can't hear me* swords and spells mostly. firearms are a newer invention of the past like ~50 years or so into the 4th age and theres a LOT of discourse around them. but there hasn't been any wars or whatever (yet cough) for them to be used. so mostly swords and magic tm.

🏢What kind of unique or magical architecture exists in your WIP?

so the most important magical structure is The Labyrinth. bc i've talked about it ad nauseum, i'll try to be brief, but basically it operates pretty much the exact same way you think it might based on the name. its a maze like entity that has a mind of its own (to an extent) and is greatly influenced by magic in both its construction but also internally. things move and shift, mirages and illusions will make you lose your way, and its absolutely teeming with monsters and beasts alike :) the structure itself was created with cantillo and by IISIDIA herself so the thought is that its basically unbreakable... but that is technically not the case. tm. book 2 spoilers cough.

💰How does trade function in your WIP? Merchant caravans, local markets, dragon drop-shipping?

merchant caravans, local markets, and by sea is pretty much the major ways that trade happens. bc mainland terrae is mostly land though so mostly through caravans and beasts of burden does trade happen if its not on a local level.

📦Are there any specialized or magical imports/exports that your fantasy societies rely on? Why are they so important?

getting into this delves more into the weeds of things i don't fully have the brain for yet, HOWEVER, the biggest thing that i do know is there is high demand for monster hair and hide in order to make clothes and especially, most interestingly, weaves, wigs and so on. its very similar how black people use synthetic or human/horse hair to create elaborate hairstyles, same can be said for terrae however their hair parts all come from monster hair :>. there's certain species (that i haven't developed yet bc flora and fauna is genuinely my LEAST FAVORITE part of worldbuilding holy shit) that are better for these material than others, and when i figure it out y'all are gonna be so cooked lol.

💵What kinds of currency exist in your WIP? Do people use gold coins, barter and trade, or something else?

sooo technically currency exists. i don't know much about what it is yet bc economics makes my head hurt. however, i do know that a higher prized form of currency (and what is more common among the common folk) is bartering and trading; not just items and resources but favors, skills, and even introductions to other people. its not uncommon for people to offer their service or time in exchange for something else--and the bartering system is HUGE within guild culture. when you need any type of monster part or something from the labyrinth, you can usually go to any kind of bar and they'll have a notice board where you can put up requests and rewards for services or other goodies.

thinking about it i want to say that they use coins for everything because mining is a pretty big thing esp in towns like Kingsburrow. and i imagine they just have different sizes and styles of coins to denote different things. and i don't think their money is made of silver or gold, i wanna say its made of a completely different fantastical mineral that is in abundance in terrae. i just haven't figured it out yet. LMAO. i'll come back to this eventually.

👚What kinds of clothes do people wear in your WIP? What accommodations are made for any fantasy body parts?

i can't answer this in full bc culture varies across different city states, however i will briefly mention that different guild classes tend to wear different kinds of clothes: ie, hunters of eros tend to wear a lot of furs and hides and are generally more exposed with light armor bc they're about speed. meanwhile, protectors are heavily armored in a style more similar to medieval knights. there's much more to this but again, we'd be here all day and i haven't fully decided yet so like, hit me up like several years from now when i finally stop freaking out over the timeline and start filling in details.

🏙️Are there any especially famous cities or nations in your WIP? What are they known for? & 🚩Are there any especially infamous cities or nations in your WIP? What earned them the sour reputation?

figure i would do these two together lol. all the major city states are pretty much known for something, so let's have a brief overview of the major cities (i'm literally just gonna copy and paste from my large worldbuilding doc lmao)

LATHSBURY (Lathsburian): Lathsbury is the capital of The Kingdom of Lathsbury and is named after the first Guardian of Terrae, Lath. It’s known for its entrance to The Labyrinth, it’s bustling and diverse culture as it’s a huge traveling and trading hub, for its Guilds, and being the base of all government operations. 

KINGSBURROW (Lathsburian): As Kingsburrow was established near the same time, and has close proximity to Lathsbury, most people who live in Kingsburrow consider themselves to be Lathsburian. It’s known for its rich mineral deposits and mining culture. 

EROS / ARGOS (Aegean): The swampy, dense Eros is a converted fortress city that stands in the shadow of the crumbling and foreboding Argos—the first capital and city of Terrae thousands of years ago. Eros is known for its hunters and dark hunters, and their seemingly never ending devotion to culling the vast chaos that lies beneath Argos’s dilapidated streets, in hopes of one day reclaiming the city and restoring it to its former glory. 

MARTHVEIL (Veilian): Marthveil is the birthplace of alchemy and a hub of innovation, and is the most technologically advanced city in all of Terrae, with electric lighting being one of its main highlights. It’s named after the god of alchemy MARTH who was born in the region. 

HYTRÖTH (Püerthian): Hytröth lies at the foot of the sacred Mt. Hytröth, which is also known as MUINENS’s home. It’s no surprise that the Protector’s Academy and the largest OOM Temple are located here. They call themselves Püerthian because they are sheltered under the towering Mt. Hytröth from the worst of the north’s pain. 

SILVERKEEP (Silvian or Lathsburian): The hub of medicinal research in Terrae due to the incredible and sheer vast biodiversity of plants that can be found nowhere else in Terrae. They call themselves Silvian however, implants from Lathsbury are extremely common so it’s more of a blended culture. 

MORDIGA (Diisaian): The capital of Diisai, and the hub of harvest, food and drink. It’s known for its beautiful rolling hills and it’s residents are known to be quite superstitious.

SNAKE’S CANYON (Illumese): On the Eastern edge of the continent lies the dark badlands of Snake’s Canyon. They are known for their canyon built homes and the guild class, Illuminators or Hexers.

WISH OF PALANTHIA (Palanthian): The residents of Wish of Palanthia are known for their kindness, generosity, and agreeable nature. The city is famous for being the site where a peace treaty was signed after the first and last Terranean civil war. Etched in stone in the center of the city is the grim promise the city stands to uphold: Should Terraneans ever war amongst themselves again, IISIDIA will destroy all life on Terrae. 

BASS LANDING (Canterian): Taken from cantatio, the Canterian people of Bass Landing are famous for their music and arts.

EASTHOLLOW (n/a): Easthollow lies close to Eros and the Western bank and is nicknamed “The Guild City” as any willing adventurer must travel to Easthollow to pass the Guilder’s exams and be chosen in the guild bid before they can become a guild hand proper. The city is called “hollow” because there are no permanent residents that reside here; and as such it has no significant cultural heritage. 

KOSS (Koskans) -> A seafaring city, named after the god of the seas himself KOST and located at the major junction between Mainland Terrae and the Eastern Sea. All major trade sea trading routes pass through here and its floating markets are famous throughout Terrae.

UBWYN (THE CITY OF SORROWS) (n/a): Ubwyn is mostly a ruin now, but it was the first place the Nomads that would eventually become The Lathsburians established after they fled from Eros after The Day of Fissures. It’s mostly remembered as a cultural site, and some say they do occasionally see what seems to be a tall, pale, ghostly woman floating among the ruins at night.

🥪What kind of unique and/or popular foods exist in your WIP? Magical foods?

haven't got too in the weeds of food yet, but if you wanna read a funny incident about food in this wip, how about you read The Quest for the Perfect Labyrinth Honey Loaf and lemme know what you think lmao

🚗How do people travel over land in your WIP? Are there any magical machines that help?

no machines :) just horse or beast of burden. perhaps deer and moose or other cloven animals are tameable i just haven't decided yet bc fuck flora and fauna PFF

⛵How do people sail over oceans and seas in your WIP? Are there any magical machines that help?

no machines :) by boat! however, before you travel across the ocean its always good to pray to the sea god KOST, as he invented boats and seafaring and you may as well get his blessing before you start venturing into his domain.

✈️Is air travel possible in your WIP? Through magic, technology, or a mix of both?

nope, though the first place to discover such a thing will be marthveil, they just haven't gotten that far yet lol.

🪄Is there magic in your WIP? Where does it come from? & 🎆How does magic work in your WIP? How can it do all those fantastic things?

OO BOY IS THERE MAGIC. so there's actually a LOT of different kinds of magic in terrae so to make my life simpler i'm just gonna do more copy and pasting from one of my NUMEROUS worldbuilding docs.

but very very basically, all Terraneans’s souls are made of sana (health and vitality), cava (chaos energy), and ars (magic potential). None of these are perfect percentages (they don’t have to equal 100 basically). Your soul needs to have at least 30% ars in order to use any kind of magic whatsoever. so if you're rocking a 50-29-15 set up for instance, y'aint using magic lmao. while most people don't know their exact thresholds, medics specifically tend to know their breakdown due to the growing technology in Silverkeep to measure this, as well as they need to know what their sana limits are so they don't kill themselves tm. and speaking of that, here are the kinds of magic:

Sana Inanem — is the practice of using excess sana in order to heal the wounds of others. This is strictly used by the medic class. Wounds can be surface level or internal and the only limit is the amount of 'excess' sana you have (essentially, how much sana can you give away without killing yourself). Usually a base threshold sana of 55% or more is needed.

Subortus — is an offshoot of sana, but is one of the “extraction” magics. It is the practice of utilizing the sana properties of plants and the ars of beast/monster parts in order to create potions, remedies or salves that have a variety of functions. It is the only magic that you do not personally need the base threshold of ars to use it. 

Diruam — a protective, fire based magic used solely by medics. In order to use diraum, like any sana based magic, you must have an excess of sana. While it is not particularly powerful offensively, it is a quite useful defensive last resort

Vis — is the magic of the force of your own will and is extremely versatile. It is the most common magic used by magic users in Terrae. 

Muram — is a magic only used by alchemists and involves using the scientific and biological understanding of the world around you, in order to break down and transmute the components of things around you into other things, such as plants to steel or dirt to gold. It allows you to change the state, composition, and properties of essentially any matter. 

Lumine — is an offshoot of vis and is one of the “extraction” magics. Lumine is only used by illuminators and allows a user to draw the ars out of other beings or rocks/minerals (which are rich in ars) to channel energy. Illuminators can also be called hexers as they can do darker things with lumine unto others. 

Tenom — is an offshoot of vis and is one of the “extraction” magics. By drawing out the cava of beasts and monsters you can turn yourself into a brute force powerhouse. Tenom however has extreme drawbacks, as its over usage can lead to death or insanity. 

Chaos Touched — Isn't necessarily a magic in the traditional way, but it is a blessing from the god MIZDARR, most usually to rangers, gifting them the ability to see and sense chaos (or corrupted cantillo) in the world around them, appearing like an aura around beings and beasts affected by it. it is also a skill that is developed by dark hunters (though not as proficently as rangers) as they are in close connection with cava thanks to usage of Tenom.

Cantatio — Is the second oldest form of magic and literally brought the universe into being as it is the magic of creation through music. It is very rare that Terraneans are able to grasp this ancient and complex magic, but some very skilled bards have been able to dabble in it on occasion.

Cantillo — is the oldest form of magic and what contains the fabric of the universe, only able to be wielded by IISIDIA. It's also known as "deeper magic" and its too much for any mortal or god outside of her to comprehend.

🚫What CAN’T magic do in your WIP? Where does the mystical power fall short?

the only thing magic can't do, essentially, is create immortality (though you can be risen from the dead) or deify someone unless the gods will it. the great thing about vis especially, is the sky is the limit on what you can do and the only determining factor is your own power and discipline. the other thing is control time--time is always moving forward at its own pace and you can't change that. you also can't dimension hop; time and space are apart of cantillo's jurisdiction and only IISIDIA can control that.

🤕What are the drawbacks to using magic in your WIP? Do they improve or get worse depending on how powerful you are?

Tenom has the most disasterous side affects of its usage so tl;dr the more you use tenom the more your sana will be consumed by cava to the point that you can eventually be overcome and overrun by it and become a monster yourself. :D

🔮Who can wield magic in your WIP? Everyone, a select group, or basically nobody?

people who use magic are called artisans (bc it comes from ars), and as aforementioned, you need 30% ars to be able to do magic in any capacity; if you don't have that then you can't use magic at all. there isn't any way to increase this either, though subortus doesn't require the usage of one's internal magic to do, so basically if you don't have ars you can always try subortus.

💪How do people wield magic in your WIP? Are magic users able to bend it to their will, or merely guide it?

do whatever you want baybeee you got free will LMAO

🔨Is magic considered useful or dangerous in your WIP? Do different cultures or species view magic differently?

generally considered useful! magic is entertaining and awe inspiring, or its useful and practical. bc as i said before most terraneans are community oriented, they tend to use their magic (most of the time) to help others. obvs again theres people who do use it for bad and evil but fuck those people LMAO.

tenom & lumine specifically are definitely more side eyed however, because they are more deadly than other forms of magic and can either cause severe harm to yourself (tenom) or to others (lumine). lumine itself does have its practical uses, as in Snake's Canyon artisans who can use lumine are vital to ensuring that the area is lit and traversable. tenom does have practical uses to aegeans (people who live in eros) because only dark hunters (aka people who use tenom) are able to traverse argos to try and clear it of the monsters within it HOWEVER it is so extremely dangerous that many people are against its usage. eros has no interest in entertaining outsider's opinions on the matter though.

🤷Is there a way someone could lose their ability to use magic? Has it ever happened before?

not really. essentially, its apart of your 'genetic' make up, and there's really no way to 'change' those percentage numbers... unless you use tenom enough and then you become a monster, but then basically you just cease having sentience?? so like ig you can count that but in general magic is just sorta something you're born with the ability to do or not.

⚙️How has magic influenced the level and complexity of technology in your WIP? & 🧪How does magic interact with scientific advancements in your WIP? Are they considered the same?

magic has allowed society to progress in interesting ways and the way that people have come to the conclusions that we have in our world. while science has been a major inovator for us, for terraneans magic is at the heart of innovation because magic itself (especially when you get into things like subortus and muram) is a science! while they haven't fully escaped the equivalent of the medieval period, in some ways they have very much advanced in ways that we hadn't in similar circumstances due to the proximity to magic. firearms (not automatic ones), as well as electrict are the two current biggest innovations that are equivalent to our world that have been discovered in the hub of innovation, Marthveil. and silverkeep is constantly improving and advancing their medicinal techniques as more and more about the composition of the soul and the relationship between sana, cava, and ars is discovered. but because magic itself is so prevalent, things that we use in our society aren't really things that i feel like will ever occur to them to use in theirs. i can't really think of any examples rn bc basically i don't really like making modern magic wips too often LOL so that's why tcol is like this but yeah i'm sure when i think more about what tech they do and don't have i'll get more into the weeds of this.

i do know they definitely have plumbing though. i refuse to allow chamber pots and throwing shit in the street to be a thing LMAO.

⚔️Are there any special magical objects in your WIP? What do they do? Who owns them?

telus weapons and objects are rare; they're basically magic imbued weaponry or trinkets, which allows people who don't have ars to bypass the usual requirements of being able to do magic (having ars) but limits the usage because usually the object or weapon only has a few specific abilities and doesn't have a mind of its own so it can't be as versatile. its very hard to create such a weapon; usually they're blessed in some manner by a god. there aren't really any that show up in any of the stories (unless you count guardian weapons as telus weapons but those are Very Very different) that i have for this wip, but perhaps i should and can make a side story about one. i think i would have it take place in diisai.... but i'll ponder that later lol.

🧐Do people research magic in your WIP? What’s the most popular or prestigious topic of study? The least popular?

technically people only research magic when they're trying to become a certain class of some kind. i'll just list out the "specialty" magics real fast ->

MEDICS study sana inanem, diruam and subortus

ALCHEMISTS AND GUNNERS study muram

HEXERS/ILLUMINATORS study lumine

BARDS study cantatio

DARK HUNTERS study tenom

all other classes use some form of vis, if they use magic at all as its not a requirement (ie: MBAs, rangers, protectors, hunters)

because not everyone can do magic, its not really a requirement of standard education and you usually only seek it out if you're trying to do shit in guilds or if you're trying to be in a particular field of sorts. (and as an aside, there isn't really a difference between engineers and alchemists in tcol simply because muram is also very good for construction and those types of things)

the most popular would be sana inanaem and subortus because everyone needs a medic or doctor at some point in their life, and silverkeep university is the most prestigious institution in terrae for study.

the least popular is lumine because it is very niche and mostly only those from snake's canyon use it. and even then its not a structured sort of study, its more field-learned.

⚕️How has magic changed the landscape of medicine and healing in your WIP?

sana inanem allows for a sort of catch all healing. you don't necessarily need the specifics like how we do in scientific healing; the magic itself will smooth out whatever ails you from internal bleeding, to coughs or fevers, to broken bones. i will say that generally speaking sana inanem because it is more intensive on the healer themselves, tends to be saved for physical ailments like injuries and the like; subortus tends to be the go to for other like infections and things because it is less taxing if it needs to be used over a period of time. sana inanem in the case of illness is a sort of 'last resort'

the other thing is that very extremely powerful medics are able to do things that are virtually impossible for us to do which is bring someone or something fully back from the dead. the phoenix maneuver is what it's called and its been studied for generations, however there has only ever been one medic on record ever able to do such a thing and that is Karenza Hawkins. she has been studied extensively to determine why she is able to do this and its because she has the rare condition (that i have to name) where sana is practically spilling out of her, she has an 80-20 sana to ars ratio. though this should disqualify her from being able to do magic bc she doesn't have the magic 30% because she literally has so much sana it literally spills out of her and she is able to heal irregardless. this unfortunately means though that any other magic outside of sana inanem is completely inaccessible to her. but still, its a marvel to behold and seeing her perform the phoenix manuever on a deer is the way she's introduced in book 1 :)

🏬What kind of magical professions can a magic-user pursue in your WIP? Is it considered especially prestigious, normal, or below respect?

like i said somewhere before all careers are basically considered important to upholding society so none of them are looked down upon in anyway really. magic users also aren't really beholden to one specific path unless you want to learn a specific kind of magic--however, if you want to learn vis, then you're essentially able to do anything you want without barriers. be free <3

🎭Has magic brought about social good in your WIP? Social ills?

generally i'd say magic has brought social good; but just like any tool it can be used for negative things. tenom is the only magic with a sordid history because it did not develop naturally and was not blessed by the gods. after vis came into being during The Day of Fissures, the Chieftain of Argos, Whisper of the Fire along with her head researcher Tenoma began to fervently study the limits of vis to try and find a way to combat the horrors that seeped out of Argos. this led to the creation of the Hunters With Magic research facility which basically conducted horrifying experiments of increasing cava on dissenters to Whisper's rule, and eventually led to the first 'true' dark hunter's creation, Twilightsorrow Idanly. it was horrific, and even now the history and methods are closely guarded secrets in eros; a lot of the general research itself even being destroyed from that time period. its a Hot fucking mess lemme tell you.

🙅Are there any kinds of forbidden magic? What kinds, and why?

not necessarily? there are certain magics that you simply cannot learn, essentially cantillo. like. its literally and physically impossible. but pretty much everything else is fair game.

🤔Are there any kinds of “forgotten” or ancient magic that nobody remembers anymore? How was the knowledge lost?

not really. some origins of certain magic (like tenom) have been lost, but not the know how.

🫥Are there any kinds of magic that are intentionally hidden from the general population? Who’s hiding this knowledge, and why?

The Hands of Qhozion and the origins of chaos are intentionally hidden. any of those who have discovered its power have been drawn to ruin. this is because QHOZION does not want anyone or anything to know that he exists; at least not until he's ready to reveal himself and take revenge of his own kinda against his own self. the only character that knows the full extent of what it is is MIZDARR; but he cannot speak on this for various plot reasons, and MUINENS has always been suspicious of him because he knows much more than he's letting on. he may in fact (and kinda does) know more than IISIDIA herself... which is worrying lmao. and its really just because IISIDIA chooses not to acknowledge this and has split herself in various ways. so.

all of this is book 2 plot stuff so i'm not gonna get too into the weeds about it but yahhhh.

⛪What are the popular religions in your WIP? Where is each belief more prominent?

so weird scenario; there isn't really an popular or major organized religion in tcol. the gods exist as a fact, and many different people have many different practices and have different gods that they favor more than others but like there's no like. majorly approved/state sponsored/populist belief. even oracle temples differ from temple to temple in how they practice and the gods themselves are quite benevolent in it. many of the gods feel as though they exist to aid terraneans and the world of terrae itself; and not the other way around (which would be that the world exists for them and their pleasure) so like while it can be appreciated to have terraneans worship or reach out, to a lot of the gods terraneans are simply children that they look after and nurture with or without thanks. its simply part of being a deity, its their duty if you will.

to kind of give a quick run down of places where there is an obvious preference:

MARTHVEIL -> as is in the name, they are very partial to MARTH

EROS/ARGOS -> YLENE, BRULENE and LENEYUBR (the combination of YLENE and BRULENE)

HYTROTH -> MUINENS

KISKKADDON -> RANKIMA, which is an alter of MIRANKA

KOSS -> KOST

SILVERKEEP -> YUTARA

MORDIGA (and Diisai generally) -> KIBARUM

BASS LANDING -> The Musicians of Creation, which include Nitarr, Tuara, Rana, Ranae, Wanao, and Waname

WISH OF PALANTHIA -> as the name suggests, Palanthia

THE LABYRINTH ITSELF -> The Demon King, obviously lol

📢Are there any particularly influential religious institutions in your WIP?

time for more copy paste <3

The Frosted Arches -> The largest Oracle House for MUINENS is located in Hytroth (up north) and it is considered the sacred homeland of the goddess. Oracle Houses for MUINENS don’t have standardized names the same way that MIRANKA’n oracles do, and that is specifically because they’re so old and for a long while, there was only One place (really) that oracles were and the rest were offshoots and only local Things. the large institutions we see for MUINENS don’t crop up until after the War of Lathsburian Succession.

House of Carnations -> where Oomi’s study and become the oracles. break off temples and for MIRANKA are named after different plants and flowers that have lovely scents. The House of Carnations is the largest and is in Wish of Palanthia where MIRANKA was born. Flower Houses (as they’re called generally) can pop up anywhere in Terrae and usually every town has at least one to help with relationship disputes. As of the year _(haven't decided)_ they were made mandatory for every township or city to have one per a certain population size. 

The Arena -> the only place where Oracles of YLENE practice and it is only located in Eros. it is exactly what it sounds like — a giant arena where the Champion lives their day to day life. they hold strategy meetings, sacrifices and prayers, and battle to the death for anyone who wants the honor of becoming the next champion can challenge them. they also tend to host extreme sporting events. Occasionally Champions will have a right hand man (or two) called Tacticians, who serve the symbolic role of Brulene as she is to YLENE. However, only the Champion has direct contact with the goddess.

🙏Is devotion to a particular religion expected of people? What happens to non-believers?

being a non-believer isn't really a thing? this is sort of a universe wherein it is a fact that the gods exist; however they don't demand that you serve them and there are no consequences for being apathetic or neutral to their existence. some people are definitely more religious than others, but honestly for many people the gods are just sort of a thing that exist and they just continue on with their lives about. hell, even though oracles are divinely inspired, a lot of times especially when people go to OOMIs, do so out of the help they can provide and not necessarily because they are religious. so tldr devotion and more zealot practices do exist, but like you also don't have to give a shit if you don't want to lmao.

🫵Can the deities in your WIP grant people special powers? When do they choose to do so?

sort of? deities can bestow favor upon you in certain ways-or certain deities can. the ones that are more likely to provide blessings are YUTARA, as both the deity of medicine and gender expression, their gift is towards genderqueer people who pray to them in desire of their body to match their inner self. this isn't really a 'special power' but people with all sorts of anatomy can exist if they pray to YUTARA fervently enough and they hear your prayer. 2 characters who have been blessed by them are Jagoda Arthea (a trans man who has top surgery and what we would consider working phalloplasty - as in he can have kids) & Charissa Goodwyn (a trans woman who has breast augmentation but still has her dick and is sterile), though many more exist tm.

MIZDARR can grant the Chaos Touch to those he decides but it is very unclear why he decides to do so? there's not much rhyme or reason, but more often than not these people do tend to become or already are rangers. one character who is especially unique is Eryn Arcus, who is Chaos Touched since birth but it has left her completely blind outside of the chaos she can sense. the other character is a spoiler :P

finally, guardians are ALWAYS venerated from especially noteworthy or prophecy fulfilling terraneans. MUINENS has venerated the most guardians (3 to be exact- 2 known and 1 spoiler) however, MIRANKA venerated Arian in the third age :). this is slightly different than granting powers because basically its giving you one step under a god status lol.

🗣️Can anyone commune with the deities in your WIP, or do they only answer to special devotees?

nope, you gotta be an oracle or a guardian to directly communicate with the gods and even then theres only certain gods that do communicating through them. a lot of it has to do with the power that gods have. i'm quite a fan of the whole if you look at a deity you will simply vaporize type shit so unless you're some sort of divine... good luck with that.

📞Is it rare to be contacted by higher beings, or does it happen all the time?

super rare bc its literally impossible for gods to speak with terraneans unless they're oracles lmao. and with oracles they don't necessarily speak with the god themself... its a bit confusing to explain but basically the god's energy/will manifests within them bc they're divinely inspired/a conduit for their word. the reason why they tend to be so vague is that the inherent inability for gods and terraneans to connect means that it is difficult for oracles to decipher and explain the will of the gods in a way that can be understood by the common people. some more powerful oracles are better at it but its still difficult and taxing.

🧩Are there prophecies in your WIP? Do people believe in them? & 🌟Have any prophecies ever come true in your WIP’s history? How important are they to your WIP in the present?

yuh LMAO. many if not most prophecies come true in some way shape or fashion, however prophecies tend to be more individual focused; its really very rare that an oracle gets a prophecy for an entire event or anything like that--though it has happened that multiple oracles have recieved visions and prophecies regarding a string of individuals that are all connected to an eventual large event; however its very rare for those connections to be made until after the fact unless it is alarming enough to get brought before The Frosted Arches.

there's currently a prophecy in progress for one of our main characters though i won't tell you which :D (it'll be obious who if you know anything about tcol tbh)

👂Can anyone hear prophecies in your WIP, or do they only appear to certain people, like oracles? & 🤐Are prophecies kept secret, or told to everyone who wants to hear? Why?

only to oracles (specifically OOMs because MUINENS is a goddess of fate and destiny). they don't tend to have large scale prophecies that are told aloud to the public; if they recieve a vision that great then they usually have to take that information all the way to The Frosted Arches and then among the high council they will decide what next steps should be taken to ensure that MUINENS's will is achieved.

on the flip side, usually whenever babies are born, parents will take them to the nearest OOM to have them receive their oracle's blessing. this is basically a prophecy about how their life is going to go and while sometimes vague, or nondescript, there are times when it is quite... pronounced and alarming. usually in those rare instances, the parents are advised by the best course of action for their little one.

🗡️Is killing monsters or magical creatures a viable profession in your WIP? Is it lauded work or scorned?

yup that's what guilds are for! that's not their only purpose, but what modern (as in start of book 1) guilds do a lot of is killing monsters within the labyrinth lol.

😢Are monsters legitimately dangerous, or are they simply misunderstood?

DANGEROUS ITS NOT A FUCKING JOKE THEY CANNOT BE REASONED WITH DEADASS

beasts are misunderstood but also legitimately dangerous and unpredictable and while they are similar to monsters they are very much not the same thing.

💀Can people commune with spirits of the dead in your WIP? How? & 👻Do spirits wander freely in your WIP? Why? Is there a way to help them pass on?

you can't really, but it isn't uncommon to see them in certain places. tl;dr terraneans cannot pass on unless they are properly buried, and their spirit will wander aimlessly throughout terrae unless their body is buried OR unless The Lady of the Mists finds them and guides them to Cerullius; which is essentially a "heaven" of sorts. its a reuniting with IIARAN. you can't really speak to them if you see them but occasionally travellers have seen spirits wandering and have been able to guide them back to their bodies so they can be buried and pass on.

😱Is it considered normal or taboo to speak with the dead in your WIP? Does it vary from culture to culture?

its seen as a good deed, if you can. again something something terrae is basically socialist/communist or whatever but its seen as something you should do because no one should be forced to wander forever. also, its usually not speaking to them as y'all are on different planes of existence and more like following the ghost to its body and giving it burial rites.

⚰️Is it possible to completely resurrect someone in your WIP? How? If not, has anybody ever tried?

yup! phoenix manuever i talked about before lol. only Karenza has ever been able to do it.

🗺️Is your WIP a globe-trotting adventure, or is all the adventure contained in one place?

technically book 1 and book 2 kind of all take place between the labyrinth and lathsbury but bc tcol is a huge world and i have a lot of side stories in it you can argue its a bit gloe-trotty. but characters do travel often.

🧚Is adventuring common in your WIP, or something only for fairytales?

common!

🪙When people go on adventures in your WIP, what are they looking for? Fame, fortune, power?

all of the above :)

🦸Are there any legendary heroes or adventurers in your WIP’s history? What are they famous for?

YEAHHH so time for some more lists tm

lath of argos (aka Lath, Guardian of Valor) & ensio montero (aka Ensio, Sword of Valor) -> famously helped the goddess MUINENS among 33 other warriors corral monsters and beasts from across the lands of terrae into The Labyrinth, slaughtering many stragglers so they would no longer pose a threat to terraneans and giving their lives in the process. Lath became the first guardian, and also gave the people of Terrae who left Eros after the day of fissures their eventual name Lathsburians

immordia gallant (aka Immordia, Guardian of Exploration) & her son, gawain gallant -> famously helped the first Lathsburian ship make the journey across the treacherous eastern sea, holding the boat afloat long enough to allow the first lathsburians to make it to shore before giving her life in the process. if it weren’t for her contributions, the Diisaians would never have been discovered and the Diisaians would never know their distant Lathsburian cousins existed which both are grateful for.

king mitică the nomad -> tl;dr made sure the lathsburians didn’t go extinct and is regarded as the greatest king who ever lived; humble, modest, wise, and measured.

karlan of the sea -> the first leader of the diisaians who helped them journey across the great eastern sea and was favored by the god, KOST

i haven’t named this guy yet but he’s the leader of the kisks and basically he’s the one who helped them travel from the mountains of ubwyn to where kiskkaddon is today.

king savon the evergolden -> the principle force in the war of the seven sons who held back the depouring of the labyrinth that his brother ziri the windless caused. if it weren’t for his tactile prowess and leadership it’s very likely that the lathsburians would’ve all perished tm <3

a lot of these heroes are very lathsbury focused but it’s bc i haven’t really started branching out into the other city states and what’s going on with the timelines and whatnot! but fear not! there will be So Many More LMAO.

🦹Are there any infamous villains in your WIP? How were they defeated?

listtsssss

whisper of the fire, first chieftain of argos -> she’s a villain to ME so that’s why she’s going on this list idc. anyway after her horrifying and tyrannical also short ass reign, she was killed by the first COH, hyla at the behest of YLENE. her death caused the beginnings of the aegean civil war which eventually ended with the creation of the nightwillow clan.

prince ziri the windless -> fuck this guy specifically. anyway lord evondra personally kills him because Fuck this guy specifically.

lord evondra -> that’s spoilers <3

QHOZION -> that’s also spoilers <3

🌄How much has the landscape and environment of your WIP been shaped by magic? Have entire mountains been wiped off the map, or is everything the same as if magic didn’t exist?

well, the entire world came into being via musical magic—

jkjk (but it did) but to answer the question, the best example is the kiskkaddon desert, which is a sentient entity. i haven’t fully decided if its sentient because it is RANKIMA herself, or if its a completely separate entity, but basically kiskkaddon itself is a word that means “swallowing” and thus its the all swallowing desert. conditions are harsh and its all magically related lol. it could alllllso potentially have something to do with Phyddione which could be a cool tie in so i may explore that a bit 🤔

🌥️Are there any magical places in your WIP that are kept hidden from outsiders? Why?

The Thicket, where MIZDARR resides, is hidden because it is the birthplace of chaos and to go in there is to risk being touched by The Hands of Qhozion. MIZDARR can somewhat control how much chaos seeps through the thicket into Terrae, but as he warned MUINENS thousands of years ago, there’s only so long that he can hold chaos back before it is fully unleashed :>

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

hello hello what is your newest zhongchi fic about 👀

assuming you don't mean any of the info here and are alright with spoilers for the first chapter,

basically it's about zhongli dying on the rite of descension and waking up in a modern au alternate reality, except he's not just- appeared there, he's not reincarnated: he has taken over the body of the zhongli from that world. so he has to pretend he knows what's happening (and that he's not op and not human) while also investigating the reason why the original zhongli died in the first place

on the zhongchili side, childe is in liyue for reasons and he's befriended hu tao's gang, so as things get more complicated in the story and since he's a nerd in exorcism and fights, he gets more and more tangled up with the main mystery and zhongli himself

it's also a sort of xianxia au. i think i gave a bit of an explanation of what that is for those unfamiliar in the first chapter, and someone in here also sent me an ask about it, so. but for an ultrashort TL;DR, xianxia is a chinese fantasy martial arts story genre, and is a subgenre of wuxia (which is less fantasy-esque i think). if you're at all familiar with mxtx's works (mdzs, svsss, tgcf), that's what those are. if not, genshin itself uses a lot of xianxia stuff (the adepti, chongyun and shenhe, qiqi, baizhu, zhongli, how visions work, the miasmas xiao has to purify, adeptal arts, etc etc), only it doesn't use the genre-traditional names (likely bc wider audience n stuff); and so that's more or less what i'll be doing, too

[thealmightyemprex]

Fantasy month:Middle Earthathon Part 3 The Return of the King

.......OK....This might be one of the most baffeling movies that exists simply cause it exists .So this has nothing to do with Ralph Bakshis Lord of the Rings Film ,this is done by Rankin/Bass who did the Hobbit .Now a rumor is Rankin/Bass made this to cash in on Bakshis film when it was clear he was not making LOTR Part 2.....Thing is that just plain not true ,animation takes a long time and they started on this before the Hobbit was even finished.Nah the plan was always to follow up the Hobbit a light childrens story.....With the final book in a TRILOGY that is connected to the Hobbit ,while not unkid friendly is a bit more complex.Why did Rankin/Bass think that going about a sequel in this backassward way was a good idea.....They didnt think people would sit through a whole trilogy .....So this is kind of a dumb idea for a film ,and whatever my oppinion on the finished product it is made on shaky ground ....Buthey its done by Rankin/Bass and while not every project they make is gold ,theyve made some pretty good stuff and while their Christmas Specials are what they are known for....Theyve done some damn good fantasy :Ive already discussed my love of their Hobbit,Flight of the Dragons is a total blast and The LAst Unicorn is a personal favorite of mine,so maybe this'll be great too....Well-OK lets get into the review

In this 1980 TV movie Gandalf (John Huston ),Elrond (Paul Frees ) and the hobbits Frodo(Orson Bean ) ,Samwise ( Roddy McDowall ) ,Merry(Casey Kasem ) and Pippin (Sonny Melendrez ) are celebrating the 129th birthday of Fordos uncle Bilbo(Also Orson Bean ),who asks Frodo about what happend to his magic ring ,and thus we get a tale of war ,death,of litterally carrying the world on your shoulders....All set to Glenn Yarburough songs-OK We gotta talk about it

Look....I dont hate this movie ,I actually quite enjoy it .....Despite how technically it is NOT GOOD .Ya know how the biggest criticism of the Jackson Hobbit films is they try to take a childrens story and fit it in the mold of a grand epic.....Its the same problem here but reversed ,they take a grand epic and try to make it a childrens tale.Also I cant imagine how confusing this film mustve been to kids in 1980 who had never experienced any version of LOTR or just knew the Hobbit cause this is clunky as hell ...That said it is such a weird idea I cant help but find it charming in an odd way

Theres a lot of songs and dream sequences (Mostly performed by Glenn Yarburough as the Minstrel of Gondor )they are all pretty decent though my favorites are

Leave Tomorrow Till it Comes which is paired with a nice fantasy sequence of Frodo imagining a more peaceful journey complete with friendly orcs

Towers of the Teeth :A really solid villain song mocking the heroes forces

Frodo of the Nine Fingers which....Full disclosure is kind of a meme in my family ,easy way to make us laugh is to say "Frodo of the NInnnnnnnnne Fingers and the ring of Doooooom "

And of course the orcs song When Theres A WHip Theres A Way which maybe my second favorite thing in the entire movie,it humanizes the orcs and is really catchy

The cast is basically mostly the same people from the Hobbit .John Huston is still commanding and grand as Gandalf ,Brother Theodore is legit menacing and creepy as Gollum .Paul Frees replaces Cyril Richard as Elrond and hes good ,John Stephenson plays the Witch King and I kind of love the weird Skeletor esque voice he gives him and his design is pretty awesome ,and Don Messik is good as both Theoden and the Mouth of Sauron.Of the returning actors the one who really impresses me is Orson Bean ,who made for a great comedic protagonist in Bilbo ,but as Frodo hes pretty good capturing the wearyness and I especially love his evil laugh once he becomes corrupted by the ring

Im sad to say aside from one,,,,,,I dont have much to say about the new cast members ,as Merry and Pippin dont do much (Though Casey Kasem has a few good dramatic moments which legit impressed me considering I mostly know him as Shaggy from Scooby Doo )Nellie Bellflower get a good scene as Eowen but since theres no build up to her she falls flat and the same goes for William Conrad as Denethor as while Conrad does the madness well....All his scenes are cut so hes just a crazy old guy.Hell Aragorn the title character.....IS BARELY IN THIS AND WE GET NONE OF HIS BACKSTORY ,we dont know hes friends with Frodo,hes just some vague king guy and while Theodore Bikel definately makes him imposing and kingly ,like the others hes flat

However the film SHOULD be watched for one thing :Roddy McDowall as Sam.McDowall is one of my favorite actors but on paper hes a weird choice but thankfully McDowall NAILS it ,putting aside his refined mannerisms to fit Frodos trusted gardner ,and he fills that heroic latter part of the story Sam really well .Honestly due to how good McDowall ,Bean and Brother Theodore are ,there scenes are the best part of the movie .I also wont lie the emotional moments did get me misty eyes

So this film IS an oddity ,but a pretty interesting one and very fun to watch and again Bean and McDowall are fabulous .Its a bit of a mess but its got some good stuff there

@countesspetofi @theancientvaleofsoulmaking @the-blue-fairie

@ariel-seagull-wings @themousefromfantasyland @princesssarisa

@amalthea9 @barbossas-wench @filmcityworld1

[wandering-knight-asahina]

some lore things!! ask me in the inbox if you have more questions about this stuff or just in general :) this is a lot of text so it might be a little hard to read. i'll clarify anything you need me to!!

This is set in a high-fantasy world. one that you would get isekai'd to if you got hit by a car If you want to choose a time period thing it's loosely around renaissance period europe. Don't worry too much about historical accuracy because it doesn't matter You can use any fantasy-esque card for these characters!! make your own stories for them!! go wild!! let me know what they are though i wanna see Mostly Mafuyu things: -> Mafuyu is a knight in training for the Yoisaki kingdom. Mafuyu's the head of her regiment. Her mother is pushing her towards becoming the personal knight to the next in line to the throne (Kanade) -> Kanade is the crown prince of the Yoisaki kingdom. T-boy trying his best to rule because his dad is not doing great. Not fully human but mom is dead so. Doesn't know what (taken from Kanade blog) -> Most times, Mafuyu will introduce herself as "Yuki" to strangers. The fae could be anywhere y'know Other: -> The Virtual Singers are gods/deities in this rather than pop-stars. -> Magic does exist. Most mythical creatures you can think of exist really -> From a tech standpoint, it isn't that advanced. They still think that the universe revolves around Earth and stuff -> Religiously, the elves mostly worship the Kagamine twins (idea by @/ithappenedonroute66)

[lifeofmysteries]

anyway im going to be annoying and share my opinion bc sometimes I just need to talk - I read Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh and it's enjoyable, a fun read, the prose is good etc etc I had fun

but then it got me thinking

SDG is a sci fi that feels like a fantasy due to the nebulous nature of the main plot device (the wisdom) which is basically a god that was created through Science instead of fantasy so in my head I am cateogorising it as Sci-Fantasy - not so much something that is exploring the technical potential of what could be, but a reflection on our current society through the lens of the fantastical and distant. SDG touches on a lot of topics - facism, eugenics, reproductive control, genocide, systematised rape - there's a lot it touches on. the end itself deals with these topics in a fairly simplistic manner. that feels fine when reading, as I was invested in the characters themselves by that point so the particular nature of the political resolution of the novel wasn't to my concern. the resolution of the novel I feel can be pretty accurately summed up with 'violence bad give people a chance' which is very doctor who-esque so in that regard I liked it.

howeverrrr asterisk asterisk asterisk i feel it reflects a wider issue of fantasy/sicence fantasy to take complex societal issues and then reduce it to a simple narrative resolution that I feel can be best summed up with the word deracialised.

Kyr the protagonist is raised by Gaea, a group that intends violent revenge on the aliens that once destroyed planet earth. Other humans do exist, but they live on a shared planet with other aliens. Gaea views itself as the last bastion of humanity that survived the genocide, and the aliens en masse deserve retaliation for it. The comparison invites itself with real world comparisons to violent trauma, in fact the afternote asks you to consider it. however that afternote makes you more aware of the fact that this genocidal trauma is a real trauma for many people in the current world, and just being able to 'let go' of their anger to those who eradicated their culture isn't really an option. the easily simplified resolution where one patriarchally villainous man is killed while the rest of the ship leaves into the presumably happy future, the entirety of 2000 people assumed to be going to assimilate into the rest of the world to live alongside the aliens, is emblematic of a viewpoint that can only come from an understanding of this kind of violence that comes from a distance. the fact that the author studied classics at Cambridge makes this distance all too understandable.

i'm not the first to write about the facist rhetoric inherent in the worldbuilding of fantasy - see orcs - but I think something should be noted for the recent attempts to try and depict societal complexity, but through a fictionalised marginalised group that unsurprisingly is openly depicted as white and cis. think the X-men, think Disneys' Zombies, think Some desperate glory, these groups provide an allegory of marginalisation to explain to young people but again and again this story is told through white voices, through characters that themselves don't contain traits that would be marginalised from our experiences. it tells of a truth that these stories appear to not be able to be told from the reality of the experiences of systemised violence that is experienced by people of colour, by trans people, by any other marginalised group that doesn't easily present itself to the status quo on the resulting books cover art

[lumoong]

Fantasy races

Okay so I think this fantasy trope is pretty good, interesting atleast, but at the same time can be kinda annoying, and I think it's because almost every fantasy world nowadays fits in two categories, only humans and tolkien/dnd races. Sure they are exceptions like the Stormlight Archive, but when you hear magic race you think on elves and dwarves. not singers or others.

Another issue is that most of the time in this worlds every race is monocultural, and in those cases humans almost always are the standard medieval europe, and always the most common species/race.

The settings with only humans probably popularized after fantasy got oversaturated with the tolkien-esque races, and I think it's because it's easy, and comfortable (not bad per se). It's familiar and everybody knows what a halfling or an orc is, so that's why they are so popular in the genre. And it's risky to innovate in that sense, to create your own fantasy races or made the classical ones with different tropes than the usual ones. It's like making a sci-fi story without space travel, you can definitely do it, they're not essential to the genre, but it's a trope so iconic that you immediately think about it, even before than thinking if it should be there or not.

So my point is, magical races aren't bad, dungeon meshi have them and it's really good, It's really a thing about the execution rather than the ideas. That said, it's cool to try to go off the tropes and try to innovate, it's a good creative exercise, but at the same time, trying to be diferent just for the sake of it can end up being worse.

[specialagentartemis]

As someone who doesn't really like grimdark -- my biggest annoyance in 'historical style' fantasy writing (y'know, the standard medieval fantasy, or other eras) is that everything is trying so hard to be Game of Thrones, and it's just like 'please stop'. Not everything has to be about the conception of society being a terrible place full of violence and violence being the only answer and everything is dirty and everyone is mean, and so on so forth that GRRM and his fans like to posit as 'historically accurate'.

People have always been people, whatever era they lived in. They liked colourful things, they wrote shopping lists and asked their parents to remember them to their siblings and friends, they cared about keeping up appearances, they found joy in the lives they lived and the things around them, they cursed poor candelight and cats smudging their ink, they left behind marks that mean we know even now that they existed, and they sang and told stories as they worked.

Yeah, sure, wars happened, plagues happened, they didn't have the modcons and knowledge we do now, but that doesn't change that they were people doing what people do.

... I think this is why I like Pratchett, honestly. He acknowledges the way that people will be people, even down to the faults that come of it, but he also acknowledges the funnier side of things, and even the brighter, more hopeful, more optimistic side of things.

But yeah, this is why I can't be having with grimdark.

Undeniably! I don't disagree with you that there's a lot more to life and history than suffering. That's important.

I admit I don't read a whole lot of medieval-esque fantasy. I actually really loved A Song of Ice and Fire for some of the most compelling character writing and political intrigue I've read in fantasy, but it's not my go-to genre. What books are doing it in a grimdark way? I guess I would hardly be surprised if there's that kind of trend-chasing in medievalesque historicalesque second-world fantasy, but I've often found descriptions of being "grimdark" to boil down to "I didn't like it" more than naming a consistent set of traits tbh.

I'm an archaeologist, haha; I definitely know the feeling of connecting with humanity across the centuries and millennia, looking and something and thinking, oh, wow! I do that, or I've seen that, or that's just like us... I study 700 year old pottery, and there's something special about holding a pot that was clearly made by a child, because it looks basically the same as the pinch-pots I made in elementary school art class. It's something that I definitely think people writing in very different times and cultures could stand to remember more, that people inhabited these lives. Making characters feel like real people who really live in this world is a perennial pitfall of second-world sff. That's for sure.

But people being people doesn't just mean being nice and funny and quirky. Like, very often it does mean being selfish or prejudiced or suspicious of people unlike them. Generosity is ubiquitous in humans vultures, and so is violence.

I love Terry Pratchett! I love Discworld! He definitely has one of the sharpest, most sympathetic satirical eyes for modern life, and I love Discworld for that. But the Discworld books are also comedies, and not the be-all end-all of fantasy. I dunno. I kind of get tired, sometimes, of the "people are inherently good actually" discourse of tumblr. I don't believe that. I don't believe people are inherently bad either; I don't believe people are inherently anything other than prone to ingroup/outgroup thinking tbh.

I'm definitely not saying you have to like grimdark fantasy. I don't think anyone has to like any genre. I try not to moralize liking genres. I get a lot of value out of books that feel to me like they're acknowledging that sometimes things really are that bad and sometimes people are mean and you gotta deal with it. I'm not always in the mood for that. Certainly I have plenty of faves that aren't depressing as well (I do love Discworld! I blog about The Murderbot Diaries a Lot!) I'm interested in books that make an attempt to portray the best, most utopian society the author can imagine. I just... also, for example, read Ninefox Gambit at the height of the pandemic when no one knew what was going on and no one knew when there would be a vaccine and there were protests every day being met with police brutality and I was throwing up nearly everything I ate out of anxiety, and the violence and the war and the heavy imperial dystopianness of it calmed my brain down a lot during that time. Because "react badly to plagues" and "violence" are also what people do, and at that time, it resonated to see someone agreeing.

[wardenwyrd]

Writeblr Introduction

Dotted in secret stars and whispered moons lies The Warden O' Wyrd; too bright smiles and sharp eyes linger on her skin, miasma orbiting their visage. When dusk's hands sweep fluttering eyes closed her shackles, in turn, loosen.

Greetings and welcome all, I am Wardenwyrd - connoisseur of messy queers, the freaky & occult, and all things speculative fiction! I am freshly new to Writeblr and am keen to dig my claws so fellow denizens of Writeblr interact if you enjoy my vibes < 3

Open to ask and tag games !

◈What I write ◈

Anything and absolutely everything speculative, weird horror, all shapes and forms of queerness, and a metric ton of worldbuilding.

Genres: Fantasy (Low, high, dark, fairy tale-esque, etc), Sci-Fi, Paranormal, Romance, Horror, Mystery

Fantastical, often ethereal and treacherous worlds flavoured with flowery prose

Queer, neurodivergent, and disabled characters and themes. All kinds of diversity really. Always looking to broaden and grow my noggin' with wisdom

Gender queer characters. An UNBELIEVABLE amount of dyed hair and pronounces.

Body horror: elegant body horror; gross, grimy body horror; wonderfully queer body horror 'til I burst at the seams; all sorts. Twisting of the body into something other than human as a form of beauty my beloved < 3 < 3

Characters who desperately need therapy (That would be my fault)

Rich settings and worlds. Give me intricate magic systems !!! give me ecology that could be shown in a nature documentary !!!

🌔About Me 🌒

Goblin in my (late) teens. I've been writing for a whiiiile but started really getting into it about half a decade ago. I will ravenously consume all forms of creative media.

⭐Likes ⭐

Favourite colour: Purple my beloved Favourite band: Mili (I'm so normal about them) Favourite genre/s: Gothic lit, Fantasy, Horror romance, whimsical fairies Fav insect: Moths/Butterflies

Stats:

Creative writing college student

Panromantic Ace | Queering my gender to the max

English (Regrettably)

Autism kreachure

Revolving door of hyperfixations on science-y stuff

Purple hair (Not beating the stereotype allegations)

WIPs

[Note: I am very bad at deciding on WIP names]

Prisma

My surreal fantasy WIP comprised of a collection of different stories linked by a unifying setting.

Colour-Coded to the max. Each central story focuses on a character assigned a colour, differing in tone, POV, and focus. Main three are purple, blue, and red.

Literal becomes figurative, and figurative literal

Charms and incantations of old swirl in from afar, weaving our hands together with something much deeper than flesh – a curious sentiment oozing from the recesses of Damsel’s cloak as the feeling of moss and stone wove through my veins; cold and refreshing.

◉

‘What absurdity’, The Arbiter would think to himself. After all, those carmine red eyes of his delve into the primaeval madness: in their muddy depths lies the shivering madness - Fear. From fear is the knowledge wrenched from uncertainty and bloodshot eyes. Dread is the light; tugging on world-weary watchers. 

Sort of portal fantasy, sort of not. The stories in this WIP span across many eras and places, yet often find themselves connecting and mingling. Incredibly queer.

Main characters:

MC of Red, Jack Pronouns: He/Him Bnuuy ass trans Victorian boy. Pasty and WILL combust in the sun. Autism creature. He gets a himbo bf and sick asf t-surgery scars as a treat &lt; 3 Character Playlist

MC of Blue, Hel Pronouns: Any/All seemingly innocent girl but remove the innocent and girl part. Kind of an eldritch horror after a character arc but like, that's the good ending. So old surnames weren't a thing in the era they're from. Character Playlist

MC of Purple, Dorothea Pronouns: She/They Gatekeep, Gaslight, Girlboss. Autistic adhd precocious mess who WILL make it your problem. Genuinely manipulative but has great hair so it's fine. Character Playlist

Other notable mentions

[Note: I will elaborate on all of these later]

Witch WIP

My beloved blorbos < 3 Once I figure out how to frame and present it in a more refined way I like I shall be posting about this.

Personal & Cultural struggle within a fantasy context | Disability & Identity as a main theme | Aroace protagonist and Queerplatonic relationship | Magic inspired by folklore and myth | Found family

Low Fantasy setting in a somewhat alternate earth

Sprawling magic system

Conventional fantasy groups but with a spin: revamping those vibes

Witches aren't just funny flying women but genuinely inhuman creatures with spicy shit going on

Demons and angels but: demon is the colloquial term for a class of magical beasts characterised by dense essence, not like hell demons. Angels are living algorithms born from patterns and don't have an actual association to any gods.

MC Playlists:

Branwen | Ingram

Five Steps From Hell

Biblically Accurate Angelic-Flavoured paranormal apocalypse

Autistic MC

More horror oriented than action

Lots of vibes.

MC becoming something not very human, but they're more worried that they aren't worried too much about it

I've got some dastardly plans for this one. Vibes and atmosphere whilst the world falls apart and neurodivergence is a great combo.

[edwin-paynes-bowtie]

Your post about how Lucie and Jesse aren't mature enough for their relationship reminded me of another weird thing with them, which is that Lucie met Jesse for the first time as a small child and has been holding onto this idealized vision of him as a faerie prince for years.

Now I can appreciate a ship where one person thinks the other is perfect but has to learn that they're human and ends up loving them all the more, but I don't think that Lucie ever really has that. I got the feeling that she loves Jesse because she loves the inherent romance and adventure of falling for a ghost and bringing him back to life through determination and love, that he's more of a character than a person to her. This might be because he isn't the best written character and the narrative never really acknowledges his flaws (like how he treated Grace), but it seems to me that Lucie was basically thrust into the middle of an epic romantic adventure that fit perfectly into her comfortable world of fantasy novels, and it just stayed that way. She is able to bring Jesse back with no real consequences (yeah Belial uses his body to kill Elias, but it all gets resolved without permanently hurting anyone the audience really cares about), and it's safer and better than when Jace is resurrected by the literal angel Raziel.

If ChoT leaned more into Lucie and Grace's friendship, I think we could have got a really interesting dynamic with Lucie building more empathy for Grace's trauma and learning about the problems with how Jesse treated her. Maybe Grace would inspire Lucie to confront Jesse, and it could help them both grow as people. I also like your idea about focusing on how the Lucie and Jesse situation impacted Malcolm and his quest to bring back Annabel. Actively addressing how much easier it was for her would do a lot to make me happier about the inconsistency, showing that the characters see how unfair it is and get angry about it. I'm fine with the fact that things aren't equally difficult for every character, I just wish there was more insight into how they react to the imbalance.

This ended up being more of a rant than a question, but Lucie frustrates me as a character because she could have been so interesting and she's just not.

So, preface. I'm very overall satisfied with ChoT and I give no fucks at all about Lucie, Jesse, or their relationship. I would not change anything if it would alter the endings of other characters (besides Grace in the ways I'll get to). But I don't think that my hopes would have impacted anyone outside of that trio, so, we good.

I think you hit the nail on the head with

I got the feeling that she loves Jesse because she loves the inherent romance and adventure of falling for a ghost and bringing him back to life through determination and love, that he's more of a character than a person to her.

and

Lucie was basically thrust into the middle of an epic romantic adventure that fit perfectly into her comfortable world of fantasy novels, and it just stayed that way.

I like Lucie fine, but I feel like she ended the narrative exactly as she began it. All of the other characters grew a lot, and Lucie's immaturity is so stark by the end. The only exception to this rule besides Lucie is Jesse, who like you acknowledged has no canon personality besides in the moment where he's utterly awful to Grace.

I periodically think about this, and I have wondered before if Cassie purposely made Jesse a cardboard cutout. Lucie/Jesse is clearly a fairy-tale-esque story, and perhaps she wanted people to be able to project whatever they wanted onto the "Jesse" void so they would feel as though he could be their dream fairytale prince. I don't think so, though, I think this is giving way too much credit to the narrative.

I think it's really interesting how (in my experience) being super underwhelmed with Lucie/Jesse is the TLH fan standard. I know two people who like them, which is great! I'm really close with one! I adore her! But like, "Lucie/Jesse is underwhelming" seems to be a take that 99.9% of TLH fans share, and it's so odd that they overwhelmingly missed the mark.

Re: Lucie and Grace, yeah. Agree.

Here's what I would have done with Ghostwriter (if I couldn't just background them and make them Malcolm's backstory):

Lucie and Grace work hard to ressurect Jesse. Ultimately, though, they fail and Jesse fades. This is the end of ChoI - he is just dead now instead of having come back to life. Lucie can no longer see him, and ChoT is not just her grief cycle but also her "holy shit I have to stop living in fantasy lala land" growth moment. It would have been such a moment of growth for Lucie and could have been poignant as fuck - and, since Jesse is just a cutout, would have only really been sad on a "poor Lucie" level. Grace and Lucie bond in their grief and become really close friends, which is their ending. Much more satisfying for Grace since she would have a friend after Kit died; much more satisfying for Lucie as an arc of growth.

I'm also saying this as a noted hater of tragedy, so I'm very secure in my knowledge that it's a hell of a good plotline. Also, Malcolm watching this failure could have been SO cool. Especially if Lucie, not doing well, had a confrontation with him for failing to resurrect Jesse. And then she refuses to call Annabel - not because she can't. Like, Malcolm's story would have developed even more layers.

If Cassie had been willing to call Jesse the plot device that he was instead of hurriedly trying and failing to give him a semblance of personality in ChoT, we could have had so much more with them.

[scatterpatter]

What’s dirt poor robins? Feel free to infodump

OKAY SO

Short answer: a band I found a few years ago that just- you ever have a band that somehow scratches that itch of your ideal music taste? Yeah. Yeah they're that for me. Got super into them, took a long break due to unrelated traumas, but then once I got back into them I had that "OH YEAH THIS SLAPS" reaction

I genuinely dont know how to describe their genre. Some albums are more indie/alt rock, some are more dark cabaret/steampunk, some are more space opera-esque, etc. I recommend just putting them on shuffle and go through a few albums if you wanna give them a try, just because if you dont like one album doesnt mean you wont like ALL their albums

Doesnt help that they dropped their latest album this year so man. Man. The brainworms. They're so real.

Good band to think of animatics to- ESPECIALLY with me and my fiance's Decopunk AU we've been working on

ME INFODUMPING ABOUT EACH ALBUM UNDER THE CUT

The Cage

This album introduced me to them! I found Great Vacation on one of those villain-inspired youtube playlists. This is probably their most "rock" album, before they started finding more of their niche in the more dark cabaret side of their later albums. A good intro album! Personal favorite songs: The Hollywood Song, Masquerade

The Last Days of Leviathan

Okay this is the album that REALLY starts getting into DPR's vibes- if you vibe with this one you'll probably vibe with most of their other albums. Very eldritch vibes Personal favorite songs: Leviathan, Sonnet to Science

The Raven Locks

This one's so cool because it tells a narrative story throughout that's super interesting to follow! This one has so many bangers omg. Definitely has range so goes from more stereotypical dark cabaret to more dark fantasy-esque- DEFINITELY keeping that eldritch vibe but with more of a steampunk kind of twist on it. Oh yeah also has my personal favorite rendition of Great Vacation! I greatly prefer Act 3 to Act 2 but still. Good stuff. Personal favorite songs: We Forgot We Were Human, Great Vacation, Wasteland, Take Him Away

Deadhorse

Oh mannnn. I don't know why but like. Space opera vibes. Some real good, like, high cinematic songs to really imagine your intense mental AMVs to. I genuinely don't know how to put these vibes into words but they really scratch a specific itch for me. Very "average person stumbles upon an Old World and all the mysteries around it, they go on a magical odyssey that completely changes them by the end" vibes and DONT ask how i got that bc I couldnt explain but trust me Personal favorite songs: Wax Cylinder Sonata, Skywriter, But Never A Key

Anthems to the Edge of the Earth

I dont have as much to say on this one bc its mostly remixes of some of their best tracks. That being said: REMIXES OF SOME OF THEIR BEST TRACKS, as well as introducing some new bangers! Highly recommend checking this one out, highest likelihood of finding at least one song you'll like here, unlike the other albums where you kinda have to have a niche taste to really like them Personal favorite songs: It Tore Your Heart Out, Anthem to the Edge of the Earth

Queen of the Night

Admittedly this one is my least favorite album, the definitely dips the furthest into Dark Cabaret and Vaudeville- so if you're more into that side of their music then this ones for you! That said, there's a few bangers that I always have on repeat so like. They dont have a single bad album imo. Personal favorite songs: Babylon, Enchante

Firebird

Their latest!!! This one's so good, kind of swings back into their more rock-related music, with a neat twist. Some songs carry a really cool vaporwave vibe that makes me almost nostalgic for music that feels older than it actually is. Like I feel I'd find this on a cassette tape despite the music not being anything like you'd find in the late 70s-80s. That being said their more dark fantasy and steampunk vibes are 100% on display here as well which Im ALWAYS here for Personal favorite songs: Political, Fever Dream, All at Once, To the Heights

In summary I just REALLY like this band!!! I say I'm mentally ill for them bc not only how much I listen to them but also, like, Im very aware that this is not "normal people" music taste. It's like- I want more people to get into them, but most of their tracks are very far from what youd see on mainstream radio, and if you dont like them then like... yeah you just wont like them. Kind of an acquired taste, not in an elitist way but in a "yeah this is a specific niche and if you like it then fuck yeah but if not then theres not much we could do"

If you're into more dark-steampunk, dark-cabaret vibes with plenty of orchestral rock and synth, I 100% recommend giving them a try.

But yeah the vibes of like half of these albums have inspired plot points of my dnd oc Corren, Ive thought of countless mental animatics to certain songs, and Firebird was a huge inspiration for Decopunk AU

I wish I was better at putting their vibes to words, theyre soooo... specific. They make me feel a very specific series of emotions that I cant quite put to words but I HOPE THIS HELPS EXPLAIN THEIR VIBES A BIT

[barbatos-sama]

there's a lot of arguing in general about how modern nattlan is amongst the fans, and i feel like some ppl are being overly forgiving of it and trying to put a woke hat on it since some people on the "its too modern" side are admittedly being racist, but most of us simply are not imo.

fonntaine has been repeatedly stated to be the most technologically advanced region, and every new invention we see in the game seems to come from there. however when saying this, we can't Ignore the fact that fonntaine's advancements are based on ancient sumerian and kanarian technology. fonntaine's advancements are aided by their proximity to the summeru desert and kannaria, they find old buried technology from long ago and reverse engineer / take inspiration from it. and even before summeru and kanaria, there was the original society of dragons that ruled this world before the humans colonized it, and that dragon society was supposed to be incredibly technologically advanced. so it's true that modern-esque technology isn't Unheard of in this world; one of the first enemies you fight in this game is a ruin guard, which is an ancient steampunk looking robot. that's the thing though: it Looks ancient and steampunk. it Looks like something out of a ruin. so it fits the aesthetic and doesn't look out of place!! that's almost the entire basis for our argument, They Aren't Bothering Aesthetically to make these things fit in anymore. we weren't complaining about naavia or chevruse's guns because they don't feel modern, or at least they have fantasy elements that make them fit in (naviia's gun being an umbrella cannon for example, its a very cool weapon but doesn't Look futuristic even though it technically is).

some people on the its too modern side Are being racist, i've seen ignorant people acting like nattlan can't have technology because "they still have tribes" as if tribes are some sort of primitive precursor to "advanced" (western) society and not just cultural. but people are taking these bigots and acting like they make up the entire argument and aren't just a minority. it's perfectly okay for nattlan to have technology, they aren't fucking cave people, but the laziness when designing said technology is getting ridiculous.

chassca's gun and the motorcycle aren't the only examples (although they're the most egregious) there's also xiilonen's turn tables.

they look too modern!! okay!! i just really don't think there's any way to make one of these fit in with the aesthetic of the game. and look at her sword, it's literally got LEDs!! like those light bars Move!

(i had a gif but tumblr was like "oh no oopsie that's too big to post buddie ))):" fuck offfff lmao)

also this is a bit of an aside but xiilonen in general is kind of all over the place because they gave her roller skates and made her a DJ in her gameplay but her actual role in the story is that she's a blacksmith. there's absolutely nothing in her design or gameplay that invokes Blacksmith, and she isn't just any old blacksmith either, she's like a Magic Blacksmith. an important one. its like they needed someone to fill that role and stuck her in there despite her theming having nothing to do with it, it bothers me.

i can excuse kinnich's video game aesthetic a bit more, and i know it sounds like i may just be playing favorites since i do like him most, but from a lore standpoint it makes sense because ajjaw is one of those ancient dragons from the advanced society i mentioned previously. ajjaw's projection comes from a bracelet kinnich wears which is ancient tech that he found in some ruins, so it makes sense lore wise. also, kinnich doesnt like Play Video Games, like video games aren't An Invention in this world, he just has an aesthetic that looks pixely and video gamey, it isnt like the turntables if you get what i mean? also thematically as well him being dendro also follows a pattern, in this game nature and tech have a really cool relationship that i've never seen elsewhere. you get kind of like, natural tech if that makes sense? you can see it in nahhida and kaaveh's gameplay. nahhida's attacks look like she's stepping on a keyboard and her skill looks like she's taking a picture, meanwhile kaaveh has a little robot suitcase that fights for him, but his suitcase is Appropriately Themed so it doesn't look out of place. again lore wise it makes sense because kaaveh Also got his suitcase from an acient ruin, it isn't a modern invention its left over tech from a bygone era.

idk its just weird to me to see some ppl sucking their dicks so severely over this, its just entirely a matter of them being uncreative and not trying to appropriately theme their stuff anymore so it fits in. it would have been so easy to give the goddess a motorcycle that fits in, botw had a freaking motorcycle that looked old and ruin-y.

they seriously just got lazy and gave her a modern one, like it just comes down to laziness 😭😭