#but of course the conlang doesn't exist

[cyanogen-miasma]

YT recommended me this Indian folk metal song called Dana Dan by a band called Bloodywood and...oogh

*quietly adds to the list of song I make animatics to in my head but never put on the computer*

content warning, it does address bad things that men do to women, so if you don't want to have stuff like that popping up on your playlists then..don't do that but

aaahhh

I know I've somehow ended up an animal jam blog but what I really came here to do was ramble about my ocs

and the ocs whom this song would apply to are due for a rework but I need to explain this

so there's this kid called Virus (I am changing her name in the rework because I want to make a conlang for the species she belongs to) and her dad is Vantablack (again, due for a name change). Vantablack is very neglectful and mean to her because of a disability that she has (the species they come from are derived from Lepidopteran insects, and she was born without wings), and is low-key kind of scummy to all the women in his life (he's not a rapist, as is mentioned in the song, but the vibes are there)...anyway...stuff happens and all this culminates in Virus smashing in Vantablack's head with a mace, and then doing a 'disrespecting the dead' sort of thing (that's a whole other thing that I won't explain here)

it's not 1:1 with the song but the raw energy of 'BRING THE BEATDOWN BRING THE BEATDOWN' the drive to slay the monsters, the sheer anger that people stoop to such lows and that society has produced the environment that funnels people down this pipeline, the grief over the lives destroyed or lost through the madness, and the vengeance awaiting those who exploit others, but also the visceral pain of being trapped in this system and the desire to topple the status quo...very Virus-core if you ask me

god I need to change their names...Virus was created in 2018....I was 12

oh yeah and just to clarify this is the kitties to bugs lore overhaul

[setaripendragon]

Sunlight by Hozier - in Mando'a

If you remember this post where I translated I See Fire into Sindarin, you probably won't be all that surprised by this. I've fallen head-first into the Star Wars fandom (admittedly second-hand, but still), and of course, being me, I went straight for the conlangs. Mando'a might not be the most fleshed out language of the GFFA, but it is the one with the most Culture, at least in the fandom, so it's the one I gravitated to. And honestly, I really like how... brisk it is? It drops unnecessary pronouns and verbs, barely bothers with tense at all, and contracts everything. It's so much fun to play with.

Sunlight isn't the first song I started translating into it (that would be Born For This from the Spiderverse movie), but it is the first one I've finished, because matching Mando'a to English scansion is hell. It struck me as a very Codywan song, which is why I picked it to translate (yes, I do imagine Obi-wan composing/singing it in honour of Cody pretty much every time I listen to it).

I did have to make up a couple of words because the dictionary I use didn't have even a near-equivalent to the concept I was looking for, and those will be marked with a * and I'll add the 'etymology' of them at the end. (If anyone knows any other Mando'dictionaries, throwing me a link will win you my undying gratitude.) I also had to get creative with my interpreations of the meaning of certain lines, since, just to pick the most obvious example, Mandalorians probably don't have the myth of Icarus like we do.

Any feedback, advice, or just general linguistics flailing is always welcome. Now, without further ado, here it is:

Tran'nau* (Sunlight)

Ni ru'nevor nau (I shunned the light) Ru'medinui naak be ca'tra (I shared in the peace of night) Ni nu'mirdi ba'slanar (I wouldn't think to leave) Par tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (For sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Tion'ad karta nu'redal (Whose heart doesn't dance) Dar'shekemi tra be ca'tra (Wouldn't abandon the stars of night) Sha solyc hettyc haa'it (At first burning vision) Be tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Of sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Ni r'echoyla ba'gar, tran'nau (I was lost to you, sunlight) Ru'miy sa kisen* ba'gar, tran'nau (Flew like a moth to you, sunlight) Ner tran'nau (My sunlight)

Gar kar'tayli tran'nau (Your love is sunlight) Gar kar'tayli tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Your love is sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Gehat'ik arasuum (The tale remains the same) Ru'rejor bal ven'rejor (Told before and told again) Runi ru'got* lo ciryc pitat (The soul that's born in the cold rain) Kar'mir tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Knows sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Mar'e lis dinuir gai (At last I can give a name) Ba tracin haaranovyc (To a hidden flame) Sa kar'tayli darasuum (As love/knowing forever) Ner tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (My sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

An tengaana ba'ni, tran'nau (All that's displayed to me, sunlight) Ratiin kar'mir ba'ni, tran'nau (Is always known to me, sunlight) Ner tran'nau (My sunlight) Gar kar'tayli tran'nau (Your love is sunlight) Gar kar'tayli tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Your love is sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Gar kar'tayli tran'nau (Your love is sunlight) Gar kar'tayli tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Your love is sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Tran'nau (Sunlight)

An ner alii'gai* lo gar gaan solus (All that I am is in your hands) Ke'juri ni ulyc, ner tran'nau (Carry me carefully, my sunlight) An ner alii'gai* lo gar gaan solus (All that I am is in your hands) Ke'juri ni ulyc, ner tran'nau (Carry me carefully, my sunlight)

Antuur* mhi cuy tome (Everyday we exist together) Kar'mir gar ner shereshoy (Know that you're my reason for living) Ner oya bal kyr slati* gar (My life and death belong to you) Ner tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (My sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Narbatir* sen'tra (Wearing a jetpack) Kyr'nayl'gam* briikasyc (I'm death-trap clad happily) Galar carud ni trattokor (Spilling smoke I fall) Chur tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Under sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Gar kar'tayli tran'nau (Your love is sunlight) Gar kar'tayli tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Your love is sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Gar kar'tayli tran'nau (Your love is sunlight) Gar kar'tayli tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Your love is sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Gar kar'tayli tran'nau (Your love is sunlight) Gar kar'tayli tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Your love is sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Gar kar'tayli tran'nau (Your love is sunlight) Gar kar'tayli tran'nau, tran'nau, tran'nau (Your love is sunlight, sunlight, sunlight)

Tran'nau (Sunlight) Tran'nau (Sunlight) Tran'nau (Sunlight) Tran'nau (Sunlight) Tran'nau (Sunlight)

[*tran'nau = tra (star field)/tranyc (sunny) + nau (light)] [*kisen (moth) = kih (small) + senaar (bird)] [*ru'got (born) = ru- (past prefix) + goten (birth)] [*alii'gai (identity) = aliit (clan)/aliik (sigil/symbol) + gai (name). This is technically already a word that means 'colours', but I took that to mean specifcally the colours one wears on their armour, the 'face' they show the world, i.e. their identity.] [*antuur (everyday) = anay (every) + tuur (day)] [*slatir (to belong to) = slanar (to go) + ti (with). I took the inspiration for this from the etymology of the word 'belong' in English.] [*narbatir (to wear/to put on) = narir (to put) + bat (on)] [*kyr'nayl'gam (death-trap-skinned) = kyr (end/death) + gaanaylir (to trap) + 'gam (skin). Since beskar'gam is literally 'metal-skin' and the word for skin literally translates to 'soft-skin', I figured it could also be poetically used to mean 'clad in']

[strixcattus]

If you've seen my posts from before I was busy being consumed by a media, you might remember the time travel conlang I talked a little about. Good news on that front—I've actually been working on it through @quothalinguist 's Conlang Year prompts. Given what I already had sketched out, the prompts are making me slow down a little at the moment, but they're also forcing me to think about in what capacity this language exists in a conworld.

I mean. Obviously it's meant to exist in our world. But it also exists in our world four hundred years in the future, and four hundred years in the past, and in an alternate timeline where World War II never happened, and in an alternate timeline where some nobody choked to death on a piece of fruit in 7 BCE and it had unforeseen cataclysmic effects.

It also exists in a timeline that diverged in 2013, but which somehow developed wormholes within the past eleven years—wormholes that completely fail when brought to our own world.

The first step was creating a framework for time travel. Something that could be used to explain how things worked and serve as a jumping-off point for beings that interacted with time in an odd way. I included the time worm in my original post half as a joke, but it did end up with its own gender and person when I started sketching those (though it is possible, if not likely, that such things will change some when we reach that point in the year).

Time is like a tree. It's like a tree in a more literal way than necessary. At the base of the trunk lies the Big Bang, and the trunk itself is the stretch of time afterwards where not enough was going on to form any real branches. Eventually, as star systems (and more importantly, life) began to form, time started to split off into new possibilities. Every event that could proceed in multiple ways has the potential to branch off several new timelines, but for the most part this doesn't happen—the smaller the consequences and the less likely an alternate outcome, the less likely a new branch will form. There is definitely a branch where WWII never happened, and some where it ended differently, but there isn't a branch for every possible outcome of the war, until the time travellers get involved.

If a time traveller heads back in time a few years just to hang around, they probably won't create a new branch unless their presence itself is enough to noticeably alter events. If they actively cause changes, though, they're guaranteed to form a new branch.

The tree can be navigated in a couple different ways. Time travellers take the slow, responsible route—they pick their way up and down the timelines to explore new eras and branches. There is also, however, a school of universe-hopping—essentially, not bothering with time and simply flinging oneself out into the branches and hoping one has aimed right. This is risky.

If time is a tree and people can fling themselves between branches like some sort of sugar glider, there must also be things living in the space between those branches already. Some of them are benevolent. Some of them choose to settle down in linear time, either for a season or permanently. Some of them bore into the branches of timelines and eat away at them until they fall apart. Some of them knock universe-hoppers off course and prey on them. Some of them are plants.

Some of the key inhabitants of this space that I've outlined:

Time worms: I already mentioned these things. They're really big purple worms that inhabit a branch of a timeline and experience all of time within that branch simultaneously. Each worm has a "birth date" where they start existing in the branch, but it's unclear if they are capable of death within a timeline—any attempts to kill a time worm just branch off a new timeline where the worm does not exist. Time worms are sapient beings and also a sign of a healthy timeline—if a time worm has time to grow, the nearby space outside time must be safe, and mature time worms prey on most pests that could bring harm to a timeline.

Outsiders: A general term for beings that live outside time, both flora and fauna. Some of them are capable of entering linear time for a while, and some even choose to give up outsider status, but they all live, generally, between the timelines. For this reason, time worms are excluded from this classification.

"Hawks" and "Borers": Euphemistic terms (which may change later on). Their true names have been lost due to superstition that speaking it would summon them. "Hawks" are outsiders that attack and prey on hoppers, and "borers" are outsiders that burrow into timelines either to prey on their inhabitants or to eat away and eventually destroy the timeline itself.

Dragons and Faeries: Not exactly what you picture, but pretty close. "Dragons" are outsiders which typically only travel between timelines to find new places to live, and do their actual living and hunting within linear time—and, sure, most species do look like dragons if you're willing to make some concessions. Faeries are humanoids which live outside time, but many of their clans give up outsider status to live within linear time, seemingly as a means of protection from "hawks."

"Lichen": Or "Moss." It's debatable what term should be used when translating into a linear-time language, since there's no good analogue to the name. Point is, these are flora that grow on timelines and alter the laws of reality within them, for better or for worse. Think of them as a little like bacteria: some of them will do their level best to kill you, some are beneficial to your survival, and most of them just hang around doing neither good nor harm. "Lichen" spread into the past of a timeline backdates the appearance of their effects, but doesn't measurably change the events of the timeline, and can create worlds where "the magic vanished" if it doesn't cover all branches after where it's spread.

The Rot: Death. An infection that completely destroys any timeline where it takes root. The only known killer of time worms. If a timeline is infected, it cannot be saved—its inhabitants must be sanitized and evacuated if at all possible.

[translunaryanimus]

The rest of the Sarvipöllö-Hollolas (Minus Aimo)

Finished up the rest of the Sarvipöllö-Hollolas (Minus uncle Aimo because I do not have his colors yet). More about them under the cut because I wrote a lot. Massive post. Images are described in alt text! As always, these folks are for the @halfstack-smp

In image order

Sampsa was born into the Waxcoat ships business but never enjoyed all the sights, sounds, and smells of the sea quite as much as their sister Tuulikki. They broke off from Waxcoat ships in their early 20s, traveling to the Luumuseo to take up their residence there, though never becoming the owner.

Sampsa's entire arm was blown off while he was firing a bow due to the family curse, causing more than one catastrophe that day. The arrow caught a rope connected to the main mast of one of the docked ships, setting the balance off just enough to cause all the sails to unfurl the wrong way into strong winds, immediately tipping the ship all the way over onto its side. Nobody died luckily.

Sampsa wasn't aware they were queer until one of his grandkids introduced the concept to him.

Sampsa currently works as an archival assistant at the family Luumuseo. Hannu makes sure to give them easy but interesting work and has made the space accessible to account for his missing arm. They have a prosthetic, it's just itchy and he doesn't need it constantly, so Sampsa will frequently go without it. He is married to Ilona.

Ilona was born to 'Tengu' parents with some questionable hybridization back in her lineage. She's married to Sampsa.

Ilona is an art historian and conservationist, spending a majority of her free time cleaning, repairing, and re-framing artworks sent to her for her conservation efforts. She's got an excellent eye for detail and can likely tell you who made what piece in what era no matter the piece she's shown. She's also excellent at spotting fakes or forgeries of original works, as well as legally reproduced copies. Ilona has amassed a small collection of artworks she's taken in for study and research purposes.

She dabbles in a little bit of painting herself and all of Sampsa's prosthetics have hand-painted details from her.

Severi is a fashion historian and regularly works with Ensi. to reproduce and preserve old fashions and sewing patterns found through the Family's archival efforts. Most gifts from either of them are immediately recognizable given that they're a handmade garment 90% of the time. Hannu's Shawl was a birthday gift from Ensi and Severi.

Severi does not have a personal clothing brand but does sell some of the things he sews or crochets on the side that she doesn't want to keep.

Severi's legs exploded slightly due to the family curse shortly after her 17th birthday. She uses a wheelchair to help him get around now. He let his kids decorate her wheelchair when they were all young and still lets them do so if they ever want to. She lives close to his great aunt Ensi and the two of them regularly swap patterns.

Saana is a talented linguist, specializing in the discovery of old languages, their reconstruction, as well as the creation of conlangs. Saana has created more than a few conlangs for her husband Janne's books and is always credited in the back.

Saana developed her passion for linguistics from a young age, spending most of her free time learning anything and everything she possibly could about all different languages from the resources her parents could provide. She's fluent in at least 5 languages and regularly makes up new conlangs for fun. Saana sometimes teaches linguistics courses at the same college Hannu graduated from. Janne was born to tengu parents in a spruce taiga home. He is married to Saana Sarvipöllö-Hollola. He writes fiction and fantasy books mostly aimed at child and young adult audiences, telling grand stories of worlds that do not exist like their own. He has a science fiction publication but that one was enough for him to decide that he never wanted to write sci-fi again.

Columba was born to Tengu parents in a birchwood forest home. He has no siblings and is married to Severi. He came out as trans at age 13, allowing that experience to be a part of their fashion concepts moving forward. He'd already begun taking sewing classes several years beforehand and started to make clothes that would both bring him some comfort and look spectacular.

Columba creates and sells 'designer' style clothes under the brand name Dove and Raven. Dresses, skirts, blouses, shirts, all made by hand and fit to each origin's particular requirements on sizing and shape. He occasionally gifts clothing to his family members but it's a bit difficult to get them all done in time so he mostly offers sewing classes.

Corvus is an avian origins weaponry expert and, as such, spends quite a bit of time around Inka. His kids love it there because Inka shows them cool sharp things they usually aren't allowed to touch. She spent quite a bit of time around her great aunt Inka as a child, leading to him developing a passion for avian origin specific weaponry. It keeps an unsafe amount of claw extending knives around the house but doesn't seem to see the issue with having them, much to the delight of her partner.

Emille assists her with with reproduction copies of old avian origins weaponry, some to send to the Luumuseo, some to keep at home, and some to bring to fairs for entertainment's sake. Aquila is an avian origins architecture expert, focusing on the preservation and restoration of Tengu and Sirin ruins. There's been some debate as to whether or not feathered draconis count as avian, but Aquila includes them in xir research anyways.

Aquila spent most of his time sketching as a kid, drawing building after building and floorplan after floorplan. Once he found the original building plans for the Sarvipöllö-Hollola Family Luumuseo, Xir love for architecture only grew. One of his notable contributions was the addition of disabled avian origin friendly architecture in both the Sarvipöllö-Hollola Family Luumuseo and The Downfeather, calling on older blueprints for similar structures that had fallen out of modern usage.

Emille reproduces both actually dangerous and child-safe versions of historically avian origin produced weaponry. The dangerous reproduction stay at home, go to Inka, or go to Hannu at the Luumuseo. The safer reproductions are sold at fairs for entertainment's sake for younger audiences and also occasionally given to Raine and Siv as both education and a way to entertain them.

Emille picked up their love of blacksmithing from the local Daystone population, being taught by a smith that they remember as having iron inlays and strong but gentle hands. As such, most of their crafts are intricately detailed and tend to resemble the works of a daystone rather than the works of a faun. Raine fancies themselves a writer and is working on their own vast, interconnected web of lore for their 37 magical wolf oc's. Ae has always been a particularly ferocious reader, regularly demolishing upwards of 40 books over the course of a few months or so. Currently ae's obsessed with aer uncle Janne's book series, A Dance of Stars and Storms. Siv is going about her life as any 10yo child does. She is ABSOLUTELY convinced that she's an aspect of Aelrys. She isn't, but she has horns and wings and so does Aelrys so she's 100% convinced she is.

If you've somehow read all the way down here, thanks! I'm going to go dunk my head in cold water to cool off my brain.

[daisywords]

I posted 1,703 times in 2022

That's 1,350 more posts than 2021!

382 posts created (22%)

1,321 posts reblogged (78%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@daisywords

@unbearable-lightness-of-ink

@headspace-hotel

@ettawritesnstudies

@jedi-valjean

I tagged 1,208 of my posts in 2022

Only 29% of my posts had no tags

#art - 221 posts

#second chance wip - 90 posts

#other's writing - 86 posts

#ask game - 59 posts

#other's wip - 42 posts

#boost - 36 posts

#my art - 33 posts

#my writing - 23 posts

#other's art - 19 posts

#writing process - 18 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#i have one black turtleneck and it looks sooooo good on me literally it's like my first date outfit but also i cannot wear it for that long

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Kk just finished A Conspiracy of Kings

Sophos my beloved

the boy is back <3

I just loved Sophos as a narrator! His voice really came through ugh he's just so honest

the shifts between first person to omniscient were interesting I don't think I've ever seen it done in quite that way

bunny :)

"If my affections weren't otherwise engaged" oof

love how the middle section is just King of Attolia pt 2

"that Sophos held Gen's heart in his hand" + "He would have given Eugenides his heart on a toothpick, if asked" ok cool cool

we still stan Eddis Helen

I want to know more about Sophos's sisters they seem cool

uM did he just—yes he did ok he went there

"You shot the ambassador?" my Lord Attolis you gave me the gun

It's all just about how they all love each other but it's so much more complicated than that, except that in the end it isn't

Wow this book is so...heartfelt idk

Sophos my beloved

and here's the complementary doodle of Eddis and our boy Sophos ofc

140 notes - Posted March 14, 2022

#4

Ok so read The King of Attolia yesterday and wow ok

Costis is one of those characters that's just some guy but like. he's my guy

Also I love his friendship with Aris? just like aww look they're friends

just because no one ever sees the king visit the queen doesn't mean he's not you idiots did you forget everything you ever knew about the guy?

I feel like the narrative distance between the reader and Gen has to get further and further away lest we know what he is up to

What did Relius actually do wrong? was kinda confused there tbh

I guess Gen being mortally wounded is just a staple for this series like jeez give the guy a break

And yup there we go

Costis the whole time like "get a room" except they have a room he's just. also there

Aww Sejanus and Dite really did love each other <3

Also Sophos is missing??? Someone better go find him right now

This book was just straight character dynamics and I was riveted

I feel like Megan Whalen Turner Understands Something About Intimacy

This book is so incredibly spicy you guys

ok anyway here's the king and queen themselves and of course our boy Costis

156 notes - Posted March 11, 2022

#3

minimum page counts really coming for those of us who are concise

332 notes - Posted October 4, 2022

#2

can't believe it's 2022 and we still have posts around about not overusing "said" like seriously? Imagine if I made a list of words to use instead of "and." wouldn't that be stupid?

1,162 notes - Posted September 29, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Conlanging for cheaters

quick tips for creating fantasy language(s) that look believable if you squint

Pick a few rules about what letter/sound combinations can and cannot exist (or are common/uncommon). For example, in English, "sp" or "st" can begin a word, but in Spanish they can't. The "ng" sound (or the voiced velar nasal if you want to get technical), can't appear at the beginning of a syllable in English, but it can in at least of third of languages around the world. English allows for consonant clusters (more than one consonant together without a vowel), but some languages, such as Hawaiian, don't. Picking a few distinctive rules that are different from English or the language you are writing in, and sticking to them, will yield a lot better results than just keysmashing.

Assign meaning to a few suffixes, prefixes, or roots. A simple and useful example of this is making up a particle that means -land or -city or -town, and tacking it onto your appropriate place names. You could also have a particle with a similar meaning to the "er/or one we have in English, such as in "baker," "singer," or "operator," and then incorporate it in your fantasy titles or professions. It's like an Easter egg for careful readers to figure out, and it will make your language/world feel more cohesive.

Focus on places and names. You usually don't need to write full sentences/paragraphs in your conlang. What you might want to do with it is name things. The flavor of your language will seep in from the background, with the added benefit of giving readers some hints on background lore. For example, you could have a conlang that corresponds to a certain group of people, and a character with a corresponding name could then be coded as being from that group without having to specify. A human-inhabited city with an elven-sounding name might imply that it was previously inhabited by elves.

You don't have to know what everything means. Unless you are Linguistics Georg R. R. Tolkien, you probably don't want to (and shouldn't!) actually make up a whole language. So stick some letters together (following your linguistic rules, of course) and save fretting over grammar and definitions for the important stuff.

(Bonus) This isn't technically conlanging, but it can be fun to make up an idiom or two for your fantasy culture (just in English or whatevs) and sprinkle that in a few times. The right made-up idiom can allude to much larger cultural elements without you having to actually explain it.

Congrats! You now have a conlang you can dust over your wip like an appropriate amount of glitter. Conlangs can be intimidating, just because there's so much you can do, but that doesn't mean you have to do it all. So yeah anyway here's what I would recommend; hope y'all have fun :D

5,598 notes - Posted May 12, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[fenmere]

"This is going to be one hell of a story," I say, looking down at her. "Lead the way."

She looks nervous and uncertain about what to do.

"I figure that since you're the one coming back in time, you're the one with the knowledge about what we need to do right now," I explain. "And, if you are somehow really me, though that seems dubious, you'll know that I'm going to be thinking that way, right?"

She nods hesitantly, then gestures for me to follow.

My vessel is 5'10. It used to be 5'11", but estradiol is magic and we shrank. But it seems unlikely that we'll keep shrinking to the 5'7" or so she seems to be. And while HRT has made us look a bit younger, shaving about 20 years or more off our apparent age is definitely a daydream at best. Our twenties were a whole three genders and a couple million headmates ago, so this girl isn't us from the past, either.

But nobody outside our system knows that phrase. It's not even in English. It's in Fenekere, our first conlang, that nobody else ever bothered learning, because it's too big and complex to learn. And hardly anyone knows it exists, because conlangs aren't that popular.

Maybe this is time travel like in Quantum Leap, where she's sent her consciousness back into the body of someone who already exists here. We've already suspected something like that was responsible for the formation of our system. We've had enough deja vu and prophetic dreams, it's why we came up with the pass phrase in the first place.

But is she just one of us? Or the whole system? Or what?

I've decided to let this be an adventure and allow our interloper here explain herself in her own time.

Of course, she leads us to a coffee shop and then gets upset when they don't have any almond poppyseed muffins. That's my thing, specifically, so maybe she's me, or trying to signal that she's me, whether or not she is.

Finally, sitting down in a quiet corner with our drinks, she looks intently at me.

Honestly, she looks like our cousin, which is something a lot of us had always wanted. Skinny, dark brown hair, and a face that seems to have never grown a beard.

Others of us have had different, even less possible goals.

"How does this work?" I ask.

She shrugs, shakes her head, and takes a drink of her decaf grande mocha with no whip.

"I don't understand," I say. "Are you me? Or, one of us? How many of you are there? And how are our vessels so different now?"

She holds up a hand, looking apologetic.

I nod.

She's lost her words. That's a clue. It maybe starts to click for me, and I squint at her.

She smiles, and then pats her pockets and looks around.

I pull out our phone and slide it to her, starting to actually feel excited.

She reflexively tries her thumb print to open it, which doesn't work, so she then thoughtlessly enters the correct pin. Boomboomboomboomboomboom. Six numbers rapidly entered with her thumb.

Then she opens up notepad and types a couple sentences and pushes it back to me:

I'm Jenifer.

I'm from the present.

Project Open Door was a success.

I look down at the phone, then up at her, then down at the phone again. Then up at her again.

She smirks.

I feel a surge of emotions and jostling as nearly everyone in the system tries to rush forward to talk to our eldest girl. She doesn't look like how we've been drawing her, but she looks just like how we actually see her while inworld. How she sees herself in dreamland mirrors.

It's amazing.

I manage to keep control, and stammer out, "B-but... Wait. OK. That vessel. That's you?"

She grins and nods.

"So, what happens if I leave through the gateway?" I ask.

She gestures for the phone and I slide it to her, and she types out:

It's time to do that. We have work to do.

"What will I look like?" I ask. "Where's the exit? Where do we come out?"

Find out. Meet me out here. Bring Gnargrim and the others.

"What about this body? How do I leave it? I don't-"

"Fenmere!" she speaks for the second time since I've seen her outside our vessel today. Her voice is firm and stern. She taps the phone.

Hurry up, it's time.

The phrase, but in English.

We'd never imagined Project Open Door would work at all. We'd thought time travel would be more likely. We'd thought, at best, we'd be able to peak into the realm between psyches, whatever that might be.

"Hurry up, it's time," had been chosen as a joke. For time travel. A reference to a drug trip sequence from a cute online game we used to play.

But now, Jenifer is using it to push me to do the scariest thing I can possibly imagine.

Show the world what I really am.

Years ago you came up with a nonsensical code phrase that you would use if you ever went back in time and needed to convince yourself of who you were. You never wrote it down or told anyone what it was. Today a young woman you’ve never met walks up to you on the sidewalk and speaks the phrase.

[bodyofmagic]

for context of what this world is and why i wrote it up:

so like i was thinking about how my partner and i both like using blood in rituals but we have to go about getting it in different ways because one of us menstruates and one doesn't. which led to me thinking: how would blood magic interact with a fantasy world's gender norms?

of course, blood magic is coolest to me when it exists in the presence of other, less taboo forms of magic. my brain went to "what if magic was powered by bodily fluids?" which sounds gross but like spoken magic and sex magic could both be explained pretty easily with spit and.... well you know. mother's magic, fueled by her love for her baby, could easily come from breastfeeding. and witchcraft has historically involved

so i start doing brief outlines of societies and how they might interact with these types of magic, and in doing that i of course had to make other decisions about their societies. suddenly im frustrated by the fact that all the names are just English nouns, so i make a brief sketch of a conlang, really just a set of phonotactical rules.

once you have phonotactics, its over.

[tmnt-star-wars-au]

For the ask game

🧶

🏙️

🏠

���

🧶 - does raph knit?

he doesn't do it often, but he does when he finds time, it's one of the things his parents taught him before they died. angel (another member of their system) also knows how to sew, and he mends the family's clothes.

🏙️ - what is the main setting of your au?

it’s pretty much the whole galaxy! mainly they live in their ship, but they do spend time on other planets. there are parts that don't get visited- wild space (outside of the galaxy) and the unknown regions (the half of the galaxy without hyperspace lanes) won't be touched by these guys, but pretty much anywhere else is fair game. they won't end up Everywhere, of course, but they could theoretically go Anywhere.

🏠 - what is the lair like?

the “lair” is basically just their ship! it’s called the Turttai, which means turtle tank in asoshi (a friend's conlang and their native tongue). they don’t have a permanent base besides the ship, mostly bc they're Very Much on the run from the empire, which is mostly because leo and mikey are force-sensitive. there are other reasons they're on the run too, but that's the main one.

🧫 - were your turtles mutated intentionally or in an accident?

so!!! ok. the turtles actually Didn’t get mutated in this au. it’s kind of like a key point in tmnt that they’re mutant turtles but they’re not mutants in this one. teenage ninja turtles. except they’re not Exactly ninjas either. and they’re not teenaged the entire time. and technically they’re not turtles they just Look like them. i kind of just took tmnt and i said hm. and then i made four turtle-looking humanoid guys with the same names in star wars. i couldn’t really/didn't want to figure out how a mutagen would work in star wars, ninjas don't exactly Exist there, and the empire’s reign is short but it isn’t short enough for them to be teenaged the entire time (it lasts 24 years from its formation to palpatine’s death, and they were already in their teens at the start of that. plus there’s a decent few decades of cleanup afterwards)

theoretically you could say they were mutated by accident? via the normal mutations that lead to evolution? but that’s not exactly what Mutant tends to mean in the context of tmnt. it’s not the most faithful au i suppose lol, but i'm enjoying making it. anyway the boys are their own species called dragons, which have a Lot of worldbuilding i won't go into here. (feel free to ask about them though!)

(ask game)

[aureliosinistrum]

Dragons in The Modern World Project

Howdy, it's me again! The guy that made that whole analog video thing.

I wanted to post this to explain more about what exactly my modern dragon world is all about, or as I have put it so far, the Dracoverse.

The Dracoverse exists almost completely in sync with our own, with the main deviation being that dragons exist and have for some time. The dragons themselves are less so monsters and more like people, with societies, language, cultural norms, and more. Currently, I am developing a conlang for one of the draconic languages, called "Kaltó'get", or as the federal government refers to it, "Draconic". There will probably be more conlangs for the dragons in the future, especially for the dragons in China and South America. Speaking of that, dragons are all over the planet in the Dracoverse, or well, used to be. The introduction of humans and global climate change following the ice age caused many problems for dragons, especially ones that did not live in the mountains.

Overtime, dragons begin to die out on a massive scale, mainly by the time of the middle ages to early modern history. This was because of a lot of factors, but a few key notable ones are important to mention. Of course, humans were one of the main causes, but food also became harder for dragons to find. Not only that, but dragons started to turn on each other for resources, especially in Europe. All in all, you have a very chaotic situation starting to arise. European dragons were already screwed leading up to the modern era, but what really hammered in the final nail in the coffin for them was the first and second world wars. Both wars caused massive damage to the dragon populations, especially in world war 2, where both the Axis and the Allies targeted them. By the time the main events of the world take place, IE the later 20th and early 21st century, they're only about 15 to 13 dragons left in Europe.

Then, they're is North America, with over 10,000 dragons. The reason why North America has such a large population of dragons is because the dragons were able to isolate themselves really well from people. That, and they had a large population of food available to them that was not under the protection of or nearby human settlements. However, this started to change once colonization began and suddenly North America was being flooded with new people. With this, the population suffered, and is critically endangered by the 20th century. Dragons in North America existed all over the place, but were massively killed off on the east coast. Now, the real only stable population of dragons live in the west, which actually is to their benefit in some ways. The Rockies and the great basin are places where not a lot of people live, and since the government gifts them with supplies, the dragons aren't starving that much.

However, just because the feds supply the dragons, doesn't mean that the dragons and the fed have a good relationship. For the longest time, the feds and dragons hated each other. The DDA (The Department of Draconic Affairs) and the US Fish & Wildlife service made several active attempts to greatly hinder or cause the extinction of the dragons out west. One notable example is, in 1959, the DDA approved nuclear testing right on top of a dragon nest in the middle of nowhere Nevada. That test itself was very brutal, and any dragons that survived the bombing were later seen suffering the effects of radiation poisoning, and any children that they had often had some form of genetic mutation.

This hostile and negative perception of the dragons was starting to change greatly by the mid 90s up to the mid 2000s. By that time, the DDA and other associated governmental agencies finally started treating the dragons better, even removing the classification of "DRA entity" in 2003. DRA Entity being a term created in the 1960s, as a way to make the dragons sound less like animals and a people, and more like monstrous and evil beings. Overall, human and dragon relations greatly improved. However, this did not stop a lot of dragons and humans from protesting and wanting to kill off each other. Notably, the more younger generation of the dragons wanted to rebel against humanity and create their own nation-like state in the Rockies. On the other hand, the more violent human members of the DDA wanted the near or total extinction of dragons as a whole, labeling them as a threat to humanity.

As such, both dragons and humans took efforts to quell this anger and hate on their sides. However, some instances made this more harder over time. For example, there were multiple cases where dragons attacked towns and minor railways over the years. These events were used by the more hostile members of the DDA as a justification that the dragons were dangerous. On the other side, young reactionary dragons told stories to their families and friends about how humans brutally killed dragons, and how humanity and dragon-kind could not get along. Overall, the situation was incredibly difficult, and it started to begin boiling over when both sides began to get more drastic in their measures. Young dragons took to destroying highways and more major railway networks, making it more difficult for the government to hide them from the public sphere. Then, members of the DDA began to secretly insert disease into the food given to the dragons, which caused numerous deaths.

So far, this is as much as I have developed. I currently want to explore what would be happening to the dragons in South American and China, and how they have their own unique problems and what not. If any of y'all have any suggestions or comments, I would love to hear them. Thanks!

TL;DR: Dragons in the modern world in North America, Europe, South America, and China. Humans and Dragons don't like each other.

[elean0rarose]

Happy (slightly late) STS! Some questions for you:

What inspired you to create the world of Olrion?

Alternatively, do you have any conlangs? If so, what languages (if any) are they based on?

Hey! Thanks for the message! I don't mind stuff late because I always get to it late anyways!

Honestly I just started writing one day and it emerged from there. But when I am thinking of details, my inspiration is vast. There’s other fantasy media, of course, but I am most inspired by our world and its terrible history. A lot of my work revolves around oppression because there's a lot of comments and allegories to our world. I’m also inspired by mythology, particularly Ancient Greek as that's what I know most about. Finally, I’m also doing research now on cultures that existed around the medieval period with a focus on European in particular. I want my world to be fantastical, yes, but I also want it to be believable too.

As for conlangs: I wouldn't know where to begin to do it properly! There are dead languages in Olrion that you find in names (for places and people) as well as the odd word here or there, but otherwise the common tongue dominates mostly out of ease for me. When I need a word, I kinda just dream one up and then check it doesn't mean anything rude in any of our world’s languages!

[strixcattus]

Conlang Year Days 43–47: Nouns

Over the course of this week the prompts were mostly focused on figuring out what nouns would get marked for—class, number, definiteness, and function.

Day 43: Noun Class

...Conlang has (technically, is planned to have, since we haven't gotten to this prompt yet) seven grammatical persons, three of which have four genders, which are based on semantics. I don't need to add noun class to the stew.

Day 44: Noun Number

I'm pretty sure I actually said something about Conlang's plural system before Conlang Year was going on, and my intentions haven't changed since.

Conlang has an unmarked singular and two marked numbers, plural and general. The plural is marked by doubling the final syllable of the noun—currently I'm thinking that this process gets essentially fused into the word before Stage 2 of sound changes (you may or may not recognize this as immediately after all the stress-based changes), which would result in occasionally irregular-looking forms, but I've yet to test how this would work in practice, so it's still up for some wiggling.

The "general" is a bit like a collective, "all X," except it carries the implication of "not necessarily all X." It's for generalizing. If I say something like, "Cats have four legs, long tails, and fur," that's a general statement, which isn't falsified by the existence of cats with missing legs, short tails, or no fur at all, and in Conlang that first word would be marked differently than that of the sentence, "Cats are covering the warm tile floor." The general is going to be derived from *puyi (universe).

Day 45: Definiteness

This was the day where I decided on the numerical system Conlang uses. Not even the number day got me to crack, sit down, and spin up a bunch of numeric words, but, well... I needed markers for definiteness, and "one" and "some" are pretty classic sources.

I want my definiteness markers to agree with number—two each for definite and indefinite, since the general doesn't need these markers—what would that even mean?

The indefinite markers will be derived from *liya (one) and *kiyi (some), respectively. The definite markers will be derived from demonstrative determiners, which I have yet to create.

Day 46: Case!

Or is it just "function?" I don't know if I can say "case" if it isn't marked directly on the noun. That's always been a bit unclear.

This one's the fun day—two days, actually, since I only finished selecting all the derivations earlier today. I like the idea of having each noun's function be indicated by an adposition which gives me a landing site for subjective tense markers later on.

Hold on, I've got a list. There are twelve. (The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization was very helpful for several of these, and gave inspiration for even a few of the cases it didn't cover.)

Nominative: from *teto (have)

Accusative: from *yine (take)

Dative (indirect object): from *kaki (give)

"Give" and "take" came right from the World Lexicon. None of their examples for Agent sources were particularly inspiring, but "have" seemed the natural completion of the triad.

Instrumental: from *kazo (hold)

Comitative (accompanied by): from *noda (follow)

Benefactive (on the behalf of): from *dedi (help)

Pretty straightforward, I think. I don't remember if I got the comitative derivation from the World Lexicon or not, but. You get where these all come from.

Locative (at): from *dizopo (liver)

Inessive (in): from *koju (heart)

Adessive (near, by, outside): from *zese (lung)

I've always been a little fuzzy on what exactly "locative" means, but the distinction between these three is like so:

Say I want to spend the afternoon with a friend, and we decide to meet up at a café both of us know. I can say one of three things:

I'll be waiting at the café. (Once you're at the café, you'll be able to find me—but where specifically I am, you won't know until I'm there.)

I'll be waiting in the café. (You know where I'll be—inside the café, probably at a table or something.)

I'll be waiting by the café. (You know where I'll be—outside the café, waiting for you to arrive.)

The locative-liver connection was from the World Lexicon, and I was frankly ecstatic to discover it. Then the inessive-heart link was there as well, so I just kind of rolled with it.

Ablative (from): from *dana (leave)

Allative (to): from *sozu (enter)

Perlative (through): from *kili (nerves)

The former two came from the World Lexicon. The last one came from my desire to complete the set.

Day 47: Noun Phrases

Not as difficult as it seemed. I already knew the plural would be marked at the end of the noun, so it's best to keep all number markings there. If I take into account the already-determined sentence structure, the nouns will probably follow the case particles. The only real decision left to make was where the definiteness indicators go.

Currently, what I'm going with is: case definite NOUN-number, though I may take the definitiveness indicator and attach it somewhere else. If I do, it'll be a prefix on the noun most likely—that case preposition does not need more of a job than it's already going to have.

[womgi]

Thoughts about worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is a complex process, because worlds are complex things. Hell, people are complex things and its hard enough just getting enough words to get any one person right, never mind a whole world.

But that's the challenge, and more importantly the fun. A painter can put brush to canvas, letting the complex interplay of brush and surface, paint and movement and a hundred other things coalesce into a grand creation, a fragment of creation perfectly preserved into a still frame.

A writer however is bound by having too many choices. Whether that writer is just expressing through plain lines of text, or through audio, or with pictures interspersed between the whispering stalks of written words, they all have an infinity of choice to put just the write words in just the write order to create a magic that cannot be matched. Language is communication, the art of transferring information, an idea, a revelation and a million other things to another. Real, imagined or both, it doesn't matter to the canvas that is the world to a skilled writer. A writer writes, and the world holds their breath. And a story is nothing more than a dream manifest, blurring the lines of imagination and reality of a boy, a girl, a land, a ship, and maybe a rock even! A story in in the end just a journey, to carry a reader from this world to another, and allow them to return, all the better for their time there.

But stories do not exist in a vacuum. Like the painter needs a canvas, stories need worldbuilding. My beloved fanfiction is all about worldbuilding, turning the original story into an almost entirely different but still believable world, carrying you to a similar but different world, allowing you to enjoy the same world, the same characters, but with a new story! A different story! A story that you don't already know the answer to!

And for a writer, worldbuilding is that canvas, that framework into which a story fits, what makes it work, what makes even the most fantastical thing....real.

Admittedly, all that waffle I just wrote means nothing to many writers. There have been plenty of people who wrote and got rich off poorly written stories that have plot holes larger than the planet they live on. No, worldbuilding is a very much ignored exercise, making writers that write stories as if they are making jenga towers out of marbles. At some point if the writer has any dignity or shame, those stories will die, incomplete and forgotten. Or worse, they will stay alive because of fan service, and harem shenanigans! and worse!

But nonetheless, its a fun thing isn't it? At least I think so. You are creating a world after all. You can put anything into it. It just needs to make sense. You can be like some, making it up as the story goes along, inadvisable as that seems. Or you can be like some others, building a world until you have mapped out every tiny square cm of setting in the fanatical charge to avoiding plot holes, ending up avoiding writing the actual story altogether.

Better is the enemy of good.

Unfortunately, I am in the last category, driven by this obsessive compulsion to avoid plot holes and do due diligence before I even begin writing chapters.

It's why I got into this conlang business after all.

It's the rabbit hole at the end of the rabbit hole. The sad abyss that pouts at me in this toxic relationship with literal creative paranoia.

But I shall stay strong! I shall begin my story!

....as soon as I finish another 1500 words for my lexicon of course. Its just common sense to be prepared. I just got to be ready for anything in the twenty odd lines of dialogue I'll end up using in the whole story.

[zwoelffarben]

Thoughts from the artist:

Why the fuck doesn't progress engine have a character for h? I undertsand phyrexian not having an H character. I understand the concept of languages with different phonetic inventories and orthographies, especially in conlanging where you can just get fucky with it. But this is a font for humans to use when setting existing words. It should 'ave more Hs than an adult bookstore in London. This:

Remarkably unhelpful. The lettering you see in the image is actually the words, "Pþyrexian Miku, because for some reason, progress engine has a thorn. No shade for thorn, good letter, was in the first batch of letters I put on my auxilary keyboard. H should have a glyph before thorn tho.

2. I started with a traced pose from an existing hatsune cause I'm working with a mouse and keyboard here, and I don't typically do people, cut me some slack.

I couldn't for the life of me get the trace'd legs to look right, so I shortened them. Figure out now that I've posted that when designing her skirt, I made it start much lower than the canon example I was working from, which made her torso too long while leaving no room for the thigh gap that looked correct. Adjusted her leg sizes to look correct while maintain the thigh gap was the best I could figure out. I also moved her right hand up so that I could better show off the claws.

3. My idea behind her (lack of a) face is that phyrexians are all about utility taken to the most illogical extremes. Form follows function more in phyrexians than in animals because phyrexians are litterally designed. So, does a singer need eyes? No. They just need a mouth. Better make it a big one to be sure it can carry the voice well.

4. Also, according to source on the internet, Miku's greatest fear is her never being allowed to sing again. I attached her mic to her porcelin exoplating: Now that it's a part of her she'll never need to worry about that again. The Phyrexian Songstress won't ever stop singing.

5. Her hair is a mess of cables. I don't think they'r prehensile like Vraska Compleated is. I think their their for recognizability, like diagetically, I think Miku was compleated as a phyrexian propaganda target. "Here's your idol, turned against you, weep and submit to the great project" type stuff. They could be tho.

6. She got claws, the better to tear your throat out with, because of course she does. Her talon peaks are painted like finger nails because of course they are.

7. The white frills on her skirt were color-picked from miku's skin. I like to think that in so far as Miku 'has flesh' she got to keep a little on accessories, as a treat.

8. Replaced her shoulder tattoo with Phyrexia's symbol. It had to go somewhere on her design, and the tattoo provided the best location for it that would have something to say about her character. Her identity as 'the first vocaloid' is consumed and directly replaced by her new identity as the Phyrexian Songstress.

9. The black background help seporate her from the parchment, and was designed to look my idea of the glistening oil.

That's it, that's all my thoughts.

We're still doing hatsune miku, right?

[daisywords]

Conlanging for cheaters

quick tips for creating fantasy language(s) that look believable if you squint

Pick a few rules about what letter/sound combinations can and cannot exist (or are common/uncommon). For example, in English, "sp" or "st" can begin a word, but in Spanish they can't. The "ng" sound (or the voiced velar nasal if you want to get technical), can't appear at the beginning of a syllable in English, but it can in at least of third of languages around the world. English allows for consonant clusters (more than one consonant together without a vowel), but some languages, such as Hawaiian, don't. Picking a few distinctive rules that are different from English or the language you are writing in, and sticking to them, will yield a lot better results than just keysmashing.

Assign meaning to a few suffixes, prefixes, or roots. A simple and useful example of this is making up a particle that means -land or -city or -town, and tacking it onto your appropriate place names. You could also have a particle with a similar meaning to the "er/or one we have in English, such as in "baker," "singer," or "operator," and then incorporate it in your fantasy titles or professions. It's like an Easter egg for careful readers to figure out, and it will make your language/world feel more cohesive.

Focus on places and names. You usually don't need to write full sentences/paragraphs in your conlang. What you might want to do with it is name things. The flavor of your language will seep in from the background, with the added benefit of giving readers some hints on background lore. For example, you could have a conlang that corresponds to a certain group of people, and a character with a corresponding name could then be coded as being from that group without having to specify. A human-inhabited city with an elven-sounding name might imply that it was previously inhabited by elves.

You don't have to know what everything means. Unless you are Linguistics Georg R. R. Tolkien, you probably don't want to (and shouldn't!) actually make up a whole language. So stick some letters together (following your linguistic rules, of course) and save fretting over grammar and definitions for the important stuff.

(Bonus) This isn't technically conlanging, but it can be fun to make up an idiom or two for your fantasy culture (just in English or whatevs) and sprinkle that in a few times. The right made-up idiom can allude to much larger cultural elements without you having to actually explain it.

Congrats! You now have a conlang you can dust over your wip like an appropriate amount of glitter. Conlangs can be intimidating, just because there's so much you can do, but that doesn't mean you have to do it all. So yeah anyway here's what I would recommend; hope y'all have fun :D

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hi! I'm writing a story set sometime during the mesolithic/neolithic period (8000-3000 BCE). My characters are all from this time period. I've run into a scene where it would make sense for a character to swear. Of course, modern swear words don't exist yet. What kind of words might they use instead?

More broadly, how should writers writing stories set in fantasy worlds or the distant past or future approach swearing and expletives?

Thanks for the help :)

Neolithic Swear Words/Fantasy Swear Words

The first thing you have to remember is that your characters wouldn't even be speaking the language you're writing in anyway. So, none of the words you're using to tell the story or that they're speaking in dialogue existed in 3000 BCE. But just as we don't write modern Viking sagas with characters who actually speak Old Norse, or stories set in Ancient Egypt where the characters actually speak Ancient Egyptian, you're not expected to have your neolithic characters using "neolithic-appropriate" swear words.

Now, I will say that if your story was set during a period with a known ancient language, like Old Norse or Ancient Egyptian, you could throw in some Old Norse or Ancient Egyptian vocabulary here and there to give the impression that your characters are speaking that language. This is the same method used when characters speak a different language than the one in which the story was written. An example would be The Book Thief by Markus Zusak which takes place in WWII Germany with German characters. In reality, Liesel, Rudy, and Max would all speak German, but since the majority of the book's readers wouldn't be fluent in German, it doesn't make sense for the characters to actually speak it. So, instead what the author did was use German vocabulary and slang to give the impression of the characters speaking German. For example, Liesel's foster mother calls everyone "saumensch" and "saukerl" which apparently along the lines of calling someone a pig. This is a useful method if you are fluent in the language your characters would speak, or if you can get help from someone who is fluent in the language. But...

The problem in your case is that we don't really know much about the languages that were spoken during the neolithic, much less during the mesolithic, so this is not an option that's available to you. Writers of stories set during the stone age have made up for this by doing a little bit of conlang, or in other words, constructing a fictional language. You obviously don't have to construct a whole language, but you can put some thought into the sound of the language your characters might have spoken. What letters are the most prominent? What sounds are prominent? Use these same sounds and words in your characters names and the names of places, too.

For example, let's say you're going to use a lot of B's, O's, H's, and S's in your language. You might have a character named Bo'sa, a character named O'hb, and a character named H'sbo. They might live in a village called Hahob'a. If you're writing your story in English, your characters will speak English on the page, but you can throw in made up vocabulary and swear words that match your made up language. Your characters might wear bone armor called Oohsh, and they might eat a seaweed and fish dish called Lo-bah. And your MC's favorite swear word might be th'oba meaning "shark shit."

And, "shark shit" leads me to how you can come up with fantasy swear words. Ultimately, swear words are pretty limited in terms of their meaning. Pretty much any world related to the bodily functions of humans or animals, body parts, and anything that's perceived to be offensive or unpleasant in some way (bad smells, bad tastes, bad textures, things that look ugly or weird.) So, think about what those things would be in your character's environment. I was imagining a neolithic village by the sea in my example, which is why I went with "shark shit" as a bad word. Maybe there are stinky monkeys around your character's village called N'olbos, so someone might say, "Shut-up, N'olbo-butt," as an insult.

And if you don't want to make up a language, just go with the regular words... shark shit, monkey butt, fish gut breath, whatever works.

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

Visit my FAQ

Find answers fast on my Master List of Top Posts

Go to ko-fi.com/wqa to buy me coffee or see my commissions

[willowcrowned]

Any tips for a non-linguist attempting to create a fantasy language?

Hey! So! This is a great question, but not one I'm really equipped to answer. Because I'm not conlanging in the traditional way (by the seat of my pants while drawing on years of linguistics nerdery and advice from internet forums), a lot of the resources I'm using are ones provided to me by a linguistics professor, and therefore, for copyright and doxxing reasons, ones I can't share. What I can do is give you some very basic tips, a non-risky resource or two to help you get started, and a call for other people who dabble in conlangs to supply resources as well.

The first most basic thing I can advise is to figure out exactly what you want your language to do worldbuilding-wise, because that's going to define a lot of where you put your time and effort. For example, I want Dathomiri to recontextualize the awful, ridiculous, deeply misogynistic and cisnormative worldbuilding around the Nightsisters of Dathomir, which means I'm going to need to spend a lot of time thinking about how I want the pronouns and classes to work.

The second thing to do is to figure out which areas of your language you want to be naturalistic (it can be all of them! a lot of conlangs are made that way), and how naturalistic you want them to be. Because languages are incredibly complex, making a conlang as complex as a natural language in natural ways can take years and years and, for people who aren't Tolkien—who btw didn't even end up with a fully usable conlang—usually isn't worth it.

Of course there's room for changing your mind once you've decided on them, and not everything you toss into a language has to work exactly with your goals, but I think it can be really useful to have guidelines to help you decide which things you're going to keep in or throw out.

What you do after you've decided what you want to do is going to depend a lot on your existing knowledge of not just conlanging but linguistics in general. It's common (and best, in my opinion) practice to start with the phonetics of your language—what sounds it contains—but if you don't know how big most phonetic inventories are, or what patterns show up in them, even that can be rough.

Because I don't know where you're at knowledge-wise, and because I'm about the furthest thing you can get from an expert in linguistics, I'm not going to provide any more advice. We could get lost for days in phonetics, and weeks just on what I know of phonology (my current preferred branch), so instead I'll take this opportunity to list some resources:

First, David Peterson's book The Art of Language Invention. It's an easy read, and oriented towards people who know nothing about linguistics, so it's a really good place to start for a crash course in the basic parts of language.

Second, the World Atlas of Language Structures (https://wals.info/). Peterson's book is good for the basics, but it doesn't supply much in the way of typological information (i.e. what features occur in languages + to what frequency and where). WALS is a great database for looking at where different features of language pop up, and how often they do, which can inform a lot of your decisions about how to implement naturalism (if that's what you're trying to do).

Third—and this one both @mandaloriandy, who knows more about conlanging than me, and my professor recommended—is this word generator (https://zompist.com/gen.html). It can be really helpful for figuring out the phonology of your language—how segments are arranged—as you have to enter your phonological and phonotactic rules for it to generate a wordlist. There's also a sound change applier (https://zompist.com/sca2.html) if you're trying to evolve a language forwards or backwards, though that one I haven't ever used.

I wish I had more to give you, but a lot of what I've done so far has come from my own knowledge of phonology or from a few offhand comments from my professor/his powerpoints. I'll put out a call for resources in the tags so hopefully you'll be able to find some in the reblogs or replies, but beyond that google is probably going to be your best bet.

Sorry I couldn't help more. Good luck!