#common materials

[chiquilines]

In honour of mha ending, have some old (and i mean OLD) miryumi scribbles i never got around to posting. They were the main characters in my heart

[endlesslytired]

[justjettithings]

jedi gifting each other river rocks and sea shells because they can feel the living force through these objects and sense the beauty and life flowing through the environment it once inhabited

[serpentface]

how do you come up with the ways cultures in your setting stylize people/animals/the world in general in their artwork, i.e. jewlery, rock carvings, statues, etc? Each culture in your world seems to have a very unique "art style" and I love it a lot - makes them seem that much more 'real'. This is something I struggle with a lot in my own worldbuilding and I'd love to pick your brain if possible 😁

I think a starting point is to have a research process based in the material realities of the culture you're designing for. Ask yourself questions like:

Where do they live? What's the climate/ecosystem(s) they are based in? What geographic features are present/absent?

What is their main subsistence method? (hunter gatherer, seasonal pastoralist, nomadic pastoralist, settled agriculturalist, a mix, etc)

What access to broader trade networks do they have and to whom? Are there foreign materials that will be easily accessible in trade and common in use, or valuable trade materials used sparingly in limited capacities?

Etc

And then do some research based on the answers, in order to get a sense of what materials they would have routine access to (ie dyes, metal, textiles, etc) and other possible variables that would shape how the art is made and what it's used for. This is just a foundational step and won't likely play much into designing a Style.

If you narrow these questions down very specifically, (ie in the context of the Korya post- grassland based mounted nomads, pastoralist and hunter-gatherer subsistence, access to wider trade networks and metals), you can direct your research to specific real world instances that fit this general idea. This is not to lift culturally specific concepts from the real world and slap them into your own setting, but to notice commonalities this lifestyle enforces - (ie in the previous example- mounted nomadic peoples are highly mobile and need to easily carry their wealth (often on clothing and tack) therefore small, elaborate decorative artwork that can easily be carried from place to place is a very likely feature)

For the details of the art itself, I come up with loose 'style guides' (usually just in my head) and go from there.

Here's some example questions for forming a style (some are more baseline than others)

Are geometric patterns favored? Organic patterns? Representative patterns (flowers, animals, stars, etc)? Abstract patterns?

Is there favored material(s)? Beads, bone, clay, metals, stones, etc.

When depicting people/animals, is realism favored? Heavy stylization? The emotional impression of an animal? Are key features accentuated?

How perspective typically executed? Does art attempt to capture 3d depth? Does it favor showing the whole body in 2 dimensions (ie much of Ancient Egyptian art, with the body shown in a mix of profile and forward facing perspective so all key attributes are shown)? Will limbs overlap? Are bodies shown static? In motion?

Does artwork of people attempt to beautify them? Does it favor the culture's conception of the ideal body?

Are there common visual motifs? Important symbols? Key subject matters?

What is the art used for? Are its functions aesthetic, tutelary, spiritual, magical? (Will often exist in combination, or have different examples for each purpose)

Who is represented? Is there interest in everyday people? Does art focus on glorifying warriors, heroes, kings?

Are there conventions for representing important figures? (IE gods/kings/etc being depicted larger than culturally lesser subjects)

Is there visual shorthand to depict objects/concepts that are difficult to execute with clarity (the sun, moon, water), or are invisible (wind, the soul), or have no physical component (speech)?

Etc

Deciding on answers to any of these questions will at least give you a unique baseline, and you can fill in the rest of the gaps and specify a style further until it is distinct. Many of these questions are not mutually exclusive, both in the sense of elements being combined (patterns with both geometric and organic elements) or a culture having multiple visual styles (3d art objects having unique features, religious artwork having its own conventions, etc).

Also when you're getting in depth, you should have cultural syncretism in mind. Cultures that routinely interact (whether this interaction is exchange or exploitation) inevitably exchange ideas, which can be especially visible in art. Doing research on how this synthesizing of ideas works in practice is very helpful- what is adopted or left out from an external influence, what is retained from an internal influence, what is unique to this synthesis, AND WHY. (I find Greco-Buddhist art really interesting, that's one of many such examples)

Looking at real world examples that fit your parameters can be helpful (ie if I've decided on geometric patterns in my 'style guide', I'll look at actual geometric patterns). And I strongly encourage trying to actually LEARN about what you're seeing. All art exists in a context, and having an understanding of how the context shapes art, how art does and doesn't relate to broader aspects of a society, etc, can help you when synthesizing your own.

[julijbee]

girlbossing too close to the sun.

[nightmarerose1]

💥🧡BakuToko Crumbs🖤🐦‍⬛

💥[Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,Part 6,Part 7]🐦‍⬛

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

You should be a childrens' book illustrator! Your style would be so perfect for that I think! Really unique :D

While I don’t know any children’s literature writers, I *was* commissioned to do illustrations for a medical journal article!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

always enjoyed the Chess Set In The Foreground perspective framing used here

now also noting like, huh, a chess set in a general store just visited by marigold competitors who killed one of their guys and are now on the way back from their rendezvous point w/suppliers

[revenantghost]

The Trigun fandom really has dedication like no other, huh

[tj-crochets]

Today I learned that while I can now walk around the neighborhood to look at yard sales that does not mean I should, because I will spend the afternoon with super low blood pressure I mean, I did figure that out after walking like half a block, but then I cam home and set up my own mini yard sale of just plushies, baby blankets, and quilts, and apparently "sitting outside in the sun for an hour" is too much for me physically at the moment? Definitely a learning experience lol I did sell a few plushies, a pair of baby booties, and a quilt! And the quilt went to someone super excited about it! It was her favorite color (it matched both her nail polish and her ring)

[prolibytherium]

There's a LOT of things people do wrong when constructing fantasy beliefs in pantheons of gods, but one of the more specific is having only one god related to fertility and it kind of being just a horny sex thing.

Like you'll have one in the entire bunch whose sphere is listed as fertility and it's basically like Yeah this is the sex one. She's always depicted naked (but not TOO naked because censorship and/or the writer's own skittishness). She's going to have the exact body type epitomized in contemporary western beauty standards and there's usually no chance in hell that she's gonna be fat (unless MAYBE they're referencing 'venus' figurines). Her thing is fertility, which means having sex and making babies. Might be a goddess of beauty or love or marriage too, because these are kinda sex things, but that's probably it. And yeah that sort of thing is virtually nonexistent in real life.

Like the concept of fertility is so fundamentally important to the function of most societies in human history in ways that it is just Not in industrialized imperial core countries. Most people are getting food from stores, and not having to worry about harvesting crops or breeding livestock or foraging for food or having enough animals to hunt, so fertility only really comes up as a concern if you're trying to have kids (and there is certainly societal pressure to have children, but your wellbeing and survival is rarely going to Depend on it). And I think writing only from that perspective and not even trying to learn about WHY fertility is so conceptually important is why you see this trend.

There's no absolute universal statement about how people believe in gods but it's broadly accurate that systems with many deities will Usually have more than one deity associated with fertility, and these associations will certainly include human reproduction but also the fertility of livestock/hunted animals, plants, the land itself.

Some fertility deities may also be heavily associated with seasonal changes or environmental factors that agriculture or foraging is dependent on (spring/summer/fall, seasonal rains, seasonal flooding, rain itself, sunlight, good soil, rivers, wetlands, etc). Some certainly might be related to love, marriage, sex, and beauty, but that's VERY RARELY going to be the sole way the concept of fertility is embodied. And they'll often will have other associations not directly about fertility, or related to fertility in culturally specific ways.

[soracities]

People are wild lol rap does actually take a certain level of skill to both perform and understand, it takes five seconds of research to see that theres decent lyricism going on there. Lots of rappers are actually great at english, they dont all know the official terms for the things they practice but rapping is like a form of poetry really.

ofc there are subgenres that i personally do not like such as mumble rap (a conversation for another time i digress) but if you take for example kendrick's latest diss tracks to drake, its something that has to literally be studied and broken down by a bunch of people lol and once you break it down and understand the refrences you see that its not just a bunch of words and a beat. of course white people will think something they dont understand is ghetto trash what else is new lol they're the kings of ostricizing and devaluing what they dont understand. They did it to jazz they did it to metal and alternative music and they do it to rap.

At the end of the day, culture is a thing that will be understood by those who are meant to understand it. You dont have to like rap to acknowledge that its an art, but calling it trash and refusing to see it from any point of view but your own speaks for itself.

And for the record, im not a rap fan lol its a genre i hardly listen to in fact, but what i am is an artist, and i can acknowledge art when i see it.

i'll be honest, i don't think lack of understanding is solely what comes into it, if at all. the genres that get the most aggressive pushback are also ones that threaten a cultural hegdemony in their respective societies (white, male, christian etc) and that's not a coincidence. rap gets the worst of this and ultimately i don't think it has ever boiled down to not knowing what GOAT means and a lot more to do with overt and tacit hostility towards black people making outspoken art on their own terms in a deeply racist society.

but otherwise i completely agree with you! the lyrical complexity, rhyming schemes and dexterity at play in a good rap song is second to none and you could absolutely teach a literature class on it. it is as much a poetic medium as anything else while also encompassing its own deeply layered, complex and distinct sensibilities--just like, literally, every other art form on earth! to pretend otherwise is just ludicrous at this point.

[serpentface]

Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol

Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.

I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).

The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).

A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).

All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.

The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.

An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.

At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.

(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).

They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:

(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)

The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.

The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).

(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).

The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.

This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.

Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).

This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).

[madisoncounty]

i don't really know what the vision here is but is anyone else seeing it

[mxtxfanatic]

I cannot stress this enough, but using The Untamed/CQL to “contextualize” the novel mdzs is like using the movie Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010) to understand the Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series. American readers know…

[bonefall]

...Something's kinda hitting me, guys. I think something just clicked.

So we all know that BB!DOTC is the arc I'm not staying faithful to, right? A lot of characters are getting total overhauls? I'd actually been dancing pretty heavily around the pro-colonialism themes in the original text, simply because I don't really feel comfortable handling them (same with certain sexual themes, it's not great for my mental health to force myself to engage with certain elements that are triggering)

So I'd made it so there was Park Cats (Wind Coalition and River Kingdom) who arrived relatively recently, and Tribe Cats (Sky's Clan, Shadow's Clan) who nestle into an unclaimed spot in the forest. All groups roughly equal in power until Thunder's Clan which was existing in defiance.

But Clanmew isn't JUST comprised of Parkmew and Tribemew-- there's a third contributor. Old Townmew, which mixes with Parkmew and forms Middle Townmew, mixing again with Clanmew to create Modern Townmew.

Since I'm now really thinking about the colonialism themes, especially in my re-read where it starts reaching its narrative conclusion in Books 5 and 6... I think I need to add that 3rd cultural group. I need to make them a player. I think I'm doing a serious disservice by only having the Park Cats, Tribe Cats, and then saying all others mostly lived in the town.

I'm gonna do a BB!Brokenstar with Slash. Previously I'd just cut him completely-- but I think I should, instead, walk him back from being "Pure Evil" like he is in-canon and make him into a real character.

One Eye's a god drawn to the festering stink and rot of the First Battle; Slash is a mortal, leading a group like any other in the Forest Territories.

I think I'm also going to significantly bump up the time the Park Cats have been in this territory. Slash and his cats have been fighting them for years, and until the Mountain Cat influx, were basically spread through most of the Forest.