#great worldbuilding

[writing-for-life]

Hey girl. What author most inspires you? Popular press or obscure, dead or alive - no matter. Bonus Q: What author's work is like your comfort food, that you find yourself coming back to at different times in your life?

Whoa, how much time do you have? 😂

Let’s start with the obvious and kill two birds with one stone:

I love Neil Gaiman, and The Sandman absolutely is my comfort.

I don’t even know how often I’ve read it cover to cover, so to speak—my guess is roundabout 15-20 times (and that doesn’t even include dipping into individual arcs or stories just because)?

It’s just a work that has matured with me, and I’m honestly not tiring of it. I still feel I discover new stuff on every reread. It’s honestly the work that’s been most influential on my life in so many ways.

But it’s not just The Sandman. I love The Graveyard Book (I don’t care if people say it’s a children’s book). I really like Neverwhere, literally everything in Smoke and Mirrors, Norse Mythology, The Sleeper and the Spindle, and Snow, Glass, Apples. I also like his other stuff, but the “big ones” aren’t always highest up my list (like Anansi Boys, American Gods, Good Omens and Stardust)—make of that what you will 😂

Also: I really love Art Matters and The View from the Cheap Seats (for some of his non-fiction stuff).

And of course his children’s books.

I just love his worldbuilding, it honestly awes me.

But it’s not just Neil Gaiman. Matt Haig. The Midnight Library and How to Stop Time in particular. His children’s books are wonderful too, especially To Be a Cat, The Truth Pixie and A Mouse Called Mika. And Notes on a Nervous Planet is always worth a read (I think it’s also a comfort one).

Other books I frequently revisit:

Joan Aiken’s Midnight is a Place.

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (she writes great dialogue)

I also like Tolkien, but I feel I need to be in a very particular mood. His overly descriptive prose irks me on occasion (nothing to do with him, but all with me), but the overall story and worldbuilding makes up for it.

Sinclair Lewis (surprising, I know 😂), John Steinbeck, David Foster Wallace 😢

And many more, so that’s all just from the top of my head and very unfiltered.

[lady-laureline]

starting my first watch of Den-noh Coil, on a scale from 1 to 10 how broken am I going to be

[daisywords]

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

[calamitaswrath]

I have feelings about fantasy worlds

[ID: The "shoutout to women, gotta one of my favourite genders" meme edited to say "shoutout to unconventional fantasy world shapes, gotta be one of my favourite settings. I fw individual fantastical areas too if anyone was wondering". Several drawings and screencaps are edited in, such as the Discworld, Laputa from the Ghibli film Castle in the Sky, and the titans Bionis and Mechonis from Xenoblade Chronicles in the upper half. The lower half of the meme has has screencaps from Satorl Marsh and Valak Mountain from Xenoblade Chronicles and Sylvalum from Xenoblade Chronicles X edited in. End ID.]

[beigetiger]

This will probably be my last post about Murder Drones ever, but I really do love that the message of the finale is basically just…we should do more cringe things.

Liam Vickers is out here making a silly little robot show with no particularly deep or existential message (which half the fandom was expecting) and is instead smashing his characters together like dolls, making them anime fight with nightcore music in the background, and giving them fucked up to the point of ridiculousness character development/trauma, with the message that this is fun and lighthearted and that we should kill cringe culture and instead do more of what he’s doing.

And honestly? Go off king, that is a GREAT message to spread and a delightful subversion to what everyone was expecting for the finale. We SHOULD spend more time doing cringe things and making fanart and pop culture references and edgy OCs. You’re so correct that not everything needs to be deep or meaningful.

I know a lot of people are going to hate the finale for the lack of story, but honestly this show is just here to have fun and I’m rolling with that. Go be cringe and weird and free.

[whiteraven90]

Your take on griffins is so cool 👀 Do you have worldbuilding notes somewhere? Like what their dynamic is with humans, or what their habitats and habits usually are? I’d love to know more about them!

Hey, thanks for asking! I actually had written a little species description for them, but I shelved it until I draw illustrations for it. However I might as well post it now with less relevant pictures. Who knows when would I get around to drawing those illustrations. First of all... there are no gryphons on Tetra. No mortal ones, just spirits.

Spirits were created by the gods to be sentient blueprints for species. Flora & fauna were created out of chosen spirits (e.g. polar bear, barn owl), and the leftovers were repurposed (e.g. great horned gryphon, common pegasus).

In addition to the whole range of shapes/forms spirits were designed to take as part of nature, they also had their would-be behavioral patterns pre-set into them. So now lets see how the Great Horned Gryphons would have lived!

Great horned gryphons (also simply referred to as 'griffins' from now on) are sexually dimorphic, and live in pairs. They are very resource-conscious - individuals not raised properly may hunt their food sources to extinction, after which they either starve to death or get themselves killed while ravaging the animals of other griffins or humans. Each pair oversees a vast territory filled with wild herd animals. They engage in several behaviors that are basically animal husbandry. They will protect their herds from other predators and even natural disasters. They will herd their animals toward quality food. They can recognize juveniles of many species - humans included -, and will not eat them. They sometimes raise the abandoned offspring of other species, not because they plan to eat them, but because they get a kick out of it. They don't hunt, per se. They hit up one of their herds, select a specimen, and carry it home for lunch. They like to construct their nests atop cliffs and similar high points overlooking their territory.

Their relationship with people is complex (and hypothetical, as is everything else), since people may want to claim the same lands for the same purposes. But typically if they saw a lone human child, just waltzing around on their territory, they'd pick it up and put it down near adult humans. Solitary adult people tend to be safe as well for different reasons. The staple of griffins is large animals, and they like to conserve their energy. Normally they won't get up for 1 lone human nugget.

If an adult pair spots an unrelated juvenile griffin on their turf, they leave it alone, but they don't tolerate mature trespassers or other pairs. They are hostile to all other species of gryphon. Given the opportunity, they will kill and eat them. Great horned gryphons are viviparous and give birth to 1 chick at a time which stays with the parents for several years to learn some manners. Mostly moderation, recognizing important animal species, and caring for their animals. Their lifespan is 40-70 years.

And that's more or less it. At present, great horned gryphons are not plural. There's just one spirit, Griffin, representing the whole species, either until the heat death of the universe or until he bites the dust. Spirits are shapeshifters with a range of native forms as opposed to one original form. They have some rules among them on etiquette, such as when is it ok to take the form of another spirit. Griffin mostly uses his adult male form, and lets Phoenix take his adult female one.

Several of his species' characteristics can be felt in his personality - excels at relaxing, hard to anger or scare, won't hurt kids or pets and is good with them, extraverted, resource-conscious, enjoys having vast lands. His relationship with humans is... complicated. Nowadays he kinda pretends to be a pet at the palace of the emperor of the Karkian Empire, and is banned from or unwelcome in several other countries. Sorcerers summon him sometimes, but the jolly fucker usually charges by the hour for his spirit-y services, and may even screw the summoners over if he doesn't like them.

[mahi-does-some-art]

What if, instead of the Sorcerers' Society being just a small organization with a headquarters, it was instead a hidden city or capital where not only could sorcerers go to for assistance and to get their licenses, but could safely live and learn without having to put so much effort into hiding their magic from general human public? (Something similar to Witch Hat Atelier perhaps)

A hidden away capital with houses and apartments and magical shops selling everything a sorcerer would ever need. Where they can safely converse on the street and network and apprentices can talk to each other and swap tales of their lessons and masters.

Out in the expanse of the human world, it's hard to come by each other so having a place to live like that would be great.

But also it would make Solomon getting chased out by a dragon so much funnier (or sadder) since he and the mystery apprentice would have been the ones to found the Sorcerers' Society in the first place.

He would probably own his own house there and come back there whenever there was a meeting he had to attend or some urgent matter to discuss. Solomon wouldn't stay there longer than he usually had to and his property is usually empty.

But when sorcerers usually take in an apprentice, that apprentice lives with their master in order to make the most of learning opportunities and a lot of them tend to move back to the Sorcerers' Society for convenience.

If Solomon was able to convince MC to live with him for "educational purposes" completely separate from the brothers and Devildom, who's to say he wouldn't give living amongst his peers an honest try once more?

[joshuamj]

In Stars And Time? More like In Ace And Gender

+ some alts

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

utter bullshit that we stop growing at a certain age.

humans should grow (both taller and wider) at a continuous rate throughout our lifespans. i want to be 80 years old with the proportions of an average human being except i am the height of a multistory building. that would be so fun. that would require so much societal rearrangement. this isn't a want it's a need

[kataraavatara]

“wah wah nesta was spending Rhysand’s infinite money!” real talk…why did she even need it? wtf happened to all the money tamlin gave them??? it just disappeared? was this ever explained

[chiropteracupola]

Martín Macuilmazatl, a young gentleman of the Ciudad de México.

[ohfugecannada]

Going back and reading the 80s Rocket comics hits different after watching gotg Vol.3…

[onaperduamedee]

Thinking again about how the gender essentialism in WoT is aggravating not because there is gender essentialism in magic because that's the entire premise of the books but because RJ set to explore that particular premise without fully understanding how gender essentialism and patriarchy affects women differently that it does men. That's how you get Berelain's writing, the internal monologues of Nynaeve in tel'aran'rhiod, groups of women in power often written as petty squabbling fools, practically all the powerful female leaders at the start of the series will be depowered and humiliated by the end, the Aiel warriors being women presented as something foreign...

In RJ world, men are naturally stronger than women in the OP: this rule isn't subverted and permeates every aspect of his worldbuilding. There's a reason only the boys are ta'veren, that Mat ends up taking control of the armies over Elayne, that Perrin is naturally better at tel'aran'rhiod than Egwene, that Nynaeve the strongest channeler we've seen in a thousand years becomes a glorified battery for Rand in the end.

In a way, it's a fascinating psychological phenomenon that the entire premise of his fictional world is based on gender essentialism yet he doubled down on several core elements of gender essentialism instead of subverting them.

When I discuss gender essentialism in his work I do it so because he made it "gender essentialism: the fantasy edition", so while his women challenge gender essentialism in some ways, it's entirely legitimate to question why he didn't expand the subversion in other aspects of his world.

[genericpuff]

people kicking and screaming about the cultural worldbuilding in Dawntrail:

people who aren't white redditors:

[marlynnofmany]

"You need necromancy to fix a rotten board."

Highlight from a conversation about airship mechanics, and the way you can't just remove rot the same way you'd remove paint or bloodstains. See, rot isn't so much a thing that befouls a surface so much as a sign of what has occurred. Like burn marks.

You gotta regrow the damaged area, and we all know what branch of magic handles regrowing dead material.

("And that's above my pay grade," says the mechanic. "Or above board, if you'll pardon the pun.")

[nineslugs]

Male Great Alv faces. I decided, since they use pheromones to (mostly subconsciously) communicate things related to health/age/ownership of objects and territory/readiness to mate, that I want to give them preorbital glands like deer.

The glands are present in both males and females. The glands lack hair and can flush with blood to turn more red. Redder glands are seen as fetching, and in some cultures the tissue is tattooed or pierced (Bainan has preorbital gland tattoos for example).