#inconsistant worldbuilding

[rjalker]

Martha Wells really didn't think anything through for her version of The Imperial Radch. (Aka The Murderbot Diaries)

Ancillaries from The Imperial Radch are all different looking because they literally used to be real people who were kidnapped, murdered, and their brains taken over.

Martha Wells tells us that Constructs (anthroids, but she wanted to be special and make up new terms to confuse everyone) are made from cloned human tissue, but then...it's never brought up that they'd all be exactly identical to eachother because they're all clones from the original source? It's implied that they all look different, even though they also apparently all have the exact same proportions.

If they didn't all look different, then we would have gotten comments from characters about confusing Murderbot for another construct, or thinking it has a twin.

So, we're supposed to casually accept that all constructs are physically unique except for their proportions, which are all exactly the same.

And yes that's already extremely contradictory for no good reason. Gawaine giving away the horse and finding it dead five seconds later, yada yada yada. It's a game of telephone but for writing.

But even if we accept this contradictory statement as true, that each individual construct was cloned from a different source that's...not how capitalism works.

Modern day capitalism doesn't' care about genetic diversity even when it's crucial for species we eat not going extinct.

There's absolutely no way capitalists would suddenly care about preserving "genetic diversity" when it's literally not needed in any way. Constructs don't reproduce. Genetic diversity is not even remotely a consideration.

There is no in-universe justification we’re ever given, and considering Martha Wells’ loathing for doing world building for this series, we’re just never gonna get one.

They all look different because, despite the fact that she’s never bothered to describe it, Murderbot has to be Unique and Special™.

Even though it makes no fucking sense. The point of cloning en masse is that it’s supposed to be cheap and easy and can be done over and over and over again without end.

No capitalist is going to go out of their way to collect so many samples of genetic material to create a supposedly unlimited supply of completely unique anthroids who don’t even reproduce.

It’s a small detail, yes, but it’s just another inconsistancy upon piles of inconsistancies, born out of her insistance that her protagonists must be the most special characters ever to exist, while also trying to mimic better writing that...doesn’t prioritize creating Mary Sues.

She wants the cool vibe of The Imperial Radch, but doesn’t want any of the nuance or actual depth for characters and backstories and worldbuilding.

Murderbot is simultaneously super expensive and worth investing constant repairs in, but also cheap and easy to replace and not worth repairing. And you’re just supposed to believe both of these things at once, and who cares if they’re completely contradictory.

Murderbot is a disposable plastic cup, because Ancillaries are disposable and Martha Wells wants Murderbot to be as cool as them.

Murderbot is expensive and worth investing endless repairs in, because Martha Wells is ableist and lazy and would rather die than write a character who becomes physically disabled over the course of the story, even though Murderbot’s literally based on a character who -- *gasp* -- became physically disabled over the course of her story! Multiple times! And none of them were ever magically healed like they never happened!

Murderbot is made of cloned human material, because that sounds cool and scifi-y, but isn’t actually a direct clone of anyone, or one clone among many, because Martha Wells’ protags have to be the most unique and special and best characters in the setting ever, and she thinks that specializes would be diminished if Murderbot had a few thousand clone-siblings running around.

So we just end up with another completely contradictory set of ideas on top of the rest that we’re already supposed to accept in the series.

[justarandomlambblog]

I was possessed by a thought

Modern-ish au but in a "thousands of years post-canon universe"

In which Lamb did not spare Narinder and when they saved the Bishops from Purgatory, actually put them to rest (aka sent them to the After) and oops, the Bishops + Narinder accidentally reincarnated while the Lamb wasn't watching

(Part 2 here)

In this life, the Bishops are still siblings and all were born with magic; Narinder became a priest, and though the other Bishops were raised in the temple alongside him they chose to pursue careers outside of the priesthood. Heket runs a restaurant (of course), Kallamar makes jewelry and sells crystals (he has healing magic so his crystals are literal healing crystals :) ), Leshy is a gardener and Shamura runs a bookshop (I'm sure you're noticing a theme here- their past lives are affecting their new ones). Their past lives' injuries have actually carried over, only instead of being injuries they're disabilities they were born with; Shamura their memory issues, Kallamar is deaf, Heket is mute, Leshy is blind, and Narinder has chronic pain (he WAS in chains for a thousand years, his muscles were ATROPHIED and his joints destROYED, and you cannot convince me otherwise). Not shown here; Narinder also uses a cane and on his really bad days a wheelchair.

Heket: Get a whole pumpkin Narinder, who can't lift more than 20 pounds:

Why do Narinder (and the Bishops) look the same and have the same name? Well. The world may have forgotten them, but the universe hasn't.

Aym and Baal are immortals from their time in the After in this world, and though at first they were resistant to helping the Lamb, eventually they saw they needed Help™ and had no idea what they were doing, and having been witness and aid to Narinder's job for centuries they knew how to help. Over the millennia they fell into the old familiar role of being the guardians of Death (Forneus is also an immortal so don't worry they're not separated again) and are in a constant state of Done With Lamb's Shit (/affectionate).

... I actually really love how Lamb turned out here. It was fun drawing them Older. And quite a flip with making them look older than Narinder. The society that's been built up is still religious but no one recognizes Lamb because they've changed so much over the last two thousand years, and the fact they're a sheep doesn't raise any red flags as sheep have migrated to the Lands from other continents. They're rare but not unheard of.

The Crown fits in by disguising as various types of pets, though no matter its form it always has one eye. This time it's a bird, and it recognized Narinder from a mile away :) The mind forgets but the soul remembers....

[bayonettesque]

i have a really big issue with the priestess library because the idea we’re supposed to have of it vs the problems that are alarmingly obvious once you examine the concept even slightly are like… sooo different it’s scary. sjm clearly intended for it to be rhysand’s woke king abuse survivor utopia except when you think about it, it’s an isolated camp for heavily traumatised women to live with zero programs in place to overcome their trauma or work towards returning to the outside world— instead, they swear an oath to provide labor for rhys (presumably without pay, because what and where would they spend it?) and be bound to a religious order they don’t really have room to question or leave because defecting from the religion would lead to obvious social isolation and exclusion. it’s an almost cultish setup because like… imagine if a priestess wanted to leave— she has nothing, no family, money, accomodations, or familiarity with the “outside world”. leaving means departing from everything you know, likely to never return, not having learnt to defend yourself or cope with your severe trauma. 

the excuse that “things work differently for the fae” doesn’t exist here because acosf gives us a perfect case study of how these priestesses are quintessentially the same as an average real human woman, wherein yoga, meditation, doing some exercise, getting fresh air, and hanging out with your girlies is enough to apparently re-integrate you into the real world via GWYN and all the other priestesses. WHY is this apparently the first time in like 500 years the powers-that-be have considered a program to rehabilitate the priestesses and give them their own power??? (well. it was NESTA’S idea lmfao the ic would never do that on their own) if sjm wanted this priestess library to actually be the ethical feminist fantasy she thinks it is, couldn’t it have been that the library is supposed to be a transitional place where the ultimate goal is to heal and leave to live a fulfilling, independent, healthy life?? if rhys were the villain this would so easily be a “he keeps traumatised women as slaves to work in his isolated library camp” it’s not even funny holy shit

[revenantghost]

Wait

Goddammit. The twins are taller than Wolfwood. CAN WE HAVE NO HEIGHT CONSISTENCY IN THIS FANDOM???

[too-many-blorbos]

Figuring out Witcher lore is so hard. You ask a question and there will be three different contradictory answers spread over the book series, and you never know which one is actually the truth because Geralt is a freaking LIAR and cannot be trusted to give exposition.

[starflungwaddledee]

A little off topic but do I spy tail feathers on gk in the last panel?

thank you for noticing thank you for noticing thank you for n oticing thanky nyou f

yes, you most certainly do!

voilà!

he's had them in every picture of him i've posted, but they're not always easy to see! i was really wondering when someone would notice!

it is a swallow-like tail! when you have big ol' wings i figure that having a rudder helps significantly with manoeuvrability. here's some sketches where you can see it a little more clearly.

and an extra bonus; with all those feathers he's obviously gotta have a way to preen them...

[mellonieee]

One thing I find absolutely hilarious is that there's so many different sources of the fairies magic and it's incredibly busted. Like that's one thing that has NEVER been consistent. First there's the big wand, but then there's the royal jewel from Shadow Showdown, and that's not even getting into the literal power of belief from that one Crocker episode, Crocker Shocker. The stone called Abracadabrium from the Live action films, and then there's finally the magic microchip from a New Wish.

[alicentsaegon]

Modern fantasy writers are like

"I want to tackle themes such as misogyny or clssism or racism or homophobia in my work!🤗🤗🤗 No there's none of that present in my book, this society that mimics 1300s central Europe suffers from none of these issues because thats not progressive and if we have DRAGONS and MAGIC why do we need this ahaha am I right? 😅🙂‍↕️Except for this individual conflict in this novel the characters have to overcome but that's an isolated case. Oh look there's a Queen!"

[duckiemimi]

apparently the jjk we know now was not the jjk gege had in mind before chapter 1, and this...this makes a lot of sense actually (context: here, and also this is one of the first drafts).

[saltysplayt00ns]

Page 849 Reworked

I've been waiting a long time to show this one, and had to adjust some stuff cause the author thought rushing to place an out of place fog would make things better, but just adds on the confusion of a fog only showing around their and not around the area. Also would've had a scene of them going through the fog and we seen the Two tribes coming in through the fog. This would've been a better battle and advantage CAUSE LET ME REMIND YA. There are two tribes band together to take down Meteor tribe and a few of Whispervale members. THIS IS A NO WIN BATTLE, Meteor has to be strategic and improvise from a no win scenario. Ronja and other would've taken advantage of the fog and fought them there and not up the freaking mountains. taken advantage when the elements plus the rain coming down would make it more thick in mist. THE BATTLE SPEAKS FOR ITSELF!!!.

Close-up shots;

I did adjustment of the whole scene cause this is an action scene;

Panel adjustments and add-ons

Added lighting and shadows

Added SFX

Reworked the BG

Added armor

Added tribal paint

Worked Dialogue bubble cause yikes Ronja.

KARGO HAS PAINT ON BOTH SIDES!!!

He also has the other half of his body.

Adjust to make the dogs more like fur.

Diarko had him more primitive and connect the dark markings.

Also quote from the author themselves; " No paint on any of them for this, it's tedious enough to have to draw all this armor X)" SO BASICALLY YOU, an author that is drawing a Raiding battle of tribes that is between life and death, doesn't want to do paint nor any detailed important stuff, so we don't know who's fighting who. It's not even battle armor cause None of them ARE WEARING ANYTHING TO PROTECT THEMSELVESM, Meteortribe is more equipped with clothes then the tribes that are experienced not wearing any, they're the one's that say burning bodies is ' primitive '. let me tell ya after 2-3 pages its laughable on him trying to make this the final boss type BS when they. How these dogs advanced again? ya got literally spirits giving out free loot XD This is what I mean by ' changing plot to fit the story ' and ' inconsistencies ' like this an annoying blemish, instead of a competent tribes that are more experienced and trained to handle such things, you are NOT given armor nor paint nor anything of an build-up, because you was lazy and don't know how to find an easy way to do said battle armor - PLUS don't know how to have meteor tribe not lose members. Like, why the heck are the two tribes waited MONTHS to start invading them now why not then?? because kiq. doesn't know how to fix the plot holes, since basically would've been wiped out regardless of the extra protection. why meteor waited so long to fix their defenses?

why Keirr is not with them, isn't he a family oriented dog.?

Why Rhovanion and Feaf are not their isn't Rhov and family oriented dog?

Why meteor didn't leave around winter and waited many months to move at all? , this is not a vacation, its an evacuation.

why Tribes waited years to actually start something now then 30 years ago.?

Why Roamer wants to take the idea from Kargo which was meant for Kargo, roamer, Ferah to make their ' new life? ' why not just have it where its an idea you made on your own???!!!! really putting salt on that wound ain't ya?

When did Kargo know about Rogio, more then Roamer who is literally his boyfriend?

Why Rogio dumping all the chores on Roamer to do? he's been doing it a lot and somehow Roamer have to agree, cause remember those scenes when Roamer put OUT HIS OPINION??!!! and tried to help? he gotten gaslighted and a upper cut of emotional manipulations.

Why Rogio wants a Polycule now? especially after we SAW Rogio snooping AGAIN on other dogs conversations. and Kargo so far is focused on other things then having a threesome. and all these glaring and many more glaring questions. Again the question is why?? why, why and more WHY'S. This stuff usually is dealt with after doing drafts, concepts and revisions.

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Ps.

The quick placement of the Fog was laughable, cause think about it like, why kiq. going to do a dues ex Machina on the mountains and not in the fogs. Think about it in a tactical planning for Ronja and writers. The Fog is more an advantage to hide in the thick mist in dark shades of the trees, then being exposer on plan sight on top of a mountain. Meteor ( Nordguard ) 1. does not know how to wield a sword, 2. they're outnumbered, 3. lack experiences and 4. have children. They needed to think strategically and fast. The fog would've been a perfect scene for them to hide in and cover their scents, Rain and thunder is coming, so more thick fog and cover up from the tribes, they would use that to their advantage and scatter the raid them around. It's a risky maneuver but Ronja can't be hesitant nor meek on this, is all or nothing. THIS STUFF IS GOOD TENSION AND CHARACTER BUILD-UP.

---- This creating armor and concepts is like whip cream on an ice cream cake for me. But hey it's not my Comic to stress over, be a pump and dump for all I bloody know . .....

Side Goodies:

Quick Armored concept for Dragonsfall

Dragonsfall Paint marks

The Dragonsfall tribe is a group of Canines who have forged a strong alliance with Fire-breathing lizards, believing themselves to be descendants of these majestic creatures. They are known for crafting a unique bronze metal, believed to be hardened and melted with metal from the scales of dragons. This bronze shines like fire, is harder than regular metal, and exhibits weird translucent colors like the scales. The tribe also molds bits of leather to create softer but sturdier materials. While they may have lost some of the fierce traits associated with dragons over time, certain traits like their scales, reproduction and facials still show hints of their connection to these mythical beings.

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HAPPY EATING YA BLOGGERS ♥

[hellsuwus]

I did this at 3 am, threw it in my drafts, and it’s just been sitting there so here we go lmao. Inspired by @ceo-of-sloppy-men tiefling tail headcanons

Exposing myself as that insane anon who said they were drawing zevlor tail charms and also omega fic fanart teehee. Now! Hcs under the cut

Okay so anyway I know nothing about biology BUT I love worldbuilding

I imagine that when tieflings weigh their tails down there's two different types of weights.

The first ones are practical ones. Not every tiefling can just give into their heat. They got jobs to do! Bills to pay! So these ones are more simple and are purely for purpose of weighing down tails. Most of the time it's like, a heavy sleeve and the inside is often filled with heavy beads or rice or pebbles or something ((kind of like a weighted blanket where its inside)) and in the case of stronger tiefs ((like zev 🤭)) they often have heavy metal bracers or cuffs around them as well just to weigh em down a bit more. Some wear em only at the ends of their tails, and some wear em up all the way.

The second one are the decorative ones. Sometimes they start off with the weighted sleeve, like stated above, as a base and then they'll wrap decorations around it. Or sometimes, the decorations are heavy enough that they'll just use those. (( In my brain zev always wears that little sleeve tho, he’s an old man who values comfort over style lol))

And if course the decorations and any meanings vary from tief to tief. Some tiefs wear basic metal charms with some chains and stuff to look cute, others are dramatic as hell and will wrap gold and jewels over their tail.

I dont think there'd really be any specific way to signify being in a relationship or not. A color system wouldn't work since tieflings come in so many colors that they could just be matching their partner. And I love the chains idea but chains are so hot i think everyone deserves them. Maybe they wear a padlock on their tail to symbolize they're taken??

I LOVE the thought of there being a symbol for free use tieflings in heat though. In my mind it would be any sort of bells. Some are more subtle and wear smaller ones on the ends of their tails, others are loud and proud and desperate and will wear large ones and it's a symbol for any other tiefling around to come use em.

I also think it would be really funny if the other races aren't aware that the bells mean free to use and they just think that tieflings are attention seekers lol

[allgremlinart]

Erté.... Erté is so Vulcan....

[legislacerator]

i have a lot to say on this matter but as someone who has watched the x-files front to back numerous times in the last few years i think people shouldn’t feel obligated to watch the whole ass entire show before they can engage with fan content. especially because show’s lore has, uh, diminishing returns after a certain point

[sparkspropaganda]

it's just wild bc resident evil will be like. Here's Heisenberg a man who wears WW1/WW2 German dogtags and views humans not as people but as canon fodder. He desecrates the dead and literally hooks them up to an assembly line, in case you didn't get the heavy capitalist and war machine imagery already. Or look here's Oswell Spencer. He's a decrepit old pos who wants to pillage the KAZ for its natural resources in an effort to create a new, "evolved", superhuman race, killing the Ndipaya tribe in the process because, to be clear, he's a white supremacist. He will indoctrinate a group of children to become this new race and the rest will succumb to the virus and he won't care bc he's also a staunch eugenicist. And then countless other villains will employ the same tactics, will believe the same things, and will have active backing from the US govt and global military orgs and then fans will be like.... let's not talk about it. Let's actually forget any of this because I personally think they're hot and would like to fuck them

[vyuntspakhkite-l-darling]

Less of an infodump than me just rambling but I'm just gonna. Here. Have this.

Selvarem is probably my favorite place I've worldbuilt tbh. I've been working on it for years, even before I created the world it exists in- it came from a roleplay group I used to have with my friends. It also used to be called Silvarum, which is a straight up Latin word which means 'of the forest.' You'll never guess what kind of biome is most prevalent here.

I've started developing a conlang which is the dominant language here, it mostly has the grammatical structure of Latin and a phonetic system that I'll detail out whenever I make a post about the language.

It has a warm, wet climate, mainly covered in rainforests or rocky beaches along the coasts. It's fairly average sized, but it has a larger population than one would expect because of the way the infrastructure is there, with most of the population living in houses that were built in the trees while things like stores and service buildings were on the forest floor.

For the first few hundred years it's an independent state, Selvarem is pretty well respected, even though their culture is thought of as a little strange. The reason that it broke off from the larger kingdom is used to be a part of was because a large group of the population that followed the Senesi religion took advantage of instability during a leadership change and negotiated for land.

The government is based around Senesi principles, which all pretty much boil down to being balanced. There aren't a lot of specific things that the religion forbids, and it doesn't really care about a person being 'good,' more so just that they don't go too extremely either way. This idea of balance ended up isolating them, though, when the rest of the world went into an expansionist era, with many governments joining to form large empires. Selvarem got left behind with this, and in most other countries, Selvesh people began to be viewed as 'primitive' and this weird sort of fear around them started to spread even though they were literally not bothering anyone. This did affect them (and other places) a lot though, because they stopped importing and exporting goods as much as possible.

(Side note, the reason they were seen as primitive was mostly because of the fact that they remained very connected to nature, and it was seen as weird that their houses were built in the trees. People claimed that this was them 'regressing' back towards the arboreal felines the dominant species on this planet evolved from. Despite the belief that they were primitive, though, Selvarem's technology far surpasses that of other countries, and this remains the case throughout most of history, especially when it comes to medicine.)

For a while Selvarem stayed isolated, up until the expansionist era stopped because all these huge empires were starting to experience lots of conflict and people getting upset with those in power and wanting to have more power over themselves. They ended up kind of reentering communication with other places when the Freedom Army started to gain traction, seeing that this was one of the first rebellions that had potential to actually go somewhere , and an opportunity to make an ally. They sent troops to aid in the efforts, and though they do face some difficulty communicating because of language barriers and a lot of getting picked on, they play an important roll in the eventual success of the rebellion and through this, they're able to open up communication and trade with a few other states as well.

But yeah in Biting the Bullet I'm going to have a lot of fun being mean to these poor Selvesh soldiers <3

[boltlightning]

sometimes i feel silly spending so much time researching anachronisms so minor, no one will care if they're slightly wrong. but then i read a book that casually slips in a major anachronism in a bad way, and it breaks my respect for that book so bad that i DNF it, and remember that yeah there is someone who cares about minor anachronisms: me bitch