#who needs to worldbuild with lists when having one unique concept leads to so many questions?

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Worldbuilding issues in the Shadowstruck universe:

Can I get away with the concept that people with heartlights cast no shadows and only people without them (shades) do? Wouldn't that vary based on the brightness of the person's heartlight vs. the brightness of external light sources? Can I just chalk it up to "it's a magical side effect that we don't understand"?

How does the fact that most people (or rather, all the people who are considered people) serve as a light source affect lighting technology in this world? I imagine you'd still want external lighting to light up a whole room, or to have streetlights to illuminate an entire area so you're just not navigating by the small window of light cast by your own faint glow, but would there be less external lighting? How bright can a person's heartlight be without putting too much strain on themselves? Would lanterns be a thing? Are they considered assistive technology that's only for shades?

(How does a heartlight affect art? Does the look of a painting change when the artist themself is a light source?)

Does having a heartlight affect sleep? Are there ways to dampen ones own heartlight when you want a dark room, or want to move around without being seen?

If being ill can diminish or temporarily quench a person's heartlight, how do you tell the difference between someone who's been born a shade and someone who's dealing with a temporary illness/disability? Can shades take advantage of this if they're trying to escape slavery/imprisonment/death?

Does it diminish/overly complicate the pro-life message if a lot of people believe that a heartlight is the external sign of having a soul? This is a heresy, but a widespread one that has been taken up enthusiastically by several governments/societies that find it much more convenient to believe that the people who need extra care aren't people at all. But could I make the fact that they're wrong about heartlight being linked to the soul clear within the story? Would it make it look like all religious people are monsters who think shades should die?

Even if I could make it clear, would mixing religion into this make the too complicated? You'd have religious people who think that shades are abominations--an empty vessel that's like a person but is walking around among us with no soul--and should be killed/prevented from reproducing, while other religious people believe a lack of heartlight is a disability like the loss of any other sense, so shades have to be treated as people, while other people are like 'Hey, convenient labor source," and don't think too deep into it. And then there are atheists who scoff at the idea of the heartlight being tied to the soul because no one has a soul, so it's stupid to think shades are worth any more or less than anyone else, while other atheists are like, "Why should we have shades straining society? It's better to have them die out and rid the gene pool of this weakness." Does this make it realistic or too complicated for the length of story that I'm likely to write?

[echodrops]

Home and Half Galra Headcanons

I have owed @latransmearnsi this for forever, finally trying to squeeze a few drops of blood minutes out of a stone out of my day to share a whole bunch more worldbuilding Galra headcanons connected to my fic Home and a Half.

How long do Galra live?

I know the show was all about Alteans living hundreds of years compared to humans, but then considering that plot line was promptly dropped and never brought up again, and the fact that Zarkon and co. are the only Galra implied to have lived for 10,000 years due to the power of the rift, I’m just going to go with Galra living slightly but not much longer than humans. In fact, since it was never clear if Coran’s comment about years meant 600 Earth years or 600 Altean years, I’ve elected to just go with the idea of Altean years being notably shorter than Earth years. And since Altea and Daibazaal are in the same system in my personal headcanon--more on this later--they share somewhat similar year lengths. Altea’s years are 8 Earth months long, and Daibazaal’s are 10. Of the three species, Alteans live the longest (max about 150 Earth years), and Galra the second longest (max about 125-130 Earth years).

But this is somewhat a moot point, since military service is mandatory for a huge portion of the adult Galra population, and casualties are high; therefore, most Galra do not live long enough to reach the maximum lifespan.

What are some other traditions or games? 

I think I’ve mentioned two games so far: Renni, which is a card-based game that is similar to both Magic the Gathering/Yugi-Oh and chess (there are multiple types of cards--such as defensive, trap, spell, and attackers--and certain cards are placed in certain locations on a set board. Each card can move in a set way and distance; the objective is to get an attacking card through the enemy’s defenses and traps to strike their “castle”). Although I’m saying “card” here, of course what I mean is paper-thin electronics that project holograms in the shapes of monsters and weaponry.

Renni is a favorite past-time of Prince Lotor, by the way!

A second tradition/game is “Marfeil,” the hunting game children play on their clan day. A high-powered flying device (basically the equivalent of a super-powered Earth drone) is released in a set area, and all the clan’s children are set loose to track, hunt, and capture it. It’s a free-for-all where alliances are made and broken in an instant, and only one kid can make it back victorious with the prize in hand. It’s a test of the children’s athleticism and ability to tenaciously pursue a target. Big bragging rights go to the winner!

In terms of stuff I haven’t talked about before... The Galra battle arena is about as “ancient tradition” as they come, although the violent, horrific battles of Zarkon’s late reign are not what it was always like (just like the gladiatorial fights in Rome were not originally intended to be fights to the death). According to headcanons I wrote earlier, the Galra population was originally divided into autonomous clan groups that were eventually united under a king. However, especially in early centuries, the union of the clans was tenuous at best, and disagreements over territory and resources frequently sparked up into small-scale combat. Originally the arena was founded as a way for clans to do battle with each other in a relatively organized and more civilized manner--the two clans would send representatives who would duel fairly; the winner of the duel would correspondingly “win” the feud for his whole clan.

Eventually, clan feuds died out as power began to accumulate in the hands of the monarchy. Over time, religious views--more on this in a bit too--were altered to promote the kings and queens of Daibazaal as absolute monarchs, invested with the power of the goddess, and the arena took on a new meaning: it became the primary vehicle for choosing Daibazaal’s “champion,” the planet’s strongest fighter, who, once crowned, was appointed the right-hand of the king or queen. (Check out the religious question below for more on the symbolism here.) The champion was entrusted with protecting the lives of the ruling family, and enforcing the monarch’s word as law. It was once am extremely noble and revered position that Galra would train their whole lives hoping to attain, and even to this day, the concept of the “champion” is so engrained in Galra’s cultural consciousness that finding out Shiro is the current champion would absolutely blow Dulsara’s mind and she’d never want to hang out with anyone else ever again.

What determines the treatment of the natives of conquered planets?

This depends on two things: 1) who conquers them and 2) what they’re being conquered for. Although all of Zarkon’s generals and fleets report back to high command, there’s still flexibility in the way they carry out their orders. I.e., ten generals in a galaxy might be given the same order to conquer new systems, but each general might conquer in a different way--some in a bloody massacre and some in a significantly less violent manner. Generals are effectively the rulers of the planets they conquer (until they are called to conquer a new planet, and a viceroy is appointed instead), and therefore each of the conquered planets is ruled uniquely. Many of Zarkon’s generals are hand-picked for their violent, bloodthirsty behavior though, so unfortunately, many conquered peoples are brutally slaughtered or oppressed. There are a few rare situations where the opposite is true, however. In certain cases, Galra intervention has provided planets with lifesaving technologies that improve quality of life for the original inhabitants, leading to a few somewhat mutually beneficial situations.

Likewise, the reasons for occupying a planet also change how the populace is treated. Sometimes planets are conquered merely to eliminate strongholds for allied anti-Galra forces, and the conquered planet itself has no special use for the Galra. In these cases, sometimes nothing more than a single large base is built on the occupied planet, resulting in a situation where Galra occupation doesn’t massively inhibit the original lives of the planet’s people. This was case with the base where Niresh, Dulsara, and Xerci’s families lived--they were a military outpost for moving supplies and information, but the planet itself had no meaning to the Galra and therefore the original inhabitants were mostly left alone unless they attempted to interfere with the operations of the base. On other planet, Galra occupation has prompted important economic revivals that have turned impoverished civilizations into flourishing galactic hubs.

Unfortunately this is not the case everywhere--on planets rich with natural resources that the Galra empire needs, the planet’s original inhabitants are typically enslaved to serve as a workforce to extract the planet’s resources until the planet is no longer valuable; then the inhabitants are rounded up and exported for service elsewhere in the empire.

It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s also not a simple “The Galra are always bad.”

What do Galra eat? Mealtime customs and etiquette?

Galra are mesocarnivores with strong metabolisms. Traditionally their diets consisted of primarily meat proteins (about 60% of their diet was meat and eggs), with the rest being made up of fruits, mushrooms, and what would qualify on Earth as leafy greens. Nowadays, the Galra Empire largely runs on synthetic food goo, which is significantly cheaper and less resource-demanding than actual food and prevents the likelihood of Galra troops ingesting poisonous matter on the wide variety of planets they conquer. Galra stationed in space will pay large amounts of GAC for illicitly traded foodstuffs gathered by those stationed on planets, but food poisoning is alarmingly common because, despite their physical strength, Galra are chemically sensitive to many compounds which are not naturally found in their own star system. The list of things Keith is “allergic” to is actually obnoxiously long; Neuhahn once accidentally sent him into shock by allowing him to eat vanilla ice cream. When he’s in a good state, Keith is the team’s notoriously picky-eater, right up there with Pidge (who has issues with strange textures). Unfortunately, when Keith gets reallyyyy hungry, his thought process usually devolves into: “Nothing I’ve eaten has successfully killed me so far, so I’m sure I’ll survive.” Chomp.

On the other hand, there are some things Galra are not allergic to that would straight up kill humans; fugu fish and deathcap mushrooms are no problem for purple space cats.

One other aside about eating: there are a lot, a lot of mixed Galra in the universe since their DNA (if not their behavior) plays well with other species; generally a mixed Galra will still be sensitive to the same chemical commands that affect full-blooded Galra, but may have slightly different dietary needs. For example, Xerci is a granivore whose diet leans more toward staple grains and plant matter than meat. This actually makes the lives of mixed Galra much harder, as they have to account for their dietary limits as a Galra while also attempting to appease the diet needs of their other species.

In the current Galra Empire, mealtime customs are kind of a thing of the past for most people--soldiers just don’t have the time or energy to make a big fuss over food goo. As the empire spans on and Galra colonies become more and more remote from the source of their own heritage, the complex etiquette of the past is going by the wayside somewhat. Traditionally, Galra coalitions would gather together at mealtimes to eat as a family unit, and proper table manners were drilled into the younger generation by the older members of the family--sit up straight, no elbows on the table, etc. One notable faux pas that is still true today is sharing food directly from your plate to someone else’s. Doing so is a big insult to the cook--because either you didn’t like the food enough to eat it all, or your host didn’t serve their guests properly (Why are you trying to feed someone else? Are you saying I didn’t give them enough?). Because of this, Galra have a reputation among other species for being stingy with food--do not ask your Galra friend for a fry, you won’t get one--but it’s really just a matter of finding it rude not to eat everything that is placed on one’s plate. Keith has never heard of this rule. His habit of pinching from Shiro’s plate is an absolute scandal to the Blade of Marmora.

Table manners among royal families is a Big Deal(tm). Lotor has the rules for silverware on 200 different planets burned into his brain.

What exactly does Galra courtship entail?

Most of the answer to this is “I can’t tell you because spoilers.” But there are some things I can say, chief among which is: at all levels of the social hierarchy, Galra courting is just really, really... different.

In most human societies, the (highly heteronormative) goal is to meet a person, marry them, and raise a family. The opposite is true for Galra: having children isn’t at all tied to being in a couple relationship (there is no baby mama drama in the Galra world), so many of them have children first and then go looking for a permanent life partner later. The basic reason for this is that Galra are a lot more serious about the “’til death do us part” concept than humans are; when they finally settle on a person, that’s it, they’ve settled for the rest of their lives.

I don’t mean this in a soulmates AU kind of way--it’s not “this person I met at 17-years-old is my One True Love” it’s a lot closer to “Wow, I can’t believe it only took me until 52 to find the person I’d be happy to live with for the rest of my life!” They wait until they are absolutely, 100% sure of their choice before courting and formally settling down. (Caveat: Not everyone gets to choose. The higher up the social hierarchy, the less likely it is that a Galra would be free to pick their eventual match; Niresh’s parents had an arranged marriage, for example. The only reason Lotor isn’t betrothed to anyone is that Zarkon doesn’t want to run the risk of challenges from multiple potential heirs and also Lotor is not about that life thank you.)

So, long story longer, courting happens more among older Galra and less among impetuous teens. Also, it would be extremely rare (and foolish--ah, but they do say love makes fools of us all) for a Galra to court someone they don’t already know very, very well. That 100% sureness comes specifically from knowing the other person inside and out. It’s not unusual for Galra to be living together for years before finally declaring their intention to formally court.

The actual courting is... equally weird. The most common way to signal interest in courting is engaging the other person’s coalition in the Galra equivalent of “flyting”--you insult the person you’re interested in in front of every one of their family members. Your insults serve two purposes: first of all, the more detailed and personal your insults are, the more obvious it is that you completely and fully know the person you’re interested in. If you can fairly point out every single bad habit and negative point about them, then you’ve paid close enough attention to know them deeply, as well as their family does. Second, being brave enough to insult someone in front of their very close-knit family is a must in Galra courting. If you shy away from the challenge of facing the family, you’re not worth anyone’s time.

After your insults, the family answers back in the opposite, with nothing but praise for their family member, and a back-and-forth battle begins assessing the person in question. The final goal is for the courter to "be persuaded” that of course, of course the family is right and the person in question is worth all the effort in the universe and more. It’s a game designed to demonstrate your knowledge of the other person as well as air out any grievances or sticking points before the courtship proceeds.

(You can see where other species’ might struggle with this--many an intentional insult has been mistaken for the opposite.)

After that, things get even sillier, but in the interest of time and space, I’ll leave this answer here.

What are their views on pets?

Galra are big pet keepers! Historically the “pets” were war animals that aided the clans in their conflicts with other clans, but over time pets have come to just be beloved household companions. Unfortunately, military members are not allowed to keep pets, no matter HOW incredible the critters they find on their space travels are. This doesn’t stop everyone. Many an escaped secret pet has caused serious issues on-board Galra battlecruisers. Civilian Galra family groups often have a motley collection of pets. Two problems: 1) The illegal pet trade is hyper-aggressive in the Galra Empire. They import thousands upon thousands of species of animals, without too much regard for the long-term species survival of these animals. 2) What qualifies as a “pet” to the Galra sometimes includes the citizens of other planets. It does not pay to be a small fuzzy person (or a big scary fuzzy person) in the Galra Empire. Sometimes slaves who escape the arena end up in the pet trade instead. Pet abuse is strangely not okay in the Galra Empire, but that doesn’t mean that being treated like a pet instead of a person is any less horrific.

(God help Keith when the kids finally reason out the argument, “Allura has mouses, so why can’t WE have a pet?”)

What's Galra mythology like? Religions?

I’m glad you asked this because this is actually at the heart of a lot of Galra plot line in HaaH. As I mentioned earlier, in this fic, Daibazaal and Altea were both in the same quadrant and although they weren’t particularly near each geographically, they were close enough to each other that they inherited some surprisingly parallel mythologies, shared with numerous other planets in their general region of space. In particular, both Altea and Daibazaal prominently feature legends related to a lion goddess. On Daibazaal, the legend goes that the creation of everything we know began with the lion goddess, the first star. The roar of the goddess shook the universe and created the ever-expanding waves of space and time; the shine of her eyes in the void became the burning cores of stars; the weight of her swift passages formed gravity and orbit. She breathes and life flows over planets. (In short, the lion goddess is a sort of visual representation or embodiment for what we humans would just call “energy” or “order”.)

But the very existence of the goddess ensured the existence of her diametric opposite--the antithesis of all creation, the extermination of all life, all energy, all differentiation. This being has no form of its own (it is what all things will become when they become nothing--entropy or chaos itself, if you will), but it constantly fights to upset the balance in the universe, to claim more than its fair share.

The legends say that four times the lion goddess took a physical form and came to defend Daibazaal from the onslaught of darkness--once by fire, once by water, once by earth, and once by vine--and at last when the whole planet rang with the force of her being, she put part of her soul itself into a mortal, her first champion, that he and all his descendants would be blessed with the power to combat evil wherever they roamed.

Of course, you can see how this kind of origin story might lend itself to propaganda. The early kings and queens of unified Daibazaal used the legend to their advantage, first claiming that they were direct descendants of the blessed champion, and then a step further--that, by possessing the strongest remnants of her soul, they ought to be treated and revered as physical manifestations of the goddess herself. This evolved over time alongside other cultural fixtures like the arena, until religion became irreparably tied to politics for the Galra: by the time Zarkon took the throne, the general agreement was that whoever was emperor/empress was the representation of the goddess made physical, and the champion crowned in the arena was the one blessed and bound to carry out both the power--and the will--of that “goddess.”

Over Zarkon’s reign, the influence of the religious aspects have waned significantly--it was not beneficial for the Galra to believe in a higher power instead of their immortal emperor--and so the importance of the goddess has been continually downplayed while the importance of the emperor has grown. Although most people still treat Zarkon as if he were a god and “the champion” is still an awe-inspiring figure, the significance behind “the goddess gave us power so that we could fight evil” has definitely been lost behind “we have power and it’s only right for us to use it.”

(You can see the obvious links to Voltron here. It’s definitely not accidental, but I’m not going to say much more than that.)

What are some common Galran phrases?

Ha ha oh man, I don’t want to write anything here and then have to take it back later when I inevitably over-think language stuff...

"Sticks and flungr” is a very unflattering why of saying someone doesn’t have their shit in order. A messy house might be described with this saying, or turning in a half-assed report at work. (For reference, it’s referring to the Frinunnel bird’s habit of making lopsided, disheveled nests out of well... sticks and poo.)

“Vrepitsatir” is a “yes man,” a military flunkie who mindlessly agrees to everything the higher-ups say without questioning it.

“Notches” is a way of referring to past lovers, based on the common habit of ear-nipping between partners.

“Be careful--Zarkon’s watching!” is an empire-wide joke, especially among the lower-level military, when you find out someone is up to something they shouldn’t be. The effect is pretty close to the joking Earth phrase “Ooohh, I’m tellinggg.”

Phew, I think that covers it!

[sleepymarmot]

A couple of months ago, after finishing COUNTER/Weight, I spent about a week in a total hangover, relistening to scenes and having feelings. I took some notes, but procrastinated posting them, and then finally got distracted. But, a) I hate leaving things I intended for tumblr unposted, even if they have value only for me, and b) I also hate posting things out of order, and there's a big TM liveblog incoming. So, here's a bunch of really random thoughts about C/w from past me.

The gnosis virus did go nowhere huh. I was hopeful for a minute when one of the finale intros mentioned it, but that was it. What was the purpose of that arc even. [Note from present me: Lol. At least I feel better about this one!]

Oh, and the patch AuDy left never reappeared either. And the idea from the faction game that Aria's images owned by EarthHome/Petrichor transmit Rigour code… That's the flip side of the coin. On the one hand, it's really cool to see the creative process – on the other, it sometimes feels like you're listening to people write a script for the tv show, but only get to see a half of the finished product. It's fascinating to see the universe grow organically and the players to come up with new ideas and get excited about them – but that means numerous retcons, some of them not even presented as such, because the creators forgot what the previous revision was or didn't thought it was important. It's a unique feature of the medium that player choice directs the narrative and it's not bound by railroading – but that means some roads lead nowhere, and some branches dry and fall off.

It's a bit harder to make peace with something that could have easily been developed more within the existing plot of the show. How come there's a player character whose consciousness consists of three different people in various combinations, but nobody seems to be curious how that works? No PC or NPC ever asked “Which one of you is speaking right now?” or something. The final episodes made a lot of things clearer, but it still felt too little, too late. Hard not to be reminded of that gripe about certain two characters sharing one character sheet one of whom was left underdeveloped and half-forgotten… Both are very ambitious concepts that require a double amount of work from the player, so I feel bad complaining they weren't realized to full potential, but…

Speaking of L&D… I still want to know how the hell did that one engineer all by herself design 4 gods, one of which became a basis for technology that was advanced even for the civilizations 80,000 years later? This woman singlehandedly surpassed any technological achievement of humanity before and after. Who Is She

I saw a “Wake me up: before you go go / when september ends / wake me up inside” meme and thought “heh, this sounds relevant, which member of the Chime is which?” and it already made me sad, but then I realized that I'd never actually heard the september song and looked it up and. The lyrics fit so well. What the fuck. It's an old song everyone keeps joking about. Why is it appropriate for a legitimate fanmix. What. I guess the word “September” will never be the same again for me.

I looked up the rules for Firebrands, the game used for the finale. Oh my, challenges for the dance minigame are so overtly romantic when you see them in a list together! Imagine this cast of characters having to answer to “do you place your hand upon my elbow, shoulder, waist, or hip?” lmao. Also I didn't realize “May I?” was part of the rules for “stealing time together”. (And I found out there's a party version of that minigame with bug-themed challenges. I might have dug too deep…) "Tactical skirmish" is a really fascinating concept, I've never seen such a masochistic combat system! Really faces the player with the violence they're inflicting: sure, you can always fight on, but are you ready to live with what you'll have to do? But for it to work fully, you need a lot of non-expendable NPCs on both sides. The one with the most likeable team wins! (Like Mako did.)

I'm relistening to Three Conversations and it's pretty interesting that Ibex has a bunch perfectly lifelike android bodies, right? There is no such technology seen anywhere else. Did Righteousness develop and privatize that? Are they so complex that only a Divine would have enough computing power to successfully mimic organic life? Can Aria convince Righteousness to help her perform on stage without leaving her duties? Also, like with AuDy, I wonder how Ibex & Righteousness' consciousness works. Is it a single mind, spread across every body he has, or even anything Righteousness is running on, having a bunch of different conversations at once if he needs to? Or is the original Ibex just gone, and what's left is a personality imprint hanging on to the connection to his still living body, imitating his former self like the automated recording Cass saw wore his face? In other words, has Ibex completely fused with Righteousness, or assimilated and destroyed by it? Does he not exist anymore as an independent singular being, or does he not exist at all? Most info indicates the former, but there was also “You’re not in there anymore” “No”.

If Orth and Jace are anime fans with their Kingdom Come and Panther, then Ibex is the guy who's way too into dinosaurs or paleontology. It's as if the heads of various confessions were called Triceratops, Stegosaurus etc. and only one of them knows wtf that means, and also he compares his Divine to… Were there scavenging dinosaurs? I'm looking at an article that suggests T. Rex might have been a scavenger, so yeah he would compare Righteousness to a goddamn T. Rex.

Hey what do you think is the most thematically aproppriate part of the Hieron anime for Orth to watch alone at night during the Kingdom game. What's the best thematic parallel for when he turns off the episode and thinks he made a mistake. Do you think that he once, after a long day and a long month and maybe a long year of feeling helpless and doomed, sits down for a distraction but ends up sobbing “How could they let this happen to Mother Glory”

On Joypark, there are definitely statues of Eidolons, ancient and holy, that were repainted and repurposed as Hieron deities. Imagine a giant Greek or Roman style marble statue of Apote – and it’s painted over as Samot, with an anime face and in really bright plain colors like these “reconstructions of original coloring” that actually only use base colors so they look like cheap action figures.

I was reading Austin's top ten games of 2016 list on Waypoint and he gave first place to The Sprawl! Aww!

The Downloads folder in my phone gallery is funny bc it mostly consists of every freely available f@tt map and also that one photo of Tristan Walker (because I tried to redraw it, very unsuccessfully). I go check a map and every time am met by Ibex just. staring at me. It's unsettling

Some of the many options for how Apostolosian gender could have been presented:

Apostolosians prefer to be addressed by the most neutral available human pronoun, represented as "they" in English, because the human languages don't have anything close enough

Apostolosian pronouns are represented in English by a set of real-life common pronouns and neopronouns

There's a list of Apostolosian pronouns and they're just used in English verbatim (Really impractical because the players need a cheat sheet, but the most fair)

Humans apply human genders to Apostolosians. Apostolosians may be offended, may find it convenient, or something else

As Austin said in the post-mortem, the Eidolon system is not gender. It's represented in English by titles/honorifics/etc

Any of the above, and the creators are aware of the difference between personal pronouns, grammatical gender, and social gender

And that’s not even touching the core problem of what the concept of gender in a futuristic, techonologically advanced society would look like. Yes, I'm complaining about this for the third time but I'm just. So tired of native English speakers' takes on gendered language. They could have made Apostolosian gender look like anything and they made it look like that fucking mess... God, I really hope TM is good enough to make me forget and forgive the experience of listening to “he... sorry, they” for 100 hours. [Note from present me: Well… mostly]

Here’s my take on this: eidolons in Apostolosian language are absurdly broad noun classes with associated classifiers (which fits both the idea that they’re gender but not actually, and that each of them is a patron to several unrelated aspects of life) Apostolosian: the word “(Apo)thesa” is used to refer to people who follow the corresponding eidolon, as well as for counting buildings, heavy machinery, military units, specific strategies and tactics, log entries, historical documents and chronicles, history textbooks and monographs, and eras :) Human: what the fuck

Very critical, imaginative worldbuilding in which 80,000+ years into the future humanity somehow has 21st century gender and 21st century capitalism! TBH, I find any sci-fi set in the far future inherently silly – we can’t really imagine the future technogy and its effect on society. But it feels like C/w barely even tried, and to hear it boast about “critical worldbuilding” is kinda strange. I assumed that meant they build the world critically, not that they recreate modern society or some aspect of it and criticize that! It’s just another Star Trek then! And it was already clear right during the setup when they said “We don’t want Star Trek aliens” and immediately created Apostolosians.

I haven't seen a single piece of fanart with Taako and Mako. Come on, does nobody want to see these two next to each other! Especially considering the outfits artists like to put Taako in!

I really don't understand how and why people do fandom activities on Twitter and Discord where the creators also have accounts. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment. I can barely peek at Twitter posts before running away. Old-fashioned opinion apparently but I strongly believe the main fandom space and the interaction-with-original-creators space should be separate. I need a space where I can voice my opinions, especially negative ones, with complete freedom. I need to be able to say exactly what's on my mind. But I wouldn't want any of the people on the podcast to read something unfiltered like my complaints above. Being in the same space as the source content creators obliges any decent person to be diplomatic and constructive. And the creators, in turn, need a space where they don't come across complete randos yelling at them about something they said in a podcast three years ago. I'm already feeling uncomfortable because hearing to strangers pour their hearts out for hundreds of hours gives me way too much insight on who they are as people. Of course, nothing’s stopping them from lurking on Tumblr or AO3 and even reading this very post, but a platform where they have official accounts is still a different thing! I even feel uncomfortable talking about the podcast creators using their first names so much. To my ear, referring to a total stranger by first name, especially if it's a shortened form, sounds so rude! I'm not their friend, I don't have that right! But, of course, writing something like “Mr Walker” in my liveblogs would have been even weirder, nobody does that...

Is it a common experience to not even think about fanfiction after listening to Hieron, but going straight to AO3 after C/w? I feel like since Hieron is still a work in progress, writing/reading about it is stepping on the GM&players' toes, and C/w is finished so it's like they gave us the keys to the playground, it's the fandom's turn now. This story has so much blanks and they must be filled! In one of the early episodes they joked that something cute they said would encourage people to ship Mako/Cass and I was like "Bold of you to assume they aren't already" and, indeed, I was right and it's the most popular C/w ship on AO3. Too bad I’m so indifferent to it…

It’s a shame we never had a full scene with Ariadne or even learned what they were up to during the finale.

I still don't understand how Ibex went from “evil CEO” to “leader of a proletarian revolution”, these sound like completely opposite concepts to me

I probably have talked about this too much and have pretty much given up on ever getting a clear picture due to all of these reimaginings but… Righteousness and Voice… Ibex takes Righteousness out of Mako but he still has Voice, that was pretty much openly stated, correct? So how does that work? I’m guessing Righteousness is hidden somewhere in Voice’s code. But if so:

Did Maryland know? On the one hand, she’s too competent not to. On the other, why would she ever allow or accept that?

How did Righteousness not get corrupted by Rigour too? Maybe it did, but broke off the connection with the rest of itself to contain the damage? Or maybe, on the contrary, it kept in contact and was sending intel to Ibex the whole time? But in that case he would have provided more help in the finale.

[taz-writes]

WIP questions tag

i got tagged by @eff-writes and I haven’t actually participated in a tag game in like 10 years, so here we go!

1. What is the working title of your book?

Book 1 is called The Beginning. Boring, I know... The series as a whole is called Feilan! It used to be The Feilan Chronicles but then I decided that was stupid. 

(book 2 is The Queen of Feilan, book 3 is Storm and Shadow, book 4 is Liaea. 2 and 4 are literally perfect but 3 is Bad and needs replacing when I finish the manuscript.) 

2. Where did the idea for your book come from?

It’s based on a recess game I used to play with friends in elementary school. You know how basically everyone was involved in that stupid Boys Versus Girls war in first and/or second grade? I was the leader of my school’s stupid Boys Versus Girls war, it was centered around “Fairyland,” and my friends and I all had these overly complicated self insert characters that we LARPed as during recess. Over the years, the boys vs girls thing faded away, but we kept playing fairies and developing the ~lore.~ When I got to sixth grade, I decided to write it all down for posterity, and that’s when the first concept of Feilan came into being. I wrote the first legitimate draft in 9th grade, after spending a few years developing the characters and world into something that could exist without relying on bad self insert Mary Sue logic. 

There were a couple specific scenarios that we always wound up playing, and those are what the books’ core plots are about. Book 1 is the game we played at my house in the woods, usually searching for treasure. Book 2 is the ice skating rink game where we rescue Violet from the Frozen Isles, fused with the swimming pool game where we turn into mermaids. Book 3 is the one we played at my friend Emily’s house, where we built couch fort “prisons” and tried to escape without making enough noise to bother her dad. If we knocked too much stuff over, he’d come up and lecture us for interrupting his Warcraft game, so avoiding him became part of the LARP. Just typing this is bringing up vivid flashback-style memories. 

3. What genre is your current work in progress?

High/heroic fantasy, with a drop of genre de/reconstruction added in for fun :)

4. Choose the actors for your movie rendition.

Lucy Liu has to play Lilac Ravenhart. I don’t care about anything else but she has to be Lilac, it’s perfect. 

Honestly, if I got a movie, I’d want Sayara to be played by a total unknown because I feel like it fits her place in the story. She wants to be known as Sayara, the actor should want to be known as Sayara and not as whatever their last major role was. Plus I can’t think of any actresses who are short and buff enough. 

5. Give a one-sentence synopsis of your book. 

An ambitious illegitimate princess stumbles into a civil war and somehow manages to make herself a ~new legendary hero~, much to everyone else’s chagrin. 

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agent?

I’m not sure yet! It would be awesome to have an agent and be published with a legit publishing house, but self-publishing is faster and easier. Considering that I’ll be trying to market a debut novel with niche appeal and no romantic subplot to speak of, which also has three sequels.... self-pub seems more likely right now. 

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft?

The first first draft? I plugged that baby out in six months back in high school, because I didn’t have anything else to do with my life. It added up to over 150,000 words, so that was no small feat. It’s taken progressively longer to finish every new draft since. 

8. What other books would you compare your story to?

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (frantic googling sounds) 

Honestly, I have no clue. I’ve read lots of books with similar concepts or characters, but I’ve never read another book that was enough like mine for me to want to make a comparison. I’ve taken some inspo from Game of Thrones, but deep worldbuilding lore and too many characters isn’t enough similarity to make a good comparison. Most of the fantasy I’ve read lately has been in a very different vein from what I write, because I’m trying to push my boundaries. 

9. Who or what inspired you to write the book?

I got into this a little with the “where’d the idea come from” question! But mostly, my inspiration was spite. 

The reason for making this particular recess game into a novel was, simply, that I couldn’t find a single book in YA fantasy that gave me what I wanted out of a story. I wanted strong female leads, who didn’t fall in love or have a LI, who saved the world without being questioned because of their gender or being outshone at the final hour by random boys. Do yall know how rare books like that were (and are) in YA fantasy? Full respect to paranormal romance writers, but your genre was the bane of my existence in high school, because the library would always label it as fantasy, and they always stocked twice as much of it as they did the actual fucking fantasy. Poor little naive Taz would pick up book after book about cool monsters and seemingly-intriguing plots, only for it to devolve into Edgy Boy Love Triangles. I didn’t care about the sexy demon/angel/whateverthefuck boys! I wanted to know how the girl who was supposedly the protagonist was gonna save the world! 

Also, I was really into fairies, but the only YA-ish author I could find who wrote about them was Holly Black. Who is a talented writer and I envy and respect her success, but that just wasn’t the kind of story I wanted to read, yknow? She’s too edgy, and the love interests are... that. 

I’d sat on “the fairy story” for years at that point, but this powerful rage was the kicker to actually get me started. I was bitter and salty and figured that if nobody would give me what I wanted then I’d just have to make it myself.  I already had this source material that was funny and weird and deep and (as far as I could tell) totally unique, so I took it and ran with it! My friends gave me a lot of inspiration, because a few of them still remembered the fairy game, and they wanted to know when their characters would show up. So I’d send them chapters as I finished them, and we’d all get excited about stupid inside jokes and goofy names. 

10. What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?

I think the deconstructive elements are the core appeal in Feilan. I have a lot of the trappings of standard high fantasy--the lost princess, the return of the evil, the big war, the chosen one--but they’re used with the intent of picking them apart to see what makes them tick. None of the elements listed are played entirely straight. 

The main cast is made up of mostly royalty, and their positions have Actual Responsibilities that motivate the plot and their character development instead of just being set dressing.

Female friendships and relationships are really important to the story, no boys will ever appear to derail character arcs at any point. 

One of the main characters (Violet) is a trans girl and I know people appreciate queer content

(most of the main characters are actually under the queer umbrella but it doesn’t really come up in canon since i have a lot of plot to deal with)

Sayara is a relatively unconventional character type (especially for a female protagonist), she’s ambitious and mostly confident in herself, and her conflict comes from the way other people treat her more than how she treats other people. She’s not forced to learn��“humility,” she’s not forced to give up on what she wants. Instead she learns how to handle responsibility and move past naivety to realistic optimism, and how to achieve her goals without hurting other people by it. I feel like that’s a theme that should be way more common in YA fiction than it is right now. teenage girls are right about things sometimes!

i have Deep Worldbuilding(tm)

The magic system has categories and you can sort yourself. because we all know what’s really important here. 

I’m not going to tag anyone new in this, because I’m tired and I don’t have the energy, but if you want to pass on the challenge then feel free to say I tagged you! :)