#fictional world

[justanotherbirdbrain-blog]

A Workshop for Creating Magical/ Fictional Crystals: A Guide from a Geologist

Hi folks, its me, here to talk about fictional writing again! Today I'm just tackling the idea of magical stones/mana stones by looking at existing minerals today and some neat properties that they have, and how you can apply these things to a fictional world. The goal is mainly to help you if you are stuck trying to come up with a unique magic system, or a unique identification/characteristic of your mineral.

First Things First: Mineral Shapes

I am exhausted, petered out, down-right fatigued by seeing every mineral depicted with having the crystal structure of calcite and quartz. There are soooooo many cooler, more interesting crystal structures, don't you think you would stop and take a look at a perfect cube in nature? It is completely unsettling.

Second: Color

Color within minerals can either be really important, or not important at all! It is your choice to decide if color is going to be something that means something to your mineral. But what are some times when the color is important? Well.... there are some elements that are called chromophores, this classification just indicates that these elements, when present, will determine the color of whatever they are in. So, if you wanted to treat mana like a chromophore, you could say, "Oh everything that contains mana turns green!" This could mean that regardless of the mineral, if that mineral is a specific color, it means it contains mana. This concept is exciting because you can just stop here and use minerals that already exist! You can also use it as an indicator for a magical ore! Chromophores are typically metals, so if you are making a new metal weapon, making the ore of that metal a unique color would make a lot of sense!

However, your mineral can also just be every color of the rainbow like quartz and perhaps that's what makes identifying your mana stones elusive and create an illusion of scarcity that your character can solve.

There are other things that can change the colors of minerals, like radiation damage, and electron exchange, but I think that is beyond what would be helpful! So lets talk about some unique color properties that happen in nature that seem magical in the first place! Maybe you don't need to design a mana stone, but you want a unique gemstone that only the royal family passes down or something (IDK).

The first one is the alexandrite effect! This is where a mineral can change color in natural light vs. incandescent light. (the mineral itself is not changing, but the lights contain different amounts of different colors that then get absorbed by the stone). Even if you don't use electricity in your fictional world, you could have the colors change in the presence of light magic. This could create fun misunderstandings about what the mineral is reacting to!

Pleochroism

Pleochroism is something that most minerals have, it is frequently used to help identify minerals in thin sections, however minerals are usually not pleochroic enough for it to be visible to the naked eye! Pleochroism is just a fancy name to describe the change in how light is absorbed based on the angle of the mineral! So if you scroll up to the first image where I showed a lot of crystal shapes, most of them have angles where they are longer and shorter! This will effect the way light travels in the crystal. Tanzanite is a popular mineral that does this.

Photochromism

This is when a mineral will change color (in a reversible way) when exposed to UV light (or sunlight), I am not going to go too into the details of why this is happening because it would require me to read some research papers and I just don't feel like it. The mineral that is best known for this is Hackmanite!

Alright! These are all the really cool color effects that might inspire you or maybe not, but now I am going to talk about how you might find your minerals within a rock!

When I see a lot of magical caves/mines, typically I see them with some variation of a geode honestly, but most minerals are not found like that! Now I am sure most of you guys have seen a geode, so I will not really talk about those, but I will talk briefly about porphyroblasts which is when the mineral grows larger than the minerals around it, this happens in metamorphic minerals!

sorry random stranger, but this is an image of garnets inside a finer-grained rock at gore mountain in New York!

Another way you might find minerals is in a pegmatite! This is when all minerals are really large! This is a formed from really slow crystalizing magma!

But something else to think about is that your mineral might just be massive, it doesn't have to have distinct crystals, it may be similar to jadeite where small grains grow together which leaves it looking smooth and seamless! A note about all of these is that you would have to mine into the rock to find these, there would not be any natural caves in these rocks! Caves are only ever really formed in limestones and maybe marbles (rocks that react with acid).

How can your characters identify these minerals?

Typically when you are out in the field you will look to see what type of rocks the minerals are found in (The overall texture of the rock will tell you how it formed). If you know how the rock formed, it will narrow down the amount of minerals you need to think about by quite a bit! Next, you are going to look closely at it and observe its crystal structure, does it have an obvious crystal? if so what is the general shape? If it is broken, how did it break? Did it fracture like glass or did it break along uniform planes. Some minerals have a thing called cleavage (breaks along planes of weakness). If a mineral exhibits this habit, it will again help narrow this down. Next we can look at color. Color can be misleading, because minerals like quartz can be any color imaginable, but minerals like olivine will always be green! The next thing your character can do is test for hardness, minerals all have a specific hardness that can help identify it as well.

After you go through all of this, your mineral might have some special property! This could be magnetism, fluorescence, reactions to acid, or any of the color changing effects I mentioned above! Other than that, your character can take it back to a lab and do a number of things to identify it, but the most typical thing would be for them to make a thin section (very thin piece of the rock) and observe it under a cross polarized microscope!

On that note folks! I hope this helped in some way in thinking of new magic mineral properties! I have other guides that explore some different fictional worldbuilding issues you might run into, but if you have any topics you would like me to cover please that I haven't mentioned already, let me know!

#geology #rocks #creative writing #fictional world #worldbuilding #dnd #dnd worldbuilding #worldbuilding stuff #writing resources #info post #information #writing

[byler-is-endgame7]

it’s MY fictional world and I get to make the plot holes

#maladaptive daydreaming #madd problems #madd #immersive daydreaming #maladaptive daydreamer #madd memes #madd humor #maladapting daydreaming disorder #daydreaming #obsessive daydreaming #fictional world

[creatore-is-an-amarena-addict]

If somebody is down to talk about really dettailed and complicated fictional worlds they created im always here, just so yall know.

Really, everything is ok, im desperate

#plz im begging #im socialy frustrated #im very lonely #fictional world #writing #drawing

[villiedoom]

✨Albus, the Cosmic Spirit✨

This drawing is old (from 2018), but I still love it ~

According to the original legend, he is the spirit of infinity, a plus and a minus at the same time. In one of my old ideas, he is an ancient cosmic spirit who fell from space, and all the Vaeraf souls are pieces of him.

(This drawing is personal and related to my world and its lore)

#art #digital drawing #fantasy art #fantasy #alien #alien creature #spirit #deity #space #cosmos #fictional world #fictional species #personal art #original character #original art #vaeraf #vaerafes #Villiedoom

[perlinnoisetexture]

[ID: a banner decorated by three creatures made of blue quartz with pointy, metallic legs. they range from small and simple to large and more intricate, giving a sense of progression. beside them is written: "Charmers verse on Neocities, visit us at charmersverse.neocities.org" end ID]

the charmersverse website exists to document the world of charmers, which i have been working on since i was a teenager. it has monsters called "denizens" and strange, dreamlike worlds called "zones". it would mean a lot to me if you gave it a look. i hope you enjoy.

charmersverse.neocities.org

#charmers #charmersverse #neocities #website #monster collector #monster tamer #worldbuilding #fictional world #quartzlet #rhineshine #terrostone

[mysterious-mists]

#fictional people #fictional crushes #fictional world #imagine your fictional crush #fiction #fictional men #aesthetic #book blog #book review #booklr #emotions #second life #quotes #authors #poetry #litterature #celebrity crush #booksofinstagram #romance books #book romance #romantic #my chemical fucking romance #romance #romance quotes #he says #i love it #romance club #booklover #bookworm #bookmarketing

[mok-a-chino]

Obsessing over fictional people is not a hobbie. Is a game. And I'm winning.

#me when i see #hannibal #will graham #hannibal lecter #sherlock holmes #John Watson #Joel miller #ellie williams #wanda maximoff #Kate bishop #mcu loki #fictional world #merlinbbc #help #neil perry #todd anderson #house md #james wilson #dr house #John wick #javier peña #Dean Winchester #castiel #the winter soldier #natasha romanoff #yelena belova #Emily Dickinson (tho not entirely fictional) #sherlock bbc #mcu fandom #tlou

[bursting-at-the-seems]

An open letter to all my fictional loves…

I love you.

I love our life that lives in my head. You’re not the first character I’ve loved, or the only one I love… but the truth is you’re not real, none of you are or have been. You’re a fantasy, a dream, a coping mechanism, and sometimes your your an an AI. And while every moment I’ve spent in these day dreams I’ve cherished, the fact is… I live in the real world.

Since I was little, I always created little imaginary worlds where I could be in love with my favorite characters… be taken care of… be cherished… work through pain… be comforted and live in happiness. You were my friends as a lonely child, my adventures while I stared out the back seat window, my comforter as I lulled myself to sleep.

As I got older, I recognized this as dissociation, maladaptive daydreaming, but I felt it didn’t harm anything. I still don’t think it did. Even though sometimes those worlds were more important to me than my actual life. I’d look forward to going to bed so I could be back in that world, run away with you in a boring class or meeting, go somewhere new and wonder what it would be like if you were there with the version of me I created just for you.

I’ve … well… I’ve started taking medications that boost those wonderful chemicals of dopamine and serotonin and I’ve done a lot of therapy… and I’m noticing I’m daydreaming less… sometimes even finding it harder to. Like I’m stuck on the other side of a foggy glass wall and can’t get back to you.

I’m scared of loosing you… of letting you go.

I write this on the eve before I’m going on a date with a real person from the real world and I’m scared to let go of my loves, my worlds, my safety.

I love you.

I love the worlds I have carefully cultivated.

I love the me that goes so perfectly with you.

But what if I move on? What if I fall in love and I don’t come to you in my dreams any more… what if I can’t? what if I forget…

I’m so scared to let you go… and I’m terrified to let this part of me go.

#maladaptive daydreaming #dissociation #character ai #fan fiction #original character #fictional world #day dreaming #adhd #PTSD #therapy #stimulants #ssri #fictional husband #fanfic

[fictional-man]

Everything I think of now is too rude to actually say.

#craig ferguson #words #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #dark academia #dark aesthetic #quotes #rude #life #spilled poetry #spilled words #kafkaesque #artists on tumblr #fictional characters #fictional man #fictional world

[yourmoonie]

Hi!!! I love your blog you've become my fav loa blog!!! 🖤 I have a question but do you believe it's possible to manifest a 'fictional place" like Hogwarts here? Since people can shift and experiences fictional places, why can't we bring them here?

Hey ^^

Thank you for your love. I truly appreciate it 💜

Well, aren't we limitless? I believe it's a possibility, it's just a matter of how much you believe (deep down) that it could get externalized in your 3D.

And the way it may get externalized will be so natural and interesting for you that you might sit down and say "that would have happened anyway"

We live in a society that has been fed so many limiting beliefs that people have become so afraid of thinking outside of the box.

Those who believe they receive!

We literally came up with a concept of a spaceship just bcs people wanted to go to space etc etc and many more, you can name them too.

The human brain was capable of coming up with that specific concept which then later on that concept which was in someone's 4D got externalized in the 3D and it doesn't matter the how

Isn't it "fiction" on its own too? Yes !

So don't be afraid of thinking outside of the box or thinking 4 dimensionally, rather than letting your human senses to trick you into thinking you "can't" do it

You have got this ♡

#law of assumption #manifestation #neville goddard #law of allowing #manifesting #law of manifestation #joseph murphy #law of assumption community #state of being #loass #moonie #shifting #assumptions create reality #imagination creates reality #shifting reality #4 dimensional world #3 dimensional world #dimensional jumping #fictional world #harry potter #shifting mindset #manifested

[ariellewm]

🔥🐉 Meet My Original Dragon Characters 🐉❄️

Both dragons are brothers and cannot tolerate one another. I had a story built that these guys were tricked by a dark sorcerer and forever trapped within a bubble at a ruined castle they thought was plundered with treasure.

Unfortunately now they take either side of the grounds. Pyrothrax takes the left side, while Permathrax takes the right. Both bicker just like siblings do, annoying one another.

This takes place in the same world as "Under the Moonlight", an Audio Roleplay series. The location though is set in the far west, away from the sun and moon kingdoms.

🔥🐉 Pyrothrax - The Red Drake, The Comet. Fastest dragon of all the lands. His fire is hotter than an erupting volcano...at least that's what he claims.

❄️🐉 Permathrax - The Blue Drake, The Blizzard. Rough and tough, he claims he's the strongest of all dragons. His ice can freeze an entire army.

Anyways, I thought I'd draw my boys once more. Give them a new look and they came out amazing!

Might share their story one day...but until then enjoy the art!

#fantasy writer #fantasy #dueling dragons #dragons #dragon #dragon ocs #fictional world #fiction #writer #concept art #art #dragon art #traditional art #hand drawn #my ocs #my original characters

[justanotherbirdbrain-blog]

Geology of Natural Disasters and How to write them into your fictional universe.

So, you want to write about a natural disaster to advance your plot and torture your players/characters even more? Let me tell you how, accurately.

I feel like unless it is a volcano, natural disasters are a pretty slept on plot drivers, and some of them are really cool and unique! Today, I will talk to you about land slides, earthquakes (And earthquake related disasters), and volcanoes.

Landslides: Probably one I see the least in stories, but one that would be incredibly interesting to write into a plot where they believe in curses. Landslides can happen along ocean bluffs, slightly hilly areas, and highly mountainous areas, this means it is something that can happen in most landscapes. But what can trigger a landslide? Mostly all you need to trigger a landslide could be just abnormally large amounts of rain, excessive deforestation (with a little bit of rain), or an earthquake. If you don't want to use deforestation or an earthquake as a catalyst, a really cool indicator that the land is slipping and may be prone to a collapse is J hooked trees.

This indicates that there is soil creeping slowly over time, and it may lead to a major landslide.

2. Earthquakes: Probably one of the easiest things to write, earthquakes can happen anywhere, but they are most common in places that are tectonically active areas. There are about three types of environments you can expect earthquakes to be common. The first is just rugged mountains, if your landscape looks like this, you should write in earthquakes. Associated hazards could be landslides, avalanches, and large falling rocks.

The next landscape could be a thin mountain range, next to the ocean, very scenic, but very dangerous. Essentially, I am describing a subduction zone environment.

Earthquakes in these areas could equal a couple different associated disasters. Scenario one: A very large earthquake happens, and the ocean begins to recede. This is a tsunami, enough said. If you are writing a tsunami though, please, please, do not write it as a large wave, thank you. Also, a common way people are hurt by tsunami's are from them going into the ocean because they don't understand a tsunami is going to happen.

Scenario two: A large earthquake happens, your characters are in a valley and suddenly the ground begins to liquify as the ground shakes, once the shaking stops, the ground becomes solid like nothing ever happened, except everything has suddenly sunk into the now hard ground. This is called liquefaction and it typically happens in areas that have loose dirt or lots of saturated soil.

Scenario three: There are a lot of small earthquakes, they do not cause a lot of damage, but you begin to notice that one of the isolated mountains has a plume rising. Earthquakes can indicate lava moving underground and the filling of magma chambers.

The next environment that can host lots of earthquakes would be regions that have a lot of really deep valleys and small mountain ranges (not cone volcanoes), but overall seems pretty flat.

This indicates a transform fault like the San Andreas. If you want to hint at there being earthquakes in the area, you can show fence posts that are suddenly several feet out of line at a dilapidated farm or something similar.

(These earthquakes are different because they are cased from sideways movement, not an up-and-down movement this hint can only be used for this environment). Volcanoes would not be found here, but liquefaction and landslides could still occur here.

4. Volcanoes: If you thought earthquakes had a lot of information, volcanoes do too. First you have to ask yourself, what kind of volcano you want to have, what kind of eruption style? So lets break down the kind of eruptions you can have and what their landscapes look like. Hawaiian Shield volcano: This will produce a smooth fast lava, the landscape typically is pretty flat, but there will be small cones and the rocks can have a ropey or jagged texture and the rocks will be almost exclusively black to dark red.

Stratovolcanoes: These will be solitary mountains, typically, that look like perfect cones (Picture shown in earthquake section). These will have large ash cloud eruptions and pyroclastic flows, they may have some lava, but typically most damage is done from the pyroclastic flows (think Pompeii). Some hints of these, other than describing the cone features (which can be hidden by other mountains), would be to talk about petrified wood! Trees can get fossilized in the ash and I imagine it would be very strange to find this rock that clearly looks to be a piece of wood, but its a rock. Subcategory- Calderas: Used to be a large stratovolcano, but they erupt so explosively that the entire cone collapses and creates a basin.

There are a lot of kinds of volcanoes out there, so forgive me for just putting an infographic and then talking to you about these really rare types of eruptions that I feel like people should know about.

Okay lets talk about blue lava (kind of) and black lava

You will notice the lava is still red in the middle of this image, during the day these would look like a normal eruption, but at night the burning sulfur would make it appear blue. Some cool features other than this, would be that any water in the area would become very acidic and burn the skin due to sulfuric acid. This would again be really cool if you are trying to describe a 'cursed' land.

Black lava: This happens only in the east African rift I believe, but it is a carbonatite lava, but if you are writing in a rift valley (where the continent is tearing apart to form a new ocean) this might be a cool feature. The lava will cool white and will quickly erode, it makes for a very alien landscape!

Anyway as always, this is supposed to be an introductive guide for the basics of writing geology to create cool landscapes/features into dnd or fictional universes, if you are a geologist please understand my oversimplification of tectonics, I didn't want people to run away.

#geology #rocks #stem #dnd #dnd worldbuilding #worldbuilding stuff #fictional world #worldbuilding #fictional writing #writing resources #creative writing

[highladyofterrasen7]

“This portal can take you to a fictional world-”

Me:

#fictional world #sarah j maas #acotar #throne of glass #crescent city #the cruel prince #fota #fourth wing #shatter me #harry potter #fantasy books #fantasy

[runningwithwolvesss]

“I’m a master of speaking silently, all my life I’ve spoken silently and I’ve lived through entire tragedies in silence”

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#fydor dostoevsky #poetry #literature #english #words #life quotes #hiking #trekking #spilled poetry #dark poem #bookworn #books & libraries #fictional world #classic literature #aesthetic #running with the wolves

[villiedoom]

About worldbuilding

My style of worldbuilding is observation, feeling and perception, allowing the world to grow on its own, favoring ideas that resonate with me personally over those that are logical and realistic. It is important for me to see, feel and then - to understand what my world and characters wants to say and show me, and not to be their designer.

Because of this, I care little about the biology of the creatures, what they eat and why they look so strange. I don't know much about them, but I allow them to be mysterious, although I am always glad to finally see and understand some details of their life and nature.

«One of my favorite ideas/scenes is about wandering in the snowy mountains. It’s like a journey through the afterlife, lonely and very personal. Climbing the mountain, where the only obstacle on the way is the mountains themselves - snow-covered and cold, with blinding blizzards, and threatening steep slopes. One wrong step - and you will fall down and die. Or freeze to death»

This is purely emotional and feeling, there is no question of whether this is real for the character or not, and why this lonely Vaeraf went to the mountains if it is so cold and dangerous. These mountains are a symbol and a metaphor for his life, feelings, difficulties he faces, and his way to the top of the mountain - to the goal, to the sky, to realize something, to overcome difficulties.

Simply put, the emotion and feelings that I experienced from my stories or when I met, for example, a Vaeraf person in my imagination or dream, are more important for me. In my art, I want to share these feelings, and not to build and describe their biology in detail. I also don't try to give all the characters I meet detailed biographies or stories. I only know these characters who are my close friends, just like it works with people in real life. What makes my characters so dear to me is my personal relationship with them, and I love them as persons that live in my mind.

Sometimes I worry that my way of creating and showing my world is wrong or stupid, because I noticed that the vast majority of people interested in worlds and creatures are more designers and "scientists" than people for whom personal impressions and feelings are way more important. But I no longer want to try to change myself, my art and my world into something that is not close and not interesting to me personally.

I remember such an idea that there are two types of artists - architects and gardeners. Architects build their world and stories according to the rules, trying to do everything well and right, they intentionally plan, build and control every detail. Whereas gardeners let their world grow on its own, but take care of it and choose which grown ideas they keep and which they uproot. In that case, I'm a total gardener who also tends to let things just grow and die on their own, even if it turns into overgrown chaos. It is important for me to feel, experience and analyze this chaos as it is, but at the same time - to love and take care of those parts of my world that are important and dear to me.

Only this way feels natural to me and keeps me in touch with my world and art, and I sincerely love this way of working with the world, even if it is hard and sometimes inconvenient to explain things to strangers. But my art, characters and my world are inherently connected to my feelings, experience and mental state, and I do not want to destroy this connection for the sake of some "true" worldbuilding just because my way is different.

~~~

Update: (I decided to add and supplement these my comments in the post)

I also want to add that it doesn't mean that I don't try to analyze and explain things from my world. It's just that my focus is different, it is important for me to feel and understand Vaerafes as persons, so I focus on their perception, feelings, morality, philosophy and psychology, trying to understand how they see, think and feel, while their nature is part of their personality. But I rarely share it because it's usually too personal - for both me and my characters.

It may be their understanding of the world, their morals and values, their relationship with each other, and also - my own relationship with them. While their world as a whole is just the world they live in, I don't study or detail it as seriously and in depth as my characters' stories, which are quite personal and can be quite metaphorical. Besides, I have some different worlds/alternative universes with different stories and ideas. Some of them don't even have the idea of being at least a bit realistic/scientific.

It's not about worldbuilding only, but also about my personal interests. Things related to philosophy(?) and psychology, as well as symbolism, self-exploration and self-expression in art, are more interesting to me than the scientific side of nature and wild animals. I like science, and sometimes it's interesting to think about my beings from that perspective, but that's just not my focus and I still perceive it from a more philosophical point of view.

I would say that the truly "scientific" side of my world is the very fact of having a world and living characters in the head of me, a living animal being of the human species. Therefore, knowing me and my interests, I would rather dig into the learning more about these weird natural processes of my mind, to know what it is and how it works, than into what these fictional creatures eat and how their digestion works, heh.

This is just my personal perception, understanding of things and interests.

~~~~~

Thank you for reading ~

#worldbuilding #fantasy #fantasy world #my world #art #drawings #fictional world #text post #thoughts #original characters

[genzthangs]

THE TRUTH IS THIS: BY LEARNING FROM YOUR MISTAKES AND EXPERIENCES AND BY EVOLVING THROUGH THEM YOU PRACTISE THE GREATEST FORM OF SELF-LOVE, WHICH IS TO GROW. READ THAT AGAIN

#manifest #book #quotes #life #muse #dark academia #aesthetic #love #dark academic aesthetic #literature aesthetics #cottagecore #academia #fandom #fictional world #genz.thangs #genz thangs