#universe construction(worldbuilding)!

[wizard-finix]

LU Star Wars AU: Part 5

LAST BUT NOT LEAST ITS TIME AND SKY LETS GO

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4

Time

Time is a direct survivor of Order 66. He was a child living in one of the more remote temples when everything happened, and was able to escape alive by fleeing into the dense forests of the planet.

Time spent many years after that traveling on his own and not getting close to anyone out of fear of being found out, or worse, left behind. He holds a certain bitterness towards everything that's happened, and when he was a teenager, he was involved in a major incident on the planet Termina. Time finally decided to bury his saber on a remote planet after that, unwilling to take on the responsibility that comes with it.

Time actually ended up meeting Sheik and donning Mandalorian armor some time after that in his teenage years. He doesnt always gel with Mandalorian warrior ideaology, but he doesn’t truly fit the Jedi way of his childhood anymore either, after all the war and death he’s seen. He's determined to be strong enough to protect those he cares about, like Malon.

Time doesn't entirely get along with the Chain at first. (Especially Warriors and Twilight; Warriors reminds him of his old Jedi master, who wore a red scarf, and Twilight's saber looks suspiciously familiar.) The boys eventually grew on him anyway, and he counts them among the people he cares about.

Sky

Sky comes from a gaseous planet in the Outer Rim with settlements that float in the clouds, constructed far above its surface.

Sky's planet is a bit of a cosmic mystery, since it should be impossible for islands of solid rock to float; some theorize that it was constructed instead of naturally occurring, or that there is a unique combination of magnetic fields and orbits that make it possible, but no one knows for certain. Loftwings are part of the planet's ecosystem of impossible floating islands, and are an important part of the culture there.

Being so remote, the Empire didn't show much interest in Sky's home planet until Ghirahim showed up. The Empire hasn’t taken over his home yet, and he is determined to keep it that way, along with the rest of the Knights of Skyloft (including Sun). Ghirahim's interest in the planet involved rumors that there was an old Jedi temple hidden on its surface, and the secrets that were hidden within it.

Those rumors turned out to be true; there was an ancient abandoned temple on one of the floating islands, and Sky and Sun ended up discovering it before Ghirahim did. Sky also found a protocol droid named F1, and with Fi's help he and Sun managed to forge their own sabers with the only remaining kyber crystals there.

Sky's connection to the Force manifests mostly as visions, and he occasionally experiences strange, cryptic dreams as a result.

Linked Universe AU belongs to @ linkeduniverse!

#lu time #lu sky #lu star wars au #star wars au #linked universe #star wars #my art #mandalorian time my beloved #in case it isnt clear Saria and the forest kids were kids he grew up with at the temple #I left their fates ambiguous on purpose but point is he doesn’t really see them again after that #saria and the kokiri are FINE in my HEART #also I really like the worldbuilding for skyloft ooof #celestials and potenitally constructed systems exist in the lore and im abusing it to fit skyloft into star wars!!!! #god I wanna design sith ghirahim I think a saber battle between him and sky would be cool as hell to draw

[artmctalon]

Krita sketch from 2021, part of a worldbuilding thing I keep tinkering with on and off again. This specific image (which I procrastinated on for a while) was intended to imitate a specific style of painting from some early time period, but I couldn't remember what it was for the life of me.

-In Universe Excerpt-

The name Tinovano T'hailuuno (literally ''Mountain's Melody", or "Mountain Songbird") is the given name attributed to a certain author in Vita-Ra ancient history.

She was likely native to the north of Kunee Harak'di (Eocene-epoch India), or at least educated in the city nations there. Most of her writing concerns documentation of the far northern continent (Eurasia) and the peoples that dwelled there, particular the illiterate yet metallurgically skilled "Moon-faced" predecessors of the Lunak'-Rha tribes. Copies of texts attributed to this author are likely some of the most well-preserved artifacts of the Pre-Modern millennia.

Whether or not Tinovano T'hailuuno was a single individual or multiple is something of scholarly debate (both names and careers tended to be passed down through a family lineage in this time and place). If a sole individual, the author was likely of brown plumage and possibly striped, as most Vita-Ra around the Tethys Ocean exhibited that phenotype at the time.

#vitara #vita-ra #conlang #constructed language #worldbuilding #original character #character concept #krita illustration #digital drawing #digital art #feathered dinosaurs #sapient #sentient #alternate history #alternate universe #fictional history #deviantart crosspost #scribe #explorer

[finch1pinch]

ok i wanna talk about the fae in my world because ive come up with a bunch of cool lore for them and their culture, im obviously not finished yet but this is what ive got so far

ok so in my little multiverse, the most common 2 groups to be present on each earth are fae and humans. on some earths the fae are less present in the story that occurs or on some they are very present. it all depends on the awareness fae and humans have of each other.

the 2 groups are very different and have very different cultures but they have many parallels between them

like each group has 3 main aspiration groups that overlap and have specific attributes whether physical or mental. humans have the sciences, the humanities, and the arts, while the fae have the storm, the end, and the spirit

there are 3 central figures to fae culture.

the storm also known as Ebbe who represents change, unpredictability, overcoming fears, flexibility. this figure is often depicted with dragonfly wings, which is often an attribute of their followers. They are also depicted in shadow with a hood over their head, normally with only one eye glinting out of the shadow of the hood, shining like lightning. after all the future is never truly clear, even to its beloved followers.

The next is the end, also known as lady death or Synneva. She represents death, as you might’ve guessed, but also familiarity, comfort, the solid earth to Ebbe’s ever-changing skies. She is often depicted with moth’s wings similar to the death’s head hawkmoth or just as a little moth lurking in a corner ever present. it is said that she watches over every death that has ever been, rocking them into her dusty embrace. when she is depicted, her face is never in shadow, because she is always known. she doesnt hurry or rush, she knows she will have you eventually and like you can’t run from your past, you cannot run from her.

and the last is the spirit, who is the one most likely to give you his name, which is Anders by the way. He’s the brightest of the bunch representing growth, revival, and life in general. while many fae claim they see Synneva during near death experiences and Ebbe during big make or break it decisions, people often say they see Anders during their greatest moments, often cheering in the background, jumping up and down. he appears when a person is truly living. hes often depicted with bee wings, pollinating and nurturing growth around him all with a big grin on his face. life flourishes around him. But hes a trickster as well, his tricks are short term rather than the big strange inscrutable crossroads Ebbe prefers. and hes always moving, because the present stops for no one.

these 3 are the main figures in fae culture, though there are many more that are present. often the followers or fae that share the most in common with a figure will take on their attributes. Unpredictable fae like Eden have dragonfly wings, while sunny ones have bee wings like Knaff, and calm ones like Kaia have moth’s. But there are those with birds wings, like Sage, who have Sparrow’s and there are some who have no wings. But often fae do have wings, that’s why “fae” is often interchangeable with “wingfolk.” its more common to see a fae with wings than without.

Also, fae view humans as having uncanny valley as well. they find the weird bare skin they have unsettling. also plastic is fucking weird like what the hell dude, why are you guys so obsessed with using it for everything. why do keep eating so much inedible shit like asbestos and lead as well?

#universe construction(worldbuilding)! #fae lore stuff #i spent like an hour writing this and it doesnt even encompass a lot of my feelings about the fae #i need to do art class hw ahhhh #and i have a math test tomorrow!!! #but here you go #its both for me and you to read and keep track of #just wanted to get some thoughts down #also yes Ebbe Synneva and Anders also represent Past Present and Future #i thought it would be fun #because of the myth of human children being replaced with changeling fae as a scapegoat to kill and abandon autistic kids i wanted to #flesh out the fae and give them a similar culture to humans so that it wouldnt have the oh no theyre so weird and unknowable that often #comes with fae and allistic people trying to ‘figure out’ autistics #its just a bigger way to say hey fuck off were not acceptable to kill just because we cant make eye contact or follow your dumb social rules #anyways rant over #hope you liked the block of text i typed out #if you see any typos #no you didnt

[strelles-universe]

Talked about it a few times on my discord but I don't know how to translate it over to blog so I'll make this minipost lmao.

Because I like conlanging and also acknowledge that Great Connection or not that some individuals would've learned each other's tongues (but most bc I like conlangs) there are a few pidgins/creoles that exist in Sielsia.

Sky/Clan Pidgin

Skies drop noun classes, clans drop noun cases

Momentane and Iterative are removed

The moods are retained

only the mortal set pronuns are retained

Pack/Skulk Pidgins

Noun Classes = excl. animate vs. inanimate

Keep titles, honorifics are dropped

The number of titles shrink and simplify

These two pidgins are regularly referred to as Cat-Speak/Felitalk and Dogspeak/Canitalk respectively due to their focuses on each other. Now the Sky Kingdoms are the ones most likely to continue pressing for contact with the non-cats so;

Sky-Canine Pidgin

Noun Classes are kept - Ani vs. Semi vs. Inani

The paucal is lost

Iterative tense is aspect, traded for habitual

Momentane aspect is kept

Tenses are morphed to past, present, future

Animacy hierarchy markers are kept

The imperative mood stays

Only stand-alone pronouns

Titles are introduced and simplified

Articles and demonstratives are exempt from noun class

The Sky-Canine Pidgin is also known as Rogue-Speak as it's the tongue used most commonly by loners. It was a language born of necessity of the trade and I think I should actually call it a creole because it has native speakers now.

All of these are based on traits that each language shares so I think would make speaking easier/acceptable for them. For example, the kingdoms and clans both have independent vs. dependent categories for their pronouns so they keep them in their pidgin - meanwhile the canine languages only have independent forms so they'd drop the dependent forms in a pidgin.

The Packs and Skulks are far less isolationist than the clans are so while the clans and the kingdoms blossomed quite a few differences, the Skulks and Packs have similar enough grammar in their languages that very little has to change to create intelligibility once the parts are parsed.

#strelles au #strelles worldbuilding #strelles universe #conlangs #constructed languages

[escapistcatontheinternet]

i love the extras of dungeon meshi in how it fleshes out the world because they make it so much more evident how race affects every part of the story while avoiding the zootopia racism problem. like obv a main theme of the story is like, humanity and desire, 'to eat is to live', etc, but since the majority of it takes place in the dungeon isolated from society and thru the lens of laios, the racial aspects play out more like shadows on a wall for most of the story.

then in the extras we get comics like this

which at a glance fleshes out the racial aspects via a character explaining the racial rules of universe - humans have x amount of bones, while orcs and kobolds have more. however, if u take it less straightforwardly, it points out how the concept of 'human' is a constructed concept in the world. the fact that there are different categories of human in different parts of the world based off of what types of humanoids occur there is already a demonstration of this. in response, the bones explanation seems to kabru and the characters as an objective way of measuring humans vs nonhumans.

but obv, when the culture was deciding what humanoids were humans and nonhumans, they weren't blindly analyzing skeletons and then deciding. just visually, one can glean that orcs and kobolds look less like the ingroup of tallmen, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. the bones explanation appears as a justification for that immediate prejudice under a scientific guise - I'm sure that one could come up with the same number of physical differences between a gnome and an elf that they would find between a tallman and an orc. it sounds a lot better to say 'well, an orc has 230 bones while a human has 206' then 'well, an orc looks ewwww yucky yucky to me while a human looks normal'.

and what i like abt the comic is that the characters take the explanation at face value for the most part. when a contradiction is brought up in the oni, kabru can neatly slot them into the predetermined number of bones framework. bc that's kinda how it works irl - there r cultural prejudices that we can posthumously justify, and if we find something outside of it, we can twist it to fit into our predetermined binary. however, since the reader does not live in a world where there are orcs and kobolds to be prejudiced against, we can see that flaw in the cultural logic. when the party encounters the orcs, the number of bones has no bearing on their humanity. They r shown to be cliquish and distrusting of outsiders, but not any more than the elves are later in the story.

tldr dungeon meshi worldbuilding is so good

#just me #dungeon meshi #kabru #there r 10000000 examples of how fantasy racism affects the story of dungeon meshi not brought up in the main story #like namaris backstory and chilchucks union and the oni #augh. tasty manga #girls when themes of social isolation #ppl talk Abt the neurodivergent rep/allegory #the racial allegories aren't half bad either #social isolation guys social isolation

[bianavacker-is-bi-as-hell]

I’ve been writing sm it’s v fun

oml good for you!!! that’s so fun what are you working on?? <3

#I love bursts of inspo sm #I’ve been on such a worldbuilding kick #although tbh when am I not #everything I write is part of this elaborately constructed universe wtih obscure fantasy lore 😭 #asks #an-ungraceful-swan

[prokopetz]

Okay, so a thing about Tolkien's Middle-Earth is that, for elves and other beings of comparable metaphysical stature, the "distance" between an act of will and its tangible result is shorter than it is for mortals. The universe is just more inclined to play along with how they want it to work, which is why they're not lying when they claim not to know what magic is even though the products of their craftsmanship are by any reasonable standard supernatural – they just make stuff, and it works the way it does because that's how they intended it to.

This has a number of fun worldbuilding implications, like inventors having tangible authority over things crafted using their techniques, regardless of who does the actual crafting, because they literally willed the principles which allow those techniques to work into being, or the fact that when powerful beings die, sometimes stuff that depends on techniques they invented stops working. However, there's a bigger implication that that's generally gone unaddressed:

Elves can't do science.

Like, it's straight up impossible. A Tolkien elf cannot construct and carry out a meaningful experiment of any sort – it'll always works the way they expect it to, but only for that particular elf. Confirmation bias is an insurmountable barrier.

I want to read a story about the elf who figures this out and it bothers them terribly.

#media #literature #lord of the rings #lotr #middle-earth #tolkien #j r r tolkien #elves #worldbuilding #science #death mention

[ot3]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

What is it, and why you should read it.

(Art by purple)

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere is a currently updating webserial by author Lurina. It's one of my favorite things I've read in a long while and I'd like to convince you all to give it a chance.

My elevator pitch is this: A time-loop murder mystery directly inspired by Umineko, with a lot of similar vibes to the Locked Tomb Trilogy - partially due to it's meditations on grief and mortality and partially due to it's far-future magical sci-fi world where we follow a fucked up lesbian necromancer on a task she is determined to see through to the end. A deeply complex, unique, and believable world that plays hosts to one of the best interpersonal dynamics I've read.

In a future so far-flung that it is past the heat death of the universe, humanity has constructed a new society that is post-scarcity but not post-stratification. Utsushikome of Fusai is one amongst a class of prodigious young medical arcanists (essentially grad students) who are invited to visit a recently legitimized conclave of top-of-the-line researchers studying immortality. Accompanying Su is her best friend Ran, a fellow arcanist. Over the course of the novel we begin to slowly unravel exactly what ulterior motives have brought them to this conclave and how events in their childhoods and years of working toward their shared goal has warped their relationship into what we now see. This relationship is the crown jewel of Flower's narrative, and getting to peel back the layers of it as you read is a delight.

Like Umineko, Flower is a murder mystery that prevents itself with in-universe Rules that dictate the murders' parameters, meaning there's a lot to chew on for anyone who likes solving mysteries. For those that don't, like myself, Flower offers instead a richly developed world and plenty of open questions about the sociopolitical and metaphysical implications of its own worldbuilding.

Below the cut, I'll go into more detail about the series (without spoilers!) for those of you whose interest has been piqued.

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere is currently ongoing, updating every few weeks. It's several hundred thousand words, so if you're looking for something substantial to keep you entertained, you've got it. As you might expect from the length, the pacing is decently slow. I don't see this as a bad thing at all, because within this pacing Lurina dripfeeds the readers enough new and interesting information at a regular rate that it never feels like your time is being wasted. But if you can't handle slow burns, I wouldn't recommend this one for you.

If you enjoyed the Zero Escape series and liked that they stopped solving murder puzzles to infodump about fringe science, I think you'll get a lot out of Flower. Characters are frequently interrupting their life-or-death scenarios to have lofty, philosophical and political discussions. It's a ton of fun if you like reading characters argue.

'People have to sleep.' 'People have to work.' 'People have to die.' But those were just vague rules, phrasing I'd used because it had been easier in the context of that conversation. What really mattered, on the day-to-day level, was the idea that it was all for something. If someone invented a elixir that made people not to need to sleep, it would, in retrospect, recontextualize all nights everyone ever wasted sleeping as wastes of time. Not something that occurred for some inherent purpose, but whims of circumstance, a tragedy of when you happened to be born. If you accepted that all unfair things in the world could be removed, if only someone knew how - fatigue, labor, death - then to exist in the world we had now, with all its grotesque imperfections, was to know that you had been violated by fate.

Along those lines it's just got a sense of humor I really enjoy. Pretty dry and cavalier. It manages to keep the mood light without feeling like it's undermining it's own stakes. I'm particularly fond of Su's penchant for telling incredibly depressing suicide jokes that just Do Not Land.

The peer pressure cut into me like a hot knife. I hesitated a little, biting my lip. "Well, uh, okay. I'll just tell a quick one." I swallowed, my mind quickly scrambling. "Okay, so, there's a woman who runs a dispensary for second hand goods. She sees a man come in who's a regular customer. He's kind of a mess-- Has a big beard, a bad complexion. He buys a razor, and tells her he needs it to clean himself up, because he has a date." I could see that I now had Ophelia's attention and that Kam was looking pleased with herself, but Ran was watching me, too. I could see the look in her eyes. It screamed at me, with such vividity that it could be sold at an art gallery: You better not be telling a suicide joke right now, or we're going to have a talk. But it was too late. The wheels were already in motion.

As I mentioned up top, the relationship between Ran and Su is just one of my favorite interpersonal dynamics ever. Period. The author is playing some insanely complicated 5th dimensional yuri chess and I am absolutely here for it as someone who likes characters who are deeply devoted to each other in a way that is deeply deeply fraught. I cant emphasize enough how obsessed I am with what they have going on.

Additionally, as stated, the worldbuilding in Flower is top tier. The author clearly understands how every part of her world functions, which makes the moral quandaries and politics presented all the more impactful because they're very believable. It's hard to talk about Flower's world without spoiling too much of the specifics that get slowly revealed, but it doesn't fall back on any typical sci-fi standard fare and feels like a breath of fresh air amongst recycled and repetitive worldbuilding tropes.

A lot of really fun side characters. Strong voices for all of the supporting cast (♥♥Kamrusepa♥♥) and even though not every character gets their own arc, they all clearly have plenty of interiority. Once again, another thing that makes Flower feel very believable despite it's absurdities.

Autism

"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary with anyone?" She eyed him. "Anyone who seemed tense?" "Saoite, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but half of our class is so autistic that they constantly seem tense. You might as well ask me to find a specific turd in a sewer." "Just answer the question, please," she replied flatly.

Guys it's really good just trust me I don't want to spoil you for the more intricate plot beats but they're doing some crazy shit here. It's never a bad time to support an independent author's project. If you're sick of corporate mass-media and stuff needing to be marketable, getting into independent works owned and supported by individual creators is a great way to push back against that. I highly recommend it.

#media recs #the flower that bloomed nowhere

[myths-of-fantasy]

Modern Kemanjikuu Grammar Guide

Part 2: The Noun Class System

The primary remarks of similarity between the Earthen Bantu Languages and Kemanjikuu is their noun class system. Kemanjikuu has eight noun classes that affect the grammar of the language. In the common dialect of Kemanjikuu, the noun class system only forces agreement from adjectives.

However, Eastern dialects have been regularly observed to also enforce agreement on numerals. 

The eight classes of Kemanjikuu are:

Class 1: Manji and Domestic Creatures: This class includes people, alien species and all occupations. It also includes farm animals such as cows and sheep. For example, Manji (person) and Mio (cat).  The agreement prefix for this class is usually either ma- or simply m- such as in Manji mkagu (tall person).

Class 2: Nature and Wild Creatures: This class is made for a vast majority of nature - trees, plants, poisonous thing and so on. Sometimes you can see the transparent relationships between some wild animals and their domestic counterparts in their names for example Ndodi (dog) vs. Nkadodi (wolf). The prefix used for adjectives here is na- or merely n- creating sentences like, Nkadodi ntala (good wolf)

Class 3: Edibles and Phenomena: Anything in nature not included in class two tends to fall under class three. This class is often used for clarification- foods that are safe, drinkable water and healing or helping herbs. Any food present in nature and wild animals are often transferred to here;

This class has the adjective modifier of ra- or simply r- creating words like, Riha (clean water) or Ratna (meat)

Class 4: Domestic Tools: A class for everyday tools that aren’t typically associated with battle. This can be things like kitchen supplies, basic clothes and musical instruments like trumpets and horns.

The prefix for domestic tools is je- or simply j- such as in the words, jlani (knife) or even jelaga (clothes).

Class 5: Weapons and War: A class for weapons of war and battle or things associated with combat. This can be obvious tools such as swords and daggers but can also be things like armor and battleships.

Frequently things from the domestic class are transferred here with a modified prefix to clarify they’re being used for violence and destruction. This creates the inherent difference between jlani (knife) and ylani (dagger).

Jlani implies that the knife is a kitchen tool used for prepping food while ylani implies that it’s being used for hunting and skinning animals or self-defense.

This divide is present in a lot of words such as in:

Jlani (knife) vs. Ylani (dagger)

Jelaga (clothes) vs. Yelaga (armor)

Jiana (strainer) vs. Yiana (net)

Class 6: Emotions and Ideas: A class for concepts and ideas - this a broad category and can be everything from dreams and emotions. This class has also been known to take adjectives and make them nouns by applying this prefix to them. The agreement for this class is ke- or a simple k-.

For example, pai simply means “big” on its own. Attaching ke- makes it kepai and is interpreted as “big thing” and on the other side is atina (small) coming to mean “small one” when prefixed as katina. 

Class 7: Diminutive: An unofficial migratory class for words that are being made lesser or smaller than initial. This is often used to make the words for baby animals or small creatures. For example Pimio (kitten) and Pimani (toddler).

The modifier is the same for adjectives as is the migratory prefix so for example, Pimio pikenaa or “orange kitten.”

Class 8: Augmentative: An unofficial migratory class made for things greater than before. Frequently used as the classifier for titles. 

#earth 470 ujibaayai #projects by ankh #worldbuilding #lore #dcu fandom #dcu #dceu au #dceu fandom #dcu fanfic #dcu fanfiction #dceu fanfom #alternate universe #conlang #constructed languages #language design #alien culture #alien language

[writingwithcolor]

Depicting Real World Religions Alongside Constructed Religions

Maya asked:

Hi WWC! Thank you so much for this blog, it's an infinitely wonderful resource! Do you have any suggestions for how I can balance representation of real religions with fantasy religions, or should I avoid including these together? Does the fact that certain things bleed over from our world into the fantasy world help legitimize the appearance of real world religions? I feel like I can come up with respectful ways to integrate representation in ways that make sense for the worldbuilding. For instance, no Muslim characters would practice magic, and both Jewish and Muslim characters would conceive of magic in ways that fit their religion (rather than trying to adapt real religions to fit my worldbuilding). I also have some ideas for how these religions came about that fit between handwave and analogous history (though I realize the Qur'an is unchangeable, so I'm guessing Islam would have come about in the same way as IRL). BTW—I'm referring to humans, not other species coded as Muslim or Jewish. I may explore the concept of jinns more (particularly as how Muslims perceive fantastical beings), but I definitely need to do a lot more research before I go down that road! Finally, I saw a post somewhere (*but* it might have been someone else's commentary) suggesting to integrate certain aspects of Judaism (e.g., skullcaps in sacred places/while praying, counting days from sundown instead of sunset) into fantasy religions (monotheistic ones, of course) to normalize these customs, but as a non-Jewish person I feel this could easily  veer into appropriation-territory.  *One of the posts that I'm referring to in case you need a better reference of *my* reference: defining coding and islam-coded-fantasy

[This long ask was redacted to pull out the core questions asked]

"Both Jewish and Muslim characters would conceive of magic in ways that fit their religion (rather than trying to adapt real religions to fit my worldbuilding)."

Just a note that while having religion be part of magic is a legitimate way to write fantasy, I want to remind people that religious characters can also perform secular magic. Sometimes I feel like people forget about that particular worldbuilding option. (I feel this one personally because in my own books I chose to make magic secular so that my nonmagical heroine wouldn’t seem less close to God somehow than her wizard adoptive dad, who is an objectively shadier person.) I’m not saying either way is more or less correct or appropriate, just that they’re both options and I think sometimes people forget about the one I chose. But anyway moving on—

Your decision to make the water spirits not actual deities is a respectful decision given the various IRL monotheistic religions in your story, so, thank you for that choice. I can see why it gets messy though, since some people in-universe treat those powers as divine. I guess as long as your fantasy Jews aren’t being depicted as backwards and wrong and ignoring in-universe reality in favor of in-universe incorrect beliefs, then you’re fine…

"I saw a post somewhere (but it might have been someone else's commentary) suggesting to integrate certain aspects of Judaism (e.g., skullcaps in sacred places/while praying, counting days from sundown instead of sunset) into fantasy religions (monotheistic ones, of course) to normalize these customs, but as a non-Jewish person I feel this could easily veer into appropriation-territory."

That was probably us, as Meir and I both feel that way. What would make it appropriative is if these very Jewish IRL markers were used to represent something other than Judaism. It's not appropriative to show Jewish or Jewish-coded characters wearing yarmulkes or marking one day a week for a special evening with two candles or anything else we do if it's connected to Jewishness! To disconnect the markers of us from us is where appropriation starts to seep in.

–Shira

To bounce off what Shira said above, the source of the magic can be religious or secular--or put another way, it can be explicitly granted be a deity or through engagement with a specific religious practice, or it can be something that can be accessed with or without engaging with a certain set of beliefs or practices. It sounds like you’re proposing the second one: the magic is there for anyone to use, but the people in this specific religion engage with it through a framework of specific ideas and practices.

If you can transform into a “spirit” by engaging with this religion, and I can transform into a “spirit” through an analogous practice through the framework of Kabbalah, for example, and an atheist can transform through a course of secular technical study, then what makes yours a religion is the belief on your part that engaging in the process in your specific way, or choosing to engage in that process over other lifestyle choices, is in some way a spiritual good, not the mechanics of the transformation. If, on the other hand, humans can only access this transformative magic through the grace of the deities that religion worships, while practitioners of other religions lack the relationship with the only gods empowered to make that magic, that’s when I’d say you had crossed into doing more harm than good by seeking to include real-world religions.

Including a link below to a post you might have already seen that included the “religion in fantasy worldbuilding alignment chart.” It sounds like you’re in the center square, which is a fine place to be. The center top and bottom squares are where I typically have warned to leave real-world religions out of it.

More reading:

Jewish characters in a universe with author-created fictional pantheons

–Meir

#religion #magic #fantasy #Judaism #Islam #Worldbuilding #Jewish #asks #supernatural beings

[room-surprise]

Daydream Hour Page - How to make an Elven Communication Fairy (Homunculus)

I just did this using Google's machine translation tools, and I didn't clean it up, but you can get the gist of it. I saw Japanese fans on twitter going wild with this information the day the Daydream hour came out, so I already knew there was something about blood and semen, but it's so fun to get more information about how the fairies work!!!

Keep an eye on Savaralyn 's tumblr because I'm sure they'll post a better, cleaned up version of this soon, and reblog that one because it'll be easier to understand but... This is just so cool! The fairies are homunculus, and so the reason they look like their owners is because they're literally made of their semen (reproductive fluids) and fed their blood. Blood and semen and other body fluids are frequently used in real world magic or religious rituals so it's really cool that Kui is being unflinching about using it here, even if it's "gross" to us modern people... I love seeing it acknowledged in a fictional work! tl;dr alchemists used to believe that there was A Little Man inside the sperm but because the baby sometimes looks like the mother, they are absorbing traits from her through the Blood.... and so if they can make a baby Only With Sperm they can make a little man 100% in their own image. But Dungeon Meshi and especially the elves don't seem to have the same sexism that we have in the real world... Real world alchemists wouldn't think about how women are supposed to do alchemy without semen, they just would exclude women I'm pretty sure, but elves don't seem to exclude female elves so, how are female elves getting their fairies? Either: - Only male elves can make a fairy and so they construct them for female elves. - Female elves need to get semen from a male elf (or whoever, does it have to be elven semen?) to make their fairies. - Female elves use female ejaculate (Ryoko Kui confirming female ejaculation real in Dungeon Meshi universe??? Joking) - Female elves use menstrual fluid that has a shed egg in it instead of semen (equivalent reproductive fluid to male semen)

If you have to get someone else's semen for your fairy does it not look like you? Does it look like a mix because you use your blood and their semen? Does the blood need to be regularly given to power the fairy? What if someone doesn't have enough mana - can Tallmen make fairies? Would they be able to make a fairy if they had an extra mana source (like a dungeon, or an elf) to regularly feed the fairy blood?

This is just such a cool bit of worldbuilding in such an unlikely place!!! Everything in Dungeon Meshi is so fascinating. I can't wait to get my Daydream hour in the mail from Japan. In case you haven't seen it, here's the other page we've gotten on the fairies:

As you can see, only Mithrun and the Queen's fairies look substantially different from them. Possibly the queen's bodily fluids are too sacred/precious to be used in this manner? What if somebody tries to usurp the throne or something (more problematic with a male ruler but still an issue if you have magic maybe...) and Mithrun... well, hard to get semen out of him. So his may be made by someone else but fed by him with his blood? (Could have been grown from a donation by his brother? The hair color is right but not the eyes... but Mithrun's blood may be influencing the appearance?)

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dunmeshi #spoilers #my stuff #theories #dungeon meshi elves #delicious in dungeon elves #mithrun #pattadol #marcille donato #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon spoilers

[markantonys]

i already made a joke post about it but genuinely, the whole "wot s1 sucked, which was 100% the show's fault and not the source material's, but now s2 is so much better! shocking! who could've seen that coming!" narrative is SO annoying

like, the eye of the world is boring as shit! it's generic as shit! of COURSE an entire season based on it is not going to be the most groundbreaking or thrilling fantasy television you've ever seen in your life! how on EARTH can the readers who've been saying for decades that the books don't start to hit their stride until book 2 or 3 or 4 fail to grasp the correlation with season 2 being better than season 1? but even so, s1 alone IS more groundbreaking and thrilling than book 1 alone, because the showrunners knew that book 1 is boring and generic as shit and did their absolute damnedest to pull in as many unique elements from later books as they could conceivably fit in this early on.

second, s1 had to do a HUGE amount of heavy lifting in terms of setting up characters, relationships, lore, and worldbuilding. s1 did all this groundwork so that s2 could have the payoff you're enjoying so much, s1 constructed the basic building blocks so that s2 could explore the more advanced concepts you're gushing over. s1 ran so that s2 could soar! put some respect on its name!

third, stakes tend to get higher, characters to get deeper, and plotlines to get more exciting as you go along in a story. this is how stories work. why are you shocked that s1 only built the basic foundation of the story and s2 has the space to grow and deepen that story? that's how stories work, that's how TV works, and that's most certainly how the WOT books work.

fourth, practical constraints s1 had that s2 had less of

budget: s1 was starting from scratch, whereas s2 had more budget to spare since some things could be reused from s1 AND it got a bigger budget than s1 in the first place.

experience: second seasons almost universally tend to be better than pilot seasons, simply because everyone involved in making the show has gotten into the groove and solidified how they want to do this thing. this is how television works.

covid: it should go without saying that s1 would have been One Million Times more difficult and expensive to make than s2 due to covid stuff. whatever effect we may think covid had on s1, the true effect was probably astronomically higher than what we imagine. the majority of "looks too cheap" "looks too empty" complaints likely come down to this (notice that most of those complaints are about episodes 6-8 and not the early episodes; 6 was filmed pre-covid, yes, but i wouldn't be surprised if some covid-related restrictions were starting to rear their heads before production was officially shut down).

the worst part is the people who end their above-mentioned take with "they must have listened to audience criticism of s1 and made changes accordingly." [moiraine voice] the arrogance. s2 had already been written and filming was WELL underway (if not finished or close to finished?) by the time s1 even started airing. if you're impressed by what a great season they've delivered, the credit for that lies entirely with the people who made the show, not your stupid ass.

#justice for s1!! 'every single viewer found it boring and a disappointment' your experiences are not universal!!! #will i deny that s2 is better quality in just about every respect? certainly not #but s1 did a damn good job with the job it was supposed to do even if that job is not as ~exciting~ as s2's job #and THE big difference is that THE SOURCE MATERIAL FOR S2 IS BETTER!!!!! #WHY are any readers shocked that a TGH&TDR-based season is better than an EOTW-based season. make it make sense #wot

[ewingstan]

Worm and other media that won't just let you shoot the Joker, part 1:

Worm comments on the structure of stories, especially superhero stories, in some interesting ways. There's a lot of stuff that happen in superhero comics for no real reason than that it needs to happen for the story to be interesting; a huge amount of Worm's worldbuilding is devoted to taking these things and making the fact that they have to happen an explicit in-setting constraint. For instance, superhero stories tend to have more powerful heroes face off against much more powerful villains than their less-powerful allies, to the point where it seems like super-powerful threats are coming to earth every few weeks just because it wouldn't be interesting to read that comic otherwise. It gets weirder when you compare what villains end up visiting the cities of uber-powerful heroes vs the cities of less powerful heroes: Gotham mostly just has to deal with serial killers while Metropolis is a magnet for evil gods. Worm plays with this by having the Endbringers exist only because the big hero needed something to fight in-text: it changes "powerful heroes need powerful villains or else it wouldn't be interesting" from a Doylist justification to a Watsonian one. Then there's the fact that so much of the horrible conflict in Earth Bet is explicitly caused by Gods making sure the powers they grant people lead to increased conflict, the fact that one of the most powerful characters does what she does because the plot path to victory says she needs to, etc.

But the big one is Jack Slash, and how he's only able to get away with his bullshit because he has plot armor as a secondary power. As WB says here, "Jack's a reconstruction of the Joker type character in the sense that you can't have such a character take such a high profile position in the setting, without having there be a cheat." The Joker and similar characters are only able to keep being relevant threats in their stories because the narrative bends to let them win and stops them from being killed. Jack Slash is only able to keep being a relevant threat because his power makes the universe bend to let him win in the same way. Not only does this make for an interesting obstacle (its almost like they're fighting an authorial mandate!), but it skewers the use of similar character's plot armor and how unrealistic and unsatisfying it makes their stories.

But wait, what does it mean for a story to be "unrealistic" in the context of superpowers? Is being unrealistic in those contexts actually a problem? For that matter, what does it mean for a narrative to bend to let someone win? Its not like there's an objective way fighting the Joker would go, which the author is deviating from by letting him survive.

[Stuff under readbelow contains spoilers fo, the movie Funny Games and the book Anybody Home?]

Maybe we could say that if characters like the Joker were real, and put in the situations they are in their stories, they would end up being killed really quickly. But is that a reasonable way to judge stories? A narrative where such a character is killed unceremoniously to satisfy a need for realism isn't any less an expression of the author's deliberate choices than a story where the character keeps showing back up to satisfy a desire for fan-favorite characters. And while Jack Slash's arcs help show why deviating from "realistic consequences" in the service of keeping a character alive can make a story exhausting and screw with an audiences' appreciation of stakes, it doesn't make a strong case against the concept of villains having plot armor in general. A story isn't necessarily worse just for being constructed to keep the villains alive—all stories are constructed, and sometimes being constructed that way makes for the best story.

That becomes more clear when you take the premise of Jack Slash as "killer who wins because the mechanics of the universe says so" and make clear just how much "the mechanics of the universe" really just means "the story". Which is how you get Peter and Paul from Funny Games.

I'd highly recommend watching Funny Games (though for the love of god check content warnings), as well as Patricia Taxxon's review of it that I'm cribbing a lot from here. But to summarize, Funny Games is a movie written and directed by Michael Haneke about a family's lakeside vacation being interrupted by the appearance of two murderous young men, who capture them in their own house and slowly torture and kill them off. At least, that's what it seems to be about initially. It marketed itself as a somewhat standard entry in the genres of torture porn and home invasion thrillers, and played itself straight as one for the majority of its runtime. But then one of the two villains of the pair, "Paul," starts talking to the audience.

It starts small: after crippling the family's father and revealing that he killed their dog, Paul has the wife look for its corpse outside. While giving her hints, he slowly turns back towards the camera and smirks, before turning back. In isolation, maybe it could be interpreted as Paul smirking at Peter, seeming to look out at the audience only because of clumsy blocking. But then it happens again. Paul tells the family, who are completely at their mercy at this point, that they're gonna bet that they'll all be dead within twelve hours. When the family refuses to take the bet, asking how they could hope to win it when he can clearly off them all whenever they wish, Paul turns towards the audience and asks "what do you think? Do you think they stand a chance? Well you're on their side aren't you. Who you betting on, eh?" The audience is being acknowledged; their role as someone invested in the story is being examined by the ones introducing the stakes.

But the biggest moment comes near the end, when the mother grabs the shotgun she's being threatened with and blasts Peter. Paul startles, grins, and then hurredly grabs a tv remote and presses rewind. The movie itself suddenly rewinds to right before the mother grabs the gun, and plays again with Paul grabbing the shotgun right before the mother reaches for it.

Its a truly incredible moment, in that its the perfect way to forcibly take away the audience's suspension of disbelief. It forces the audience to acknowledge that they're viewing a story, not something happening to a real family. After their moment of catharsis against the villains, Paul makes the confront the fact that the movie will end however the creators want it to, and if they want the villains to win they'll will regardless of how little sense it makes. Fuck you, we can go from being set in the normal world with normal rules to the villains traveling back in time with a tv remote, because a story does whatever its creators want. Haneke just decided to make that obvious in the most jarring way imaginable.

But maybe the best way to illustrate Funny Games effectiveness at this type of artful unveiling is comparing it to its less-effective imitators. I've recently finished Anybody Home?, a recently-published book by Michael J. Seidlinger. It has the conceit of being narrated by an unnamed mass-murderer, guiding a new killer in their first home invasion. I started reading it before I watched Funny Games, and even afterwards took a while to realize the unnamed narrator wasn’t just a pastiche of a Paul-like character but was actually supposed to be read as Paul himself. Seidlinger was having his book be a sort of unofficial sequel to Funny Games, narrated by its star. Once I realized, a lot of the books details suddenly clicked. The big one was the constant references to “the camera" and the idea of murder being a performance for an audience, one that needed to be fresh and original to make “the cults” enjoy it. Take these passages from page 77:

If it happened, it would perturb. It would create suspicion. It wouldn’t end up ruining the performance, and yet, it could have derailed our casing. The camera can have all it wants; either way, it’ll make it look better than it really was. It’ll strip away the cues and other planned orchestrations and it’ll show the action—the actuality of each scene, each suggestion…

This is a spectacle, above all. The craft pertains to keeping and maintaining a captive audience; behind the camera, you’ll never know how it happened—the trickery that made the impossible possible, the insanity so close to home. It is spectacle.

Through online activity, the son made it clear that something is happening at home, yet we cannot be certain if he has noticed the camera.

These all point to the idea that the murders are being viewed by an audience rather than just by intruders, that this is a performance for said audience's benefit more than anything else. But notably, it also reinforces the idea of these characters having an existence outside of the camera: the camera shows the action and "strips away" the cues behind it, the victims have a life outside the camera such that they could plausibly sense that the camera is now here. The victims are sometimes described as playing into their role, but always metaphorically; always as if normal people start acting like characters when put in certain circumstances. Whereas Funny Games posits that characters will behave however the author wants them to, denying the claim that stories are realistic simulations of hypothetical scenarios.

The whole thing is predicated on the idea that there needs to be a guide, that the villain of a home invader movie is really in danger of something going wrong. Paul/The narrator keeps giving directions on what needs to be double checked, what needs to X, and its completely against the spirit of the role Paul served in Funny Games. If something goes wrong for the villain they should just be able to rewind and do it over, because the story was written for them to succeed. Anybody Home? throws out Funny Games theme of the story being on rails, of the winner being whoever the author wants it to be and the events following whatever the author wanted rather than what would "really" happen. It throws out the whole idea that it’s all just a story, by supporting the idea that the characters have lives not captured by the camera—or more relevantly, not captured on-page.

Because Seidlinger using the language of film in a book leads to different things going on with the fourth wall. The way Funny Games and Anybody Home? make the camera explicit are just different, and the former does it much more interestingly than the latter. Seildinger’s characters aren’t looking back at the reader, the fourth wall is never actually breached. Funny Games has Paul look into the camera to address the audience, making clear how it’s a story being set up for the audience's benefit. Anybody Home? invokes the idea of a camera tracking everything home invaders do in general, having it be a third-party force that’s itself an unseen character contained within the story, observing the intruder's crime rather than the reader. Why is it still a camera, if we're in a book rather than a movie? A character in a book talking about a camera watching them does not convey any of the same meaning as a character in a movie suddenly looking into a camera and smirking at the audience!

By the end, you realize that this is caused in part by the book's bizarro take on how horror movies exist in this world. It reveals that in its setting, all horror movies are adaptations of real home invasions, which get recorded by unseen mysterious forces. Killers enter a home and enact violence, are filmed by some supernatural camera, the footage gets leaked to the public, and then the killers sell the rights to the work to studios. The events of SAW really happened, but the movie was just an adaptation. Funny Games really happened, but the Paul in the movies was just an actor playing the Paul narrating this book. The killer's victims eventually realize that they're "victims," but not in the sense that they realize their characters in a story, only in a sense that they realize they got sucked into their world's magical realism bullshit.

Ultimately, while the book does the same trick of being all about how horror stories are “for” us, it gets rid of all the tricks that made it work for Funny Games. It even strips it's in-universe version of what made it special; Funny Games is just another adaptation of a real home invasion. All the meta stuff that makes it interesting in its genre are just gestured at as aesthetics.

So what makes Jack Slash in Worm succeed where the killers in Anybody Home? fail? Both are constructed to be entertaining for a 3rd party who stand-in for but aren't actually the audience; the entities in Worm, the cults in Anybody Home?. But Jack Slash doesn't mix his metaphors. Worm may turn various real-life factors affecting a work into in-story mechanisms of the world in the same way Anybody Home? does. But it doesn't also base itself off a text that takes in-story mechanisms and breaks them to force the audience to see the various real-life factors affecting the work. In effect, WB pulls off a trick Seidlinger tries and fails because WB wasn't taking another metatexual story and stripping it of what made it interesting.

Though that introduces the question: can such meta-moves be mixed? Can you have a text where story conceits become explicit plot mechanics the characters are aware of, while also having characters really look at the camera and tell the audience that its all just a story? Can you actually sell it and make it something interesting?

There is one story that tries this. I don't know if it pulls it off, but it certainly makes a lot of interesting moves that create a fascinating whole. It even comments on the Joker in the same way Worm does, having a character who seemingly cant die because the roll they play in the story is too impor—

Ah fuck.

Continued in part 2.

#wormblr #wildbow #jack slash #parahumans #metafiction #funny games #michael haneke #anybody home? #michael j seidlinger #mals says #mals reads worm #Youtube

[awkwardtuatara]

Something interesting about The Murderbot diaries is that (as far as I understand it) it doesn't try to connect the world back to Earth or an Earth-like planet. A lot of scifi I've read tries to establish some origin planet for humans - either explicitly or buried deep in the lore, with varying degrees of awkwardness - but in the TMD universe you have these established locations and entities. Preservation was a failed colony abandoned by a company, at a point there were already a lot of corporates trying to establish colonies, and it's never stated where the original settlers came from. The Corporation Rim is treated as one chunk of the universe, with individual companies doing business that sometimes expands their reach. The current in-universe layout is well-established, so it makes sense that no original efforts to expand into space or any origin planet of humanity is mentioned. Why would it matter? We get chunks of history that are relevant to SecUnit and its companions, and any origin of humanity and early steps to space travel would be so distant it wouldn't matter to anyone but scholars of that time. We get brief mentions of early constructs and a rundown of Preservation's existence, but only in ways that characters would access that information and things they'd care about. It's an interesting part of the worldbuilding in an already unconventional story, and the more I think about it the more I like it.

#the murderbot diaries #tmd #murderbot #it's thinking about murderbot hours apparently

[strelles-universe]

Kujhikoslan, the Complete Grammar Guide

Of all the groups in Strelles, the Fox Skulks were the first societies to approach the Sky Kingdoms upon realizing that they had made generous strides in preserving and recovering the Old Tongues. Their language is deeply precious to them and though they respect the decision of the gods to stop the meaningless aggression all species directed at each other, they’re pleased to see that the gods agreed with them reclaiming their Tongues once they understood the point that was being made.

Given that the skulks were the first to invent a written variant of their language, they were among the easiest to rebuild once they could understand the markings and managed to break it down. As such, it’s considered to be the tongue closest to its Old Form before the Connection - something they take great pride in. This means that much like the Sky Kingdoms, the language isn’t exclusive to any rank or position but rather, an inherent part of living within the skulks. 

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Part 1: Phonology and Phonetics

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Kujhikoslan has 19 official consonant sounds;

The squiggly lines are where the pronunciation of the sound isn’t quite set in stone. The skulks towards the west use /ʤ/ instead of /ʧ/.

And there are 5 vowel sounds:

Phonetic Summary

Onset: m n ny p b t d k g s x c tc jh h r y l

General Clusters: nh ns nc mc ts

Coda Clusters: mk nk pk lk

R Clusters: br dr gr nr jhr

L Clusters: nl ml kl tl pl

Nucleus: a e i o u

Nucleus Clusters (a): ai aia 

Nucleus Clusters  (i): ia ii 

Nucleus Clusters (o): oa

Coda: s n l k

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Part 2: Word Order

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SVO Primary - The cat jumps over the tree

SOV Secondary - The cat, over the log jumps

Demonstrative - Noun | This goat

Numeral - Noun | One goat

Possessive - Noun| Your goat

Noun - Adjective | Goat big

Noun - Genitives | The sandwich of the goat (not, the goat’s sandwich)

Noun - Relative Clauses | The goat, who ate the sandwich is thick

Verb - Auxiliary | Go must (I go must | I must go)

Verb - Subordinate Verb | Went to buy (vs. to buy went)

Adjective - Adverb | Big really (really big)

Yes/No Particles - Final (End of a sentence)

Question Words - Final (End of a sentence)

Proper Noun - Common Noun | state Kansas instead of Kansas State

Modifier Order: Quantity - Opinion - Age - Size - Origin - Color - Material - Purpose + Noun

Modifier Example:Two pretty old large Dutch white cotton goats.

Compounds:

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Part 3: Animacy Based Noun Classes

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Kujhikoslan has simply tri-class animacy system. The hierarchy is very basically animate, semi-animate and inanimate objects.

The Animate Class is usually fairly obvious - it’s moving, breathing things like fellow creatures and most plants that grow rapidly such as flowers. The Inanimate Class is equally obvious consisting mostly of things such as trees, rocks, mud and certain creatures that a skulk can be stubborn about.

The Semi Animate Class is for things granted a degree of life from their religious beliefs.

Animate Examples (-(r)a) - Jhiko (fox), Kis (cat), Tciri (a partner bird)

Semi Animate Examples (-(m)e) - Ansel (wind), 

Inanimate Examples (-(h)a)) - Komok (rock), Hiyil (river)

When put into practice, the animacy system applies to and affects numerals and adjectives. 

Ainra kis  - one cat Arume ansel - blue wind Ainhal hiyil - one river

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Part 4: Grammatical Number

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Much like Adovusala, the skulks of strelles have a rather simple grammatical number system. Only a singular/plural divide leaving the singular bare - jhiiko (fox) - and adding the prefix ku- to make it plural - kujhiko (foxes). 

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Part 5: Tense and Aspect

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There are four tenses and aspects in Kujhikoslan the same as Adovusala, there are also four tenses in this language. The four aspects are the perfective, habitual, continuous and pausative aspects - the four tenses being distant past, past, present and future tenses.

Here’s the example word;

In the second and third persons, the animacy hierarchy triggers agreement on the verbs.

Asla - to speak (animate) Aslamri - to speak (semi animate) Aslaso - to speak (inanimate)

These agreements are meant to emphasize what’s happening - generally speaking, rocks don’t speak and ergo, the agreement is meant to confirm that yes, this improbable interpretation is indeed what this sentence means.

Hel kis aslar ir hel ansel - the cat speaks to the wind

In this situation, the cat is the one doing the speaking and ergo, the word used is aslar. 

Hel anser aslamrir ir hel kis - the wind speaks to the cat

Now here, it’s the wind speaking to a cat. In this case, it’s assumed that the wind is actually a spirit of a sort, whispering to the cat rather than the actual wind itself.

Hel komok aslasor ir hel kis - the rock speaks to the cat

Same situation as the previous sentence except even more unbelievable to the listener - rocks rarely speak if ever, so a speaking rock is typically interpreted as a trapped spirit or even a demon. 

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Part 6: Pronouns

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Now unlike the language of the packs, Kujhikoslan doesn’t have a system of honorifics making their pronouns much simpler than Adovusala;

The possessives unfortunately get a little bit more complicated than that as the skulks differentiate between alienable and inalienable objects.

Alienable Nouns are things you have a choice over owning and can be divorced from you such as a food or an adornment. Meanwhile, Inalienable nouns are things that can’t be divorced from the person such as a blood relations and your species.

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Part 7: Articles and Demonstratives

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The articles and demonstratives of Kujhikoslan are very simple with definite articles and indefinite articles for a specific thing and a broad thing. Unlike other languages however, the articles are divided up into the three animacy classes;

Hel is the definite articles are;

Ma anser - the wind Ke kommok - the rock Hel bero - the dog

And the indefinite articles are;

Ya bero - a dog Lu neco - an egg El kommok - a rock

The demonstratives have been left alone in the distinction with only a near/far difference;

Yel bero - this dog Sul bero - that dog

#the skulks of strelles #conlangs #constructed languages #strelles worldbuilding #strelles universe #strelles au #conlang #erin hunter #erin hunter warriors

[wellgoslowly]

Lockwood and Co. How do I begin to talk about this insane universe that has literally changed my life in so many ways in such a small amount of time?

I think it was probably January 27th that I actually got the notification for the trailer for the show from Netflix’s Youtube. I don’t know exactly what it was that made me interested in the trailer in the first place and set it apart from the hundreds of trailers that netflix has posted that I’ve ignored, but there was just something about it that made me think “oh, this looks interesting, let me take a look at the trailer.” Thank god I did.

If I were to go back in time to that version of linnie and tell them that their life was about to be changed, I think they would’ve laughed. At that period of time I’d had a 2 year long hyperfixation on the grishaverse and I couldn’t think of anything that would’ve possibly broken me out of that long ass period of chaos. And then I watched Lockwood and Co and I immediately fell in love with an entirely new world.

Lockwood and co means so much to me for so many reasons. One of them is that I’ve never seen myself more reflected in a character than I see myself in Lucy Carlyle- hence the name Linnie. I didn’t even realize it until Aaron ( @queer-and-nerdy ) pointed it out (after I pointed out how much of a George kinnie they are) and then everything made sense in a way? Like Lucy Carlyle is the truest form of a comfort character for me because we are basically the same person and I never realized how special a character could be until I met Lucy Joan Carlyle.

Another reason why I love this universe so much is because I love found family, and I love the found family that Jonathan Stroud has written. The Iron Trio will always be so special to me because of how often it is shown and how deeply it is known that they love each other unconditionally, Even George and Lucy, who have their differences when they first meet, grow to love each other in their own way and I genuinely believe that the family found within the Iron Trio is one of the most beautiful relationships I’ve ever read or seen portrayed on screen.

I also just truly love the worldbuilding. The world that Jonathan Stroud has created has such an amazing homely feel to it that I will never tire of. I love literally everything about it- the lore, the execution, the way that he was able to make ghosts even more terrifying for such a young audience.

Lastly, I love the fandom. I’ve talked a little bit about how much a kind and welcoming fan space like the l&co tumblr means to me and how I have had rocky situations in a fandom in the past, but I truly cannot even begin to talk about how much this online space has truly changed me in so many ways. I feel like I can have open, honest, and constructive opinions on here without being scared to speak my mind or fear the repercussions of not being 100% happy all the time. This fandom is the most accepting and loving fandom I have ever known, and I’d like to tag a few of the people who have made this place so loving and enjoyable to partake in. Shout out to @ikeasupremacy @oblivious-idiot @losticaruss @youmanynotrestnow @neewtmas @thisgameissonintendo @readyafterthesunrise @waitingforthesunrise @yveni @uku-lelevillain @impossibleclair @donutcats @jesslockwood @kazbrekkerfast @krash-and-co @carlyleandco @biscuitrule @maraschinomerry @lockwood-lover @lvockwoods @givemea-dam-break @someonetooksendnoodles @nomolosk @thedonutdeliverygirl @neverendinglabyrinth @tangledinlove - I defo missed a lot of people but these are just the few that I could remember right off the top of my head <33

All in all, I love this show and these books and this world more than I could ever possibly express. Happy 10th Birthday to The Screaming Staircase, and a very Happy Lockwood & Co Day to all whom I have the honor of celebrating with. I love you all very dearly, and remember: “just reckless enough”.

xoxo,

linnie <3

#lockwood and co #renew lockwood and co #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #george karim #george cubbins #lockwood netflix #locklyle #locklyle brainrot is real #save lockwood and co #10 years of lockwood and co #save lockwood & co #netflix lockwood and co #lockwood and co netflix #lockwood & co #lockwood and co season 2 #lockwood and co tv show #lockyle #lucy and lockwood #lockwood and co show #lockwood #lockwood & co. #lock nation #the screaming staircase #happy 10 years locknation #jonathan stroud #ruby stokes #cameron chapman #ali hadji heshmati #the iron trio