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piratekitten has declared February world-building month.
Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.
The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!
The fifteenth question comes from kelkyag and is a meta-question
How do you-the-author develop the rules of magic in the various ‘verses that have magic? (Or Mad Science, in the worlds that have that.)
Badly?
To be honest, T. came up with the magic system for Addergoole/Faerie Apocalypse. I wanted something powerful, teachable, and with limits; he offered a modification of an already-extant roleplaying system and we kept modifying until it was our own thing.
For Tír na Cali, I started with a single character – Lady Tekenna, who has the power to command minds – and extrapolated from there, mostly via roleplaying, until I had a general idea of the powers the world could have.
Dragons Next Door, for instance, and Fairy Town are completely story-based: when I need something to happen, there’s a magical way for it to happen if a mundane way won’t work. Ditto science in Science! and superheroes verse, as well as in the space-colony stuff.
For Reiassan, T. and I sat down with a large piece of paper and plotted out a lot of what we wanted, because they have an actual, limited magic system. Then again, very little of that came up, and it was already working around things Rin had done way back in the first story.
Short answer: I’m not very good at coming up with magic systems; I generally “pants” it based on something I want to happen in the world. When I need a system – for a world that’s going to be more complex, for instance – I tap the Spousal Unit, and we start using role-playing mechanics to figure things out.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/670891.html. You can comment here or there.
Guys guys guys it’s a law generator!
(Link via Seventh Sanctum, which also has a zillion awesome generators)
“The penalty for a courtesan fighting in public is a small fine.”
“The penalty for stealing a hunting bird is a warning.”
There’s also a superstition generator!
“An artist happening upon a certain white flower in a grove of maple trees is thought to predict a death.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/609554.html. You can comment here or there.
How do you handle swearing in your constructed (fantasy, sci-fi, etc) settings?
I’ve run into this more than a few times over the years. Sometimes, I find out something about the setting when I have the characters start swearing.
Gods below… swear men in Tír na Cali, which leads to the question… below what, and why are they below.
Eleven departed gods… people curse in Fae Apoc. Why are there 11? Where did they go?
I’m still trying to decide about curses in Reiassan… Girey blasts things a lot and, coming from a maritime culture, sometimes swears by whirlpools. Rin… doesn’t swear much.
How do you handle swearing? What’s your favorite and/or least favorite ways you’ve read other people handling it ?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/585624.html. You can comment here or there.
I am in a lazy state of being today and will be working on my projects here – http://titanpad.com/UDUgf9lyVo – in a public titanpad, if you’re curious to watch me write.
I have a list of 10 projects I’m rotating through, and 40 more to fill the gaps if I actually finish one of those.
I’ll be in and out throughout the day, as I try to pick the house up a bit, too.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/413436.html. You can comment here or there.
rix_scaedu raised a question in alpha-reading the upcoming Addergoole-Year-9, and I never did answer it well in the original series – “should it be crew, or Crew?”
I’m going to stretch that out to – what things should I capitalize?
* Each word in a Working?
* the word Working?
* Bond? This one I hesitate on, because it looks to me too much like the Blood Bond in White Wolf.
Things that I know are always cap:
* Keeping, Kept (not sure on Owning, Owned), Belonging.
* Law
* references to a position as per the Law – Mentor, Student, Mother, Child (but only in that context)
I seem to have settled on capitalizing Daeva, Mara, Grigori.
Urg!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/352863.html. You can comment here or there.
Jeriendhal posted this post last week in which is linked this “Home on the Strange Strip strip (NSFW!) about the two plots female characters are always involved in, Rape and Pregnancy.”
My first thought was “Shit, Addergoole.” Rape and Pregnancy is practically the THEME of Addergoole.
Jeriendhal provided a list of commercially-available words against this test, throwing in The Bechdel Test for good measure.
So, I thought I’d do the same… just with ‘verses more loosely.
Edited to add: Reverse Bechdel, per @Shutsumon
Significant Female Characters:
Shahin, Kailani, and sometimes Jamian (gender-swapping). Fifty-some others; it’s a boarding school.
Without spoilers, rape and pregnancy abound.
Significant FMale Characters:
Conrad, Emrys, Ambrus, and sometimes Jamian, 50+ others.
Without spoilers, rape and pregnancy abound.
Bechdel Test: pass-ish. The main characters talk about boys a lot. But they also talk about other things, with other girls.
Reverse Bechdel Test: I thought, with effort, of a conversation 2 males had that didn’t involve a woman! Emrys and Ardell discussing whether or not Emrys is going to let Ardell rape Yngvi.
Stranded World (LJ Link)
Significant Female Characters:
Autumn, Summer, and Spring. None have been raped, none have been pregnant.
Significant Male Characters:
Winter. Nominally, Tattercoats
Bechdel Test: Some stories pass, some fail due to a lack of two females to talk, or because they’re all in one characters head.
Reverse Bechdel Test: fail flat-out. There is no story in this series that has two men in the same place at the same time, much less having a conversation.
Significant Female Characters:
Rin, a Healer. Neither raped nor pregnant. Not even kissed for most of the story.
Significant Male Characters:
Girey, a captive of war and former prince. Not even kissed for most of the story, neither pregnant nor raped
Bechdel Test: Mostly fail. There is one episode where Rin talks to another woman about the army, but for the most part it’s Rin and Girey, male, talking about their societies.
Reverse Bechdel Test: Fail. The two times Girey talks to another male, it’s about Rin.
Tir na Cali (LJ Link)
Significant Female/Male Characters:
Fish story – the narrator and the mermaid/none
Slave school – Debbie and Jill/Steve, Carl, (someone else)
Harem – Ursula / Stephen
Catpeople – Bay (mostly)
Cali-novel – Keva, Georgie, Keva’s lady mother. / Patrick
Somehow none of the women are raped or pregnant. Steve in “harem” can’t say he wasn’t raped, and Bay in “Catpeople” will probably be bred.
Bechdel Test:
Harem fails, due to lack of other women. The rest pass.
Reverse Bechdel Test:
Harem mostly fails: Stephen only talks to other men about Ursula.
No men in Fish story. Slave School passes. Cali-novel passes.
Vas’ World (LJ Link)
Significant Female Characters:
Becky, Malia, Suki.
Becky ends up pregnant. So fail.
Significant Male Characters:
Vas, Paz, Ezra, Andon.
Bechdel Test:
Pass. They’re exploring a new world; most of their conversation is about the world.
Reverse Bechdel Test: Pass.
Dragons Next Door (LJ Link
Significant Female Characters:
Hrrm. The narrator and her young daughter.
Neither end up pregnant, and no-one would dare rape someone who’s good friends with a dragon.
Significant Male Characters:
The narrator’s husband and sons.
Bechdel Test: mostly fail. Since it’s set in a family and the dragons are neuter, often the narrator is talking with a child (male) or a spouse (male), or a neighbor (neuter).
Reverse Bechdel Test: Fail
The Planners
Significant Female Characters:
Varies by Era. In some eras, we’re all good, no-one gets raped or impregnated. But in the “anthropologist” sub-setting, rape and pregnancy abound.
Ditto Male characters
Bechdel Test: Pre-apoc pass, post-apoc & post-post apoc fail
Ditto Male characters.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/138108.html. You can comment here or there.
1. Reply to this post with “UNICORNS”, and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.
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clare_dragonfly gave me these:
Keyword: Aldersprig.
barbary made this for me! I use it when doing 15-min-fics from Barbary’s website, or for things that seem to suit it’s along-the-waterfront mood.
Keyword: Leaf
An alder leaf, just the color I feel they ought to be. Personal-writing stuff, mostly. Or stuff I don’t have an icon for just yet. This is related to why-I’m-aldersprig, which is a longer story.
Keyword: mermaid2 (I used to have several)
Originally yoinked from somewhere on the web back when I had less-good manners about such things, it serves for both Fish Story and the flood series, and other people’s mermaid stories, and Ysabet’s fishbowls.
Keyword: Bookglasses (i’m so creative)
For readerly things and mechanism-of-writerly things
Keyword: Tea3 (I have several)
For tea-related moments – family/kin/community/comfort stuff. Also, I have that teapot.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/124779.html. You can comment here or there.
ysabetwordsmith has posted here (and on LJ) a discussion on this article on “What Do You Mean When You Say You Want ‘Strong Female Characters’?”
I had strong feelings about it reading Ysabet’s post, stronger ones having read the article, but… putting those aside for a moment, what do YOU think? What makes a strong character?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/118694.html. You can comment here or there.