Some people have asked me if I can publish my mapmaking tools. So I developed a software. 🙂

Here is the result:

Chalk is squids road.

Why the Altmeri Commentary on Talos is Important to Lore Discussion (Even if It Isn't the Thalmor's End Goal) 

Originally posted on r/teslore three years ago. To be clear, important in this context means if you're trying to guess where TES might go in the future. And as the years go by, and we now have an almost complete turn-over of developers at Bethesda, it may be less relevant. Still, the new developers will have all these old ideas to rummage through.

This begins with a split among fans, though I don't think it has to be a nasty split. There is a very strong opinion in /r/teslore that Out-of-Game texts are valid if you want them to be, if you find them interesting enough for your Tamriel. And there's another very strong opinion that only official lore is really valid for theorizing. To be completely honest, we all probably dabble in one or the other at different times. Sometimes we are more creative and speculatory about Tamriel, other times we are arguing out the Lowest Common Denominator of agreed-upon lore. (It's never actually agreed upon, but that's part of the fun.)

But there's a third possibility: examining Out of Game texts for the perspective they can give us on In-game lore. A really good example of how this works would be the document: On the Nords' Totem Religion. It was a design document for Skyrim which was not incorporated into the game directly. However, the document gives a lot of insight into the little we do see in Skyrim of the ancient Nord religion. It is useful in interpreting the game itself.

interested in worldbuilding? stuck trying to figure out conlangs, place names, etymologies, and so on? need to communicate moral absolutes about your characters with your linguistic choices? good news! i have just the chart for you:

You need a gate? You are unhappy with the position? No problem. :-)

Feel free to check out my mapmaking tool 'Canvas of Kings'! :-)

Extremely nitpicky but I hate white wedding gowns in fantasy, especially when they make absolutely no sense in the setting. No, that culture in the far north that prioritizes function over form and mostly wears heavy furs would not have the means, ability, or desire to make a sleeveless ivory silk gown with a semi-sweetheart neckline. Please be sensible about this and use your creativity instead of just slapping a Kleinfeld wedding gown into a medieval fantasy setting.

Here's some tricks to making interesting fantasy wedding dresses:

For a quick example:

If your wedding ceremony requires the bride to walk through a cold and snowy forest for cultural or religious rites, she would freeze her poor tits off in a sleeveless silk gown. Instead, consider a heavy wool gown in rich colors with elaborate embroidery and a thick cloak, maybe hooded, made of fine furs to show off her family's wealth. Jewelry, headpieces, and detailing on the gown could be made with things carved from stones, wood, antlers, and/or bones, especially if it's a culture that prizes hunting skills. Maybe a heavy veil that isn't just beautiful but also helps protect her face from biting winds during the journey.

generally not super into shapeshifter characters being revealed to have like a singular True Form. isnt it much more interesting to imagine a creature so fluid and ever-changing that even they cant identify any one body as the "true" self, or simply dont see the need to?

is this you? yes. this one too? yes. but then which one is the real you? define "real" define "you" theyre all me. even the ones that are someone else? especially those.

tip: everything you pretend to becomes a part of what you are and even the facade you wear for the sake of deception reveals a crucial truth.

also: the self is a multi-faceted, ever-shifting thing

D&D alignment is famously dumb, to the point where in literal decades I've only ever heard it discussed to dump on it or joke about it, but designing esoteric cosmic alignment systems for RPGs is very fun in that it appeals to the nerd's natural delight in taxonomy and mysticism. anyway my favourite one that I ever came up with, which I have yet to deploy in a finished work but still want to, is an alignment trinity that goes like this:

These form a kind of daoist element phase pattern where one is considered to "beat" the other and things transition according to that pattern, in the expected way.

This hits what I think is a sweet spot for design, where it feels plausibly transcendental in the sense that you can kind of let your eyes unfocus and genuinely imagine that these categories embody deep wisdom about the nature of the world, and it's elegant in that the aesthetics line up with the names of the categories in both metaphorical and literal ways, but it's also just visibly incredibly stupid and a joke, so you can enter into a superposition of taking it seriously within the narrative while considering it stupid and deflating.

I asked someone at the village recently if the dairy co-op sold [specific cheese] and she said yes they do, and I said oh I’ll pop by then, I haven’t seen that cheese at the grocery shop for a while, apparently their local supplier is giving them trouble, and the woman I was talking to scowled and said, “the dairy co-op is their supplier and my son works there and yes they’ve suspended deliveries but they’re not the problem” in a combative tone, clearly assuming I had sworn allegiance to the enemy in this dispute I didn’t know existed. It reminded me of how last spring I was saying that I’d seen a really cute foal while driving by [specific farm] and the person I was talking to scowled and said this foal’s mother was a terrible aggressive horse who shouldn’t have been allowed to reproduce and once again I just stood there awkwardly

There are mysterious and antagonistic connections between everyone in rural communities and the only way to be safe is to never mention anyone to anyone else. You say something about a sweet baby goat you can’t discount the possibility that this goat’s great-grandmother kicked your interlocutor’s third cousin in the leg in 1996 and now you’ve unwittingly taken a side in this longstanding feud

Another interesting thing: in many fantasy settings (including fairy tales, many of them of course from Europe) when people say "The North", it's inmiediatly clear they're talking about cold and snow. Oh yes, the Northerners, from the land of cold and snow...

While for me in the Southern Hemisphere and especifically Argentina, "The North" is the hot part of the country, and the further north you go it's hotter, nearer the equator, while the further south you go it's colder, nearer the south pole.

Now, I know most people do live in the Northern Hemisphere so it makes sense to them, but it's really interesting that when you see a fantasy world talking about "The North", it's inmediatly clear it's talking about snow and cold and such, and often about pseudo-vikings. Why do we need to copy Earth's geography exactly like that? Why not a warm north near the equator that gets colder the further south you go?

In fact, why does every fantasy setting has to take place in the Northern Hemisphere? Just the way it's worded reveals a lot.

As an Australian I totally agree, but there are actually a few Southern Hemisphere fantasy worlds around! Thedas (The Dragon Age Setting), for example, and apparently the Stormlight Archive. I feel like there's others I've seen and forgotten.

I also liked how Avatar: The Last Airbender travels the entire world, from southern pole to northern pole and back again. Most worlds have two hemispheres, after all.

Dragonlance, too.

The most common place name in each European country.

Source and details >>

just in case you got as confused as me looking at the results for spain, here is the complete list of the toponyms in the original map (just follow the link of op)

czechs🤝 greeks 🤝 poles 🤝 serbs

New Village

@mist-the-wannabe-linguist don’t forget about Belarusians and Croatians 😂

damn, even more

OC/Worldbuilding asks for your inner social science nerd

I wanted to develop a little tool for creating new characters, but instead of the more typical approach, I figured I’d put a slight social science cant on it. Feel free to use if you might find them helpful. 1. How does your OC make ends meet? What do they do for a living? How is their occupation viewed in the social context they’re in? Does it come with social prestige or financial comfort, and are these two things aligned in the society you’re writing, or are they separate metrics? 2. How does your OC communicate? Are they monolingual or multilingual? What is the linguistic environment they’re in? If they’re monolingual, is there a social penalty for only speaking one language, or is it the norm? If they’re multilingual, which of their languages or sociolects has the most/least prestige? Is there a separation between written and oral forms of the language? Can your OC blend in or does their language mark them in some way? What are their levels of fluency, and how do they feel about them? 3. What is your OC’s concept of social debt? What constitutes a sense of social obligation for your character? Is it based on individual feelings or collective principles? What do they do when they feel like they owe someone? Are they likely to default on a social obligation, or repay it? What are the costs of either approach in the society you’re writing? 4. What does it take for your OC to consider someone a friend? What constitutes friendship in the society you’re writing, what expectations does it come with, and how does your OC fit into that structure of expectations? Do they make friends easily or do they struggle? How intimate is a friendship for them, and what does it include?

5. What does it take for your OC to consider someone kin? What constitutes kinship in the society you’re writing, and how does your OC relate to that set of cultural expectations? Is kinship defined only by blood, or through other forms of social intimacy? Are there symbolic gestures that might establish a kin-like relation? What is family for your OC? 6. What are your OC’s religious beliefs? Are they aligned with the beliefs of the society you’re writing, or are they orthogonal? Does your OC question their convictions, or do they feel a degree of certainty? Does your OC feel a personal connection to a sense of divinity, or is religion empty social ritual for them? 7. What does your OC consider unspeakable and/or repugnant? What are the topics or issues your OC finds viscerally difficult or impossible to talk about? Are these topic socially unacceptable, or is it personal? What do they react to with revulsion ahead of any intellectualized response? 8. How does your OC approach the line between public and private? What sorts of things does your OC not share with anyone, what might they share with the people closest to them, and what do they happily share with anyone who might ask? What is their definition of property if they have one? In turn, does your OC think they belong to something as well? (A state, a collective, a cause, a person, etc) 9. What would it take for your OC to change their opinion? Does your OC change their worldview often or are they set in their ways? What does it take for them to change their mind? Do they admit they were wrong, and if so, under what circumstances? How do they handle it? What do they do when their beliefs are threatened? 10. What social persona does your OC perform most frequently, and when do they show other aspects of themselves (and to whom)? Is your OC code-switching between social persona depending on context, or do they stay consistent? Is social adaptation something they feel is necessary or are they uneasy about it? Do they believe that one has to be honest in their self-presentation, and is that aligned with the society you’re writing or is one expected to have multiple social “faces”? Under what circumstances does your OC show a different facet/angle of themselves?

any magic worldbuilding where light is 'free' (does not require oil/candles/other material goods/etc) and people still live in completely medieval-style environments - or where this doesn't have a tremendous impact on architecture and lifestyle, bare minimum, is incomprehensible to me... access to light is like. So critical

certainly this depends on other accessible technology (things like window glass!) but like... when all of your architecture is orienting towards maximizing private central space open-air space for access to both rainfall and especially light. or like, other building styles often include an understanding that most of life will be lived in public or public-facing spaces with e.g. shared indoor space, small bedrooms/private spaces not used for anything but actual sleep, and just generally (especially in more-studied higher-class spaces). so like

if you don't need significant technological advance (window glass, architecture which supports windows in the first place - what building materials are being used there? wood/brick/stone/plaster vs. thatch, hide, etc.) to have consistent access to indoor light not dependent on outside light sources. that's going to. have huge impacts on how interior space can be shaped, used, etc.

Using Jinn /Djinn vs Genie in story

Anonymous asked:

Note: Niki isn’t Muslim and is speaking on the topic of cultural appropriation only. 

You want your story to feature a wish-granting character, and you want to base this character on the Genie character in Disney’s Aladdin in order to avoid appropriating Arab/Muslim jinn. Here’s the issue: the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin is already an appropriation of jinn.

The word “genie” is an anglicization of the word “jinni” (جني) which is the singular form of “jinn” (جن). It was coined by Antoine Galland when he translated The Thousand and One Nights from Arabic to French in the early 18th century*. The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of mostly Arab and Muslim folk tales, quickly gained in popularity in Europe and was re-translated, back-translated, retold and adapted multiples times over the next couple of centuries. Disney’s Aladdin is probably the best-known of those retellings, and it certainly did a lot to popularize genies in Western media.

But despite having been absorbed into Western popular culture, genies remain firmly associated with orientalist stereotypes and are frequently portrayed with vaguely “oriental” characteristics. For example, in Neil Gaiman’s October Tale, the genie first appears wearing a turban and “pointy shoes.” Genies may feel like a part of Western mythos by now, but they clearly retain cultural markers that tie them to their origins.

In my opinion, calling your character a genie to avoid having to deal with the cultural and religious context surrounding jinn is not an appropriate solution to your problem. 

You have two options:

1) Call your character a jinni

Call your character a jinni and do your best to portray them as accurately as possible to their culture of origin. 

2) Alternatively, call them something else entirely

Alternatively, if you would like to have the freedom to use this character as you please, call them something else entirely. There are plenty of wish-granting beings in Western folk tales and mythologies that you could use instead.

Caveat: I’m not Muslim and would strongly recommend seeking out additional advice from Muslim sources if you decide to go with option 1 and portray jinn in your story. You can start by reading the posts by our Muslim mods on this topic: Djinn tag on WWC

- Niki

*A note on The Thousand and One Nights: Antoine Galland’s translation took many liberties with the source material, interpreting and altering some stories, and adding several others which weren’t part of the original Arabic manuscript. Aladdin’s Lamp is one of them. It is believed that these additional stories were written by the Syrian writer Hanna Diyab, who shared them with Galland when they met in Paris. Galland included them in his published work without crediting Diyab.