fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3026 ]

[ SECRET POST #3026 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3026 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Time Team]

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(Transformers: Windblade)

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[Sesame Street]

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(Transformers: More than Meets the Eye)

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(Transformers: Robots in Disguise 2015)

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16. [ SPOILERS for Aldnoah.Zero ]

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17. [ SPOILERS for Classic Who ]

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18. [ SPOILERS for Inuyasha ]

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19. [ WARNING for abuse, suicide ]

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20. [ WARNING for abuse ]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #432.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Any other writers want to talk about worldbuilding? I've been kind of obsessed with it lately. Do you have any worlds that you're proud of or do you want to talk about your process or anything?

I'm curious about how many people base their fictional worlds on a particular time and place in history. I was recently told that it's unusual that I don't.

I like Urban Fantasy,so most of my stuff is in the present. There's a story I've been kicking around for a few years that has people in it from another time period, though. Well, I guess a few.

What time period are they from?

Early 1900's, though that's mostly when they died. I guess it's kind of convoluted, haha

I love world-building!

I've been dipping my toe back into world-building after a long time in fanfiction. I was inspired by Narnia's world-building and wanted to do a flat world with magic but I'm having trouble figuring out the physics of the world. Like, I know I'll have to handwave some stuff because there's not going to be gravity on a flat world but there will be gravity because I say so but I still want to figure out the weather and the astronomy, etc.

(And googling flat-earth physics gets you nut-jobs who still believe the earth is flat right now.)

I sometimes consider basing fantasy cultures off of real cultures because it's a good way to see what you're missing or should consider. But, at the same time, I'm wary of all the real-world implications of it. On the one hand, there's no way to create something that's never been before but the other hand, if you're too close to something, then it invites parallels that I might not want and strangle my writing choices.

Ooh, I created a world with a friend back in middle school that was flat. There were people on both sides of it who didn't know about the other side. We didn't really think about the physics or anything though. I wish you luck in thinking this through better than we did.

I get wary of the implications that people might take from similarities with the real world too. It's been kind of frustrating me lately that it's so hard to avoid. Our brains are built to make associations, so even if you don't mean to base part of the world on something from the real world, people will connect it to something familiar and it will influence how they perceive everything. I'm getting close to the point where I just say "screw it, I'll do what I want" but I'm not quite there yet.

Like, I know I'll have to handwave some stuff because there's not going to be gravity on a flat world but there will be gravity

Wait. Wait. I got this... Wait for it...

...magnets. *jazz hands*

I'm so bad at planning world building out beforehand that I usually don't bother. I just start writing and build the world as I go. My current original story/world has a Victorian-ish vibe with what I've taken to calling organic-steampunk because half their tech is, well, alive in the animal sense, rather than the AI sense.

That sounds really cool!

I figure out a lot as I'm writing too. I do that with character and plot too. I love just writing along when something new pops into my head and I put it down and see where it goes.

My best friend and I are totally opposite in this. She LOVES world building. I'm more interested in characters/character interactions etc.

Which is why I'm stuck with this one idea right now because it DEMANDS world building or at least a minimum of world 'rules' in place before I start writing because I don't want something contradictory happening by accident. :/

You can always go back and fix things later if you wind up writing something contradictory. I always get a much better handle on all the details after I start writing anyway.

Haha, yeah that's usually my process. I'll try and scratch out basics, but I am pretty much a 'by the seat of my pants' writer, while she's the one with notebooks filled with details. XD

So the main original story I'm writing, I got the idea when I was super little and it's been growing and improving with me ever since.

For the first half of its existence, it was pretty much generic fantasy but with ever I thought was cool. Like there were originally two continents, a boring normal continent and a cool magic continent. The cool magic continent was in a "decline" and there were lots of ruins from its "glory days." There was a random fallen "kingdom of light" and an existing "kingdom of darkness" and then later I think I added a southern desert kingdom that was ruled by humanoid dragons. Like, product of its thirteen year old time.

Then somewhere along the way, I began to split up the continents and rearrange geography and then I had nine continents spread all over my fantasy globe and I started giving them general climates and pseudo-basing things of earth cultures. And then about six or so years back now, I pulled a Stargate. Fantasy world mimics Earth because it's a parallel version of Earth that developed quicker because of magical stuff, and then they were able to cross dimensions, and then influence the cultures of our earth ~~AND PRETEND THEY WERE GODS~~ around 3000bc or so, so... yeah.

There's still a weird funky mix though because my continents are different. The three cultures in my story I focus on are a sort of Siberian/Russian/Chinese, Spanish/Ottoman, and French/African.

But did you keep the humanoid dragons??

I love going back to stuff I came up with when I was younger and trying to make it into something usable. I don't have anything that's been growing and changing for that long though.

Nope. I replaced them with actual dragons though... sort of.

So in my world, magic stems from essentially magical spirits merging their souls with groups of humans, modifying their DNA in the process. They can only do it once, so it's a sort of "choose carefully" for the spirit. And there's a limited number of spirits, and there's only one left with the power to do by the time the story starts and he doesn't want to share, so for the most part it's over and done with.

But yeah. All my other spirits picked groups of humans to modify, creating pseudo!vampires/selkies/harpies, etc. They all have a sort of "truth behind the legend" feel going on. But then my spirit of combustion (aka fire spirit) was like "screw humans. look at these giant kickass lizards in this desert! i'm going to give my powers to them and make them even more awesome!"

So I have humans, humans, humans, humans, GIANT COMBUSTION LIZARDS OF DEATH.

ETA: Dimetrodons. That's what I picture them like. I have dimetrodons who wander this one desert of my fantasy world and explode things with their brains. Which are tiny. And easily provoked.

Edited 2015-04-18 02:12 (UTC)

That sounds awesome!

The thing with the spirits actually sounds kind of similar to something I wrote years ago.

Oh, cool! In terms of spirits giving out powers or beyond that?

Sort of. There were spirits associated with each animal and they would inhabit a particular person and give them powers associated with the animal so that they could act as a guardian for them. But it had to be a person they were compatible with and they didn't always get the right person on the first try. When they got the wrong person, that person would die and turn into a kind of zombie version of the animal that spirit represents.

This is the point where I admit that I just started writing one day with not a single plan for what was going to happen and this is what came out. Literally, I started with "Okay, there's a man and a woman and they're walking somewhere. Go!"

This is also a story where I killed off the first person narrator and replaced him with a new one who thought he was the first guy. Because that narrator was compatible with the spirit but something went wrong and the spirit took over the body but was overwhelmed by all the narrator's memories and ended up being confused about his identity.

I should write another story with no plan. I come up with some weird stuff when I have no idea what I'm doing.

I haven't tried to do much worldbuilding in a long time, but basing them on a well-known historical period doesn't seem quite on to me. Why not make something new and alien?

That's how I prefer to do it but I asked a bunch of people if having the names remind them of a particular language would make them think the fictional country was based on a real one that uses that language and the answer was a resounding "yes, I would assume you were basing it on that country" and they all seemed to think that fantasy worlds are always based on something in real life.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3026 ]

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