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Three Weeks For Dreamwidth: Three Weeks for Worldbuilding

Apr26

I missed Lexember and “February is World-building month” so this year I’m doing “Three Weeks for Worldbuilding.”

Starting yesterday, I will answer (on average) one world-building question a day for three weeks.

I have a lot of settings! Check out the Landing Page if you don’t already have a pet setting. Check out here for last year’s post.

4/25 – Something about the world of SCIENCE! beyond the laboratories.
4/26- How many psychics are there in other places in the world of Tir na Cali?
4/27- What do the Strands in Stranded World look like?
4/28-
4/29-
4/30-
5/1-

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/928485.html. You can comment here or there.

April A-Z Blogging Challenge: K is for Knitting (etc)

Apr14

The Meme Master Post

K is for knitting and kisses and kites

Good topics!

Knitting! I was going to start with the Oldest Egyptian Socks I’d just found last night whilst Googling Old Clothes, and then, while looking for sources, found this Blog Post on Knitting and the Oldest Egyptian Socks (which were made with Nålebinding, but hey, it’s close).

In my current quest to figure out Everything about Reiassan, I’ve been googling the oldest extant clothes, which is how I ended up finding the the Oldest Egyptian Socks. It’s not the first time I’ve come across Egyptian Socks, though, in my Reiassan research – I knit, so I was looking for evidence that the Calenyena might have picked up knitting early on in their timeline. (Further evidence shows that Egyptians did, indeed, knit as well as do nålebinding, so that works out.)

But that part of Reiassan started because someday, someday, I want to cosplay my setting. Probably at least two different eras of it (That’s what I get for writing a millennia-spanning setting). And when I started really getting into Reiassan was about the same time I started getting into knitting.

It’s kind of sad. I started getting into knitting because my baby cousin was having her first baby. She’s got three kids now and that first blanket still isn’t done.

I haven’t knit all that much since we got the house, actually, though I keep meaning to start again. It’s a nice thing to do with my hands that doesn’t take up all that much brainspace; it’s more relaxing that surfing the internet and more productive, too. *looks at pile of yarn and incomplete projects* also, it’s free, at this point.

Maybe I’ll do that. And blog about that, too. As well as the Fashion History of Reiassan and Homeland.

And, ah, kisses are nice and we used to fly kites every Easter and whoops look at that, out of time!

Catch you tomorrow for L~

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/922483.html. You can comment here or there.

April A-Z Blogging Challenge: J is for Jewelry, a brainstorming invitation

Apr12

The Meme Master Post

For J-is-for-Jewelry, I’d like to invite you to engage in some worldbuilding with me: Caleyena jewelry.

The Calenyena are one of the two major nations/socioethnic groups (that doesn’t appear to be a term but I don’t know why not) on the continent of Reiassan in my fantasy setting by the same name.

The Calenyena (and the proto-Calenyena, back in Homeland) have 5 major time periods I’ve touched on: Before they encountered the Tabersi (proto-Bitrani), during the time when they were trying to live with the Tabersi, the “sword and sorcery” era on Reiassan, the Rin-and-Girey era, and the Steampunk era, where Edally Academy is set.

For this, let’s focus primarily on the last two time periods, since I’ve written the most in those two times.

Things I know about these times:

They have only the Bitrani, the island people, and the semi-independent island people to trade with; there is no contact with other continents. In the Rin-and-Girey time, they are often at war with the Bitrani & thus have to go to extreme lengths to GET to the island people, since the islands are in the south.

The north and mid-north, where the Calenyena live, are wood-poor; there is more wood in the south, much of it mangrove- and teak-style.

They have lots of mountains: mining exists.

They have glass-blowing skill and technique and lots of sea-side beach.

Their primary garments are a tunic, often buttoned over one collarbone or, later, down one side of the front, over long pants or a skirt.

They love bright colors, the brighter and more colors the better.

Their technology in the Rin-Girey era is vaguely height-of-Roman-Empire in in the steampunk era is, ah, vaguely steampunk.

So: Thoughts on their styles and types of jewelry in both those eras? Questions?

[personal profile] anke suggested enamel.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/921959.html. You can comment here or there.

April A-Z Blogging Challenge: D is for Dragons

Apr6

The Meme Master Post

D is for Dragons, with gold for a bed

You know, I don’t remember being a dragons sort of girl. The winged-cat-people people don’t have dragons. Most of my early fantasy doesn’t have dragons. Elves, yes, horses, lots. Not so many dragons.

Addergoole got dragons on a whim. After all, Aelfgar needed something big to be fighting! (Actually, I think the parent story of Addergoole, Whisky Lullaby, first introduced the dragons. The same concept, though: so’jers have been fighting dragons as long as the faerie apoc ‘verse has existed.) Dragons Next Door was born as a 15-minute fiction prompt: “obnoxious dragons.” (here).

More than that: I came late to Pern, and read very little other fantasy involving dragons. I’ve enjoyed dragon movies, mostly for their spectacular effects, even when everything else in the movie (*cough* “The D&D Movie”) sucked. But dragons… dragons for me are more common as a metaphor.

I went through a period where my favorite phrase was “sometimes the maiden is safer with the dragon.” I was playing – in a LARP (Changeling: the Dreaming) – a satyr seer paired with a redcap (in that setting, the most violent of the “acceptable” “non-monster” fae). There were times when someone tried to convince my little satyr she was safer with the “good guys” – that’s where the concept came from. Dragons are the honest monsters, the safe ones. You know where you stand with something fifty feet long with scales and claws. Safer, maybe, then a would-be-white-knight.

…I should write that story sometime. I wonder what I’d do with it now, a decade later.

I think my favorite dragons story I’ve actually gotten to read would be the Dragon Librarian story eseme was writing many years ago. And this may be my favorite dragon art, by M.C.A. Hogarth.

Dragons ho!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/919247.html. You can comment here or there.

World/Character-Building Fun Prompt Call – Dragons Next Door, Addergoole/Doomsday, Reiassan/Edally

Mar28

I had so much fun writing the four world/character/storybuilding stories yesterday that I want to do more! 🙂

But I’m still really busy with Sekret Projeckt. 🙁

So! No promises I’ll get to any of these, much less all of them, but here goes:

For Addergoole/Doomsday/FaeApoc, Dragons Next Door, or Reiassan/Edally, ask me any world/character building question that can be answered in fiction form.

For example: How did Akatil end up at Addergoole (I’ve already answered that one, short form), Where did Aud go to school? (another one already answered ;-)… I think you get the idea.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/915765.html. You can comment here or there.

Tweets about Reiassan Food, preserved for posterity

Mar26

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/914744.html. You can comment here or there.

I think this is my favorite 10-cent description of Tír na Cali yet

Jul15

me: During US Civil War, California said “no thank you,” West coast split off into its own country.
me: modern era, except that the “US” – the rest of the country IRL – never quite got out of the 50’s morality – rather prim, rather prudish, except underground – and Tir na Cali is known as a place of sexual licentiousness – run by a woman! – and sin. And they evil Californians like to steal away teenagers to California and sell them into slavery. Debauched slavery!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/750534.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Thirty: Facets of Dusk

Mar12

[personal profile] piratekitten declared February world-building month.
And now it is March and I am finishing up the questions!
The question post is here
The eighteenth question comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly and is for Facets of Dusk
Who discovered the portal thingies? How did it start out?

In the universe the team calls Prime, in our era, Alexa discovered the Doors by accident.

She was – or had been – dating Aerich, and they got into yet another fight, as they were prone to doing. She stormed out of his study and into his library, through a door that was older than the family house in which he lived.

[Aerich’s family consist of a long and esteemed lineage of scholarly mages who discovered the Doors centuries ago, but had never figured out how to make them properly function. As only a few people in any given billion have the ability, nobody in Aerich’s family, nor their associates, had ever managed to spark the doors. Alexa did.]

She traveled from universe to universe for three years; there was a murder investigation back on Earth Prime, and she was officially declared missing: presumed dead.

While Aerich was being charged with her murder, Alexa was discovering by trial and error how the Doors work and how to find them. They do not always lead to the same place multiple times in a row and, unlike a Stargate, they don’t come with a coordinate system. Each universe has several, although the specific number varies with world.

When she returned – not into Aerich’s family library, but into a storeroom in the basement of a famous university – she was immediately snagged by a shadow branch of the U.S. Government, working with an unwilling but competent Aerich and several of his associates.

Once they determined that Alexa could, indeed, open the Doors, they put together an exploration team, and the Facets team was born.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/691062.html. You can comment here or there.