Tag Archives | Worldbuilding for you

Concepts Of Self In Different Cultures.

Posted on February 23, 2012 in Thoughts & Musings

In traditional Haitian culture, there is no direct equivalent of the mind. The self is made up of a three components. The corps cadavre is the physical body; the ti-bon anj or ‘little good angel’ loosely represents what we would consider as agency, awareness and memory; while the gwo bon anj or the ‘big good angel’ is the animating principle that manages motivation and movement.

“The mind is a guess” via mindhack

Cultured Bias is in the oddest places.

I have to freely admit,  I’ve never thought about the fact that our body-mind dichtomy is actually a cultural artefact, I just took it as given. I mean, intellectually I knew that there must’ve been differences, but still… It’s very interesting to see how different the answers to the age old question of “what is self” actually is and that those answers greatly influence a culture.

I’ve covered the self-soul dichtomy1 in my worldbuilding for ToC, but I didn’t even think about questioning what definition of “self” the Trarr have.

Gotta fix that. Can’t let such a juicy bit of worldbuilding just laying around.

Anyway, “The mind is a guess” is a short column, but worth a read.

Footnotes:

  1. Trarr don’t believe in an incorruptable soul, but in an “ahma”, the echo their lives leave in the halls ↩
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Cross Pollination AKA doing more than one thing is useful!

Posted on February 1, 2012 in On Silent Suns, On Traces of Chaos

So… Between the painting of Traces of Chaos and murdering the population of Skyrim (and, admittingly, killing everything that dares to cross Fem!Shepard in Mass Effect 2.) I’ve been quietly working on my second comic, Silent Suns1.

Silent Suns features an ensemble cast. Not something I’d ever done on my own, but these characters have been developed together with John, a good friend of mine2. This resulted in one of the most important writing lessons I ever got in my short career: Every character has to be crafted for the maximum ammount of useful inter-character conflict3.

In the first book you’ve got the Pilot, the Tech, the Playboy, the Killer and the Doctor. Not many characters, are they? Both the Playboy and the Killer sleep around, but they clash about their respective attitudes towards their partners. The Killer and the Doctor clash about their choice of profession. The Pilot and the Tech about the demands of their ship and their respective definitions of feminity. The Pilot is a bit of a prude and goody-two-shoes, which nicely leads to conflict with the Playboy and the Killer. The doctor’s prim and proper, the Engineer’s rarely seen without being covered in greese and oil. The doctor feels responsible for the Pilot and the Engineer, being the oldest person on the ship, whereas the Pilot firmly believes she should be in charge.

A wonderful recipe for tasty, tasty drama small and big. And the best thing is, it arises naturally.

So what does that mean for Traces of Chaos?

I never really thought about this before, mainly because the common writing advice is “make the most interesting character the main-character” and well, Siendes has by far the most interesting character arc in ToC. And it is a good advice, really, but very, very few characters can carry a whole story on their own.  Siendes can’t. She needs support.

The Another Life storyline’s fine in that regard, just due it’s setting. It’s “Siendes among humans” afterall. Mona’s good on keeping Siendes on her toes (it’s why they married)  and Asar von Prehn, well, you’ll see. I am going to tweak some minor characters a bit, but Another Life is full of foils for my dear Des.

The main story is another matter.

Siendes needs a foil, somebody on her side she can clash with, preferable somebody she likes but who can still keep her on her toes. Siendes, unchecked, tends to be a bit of a bully.

Welp.

Maybe I can introduce Shivret earlier than planned, we’ll see. I have at least six months to think about that properly and I’m sure I’ll find a way.

Footnotes:

  1. Silent Suns is a spin off only in the sense that it is set in the same universe as ToC – but the story plays in Andromeda instead of the Milkyway, so there will be a minimum of cross over. You definitivly can enjoy one comic completly without having to even touch the second on. ↩
  2. The original plan for this comic was me doing art and worldbuilding with him doing the writing duty, but, as usual, life intervened and John had to pass off the writing duties to me. We’re both sad about this. ↩
  3. Story = Conflict. Conflict = Story. This is the fundamental truth of story telling. The best characters are those that suffer oooh so pretty when you rip their dreams, hopes, hearts and desires to a bloody pulp and force-feed it to them with huge vat of sulfric acid. ↩
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Worldbuilding Wednesday!

Posted on January 13, 2012 in Resources & Tutorials

An idea I shamelessly cribbed from tumblr.

Pick a question and a character/place you want that answered for and I’ll answer next Wednesday.  I try to make some art for it, too.  Preferable related to Traces of Chaos, but Silent Suns is fair game, too.

First come, first serve. And if it takes off, I will make it a weekly occurance. :D


GENERAL:

  1. What are some of the tropes you would use to describe your characters?
  2. What are some personal problems that your characters are dealing with?
  3. What are your characters’ morning routines?
  4. What are your characters’ favorite things to eat for breakfast?
  5. What are your characters’ favorite foods?
  6. Do any of your characters have any odd/unusual/obscure interests?
  7. What is an experience your characters most embarrassed about?
  8. What is an experience your characters most proud about?
  9. If your characters were to transition from their world to our world, how would they react?
  10. What are some songs you associate with your characters?
  11. Who is the first character you remember creating? If you still have this character, how much have they changed?
  12. Who’s the latest character you’ve created?
  13. Do your characters live in the past, present, or future? If past or future, how far back/forward?
  14. Are any of your characters religious? If so, to what extent? If not, what are their spiritual beliefs?
  15. What do you like most about your characters?
  16. What do you dislike most about your characters?
  17. How would you get along with some of your characters?
  18. What are some of your characters’ talents?
  19. If one of your characters had to choose between their life or a loved one’s life, which would they choose?
  20. What are some of your character’s fears? Are they irrational, or have they resulted from a particular situation?
  21. What are some gross habits your characters have?
  22. What are some habits your characters would be embarassed about if people found out?
  23. If your characters attend a school – or if they were to attend a school – what kind of students are they? (i.e. class clown, straight A student…)
  24. (Directed to any characters who feel like answering) How are you doing today?
  25. Are any of your characters inspired by other people, such as celebrities or people you know personally? If you don’t mind explaining, what attributes do your characters have from these people?
  26. What are some of your characters’ body types?
  27. What do your characters seek in a romantic relationship?
  28. What are the fashion senses of some of your characters?
  29. If any of your characters don’t like food in general, why?
  30. Tell us a random fact about your character!

WORLD-RELATED:

  1. What are some of the laws of the universe your characters live in?
  2. Does the universe your characters live in have a god?
  3. If the place your characters live in is different from ours, what makes it different?
  4. Do ghosts or supernatural entities exist in your characters’ world?
  5. What kind of species live on the planet/in the environment your characters live in?
  6. What is the climate like?
  7. Is there an afterlife in your story’s universe?
  8. If there are supernatural entities in your universe, where did they come from?
  9. If the world your characters live in are significantly different from ours, would you be able to live there? (If it’s a place where humans are not supposed to live, imagine you’ve been given the ability to live there somehow.)
  10. How safe or unsafe is the place your characters live in, and what makes it this way?
  11. Does your world have multiple dimensions? If so, how many, and what happens in these dimensions?
  12. How technologically advanced is the place your characters primarily live in?
  13. Is the place your characters live in someplace people would want to go sightseeing in, or a tourist attraction?
  14. Are there any other places in your characters’ world that they want to travel to?
  15. If there is a pop culture, what’s considered “cool”? If there’s no pop culture, what are some traditions that your characters follow that have been inherited from ancestors or the culture they were raised in?
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A thing to ponder… The future of computers.

Posted on January 11, 2012 in Thoughts & Musings

Every one of them will arrive at the same place: “Can’t you just make us a general-purpose computer that runs all the programs, except the ones that scare and anger us? Can’t you just make us an Internet that transmits any message over any protocol between any two points, unless it upsets us?”

 

Go check out the full article “Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing” , it’s a pretty important read. If you agree or not, at least this is something we should think about.

In my case, it made me think about the fact that the future could look VERY different from what I expected as student. I always assumed people would end up having at least one, if not multiple general purpose computer in every home, which they can use freely how ever they intend.

But you know, it could be just happen in 10, 20 years that general purpose devices are actually either prohibited, severly regulated or just plain not accessible for Joe Schmoe and email, chat and stuff would happen about the government-approved (or, even more likely, COMPANY-approved – it’s not the governments that runs our world these days) applications/devices against which facebook  or the iPhone is the very model of free, unregulated, unfettered and individual information distribution.

And the majority of people (including me?) would be happy with this state, because, well, as long as it’s convient and doesn’t get into the future-angry-birds, why complain? I know I usually don’t give a flying fuck about consequences of gating, at least as long as my toy does what I bought it for and I can look at my cat pictures.

You know, I never thought about how fragile the internet actually is.

A book needs to be found to be burned; but in order to get rid of the internet you just need gain control the phonelines (including wlan), as the unrests in England and the arab spring have shown. The whole freely accessible internet thing might just be a bubble about to burst, something that will die and wither, just like the hippie movement.

Welp.

At least this gives me some nice ideas how the people in my science fiction stories handle things like this.

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Boobplate, no boobplate and Skyrim got it right.

Posted on December 16, 2011 in Thoughts & Musings

This is an armourer’s take on it -  good article, plus, it gave you that wonderful equation above.

 

If you need some good example for realistic female armour (in case you feel the need to differ armour between the sexes) go, check out Skyrim. That’s something it did really, really well.

 

All the ladys 1, look definitivly female but still badass and, most importantly, their armour looks as if it indeed does protect their important bits. Frankly, it’s a good thing Skyrim this right. The game is going for utmost realismn on the armour and graphic front, and boobplate woulda pulled people out.

Incidientially, another thing Skyrim does well is maintainging fair and interesting relationship between the sexes despite being set in a classic, high fantasy mediavial/greek/nordic society. Skyrim basically is the poster child for Rated M for manly, where proud vikings wrestle polar bears, and yet it manages to have heaps of respectful treated women, who are genuily complex characters2 and actually do something.

I can’t help but feel that those two things are related.

Footnotes:

  1. Including my thieves guild armour wearing, firebreathing, dragon-slaying kitty lady, although, now that I play on maximal difficulty, the dragons tend to slay HER ↩
  2. I am particular fond of Legate Rikke (General Tullius Second in Command) and Igrod Ravencrone (the jarl of Morthal) ↩
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