#which i assume would consist of stuff like geography and world history

[emilyelizabethfowl]

no but seriously if any (or worst case scenario, all) of the ASL actually joined the Marines, Garp would be begging them to go and do anything else, even if that meant becoming pirates, within a week flat

[lordeasriel]

a general question about hdm world building when writing fic cause I found it really unique in the sense of having so much wordbuilding but also so little like Lyra’s world is so vivid yet it is also filled with loads of empty patches like okay there was a Swiss war but what was it about and how is the brytish government structured etc. Really just wondering how you find writing fic for this fandom as I feel it’s hard to remain in ‘canon’ when canon can be so vague

Sorry it took me a while to reply to you, I was thinking about how to respond because this is a very complex question lmao

Writing for HDM to me is fun, that's the beginning and the end of it, I do it because I enjoy being so deep into this world, it's comforting, but it's also difficult. Like you said, Lyra's world suffers from a patchy style of worldbuilding, we have information that comes in various degrees of depth; using the example of the Swiss War, we know it happened and we know it had to do with the Magisterium, but we don't really know how and why exactly it happened, and because Philman writes new stuff as he sees the need for it, we are constantly getting information that conflicts we what we already knew (the daemons, the world itself, even with characters). I remember prior to the release of TSC, we were discussing the fact Marisa must have been an only child, because her personality was far too caustic for someone with a sibling, yet Philman just came out of nowhere and added a sibling to her. And it makes sense, but it shatters your whole view of the character, and you have to rethink this character with the new information you have, if you want to continue to write canon.

I write stories in general with 2 things in mind: 1) I write from a character's perspective and emotions, so I need to know and - more importantly - understand that character; and 2) I write that character as a part of the world, so I need to understand and know the world. For characters like Marisa, Asriel, Lyra, Malcolm, and other main characters, we have lots and lots of information, direct and indirect, that we can use to create our interpretation of the character. These are much easier to write because we have a lot about them, and because they have a lot of screen/page time as well, we spend more time with them, but then you have characters like Marcel and Madame Delamare, both related to Marisa, and they have very little information on them themselves, but because we know a lot about Marisa, how Marisa behaves and all that, we can take those things and connect them to these characters and build their profile from that. Then we have characters like Glenys Godwin, Thomas Nugent, the Master of Jordan, characters who have so very little information a lot of what you know and understand of them come from you making things up to fit the little the book gives you, and that is also perfectly fine. It's just less consistent.

Now, my definition of writing Canon Compliant fic, it's what I do and how I do it, it's that you need to write within canon, not just what canon says. For example, we know daemons can separate from their humans if they want to and they can both survive; this is a new concept (which we call the New Daemon Lore, because it adds on the old lore from the original trilogy) that is canon, so you could write lots of interesting daemon relationships that can fit into this new information, but if you decide to write that no, this cannot happen in any circumstances, then you no longer are within the boundaries of canon. I hope this is making sense lmao

Another example is that Philman retconned Mrs. Coulter into being blonde, and this has divided the fandom, but the point is the newest entry to the world is this and this is canon. However, Mrs. Coulter is considered a blonde in LBS, while in NL (despite some editions changing it) she is still said to be a brunette. So, if you decide to say Marisa died her hair either in LBS or NL, that would still be canon Compliant because 1) in Lyra's world hair dye already exists (in TSC) 2) it's a perfectly valid response within canon.

So to me, it's more important to write within the boundaries of canon than trying super hard to mimic what we already know it's truth. To do that, I do a lot of research on old countries, languages, I do research on the great wars, as Philman uses lots of countries that existed prior to WW1. For example, we know that Lyra's world is a little behind technologically, but they had nuclear tech and they had phones, but Lyra still writes letters, so we can assume that phones weren't everywhere and super accessible - it's the sort of information that we get from reading the book but it's not super obvious like, it's something you assume from having read the books and having other types of information. Other information, like, we know Oakley Street is always headed by a Counselor of the Privy Council, a position that is appointed by the Prime Minister in our world, so we can assume Lyra's world also has a prime minister - but their king seems far more present than the Royal Family is in our world. Lyra mentions too that she takes care of herself, when it's assumed she got pregnant, and from that we can assume two things: 1) There's types of contraceptives in her world (and in TSC there's also big pharma companies so we can assume pills existed) 2) Abortion is a thing as well. So from here you can work out reasonable scenarios for your story; in a world controlled by the Church, how is the situation of abortion? How does contraceptives work? How was sex before marriage treated?

I mean, it's a mix of common sense, research and creative freedom you have to sort out to know how to deal with it. Philman himself is the master of this world, so he can do whatever and we as fic writers, we adapt or we die lmao I mean we adapt or we just don't write canon compliant, but you don't need to write a super canon compliant fic to make it good. Currently I am working on a similar docs to the timeline, but it's a sort of big History Book of Lyra's world geography and culture so it's easier to access, but like you said, the information we have is dubious and scarce, so lots of what I will be doing there it's research and guess work.

Sorry this got so long but yeah, in conclusion, writing for HDM is hard, if you intend to be super canon compliant, but my advice and my experience is: you should worry about staying within canon instead of going straight for cold hard facts of canon, not being flexible about it. Do research on things, silly things like "when was birth control invented" or "how did medicine was made in the early 1900s". Philman being old and with a scholar background, he has lots of knowledge that we can only get by doing research; he comes up with things, especially pre Old War things, because lots of his favorite authors are from the Victorian era and prior to that. But more importantly, make sure you are entertained with the world you are trying to shape from his work; focus on what you think needs addressing in his world. What would you like to see and, then, did Philman ever hint at that? Those are the important questions, imo

You shouldn't treat canon so stiffly because it's a fluid thing, especially for HDM. Philman can just release another book and just change everything lmao He kinda does that a lot, so it's good to be light headed about this.

[automaticstudentmiracle-blog]

•IEW, should or shouldn't be delicate at all?• Hi, I'm Mentari. I'm an alumni of 16/17 KL-YES Program to the USA. I was hosted in Belleville, Illinois. Through this writing, I want to happily share my personal-experience-based stories regarding to the most awaited moment of all exchange students all over the world. Exactly. International Education Week. Happy International Education Week for all exchange students! *cheers* First of all, today was a year ago the kick-off night of IEW was held, November 13, 2017 in one of our mate's host family's house in Shiloh, Illinois. My IEW was started with the International Cuisine Night. In my cluster we consisted of fourteen exchange students who came from various countries (Indonesia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Moldova, India, and Armenia), and we were all organized by one very cool Placement Organization named World Link Inc. Why do I say so? First, I'm not paid to say that, because that's legit true. Second, because World Link has successfully helped me trace out my development(s) during the program. For me, especially Cyndi (my local coordinator) and Kristin--a huge and hard shoutout to them two--who have worked the best out of them to take care of all of us until the very last day of our presence in the US. Anyway, that International Cuisine Night, though, was taken in so much energy and synergy to introduce each of our countries through cuisines. The hostess (Cyndi & Nickie) also cordially invited each of our host families to celebrate and try our international cuisines for free. Yes, F R E E. Don't you wonder what I cooked in that time? Inhale. Exhale. Ayam Kecap or Chicken Shimmered in a Sweet Indonesian Soy Sauce. Seriously. This idea started off of my thought about what mom's food I missed the most in that time. Something sweet, but not too sweet. Something spicy, but not too spicy. Then popped up in my head, that, Ayam Kecap. A week before that night, I seriously surfed on the internet to figure out the closest recipe like my mom usually has back home. Boom! I found it! You can access the recipe here for the sake of your reference in case you have no idea at all: https://www.google.co.id/amp/s/anotherdish.com/2013/08/25/chicken-simmered-in-a-sweet-indonesian-soy-sauce-ayam-kecap/amp/ I brainstormed hard and I finally left to go to one Asian market in St. Louis, Missouri, named Jay's Market which was 20 minutes drive from my home, to buy some ingredients and stuffs. I got pretty much some things, such as Indonesian soybean sauce (Kecap Manis ABC) and shallots (bawang merah). In that time I did realize, I could be happy over simple things like this. Kick-off night: checked. Next stop was my school to present Indonesia through some speeches in presentations. Honestly though I only did three presentations during the IEW, which didn't reach my satisfaction point yet. But it was okay. I did my first presentation in my Public Speaking class, the second one in History class, and the third one in the library which was open for anyone at school to see. Everytime I initiated to do the presentation, I always wore Indonesian typical apparel, such as, or such as simple as, batik blazer, batik skirt, and kebaya. I spent relatively 25 minutes each presentation to talk and discuss about Indonesia with the audiences, also did I hold a little Q&A game with them after the presentation and one who could answer my question(s) right would get a piece of Indonesian money (Rp2,000,-). You know what, most of them got mad because of the money I gave them away, like, the typical question for them was,"OMG, are you sure you give me your money? Do you still have money after this? I just want to make sure you're good after all," which was followed with tender hugs afterward. I assume they said that because they thought Indonesia money got a lot of 0s and Rp2,000,- equaled to several hundreds US dollars, which was not true *lol*. Rp2,000,- is not even equivalent to $1. I explained all to them and they thanked me for such beautiful and remarkable gift from Indonesia. I spent the last day of IEW in a huge celebration of it in my school library which also invited other exchange students from other schools to collaborate created an International Day of The Week at school. I wore kebaya in that day, and my other friends also wore their beautiful traditional clothes. The school managed some stuffs so the exchange students could also display their nation-related stuffs during the event. I displayed my ID card (KTP), school ID card (kartu pelajar), Indonesian coins (receh), and some of Indonesian utensils (Pilot, Standard, pensil 2B, etc) in one medium size display window (etalase)--of course because I don't want anyone steal any of my 'traditional' belongings. Please no. Literally, prior to the IEW, I had cooked pretty much some meal for my host family at home and for a couple times brought the meals to school for lunch. Do you know what it was? Indomie. I mean, what else can typically depict Indonesia in a very quick and simple way? Indomie. Did I but the Indomie though? Nope, I didn't buy it, but my host dad did. He surprised me in my sixth week there by putting a box full Indomie he bought from Amazon in front of my room door. Yea, it was cute. And I miss him now. I'm about to cry. No. Anyway, let's summarize all these into dos and don'ts during the IEW for you whom are planning to manage the schedule, or still collecting up all the guts to conduct the presentations through some speeches in front of the mass. Let's start from the don'ts--so you have some pictures of bad things that'd happen if you do these. 1. Put information you don't specifically know or understand about Indonesia into your slides. It's such a big NO. Let's take one case as an example. You put in your slide, for example, that Indonesia got the 2nd big economy in the world, and then you don't further explain about it which left the audiences be empty about your information. Anyway though, it's somewhat unnecessary because people can basically google it by themselves and spot it right there. 2. Attach irrelevant pictures. Isn't it funny when you read about the traditional foods but then appear one picture of an Indonesian president in one same slide? It's silly. Please don't do that. 3. Miscalculate your presenting duration. I'm always cautious enough in determining the right amount of time for me to present the presentation in each class I targeted. Traditionally, when an exchange student has booked one special day to the teacher in one class to present about his/her country, class must not undergo casual teaching activity. So, don't disappoint your teacher because you say to him/her that you'll present for 15 minutes but in fact you go for another 15 minutes, because just in case she/he might plan some activities later after your thing. 4. Stuff up your slides with general information. Please, you come abroad to make Indonesian known in special way. Don't give information they should've known just by one simple click away on Google. Be specific and detail and original. 5. Skip the subjects. Tell me you aren't going to, or planning to do this, are you? Please don't let them left still wondering about some subjects that are attached in your slides but you get rid to present it just because you don't memorize the speech or information or explanation about it. Phew. Let's straight go to the dos stuffs. 1. Be knowledgable about your country! You are going to present about Indonesia, so you should learn more and more about it first before you speak about it. Am I right or am I right? Preferably don't use text or note while you're presenting, but this is actually up to you. 2. Pictures and videos can furnish your presentation for sure! Beautiful and original pictures or videos can also help you promote Indonesia to them. Your everyday pictures with your family, friends, teachers back home can be definitely attached into your slides to amaze the audiences (but please, not your selfies). You can also download some of the videos from Wonderful Indonesia on YouTube to be played. For example this one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TT8J3wUX_YY. Ideally you don't need to attact a life-long 101 hours video, you just need like 2-4 minutes long videos therefore it also doesn't corrupt your presenting time. 3. Make agenda for when and where you'll go to present (and manage the right time with the teachers if you're planning to present at classes)! I used to have a small agenda note to create a timeline of when and where and what I'll present later, and how many audiences I expected to come to watch. Just don't ruin your vibe just because you don't manage your agenda correctly. Ugh, what a disaster. 4. Input the general points, assess, through speaking, the specific matters. You may input some general points only to outline your explanation, but please be specific when you speak or talk about it. Because through your explanation, they start getting to know how Indonesia is. 5. Be in right order. You aren't going to go from foods session to the geography part of Indonesia, are you? 6. BE CONFIDENT AND CLEAR. Your voice, posture, body languages, stage manners, and all. Please manage as best you can as possible. They'll see Indonesia through you, and they'll understand Indonesia through your eyes. So please be you and original. Wow. What a list. I hope you guys feel a little bit helped and can take some good points from what I've written here. And I wish you a very successful and lit IEW. Break a leg!