#workbuilder

[ciarraguidicelli]

He doesn’t follow trends. He builds systems.

[lets-try-some-writing]

Have you seen the "humans are space cats" tag? I think the idea of us humans being little guys of chaos that get sent into some kind of cat distribution system for cybertronions to adopt is a cool and hilarious idea

(I myself am a premium orange cat)

Yes I love that tag <3 I lurk in it sometimes for inspiration when writing fics where I must make the characters seem alien.

Once Earth has set itself on Cybertron's radar, I am sure there are more than a few bots who come back with a human because "They chose me." and proceed to get a permit to keep their exotic pet (at least until they learn english and realize they have a whole aft man right there).

Humans just, picking a Cybertronian and latching on, becoming buddies and cuddling with them while the bot is in alt mode. Humans seeing packs of Cybertronians touring Earth and dropping by to demand photos like cats yowling for pets. Cybertronians grouping up by rest stops to gawk at humans and their young being adorable, maybe throwing french fries to try and lure over the children as if they were kittens for pets (yes there are likely cases of children being yoinked by an overenthusiastic alien robot). Home raised humans taken from Earth long ago and carefully tended to by one bot on Cybertron throughout generations. Military and NASA personnel being brought to Cybertron and put on display for civilians while the humans frantically take notes on things.

Some tiny sparkling finding a human and tenderly holding them in their small servos, watching the itty bitty being with wide curious optics before being told "No you cannot keep the human. Those are feral and we already have a turbofox at home."

Humans as the pets Cybertron didn't want but lowkey needed.

[maddyjones2]

I've just read Piranesi. Now I am obsessed with it. The gaslighting is such a strong thing. The damage it does to the narrator as he tries to survive is everything the book is about. And yet it's not named in any of the interviews I've seen. It's so weird how "normal" ?? people miss that stuff.

probably shitty worldbuilding idea: fantasy world that keeps going

[salmalin]

Capes in Bookworm

Sometimes I think about the capes in Ascendance of a Bookworm and how Kazuki-sensei went goddamn off about them in two different spots—one of which I feel is overlooked, even in the text itself.

Like, first off the cape is an extremely private thing. It's something usually embroidered with protection circles by family. It's something you can wrap around yourself in an emergency. It's got tradition and a long history and it's just... something that is both functional and incredible. It's just such a great bit of workbuilding.

Anyway, I have two favorite sequences that involve capes. Spoilers for part 5.

So first is the obvious one; that Ferdinand wins one from someone in Dunkelfelger in a ditter game, and the guy refuses to take it back until Ferdinand has been defeated, but it takes so long that they graduate before it can be given back so Ferdinand just... keeps it. As you do. But then Ferdinand is married off against his will and legit gives the cape back to the guy in front of a bunch of witnesses. And everyone's like, "Oh, you must be so happy to have your cape back!" and this guy Knows that Something Is Wrong, and the scene is sad and eerie and so hard hitting.

The second scene is the ditter game for Rozemyne and Hannelore where they're facing down an attack that could kill, and Judithe stands before Rozemyne, looks her dead in the eye, spreads her cape—something that was supposed to protect her, that was embroidered by her family and her labor, something that was supposed to be wrapped around her and be her last line of defense—and says, "This is the most I can do..." And to later tell others off that their first priority is not Rozemyne's wishes, but her life.

That scene breaks me a little.

[elbiotipo]

Workbuilding Fundamentalist question: when it comes to dates, times and calendars in a fantasy setting where do you stand? I'm always conflicted as a writer just because changing the length of a year or what all the months are called all makes sense given that most fantasy worlds aren't earth and because every month is named after a person or deity and our calendar has been changed like 7 times in the real world. And yet I don't want to throw all this extra work at the reader.

Example I have a gas dwarf planet with like, winderwaker islands poking out above the gaseous ocean what people live on. And there's only 4 months in a year there so a 64 year old is still a teenager and it just seems like a lot to make someone keep track of.

First of all, very cool setting, I love islands among the clouds! Now, this is actually something I've given a lot of thought into, and might become a real concern if humanity goes to other planets.

There's, for example, an opening line of a Heinlein novel (IIRC) where a girl says she's 10 years old and thus old enough to marry, which is true, on Mars (the year is 687 days there). There is no reason, if one is designing a new planet, or even finding one IRL, to expect it to have the same day and year lenght to Earth, not even close. Mars with 21 hours is pretty close, but the length of our year and day is really just a cosmic coincidence. You could easily have an reasonably earth-like planet with shorter years (because it's closer to its star, or just revolves faster), or longer days or years.

However, very few fictional settings bother with this, and it's not hard to see why, you can have all sorts of exotic additions to your setting, but to wrap our head through different lenghts of the year or the day is a bit too much. Even different week lenghts, which did exist on history, sound strange. There are all sorts of different fantasy and sci-fi calendars, but at the root, most authors operate with "Earth-time". I don't blame them, it is 'extra work' for some readers, and it's not easy to wrap our head around, it's easier to say "this is sort of an alternate Earth" and be done with it. Also, to lenghten or shortern the year or day might bring all sorts of consequences from ecology to climate that should be considered, otherwise it's just a lame gimmick in my opinion.

HOWEVER, it's still an interesting piece of worldbuilding to consider!

Calendars of a sort have existed since humans started to count seasons and days, but our current society where there are calendars and clocks everywhere is quite recent, actually. I'm sure you are aware of the different calendars besides the BCE-CE one was imposed as the standard, many cultures . But there are also different ways of counting years;. The classic one is seasons, farming societies of course need it the most but hunter-gatherers also follow and know the seasons. There is no reason at all for them to correspond to the "temperate" seasons (summer, fall, winter, spring). Dry and wet seasons, cold and summer, and other options are not only possible, but have actually been widespread on human history. I recommend reading on Wikipedia about seasons, especially the section about non-calendar based seasons.

Of course the above applies to pre-industrial civilizations where timekeeping isn't as widespread. But even in those, counting years and ages is treated differently. Birthdays, for example, don't exist in all cultures. Koreans still count age based on the Korean new year, not your birthday. Some medieval Christian celebrated on the feast of the saint they were named after (and there are lots of them) or IIRC, their baptism. And so, a culture as yours might use different ways of counting the age of a person, perhaps by more "qualitative" rituals than just counting the years (though I have a feeling they would quickly adapt to their own calendar). Much like I told you about different kinds of seasons for different climates, I imagine that in worlds where the years are too short (or too long) to really make sense for the average person, some other ways of counting time will prevail. For example, are there predictable climate cycles in your planet? Moons (lunar calendars are always fun)? I can assume your planet has shorter years because it's closer to your star (by any chance, did you base it on red-dwarf orbiting planets?), so perhaps you could use something regarding the very visible star to count time?

Like I said at the beginning, this will be a real concern when humanity expands through space, and there's even a bit of debate if the human body can adapt to such heavy changes on its circadian rhytm. In any case, my prediction is that there would be a "Earth time", that is, 24-hours day and 365 day year, that is kept as standard out of convenience and in spaceships and space habitats (in my own setting Campoestela, it's called "ship time" because human spaceships use it as standard) and lots of "local times" on different planets with all the quirks I mentioned above, with everyone going into space learning how to convert their own time to "Earth time". Or maybe, to make things even more fun and, admittedly, complicated to the reader, the time of another time is taken as a standard. There's lots to play with here.

DON'T even ask me about relativistic time (like in Interstellar) because it makes my head hurt, even if I did use it a couple times on my stories. But "ship time" might be a real thing. Some cultures might have completely different 'times', not calendars, actually *times*, depending on relativistic time delation.

BTW anon, sorry for using this to promote myself, but if anyone loved this rant and would like to see more, I would appreciate some tips on my ko-fi (given the situation down here, now more than ever) and suggestions for other topics to talk about!

[obsidiaspell]

Chapter 2: Life’s little problems

Zorian: wow I really did uderestimate Benisek

Benisek: talks

Zorian: nevermind

Benisek: some astrological BS

Zorian: Planetary alignment

Benisek: thats what i said!

(I am sure we wont hear about this again)

everytime the Kazinski family is mentioned my sould dies a little bit upon the remembrance there was no proper confrontation and resolution, author said this book was supposed to be workbuilding practice at first and i can tell, i just think its a shame there are so many opportunities for some realy charged dialogue and interpersonal drama, i mean it means nothing while they are still in the time loop, but i still thought it was a shame there were not more pages dedicated to interpersonal relationships

ooh mister Barenova mention, that is some LONG term foreshadowing

and we are meeting Taiven! first impression not that great, but she really is one of the more realized characters in the future, although having a breakdown on camera so to speak will do that

sewer run! this book is chuck full of rpg references, this is just the tip of the iceberg

nothing dangerous ever happens down there, pffft yeah right, why do you call him roach anyway. Three hours to get rid of her? They are both so fucking stubborn

Oh god his class is full of main characters, but at least it has an in universe explanation lol

I love how the first thing we hear from Zach is "Hot isn't she"

If there is one thing I can truly find no fault with its magic system worldbuilding, just *chef's kiss*

Xvim appears and is his annoying self, the narator gavem some sort of accent (something eastern i would say russian but softer) and honestly, that fits. I personally would not survive this without blowing up. Now this is spoiler teritorry but i think it is very funny that the one thing that (maybe) managed to impress him, was that Zorian lasted that long with him without doing something drastic.

Zorian: this is gonna be an exercise in frustration

oh if you only knew

[beebeedoop]

I build them whole big fancy villages with big walls to keep them safe if I want to trade with them I'll find them in their workbuildings

the leftism leaving people's bodies when it's time to build a villager trading hall

[cookie-rat]

Oh shit I just realized something. Goat Milk is a necromancer. Zombie is a zombie. Hm

[thanapo]

I fucking hate rava and his 2 dimensional feather looking ass. I him and the morality assigned to him and his black version. Ugly horrible

[toskarin]

are there any girlfriends of steel?

absolutely! beyond that, the boyfriend thing in the title is just the "pilot" concept in that the main character is actually bi and not limited to dating the pygmalions (although you need to be in a relationship with at least one even if you pursue other romantic endeavours, such is the structure of the workbuilding)

nothing's set in stone, but the vague idea is that the pygmalions' "human forms" are basically humansonas they make up to interface more comfortably with their adon's mind. some of them switch gender presentation several times over, and none of them really recognize gender between each other, as non-sexually reproducing giant psychic vampire insects

Boyfriend of Steel is also just a fun little nod to mecha vn history, even if it's only a project title

[mediocremandy]

Welp, the one class I really wanted to take next semester is already full and wait listed 6 people out so that's just great.

[rhetoricandlogic]

The Kaiju Preservation Society

by John Scalzi

Time for another unpopular opinion.

This book's first 20% read like a checklist for political correctness: ethnic diversity (check), pro-Covid (and other) vaccines (check), pro diverse gender-identity (check). At a closer look you quickly recognise:

the names for the people of ethnicities other than American are inconsistent with the RL naming conventions of said ethnicity.

the information on the Covid vaccine is downright false: it does not immunise people against the virus: you cannot conveniently take of your masks in close quarters, just because you're vaccinated and be absolutely sure, you're safe, infection impossible.

vaccines in general, as described in the book: I, personally, know of no vaccine that is 100% sure to work within 2(!) days.

Gender diversity: if only it were consistent. Take Niamh for example. We get this passage:

"Niamh snapped their fingers. "That's it exactly. And my point to you" - coming back to me- " is that you've drunk up decades of cultural angst about nuclear explosions and nuclear power. It's a big bad back home." She pointed at Kahurangi, ..."

See, this reads as if the author had written the book with perfectly assigned hetero genders and in the first or second edit-pass aimed for the (more crowd pleasing) diversity, only: he couldn't really be bothered, hence the sloppiness.

From here on out, Scalzi gets to do what he really came here for: write a story about nuclear powered Godzillas and lots of (rather infantile) snarky dialogue with a lot of WHAT?? going on. He spends so much energy on those two aspects that there's nothing left for either character development, workbuilding or even a single thought that has more depth than a dried-out puddle.

Throughout the whole affair you are forced to become more and more aware, that this is not a book written for an audience; it's written to stroke the author's own ego: see, here I am, famous - I am doing this, because I can; give me your money.

I'm so glad, I didn't have to pay for this book.

[mochatears]

spare lore? spare lore, sir? seriously tho, I live for workbuilding so 👀👀👀 I'd love to hear more about your witches!!

> If you insist, my good dude, then I am thrilled to oblige! I love rambling about this stuff! So, here are the types of witch magic:

> Natural Magic; A type of magic to do with the environment, and nature. They can create plant life almost anywhere, as well as rejuvenate dying or dead things. Very attuned to the world around them while in a natural environment, but mental state, power, and judgement can become somewhat disturbed in very urbanised environments. Probably don’t do too good in the Nether or the End either.

> Elemental Magic; The ability to manipulate the elements. Some master many elements, most can only use one or two. In this case, the elements are: water, fire, earth, and air, as well as ice and lightning. Maybe slime too, I haven’t decided.

> Wordsmithery; The use of spells often found in ancient texts. This isn’t always the case; a well practiced wordsmith may learn to create their own spells should the necessity arise. They usually have naturally more powerful magic, but require spoken word to channel that magic. Spells are in Galactic.

> Ender Magic; A type of magic connected to the End. They may have a patron in order strengthen both their knowledge and power level.

> Potion Making; A skill based magic that requires no specific sort of latent potential, and therefore any sort of witch can become proficient in it provided they study the art thoroughly.

[alwayslateneedingtea]

My Grams and Papa are like the coolest people on the face of the planet. Especially when they're together.

Grams likes to drive, and Papa sits next to her, and they talk about almost anything. Sometimes Grams has road rage, and Papa asks, with a smile on his face, "You want me to flip them off as we pass them? I'm just trying to help."

When we go to get Papa from his workbuilding, he always gives Grams a little peck or a pat on the hand without saying anything.

Grams knows his favourite Nighttime Snack is cinnamon-sugar toast and chocolate milk, and makes it for him every once in a while when he comes home late.

[delawaremortgages-blog]

VA One Time Close Construction Loan

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