World Building @boltsworlds - Tumblr Blog

OC habits ask game

🗣️ Voice 1. Are they talkative? 2. Is their voice quiet or loud? 3. Do they have unusual speech patterns? 4. Do they have an accent or dialect? 5. Do they like to sing? Are they good at it?

🖐️ Hands 6. Left handed, right handed, ambidextrous? 7. Neat or messy hand writing? 8. Do they draw/paint a lot? 9. Are they good or bad at making handicrafts? 10. Do they need their hands occupied a lot? If so, what do they do?

🍛 Food 11. What's their favorite food/least favorite food? 12. Are they a picky eater? 13. Any food they avoid for reasons other than taste? 14. How are their table manners? 15. Do they rather eat too much or too little? 16. Do they prefer to eat alone or with company? 17. Are they good at cooking?

🛏️Sleep 18. Morning person or night owl? 19. Easy to fall asleep or insomniac? 20. Light or heavy sleeper? 21. Do they move around a lot while sleeping? 22. Are they used to sleeping around others or alone? 23. Do they snore? 24. Other sleeping habits?

#ask game

shhh-secret-time

Fuck it, OC brain rot won. Get ready for the Secret Ask List

1) Does your OC have a voice claim, if so who?

2) Who's your OCs best friend? How did they become best friends?

3) What song describes your OC?

4) What song describes your OC and their partner/love interest?

5) Do you ship your OC with a Canon character? If so who?

6) If your OC is in a fantasy setting, what profession would they be in the modern day?

7) Vice-Versa! If your OC is in the modern day, what fantasy class would they be? Would they be a different race?

8) What hobbies does your OC have? What do they do to unwind?

9) How does your OC handle their physical health? Do they take care of themselves?

10) How does your OC handle their mental health? Do they take care of themselves?

11) What was your inspiration for your OC?

12) Does your OC interact with other people's OC? If so, who's their best OC friend?

13) Does your OC have a rival? How did it start?

14) Who's a character your OC cannot stand! It's on sight when they see them!

15) Will your OC ever retire? Do you see them making it?

16) How's their relationship with their parents? Are they alive?

17) If your OC has kids, are they a good parent? Do they ever feel guilty if they have to leave them?

18) What are their pronouns? What would they like to be called?

19) What's their sexuality? What's their love language both giving and receiving?

20) If they fight, what's their weapon of choice?

21) What song best describes their relationship with their enemy?

22) Fight or Flight? Are they a lover or a fighter?

23) Is your OC reliable? Can I call them up at two in the morning if I have a flat tire?

24) Can they play any instruments? If so, what do they play?

25) Are they the kind of person who can't resist a good song? Can I catch your OC singing to themselves while they do the dishes?

26) What flower do you associate your OC with?

27) What's their spirit tamagotchi? Or an animal you associate them with?

28) What clique would they be in? (Draw them in the clothes of said group!)

29) Imagine a mood board for your OC! What's on it? (Make it if you want!)

30) My OC and your OC are friends. This isn't a question. I'm not asking. (How do they respond?)

t4timekeeper

romance is lame and overrated i love mentor/mentee relationships in fiction and especially when theyre sort of fucked up

t4timekeeper

greatest hits:

- You started out as a bet/challenge to see if I could successfully wrangle the infamous Problem Child but oh whoops I got attached!

- You are my kind, bright-eyed protegé who would never do so much as rip a tag off a mattress. anyway I am going to acquaint you with Criminal Activity

- I showed you genuine kindness and it was maybe the first time you’d ever experienced it and accidentally ended up becoming more of a parent to you than your “real” blood family ever was. Uh. Do you want to play catch in the park or

- I will gladly take any punishment meant for you. I would go to the ends of the earth to protect you, even if it meant I had to die in the process. I would do it a thousand times over, and I wouldn’t regret any of it.

- I taught you how to fight, and now through some circumstance or another, I’m forced to engage you in life-or-death combat without holding back.

- I put you through training from hell to make you the person you are today, for “your own good”, and now you’ve realized that you can hit back. And you can hit hard.

- I have made you into something greater than yourself - but you are changing from how I have designed you, and this is something I cannot allow.

- I taught you everything you know, and it was the greatest mistake I’ve ever made.

- I will make you just like me - by force, if necessary.

t4timekeeper

stop taggin this with ships / “and then they kiss” / “but what if it WAS romantic” you are missing the whole point of this post so bad. this is a Certified Aro Post. get weird about platonic dynamics NOW

#I don't think I really have any mentor/mentee relationships #I've got a couple parent/child ones that hit some of these though

aedearly

✎ㅤ. . .ㅤ𝑯𝑬𝑨𝑫𝑪𝑨𝑵𝑶𝑵 𝑸𝑼𝑬𝑺𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺.

₊˚⊹ ㅤa collection of character analysis/headcanon questions to learn more about your character and your partners'! writing/headcanon prompts requested by anonymous. feel free to edit these as you see fit.

[ 🖐️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat do their hands feel like: soft, calloused, trembling ? [ ☂️ ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they crave touch or fear it ? [ 🎐 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they have a sound, like a song or voice, that they associate with peace ? [ 🕊️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhen did they feel the safest ? [ 💤 ]ㅤ.ㅤhow do they sleep ? curled up, sprawled, holding onto something ? [ 🦇 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat is a fear they never talk about ? [ 🔒 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat is a secret they’ve sworn never to tell ? [ 🪢 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhen was the last time they broke a promise ? [ 🫳 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho do they feel they owe, but never paid back ? [ 💼 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat do they always carry with them ? [ 🧨 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat’s the quickest way to set them off, even if they hide it well ? [ ⛓️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat does guilt feel like to them ? [ 💢 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho have they never forgiven and never will ? [ 🩸 ]ㅤ.ㅤis there something or someone that, if lost, would break them ? [ 🌧️ ]ㅤ.ㅤis there a pain they refuse to heal from ? [ 🪞 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhen have they looked at their reflection and hated what they saw ? [ 📿 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat superstition or ritual do they cling to ? [ 🌊 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhen was the last time they cried ? [ 🐾 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo animals like them instinctively ? [ 🪶 ]ㅤ.ㅤhow do they laugh ? [ 🫀 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho taught them what love is ? did it hurt ? [ 💭 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they believe they’re worthy of being loved ? [ 🎀 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat is their main love language ? [ 🔦 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho do they search for ? [ 📜 ]ㅤ.ㅤis there a story they love sharing with others ? [ 🌒 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they have a dream or goal they have given up on ? [ 🕯️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat memory do they replay when they’re alone ? [ 🌪️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat’s the one choice they regret (not) making ? [ 🧩 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat’s a truth about themselves they refuse to admit ? [ 🍻 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat kind of drunk are they ? [ ✉️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat kind of letter would they write but never send ? [ 🗡️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat is a scar that they have but never talk about ? [ 🕸️ ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they have a favourite lie they like to hear ? [ 🪦 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat would they want on their gravestone but never admit aloud ? [ 🎱 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat kind of future do they crave, and who’s in it ? [ 🌀 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they have a recurring dream or nightmare ? [ 🍃 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they feel like they belong ? [ ⚓ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat does “home” mean to them ? [ 🧭 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhere would they go if they could disappear tomorrow ?

#ask game #stashing for later

kahvilahuhut

🌻 random in-character questions

an ask game where, instead of replying from your perspective, you answer as if it's your original character/muse/self-insert/etc. answering the question ✨

🌧️ "When outside during the rain, do you use a raincoat, an umbrella, or something else? Do you enjoy rain?"

🍳 "Are you a good cook? Do you enjoy cooking? What's your favorite thing to cook?"

🧼 "Do you prefer to take a shower during the morning or evening? Do you like taking baths? What's your favorite scent of shower gel?"

❌ "Would you do something that someone told you not to do? Why? Is there someone you'd actually listen to more than everyone else?"

🏳️ "What will make you give up?"

📖 "What kinds of books do you read? Do you have a lot of time to read?"

⛸️ "What's your favorite kind of sport? Do you follow sports closely or don't care at all?"

😷 "How often do you get sick? Do you stay at home when sick or do you end up going outside to, say, get some groceries? If you go outside, would you wear a mask?"

🥼 "Do you have to wear a uniform somewhere? If yes, how do you feel about it? If no, what kind of uniform would you love to wear?"

🥂 "How do you celebrate you accomplishments?"

🛴 "What's your preferred way of getting somewhere - own car, public transport, a bicycle, or something else? How well do you follow the traffic rules?"

🕰️ "What do you use to check what time it is?"

🥰 "What would make you feel happy and loved?"

🐇 "Do you believe in other dimensions?"

🎺 "What kind of music do you mostly listen to? Do you know how to play an instrument, and if not, which one would you want to learn to play?"

💽 "Do you collect anything? Why?"

🧋 "What's your go-to thing to drink? Do you prefer cold or hot drinks?"

#ask game

2corvusossifragus

i wanted to make an oc ask game 😋 things i like to ask people abt their characters:

are they associated with a certain color? what color do they wear the most?

what sort of music would they like? have you thought about what genres or bands do they lean towards? do they have a favorite song?

weapon of choice? any particular reason they chose their weapon?

how crafty/resourceful are they?

how do they typically dress? does their wardrobe lean more towards practicality or aesthetics?

how do they wear their hair? do they care a lot how their hair looks?

favorite animal? why?

do they have a nickname? who gave it to them? if it's not derived from their real name, what's the story behind it?

favorite food? least favorite? are they a picky eater? do they have any dietary restrictions?

if they wear jewelry, what kind? do they prefer silver or gold? do they have a favorite gem?

what do they have in common with you? how are they different? would you get along with them?

how long have they been around? do you know their birthday? is their birthday the day you made them or another day? what do they think of celebrating birthdays?

what languages do they speak? how fluently?

are they any good with numbers?

how big or small is their family? who did they live with growing up? do they live with anyone now?

do they have any pets? what do they call their pets?

how did they spend their summers/free time as a child?

their opinion on lying, stealing, and killing?

are they quick to anger? what sets them off?

if applicable, can they drive? if they have their own, what color is their vehicle? is the inside neat and tidy, or a mess?

their favorite place to be?

do they sleep well at night?

how would you describe their voice? can they sing?

do they have any creative hobbies? (art, writing, music, etc)

how good/bad is their hearing? what about their eyesight?

how do they move? are they clumsy? light on their feet? do they use mobility aids?

if applicable, do they have a favorite sport? do they play any sports or prefer to watch?

how do they show that they care about someone? how do they express that they don't like someone?

are they associated with any particular element (air, earth, fire, water)?

do they smell like anything notable?

do they like receiving gifts? giving gifts? what is their ideal gift?

do they have any habits that aren't particularly self-destructive, just maybe odd?

if applicable, how would your other characters describe them? i mean specifically the people around them.

how would your character describe themselves? it doesn't have to line up with how they really are.

do they ever return home?

#character ask game

mistfallengw2

OC's Background Relationships Ask Game

Send an ask with OC + emoji (or the corresponding text), get a short ramble about the relationship of that OC with the corresponding side/background characters!

🎲 - Biological parents 👑 - Person who raised your OC and/or was important during their formative years ❓ - Estranged family/relatives they've never met 📎 - Siblings/close family ✨ - Children (current or future) 💎 - Chosen family (including warband) 🧸 - Childhood friends 🏆 - Best friends (past, current or future) 💌 - First crush/love 💋 - First kiss 🌹 - First relationship 🌶️ - First intimacy 💍 - Partners (current or future) 💔 - Exes 🍑 - Notable flings ✏️ - Classmates (including other cubs at the fahrar for charr) ⚙️ - Coworkers/boss (krewe/other charr outside of warband) 🐾 - Pets 🔪 - Enemy/nemesis 💢 - Person they can't stand ⚰️ - Someone they lost (not necessarily dead) 🩹 - Someone who was a source of trauma 🗑️ - "It's complicated" ©️ - Bonus: Canon NPC important to them

[Note: doesn't have to be in-depth, and if something is not applicable to an OC, you get to reroll!]

vrabia

ok but like. space shanties.

there’s a thing that should definitely be a thing in sci-fi.

vrabia

my brain went straight to the ‘put him in the airlock ‘till he’s sober’ part of ‘what can you do with a drunken spacer’ and i never want to look back from this.

honestmerchantsailor

THIS IS 100% A THING. It’s usually considered a subset of filk, so naturally a lot of prolific filk artists like Leslie Fish have a selection. Sci-fi filk is possibly my favorite genre of music.

Most of these are actually ballads, not true shanties, but still:

The Senate - Space Shanty

Kristoph Klover - Fire in the Sky

Duane Elms - Dawson’s Christian

Catherine Faber - Providence Skies

Julia Ecklar - Ballad of a Spaceman

Leslie Fish & Ann Prather - Hanrahan’s Bar

Julia Ecklar & Ann Prather - Pushin’ the Speed of Light

Leslie Fish - Ship of Stone

Leslie Fish - Guardians

Leslie Fish - Sam Jones

Vic Tyler - Space Hero

Vic Tyler & Duane Elms - Spacer’s Home

You can probably just google “sci-fi filk” and get a zillion more. It’s a surprisingly rich genre for one so unknown to most people.

nailsofvecna

I don’t normally reblog this kind of post, but this seems so perfect as background music for a dark matter game, I had to share it with you all. SPACE SHANTIES HO!

out-there-on-the-maroon

For those unaware reblogging this post, “What Shall We Do With A Drunk Space Pirate” was the close out song for the Mechanisms concerts. Their entire discography was taking folk songs and making them sci-fi epic concept albums.

Some of my favorite songs include:

Matty Groves, now with electric violin, about a lute that controls the dead.

Pump Me Boys, now a shanty about keeping the life support systems running on a dying ship.

Gently Johnny, now about sirens in a neo-noir sci-fi city lulling people into complacency.

Rising of the Moon, now about a doomed manager of a space station that descends into chaos and mutiny, left abandoned.

grison-in-space

So I’m married to a person who grew up in Canada’s folk scene, and we often talk about folk music as a genre. I was cranky about the way that people tend to slap an “alt-folk” label on folk because they assume true folk is a dead genre, and I got thinking and went: what is a dead genre, anyway?

T chirped “sea shanties!” and then added “not that you can’t compose a new one, but it’s not in conversation with other songs that are being published at the same time, it’s only in conversation with other songs that have been written long before.” It’s important to know, in this conversation, that Tay grew up around Stan Rogers’ family and therefore knows damn well that you can write a song in the modern era that everyone assumes is a hoary old traditional: Rogers wrote “Barrett’s Privateers” in 1976 because he wanted to sing lead in a sea shanty and there weren’t any in existence that had a baritone singing lead.

No, seriously. And now there are lots and lots of people, less than fifty years later, who think that Barrett’s Privateers is a couple hundred years old and has Always Been Here.

So I started thinking about dead genres, and it occurs to me to ask: why is the sea shanty largely dead? Or rather, actually, why is the work song, which is the larger category of music that sea shanties are a subset of, largely dead? Why don’t we sing work songs anymore when we’re working? Stan Rogers wrote the “White Collar Holler,” of course, and the premise of that song is indeed the notion of making a work song for office work, but I can’t imagine anyone actually signing it at the office as they go about their work. For one thing, I code quite a bit at my day job, and the speed at which I code doesn’t depend at all on what the people around me are doing; indeed, trying to match my speed to theirs would probably make us all less efficient.

Tay’s theory is that industrialization killed the work song in the West (they pointed out to me very explicitly that the idea isn’t actually dead world-wide), especially as work became more cognitive for many people and less reliant on keeping time with the people you’re working alongside. After all, work songs are most popular when the most efficient way to work is to keep pace with everyone at the same time, so you’re neither too fast nor too slow, and you’re all working at parts of the same tasks that rely on other people’s tasks to keep going without building up too much of a deadlock at any one part of the process. So much of work for so many people today is more like piecework than making things on an assembly line, and like piecework, it’s so much easier for our employers to encourage us to take the work home and keep making as many pieces as we can before we fall over and collapse… or else it’s service work, and you can’t be singing at service work, you won’t be free to quickly respond to clients and adjust your tasks to their needs.

I suspect that’s not entirely it, though, because assembly line manufacturing work isn’t actually dead in the West, not even close, and the work song is still gone from our halls. Tay pointed out that OSHA and hearing protection make it more difficult in many of those jobs to be connected to other workers and keep time on the song, and I think there’s definitely an element of truth to that, too.

But I think the death of the work songs go even deeper than that. See, work songs didn’t completely vanish as work became less dependent on keeping time together. They just turned into songs about the condition of working, and from there they turned into songs about unionization, workers’ rights songs, like the ones the Wobblies used to great effect in the 20s. And that happened in response to managers and bosses who see singing and talking and responded by trying to control workers and make that shit stop. Some of that is about controlling unionization but some of it is about control, full stop: pretending to oneself that workers only really exist while you pay them as cogs that produce labor, and anything else they do is a distraction from the labor you pay for.

Why is it that we don’t have modern work songs for Amazon workers? There are enough of them, after all, their very boring and physically demanding jobs depend on keeping time together, and everyone’s working together in a relatively quiet environment. I’ll tell you: it’s because Amazon views interactions among its workers as a threat and bans workers from talking to one another or listening to music while they execute their shifts.

We lost the work song, I think, because we gained bosses that see the work song as a threat instead of an intrinsic part of keeping the work force from getting bored and stale and tired and making mistakes. In a real way, killing the work song is a decision you make if you don’t understand the value of the work song to the workers themselves: it makes the work less boring, so you stall out less, and it reminds you you’re all doing this together, and it keeps you all in time. The action of singing is valuable. But if you’ve never sung while you worked collectively on a project, you might not know that, and if you think in terms of zero-sum losses, the song becomes a waste of good breath you’re paying for at best and a threat of insurrection at worst.

And it’s very interesting thinking about the labor conditions on a spaceship that might bring such songs back again as useful aids to coordinating the labor of monitoring and running the ship. Or even, for that matter, coordinating the labor of other tasks in a spacefaring economy. Warframe’s “We All Lift Together” is one of these, of course. Surely there have to be others?

elodieunderglass

Oh I love this grison

oldearthcartography

Okay but I would be remiss if I

a) didn’t reblog this for it’s own merits because music recs and very very good commentary

b) I definitely really wonder if the work song could be perceived as a threat also because they promote the sense of comraderie and closeness that union busting corps actively discourage (along with the genetics they share with working condition protest songs described above). (Though I also wonder if some of the die-out here is related to how comparatively devoid of public, casual singing/music north american culture is, outside of specific subcultures of course… like singing/music is treated a lot as something that professionals or studied amateurs do, and otherwise it’s relegated to the privacy of your own home or very specific venues such as karaoke)

and b) also add the Longest John’s cover of We All Lift Together (thank you @dungeonmastersconsortium for introducing me to it) because it’s VERY VERY GOOD (and I may have listened to it on repeat more than a few times over the last while):

have some minoan from various time periods/worlds. The top two are companions for various ARPG critters while the bottom one is a personal OC who travels SPACE, his little stowaway kid he watches is up there in the corner, I haven’t figured out his outfits quite yet.

#bolts head space #minoan #SPACE COWS

might be changing up some anatomy with these fellas but idk

some Fred ramblings while I putter around their planet and physiology.

#fred #bolts head space #world building

compilation of sketches for a race of aliens that wear fancy masks/socks/gloves that give them different features. They also have these weird “living ships” that I’m still working out what exactly they look like so that will be a different dump.

#lahewn world #bolts head space #world building