#sa worldbuilding

[ghostfiish]

I had this idea of the Halfas getting their powers on when they turn 14, like a puberty thing or something, and calling it Phantasma tempus. Which is Phantom Time in latin. I thought of Phantom Planet's language being in latin since it's a dead language. What do think?

hmm, not sure if halphas have anything like puberty like we know; since halphas already look incredibly similar to humans (presumably by sheer coincidence, but mostly because it’s convenient, plot-wise), i figure the more ways we can make halphas UNLIKE humans, the better. in any case, my guess would be halphas are pretty much born with the powers they’ll have for the rest of their lives, it’s just a matter of how much they can control it (think animal instinct, or how starfire explained tamaranians’ powers of flight to raven in the cartoon). i really like that name, though, maybe that could be a name for one of the abilities!!!

oooh! and as for the languages i def appreciate that pun! although, by definition, any language(s) that the halpha planet might have used would now be considered a dead language lol. as for the language itself, i doubt it would be latin, since the planned first meeting with humans and halphas (or any other species for that matter), well... didn’t exactly work out haha. halphas were secluded from most other planets/species for a verrrry long time, up until space corps made contact, so there wouldn’t really be a way to exchange languages.

i guess it’s a bit arbitrary which things would be scientifically/anthropologically(/historically?) accurate in this au but that sticks out as a pretty universal thing that planets would come up with vastly different languages independent of each other. as i said earlier, it would be a bit much to have them speak earth languages on top of their already-apparent similarities to humans lol.

exactly what halpha language sounds like is up to you, but i have my own headcanon for that. i forget which post has this information in it but tl;dr halpha language sounds kinda whispery and doesn’t have a lot of consonants, except for very prominent ‘d’ sounds. the ‘d’ consonants are mostly used when halphas refer to each other, in particular by name (which is why it’s crucial that each halpha’s name contain a ‘d’)

[ghostfiish]

Okay so I think I've settled on the 'Qin' for those space-au bug aliens. They're a primarily female species that are about maintaining community harmony with rigid castes and hierarchies, everything and everyone needing to be categorized and in it's proper place. I'm working on a draft where a close friend of Danielle's is an outcaste by the name of "Dehabilitated-Rustwright-Of-The-Crownless-Antoeci" but Dani just calls her Dhebbie.

(cy is helping me develop this species i came up with a while ago that isnt affiliated with space corps because ive been meaning to make more of those. figured id start with something i already had, when cy suggested an insectoid species and i was like, hey, ive already got one of those!!!)

some notes:

qin all kinda have these bell-shaped cloak things that they wear p much all the time, that have these holes for the wings. danielle helped dhebbie make that scarf. most qin don’t wear scarves. i still haven’t decided what they look like undern

i still need to come up with what colors to put where (im thinking mostly the browns/dull greens with some colorful spots as accents since a lot of aliens in the au so far are really really colorful), as well as species variation and stuff like that. but heres some initial ideas

[ghostfiish]

So I was wracking my brain trying to find a better word for the masked halphas than 'commandoes' and as luck would have it, there's a Latin word that means both 'ghost' and 'mask', so I used it to created a halpha word for them, L'rua.

GOOD

[ghostfiish]

headcanon that halphas from thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago were edged toward having skin at a different end of the spectrum like purple (or even fuschia or orange or something), but since more and more of the plants on the planet were of a greenish fluorescence, halphas were naturally selected to gradually edge toward blue and green. also evolution in diet toward high-copper sources helped

[ghostfiish]

drew up some stuff for halpha holidays/events

--

weddings: im gonna go ahead and do what becca did and repurpose my halpha royalty design into a wedding outfit for the bride/groom/etc to wear (its gender neutral. both parties wear the same outfit, each in their respective family color.) im gonna headcanon that halphas didnt have a monarchy but i like the idea of having it as a wedding outfit so it can still have a purpose lol. as for the attendees of weddings, they just wear normal clothes, but in two colors (representing the families being united) instead of just one. weddings are pretty casual overall. ceremonies are short and then everyone just parties their asses off. there are other events similar to marriage on the halpha planet, including being adopted into a new family or someone having children.

--

in the center we have the harvest festival, which is a huge amalgam of several things, including but not limited to: japanese matsuri (summer festivals), farmers' markets, paintball/dodgeball/color runs, holi, and la tomatina. i would imagine the colorful pigments in this case come from non-edible plants that grow on the halpha planet, but basically function as weeds. halphas dont farm crops so much as forage for copper-rich food, so 'harvesting' basically just amounts to pulling weeds that get in the way of their food's natural growth. halphas just found a way to make weed pulling fun instead of annoying

the event itself works like this: each evening of the festival at around sunset (which lasts several hours for the halpha planet), halphas in the surrounding area gather around a designated market/festival area/etc (ie where weeds have taken over) and divide into two teams at random and try to see who can get others utterly covered in paint the fastest. you get someone 'out' by getting their hair completely saturated in colors, which is tricky because most halphas grow out their hair. the leotard things are easily cleaned, but the family scarves, which don't have to endure nearly as much chaos on a regular day, are left home until the morning after the festival has ended so they don't get damaged.

most colorful things on the halpha planet have some sort of bioluminescence/fluorescence (including the halphas themselves, though for them it's less apparent than the plants). so at night, after the huge pigment war is over and it gets dark out, the market opens and all the participants parade their paint-splattered bodies around in the dark, lighting up the festival area at the same time.

the festival lasts three days or so, or however long the residents can stand the stench of nobody bathing. halphas dont have to take full-on baths that often like humans do, but they do like to have a quick rinse off once or twice a day... it's somewhere between brushing your teeth and putting on deodorant. but anyway there's a different set of two colors for each day, so by the last night of the festival, the whole town and its inhabitants make a huge rainbow of colors. the next morning everyone takes a bath to wash everything off, and there's all sorts of nice soap fragrances floating around and everything just smells so GOOD and everyone just relaxes that day

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the last kind of outfit is for halphas that are attending more formal/solemn events, or just worn by people carrying out important roles in any sort of event including the previous two in this post. for this sort of situation, the goal is usually to remove emphasis on oneself and/or any specific ties you have to other people, and instead to create a sense of unity rather than dividing up into multiple groups in a way that would remove focus on the purpose of the event, which is to bring people together for something meaningful. so, white is the color of choice for this sort of thing. (funerals aren't overly somber, but out of respect for the departed, no one wears their family colors.)

[ghostfiish]

was cleaning out the wips folder and i figured id just post this since if i ever finished it id probably just re-draw it altogether.... but anyway here was a concept i had about some halpha planet stuff. theres a lot of fountain dealies and columns. columns everywhere. a lotta stuff is built with stone but the columns have copper in em sometimes (snack dispensers for those that cant find any in plants/etc????)

other things i wonder about under the cut:

did the halpha planet have weather? idk probably not. maybe they just have different colors of mist that do different things like that one episode of mushi-shi that would be kinda cool. i dunno i mostly just pictured lots and lots of wind at varying intensities more than precipitation. though maybe it rains acid sometimes to keep them on their toes

i drew this picture kinda dark. i drew this a long time ago so i cant remember if i meant for it to mean that the planet is always dark, if halphas are generally nocturnal... in which case it wouldn't be bad for them to glow in the dark because if they slept at night then it would be kinda dangerous bc they would stick out like sore thumbs. but if theyre out and about when they stick out the most they are more prepared to defend themselves???? against what i couldnt tell you because i think they didnt really have natural enemies... or they dont have them anymore... maybe its vestigal. im not an evolutionary biologist but i like thinking about this stuff

who is that person in the statue???? idk but they have cool mist-hair

what kind of government would halphas have or would they just all be super chill and not need something like that. maybe they have dance battles for supremacy instead of political debates

basically halphas have an incredibly idealized society. too bad their planet was crushed

also i posted this doodle on twitter of danny modeling royalish garb; i dunno if halphas would even have had a monarchy i just like outfits

MAYBE THE HALPHAS HAVE ANOTHER SPECIES ON THEIR PLANET THAT THEYRE FRIENDS WITH LIKE GOOPY POLTERGEISTY THINGS THAT TAUGHT THEM MEDICINE OR MAYBE THE GOOP THINGS ARE THE MEDICINE OR SOMETHING I DUNNO

JUST. MEDICINAL ECTOPLASM JUST PICTURE IT

SPECIES THAT KNOW HOW TO MEDICINE ARE COOL OK

oh and i thought about another thing for the columns. maybe they can be used to signal other people, like telephones. maybe theyre just multipurpose and are like smartphones only not portable. also maybe they can be used to make music like the things from that one pokemon movie where they basically functioned like an amp stereo for that one girl's ocarina

[ghostfiish]

Space AU question: Why is it a problem that "Masters" doesn't start with a "D"? It's an alien language. Maybe his name DID start with a "D" but translated to "Masters"? Or maybe the Fentons misread the name all together? (I misread stuff all the time in my native English, don't get me started on other languages. Especially if there is a foreign alphabet involved.)

the way i rationalized that in my head is that the 'D' sound is reserved for the halpha naming convention, because it's how they differentiate from the rest of the language, which doesnt have very many consonants and is more of a whispery growly (ghostly) language. so as a 'rule', their names all have to contain a D so people can tell when people are being referred to. that way no one gets confused with the rest of the language. it's sorta like how we can have people named 'Rose', but 'rose' is also a kind of object, but lets just say the contextualization in halpha language is a bit more unclear sometimes so its harder to tell without a hard consonant noise to basically say 'YOU ARE A PERSON IM SPEAKING TO'. also i wanted a way to keep danny's DP logo in there so i rationalized it by saying its a symbol for halpha identity because... it's a 'D'

i guess i could solve the problem by saying that 'masters' is more of a title and not a name... at which point his name would be something else...

[ghostfiish]

Hi, I'm trying to figure out a currency that the Corps as a whole use, I was wondering if you had any ideas. I was thinking credits but I wasn't sure about if it should be something like dollars and cents type thing instead?

yeah, for the corps at large its credits. makes it easier when theres one neutral currency because theres so many different planets. different planets have their own currency but credits work most places because they can use them for intergalactic trading (i will make a separate post about trade systems). for rich people with lots of credits, they can buy pretty much anything whenever they want so if theres something that they truly need and cant get it anywhere else they have to use something special worth more than credits (maybe theyre called something silly like ‘merits’). for those that dont have credits or wouldnt find a use for them in interspecies/interplanetary contexts (especially in certain areas of terra ii), bartering is the way to go.

EDIT: wwow major source amnesia for this sorry. sophie helped me come up with currency things.