I want to take a minute to gush about how smart Siffrin is. They get down on himself for being stupid, especially with all the other members of the party. Odile's so booksmart everyone was convinced she's researching something. Isabeau has the whole secret nerd thing. Mirabelle's taken so many classes at the House. And Bonnie's a child so really not a fair comparison there.
And Siffrin isn't smart in the same way they are. But he is...
language smart!
He specifically points out the island one as being one he can't read, implying they can read all the rest. And "many" reads as more to three to me (just that three were named).
They can't read every language. In the observatory, they need Odile to read the Ka Buan book there. They also mention having been there
which, they would need to speak enough Ka Buan to get by even if they never learned to read.
But like, that's four foreign languages with the implication of more. He's been to so many places, learned to speak to so many kinds of people. Even if he can only read the three. Just being able to listen to so much? And understand? It's wonderful.
And, most importantly, the puns. You have to know a language well to do wordplay. Even if it's only Vaugardian they know well enough, they're still so talented.
He can't see how awesome that is. I need someone to recognise it.
Combining information from this post: https://www.tumblr.com/apple-onigiri/776458752598720512?source=share with climates in our world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification
Dormont is just 19 degrees away from the equator. This means that just a bit north of Dormont, we've got tropical rainforest (Af). The majority of Mwudu and the Island are also likely around Af.
Vaugard is on the top east of this huge continent, the northern coast of it all under the equator. The closest we've got to that continent is Australia.
That lighter blue is Aw, tropical savanna. I've been looking at Australian calendars here: https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/indigenous-weather-knowledge/indigenous-seasonal-calendars
That is not just a swapping of the "normal" seasons, that's its whole own thing.
Anyway, the wikipedia page on Aw has the data for a northern Australian city here:
So this bit:
When Isa says it's getting cold, he means like 20 degress still. (68 for americans.) That is a very different number from what I think of as cold.
So, rain. You know that trope that Siffrin loves rain after the loops, because that was a dry day and the rain means they're not looping? Consider also their island was very wet and the rain likely feels very normal to him in a way he can't explain.
So, snow. Considering how slow information spreads without phones, it's entirely possible the Vaugardians haven't heart of snow before. They definitely have never seen any. Siffrin will have only seen snow on their travels.
Japan is long. The Okinawa has tropical rainforest climate (Af) at the south and humid continental climate (Dfa&Dfb) up in Hokkaidou. Assuming Ka Bue is similar (BIG assumption considering how irl France isn't tropical), it's not impossible Odile could have grown up with snow. However, also consider her long coat. I reckon she would not be wearing that in above 20 degree weather if she grew up somewhere that got cold enough for snow. She's probably seen it at least, on the way to Vaugarde, depending on how travel routes work.
So! Vaugarde is hot even in the colder times of year, and it's gonna be a few months before they get rain, and this is all before getting into the impact the freezing of the country will have had on the country.
Mira's journey took almost a year after all. How vertical did the time freeze stop at? We know it stopped at Vaugarde's borders. Could the wind still pass through or is that frozen too? Did the rain freeze as it fell? Or did the rain flow through the frozen country, not being able to sink into the ground?
What about the plants and the animals and like the whole ecosystem? Those further north are likely more okay because there doesn't seem to be much change throughout the year. But still! The knock on effects! They exist!
There is just. So much drama and conflict availble post-canon just from the *weather* and then the consequences of the King's invasion on said weather (and also the people! And everything! AHHH), and then you get all the interparty dynamics on top of that? I need to gnaw on it. nomnomnom
I'm not sure Siffrin would be okay with all the cat comparisons.
Like, in the storage room:
And the kitchen:
At first they're just vaguely embarassed, but as time goes on and he gets more and more fed up with the loops, the cat/animal comments really get under their skin.
And they get under my skin too. So it's been bothering me a little. I feel like it's quite common for autistic or autistic-coded characters to get compared to animals (and specifically cats) a lot. Both in-universe and outside of it. And it makes me uncomfortable when the autistic character is consistently treated as the pet of the other characters. Like, we're not pets, eff off.
But I can see why these comparisons happen, on an individual character basis. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, I still enjoy fanfic and art that has catsif. Or petplay in general. I'm just uncomfortable with the larger pattern.
I don't think I'm just projecting when in canon Siffrin is getting so frustrated at these comparisons. (Emphasis on the "just" there's at least a little projection going on here.)
I want to shout out the act 4 dictionary scene in particular. Because Siffrin is so obvious uncomfortable with the comments that the party notices and apologises to them. When I first saw that scene, it was... reassuring isn't the right word, but it's close. That I'm not the only one bothered by such remarks.
Y'know, I think I'm gonna have precanon siffrin live on the northern coast of his island. I think the way he talks abotu Vaugarde in canon it really doesn't make sense for him to washed up there when young. (I mean, he could have and forgotton, but...)
So, I'm sending him on a journey to wash up on whichever that northeastern one is first. He's got like 10-15 years to travel the world before crossing the Poterian-Vaugardian border. He should travel further than just this one corner of this continent.
I keep thinking about isat and the island and how all we know about it is what can be extrapolated from Siffrin and the King.
Just because we have Siffrin doesn't means everyone else from the island is like them. Maybe he was already dyeing his hair black to not stand out before he left. We don't know.
Just because we have the King doesn't means everyone else from the island is like him. I recall hearing his age is 30s or 70s no inbetween? I think it's fun to imagine his hair wasn't originally white, he's just old. We do not know.
Just. Two people seen at one point of their lives can't be representative of the entirety of their culture. There is so much we don't know. That we cannot know. That's part of why it's a tragedy it's all lost.
Most (all?) depictions of the island I've seen have an entire population of white haired people. Because the two people we know have natually white hair at the time we see them. But populations just don't work like that.
It's right next to Vaugard and to Mwudu and traded with both less than 2 decades ago. Definitely Vaugarde with people in Bambouche talking about it. There would have been immigration with both those places at least, and more.
What about when Mira comments her surprise at Siffrin having experience with kinky hair when they helped her with hers? Doesn't that imply there was someone like that on the island? That he knew well? That might have been family?
The island should have more black people just living there and being born there and being just a part of the culture as any of the other citizens. It's not like it was isolated before it was forgotten. The people should be just as varied as the surrounding areas.
Been working on a little project I've been calling ISAT World Map, in which I took the canon map, made up what's on the other side of the globe, and followed a world building tutorial (this one for the curious: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn7WXgrNpwt-ZoGUchu-dcHfTW0Wf2-xa) to apply the things.
Yesterday, I finished the climate map. Behold:
Also, yesterday, someone posted in the ISAT community about finding the other half of the globe. Honestly that was a little demoralising. Like, well done! But. This took forever I don't want to do it all over again. I'm not opposed to building a second map in general, I just don't want to redo it because I did it "wrong" the first time.
This makes equirectangular maps into globes https://woowspace.com/MapToGlobe.html?i=3 if you would like to see it in all its glory.
Details, nitpicks, and more maps under the cut.
Gaping jaw section! The guide I was following said not to bother glaciating anything over 75 degrees because it would all be ice cap, and this is not an ice cap so should also be little islands. But. Gaping maw going nom on all those islands.
This section you may recognise as being, that's where Vaugarde is! So in theory, Bambouche's climate is savannah, Dormont can probably be squeezed into mediterranean (the closest that makes sense considering the trees we can see in game), and Jouvente seems to be in steppe.
Rift valley! This little segment of water has been hell for my ocean circulation and trying to figure out what's going on here. Tutorial lady went "I don't have any on my map" and then did not mention whether I should be doing anything with it.
I also in hindsight think the hot spots (the curve starting in the pink going into the islands) shouldn't have affect the elevation as widely as I did throughout this map.
Just a closer look at the top half of this continent. The mountains are so steep the elevation climates were quite thin! I like I've managed to get some shapes in and not make everything too blocky (it's so much better than climate.png)
This little corner was really awkward for my wind currents. The north-south mountain line is from a convergent boundary, and the west-east one is old from the pangea-like continent I tried to imagine. But, in both my wind current maps it seems the wind is blowing away from the W-E one? Not sure what the flat climate would be + elevation = I dunno I hope this is good enough.
This desert has a steppe smile. Why? I dunno aridity is weird and I'm not sure I mapped it right. Still. The steppe is happy about it.
Anyway, a few other maps:
This was the glaciation stage I mentioned earlier. As you can see, I labelled the curent ice and didn't touch the land there. And then it turned out, to not be ice 🙃
This one is my elevation map! Again, the ice is just lying, but that area should be pretty flat anyway. Maybe near that northern mountain range. (Actually, checking my originally sketched in mountains, yeah that goes almost to the top edge. Oh well, it's EF like it should be anyway).
I was also able to map some weather events yesterday and they're what I'm most excited about, so! Thunderstorm chances! (there's a second map with the seasons swapped, but i think it was meant to be one with both summer, but. combining them is weird at the equator so this is fine.)
Did I curve my lines right? unclear. Either way, the northern part of the western continent got really lucky with how the curves work.
These three I'll show at once. The purple are where the nothern/southern lights are visible. (If the party travels south enough, there's a tiny bit at the bottom of the continent they're on!)
The blue is where is likely to be devastated when the polar things get too close to the equator, where the climates will really struggle with the cold and the people living there not prepared for it. (like, this just happened recently in real life (i think?), so it was a little weird to map it.)
As for the ocean-atmosphere oscillations, even tutorial lady was like yeah we don't really fully understand this. But! We've included the dipole thing? From the ocean map?
As for what it does: less fish, stronger storms, drought, flooding, depending on where in the oscillation things are. I'm gonna say the cycle for this one is ~15 years and figure out exactly how that affects those areas later.
Also! Pole check:
Looks good, you can kinda see where I tried to puzzle piece the continents.
Blegh. It's..... fine.
Next step is... rivers and wetlands. So we might be going a little more granular?
hmm I've got my ao3 bookmarks sorted but wasn't there that really good unfinished one on fanfiction.net?
fanfiction.net problem connecting to server. Huh. Did I get the website wrong? google fanfiction.net, click the link, problem connecting to server. oh well try again later.
today: same thing. check downdetector: no problems. check tumblr #fanfiction.net: no problems. search fanfiction.net down: no (recent) problems.
but i'm sure i had tabs for it open on my phone. hmm i closed those all a while back when i was "tidying up" hmm. try just going onto fanfiction.net to double che-oh! it worked!
search for fic name. too many bad results. use filters. only result! that's it! yay!
yeah there isn't an obvious download button or anything. share via email? worth a shot to send it to computer. send to myself. go to computer email. open link
it lives! (was also able to go to the home page from here, and now typing fanfiction.net into the url bar does bring me here, wtf was up with my computer refusing to find this site?)
⬆️ that's the fic i was looking for for anyone interested. It is unfinished and has not updated in over a decade. It's still really good I think I reread it twice, but! it's been a few years since then so now it's good to read again! not that it wouldn't be good to read again if it had been more recent. more i still remember it and occasionally think of the fic despite (because of?) its abandonment that i'm still remember it years later
