#worldbuilding 101

[atlas-the-worldbuilder]

https://youtu.be/V4ddnrBT6hE

A good (if lengthy) treatise on following Function for ship design! Covers alot of stuff I mentioned in my ship design comic, and then some!

[manonelide]

Sigil of House Havilliard

one question: why is a wyvern a sigil of house Havilliard? If these beings were "made", as it was stated in HoF, how could they be a sigil of a royal, ruling family? Did wyverns exist before? Were they extinct? Or were they just parts of "made up" stories people used to spread around? And then, on the basis of those stories, they "made" wyverns?

[atlas-the-worldbuilder]

Phew! Finally, another comic!

Sorry for skipping the civilization comic, but I’ve been in a Sci-fi mood, and I’ve had the strangest urge to build my own starship. So I’m taking y’all on a trip with me to discover the finer points about building our own spaceship!

Also, since I’m gonna be doing this, I might as well promote this awesome YouTube channel which analyzes ships all the time from everywhere. So go check out “Spacedock”, if you want more!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfjaAUlTZRHJapJmCT6eyIg

[lokeanrampant]

Worldbuilding

Let's talk logic for a moment. And I don't mean anyone is being illogical, I mean logic as a reasonable progression from Point A to Point C, with Point B being what makes that progression work.

If you want to say, yeah, the real-world science is neat, but BioWare decided they weren't doing that. GREAT. Fan-fucking-tastic, gimme the words! *grabby hands*  You can make me believe a lot of things if you can prove it can work.

BioWare needs to tell me how that logic works or at least give me the breadcrumbs to follow. And they haven't done that.

That's all the science is - the logical mechanism behind how something works, be that biology, mechanical engineering, physics, and yes, even magic. It's how we start at x point and get to y point. EVERYTHING works that way because it has to, or else there's nothing but chaos.

And you can't design a world that way, without rules to follow...because then you have no logical progression to advance the story. 

If your readers or players or watchers cannot follow along, they tend to get disgruntled. Because that's what people DO. It's why people get so pissed off when they're watching a tv show and then the writers panic because OMFGS, the people watching have figured out where we're going, well we can't have that, and they totally pull a 180 that comes out of their ass with no substantiating support anywhere and now you have angry people who feel they were ripped off, dismissed, talked down to, etc. How many times have we heard of popular media doing that and getting absolutely blasted for it? 

People like being able to anticipate, to see patterns. It's being able to make sense of the world around us. Good mysteries, for instance, will have clues and tidbits that hint at where you're going. This is fantastic, because then people are like…ooooo, I think this'll happen, no wait, but I think this will happen, no wait, this other person things this will happen. I NEED THE NEXT CHAPTER/EPISODE/MOVIE TO KNOW IF I AM RIGHT GIVE IT TO MEEEEEEEE. And you keep people interested, you keep them involved; they are now invested in what you have created. And you get the bonus of people rereading/rewatching/replaying to see if they can find more of those tidbits that hinted. But if it doesn't have that pay-off at the end, you lose those people.

Are there completely fucking illogical things that we read where we totally suspend disbelief? Yep.

Mana and health potions, depending on whether or not they are insta-refill or slow-steady refill? WEIRD AF. But it's a concept drilled into our brains for fantasy worlds and we go, eh, okay, fine. (Well, some of us do…some of us are like, wtf, Imma need to make that make sense.) A total sum of our health (which is really interesting to have be quantifiable, btw) increases as we level? WTF IS THAT? Okay, our total blood volume increases as we grow up cause our bodies are growing. That makes sense, but kinda maxes out when we reach adulthood. And if we improve our physical conditioning, generally speaking, we become better able to resist certain elements (not actual elements, but bacteria, viruses, general ailments) and more than likely, heal faster as well, ergo, resistances to some things may improve, but it doesn't actually increase our quantifiable health (it doesn't make sense for HP to go up ^_^). Logically, this would follow a more standard D&D path of distribution of attribute points that are pretty fixed. You can get objects that help you manipulate those stats, but your core stats are who and what you are at the end of the day. Can I say, okay, you've been training really hard in this particular field (exercise, physical conditioning, etc), so your endurance improves? Absolutely! It works! It's logical! GO US. And people are happy with that because it makes sense. They can follow it, they feel good about following it, they now know a basic rule of this world. And you can absolutely have artifacts that magically enhance those traits and conditions because yes, you can sorta-kinda handwave that magic more easily. Why? Because we have drugs here and now that increase endurance, speed, coordination, help circulation improve, help mitigate disease, etc. It's a small jump to believe that magical enhancements work along a similar vein.  Again, logical.

(Creatures are another ball of chaos altogether and an entirely different post. XD  Bestiaries are a trip.)

Turning tail on those rules that you previously created is not only dismissive of your audience, but insulting. So if you do that, you damned well better be able to substantiate it or your audience will never forgive you. I recently did a dive into some of the BW boards; was researching darkspawn. You know what seemed to be a recurring comment throughout multiple posts and threads? The utter disdain for handwavey magic -- because it was insulting to the audience, because it was lazy. This is not a new thing. It is a fundamental aspect of good writing to keep the audience engaged and handwaving things is lazy and disrespectful. It says your audience isn't smart enough to understand and the author is too lazy to even give them the opportunity.

Even magic has rules. It has to have rules. If it doesn't, you lose readers because they will have been conditioned to believe, by previous writing/knowledge, that these are the spells here and these are the schools of magic and these are things that can be done. When you throw out rules, you get the classic "Rocks fall, everybody dies." That's what happens when you write yourself into a corner and you can't get out of it without throwing some random-ass shit in there because you didn't know how your own world worked. This doesn't mean you can't add new things, but they have to fit the rules you created previously, whatever they are.

In absence of any dedicated "this is how it works" FAQ, worldbuilders take the facts presented to us and make shit FIT. It's what any scientist does, as well. And yes, magic is only science we don't yet understand. At one point, fire was magic. At one point, electricity was magic. At one point, the very concept of being able to speak with someone even just a village away without having to walk there was magic. And now we have fire in our pockets, electricity everywhere, and smartphones that not only allow to speak to people all over the world, but let us access a network of information anywhere at any time (so long as signal is good). And that only happened because someone sat down and asked WHY. And then proceeded to figure out why.

So we have:

Point A - human-elven offspring appear physically human.

Point G - human-elven offspring will never have an elven appearing child as they are phenotypically human (per the wiki)

Point M - Weird-ass comments about elven appearance due to being elf-blooded.

Point Z - Elven genetics aren't understood by science, but are apparently super-duper adaptive even though they totally don’t present when you have human-elven offspring, and therefore, MAGIC.

O_o

So in one single wiki entry (and I've no idea who puts those together, to be fair), we have major contradicting info. That's where you can't have it both ways. It's maybe not a full retcon? (though yes, BioWare loves its retcons because it can't be bothered to always look at the lore they created that preceded it and it's lazy writing to change the rules arbitrarily rather than working with what you created). It is lazy writing because they're handwaving it because they know it doesn't make sense, but dude, they want this to happen and they can't be bothered to find a way to make this happen, so MAGIC. *handwaves*

NOPE. That's where FIX-IT fics and worldbuilding come into play. We can follow a logical progression from Point A to Point G above because we not only have that in writing in multiple places throughout DAO and DAA and numerous books, but we have the physical evidence in the games themselves. So we're good. Okay. Half-elves appear human. Gotcha. That's how THIS world works.

Err…wait…what the fresh hell is this elven appearance and elf-blooded crap? You just said…and all those books and games…WHAT?

Yeah, that's actually a retcon because you've now just changed a fundamental rule of your world. And you damn well better do better than *handwavey magic* for that shit. Because magic is not a midpoint. It's the classic Profit Meme: starting point - ???? - PROFIT. Cause now all those people who were invested in the world you created are at a loss and you just shat all over their dedication to and love of that world because things they knew by evidence are now wrong, so what else is wrong?  Yes, today you may know one thing and tomorrow you may know something else that contradicts yesterday, but there’s always a reason between those two points.

Is it possible to do this and actually get away with it? Yeeeessss…but it requires you providing new material that fits in that ???? section and follows the old rules and the new rules in such a way that the audience will give you a pass at pissing them off. You still need the logical progression. You have to PROVE that it works.

And hey, as an audience, you are 100% allowed to throw all that out the window and go, nope, I choose to believe something different and I'm going to mod to make ears pointed and gay people straight and straight people gay because that's what I want.

And go for it. You do you. Enforce your viewpoint on the world at large and make people be what you want them to be. Why? BECAUSE YOU SAID SO, DAMN IT.

...

But that world doesn't support it by the very rules it created. And you can't force others to believe it. "Because I said so" is one of the most dismissive phrases out there because it, again, implies you don't need to know, aren't capable of understanding, and flat-out, you need to do what I say and not ever question me.

Yeah, no. I am always going to question. I am always going to ask WHY.

So prove to me why half-elves in Thedas should have pointed ears.  Give me the facts.  Show me HOW it works.  Make me believe it.

I’m listening.

[atlas-the-worldbuilder]

And our final part. Hopefully, this trilogy of comics has helped you all understand a bit more of the in-depth considerations that have to be made whenever making spaceships...or, frankly, any type of vehicle! I’ll follow up this with another comic breaking down a ship I made on my own, by following these guiding principles! So look out for that in the next few weeks, as soon as I finish the painfully-slow and frustrating process of drawing the ship. In the meantime, it has come to my attention that there aren’t yet any discord servers purely for ship design! So to fix this, I’ve decided to make one! My only problem is that, unfortunately, I’ve never managed a discord server in my life. SO! If anyone wants to gimme tips or join the discord server as soon as it’s up, relay me a message, and I’ll send you the link once it’s up! Thanks again for reading and following the blog, and I hope you got your daily dosage of inspiration from us here! Happy Worldbuilding to y’all!

[atlas-the-worldbuilder]

Part 2! The Physics!

I know it’s a bit shorter than normal, but frankly, the physics of space flight are everywhere, if you look for them. A little research will turn up a whole list of things that real-world spacecraft have to deal with, which are excellent starting points to building your own ships. So go! Get some learnin’ in yer brains! See what your researching leads you to!

[atlas-the-worldbuilder]

Hope this helped you out anon. And sorry for the late response; work’s been getting rougher lately, it’s been hard to stop and make decent responses. I’m slowly but surely working on comics for religions, city-building, specialization of labor, and maybe economics. Lemme know if you have any topics you want me to focus more heavily on!

[julystorms]

I was thinking how many ways Isayama could have handled things better. Namely the criminal underworld and the Ackerpowers, and I always find myself eyeballing the Witcher series when I think of those things. Witchers themselves are super mutants, but there’s still a myriad of drawbacks. They push their bodies to absolute extremes for the sake of hunting, and their average life expectancy is indeterminable, because they always die hunting. They’re infertile, the process to become a Witcher is --

very unpleasant, and if I recall correctly, their numbers are very small because the process to become one itself usually ends up killing them. They’re incredibly strong, since they’re built to hunt, but this doesn’t ever make them invincible. Hell, even the MC, Geralt goes out because a fucking peasant impales him in the gut with a pitchfork. Humans or non-humans never get ruled out. It’s a very interesting playing field despite its fantastical setting. The criminal underworld isvery fleshed out. There’s the juxtaposition of the poor and the rich. Hell, an entire city is ruled by the criminal underworld and like this fictitious corrupt religious group. The criminal underworld overthrows a king and murders a good portion of his army—these fuckers even play a huge role in governing the end of a massive fucking war for the North. 

And every time I see this shit, or any other really well thought-out criminal-esque underworld, I always find myself looking back at SnKand going “what the fuck?” 

I will never not be salty about the way Isayama handled this shit. Why an actual fucking underground world?... Why make Ackerpowers such a fucking cop out instead of something genuinely interesting? Like, could you imagine part of the reason the Ackerman clan started to go extinct was because their males were being genetically mutated to come out sterile? Or if the awakening wasn’t just “hurdur I’m now Goku b/c a toad pissed on my foot uwu,” but insteadsomething incredibly excruciating and unbearable? Imagine for a moment they followed suit with the children in route to becoming Witchers– in that, the process to become one could very well kill them. Or that maybe their emotions could be intentionally suppressed thereafter the awakening, thus furthering the idea that the Ackermans were nothing more than just their killing machines. Just... Ughhhhh. Come on man. “uwu my mommy died i live in the underground w/ no sunlight uwu”

This is some powerful NaCl here bucko.

But I feel it. Sorta.

I mean on one hand I don’t know jack shit about the Witcher series (though oe of my brothers does and could easily talk my head off about it), nor do I actually know much about the fantasy genre in general.

This is perhaps funny considering my main fandom for many years was Fire Emblem. But I digress. Really all I want from my plots is a modicum of sense. Was InuYasha stupid as all hell? Yes. But was an effort made to make the main villain a little more deep and interesting than just “hurr durr evil lol”? Absolutely. That’s really all I need to be fairly content. I’ll always find something to be dissatisfied with, but there’s a difference between “it could have been better” and “it really...should have been better.”

SnK is kinda in the latter category for me. There’s so much potential in the worldbuilding that it feels gross to hop around and see other things doing it better. I don’t think I need to reiterate that SnK can’t operate on the same level as anything else--any novel series, for instance, or game. Manga creation does not function the same way. The story is intended to be a little flexible.

That said, while I don’t think using the Witcher examples would work very well for the Ackerblood thing, I do think some depth could have been added to it to make it interesting. For example, why was Kenny a killer and his sister wasn’t? Were his grandfather/father/mother/cousin/whatever also killers? The idea that they’re a bloodline put together for this purpose doesn’t work very well considering the world’s limited history (just over 100 years iirc). Like that’s maybe two or three full generations, depending on how old people get. 

I mean, you could make up a lot of things to make it work well: like Ackermans bond to people and will feel a particular protective instinct so perhaps in the past they were bonded to the king’s children from a young age and so it was inevitable that they would fulfill their role as protector of the royal family just by nature of being bonded to them/raised among them. (This is something that could have made Kenny and Uri’s relationship super interesting and complex! Also see: Mikasa and Eren. And Levi and whoever he gets close to.) 

That’s just a spitball thought, obviously, not intended to be taken very seriously, but I do agree with the idea that there should have been more to it than ‘uwu poor babbu abused and misunderstood.’ Like, are we supposed to care about this aspect of the series? ‘Cause I don’t. I only care about how I can make it make sense--and that’s kinda sad.