SF-Blog

This is the place for you if you like speculative worldbuilding, fashionable furries and weird creatures.

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500 likes!

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Help is needed for HN-tSotL 2.0

Hi, people. I’m working on a ”Happy Ness”-fan fic for a modern, progressive audience. I’m developing characters with specific experiences and I’m interested to get in contact with people who has the matching knowledge so I could consult them about good character representation. Experience I would like to know are:

Life as a LGBT+ person (specifically homosexuality).

Scottish culture (especially the areas around Loch Ness).

Knowledge about late 19th/early 20th century.

It would mean a lot if you want to collaborate with me and send me a note if you want to help.

The story is merely in the outline phase, I can change it if you don’t like it, and I will credit you of course.

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Thanks!

I’m very happy for all the watchers I got recently.

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250 likes!

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Time for Tropes: Magic A is Magic A

As a worldbuilder that also want to tell credible stories, I understand that a given setting can’t have everything no matter how cool that seems, especially if you want to tell fantastic stories with substantial conflict. And consistent magic isn’t just a modern invention; as Springhole explained, old folk magic wasn’t thought of as something ’mysterious’ and was instead seen as a logical part of whatever worldviews people of the past had. Back to designing fictional magic, I am a novice in this field. I feel that setting up rules will be the hardest thing to do but, as Brandon Sanderson said it, ”limitations are more important than powers”.

Duck Avenger: Earth’s Galactic Era - The only reason I’m considering to have magic in this otherwise sci-fi setting is because Magica de Spell is part of the Duck Universe and I feel like I don’t want to leave her out. I want a modern world where technology is relevant so I limit my magic to ”What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?”-levels. For most, it’s just parlor tricks but with some creativity, Heart Is an Awesome Power! And when I want to do something with Gladstone Gander, I would tweak his exceptional luck so that it becomes something interesting rather than a passive Instant-Win Condition; maybe he needs to do a specific ritual to gain a ’luck point’ he can then spend on a strategically chosen opportunity.

Gazing Starlight - It is downplayed here, but there are guidlines for what can happen in this dream-like world. It is impossible to resurrect the dead, but a dying person can get themself a ’second’ life with the right means. Alchemy is very versatile since the alchemists cultural perception plays a large role in what means they’ll use but its core principle is that natural materials carry seeds of potential and elaborate processes are required to germinate the seeds into becoming a new ’refined’ substances.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - The Ness thinks of the alien physics of the Melange as just natural science and they know how to exploit them. One technology Unit ET uses to explore Earth unseen is an invisibility lotion. The user apply it on chosen object (including themself), and then trigger a chain reaction that makes the coated object completely transparent to the visual light spectrum. The effect is only temporary and the lotion decay when the time limit is reached. A more versatile field of technology is Exo-Pneumatics: it’s primary component is a natural substance called Nervous Plastic, which summons and embodies living concepts when electrically excited. These Daemons come in many different themes and can become Bond Creatures that can help or hinder their hosts. With an electronic locket, a bonded daemon can be commanded into causing temporary mental alterations in other persons.

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Time for Tropes: New Weird

I’m one of these people who think that fantasy is too same-ey and needs something fresh.

HN-tSotL 2.0 - Let’s take a look at what this setting includes: Most of the characters are water serpents capable of anti-gravity flight and they live in a bright and colorful cave system populated by Permian-era organisms and aliens. I’m sure that is pretty weird enough to qualify.

Gazing Starlight - The point of this world is just to create a truly bizarre fantasy. Inspiration will come from both obscure mythology/philosophy, creepypasta and Junji Ito horror, and dreams.

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Time for Tropes: Body Horror

This is a horror trope I have been exposed to early in my life, mostly through Cartoon Network shows. Whenever I want to spook myself I’ll imagine monsters with decayed bodies, but teratomas and embryo-like forms are other flavors of ugly I like.

During Armageddon - Happens all over the place during the reign of the fallen angels. After billions of years of desolation, the angels finds pleasure in remaking organisms, especially humans, into their twisted image. Lesser demons are guarantied to have pitiful forms (such as mummies that can only eat by shoving rotting waste into their ruptured abdomens) but even greater demons can have gruesome appearances (like predatory horses with five extendable tongues and detachable jaws). And that is just the fauna, there is plenty of mutagenic microbiota and poisons that can warp demons even more.

Duck Avenger: Earth’s Galactic Era - Advanced nanotech can be used for drastic body changes. Organisms altered by weaponized or malfunctioning nanites are truly the work of nightmares. There’s a good reason why this tech is so strongly regulated.

Amazon B.E. - With most Terran nations possessing superadvanced biotech, it is a given that a few bad apples have used it to control and torture others. And some people invert this trope by having their bodies dramatically altered the consensual way. Madame Darkayda are one of these people and she wants to turn into something that wouldn’t look out of place in ”Berserk”.

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Time for Tropes: Speculative Fiction LGBT

Of course there will be LGBT+ stuff in my worlds. It allows more diverse characters if non-heteronormative traits are included. I’m not doing this just to appeal to specific demographics, I’m also doing it because I’m a little queer myself.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - The Ness are naturally Non-Human Non-Binary. They do have biological sexes but it is not relevant in their social roles. The main characters Happy Ness and Lovely Ness (both female-coded) are even a lesbian couple.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - Most of interstellar terran civilization is very open to free gender-expression and sexuality. Extreme examples include individuals that easily change sex by themselves, and species that naturally have multiple sexes or no biological sex at all.

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Time for Tropes: Fallen Angel

I agree with Bogleech that fallen angels can be fascinating horror characters, more specifically as Tortured Monsters. Even if the rebel angels might have been wrong, I still think that eternal damnation is a little too harsh. Feeling such an unfathomable loss, there’s no wonder why such angels lash out at the rest of creation.

During Armageddon - These are the progenitors of demonkind. Most of them were originally nothing more than mere art equipment to the Cosmic Designer until there was a bug in the system, this bug being free will or at least a cancerous autonomy. These angels tried to wrench creation away from the Designer, but they were defeated and sealed away in a desolate dungeon-universe where they were cursed with having relatively inferior forms waiting out the eons. This all changes when the Apocalypse is triggered...

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Time for Tropes: Inscrutable Aliens

Sometimes aliens are more interesting when they bring more questions than answers. But it is still good for a worldbuilder to have some idea for what their inscrutable alien is about even if they will never officially reveal it. That will make your mysterious alien come across as an actual being rather than a cheap special effect. I also hope that there are more ways this trope could be used beyond one-note alien invaders.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - When the Terrans do discover aliens, either live ones or their remains, it would be fun adding a mystery or more. Enigmas could be that one alien organism that doesn’t seem to be related to the rest of the ecosystem it is in, or a derelict mega-structure of no obvious purpose.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - This optimistic series will deconstruct the trope: even if the aliens are very mysterious, concluding that they are ’too alien’ to ever understand would be dangerous as that attitude basically could dehumanize them (and making it more probable for the aliens to dehumanize us in turn). Just because they seem inscrutable now, it doesn’t mean that you should give up trying to understand them.

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Time for Tropes: Invisible Aliens

I find it boring that we haven’t found solid proofs of extraterrestrial life yet, despite the fact that the universe is old and large enough to have lots of aliens, a fact called the Fermi Paradox. When thinking about why this might be the case, the simplest explanation could be that the evolution of life is such a complex and delicate process that it occurs very rarely. Regarding other answers to the Fermi Paradox, the most fun ones are when aliens, for the moment, are undetectable one way or another. Sure, maybe this may inspire paranoia to some, to me this is an optimistic scenario with is a lot of wonders waiting to be found.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - Since this space opera is based on our real life universe, it too have an apparent absence of alien civilizations in our interstellar neighborhood. There are many explanations for this: one optimistic theory is that aliens and their technology are so alien that we don’t know how to identify them. A more pessimistic theory claims that civilized life is rare and most examples goes extinct before they can have an lasting impact on the cosmos. Whatever the reasons are, most alien life will be discovered later rather than sooner.

Duck Avenger: Earth’s Galactic Era - This trope is definitely averted here. Even before the aliens arrived in our solar system, there are tons of evidence that extraterrestial biospheres and civilizations are common in the galaxy. Such evidence could be fossilized microbes in asteroids, the sign of oxygen atmospheres on several exoplanets, and the drive plume of a Generation Ship.

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Time for Tropes: Our Angels Are Different

From the beginning I thought angels were just boring preachy guys but after some time reading TV Tropes, I see them in a new light. They’re most interesting when they manifest as surreal things or forces but even humanoid angels can be interesting if they possess interesting psychology.

During Armageddon - They are the creative agents of the Cosmic Designer and are basically living programs that adds physical laws, dimensions, life and less comprehensible qualities to the creators universes. Metaphysically an angel is composed of an ontology core defining their physical function in a universe. On its own it is just an abstract code but working together with other ontology cores, angels can physically define each other, with each angel having traits borrowed from the others (for example, an angel defining time can have a material form defined by a matter-angel which in turn can undergo aging defined by the time-angel). Angels can be so complex that they can manifest multiple elemental wills which embody different expressions of their physical functions (an angel of psionics could have an elemental will of pyrokinesis).

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Time for Tropes: Solar Punk

This is a genre that I agree with. It is important to make fiction with worldbuilding emphasizing ecological sustainability, cultural inclusiveness and economical fairness so that the public knows what a better future could look like and thus work towards it.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - Ecological sustainability has been a social virtue to the Ness since the beginning of their civilization. This is justified by the limits of their home environment; when you spend your entire life in enclosing caves, it is important to maintain and even create ecological cycles so that vital resources won’t be completely exhausted.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - This is a legal requirement in the majority of Terran space civilization and a nations status is determined by complexity and sustainability of a designed habitat. There’s even quests for attaining what is called the Eco-Technological Magnum Opus; a state where machines approach the thermodynamic equilibria of the environment and economics is replaced by an ecology where nothing is wasted. In other words, a civilization so efficient it is indistinguashable from surrounding wilderness.

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Time for Tropes: Magical Underpinnings of Reality

The fun thing with the fantasy genre is that you can completely change the ways physics operate, allowing for very diverse worlds rich in novelty. This trope is especially interesting in that it is basically a metaphysical ecology if most or all aspects of reality are dependent on the interactions of supernatural beings.

Gazing Starlight - The stars are giant burning eyeballs watching the Earth as they orbit it (the universe is geocentric) and the Earth itself is a breathing creature that feeds on the starlight. Ebb and flow is caused by giant orifices on the seabed inhaling/exhaling water.

During Armageddon - all laws of physics in a universe are implemented by angels. Angels are basically living programs whose presence in a universe defines what properties it will have.

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Time for Tropes: Eldritch Abomination

Love this trope along with Starfish Aliens. But honestly, I find this trope to be an oxymoron with maybe some Trope Decay: TV Tropes defines these as something that defy the laws of reality, but if something appears in the story (no matter how unexpected and strange) then it is by definition part of the storys reality. There is nothing that can be truly unnatural, instead there are either unknown things which completely challenges our worldview or well-known beings that are considered inimical to life as we know it. Considering the fact that ’abominable’ is a subjective quality, I might even invert this trope, having eldritch beauties.

During Armageddon - the fallen angels are abstract beings that are beyond mankinds modern understanding of physics, while also representing physics (both familiar and alien ones). When empowered, the angels are capable of transforming the world, filling it with magic. Even demons, especially archdemons, can have biology-defying forms sustained by magic.

Gazing Starlight - Archeologists studying extinct civilizations have noticed a disturbing trend; most civilized species were killed off by monstrous forces called the Greater Beasts and Curses of Despair. No Beast/Curse is alike but they’re all defined as living extinction events that pop out of nowhere and soon disappear after all sapient life is destroyed.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - In the deepest parts of the Melange dwells immense entities mentioned in ancient legends. According to the stories these Lords roamed the Melange before the beginning of Ness civilization but are now confined to the hellish and hostile DeepGulfs for having defied the order of the Harbingers. The only proof of their existence are giant locked vaults and ghastly groaning heard from the other side of the seals. The Harbingers themselves were an inversion: while they were of a completely different existence compared to their creations, they are revered as wardens of life as we know it.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - There is a subculture, CryptoXenology, dedicated to the hypothesizing and search of entities that (currently) exist beyond Terran perception and understanding. While most of these ’cryptids’ are merely hypothetical, there are reports about unexplainable phenomenon and strange life-like shapes in otherwise barren environments.

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Time for Tropes: And I Must Scream

This must be one of the scariest tropes for me. Especially when I have OCD thoughts about suffering an eternal, painful fate in the future. And I hope that by writing about hellish existences in my worlds, I will have control over that fear.

During Armageddon - this is the plight of demons called Larvae. They’re humans that’s been warped into especially pitiful and helpless forms such as slithering embryos or faces on the backs of crabs. They tend to be on the bottom of the food chain, with some of them being used as livestock or pets by more abled demons.

Gazing Starlight - there are many flavors of torture a person could suffer through in this world. One bizarre fate is to be buried alive and pressurized into a gemstone. The followers of one philosophy believes even the afterlife is like this and are thus desperate to escape death, with some of their attempts leading to just a painful existence.

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Time for Tropes: Fantasy Metals

Have plenty of these. Metals are cool.

HN-tSotL 2.0 - The most vital metal in Ness 0-G propulsion is FloatStone. It is common in the Melange and its appearance is silver-grey with light green shimmer.

Gazing Starlight - There are several in addition to the traditional metals: Rosite is a pink and aromatic metal that is useful for light and maneuverable armor as well as jewelry. Pyrbit is a sickly green/white materal that causes putrid infections in any wound exposed to it, and is useless to forge unless it’s alloyed with another metal. Penazit is an indigo-colored crystal with extremely sharp edges, so sharp that it can hurt to look at them, and is thus used to forge Absurdly Sharp Blades. Only by melting the crystals in the heat of lava can the penazit be worked into new shapes. And that is just among the natural substances, even more fantastic metals can be made through alchemy. Alchemized metals include the lethally hematophagic Blood Steel and Hardened Quicksilver believed to be the key to immortality.