Worldbuilding Wednesday Archive

Archived but no longer active

[worldbuildingwed-archive]

Welcome to the WBW Hub!

Its long past time I write up a formal introduction to this blog and how it functions in the larger writeblr event known as World Building Wednesday (WBW).

WBW is a weekly celebration of all things world building. It's a chance to show off what you've been working on, and talk to other writeblrs about their own world building projects. Many writers send each other asks with questions aimed towards getting those creative gears turning. Many of us post open asks to our blogs for anyone to answer.

That's where this blog comes in.

This blog functions as a hub, collecting all those open asks in one easy place. Users can submit their open asks via the submit function or as an ask to this blog, or they can simply tag @worldbuildingwedasks in their own posts to be reblogged here. All those questions can be found under the tag "wbw asks".

Anyone is welcome to answer the questions posted here, no matter how long ago they were originally put up. Answers are reblogged and gathered under the tag "wbw answers", and queued up throughout the week. Also queued up are posts to inspire you, from "creature creation" to "language nerdery" to "picture prompts", all gathered under the more general "inspiration station". Also the tag "look respectfully" is for anything that comes from the real world, as a reminder to use this inspiration thoughtfully.

Users are welcome to submit posts to those tags, too, as well as for the tag "worldbuilding in the wild", to show off whatever worldbuilding they've been working on.

It's a world builder's paradise! Come and join the fun!

[nocturnal-stims]

Flexible feather armor

🪽 Miscreations_us on IG

[toasthaste]

according to An Immense World, apparently giant squid eyes are, like, UNREASONABLY large, even for something their size living at those depths. the next largest eyes on earth, blue whale eyes, are less than half the size, and swordfish, who live at similar depths as giant squid and have the largest eyes of any fish, have eyes that could fit inside a giant squid's pupil.

eyes hit serious diminishing returns wrt resource costs vs vision quality as they get bigger, so the question became: what the FUCK do giant (and colossal) squid need to see so badly that they couldn't see with swordfish-sized eyes that's justifying that massive energy cost? that nothing else in the deep ocean needs to see so fucking badly??

turns out the one strength eyes that big really have over much smaller eyes is: seeing large glowing objects in water deeper than 500 meters from an appreciable distance.

sperm whales are the primary predator of giant squid. sperm whales don't glow. BUT! water that deep is full of bioluminescent creatures-- these creatures light up when bumped into. something a sperm whale's size is continuously bumping into those critters, it's just surrounded by a glowing field all the time when it's swimming at those depths, visible from a distance-- if you have the right eyes-- as a massive glowing shape. so basically the only reason to have eyes the size of soccer balls is if you live in the deep ocean and your life depends on having a heads up when a hungry sperm whale lurking around

and also I gotta say, the imagery... the huge lurking threat betrayed only by the ambiguous glowing shape of its movements through the water, is really evocative, if spooky deep-sea games aren't already using that to make things extremely ominous then they should really start

[victusinveritas]

Meet Pando, not a forest but a single tree. Every trunk of the Quaking Aspen is genetically identical & connected by a single 80,000 year old root system, making it one of the largest and oldest living entities on Earth!

[foone]

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk through the body of a God?

[queer-as-city-folk]

Where would you put a city on this map?

[orrangeslices]

probably here. not really sure what scale this is operating on, but it looks real big. but generally just somewhere with multiple rivers for access to trade and near forest (green i assume?) for access to building materials.

[queer-as-city-folk]

The first city has urbanized

Where will the next city be placed

[temporarynameiwillchange]

Here looks fun

[queer-as-city-folk]

A second city has been built

[nakiju13]

I wish for a citadel with robust maritime trading and fishing on this peninsula on the big lake

[queer-as-city-folk]

City 6 has been built, lets start connecting them by rail

[i-twink-therefore-i-am]

what jumped out at me was a city at the red circle with a smaller one nearby at the yellow one. possible trade routes highlighted (you might have to zoom in to see the yellow circle, it's where the red and yellow routes meet)

[queer-as-city-folk]

Cities 7 and 8 have been constructed along the north, now the railroads should begin construction

[zeemczed]

Tentative plans for main trunk line and secondary lines.

[queer-as-city-folk]

4 rail companies have been established based off of these plans

[weirdgirljulia]

We need sustainable farmlands to supply the cities with food!

[queer-as-city-folk]

Farming has been added to the map

[mistressorinoco]

A new city, born out of trade opportunities between the already established cities and train routes.

[jgvfhl]

This post is so cool

Have you considered a city where the red circle is? Much like Paris? Possible rail routes drawn, altho the purple rail could also come from the junction to the south near City 1. Farmland could come on either side of this new city's river.

[queer-as-city-folk]

Cities 9 and 10 have been established, with the support of a new railroad and also a rail link has opened in the north

[queer-as-city-folk]

Ferry services have been established to connect some cities more directly than by rail and as a result of the industry brought by rail, numerous cities have begun to expand as well

[the-shade-system]

I would like to propose this addition:

A deep vein of magnetite, in addition to high silver content in nearby rock, being discovered in the south of the map provides space for industry to develop (black blob), leading to a new rail connection and a small industry town built nearby, which also has its own rail connection (grey blob).

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Who needs to play management sims when we've got fuckin. Post.

[poetry-protest-pornography]

Do you like the color of the cooperatively generated fictional map?

[thegreatzeldini]

[moniquill]

[moramew]

A small list of random ass sites I’ve found useful when writing:

Fragrantica: perfume enthusiast site that has a long list of scents. v helpful when you’re writing your guilty pleasure abo fics

Just One Cookbook: recipe site that centers on Japanese cuisine. Lots of different recipes to browse, plenty of inspiration so you’re not just “ramen and sushi” 

This comparing heights page: gives you a visual on height differences between characters

A page on the colors of bruises+healing stages: well just that. there you go. describe your bruises properly

McCormick Science Institute: yes this is a real thing. the site shows off research on spices and gives the history on them. be historically accurate or just indulge in mindless fascination. boost your restaurant au with it

A Glossary of Astronomy Terms: to pepper in that sweet terminology for your astrophysics major college au needs

[moramew]

Adding to this since I’m working on a shifter au one-shot:

Canine Body Language

Feline Body Language

[moramew]

More:

Cocktail Flow: a site with a variety of cocktails that’s pretty easy to navigate and offers photos of the drinks. You can sort by themes, strengths, type and base. My only real annoyance with this site is that the drinks are sometimes sorted into ~masculine~ and ~feminine~ but ehhhh. It’s great otherwise.

Tie-A-Tie: a site centered around ties, obviously. I stumbled upon it while researching tie fabrics but there’s a lot more to look at. It offers insight into dress code for events, tells you how to tie your ties, and has a section on the often forgotten about tie accessories

[moramew]

Even more:

Types of High Heels: A page describing twenty five different types of high heels. It gives a description and pictures. Shake it up from just “stilettos and kitten heels”

Random Job Generator: Exactly as it says. The site offer more generators like characters, plots, or town names.

Glossary of Hosiery Terms: Figure out what is what on a pair of stockings.

Men’s Dress Shoe Guide: A quick guide describing the eight most common types of men’s dress shoes. Pics included.

Types of Women’s Coats: Descriptions and pics of various different types of coats.

[8writingblock8-blog]

WRITING REFERENCES

[probablybadrpgideas]

Merfolk seeing a world map and being like "ok, but where are all the countries in the ocean"

­

[edgy-fish-boy]

@probablybadrpgideas idk maybe someone else who's better at marine geography and oceanic biomes and worldbuilding could make a better map but idk it was just a funny idea

[octoswan]

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

[firelightinferno]

Oh, that’s very helpful indeed!

[writing-prompt-s]

!!!

[random-questions-fairy]

Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!

[theredscreech]

Heads up that this is a very extensive questionnaire and might be daunting to a lot of writers (myself included). That being said, it is also an amazing questionnaire and I will definitely be using it (or at the very least, some of it).

[heroineimages]

Bookmarking this…

[backofthebookshelf]

This inspired me to see if Patricia C. Wrede’s Worldbuilding Questions are still online, and not only are they, they’re on the exact same page I saw them on in 1998. Somewhere there’s a binder of the Word doc I made of all of them and the answers I filled in for Baby’s First Fantasy World

[pluttskutt]

truly daunting to see that @worldbuildingwed-archive is an archive now. it was so big but the concept itself died down with interactions--like most dedicated days do. I feel like a relic

[worldbuildingwed-archive]

Yeah, it seemed right to leave it up as an archive, but I wanted some way to indicate that it wasn't really active anymore, so I changed the name. It just lost traction, and I personally moved away from writeblr stuff in general. But its still here for folks to mine for ideas :)

-R

[hacvek]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[olyia-stories]

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

[dragonpyre]

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

[serinos-kitt]

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

[dragonpyre]

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

[serinos-kitt]

So what is a rain shadow?

[lethalbutterfly]

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

[mindfulwrath]

May I recommend my new favorite tool: Mapgen4. You start with a random seed and then add mountains, valleys, shallow water, or oceans as you like. You can adjust the wind direction to make wind shadows off the mountains fall where you want. You can adjust overall raininess to make the rivers larger or smaller, or have more or fewer tributaries. It works best for small, isolated landmasses (think islands more than continents) but as there’s no scale bar and it’s all slightly abstracted anyway you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve only just started playing with it but it’s SO FUN.

[the-punforgiven]

Y'know, I'm kinda surprised I haven't seen Jack Chains more in fantasy tbh, like it's a really interesting and low budget armor style, I'm legit surprised I've almost never seen it in media

[the-punforgiven]

Couple examples I pulled from google images

[the-punforgiven]

Actually kind of! It's built with a very interesting principle behind it and I'm gonna explain it below because it's neat

So, say you've got a sword or axe or something and are fighting some guy who can't afford a full suit of armor, and like someone who thinks it's a good idea to protect their brain from harm, they go into battle with a real good helmet, but don't have enough money for a full breastplate

So, obviously, this guy's helmet is solid, well-built, and strong. You're absolutely not getting through that with anything short of a mace or warhammer, which you forgot at home or something. So, you want to instead throw some cuts at their torso and arms, since if you can't get at their brain or throat, the entire torso is a pretty good target, and without arms your opponent will have a much harder time both hitting you with their weapons and shielding that torso of theirs

So you start throwing cuts, probably like so, since these are usually the most common, instinctive, and usually efficient cuts to throw (or a rough MS Paint approximation of them lol)

Normally, on someone unarmored, those'd do a lot of damage! You'd probably even win the fight!

However, with even something as small as these weird little guys on, it just sort of...

Obviously these things are like, clearly less effective than most styles of armor, doing little to protect against things like thrusts or trebuchets, but even with as minimal as they are, the humble Jack Chains are bizarrely more effective than one would think just by looking at them!

They work because they close off the most common angles of attack, essentially trying to get the maximum value out of minimum materials. Despite their rarity in media they were pretty common, mostly because of their low cost, but also because they did their jobs surprisingly adequately

In a weird way, it kind of reminds me about that one post about army planes, actually

You know the one I mean

[delphes]

American Photographer, Joel Bissel, took stunning pictures of the frozen Michigan Lake in Chicago, covered by ice scales (x)

[valtsv]

saw this and it feels like angel behavior, or perhaps a trap laid to catch an angel 🤔

celestial spiderweb

[everythingfox]

Sleeping fox

(via)

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

So you know how lots of birds just find humans really sexy? Like how they're constantly trying to seduce humans, and if you have pet birds there's whole guides for how to not give your bird mixed signals and make them think you're their mate, and how they keep trying to drive off the partners of their owners/carers as rivals

And people who own or live near these types of birds just kind of have to live with this, like they just gotta accept that that's how birds are and work around it

I like to think that that's how gods feel about the tiresome human propensity to worship them at the drop of a hat

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

My apologies to everyone in the notes who are just now learning about the Many Birds Find Humans Sexy thing

[silfrvarg]

There are lyrebirds on the mountain pass I take to get to uni every day. The male lyrebirds apparently think motorcycles are the height of sexiness because around spring I always have to careful for the lyrebirds standing in the middle of the bloody road doing their song and dance routine at me.

Sir, yes your dance and collected sounds is very intriguing but I am the wrong species and just trying not to run you over!

[kageki-kokoro]

Beautiful Singles Are Shooting By At 60 MPH In Your Area