Hanem flies

that's the real rough working title of this. all of my writing projects were things with long histories that kept getting all tangled up in my head, and one day I decided to just go back to the source of me ever getting into writing at all, which was daydreaming, to try to just care about something fresh.

The world is archipelagos of islands in the sky, high above the churning ocean below. A lot of life is dependent on flying between these islands - including humans. in the past, they primarily partnered and developed a husbandry with dragonbirds, large spiked and beaked flyers that nest on cliffs. but now dragonbirds are left half-feral as most have changed to more comfortable - or less temperamental - advances in transportation, including balloons, zeppelins, kites, and small homes lashed beneath enormous buoyant organisms that look somewhere between a puffball mushroom and a man-o-war jellyfish. (people nurture and take great care of these guys, and often paint them)

(I'm thinking a lot about the various creatures that make up the ecosystems here. humans have a herd animal that climbs cliffs to eat, and their textile-producing coat is also selected to snag and scythe lots of cliff-reeds and grasses, which are a major material for people. there are clouds of wind-riding microorganisms that lots of flying creatures filter feed on. there are giant cliff-anchored rotifers that use vortexes to suck in their prey. I've been getting a lot of inspiration from unicellular and colonial organisms)

(I had this cute little idea that there could be a lot of magnetically-charged ore around, and that's the primary thing that makes the islands float, and it could be being utilized for flying vessels - some small, rich islands are getting mined out from the inside)

anyway, the story itself is about Hanem, a girl from an island whose people are abnormally sedentary and isolationist. she gains the trust of a dragonbird and leaves to explore the world, leaving the prison of safety for the danger of freedom. the skies and islands are mostly wild, and deep and dangerous. most people who live on the wing move about with the winds, and gatherings are temporary events of hundreds of different colorful crafts brought together, sometimes with dedicated plazas for trading, socializing, and cooking/eating set up hanging from ballasts.

Hanem does have a specific goal in mind in her travels, but her main conflict is in herself. she was neglected and mistreated on her home island, and while she's used the break from it to pretend all of that's over and done with, she's still left with the view that she doesn't belong in the world fighting with her desire to be a part of it.

I think if there's anything specific I'd like feedback on, it's this: I wanted Hanem to have some kind of physically-identifiable stigma. she's "marked by the red moon", born on the blood moon, and associated from birth with misfortune and death. This is visually identifiable - my tentative idea was a red, circular birthmark over the temple. it adds complication to the situation - it's not entirely social, there's obviously Something going on. she can hide it with her aviation gear, but in certain social situations it's suspicious not to show your full face.

Hanem's obsession is with the red moon and its mark. she wants to find out what it means, why she's been so beset upon by the world. the stigma draws back to an older civilization, one that left both archaic and advanced ruins about. it's said the knowledge came from them, that their learnings showed the mark to be a sign of ill fate for those around it. but when she finally finds the site this knowledge was said to come from, and some sort of textual or visual record (a mural?), all there is notes that the mark exists, and is tied to the red moon. they draw no conclusions, and there's no link to anything given. it's just something that's built up through the ages, as a game of telephone. it doesn't mean anything about her, and none of it was for any reason.

and it's both freeing and upsetting. infuriating and relieving. it makes hanem reevaluate her place in the world, and what her future could be. it helps her finalize that she's just another part of the weird web of life, and not special in a negative way.




what do you think about the mark? does it make sense? I wanted it to be a bit of an abstracted prejudice that doesnt really Mean anything (like a lot of real life ones...). but i wanted it to be something easily determinable in this world where there's not much recordkeeping. the fact that the moon phase actually leaves a tangible mark is an open-ended mystery and maybe a bit of a red herring, but that's life. that's kind of the point i want to make with this. that there's not answers for everything, especially for the ways people treat you, but you move on and try to find belonging regardless.

Most of the story beats and scenes would be with Hanem immersing herself in new environments and with new people, and having the opportunity to see that she's a part of the world as much as anyone else. Hanem's quest to find the "reason" she's "wrong" would actually be what conflicts with that, her having been raised believing that she's an outlier, special in a bad way, and intentionally or otherwise distancing herself when she has the chance to have real connections.

she grows over the course of the story and makes progress on that front, but her entire world changed very quickly when she left her island, and she's focusing on that goal of uncovering knowledge to avoid having to try to figure out her place in the world and what she wants with her life and her freedom. when she learns there is no answer to be found, she's fully thrown into that openness. but the connections she's made with the world, even limited as they are, let her face the unknown and all of her frustration and fear and make the decision to try anyway



some supporting characters ive got (names are all tentative) are

• Gilmedden, an inventor, a shipwright, who is vibrant and spontaneous, traveling in his big colorful zeppelin workshop. i had already had the idea of his zeppelin having big fun mechanical legs (quadrupedal) for landings and takeoffs, and i had the thought of him being in a chair with the same design functions, letting him crawl over the sides of crafts and stuff while he's working or just being theatric. i wrote his tie with the theme as being "the marriage of human spirit and wild freedom."
  
• Mahanna, the keeper of a flying inn, and very instrumental in organizing and making the connections necessary for the gathering-places. She also is trained to fend off dangerous wildlife (there are many dangerous things in the skies). She's strongwilled, friendly, and protective, and also very private and independent.
  
• an engineer I don't even have a name for, she's just a few years older than Hanem and is Mahanna's daughter though she's her own person. raised in the skies, at home on ropes and catwalks, does a lot of work keeping people's vessels running, and the various temporary systems of gathering-places. good at using self-reliance to also take care of others. she and Hanem met when they were younger, when Mahanna was a travelling merchant and Hanem's island let her dock (their isolationism not being self-sufficient). re-meeting her, Hanem is quite jealous of her ease and confidence and network of care, not knowing it's all hard-won and imperfect (and that, specifically, Mahanna is a great person but not a very good mother.)
  
• Elia/Elana, a swordswoman, a duelist, a traveling woman who drives off wildlife and competes in spectator-sport duels. I mostly wanted her in for self-indulgence, especially to bounce off of Mahanna, who duelled in the past, so they can swordfight homoerotically. but daydreaming at work I thought about her job being half "protector", and her having some power in this world, and power's relationship to oppression and prejudice. I wrote about her having completely bought in to the stigma of the red moon in the past, and in violent grief at losing a daughter, having driven many marked people out of communities and into the wilderness to live or die. she only stopped when she met a community that defended their marked member with force, and greatly injured her. she spent a long time thinking and realizing the darkness in herself, turning the anger inward at what she'd done and viewing herself as nothing more than a weapon, one she needed to use with discipline, care, and distaste. I haven't done too much fitting this concept into the whole, but i think it's interesting, and adds depth and weight to Hanem's whole deal
  
• Vailard! Vailard is Hanem's dragonbird, but it's not like she belongs to her. Dragonbirds are somewhere between feral half-dogs and pigeons; they're around half domesticated, but they were mostly abandoned, after generations of living primarily dependent on humans, being cared for and kept around for a mutual purpose. Dragonbirds still remember that purpose, especially since that purpose is "flying lots of different places with someone" and that's what dragonbirds do normally among their own. There is gear made to pad them for easier, more comfortable riding, but they are lined with a number of spikes that leave the whole sitting area clear but provide hand and footholds. They have talons, beaks, long horns, wings with some opposable digits on the end, long spike-tipped tails. They have a communal social structure, with communication rituals, and during nesting season the nesters are taken care of by the non-nesters of the group as a whole, and who nests cycles with the years or seasons. Anyway, Vailard in specific is a dusty purple color, with a brushing of ruddy, sandy-colored scales down her flank. she's a little bit small, for dragonbirds. she's curious, patient, but easily spooked, and not easily trusting. much in the way Hanem's needing to find purpose with the help of others, Vailard's finding purpose through Hanem, and they both have to slowly learn to respect, trust, and recognize the existence of the other as an individual, as a fellow living thing.
  

so I'm just looking for... any thoughts, on any of this. but especially on the mark of the red moon, and on Hanem, and maybe on Elia/Elana

starting with the things you wanted specific input on:

- mark of the red moon
i personally think on the temple is a good spot, if its stylistically unique it could give the character design some flair as well. my only alternative ideas are giving her different colored eyes (very anime) bcuz it can be off-putting to others and make them wary to approach her even if they didn't know about the stigma of the red moon. or giving her different colored hair (only 1-2% of people in the world are ginger) bcuz its can be pretty hard to hide hair color unless its dyed over or shaved off (and upkeep on that while moving around a ton could be tiresome)

-Hanem
not much to say here, i look forward to hearing her story

-Elia/Elana
an idea to help fit her in: you could have her still challenging her ideas of what the mark means in the story (instead of in the past). while hanem is with mahanna you could have her show up and make a big deal about it but mahanna tells her to cut it out (conflict to drive hanem away from mahanna's refuge?). maybe throw in some forced traveling companions situation with her and hanem (hanem ventures to a dangerous place and elia/elana goes after only for them both to get stuck)? and in the end have her apologize to hanem for being rude and superstitious.
(tbh love the character idea you have for her, i think it will really strengthen the story by having her)


questions to think about:

how do the rumors and stigma start? i think it would be good to think of a good base for these to come from, and might help guide the story or how hanem finds information on the mark.
are there any areas that havent heard of the mark at all? would there be areas where no one would know what shes talking about?
is there anyone else who is just as obsessed with figuring out the answer to the mark (and not able to accept that there is no rhyme or reason to it)? (a character to stop her from pushing to find an answer where there is none and actually focus on herself and her place in the world?)
are there any other moon related markings?


overall comments and input:

i think the story and world you have right now is really unique and i would really want to read the book/comic/however it forms when you make it. it sounds like you have thought about this world for a bit with how much detail you already have. if you go with the idea of the ore making the islands float, you might show examples of ecological destruction with some islands that have been mined out floating dangerously lower than ones that havent. animal companions are so fun in stories and i love it when they are their own character and not just a thing the main character owns.
good job! keep going! keep developing!

thank you so much for the feedback! <3<3<3
I'm planning on this being mostly writing, like a novel. but im trying to let myself feel less constrained by traditional formats and expectations. i think once im ""publishing"" this, eventually, it will be serialized by chapter, probably hosted on my website, and maybe with an illustration for each chapter. I'd love to have some visual art to go with everything, especially since this whole setting is very inspired by Moebius (& Nausicaa, which... is inspired by Moebius.)

I think I want to keep the physical marking of the red moon somewhat low key. in terms of stigma and oppression, people who are very different often get the worst of it, but it can always be a baseless, constructed fear applied even to people almost entirely within the norm. I think with the character of Hanem I want to be showing someone who is different mostly because they've been told they are. her sense of personhood has been distorted from birth, due to something as small as a mark on her temple. I do definitely need to think about if there's any other similar stigmas against classes of "other" people, and if there's any other sort of inexplicable things like the red mark

Hanem's obsession with the mark and its meaning goes hand in hand with her being made to feel less than a person; her goal conflicts with her deeper want, which is to connect with the people she meets. the thing trying to pull her away from the obsession is the possibility of accepting herself as a person that belongs among others, regardless of what she's been told, or what marks her as 'other'. I think her dedication to the goal frays as she goes along, and people like Mahanna, Gilmedden, and the engineer all try to connect with her as a human and tell her their own views on the mark and the world, and as she bonds with Vailard and explores the wilds and sees more of how the whole world is different things working in tandem, and sees herself more as a part of that. But when she gets closer to the goal, and learns little bits more, or even just starts to feel the difficulty of overcoming her lack of feeling of belonging, her drive is strengthened. it's fully shattered when she finds the "source" of the knowledge of the mark, and it has nothing to do with a tie to misfortune, it's more of just a recorded observation of its existence, noting that people born under a blood moon have a strange red mark on their temple.

the little bit I wrote about Elia's past was in the context of her telling it to Hanem; it's kind of a warning, as she's not the only one to do such things. it's also a little driven, selfishly, by wanting judgment. Elia's not fully over the prejudice, and she's attacking it by turning all the hate inward, and especially hates that her actions were only ever supported by her loose organization of duelists slash protectors. what you wrote made me think: maybe Hanem comes into contact with a different zealous duelist, showing the depths of the stigma and having conflict with Hanem. Mahanna protects her - and is also driven to confront Elia, with how she resents her actions but is only driven to self-hating inaction, when she has the power and capability to protect, and stand against those who would continue driving the marked away to their deaths.

I thought about the islands lowering as they were hollowed, it's really cool! I think every island that's ever been inhabited probably has some marks of mining, if the lodestones (magnetic stones) are a core component of a lot of flying vessels. Hanem's island has a lot of cliffside pockmarks and tunnels, where the dragonbirds nest every few seasons; they were probably left there by mining. a lot of islands will have such cliffside tunnels; there are islands that have been in the sky for ages, but others are mined out over generations, and others crumble naturally, either through normal erosion or unseeable forces. new ones rise fully formed from the sea, but generally aren't inhabitable until they're high enough above the turbulent water. but what I mean is that land is a very valuable resource, and so generally they have to be careful with mining, especially since it will speed up the rate at which islands crumble; and they have to designate smaller, richer islands as full mining operations, building platforms around it and making it into a full on mining colony, until it's depleted enough to crumble apart (if mined poorly) or just lower back down into the primordial sea.

i have so many ideas for all of this, and it's hard to keep all of them in mind...! I mostly just need to practice actually writing more. thats kind of why i want to post this chapter by chapter, so I can have smaller, more concrete goalposts that have me writing more often

Jasper wrote:

I think if there's anything specific I'd like feedback on, it's this: I wanted Hanem to have some kind of physically-identifiable stigma. she's "marked by the red moon", born on the blood moon, and associated from birth with misfortune and death. This is visually identifiable - my tentative idea was a red, circular birthmark over the temple. it adds complication to the situation - it's not entirely social, there's obviously Something going on. she can hide it with her aviation gear, but in certain social situations it's suspicious not to show your full face.

^^ Being into disabilities, etc, it might be neat it it encompassed her eye. But that's just me. I'd be inclined to try to make her lack depth perception and how do she get around that with a dragonbird? Having a birthmark without any kind of impact is something I see a lot of Asian dramas pull off, but honestly, it ticks me off because they usually are like: Oh a little make up and it's all fixed. And then if it's a "real" disability, they try to "fix" it by the end of the story. A few short dramas haven't done this, but for me, who has disabilities, it kinda ticks me off to see a visible disability and people go, but makeup, etc.

I would get why you wouldn't want to do this... especially if you don't have life experience, but I'm the type to say, if the opportunity is there to make it a true disability without the whole "rescue" or "trauma porn" angle or "inspiration porn" "Magical disability" I'd go full in with that.

Your story very much sounds YA-ish and I'd lean into the "discovery" part of it too. Don't only focus on the "conflict" part, but don't be afraid of going into the morality, the discovery, and trying to sort out the world.

^^;; Might be overstepping, but when you mention dragonbirds, I also picture Archaeopteryx types. Haha. Like the early dinosaur types which were halfway between birds and dinosaurs. (Birds are dinosaurs and a lot of reptiles are closer related to dinosaurs than they are to each other. Snakes, for example less related to crocs... than crocs are to birds. Haha People got upset at me for that. How dare I say that... but it's true.)

jasper wrote:maybe with an illustration for each chapter

oooo that would be very cool, i love it when authors have visuals to go along with their story, especially in fantasy. a lil peak into how they imagine their world. do you have a map planned out  

jasper wrote:I think I want to keep the physical marking of the red moon somewhat low key.

so more like how people will have lil funny shaped birthmarks? it could vary in placement from person to person too, maybe others can hide it better. another place where it could be hard to cover up could be the back of the hand? although there is something poetic about her not being able to see her own mark easily yet being aware of its presence all the time. lol so i still think your original idea is the best

jasper wrote:the little bit I wrote about Elia's past was in the context of her telling it to Hanem; it's kind of a warning, as she's not the only one to do such things. it's also a little driven, selfishly, by wanting judgment. Elia's not fully over the prejudice, and she's attacking it by turning all the hate inward, and especially hates that her actions were only ever supported by her loose organization of duelists slash protectors. what you wrote made me think: maybe Hanem comes into contact with a different zealous duelist, showing the depths of the stigma and having conflict with Hanem. Mahanna protects her - and is also driven to confront Elia, with how she resents her actions but is only driven to self-hating inaction, when she has the power and capability to protect, and stand against those who would continue driving the marked away to their deaths.

ohh i understand her better now, it has clicked in my brain. are you going to have her get over her internal conflict by the end of the story? i can imagine that moment being like sort of a snap where she finally decides to act (if that makes sense)

islands
so we know the islands are floating between the sea and the upper atmosphere, but do they move as well? like... orbit the world? could they move if people made huge sails? or are they fixed in their position? what would be holding them there (magic maybe)? the idea is so ripe for opportunities theres so much you could do with it

jasper wrote:i have so many ideas for all of this, and it's hard to keep all of them in mind...!

have you tried to make a sticky note wall? write the summary of the ideas on sticky notes and stick them to a wall (or in a notebook if you dont have the space)? you could color code them as well! (im going to try and organize my thoughts for my world building on a cork board so theres that idea too!)

KimYoonmi wrote:^^ Being into disabilities, etc, it might be neat it it encompassed her eye. But that's just me. I'd be inclined to try to make her lack depth perception and how do she get around that with a dragonbird? Having a birthmark without any kind of impact is something I see a lot of Asian dramas pull off, but honestly, it ticks me off because they usually are like: Oh a little make up and it's all fixed. And then if it's a "real" disability, they try to "fix" it by the end of the story. A few short dramas haven't done this, but for me, who has disabilities, it kinda ticks me off to see a visible disability and people go, but makeup, etc.

I would get why you wouldn't want to do this... especially if you don't have life experience, but I'm the type to say, if the opportunity is there to make it a true disability without the whole "rescue" or "trauma porn" angle or "inspiration porn" "Magical disability" I'd go full in with that.

I actually really like that! I am disabled too, so I do really like writing characters with disabilities. I wanted the mark to be not majorly "changing" the affected from the norm, to reflect on how prejudice can have little to no basis whatsoever (I always hate when media that has prejudice and oppression as major themes have it to where... the oppressed are actually dangerous, or have evil magic powers, or whatever. thats barely related though) but I think the altered depth perception is like, just right in the right axis of affecting her life - especially since it wouldn't matter too much if she stayed on her home island, but in the skies it would make her rely on her dragonbird more, which would necessitate more bonding and understanding!

KimYoonmi wrote:^^;; Might be overstepping, but when you mention dragonbirds, I also picture Archaeopteryx types. Haha. Like the early dinosaur types which were halfway between birds and dinosaurs. (Birds are dinosaurs and a lot of reptiles are closer related to dinosaurs than they are to each other. Snakes, for example less related to crocs... than crocs are to birds. Haha People got upset at me for that. How dare I say that... but it's true.)

no, you're absolutely right! birds are dinosaurs and I think that's awesome. I really love the archeopteryx thought and never actually thought about that myself; since I want to make illustrations I did want to figure out what the dragonbirds looked like beyond vague description, so I'm definitely happy to have that bit of inspiration!

bewitchedbat wrote:
do you have a map planned out

I do!!! I was rereading A Wizard of Earthsea and read that Le Guin started writing it by just sketching out a map first thing, and I thought that was a really good idea for any story that's focused on the world and travel.
forgive the quality, I'm bed bound right now so I'm working with a phone and chromebook

that's the main surroundings, it's probably not the full world but rather just a part of the southern hemisphere. I wanted stuff outside the story so there's more cultural context, especially since there is a lot of travel in this society! and there's a lot of ruins of an old civilization scattered around; those people originally came from Shal in the south. some details you might not be able to read: the different clusters of islands are called The Eastern Isles, Western Isles, and Southern Reaches. pretty simple. this is all in the southern hermisphere, so compasses point south, and north is warmer, south is colder.

the main focus is the Eastern Isles; this map is rotated, so north is to the left. Hanem's home isle of Istal is near Vanish, which is named that because it's a very foggy area I think Hanem's travel route will be across the little isles of Vanish, past En-Allit and to Velven Al, where a lot of Shal ruins are. I think dragonbirds can't make super long trips, especially with passengers, so she'll need to get passage on vessels across big gaps like the one past En-Allit.

bewitchedbat wrote:
ohh i understand her better now, it has clicked in my brain. are you going to have her get over her internal conflict by the end of the story? i can imagine that moment being like sort of a snap where she finally decides to act (if that makes sense)

yeah, that's what I was thinking. she pivots from inaction to protection eventually. I'm really mentally in love with Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag" theory of fiction; the focus of storytelling on protection and safekeeping rather than violence and action. Elia values protection; her sense of it was warped into destruction, and she's slowly unraveling that. I think there is a very loose organization of duelist-protectors (I've been mentally referring to them as "armsmen", and they're inspired by a conversation with a friend. I really like cool weapons and the people who use them, but, again, want to write things other than violent conflict. my friend suggested the weapons are primarily for driving away great beasts, and are also very well-crafted tools with uses beyond combat. I've also added on that these people are often entertainers, and do public duels for spectacle, and that their "arms" are as beloved, well-maintained, and cared for as skyfaring vessels.)
But this loose organization of armsmen has had a little corruption of power, especially seen in the unchallenged stigma towards those marked by the red moon, and how it's seen as part of their duty to drive them away from others. Mahanna used to be an armsman, but she left because of the attitudes, weaving her own communal net of protection outside of the traditions and views of the duelists. and this especially leads to her challenging Elia and her place of respect in the group, to do something to change it rather than just sit back and feel angry at herself.

bewitchedbat wrote:so we know the islands are floating between the sea and the upper atmosphere, but do they move as well? like... orbit the world? could they move if people made huge sails? or are they fixed in their position? what would be holding them there (magic maybe)? the idea is so ripe for opportunities theres so much you could do with it

oohhh...... that's a super cool idea, them orbiting the world, but that would mean so much for seasons and environmental conditions, I'd have no idea how to write that! I think they're in relatively fixed positions, but can definitely move a little bit, and oh my god I love love the idea of people putting sails on some of them and using them as vessels!!

bewitchedbat wrote:
have you tried to make a sticky note wall? write the summary of the ideas on sticky notes and stick them to a wall (or in a notebook if you dont have the space)? you could color code them as well! (im going to try and organize my thoughts for my world building on a cork board so theres that idea too!)

I might try that in my notebook! I have two big google docs, and a note page on my phone that I periodically transfer to the google doc, but it'd be really good to do something with a different format


I wanted to add that I've been thinking about music, and wind instruments, being used for communication, even if that communication is just "I'm here". Big chimes and whistles attached to vessels so they sing as they move or as the wind blows, specialized vessels that are also whole instruments that perform songs as flight patterns. specific instruments carried by lots of people, with specific note combinations being understood as different simple meanings (like smoke signals, which would be hard to do in windy areas!) whistles and similar sounds can travel a long ways, and whistled languages have existed in a lot of places.

I like disabilities where it isn't THE plot, but you know still has a minor effect on the overall story without the focus on it being "cured" etc. blindness/vision impairment (such as blurry in that eye) in one eye might be good to look at for something like that. Then the dragonbird would be like a support animal, without being explicit, as you pointed out.

Jasper wrote:




that's the main surroundings, it's probably not the full world but rather just a part of the southern hemisphere. I wanted stuff outside the story so there's more cultural context, especially since there is a lot of travel in this society! and there's a lot of ruins of an old civilization scattered around; those people originally came from Shal in the south. some details you might not be able to read: the different clusters of islands are called The Eastern Isles, Western Isles, and Southern Reaches. pretty simple. this is all in the southern hermisphere, so compasses point south, and north is warmer, south is colder.

the main focus is the Eastern Isles; this map is rotated, so north is to the left. Hanem's home isle of Istal is near Vanish, which is named that because it's a very foggy area I think Hanem's travel route will be across the little isles of Vanish, past En-Allit and to Velven Al, where a lot of Shal ruins are. I think dragonbirds can't make super long trips, especially with passengers, so she'll need to get passage on vessels across big gaps like the one past En-Allit.

Have you read Rainbow Islands? ^^ It's a self-published book that was made off of a tumblr post about floating Islands, etc with LGBTQIA havens in a pure queer joy fashion. It's all discovery and fun at discovering that queer people exist for this queer person who had to live in a pure straight area of the world. The original building of the world was off of a way to turn around a negative reaction into a positive queer outpouring. This transformation from queerphobia to queer joy. Kinda made me think of that, tbh.

BTW, I have a Photoshop plugin/tutorial about how to turn maps one draws or to generate a map that works like Pangea into the proper designated colors per an Earth-like world.

I also did a GIMP tutorial, but I'm not sure if you're interested. Both written out and in video form. I'm half writing a worldbuilding series for my blog. I'm up to governments, but that's excruciatingly slow to write because there are lots of tiny things to remember and fill in.

re: the Music thing. You could consider tin whistle. Similar to the Irish flute or something like that. That's easy to carry around one's neck and because you can play different tunes, that might give the effect you're looking for. There are ones that come in different keys, so you could also tune it per ship/dragonbird, etc. Plus they are cheap to buy if you want to screw around with one for a bit.

Jasper wrote:I was rereading A Wizard of Earthsea and read that Le Guin started writing it by just sketching out a map first thing, and I thought that was a really good idea for any story that's focused on the world and travel.

i remember reading that! how she had like an actual drawn out map while she wrote so she could easily reference the areas. thats actually what im doing as well for my story lol, cuz i realized that i needed to have a frame of reference for where everything is and how its places since my story is about travel and seeing the world (although its not framed like that)

i love seeing maps for fantasy worlds tho, seeing how authors lay it out and how they want their characters to move through the world. its very interesting. do you think you might do more stories in that world? since you have so much you wont really get to touch in the story you are working on now

Jasper wrote:yeah, that's what I was thinking. she pivots from inaction to protection eventually. I'm really mentally in love with Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag" theory of fiction; the focus of storytelling on protection and safekeeping rather than violence and action. Elia values protection; her sense of it was warped into destruction, and she's slowly unraveling that. I think there is a very loose organization of duelist-protectors (I've been mentally referring to them as "armsmen", and they're inspired by a conversation with a friend. I really like cool weapons and the people who use them, but, again, want to write things other than violent conflict. my friend suggested the weapons are primarily for driving away great beasts, and are also very well-crafted tools with uses beyond combat. I've also added on that these people are often entertainers, and do public duels for spectacle, and that their "arms" are as beloved, well-maintained, and cared for as skyfaring vessels.)
But this loose organization of armsmen has had a little corruption of power, especially seen in the unchallenged stigma towards those marked by the red moon, and how it's seen as part of their duty to drive them away from others. Mahanna used to be an armsman, but she left because of the attitudes, weaving her own communal net of protection outside of the traditions and views of the duelists. and this especially leads to her challenging Elia and her place of respect in the group, to do something to change it rather than just sit back and feel angry at herself.

ooo thats a very cool concept! do the armsmen all have different weapons? would those give insight to what kind of person they are? im guessing you already had an idea for the weapon Elia and Mahanna would carry?
would there be some armsmen who reformed after the main organization got corrupted? or did they kind of just blend into the rest of society?

Jasper wrote:that would mean so much for seasons and environmental conditions, I'd have no idea how to write that!

lol fair that would make it 1000x more difficult to keep track of, maybe that idea is better off for a space story

Jasper wrote:I might try that in my notebook! I have two big google docs, and a note page on my phone that I periodically transfer to the google doc, but it'd be really good to do something with a different format

yee, i started with notes and such on my computer but i find that its harder for me to really delve into building when i cant visually see stuff, so im trying to do more physical notetaking so i can spread it out while im working and reference it

Jasper wrote:
I wanted to add that I've been thinking about music, and wind instruments, being used for communication, even if that communication is just "I'm here". Big chimes and whistles attached to vessels so they sing as they move or as the wind blows, specialized vessels that are also whole instruments that perform songs as flight patterns. specific instruments carried by lots of people, with specific note combinations being understood as different simple meanings (like smoke signals, which would be hard to do in windy areas!) whistles and similar sounds can travel a long ways, and whistled languages have existed in a lot of places.

oh thats really cool! any ship or vessel without them would seem dangerous and a threat then. id imagine that ports would be quite loud when theres a lot of vessels coming in and out

KimYoonmi wrote:
Have you read Rainbow Islands? ^^ It's a self-published book that was made off of a tumblr post about floating Islands, etc with LGBTQIA havens in a pure queer joy fashion. It's all discovery and fun at discovering that queer people exist for this queer person who had to live in a pure straight area of the world. The original building of the world was off of a way to turn around a negative reaction into a positive queer outpouring. This transformation from queerphobia to queer joy. Kinda made me think of that, tbh.

That sounds really sweet! I'll definitely have to check that out, it'd be really cool to read about how someone else does floating islands, and a nice premise in general.

KimYoonmi wrote:
BTW, I have a Photoshop plugin/tutorial about how to turn maps one draws or to generate a map that works like Pangea into the proper designated colors per an Earth-like world.

I've drawn a lot of maps digitally; in the past I would generate maps with Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator and then tweak it myself and meticulously draw over it, but I've been doing bits of research here and there on climate patterns and biomes and such, so I can mostly do it by myself. I probably wouldn't use your plugin/tutorial, but I am super interested in seeing it! It sounds really cool!

I'm also interested in your worldbuilding tutorials, if you'd be comfortable linking that. I've generally been trying to find my own styles of building up the foundation of worlds, because otherwise I get bogged down and overwhelmed in stuff that's not important to me, but it's still important to see other people's ideas and processes because it can still help build up my own.

KimYoonmi wrote:
re: the Music thing. You could consider tin whistle. Similar to the Irish flute or something like that. That's easy to carry around one's neck and because you can play different tunes, that might give the effect you're looking for. There are ones that come in different keys, so you could also tune it per ship/dragonbird, etc. Plus they are cheap to buy if you want to screw around with one for a bit.

Ohh, that's really cool!!! Thank you so much, I've been trying to find real-life instruments similar to the ideas I had

bewitchedbat wrote:
I remember reading that! how she had like an actual drawn out map while she wrote so she could easily reference the areas. thats actually what im doing as well for my story lol, cuz i realized that i needed to have a frame of reference for where everything is and how its places since my story is about travel and seeing the world (although its not framed like that)

it's a really useful practice! and in wizard of earthsea especially it works really well for her, every part of the journey is traced in relation to every surrounding landmark, it adds a lot to the sense of being in the world & Ged's knowledge of it and navigational skills.

bewitchedbat wrote:
do you think you might do more stories in that world? since you have so much you wont really get to touch in the story you are working on now

hoo, maybe in the future. trying not to bite off more than i can chew, lmao! all my past stories had scales that were way too big

bewitchedbat wrote:
yee, i started with notes and such on my computer but i find that its harder for me to really delve into building when i cant visually see stuff, so im trying to do more physical notetaking so i can spread it out while im working and reference it

god that does sound nice... aside from digital notetaking i've also used notebooks, but flipping back and forth between pages isn't much different from trying to find it in a doc. if i had a genuine workstation writing desk, i'd be all over that. i might have a lot of table space to myself in a few months... things to think on

bewitchedbat wrote:
oh thats really cool! any ship or vessel without them would seem dangerous and a threat then. id imagine that ports would be quite loud when theres a lot of vessels coming in and out

yes!!!!!!!!!!! awesome thank you. even tho im wanting this to be a relatively low-hostility world, with a lot of community, where most of the danger comes from wild animals, theres definitely still gotta be some sort of pirates or renegades or something

https://www.tumblr.com/kimyoonmiauthor/703659843422208000/worldbuildingthe-bare-basics?source=share

I have a whole series... ^^;; Basically, if you're going to build an earth-like world, what do you need. And if you're aren't here are some things to look at type of thing.

But the Geography ones is here:
https://www.tumblr.com/kimyoonmiauthor/704668966231179264/worldbuilding-physical-geography-and-map-making?source=share

I took the college classes for it. 'cause I wanted to nerd so hard, so I joke my hidden degree is worldbuilding.

I'm still working on things like clothes and government, but I've covered subsistence systems extensively. (lol 50 pages of it.) How to build aliens and xenofauna (I put up the rule that nature gives no fucks). A treaties on how to do gender and sexuality. Writing battles (using some things my History profs said). Family, marriage, socialization, etc. So if you search the blog I put up the theory, but then also link various resources along the way so you can use it more as a jumping off point.

It gives things I would like to see more of in SFF (like less white cishet set ups? You have this whole other world and you have a harem set up, a sex positive environment, and you're not playing with gender and how sex is termed and sticking to Victorian shame? Oh c'mon. That sort of commentary.)

I have other things on the blog like story theory and particularly my harrowing journey trying to find a stupid diagram for Antigone that's wrong. (Instead I found everything else along the way. TT Harrowing because of how many of those people hate people like us. The amount of direct hate of women writing is astounding to me. (I'm NB, though) And the amount of failing to mention Queer and LGBTQIA, even when they contributed, or trying to skip over them, TT But I do it anyway. And I got jobs off of it.).

But yeah, it has lots of random resources on there. Also probably shows a bit of how nerdish I am.

Anyway, The only downside to an Irish whistle is that the sea air might corrode it a bit over time, but IIRC the whistle was often used by Irish Sailors, so it might be something good to investigate (i.e. if It would need to be replaced X number of years)

I still want cooler aliens on SF shows. They are so much like Anthropods.

Oh I love your top down approach..........!!! I really have to hold myself on a leash to avoid getting too bogged down in details and lost in the bigger picture, but I'm definitely going to try and jump around with your tips and build up the world a bit. I do generally think a lot about what the land is like, how people live, what they do and make. I'm wanting to research a lot more because it's a very loosely organized culture and society, because everyone's mostly nomadic, and I just don't know much about non-feudalist societies, heh. thank you so much for sharing <3

oh the air would definitely corrode it...! that's a fun detail. they're generally pretty high above the sea, but there's a lot of fog that would probably be carrying some of the salt, + you get a lot closer to the sea when you're flying around, a lot of the time. everything wears out over time, especially when you're using and stressing them a lot, and that's always a big pressure on trade and production. even people living mostly 'on their own' have to meet up with others to trade every so often. I read Wheel Of Time (just the first one) a while ago and the beginning was set in a tiny little town that was mostly self sufficient, but they sold wool, and on certain schedules a merchant would roll in and sell them needles, the kind of stuff they can't make themselves, and other traveling people (obviously based on romani) would come by to fix their pots. it's simple, but I always love when books have little details on how groups of people would actually live and interact with each other.

and yes!! cooler scifi aliens, always. have you heard of Runaway To The Stars? I follow the guy who makes it on tumblr; he has amazing designs, working heavily with plausible speculative xenobiology, it's so cool. + also humans who have been genetically altered!

The basic idea is that once you read it and know the basics, then you can world build quicker and have an idea of how to research faster and world build faster rather than be bogged down by detail. So if I want to fill out the government section, I just lean into the resources I already know where to go to to make up some nasty politics.

If I want to write food, I just check off parts of the list. Is it foreign? How hard is it to make, etc.

Granted, anything not Earth based you have to research greater, but I try my best to give hints along the way of what you can do for that. Wandering planets? cool. Water on moons, but no light? Cool.

I put it in rough order of bigger to smaller and in order of my Anthro classes too. Magic and religion should come second to last, and art comes dead last. Because often religion is there to tell you how the society is should stay that way. But art challenges the status quo. But you can't challenge the status quo if you don't know what that is. And it would be super, super boring to have the status quo be pretty much the already written (as in other books) status quo.

For forager groups, the best ones to look at are probably Sami (artic) Mongolian Steppes, and the Kung! Rich Foragers are your NW Coast Indians. You might want to round out with Polynesians who are super, super cool. Though they aren't foragers, but do live on islands similar to what you described, so it gives you an idea of island life. I put a fair amount of subsistence rules about Polynesians in the subsistence doc, which gives you the bare minimum about economy. I LOVE trade. Makes me happier than all of the stupid violence in the world. So I spend a whole lot of time talking about trade and how it didn't suddenly come with European settlers—how it was all the way back to Homo Erectus. How people will travel, etc. And also migratory patterns of people and why they would travel. Haha, I know a 50-page doc, but it should help.

One of my profs did his field work on the Yapese people, which was an interesting look at gender roles.


So yeah, I info dump because I so want to get away from white polytheistic/Monotheism with no twists and sounds like Judeo Christianity with no twists. SOOOOOO duuuullllll.

Nomads will have to usually trade, but you could also consider instead of intensive agriculture also, something like the thing that atolls do which is selective horticulture. (Atolls are cool. We're losing Earth's, but that sucks so much.) And there are the horticultural practices of most of Polynesia (You should also look up the Kula ring, just to blow your mind. I'm not saying lift Polynesian culture. I'm saying they are cool.) Ooo–oooo... there is also Trobriand Islanders who have men raise the children and call them something that sounds a lot like "ma" and the women govern, and then the word for them sounds more like "pa" or "ba". The women are the ones that participate in the Kula ring.

Anyway, yeah, I use real world to build up, but give other sources to think about it if you want to deviate.

Wheel of Time that way, I don't think is 100% accurate. Merchants often traveled by foot in human history. But European erasure would like you to forget things like the coming of the Renaissance was due to the Islamic Empire. They also conveniently forget about Rromani, and there were always people coming from Africa. Yes, there are trade winds, but if you have connected continents with sailors (and Eff it, the Polynesians sailing around Europeans—beating Europeans as the second group to make it to the Americas) then there were people coming. Queen Elizabeth I complained about too many Black people in London. The pub that Shakespeare frequented had a Black woman. Othello is Black because there are Black people and the first staging of it had a Black person playing the role.

London was a port town, but it wasn't as if Germany was "purely" white either. Rromani were there too and originally were kicked out of NW India.

I know some people who like to be "white purists" argue, but trade networks, where you sell it, but information also traveled on that highway, so by the time you have a healthy boating industry, you've heard at least about far off China, etc. And someone will desire to go there for X good, violently or peacefully. The people who try to argue there was an anti-PoC forcefield around Europe, therefore they never saw PoCs baffle me. Dumas Senior (not the writer) was Black. And no other region on Earth spends so much time arguing for race purity than Europeans, who ironically are the ones that spread theirs across the globe so much through imperialism and colonialism. !@#$ European ideas of trade and consent (i.e. lack thereof). TT I have a post up about types of cultural Dissemination too. From Appreciation, trade to imperialism.

Anyway, yeah, going to the smithy to have a new whistle made might be interesting in a pre-industrial society and maybe the tuning has to be just right for the dragonbirds to hear it? Or the tuning is slightly off since the last time so you have to retrain them? There's so much you can do with that.

im starting to have the idea that I want another stigmatized outsider in the story. the duelists/armsmen have driven many of those marked by the moon into places they could never survive in, but there has to be at least one who managed to live despite all of it. I had the image of them being a stowaway, they dont have their own means of travel like Hanem does. and maybe they have people taking care of them, but they're kept hidden. outside of specific communities, the people marked are generally not safe.
I'm having some self consciousness about mostly having ideas from the details of other media but that's how a lot of art works, duh. anyways I've been watching wolf's rain. and its made me think a lot about how different it is to be an outsider when you at least know there are others like you.
Hanem and this person (im really not sure on the details lol. everything i can think of feels contrived) wouldnt band together, they're living their own lives. and this person, due to being in active danger while Hanem was neglected but mostly safe on her isolationist island, is a lot more wary of the world. theyre harder and even less trusting. they see hanem as someone on the same level, though. they know theres a connection, even if what shes experienced is different.

additionally ive been working on an illustration for the first chapter... not sure i like how its coming out but its fun and its practice. i havent used acrylic ink in a long time so im relearning it. im setting weird random unfamiliar goals for myself. i almost never do full illustrations, i havent used acrylic ink in a long time, im planning on coloring with watercolors and ive barely ever used them!! and i havent done any actual art outside of digital art in a long time! but to balance that i tell myself its okay to take jt at my own pace and its okay if it doesn't turn out how we wanted. its all just stuff i want to do More (including just the idea of interweaving art and writing) and this is basically an excuse to do it more. but yeah. im working on that and on actually shaping up the first chapter (i have a lot of writing but its all over the place) and then making a place for it on my neocities. im excited about it.

--


@KimYoonmi , omg!!! thats so much good info. im definitely not looking to fully lift stuff from other cultures, I tend to roll my eyes when other white people make Exotic Fantasy Cultures but theyre just [insert earth culture], and they're banking on no one knowing about those people + just treating the culture as exotic dressing. but inspiration is so good, seeing how people in different environments, with different living situations and cultures live their lives is really good for understanding how to shape your own. something i especially like seeing specifically is vernacular architecture, generations of knowledge shaping specialized structures (or non-structures, Where You Sleep?) for thriving in any type of environment. it gets me really mad about living in a stuffy drywall box, in a swamp.

and i agree that the white european standard in fantasy is so overdone. i have a soft spot for the classic knights and swords and such, but... theres so much more you could do. its Fantasy, you could be making new worlds, not just doing european christian feudalism again.

ooohhh the dragonbirds hearing the whistle...... most people don't use dragonbirds anymore, they've been mostly abandoned for other newer forms of transit that are less likely to claw you, so the most common whistles probably wouldnt be tuned towards them, just towards other people. but that could absolutely be used to call a dragonbird over, like whistling to a horse (assuming thats a real thing and not just a videogame thing, haha...) that'd be really awesome for adding to Hanem and Vailard learning to work together. Hanem might need to find someone who actually still knows how to tune a whistle for dragonbirds. I think she actually starts with a decent one, because she's handed down some basic equipment from an old woman who rode them in her youth, and id already decided that included a whistle, which i think just about everyone in the skies (controlling their own mode of transport) has one, and if it's from a rider's equipment it'd probably be that kind. but having to repair or replace it would be a fun little challenge.

youre absolutely right, there is an unfathomable about of misinformation and ignorance and straight up denial about the existence of non-white people in an infinite range of geographic areas and time periods. humans have been travelling and exchanging populations forever! especially as our modes of travel became more and more sophisticated, and trade became much wider ranging! theres just so much ingrained racism playing with an idealized vision of past white european cultures - the 'idealizing' involving purity primarily, purity of culture and of race. and they dont at all think that it's racist, because of course not. + if theyre ever presented with the idea that maybe there were white people other places, they'd be fine with accepting that, of course, of course.

I have a lot I want to research and I'm researching very slowly bc of it; in addition to really wanting to build up the human aspect of the world with cultures and people and what they subsist on and create, im also very focused on making the natural animal aspects a mix of familiar, fantasy, and alien; ive especially been focused on basing creatures off of unicellular and/or microscopic life - i think i mentioned that in the intro post, but legitimately ive been doing so much research on that, especially because its a little hard to find stuff about it that i can understand and picture in my minds eye (my goal of an illustration per chapter makes me want to be able to draw most of these things). Journey to the Microcosmos on youtube has been really good, and ive been checking out a lot of books from the library (though I had to actually go out of the way to my city's biggest library to find anything actually decent! but i got a Giant book on protozoa and rotifers and slime molds and all those awesome guys, all the "lower life"). ive also been borrowing books off archive.org, researching different ecological systems especially cliff ecologies (dragonbirds nest in cliffs, and human-kept herd animals forage on cliffs, and people's main Plant Material for weaving and such is reeds from cliffs - some of it gathered by their herd animals snagging it in their hides or something. i think generally speaking theres probably about as much Cliff Surface in this world, if not more, than solid ground). even if im doing a lot more reading than writing it's been really fun, I genuinely love learning stuff (especially about people and nature, surprise surprise) and im not really able to go to college so it's been nice to make myself do it lol. always gotta have a higher purpose im working towards (right now, being building up this world).

Just for fun, then you should look up Bower birds. The David Attenborough version of the video is fun. He has a few.

There is also a bird that is dubbed the "Michael Jackson bird".

Usually people make the whole nesting thing dull in fantasy, but I think you could have fun. Crows decorate their nests with shiny objects, etc.


Yes, definitely, it's not about "lifting the Kula ring" It's about understanding the concept and idea behind the Kula ring, to its core and then using that knowledge to build something entirely different. You could ask things, such as, "What does prestige mean for the people of my made up culture?" after looking at it. Instead of doing a facsimile. And who has access to prestige and why?

That's how I see it, at least.

@KimYoonmi
ooh, yeah, all the birds of paradise have so many fun inspirational behaviors. i think dragonbirds definitely have some courtship rituals and such, but they're less frivolous; all the funnest real-world bird courtship stuff evolved in an absence of predators! I'm gonna think about bird behaviors and social practices shaped by pressure from predation

anyway I've been having a very prolonged, very bad time, physically. im going a lot slower than usual. but ive still been writing, and working on that first chapter i want to put up as a jumping off point. and im way behind on all the research/reading i want to do! but at whatever rate, the world is building in my head and in my writing.

I've realized a huge inspiration for the environments and aesthetics I was envisioning are the movie Nausicaa and the artist Moebius. and then I happened to find an artbook of both of them, and learned Miyazaki was inspired by Moebius and Moebius was inspired by Miyazaki! Nausicaa is obviously built off of Moebius' art, and then there's drawings Moebius did of Nausicaa! it was so cool to see.
searching back in this thread I think i already vaguely brought this up. whatever! i've been thinking about it!

but anyways
1. aside from actual notes and writing, ive been trying to shore up a little simplified list of the stuff about the world (and the characters) that i want to hash out a bit. a nice little skeleton would help with me writing, and give me something to post here. it's primarily trying to shape and reign in my super adhd brain that vibrates between wanting to worldbuild until my hands fall off, and wanting to say f*** it and dive in. but it'll have little points of interest in the geography, the creatures, the cultures... i've written up a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, like language families, cultural history, migration patterns, folklore and mythology, dragonbirds, various biomes and ecologies, domesticated animals, island formation and geology, etc. i gotta practice organizing it and making it make sense.

2. I am still holding this forum in my mind's eye a lot of the time! even if it's slow or I don't post for a long time. i mean, it's already met my goal, which is just 'talk to some people about my writing'. big thanks to both of you for being here for any amount of time. i'm still hoping to open it up to some other people, because i keep seeing more people dealing with the same issues that led to me making this... which is to say, just... facing ignorance and bigotry in other writing spaces. it'd be nice if this forum could be some help to people beyond me. but even if it ends up just being a place I post a lot of notes, that's fine too. :-)

definitely keep us updated on your progress! if you need any second opinions about anything, i know i would love to help where i can.
this beginning of the year has really felt rough for me as well, but i hope you can have things turn towards the better! you are making me think that its time i rewatch Nausicaa agian, its been so long since i first watched it.

were you able to make a page on your neocities? you should drop a link to it

and have you developed the stigmatized outsider? were you thinking they would be the same age or older/younger?