I just love infrastructure in general. I love worldbuilding -- continents, ecosystems, constructed languages. I love figuring out what that setting would do to people or other lifeforms living there.
I've discovered that when you lay out how things are constructed, it becomes very easy to see other options, and then, to play around with those options in different designs.
Homestuck is a very structural fandom. The trolls have four romances, and each quadrant has its own rules, and they are divided into pairs based on different criteria. The trolls have 12 (standard) colors of blood, each with its own tendencies and cultural expectations; and there are clusters based on rank or abilities within those 12.
If you look at A Conflagration of Dragons, that is all hand-built. (You don't have to read the poems for this part, I've posted some of my notes.) No humans, no standard-fantasy-races except for the dragons and even those are constructed with logical patterns. I literally sat down with an elemental system and made lists of traits associated with each element, then assigned each race 2 elements and some traits based om those. I figured out how certain major features, like wings and horns, are passed down. There are notes on which races have close or casual alliances, and which don't like each other. There are notes on certain well-known things about relationships, like how Hachi babies are quiet and Madhusudana babies are demanding; so a Madhusudana usually can't raise a Hachi baby at all, and a Madhusudana baby will run a Hachi foster parent into the ground. Laying things out like that not only let me avoid prior patterns to create something new, it gave me lots of story hooks. And that's my idea of fun. I look at story or character elements as a set of Legos, and I want to dump out the box and mess them around.
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Re: Try this ...
Date: 2024-01-13 05:33 am (UTC)From:I just love infrastructure in general. I love worldbuilding -- continents, ecosystems, constructed languages. I love figuring out what that setting would do to people or other lifeforms living there.
I've discovered that when you lay out how things are constructed, it becomes very easy to see other options, and then, to play around with those options in different designs.
Homestuck is a very structural fandom. The trolls have four romances, and each quadrant has its own rules, and they are divided into pairs based on different criteria. The trolls have 12 (standard) colors of blood, each with its own tendencies and cultural expectations; and there are clusters based on rank or abilities within those 12.
If you look at A Conflagration of Dragons, that is all hand-built. (You don't have to read the poems for this part, I've posted some of my notes.) No humans, no standard-fantasy-races except for the dragons and even those are constructed with logical patterns. I literally sat down with an elemental system and made lists of traits associated with each element, then assigned each race 2 elements and some traits based om those. I figured out how certain major features, like wings and horns, are passed down. There are notes on which races have close or casual alliances, and which don't like each other. There are notes on certain well-known things about relationships, like how Hachi babies are quiet and Madhusudana babies are demanding; so a Madhusudana usually can't raise a Hachi baby at all, and a Madhusudana baby will run a Hachi foster parent into the ground. Laying things out like that not only let me avoid prior patterns to create something new, it gave me lots of story hooks. And that's my idea of fun. I look at story or character elements as a set of Legos, and I want to dump out the box and mess them around.