I wanted to make a post so I can quickly reference everything I’ve written/made for my paracosms. I’ll be updating it as I add stuff, so if you want to stay updated, be sure to check back here! (Or if you wanna get added to a taglist, that works too!)

Keep reading

creatingblackcharacters:

“It takes HOW LONG?” Black Hair is an Art (pt.2)

(This is part two of the hair lessons, focusing on writing/narratives. If you want to know how the styles LOOK, refer to part 1 and its addendum)

Now that you know what our hair actually looks like, we’re going to discuss incorporating that into your writing (original fic, fanfic, webcomics, anything with a narrative). You don’t HAVE to give us a dissertation on “how you studied ‘The Black People’s Hair’” in your story. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. I’m just asking you to CONSIDER the effort and existence of it. The same way you put effort into discussing nonblack hair textures? Should be the sort of tenderness and care you put into discussing ours. It does not stand to reason that I have read thousands of stories describing “the silky, black/blonde tresses/waves that fell down their pale back as their lover ran their fingers through them”, but Black readers have nothing of the sort to compare to without seeking our own authors out. Our hair deserves some loving and adoration too!

This is a very long post describing hairstyles and how they can correspond to your character’s design and decisions, so I’ll put a read more here. The sections are organized into ’Twist Out’, 'Afros’, 'Locs’, 'Braids’, 'Black Men’, and 'Straight Hair’ if you Ctrl F. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take your time to read all of this at some point though, as I put a lot of resources and explanation into this. I’m trusting you!

Keep reading

scorpiolight-ships:

I’m trying to brainstorm ideas for my fic abt me and Mike and I just had an idea

So my s/i acts as the mechanic for Fazbear’s Friend (not their official job, they’re there as a set designer but the owner (phone dude) is way too cheap to actually hire one and knows he can dump all the work on me rip)

So one day the AC breaks and so everyone comes into work prepared for that and dressed for the heat (except for Mike, of course, who’s still completely covered from head to toe) and he um. 😳 👉👈 really likes my outfit (sweats. looks away. blushes. i am so not used to saying stuff about him liking me. I can say i like him just fine but the other way around? hoo boy)

Anyway there was a bit in my daydream where i had to crawl through one of the vents to get the fan working and he was watching me on the cameras so he could unscrew the vent cover and pull me out when i was done 🤭 but also that’s why there’s no vent covers so Springtrap is eventually able to crawl around in there all willy nilly WHOOPS

anyways sorry for that train of thought ramble. I love him

aesthetic-writer18:

HEART ASK GAME

❤️- If your character was in modern day(or depending on the time period if they were in the past), what job would they aspire to have?

🧡- what’s your character’s worst irrational fear?

💛- is your character religious? If so to what extent?

💚- What does your character like to wear? Why do they wear the clothes they do?

💙- What would your character be doing if they hadn’t gone through what the have?(Don’t play with me I know they’re probably traumatized)

💜- How many languages does your character speak?

🤎- How much physical pain can your character withstand? How much mental pain?

🖤- What kind of music would your character listen to?

🤍- How willing to help a stranger would your character be?

💘- Is your character addicted to anything? Or how do they cope with stress?

💝- What would be the greatest gift your character could receive?

💖- Who’s your character’s best friend if they have one? What makes them work so well?

💗- Who is your character’s greatest influence or inspiration?

💓- Is your character a hopeless romantic? Are they a pessimist, optimist, or realist?

💞- who loves your character the most? Even if the character themselves don’t know it. And why?

💕- What’s your character’s fatal flaw?

❣️- What show/movie/game/book universe would your character thrive in?

❤️‍🩹- What would your character look like if they were a deity? And what would they have power of?

💔- Does your character play a sport? If not, what sport would the play?

❤️‍🔥- Would you character go to heaven or hell? Where do they think they’d go?

star-drip:

stark-raving-madd:

bro. dude. a madd rp server would go so hard actually

fuckkkk

you’re so right wtf

One of my main paracosms actually used to be an rp server

I miss it 😭

dedicatedfollower467:

brehaaorgana:

oh-opossum:

jeanjauthor:

mindfulwrath:

derinthescarletpescatarian:

lethalbutterfly:

thatyellowfinch:

dragonpyre:

thatyellowfinch:

dragonpyre:

olyia-stories:

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

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

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

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

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!!!!!!!!

So what is a rain shadow?

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.

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

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.

I do think this could be useful for writers! …Caveat, if you’re going to use this for making a map for anything published (digital or paper, even if it’s only in a fanfic archive or whatever), please, please credit the creator and their program as how you made that map! The more ways information like this gets out there, the more useful it’ll be to other writers, roleplaying game DMs/GMs, creators, etc.

One of my favourites for mapping plates, biomes, etc is Tectonics.js. If you’re familiar with how tectonics shape a planet, you can guess where the features go by toggling plates, crust thickness, etc. Between Mapgen4 and Tectonics.js, we’ve got some pretty sweet tools at our disposal.

More stuff!:

• European Geosciences Union Blog — Beyond Tectonics: Building fictional worlds to better understand our own
• Reshaping Reality’s Worldbuilding Tips
• Worldbuilding pasta’s series, An Apple Pie from Scratch also check their resources page!
• R/worldbuilding’s Reading List. Also check out their collected resources link. This basic geology guide from 11 years ago is still nice.
• Creating an Earth-Like Planet, and The Climate Cookbook (aka Geoff’s Climate Cookbook) technically the climate cookbook is a part of Creating an Earth like Planet I think.
• Related: Worldbuilding Workshop’s “Working Out Climates Using Geoff’s Climate Cookbook.” Which goes through using the resource in order to map make. Also just the Worldbuilding Workshop in General.
• Madeline James Writes’s Worldbuilding Guide
• Worldbuilding 101 (this links to the Biomes section but there’s like…everything.)

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That’s because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: “Notes on Landscape Archaeology.” To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like…studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the “construct paradigm” of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

1. Landscapes are not synonymous with natural environments. Landscapes are synthetic (Jackson, 1984, p. 156), with cultural systems structuring and organizing peoples’ interactions with their natural environments …
2. Landscapes are worlds of cultural product … Through their daily activities, beliefs, and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. …
3. Landscapes are the arena for all of a community’s activities. Thus landscapes not only are constructs of human populations but they also are the milieu in which those populations survive and sustain themselves. A landscape’s domain involves patterning in both within-place and between-place contexts …
4. Landscapes are dynamic constructions, with each community and each generation imposing its own cognitive map on an anthropogenic world of interconnected morphology, arrangement, and coherent meaning …

Basically a “landscape” is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like… Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it’s like…I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it’s easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

• This course syllabus for a Landscape Archaeology class is freely accessible. It includes an online resources page.
• Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009
• (Landscape Biographies is open access, as is Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science: From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach. But I wouldn’t try to read every essay.)

If you are like me and find it helpful to have video reference for a process/activity in addition to a written guide, Artifexian is a YouTube channel that does a LOT of world building stuff and specifically he’s in the process of creating a world following a lot of Worldbuilding Pasta’s methodology!

writing-prompt-s:

weaselle:

tunashei:

Caves are weirder and more varied than you think

my followers can have some cave pics, as a treat

Good reference for writers

hishima:

i love it when ryoko kui draws the gang in a modern setting but they still have their armour on

like this one specifically. jacket over plate and chainmail armour. sweatpants. hiking boots. i wish people dressed like this for real

judyyalvarez:

wizard101 scenery. (4/?)

⤷ ┊baba yaga’s home.