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Since it's Worldbuilding Wednesday, I've decided to write up a bunch of questions that might work for participants might work in WBW. Admittedly, much of these are oriented towards fantasy and non-Earth societies and cultures, but! Still useful.
I was heavily inspired by this list by the SFWA.
What is considered a normal family unit in your culture(s)?
What sort of magical creatures exist in your world? (Dragons, fair folk, spirits, etc)
What does a right of passage look like in your culture(s)?
How does someone propose marriage in your culture(s)? How long do they stay engaged, and what marks the marriage?
What weather-based customs exist in your culture(s)?
What customs surround death and burial? Are the people of your culture(s) even buried?
What distinguishes a formal dinner from a casual one?
What foods are considered taboo in your culture(s)?
If your culture is largely unable to get safe, clean water, what is considered a good substitute?
Are any gestures considered rude or vulgar? Why?
What is a way to show respect? To whom is it owed (parents, teachers, rank superiors, etc)?
When a visitor comes by, how are they greeted and treated? Is there special ceremony?
What is something your culture never talks about when talking to an acquaintance (e.x. religion)? What is something they always do (e.x. asking after the health of someone's family)?
What is considered courteous to gift to a visitor, if any?
How are people with magical talent treated?
How intertwined is magic and science, and how does this effect the views of it?
What is the calendar like? What celebrations are there?
What is the best way to get around? What's the cheapest?
Do many people own pets, like cats and dogs? What about magical pets?
How is war declared by a certain culture?
Does your culture have a concept of sin? If so, what do they consider a sin versus virtue?
What's a major historical event that changed the course of the culture forever?
If your world has magic, how did it get there? Was it always there? Or did it come about through other means (science gone wrong, melding of a separate plane of existence, etc)?
What is one major flaw or loophole in the law? Have people taken advantage of it?
How would a state of emergency be declared? Who can do it? Under what circumstances can it be declared?
hey yall, back again. the two women in the middle of the left photo are me and my mom. ever since mama and dad’s split our brother went off the grid, so we’ve been braving it alone. no luck on the job front, with prescriptions to pay and my mama’s disability. i’m begging y’all to come through for us again. rent is $600 but between odd jobs i can cover $200, which means i’m hoping for $400 by the 30th.
"Magic cares about what something means, not what it literally is. So when we adopted you into this family, when you truly accepted us as your parents, you became part of it in the eyes of magic. Which is why you've begun to manifest some aspects of our bloodline."
@eid_yara
Credit to VelvetWonder on Twitter.
fun thing about herding and/or generally neurotic breeds: they are really good at following rules you have instituted, but they will also make their own Dog Rules they will follow stringently whether or not you like it
Whumper dialogue
“Darling, if you still believe in a god, get on your hands and knees and pray. Because if you’re lucky, and They decide you deserve it, They are the last person who can save you now”
So listen up y’all, nothing drives me crazier as both a writer and a scientist than seeing alien diseases that make no fuckin’ sense in a human body.
If you’re talking about alien diseases in a non-human character, you can ignore all this.
But as far as alien diseases in humans go, please remember:
DISEASE SYMPTOMS ARE AN IMMUNE RESPONSE.
Fever? A response to help your immune cells function faster and more efficiently to destroy invaders.
Sore/scratchy throat? An immune response. Diseases that latch onto the epithelium of the throat (the common cold, the flu) replicate there, and your body is like “uh no fuckin’ thanks” and starts to slough off those cells in order to stop the replication of new virus in its tracks. So when it feels like your throat is dying? guess what it literally is. And the white spots you see with more severe bacterial infections are pus accumulation, which is basically dead white blood cells, and the pus is a nice and disgusting way of getting that shit outta here.
(No one really knows why soreness and malaise happens, but some scientists guess that it’s a byproduct of immune response, and others suspect that it’s your body’s way of telling you to take it easy)
headache? usually sinus pressure (or dehydration, which isn’t an immune response but causes headaches by reducing blood volume and causing a general ruckus in your body, can be an unfortunate side effect of a fever) caused by mucous which is an immune response to flush that nasty viral shit outta your face.
Rashes? an inflammatory response. Your lymphocytes see a thing they don’t like and they’re like “hEY NOW” and release a bunch of chemicals that tell the cells that are supposed to kill it to come do that. Those chemicals cause inflammation, which causes redness, heat, and swelling. They itch because histamine is a bitch.
fatigue? your body is doing a lot–give it a break!
here is a fact:
during the Spanish 1918 Plague, a very strange age group succumbed to the illness. The very young and very old were fine, but people who were seemingly healthy and in the prime of life (young adults) did not survive. This is because that virus triggered an immune response called a cytokine storm, which basically killed everything in sight and caused horrific symptoms like tissue death, vasodilation and bleeding–basically a MASSIVE inflammatory response that lead to organ damage and death. Those with the strongest immune systems took the worst beating by their own immune responses, while those with weaker immune systems were fine.
So when you’re thinking of an alien disease, think through the immune response.
Where does this virus attack? Look up viruses that also attack there and understand what the immune system would do about it.
Understand symptoms that usually travel together–joint pain and fever, for example.
So please, please: no purple and green spotted diseases. No diseases that cause glamorous fainting spells and nothing else. No mystical eye-color/hair-color changing diseases. If you want these things to happen, use magic or some shit or alien physiology, but when it’s humans, it doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense.
This has been a rant and I apologize for that.