Monsters, Dragons, Beasts, Creatures, Horrors, and Miscellaneous Lifeforms Edition Version 2: Magical and/or Alien BoogalooFAQ:>What is worldbuilding?Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch, all while considering the logistics of these worlds to make them as believable as possible. Worldbuilding asks questions about the setting of a world, and then answers them, often in great detail. Most people use it as a means of creating a setting or the scenery for a story.>"Isn't there a Worldbuilding general in >>>/tg/ already?"Yes, there is. However, that general is focused on the creation of fictional worlds for the intended purpose of playing TTRPG campaigns. Here you can discuss worldbuilding projects that are not meant to be used for a roleplaying setting, but for novels, videogames, or any other kind of creative project.>"Can I discuss the setting of my campaign here, though?"If you want to, but it would probably be better to discuss it on >>>/tg/ . We don't allow the discussion of TTRPG mechanics, however. If you want to discuss stats or which D&D edition is best, this is not the place.>"Can I talk about an existing fictional setting that is not mine?"Yes, of course you can!>"Does worldbuilding need to be about fantasy and elves?"Worldbuilding, as already stated above, and contrary to what many believe, does not inherently imply blatantly copying Tolkien. In fact, there are many science-fiction setting out there, and even entire alternative history settings which do not possess supernatural elements at all. Any kind of science fiction book has an implied setting at least, which involves a certain degree of worldbuilding put into it.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>25183027Yeah, the entire point is that being able to see the future let's you determine it. That's why giving everyone prophecy is one of the two solutions to the Kwisatz Haderach Problem. Someone who can see the future has basically infinite tries to get any possible outcome. And "possible" is a very big word when cause and effect have ceased to be an issue.
>>25183048But the character may not be able to perfectly follow the route he had planned in advance, and there may not be any possible route to some things. For example, taking over the entire nation or winning an Olympic gold medal may be literally impossible from someone not starting from a good initial position or require such an absurd sequence of precise actions that it becomes unrealistic to remember them all and execute them exactly as planned.
>>25183067He gets infinite tries. You could say that he's basically just jumping consciousness from one "Point" to another. It's true, some things are simply impossible to do even for a prophet. If I walk into the ring with prime Mike Tyson with nothing more than prophecy on my side, all that will accomplish is to let me see the beating ahead of time. But prophecy means I will never have to walk into the ring in the first place, or to let me figure out a way to bribe or threaten him into taking a fall. And while that's not an insurmountable advantage, it's still a major one.
>>25183106You are diverging really hard from the standard dictionary meaning of prophecy, by the way.It would be really strange to be someone capable of living an infinite lifetimes in one life. They could watch a movie, reset, watch a different movie, reset again, etc., and finally get bored of that and go to work like they were supposed to. Doing something like successfully becoming the president of the United States would be such a colossal undertaking though that I could very easily see someone getting bored of life before succeeding. Or they could eventually become the president, decide that it wasn't a fun career choice, and reset to try to become a famous musician or a lottery winner instead.
>>25183158Precisely. I presume that from the PoV of the Prophet, there's no real difference whether your consciousness is following a linear path or not. So what if your life from point B1 (original timeline) that you have "lived through" never happened? B2 is better. Or B3, or B4....all the way to Bn, where n is however many futures you could have created.
Nature is a whore, indifferent and cold, that only rewards mindless aggressiveness.That's why an illiterate low-IQ subhuman in some third world favela, is able to get a hot skinny girlfriend and impregnate her with his genes.While you, with all your books, knowledge and refinement, will die as a lonely and miserable incel
>>25183085>>25183105Hey Faggots,My name is John, and I hate every single one of you. All of you are fat, retarded, no-lifes who spend every second of their day looking at stupid ass pictures. You are everything bad in the world. Honestly, have any of you ever gotten any pussy? I mean, I guess it's fun making fun of people because of your own insecurities, but you all take to a whole new level. This is even worse than jerking off to pictures on facebook.Don't be a stranger. Just hit me with your best shot. I'm pretty much perfect. I was captain of the football team, and starter on my basketball team. What sports do you play, other than "jack off to naked drawn Japanese people"? I also get straight A's, and have a banging hot girlfriend (She just blew me; Shit was SO cash). You are all faggots who should just kill yourselves. Thanks for listening.
>>25183136Escorts don't count, friend
>>25183105>It’s classic externalization: instead of asking “what could I improve?”, he blames biology, society, and imaginary “low-IQ rivals.”Reminds me of this essay by Umberto Eco:https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/>8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
>>25183156How is this different from being a lefty and seething about “the rich” having luxuries and the jews being evil because of crying brownoids?
>>25183156I do not think people with both honor and intelligence use this type of rhetoric. Maybe in lacking only one or the other and not necessarily both.Or maybe it is a simple psychological need to hold onto a belief?I guess everyone, or most people, justify their choices to avoid paradigm shift. It's easier to paint over a crack in a wall then to repair it and the foundation.
I remember school and university, where trying to get good grades and paying attention in class made teachers and other students think I'm a nerd, when I would actually just study, say, math on my own, with a tutor, in class, read about it online and still barely pass exams and testsI easily learned english as a child, but when it came to learning a third foreign language in school I was very below average, one of the worst students in my group, it was humiliatingI've now tried to learn a few languages (French, German, Latin, Spanish, Russian, probably a few others I've forgotten too) and I've struggled with them a lot, even studying every day for 3 hours (I did manage to keep up that pace) would generally not net me anything. it doesn't help that there are so many charlatans in the language learning "hobby space" that you don't even know what "method" to use while learning a language. probably the worst thing is that language learning communities are full of intelligent people who have many languages under their belts and this is their special interest and you can't compare yourself to themI like reading books and don't really like video games or TV, so I spend a large chunk of my free time reading. I know a bit about history, philosophy, things like this which automatically make other people think you're intelligent, but it's a bit of an illusion and I've disappointed pretty much every teacher I've had in my life. in general I am a pretentious failure who is well read enough, knows about history, philosophy and thinks he's intelligent, so I can discuss things with other people, but honestly, with the philosophy that I've read it's more that I memorized the logic but don't actually understand anything at all. it would take one actually intelligent person who's read enough as me to show that I'm just a complete fraud and retardI'm too stupid and lazy to ever learn another language
>>25181488A wise man can speak his mind plainly for the entire room to understand. A foolish man will wrap around his thought with poetic and abstract language attempting to explain how it's intelligent to not know ones own mind and thoughts.Bruv spit it out. You don't know what you're thinking, just admit it and then move forward. no need for pretentious foolery.
>>25183092>your social performance has nothing to do with how smart you areholy mother of cope
>>25183092If you were really smart you'd be able to trick women into sleeping with you
Read Mere Christianity's chapter on pride
>>25183169or was it Screwtape Letters? I'm pretty sure both speak of pride so read both.
I keep hearing how Shakespeare stole from other works before himHow true is this?Which works specifically did he steal from?
>>25180498What word would you use instead?
He was was a thief, and that's why he was great. Most people can only copy.
>>25180866Not that anon, but no one who's actually involved in literary analysis or publishing uses the word theft. That's an amateur word born out of inexperience. The closest you get among publishers is that they'll accuse you of plagiarism if you copied, or they might call it derivative if it follows the work of someone else closely without adding anything important. But if you take one story, and you put it in a new context, or you change some part of it so the outcome is different, then it isn't considered theft. For example, if I were to take Star Trek, but I put the story in the renaissance with a regular ol' wooden ship, and the crew is sailing along coasts of unknown countries to establish trade connections with them, then it isn't theft. It would be called literary transposition and would be considered legitimate, provided it brought new consequences to the story. If it's just transposition of show after show with no change to the story, then it's derivative. When Tolkien takes the dwarven names from the Edda and places all of them in his work verbatim, it's still not theft. All art is built on previous art (except perhaps the cave hand paintings of a fucking cow or whatever). Talking about theft because one writer used concepts from another writer will get you laughed out of whatever literary circle you're in.
>>25181483I see
>>25180251>and many othersWhich others?
>children's book>resolves fiction as a mediumHow did he do it?
>>25182553>children's book
I'm interested in discussing and exploring the potential for the internet to present a novel form of literature, namely in the form of stories that are:1. written to a high standard (i.e., respecting the literary craft)2. written, read and interacting with in real-timeThere are some examples of this, both in a literary sense and a non-literary one (e.g., Cicada 3301).I'm aware of web novels (written in installments/updates, like serialized novels), hypertext (literary works published online which include hyperlinks to aid the story and take advantage of instance access to external information). What I am interested in however are stories (focusing on mystery and/or horror) which begin and expand in real-time, with the readers playing an ongoing role in determining (to whatever extent) the narrative direction, exploring the story independently of the author (i.e., helping to "solve" the mystery, discussing the characters, motivations, plot, problems) and taking part in a kind of collective reading experience. I see a lot of potential here which, to my knowledge, has not been taken advantage of yet.Would anyone like to discuss this with me?
>>25181979>>25181989Thanks for that. I've read a little about hypertexts, and what is interesting is that many of them are studied in colleges etc (e.g., The Waves of Girls) but never really reached a wide audience.>>25181991Thanks - these seem to be conspicuously fictional however, in the sense that there is no effort to present the story as potential real, which is what I was trying to get at here. I'm thinking about a story that begins as a simple thread about some mundane if a little weird chance encounter or something, which develops into something more serious and sinister over the course of several threads. Ben Drowned seems to be something along those lines, as I'm reading about it.
You should look into alternate reality games OP. That's essentially what you're describing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gT68xeDMM
>>25181993>these seem to be conspicuously fictional however, in the sense that there is no effort to present the story as potential real, which is what I was trying to get at here. Well, the main thing apart from the realness seemed to be the audience participation aspect, and Problem Sleuth & Homestuck were for the most part very heavily audience-driven, due to presenting itself like a quasi adventure game with a text interface when they were live and running. A character from Homestuck once had a blog running, there's a comic-within-a-comic with Homestuck, and there were live treasure hunts around it.Apart from the "plausibly real", "currently running" and the proportion of author-to-audience authorship, it's pretty much going to be exactly what you were looking for.The problem with the majority audience participation angle, is that if you've never roleplayed before, you've never encountered people who want to participate but don't Get It. Your idea is great sofar as only people who Get It participate. But without that, you immediately degenerate into garbage. So it is unfortunately a non-starter, which is why Actually Done narratives have heavy author direction and control.>>25181991>Homestuck is mostly a waste of time with some good sprinkled in.I said it was the final boss of postmodernism for a reason. It ended like shit intentionally because the torch was *supposed* to be passed to the MSPA readers to find some way to fix the story and its obviously dangling threads, after Lord English ruined the narrative (notice that the only characters who could have possibly stood up to him, Eridan and Jake, were completely maligned by the narrative, and Lord English is in control of the narrative that maligns them).Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>25181559every single thread on this website is already a hypertext novel and that's just 4chan. the question of single authorship kills the idea, the point of a self-contained vision is the vision, and the print novel is the best form for that. trying to introduce an author's frame into hypertext is having your cake and eating it too, and i'd argue it's a relic of early digital age people thinking the future would be exactly like the past with shinier lights, much like curators who treat video art like it's a painting with sound and motion
I just started reading this, and it's fantastic. I only regret that I got the 2024 version, with a foreword by Patton Oswald seething about the evils of internet trolls. I'm on "Riders of the Purple Wage" right now, and it's excellent.
>>25183151Probably gonna be worth some serious bucks some day if it's in pristine condition.
>>25183152Wait Asimov's himself was 1.75 meter so how short was Harla.....Holy kek. He was that short?
>>25183153It's not...the cover has big chunks torn out of it. However the previous owner cared enough to put it in a plastic sleeve to preserve what's left of it. Most of it is intact. I bought it for...$40 CAD, I think? From a used bookstore.
>>251831575'4" I'm afraid.>>25183159Still a nice artifact nonetheless.
>>25183159*by cover I mean dust jacket, ofc
are there any pop-science books you've enjoyed?
>>25182777>Not an argument.An unfortunate waste of trips.
>>25182792Submissive sycophants like you deserve to have their heads crushed with a mallet.
>>25182809U mad bro.
>>25182643It's not hyperbole, you get mad and wanted a strawman to take down.>This is literally the same argument for the "addictive" nature of social media.So ice cream is the same as heroin. Damn you're so smart! Really helpful to blur everything so now we consider ice cream and heroin as being in the same categorie. Thanks for muddying the waters.>libertarian theoryI wipe my ass with your theory, so does the rest of the world.>gambling just didn't exist before the state legalized itIt's about volume, dumb gorilla nigger. Is that the next thing you're going to blur? Some people gambled in Las Vegas so nothing changed when every human could gamble on the go from their phone 24/7 on literally everything.>Just don't use themHow about we ban them? Works better.>when are you going to stop using 4chan?Never. Do I need to point out the difference between a 4chan and an Instagram? I guess Meta just pumps money into research to keep you hooked for nothing since it´s just the same as an imageboard. Hey you should contact Mark Zuckerberg! You're a very clever guy and you should tell him he's wasting his money!
>>25183104>It's not hyperbole, you get mad and wanted a strawman to take down.Says the fag that cries and throws around threats of violence on the Internet lmfao.>So ice cream is the same as heroin. Damn you're so smart!A difference in degree is not a difference in kind. In principle both would be addictions (provided you buy into the dopamine argument used against social media) even if they vary in their "seriousness." And since when were we comparing ice cream to heroin? I was comparing ice cream to social media, which is the actual subject at hand.>I wipe my ass with your theory, so does the rest of the world.You and the rest of the world are total clowns. Which is why the world is shit.>Some people gambled in Las Vegas so nothing changed when every human could gamble on the go from their phone 24/7 on literally everything.That has more to do with the availability of the services provided by the Internet. Which doesn't have much to do with legalization. Piracy is illegal, yet tons of people do it because the Internet makes it easy to do.>How about we ban them? Works better.Again, privacy is illegal, how's that working out? And the erring reason binds, if someone comes to particular conclusion, like say placing bets on an app, it's immoral to use force to negate that person's judgement. If someone makes a bad decision as a result of their own poor judgement, it's up to them, no one else, to deal with the consequences. In fact by resorting to force, you're implicitly saying that you have no argument against it, and thus have no valid grounds to claim that you know better.>Never. Do I need to point out the difference between a 4chan and an Instagram?Let's look at the definitions of social media provided by the Cambridge English dictionary, shall we...>websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information, opinions, pictures, videos, etc. on the internet, especially social networking websites:>forms of media that allow people to communicate and share information using the internet or mobile phones:Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
Is this the most reddit book in existence? I'm finding it nearly impossible to finish due to the reddit prose >Ermm I'm in space...? And I'm a ... scientist? Come on, megabrain! Science this shit!
>ive read it today, to this day i REALLY dont get the hate for Weir books.tactical death of the author when he's not metapolitically useful to one's Left vs. Right dialectic.
>>25159215Anon, you can't post gore on a blueboard.
>>25159284>umm HAL... You're not going "humanity-ending killer robot" on me, are you? I'm a monkey who taught rocks to think and made steel buildings fly by containing an explosion until it overcomes the attractive force of an entire planet. Are you sure you want this heat?
>>25163393films can get away with it since they are about spectacle, and the writing is a small part that can be compensated by cinematography, score, acting, etc. Jurassic Park is just as reddit but it's one of the best films ever made, even the most snobby film buff would agree.
>>25172473Oopsie daisy! Did I just insult your favourite boyband?
You have eyes but failed to see Mount Tai! EditionStubbed >>25172742>What is /wng/ — Web Novel General?A general for readers and authors involved or interested in the growing phenomenon of 'web novels', serialized English fiction posted to websites such as: Royal Road, Webnovel, Scribblehub, Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, Spacebattles, HFY, various personal author websites, and more>Why read web novels?Not for prose or tight editing or deep themes, frankly. As a whole, web novels are infamous for content sprawl and pacing issues. If you enjoy having millions of words to sink your teeth into to get to know the world and characters, though, you may be interested. Keeping up with other readers on a weekly basis to discuss the story's events unfolding is another perk, in the same way discussing an ongoing TV show might be.>Why write web novels?Ease of access & potential for Patreon earnings. Many successful authors gain an audience on their website of choice and funnel their readers into a Patreon. See graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing for an idea of what some are earning.Also, once an author has earned a fanbase, transitioning into an Amazon self-publishing career is several orders of magnitude easier than starting 'dry'.>/wng/ authors.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>25183042fortunately this isn't a matter of opinion, it's factual and easily verified by going on waybackmachine
I will write a story where my (female) (sexy elf) mc attends her second year at a (female) magic academy and slowly notices that all of her sexy elf classmates seem very strange this year.There is the new classmate who seems to unstandard none of the basic things about the world, shudders knowingly whenever anybody mentions death, and keeps making cryptic cultural references to that only she understands.There is the classmate who knows what everybody will say before they say it, is suicidally careless with her own life, and is inexplicably more talented than she was the prior year.There is the classmate who has changed drastically from the prior year, keeps making ominous references to the distant future, and who knows more than she should about evil lich magic.There is the classmate who seems to think this is all some sort of game, keeps disappearing to go on "quests" and references a "system".There is the classmate may have found a powerful object in the library and who now seems to feature in every single prophecy spell the class attempts to cast now. And others.
>ElfslopDropped.
>elfslopcute!
>>25183047mary sue death games would be kinodrop the magic academy setting and go battle royale
Are the Eton, Oxbridge English upper crust still this smart and literate? Or have they been watered down like everyone else?
>>25182470NTA, although De Quincey was likely an exception rather than the rule, if I recall a teacher says of him that he would better argue with an Athenian mob than he (the teacher) could in English. But I am sure that on the whole, they were probably more proficient than one would be today. A privately educated teenager probably had more knowledge than classicists of today. I did my undergrad in the Classics, and my Latin is by no means impressive. My Greek is better but that's because I have intentionally spent time learning and reading in my own time as a hobby.
>>25181479They're too busy buggering freshers
>>25181479They don't study the classics anymore in primary or secondary. They get taught by karens and spend their free time aping Tiktok
>>25181479I've heard all the universities in the UK now aim to admit as many foreign students as they can because they're allowed to charge them more. Not sure if that's actually true, however.
>>25182850This is half true, my younger brother is at Cambridge (he’s 31) and they DEI hired a very inept professor who according to him can’t even speak in front of an audience without standing frozen and stuttering for the first 5 minutes. I like to think some there are at least trying to keep about themselves some degree of forbearance. Not expecting pure asceticism but I’m still an optimist (except when I’m not) even in the face of hopelessness.
I gooned to the sex scenes in this book when I was 10
You masturbated. ’Goon‘ does not mean that.
>>25183061>when I was 10When I began the series the first four or five books had come out by that time. IIRC the sex doesn't start until quite a few volumes in. I never finished the series though and I've always kicked myself for that. Got halfway thru book 11 when I stopped.
Chtorr editionHere we discuss any kind of science fiction and fantasy.>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs):https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb>Archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg>Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg
I just finished reading Watership Down. It was a really nice relaxing read. Just the right amount of tense. It's kind of interesting because all the rabbits have their own personalities but the book still has to treat death as a sort of casual affair because in the end they're still rabbits. Makes the book both whimsical and grim at the same time. Lot of interesting tone shifts too. There's a horror segment, a spy thriller, battles, some slice of life stuff. Just really enjoyable from start to finish.
>>25182370The comments... comment was ~20 hours before the artist commented.But yeah what a piece of trash lol the author doesn't pay or even CONTROL what goes on the cover if you're tradpub.
>>25182294Good for you.>>25182315Bear in mind that AA also lists Chinese libraries! I'll get my coat
>>25182353He could afford to say that because he was talented.
the conversation when kellhus finally meets his father is literally "i am 17 and this is deep"
why aren't you conversant in the methods of rationality as conceptualized by big yud (pbuh), anon?
Actually I amI read the sequences(Everyone told me to skip the quantum mechanics part)You can too:https://www.readthesequences.com/
I subscribe to Yod, personally.
>>25181931I'll believe in his AI scenarios (impossible) when he manages to get fit (impossible)
>>25182581Me? Yesod.
Why does it seem that all anyone on this board wants to write now is either fantasyslop or sci-fislop?I have seen some decently skilled writers throwing themselves away writing the most derivative, infantile, autistic, Royal-Road-coded shit imaginable:>Narrowing his eyes at the approaching hoard of T’zendians, Klayden clenched his fist and summoned forth a burning shadow spear…Just stop! Is this all because you’ve watched a small handful of fat guys be moderately successful producing this gutter oil? Why can’t you write something real? Do you have no real life experience to draw from?Just downright right peculiar, thas’ all.
>>25181062Because the literary scene has been dead since WW2, and then it died again even harder in the 2010s. If you're not an Asian woman who wants to write about how White men make you sad you've basically got no chance with modern literary publishers.
>>25181062Because imagination is something that connects us all. The global community is divided to a dozen axes. Sure , you can write something 10/10 for the American middle-class but then you'll be the country music of the lit industry.
>>25181062>why do people do what they want to do instead of what I want them to do?
>>25181068>>25181080>>25181088This samefag is so obvious I can only assume it's being done on purpose to annoy people
>write about the real world and whats going on in it from a white male perspective>all corners of society mysteriously coalesce to dismiss you as a wank nazi and bitter incel>quite literally cannot get a single word in because you arent allowed to>only viable "audience" is white men who are so bitter and jaded by the state of literature that they're a tiny base>choices are "extrapolate to the point where you are hegel levels of incomprehensible" or "dont write" because the plain white male truth as he sees it is radioactive to how modern culture functions>amid all this you have someone screaming NO STOP ENJOYING THOSE FEW BOOKS YOU ENJOY!!! STOP IT
