Uqbar, Tlön editionFAQ:>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.Old thread: >>25285316
>>25346579>how do you handle LGBT individuals in your settings and stories"Here's John and his husband Jerry">what are some good ways to justify... being more accepting... besides having gay godsWhy would you have to justify it? It's just a feature of the world, just as murder is a feature of the world, just as childbirth is a feature of the world, just as water freezing into ice is a feature of the world. You don't need to have a GOD OF MURDER to "justify" why your writing features murder, or a GOD OF SOLID WATER to "justify" why your writing features ice.
>>25346477Because it's more interesting. There's a lot more you can do with a race instead of just an ethnicity or a nation. It's more interesting to me when customs and culture are informed not just by differences in geography and local history, but in fundamental differences in species, like lifespans, natural abilities, and magic.But that's not to say I ignore nations. There are many human nations in the setting I've been working on, though most are hardly developed in detail and exist as background flavor at the moment. And some of the nonhuman races have nations of their own, which of course do not encompass the entirety of their race. However I created a third way people become distinct, and that is their religion. In this setting people don't worship immaterial gods, they worship beings they can actually see, and who provide an immediate, tangible benefit to them. As such, "worship" ends up being more like oaths of fealty with supernatural enforcement and consequences. One of the consequences of binding yourself to a God is the nature of the blessing he bestows upon you, which can change the very essence of your being, transforming you into a new race. Sometimes this can result in two entirely different races becoming very similar to one another, physically, if they both pledge to the same deity.
>>25346579Most cultures would deem it 'sexual deviancy', and hetero-normative sexuality tends to be enforced by either law or tradition in most places. There's a few places where LGB people would be more at home, but these are seen as rather lawless areas or else are notorious as dens of vice and inequity. It's a bit different when you start talking about other races, though, that fall outside the bounds of human cultural norms. The few surviving elves don't procreate through sex, so for them it's a kind of atavistic bonding ritual where the genders of the participants don't really matter at all.There's a few races that have more insistent breeding cycles than humans do, so in their cultures there's a kind of suspension of propriety during the mating period. Sometimes same-sex couplings happen when everybody's all worked up. Nobody gets judged for it, even if it's not an ideal outcome. Sometimes it leads to surprising new relationships, sometimes it leads to recriminations. It depends on the specific situation.And then you have the type of species where breeding is so strictly controlled and regulated due to their physiology (and magic) that nothing like human relationships is really possible.
>>25346579I think I'd never write a gay character into a novel, I just write as though that stuff doesn't exist. People say to write what you want to read, and I never like seeing that in fiction.
>>25346579Some characters in my scifi setting are "work gay" since space habitats and stations tend to skew towards one gender depending on what industry they specialize in.
Modern psychology is fucked specifically because we are ignoring the unconscious. And by that, I mean both the individuals and the subject matter.
>>25345713>are you implying we only know the unconscious because others have talked about it, or have i misread you?Indeed. Otherwise you would be tied to your own experience and perspective, you wouldn't be able to figure out there are such things as archetypes.>& once it’s brought into consciousness it’s pretty well lost.Not entirely, but sure enough that's not the direct fact in itself. That's why one or two facts are nothing, but a repeating pattern does point at something existing behind it.
>>25345716see we’re already descending into the dull & dry-as-dust diagnostics from which nothing real can be brought back. if this is the extent your imagination stretches on the subject of … the god that made you (your true self), then irreparable damage has been done. the harder you try to be something the more comprehensively you fail at it. like the story of the philosophers stone: it only appears for the humble seeker, not the obsessive collector. god or the universe cleverly constructed things to be self-defeating to chase. the more you fetishise it, the more you distort it.
>>25345721I only see you fetishizing it here. I'm treating it as a fact of life, like the fact man drinks water.
>>25345723dont, i have a weak stomach.
>>25344905What do you think dreams are for? Or even daydreams? They're communications from the unconscious.Have you never had episodes where you acted involuntarily, or out of character? Who do you think was controlling your actions at the time?Where do psychic dysfunctions come from, like neurosis or schizophrenia, or even Tourette's syndrome?
Was his childhood story of abuse true or fabricated?
>>25339542It's not exactly unreasonable, plenty of people get off on the idea of torturing people and do it if they are able to find weak people that no one cares about, foster children with behavioral problems fit that mold exactly. Is it Satanic in nature? Probably for at least some of them, but it's not like most of them are actually communing with the son of perdition, they are just torturing people and inventing some faux-ritualistic reason for doing it after the fact.
>>25342307> it Satanic in nature? Probably for at least some of them, but it's not like most of them are actually communingThen you have dismantled what this was at the time. It’s hard if you’re not 40+ to understand that the Satanic Panic shit was a christcuck thing at its core. The Ozzy records, banning all videogames (this started at the “Mario jumps on turtles” age, not GTA), the lead drinking and breathing, 5 pack a day, boozing since 12 years old boomers were convinced pop culture in general was satanic. You even see their feebleminded retard spawn struggling to form the same sentences on /pol/ today (more focus on ze joos than satan though). Without the Rosemary’s Baby framing of literal satanic cults you just have the same shit the boomers grew up with and normalized. Diddlers. Pederasts. These enlightened fucking jewels of our age didn’t even ban child porn until the 70s, and spearheaded the “psychological” ideas of children being introduced to sex by their parents and other insanity. As part of the whole sexual revolution they were rebelling agains the backward ways of their parents you see, the era of feminism and free love and drugs was all boomer led. By the 80s and 90s they were pretending to be conservative however and screaming about MY KEEDZ BABY, and the corrupting influences of the society they created. They needed it to be literal satanic cults operating in secret because the idea that it was just the perversions of their own generation come home to roost was too much.
>>25339542Fucking idiot.
>>25341690LOL my mom looovvvveeed participating in online self righteous outrage culture over "child abuse" and "pornsickness" as she was actively sexually abusing us (not violently but still) and letting us eat moldy bread cause she was "too good for food stamps"(or a job). I'm sorry anon.
>>25343587>It’s hard if you’re not 40+ to understand that the Satanic Panic shit was a christcuck thing at its core.Except there's lots of evidence to support it.
Convince me otherwise even though you can’t
>>25344449>homosexualphobiadoesn't have the same ring.
>>25346348>>25346507Idiots.
>>25345701>t.has never seen The Shining
>>25346675>no response.
>>25346507>Name 3 (three) adaptionsNot funny to write the number in parenthesis; return to Reddit!
back to westeros with the young wolf editionASOIAF wiki: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Main_PageBlog: https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/Old blog: https://grrm.livejournal.com/So Spake Martin (interviews): https://westeros.org/citadel/ssm/Book search: https://asearchoficeandfire.com/SSM search: https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=006888510641072775866:vm4n1jrzsdyGeneral search: http://searcherr.work/TWOW samples: https://archive.org/details/411440566-the-winds-of-winter-released-chaptersold: >>25310112
>>25346275so never pick it up
>>25346136>Tolkiens main story was complete.Tolkien's main story was the Silmarillion. It was the one he was working on decades before he started LOTR and well after he finished it. LOTR was something he wrote because his publisher wanted a sequel to the Hobbit and wouldn't take the Silmarillion. He eventually came to think of LotR as equal to the Silmarillion in importance, but the Silmarillion was his life's work.
>>25346574>Tolkien's main story was the Silmarillion. Did he ever say that?
>>25346608nta but "Leaf by Niggle" heavily implies Lord of the Rings is the Leaf and the painting is the Silmarillion, and the entire story is about Niggle/Tolkien not being able to finish it
>>25335283It's not too late to quit, anon. You'll avoid wasting hours of your life.
Why isn't Ada ever discussed? It's comparable to Ulysses in complexity, wrapped in that typically beautiful Nabokov prose. The complexity and volume of French and Russian references, allusions, jokes is overwhelming.
>sci-fi>alternative historyFuck off back to /sffg/ with your genre shit
>>25345673Bot reply
>>25345668>The complexity and volume of French and Russian references, allusions, jokes is overwhelming.These not a great book make
>>25345668>wrapped in that typically beautiful Nabokov prose. The complexity and volume of French and Russian references, allusions, jokes is overwhelming.only a midwit reads nabokov for the prose, allusions, references, and jokes. everyone else reads him in spite of those things
>>25346654So tell me what you read him for then
What's the last time you read a really long book?Like a really really long book, like 400 pages or so
>>25345137I read The Iliad in like 2.5 days last week
recently realized that my fav long books all have something in common, that they’re suspenseful first person thrillers with philosophical or tragic themes.The shardsThe secret historyThe school of nightThe magusAlso they all start with The. Anyone got other recs up this alley?
>>25346599More like The Skipiad
>>25345137400 pages is not "really long"That being said, I read the Lord of the Rings, all three volumes, about 25 years ago
>>25345137I put the doorstopper length at 600p+. 300 is a normal book and 400 is certainly not “really long”. That way we have 2x normal book at 600, 3x at 900 and 4x at 1200 pages. This is around the limit single books can be physically printed. The uncut The Stand is about 1200 pages. Shogun 1100. A Dance With Dragons 1000. Lonesome Dove is 900. Pillars of the Earth 800. I’ve read all those of course. It gets tricky with trilogies, like LotR was originally envisioned as a single book by Tolkien. It’s around 1200 pages in the editions that exist. Other classics like Count of Monte Cristo were originally serials in papers. Many of Dickens books as well. A TV show before there were TV shows to keep punters buying the rag. Now hailed as “classic books”, destroying that context.
What are your favorite American authors and books from the latter half of the 20th century? Have you read the following any of the following authors and if so, what were your general thoughts on them:>John Updike>Joan Didion>Joyce Carol Oates>John Irving>Tom Wolfe>Norman Mailer>Anne Tyler>Philip Roth>Saul Bellow>Bernard MalamurComment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>25342743>What are your favorite American authors and books from the latter half of the 20th century?John Hawkes is easily my favorite from that bunch; his book Second Skin is the bomb diggity. I'd also highly recommend>Mary Lee Settle- Blood Tie>Wallace Stegner- Crossing to SafetyAnd plenty of good but lesser books, or books you've already heard of and that don't need me bringing them up.Of the guys on your list, OP, I've read a lone Bellow and it was okay. Frankly none of those guys has much appeal to me right now. There were many different currents flowing at that time and place, and I'm much more drawn to the smaller names.
For me it's Chester Himes, Donald Goines and most importantly Iceberg Slim for Pimp. Sure it's more of a memoirs than a work of fiction but reading it at 16 illuminated me on the state of women and helped me never get emotionally hustled by them, unlike my peers
Do you guys consider stuff like Geek Love or Actual Air to be part of the same post-ww2 but pre-21st century grouping that OP's list comprises, or is it something else entirely? I think it's too sentimental and "rudimentary" to really accord with writers like Mailer, Roth, Didion, etc.
>>25342743I want to like this book, because I quite like the fact that Updike was supremely talented and yet decided to employ that talent in writing about his dick, but the book is such a chore. It has some great stuff, like Rabbit driving on the road. But the character interactions are a slog.
>>25345743Rabbit is not supposed to be a sympathetic character.
>Spend the whole story building Cthulhu up as some grand cosmic entity that is powerful beyond imagination>Some random sailor dude single-handedly defeats him by ramming his boat into him and gets awayIs this some sort of practical joke? Did Lovecraft hide the pages of the true ending inside the cover of the book somewhere?
>>25330571it was one bajillion kajillion years since the sunken city of Rl'yeh was above water. Cthulhu gets a boat rammed into his head and decides "yeah I'm just gonna go take the jammy time express back to sleepy town zzzzz"it was bullshit
Dream-Quest >>>>> everything else he wrote
>>25344250What was he supposed to do, the stars were not right.
>>25330538>>Some random sailor dudeI'm one tough GazookusWot hates all PalookasWot ain't on the ups and squareI biffs 'em and buffs 'emAnd always out roughs 'emBut none of 'em gets nowhereIf anyone dasses to risk my "Fisk"It's "Boff" an' it's "Wham" un'erstan'?So, keep "Good Be-hav-or"That's your one life saverWith Popeye the Sailor Man
>>25344395Why do so many people deride this one? I really liked it.
Books for a 28 year old loser who's never had a girlfriend. Never kissed a girl. Doesn't fit in. And wishes he was dead everyday?(I've already read The Book of Disquiet)
>>25346198>Any anons that are in relationships or married/with kids that have any advice, or feel similarly?Try taking vitamin D supplements. It (along with L theanine but I suspect it's 95% the vitamin D) completely changed my life. I take 4-5000 iu a day. It might not help but deficiency is a common problem that I don't see talked about very much.
>>25346198Why the fuck are you getting married and having kids?
>>25346258I am only around 4 months in to learning ancient Greek but I just do around 2 hours a day of my book and readings unaided until I get stuck and then refer to lexicon. I learned Norwegian to around a B2 level with Pimsleur + Duolingo + books back in Covid but that was an incredibly easy language for a native English speaker.>>25346343Thanks anon I will try them out. >>25346347What do you mean why? It is the only thing that we as humans are really here to do. Are not planning to have children?
Your diary, desu.
>>25346347i did that and it’s because it’s based
>What are you reading?>What was the last book you read?>What do you plan to read next?
>>25336909Currently reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Been reading about Buddhism a lot recently so this is a good supplement to that. Just finished Part One. Interested to see where it goes. Next book I'm gonna read is Welcome to the NHK, the original Tatsuhiko Takimoto novel. Looking forward to it as I'm a huge fan of the anime/manga
>>25336909>>What are you reading?DFW, The Broom of the SystemThe Bard, The Tragedy of Iulius Caesar>>What was the last book you read?Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms I was re-reading most BEE novels for some reason.>>What do you plan to read next?Probably finally get to IJ, or read Underworld first, which was my original plan before re-reading Broom
Reading now: I'm 3/4 through the Book of Disquiet Last Read: Late Fame by Arthur SchnitzlerReading Next: Skepticism and Animal Faith
>>25336909>What are you reading?Dawn of Everything>What was the last book you read?The Prince>What do you plan to read next?Either finish Nixonland or ¡No Pasarán! by Matt Christman. I want to move onto Reaganland, however, I do not have The Invisible Bridge..
>blatant data mining thread FUCK OFF WUMAO
Now that it is officially over, what's your plan for surviving the post-literate world?
>>25341422Jokah laugh
>>25338497>I just enjoyed the words and the imagery when I read it firstit's common when reading poetry to expect to read a poem several times to parse it many different waysmaybe you should be doing the same? read a chapter once in your leisurely way, registering the images and feel of the words, then reread it again focusing on the narrative and metaphoric implications
>>25336844> Trade school for chinks and jeets devalues the humanitiesColor me shocked
>>25343487Forgive him, he speedread your post
>>25339346>Their parents failed them, but they also failed themselves by having zero drive or curiosity. And these kids don't even have brain defects, they just use tablets too much.This. late genz and alphas are fucked cause they are perma on screens. its a meme but attention spans are gone. its not even their fault its the parents giving them phones and tablets at the first sign of discomfort when theyre in the pram/at home crying. another thing i find somewhat bemusing is they dont even know how to use the tech properly. all the know is how to scroll. ask them to troubleshoot or set up a new device and theyre completely lost lol.
Hello, I am working on a story you can find either through my Carrd (https://staggerloop.carrd.co/) or on RoyalRoad (https://www.royalroad.com/author-dashboard/dashboard/168985) and ScribbleHub (www.scribblehub.com/series/2337452/stagger-loop/stats/) The narrative is currently 97~ pages published on either site. It is an experiential story that has aspects of body horror and scifi, among with weird-fiction and similar. Narrative is dense and uncompromising, you are meant to meet the story halfway, you won't be told anything directly. I am looking for critique and advice, and an editor if anyone is available.
>>25346325>access deniedThanks very cool
Ah fuck wrong link sorry manhttps://www.royalroad.com/fiction/168985/stagger-loop
>>25346325we have /wg for this
>This fiction contains: AI-Assisted Content
>>25346325look a' wha' we ha'e 'ere
The book of Genesis copied Sumerian creation myths. Adam and Eve never existed, the tree of knowledge, the serpent and the fall from Eden never existed.
>>25346486>he thinks each of the six days were 24 hoursHow could the concept of a day exist when the sun didn't exist until after day 3? You're also willfully misunderstanding what Pre-Adamite means and implies. Are you a leftist? Because you're arguing like one (pretending to misunderstand things in order to make discourse impossible).
>>25345700Even if this wasn’t the case, studying other ancient epics gives you a very patterned understanding of the primitive human mind and how it constructed mythology. Reading the OT feels much like reading The Iliad in its structure/character depth but way more long winded, boring, and painfully jewish. The NT feels way more inspired by Greco-Roman theatre, which makes sense given its compiled authorship in Greek by scholars versed in the language through inscribing prior Greek literature to codex.The Bible on its own would be a much more interesting segment of ancient mythology if it wasn’t ruined by generational breeds of apocalyptic cultists who take mystical canaanite slave fanfiction seriously so many centuries later.
>>25346529laurent guyenot wrote a very interesting analysis of genesis. have you read it?
>>25346529You forgot to write "*tips fedora*"
>>25346564Every trope that made New Atheism ‘cringe’ in the 2010s is now just being committed by Online Nu-Christians. It’s the consequence of mixing dogmatic assumptions/beliefs with zero barriers to entry, which will inevitably swing the pendulum once again once this current useful psyop zeitgeist runs its course. Hope you got your own fedora on standby brother.
Jumbee EditionNotable Authors: H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Robert Aickman, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, William Peter Blatty, Robert Bloch, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Edogawa Rampo, Arthur Machen, Ambrose Bierce, M.R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Brian Evenson, William Hope Hodgson, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R Kiernan, Laird Barron, Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, Brian Lumley, Stefan Grabinski, Peter Straub, and many many moreDiscuss your favorite horror tales in both short and long form. What have you read lately? What do you want to read? What's a work of horror fiction or an author who you want to recommend?General archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=hfg"
>>25340491>>25341842Those are sick! do they do physical copies?
>>25343113Yep
I was thinking, there's always gonna be debate about sub-genres but like, do you guys consider "Something Wicked This Way Comes" to be "Dark Fantasy" if so, what other books would fall into that? I always thought of IT, as being in that vein, as well as something like Coraline.
>>25344904Yes, I would say that Something Wicked This Way Comes is dark fantasy; it's a combination of fantasy and horror. I don't know that much about the subgenre and have not read much of it, but if I had to guess I'd say that some of the works of Clark Ashton Smith and Clive Barker also fall under dark fantasy.
>>25344904>>25345642 Dark Fantasy for sure, but it blends a few different genre conventions (As is often the case with Bradbury) it's a firmly weird novel. I'd say it's also a forerunner for the Urban Fantasy genre, but I don't think this board is ready to have that conversation.
