Massive High-Fantasy RP

[FluffleButter]

What's ''pangender?''

Anything that isnt male/female more or less

 

[Kagayours]

What's ''pangender?''

Presumably "all genders". Can't say I've ever encountered anyone with such a label, but, personally, I don't see anything wrong with it.

BUT!! I did not intend to open up a potentially controversial discussion with that comment. O_O

In terms of the RP, I only talked about gender roles for men and women because, well, that's easier. And, hell, even in the real world, despite other genders existing and becoming more and more respected, discussions about "gender roles" still generally revolve around the big two. Hell, even non-binary genders tend to treat masculinity and femininity as a spectrum, with third genders existing somewhere in the middle.

I could theoretically allow non-binary characters, but it certainly wouldn't be a particularly common thing in this world.

 

[Kagayours]

Anything that isnt male/female more or less

I think the general term you're looking for would be "non-binary", or perhaps "third genders".

"Pangender" does literally mean "all genders", so... yeah, probably not quite what you were going for.

 

[Rax Rosetta]

Oooh, that does indeed open up a can of worms, doesn't it? Well, way I figure, depends on how you want things to play out. I, personally, am fine with either having general roles, or not having them at all. I reckon it really depends on how medieval/old world society tends to be.

 

[Kagayours]

Oooh, that does indeed open up a can of worms, doesn't it? Well, way I figure, depends on how you want things to play out. I, personally, am fine with either having general roles, or not having them at all. I reckon it really depends on how medieval/old world society tends to be.

Well, I mean... that was exactly the point of detailing gender roles -- to explain how the world generally is. Not how your characters must function.

Gender roles just seems like a fairly important topic to at least briefly touch on if I really want to flesh out the world. o_o

 

[Luma]

Not really sure why gender roles are hated on so badly. It's a norm. If your characters don't like the norm, they'll just break the norm, and the consequences make the story all the better. The same can be said for norms in things like fashion, speech, not breaking into the heavenly realm to come in contact with the high-gods of your world, etc.

I both like and am terrified of the amount of info incoming. Lots of reading to do, but at least it should be interesting.

 

[Kestrel]

The only way to have no gender roles is to have asexual reproduction. As long as nature divides people through small differences, people will treat others slightly different based on said differences. Likewise, if you're god at math, people will be more likely to ask you how to sum up their taxes than someone who is not good at math. It's a pretty simple concept, people have different inherent strengths and talents and some of those are more common amongst a certain sex.

Kaga and Luma are absolutely right in how gender roles function in storytelling. It fleshes out a norm for your character to bounce off of, helping to create a culture with that and a sense of immersion in the world. It also doesn't have to apply to your character and their decision to accept or reject conventions based on gender will help determine their identity and relationships. However, the concept of gender roles are faaaaaar more complicated than 'medieval vs. modern' and just studying the history of multiple countries will give you an insight in how different that can be and how it impacts culture and vice versa. On top of that, you have a creative license as a worldbuilder, so if Kaga felt like it she could go full-blown Amazon on her world or mess with any type of inversion she wants to.

The thing is, the concept of gender roles doesn't get flack, it's the discussion that does. That's more the fault of how certain persons have steered that discussion than the idea itself.

 

[Kagayours]

Not really sure why gender roles are hated on so badly. It's a norm. If your characters don't like the norm, they'll just break the norm, and the consequences make the story all the better. The same can be said for norms in things like fashion, speech, not breaking into the heavenly realm to come in contact with the high-gods of your world, etc.

The only way to have no gender roles is to have asexual reproduction. As long as nature divides people through small differences, people will treat others slightly different based on said differences. Likewise, if you're god at math, people will be more likely to ask you how to sum up their taxes than someone who is not good at math. It's a pretty simple concept, people have different inherent strengths and talents and some of those are more common amongst a certain sex.

Kaga and Luma are absolutely right in how gender roles function in storytelling. It fleshes out a norm for your character to bounce off of, helping to create a culture with that and a sense of immersion in the world. It also doesn't have to apply to your character and their decision to accept or reject conventions based on gender will help determine their identity and relationships. However, the concept of gender roles are faaaaaar more complicated than 'medieval vs. modern' and just studying the history of multiple countries will give you an insight in how different that can be and how it impacts culture and vice versa. On top of that, you have a creative license as a worldbuilder, so if Kaga felt like it she could go full-blown Amazon on her world or mess with any type of inversion she wants to.

The thing is, the concept of gender roles doesn't get flack, it's the discussion that does. That's more the fault of how certain persons have steered that discussion than the idea itself.

Yes, thank you both. I didn't expect the mere mention of gender roles to be met with this kind of response -- it only seemed like a necessary thing to include in worldbuilding. o_o Hell, even my own 'frothing at the mouth' comment was only there to emphasize how caught up I am in all this worldbuilding and how excited I am to see it all come together, nothing more.

 

[AnimeLover_Princess]

Hi! still interested I've just had a lot going on so I haven't been able to check in.
you've done so much Kaga! I'm, so excited!

 

[Kagayours]

Mmmmm ok, so, I got a little overambitious with the map, and it's been taking longer than planned to complete -- which is one of the reasons why I haven't made a ton of progress since the last update (with the other reason being that I'm still waiting on a refill of my medication...). Still, overall, I'd say we're getting fairly close to completion. I think I just need a couple more weeks on this (no promises, though).

Also, yeah, consider this a confirmation of the fact that you're getting one more blog post -- the map, when it's finished. XD

I should also probably edit another note onto the OP saying that I've switched gears to focusing on the OP, so that the lack of recent blog posts doesn't look like a bad sign to newcomers.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Hi! still interested

[2]

 

[Neobullseye]

[2]

 

[Kagayours]

@Edward @Minerva @Rax Rosetta @Luma @Ichigo @Rithas @AquaTheLita @Neobullseye @Eruantien @Winter @WhisperingWillows @kimsim12 @Kestrel @Honor-Sama @FluffleButter @AnimeLover_Princess @Gwazi Magnum

Time for the final blog post!!

This one talks about Altera's geography and politics, and features a color map of Altera~ :D

Also, special thanks to FluffleButter for the briefly-mentioned rat hordes, although there won't be much more about them until Magical Beasts Volume 2 eventually comes to fruition.

Hope you guys like it! The OOC is definitely further along than it was when I posted the last "final blog post", so uh, hopefully I can get that to you guys within the next couple weeks. ^^

 

[Neobullseye]

Aww, look at the cute sea dragon :D

 

[Kagayours]

Aww, look at the cute sea dragon :D

I'M GLAD SOMEONE APPRECIATES THE DETAILS IN WHAT I DO. :D

 

[Neobullseye]

On the note of details, what is the scale of the map? For example, let's say you want to travel from Agnai to Vuchala. How long would such a travel roughly take, assuming nothing bad happens to you?

 

[Kagayours]

On the note of details, what is the scale of the map? For example, let's say you want to travel from Agnai to Vuchala. How long would such a travel roughly take, assuming nothing bad happens to you?

I'm glad you're asking in terms of travel time, because I'm terrible at visualizing and quantifying long distances, so I could never tell you how many miles/kilometers apart everything is (hence why the map doesn't include any sort of scale like that to begin with).

Soooo I'd say... eh, a day or two, maybe? To be honest though, I'm not so sure.

I have to make sure the scale of the map works on a practical level. Meaning: it needs to be small enough that our characters can feasibly travel from one place to the next without it taking an eternity. I don't want to say that one can walk from one place to the next in no time at all, because that feels a bit too unrealistic. But, I'm also worried that day-long travel times could take too long to complete. I mean, Fandomstuck has literally not progressed a single day over the past year and a half... but, that's also largely because I've been doing fuck-all to monitor the flow of time in Fandomstuck or make it progress realistically. In this RP, however, I plan on doing a much better job of making sure time doesn't move like molasses. I'll also probably be making good use of time skips when nothing's going on (which doesn't really work in Fandomstuck, because shit is constantly hitting the fan 24/7).

But, it's been a very long time since I've had any experience running an RP where I had to keep track of time like that, so it's a little bit hard to estimate exactly how fast time will move in the RP, especially since we don't know what our posting speed will look like yet.

Aaand then there's also the fact that stuff will surely be happening as our characters are traveling between cities. Even if I say that it only takes a day and a half to travel someplace on foot -- which sounds at least mildly realistic -- that assumes that you're spending as much time as possible just traveling, when our characters will probably be doing more than that.

This is leading me to consider greatly sacrificing realism for practicality -- just like how a lot of video game maps really don't put that much space in between cities (I mean, in Gen I Pokemon, it's like a five minute walk from one place to the next...), but, it's pretty obvious why there isn't a realistic amount of distance between them.

tl;dr -- I don't have a solid answer for you yet. I'm still thinking about it. Odds are, the scale of the map will probably vary somewhat over time in order to suit the RP's needs... I'm still going to say "about a day and a half" as an approximate answer to your question, but, just remember that that's an estimate, and I'm still not totally sure about things...

 

[Kagayours]

Ok so, this isn't an update on OOC progress, which is why I'm not going on a tagging spree, but, I don't think I've told you guys yet about all the reasons why @Neobullseye's actions are a big reason why this RP even exists -- or at least, a big reason why a lot of the details in this RP are the way they are -- and so I wanted to thank him for that. :D

Because, you see, I already mentioned that a lot of stuff in this RP is based off of tarot cards -- and I could go on a huge rant about everything in this RP that was inspired by tarot stuff to begin with. But, while a lot of that inspiration just came from the general meanings of cards and things that exist in any tarot deck -- a lot of inspiration came specifically from the artwork in a deck that Neo bought for me. :D

Inspiration for which things, you ask? Well you see,

[spoili]

[/spoili]

A lot of the wands cards in this deck had lion-themed imagery, which became the inspiration for Apollo's lion theme. The general color scheme of the wands cards also became the general color scheme that comes to mind whenever I picture Apollo (or Pyran society). :P

[spoili]

[/spoili]

The Wheel of Fortune card in particular was a huge source of inspiration for Eterna and the Wheel of Fates.

[spoili]

[/spoili]

A lot of the pentacles cards have these, uh... forest sprite creatures? I think that's what they are, anyway. Point is, they eventually evolved into the Terrans.

[spoili]

[/spoili]

The swords cards feature a lot of crows and winged figures, which inspired the crow/raven-theme for Corvenus and the Avians.

[spoili]

[/spoili]

The Devil card was a huge inspiration for Daius. I mean, most of his personality and stuff was based off of what the Devil card is supposed to represent in general, but the artwork on this one in particular -- see that little dude in the background? -- eventually evolved into the appearance I had in mind for Daius.

[spoili]

[/spoili]

This specific image provided a bizarre amount of inspiration for the lore surrounding unicorns in this world. XD

[spoili]

[/spoili]

In addition to lions, the wands cards also featured a lot of dragons, all of which looked a lot like this -- and it provided a lot of inspiration for what I wanted the fire dragons -- especially the ones ridden by Pyrans -- to look like. (And as you can probably guess, a lot of this came from the Seven of Wands. XD )

So um... yeah. That's just something I thought I'd share with you all. And it only seems fair to thank Neo again for this, as I wound up looking to these cards a lot for inspiration. ^^"

And uh, don't worry, I still made a good chunk of progress today. I'm not typing this out just to procrastinate or anything. ^^"

 

[Neobullseye]

And uh, don't worry, I still made a good chunk of progress today. I'm not typing this out just to procrastinate or anything. ^^"

That's an awfully specific denial :P

 

[Kagayours]

Important milestone!! I'm finally done with all the race info, which means most of what's left is general introductions, basic OOC stuff, and a bit more organization! We're really getting close, here! ^^