Me: You Know How When You Were A Kid And You’d Wish That You’d Get Sick Or Injured In A Way That

Me: You know how when you were a kid and you’d wish that you’d get sick or injured in a way that would justify why you didn’t live up to your potential?

Everybody, apparently: No?

Writing Notes: Magic System

The Golden Gate (detail)
Albert Bierstadt
1900

A Quick Guide to Crafting Your Own Magic System

The comforting tug of the familiar can often draw writers into the domain of tried-and-tested magic systems.

While there's a reason these archetypes endure, speculative fiction thrives on innovation.

So here are some guidelines and questions to ponder as you craft your unique magical framework:

Analyze Existing Systems: What makes them tick? Is it the laws, the setting, the cultural context? How can you take a known concept and turn it on its head? For instance, if elemental magic is overdone, what about a system based on abstract concepts like time, sound, or dreams?

Mix and Match: Combine disparate systems. Perhaps in your world, astrology-based magic is combined with bio-magic, where celestial signs grant specific biological enhancements.

Internal Consistency: Ensure that the rules of your magic system are internally consistent. If you're coming up with something new, like Brian McClellan with his “godglass,” consider the broader implications. How would such a system affect economics, politics, or social dynamics?

Ask 'What if?': Let your imagination roam by posing hypothetical questions. What if magic was a tangible, finite resource? Or perhaps it's a virus, and only those infected can wield its power?

Balance: Whichever route you choose, remember that each magical ability should come with its own set of limitations, costs, or ethical dilemmas. This not only adds depth but also avoids the pitfall of making your characters too powerful to face any real challenges.

Above all, let creativity be your guiding star.

Embrace the known, but never be afraid to venture into the uncharted, for therein lies the magic that readers will remember.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References

260 notes View Post

outdatedsymphony

3 months ago

Personally your work inspires me. I love seeing how incredibly vast your library of characters is.

How they all have different experiences. It makes them feel real to me, with their style, culture, disabilities, names even being so well researched and built into the character rather than just an afterthought.

(No shade to the anon though i just think things like that are better when they are thought about earlier in character building). It's just incredible to me seeing how you build your characters and how well represented I feel seeing characters with disabilities, identities, and cultures that are apart of my life as well.

Hey, so I mean this entirely in good faith and just want to see where you're coming from.

When you draw pictures of people (OC), why do you only list their name, age, disabilities, and race (and some other stuff sometimes)? not likes or interests or hobbies or a look into their life? Is there somewhere else for me to find out more?

Personally, I don't find those to be the most interesting things about a character or a person or an object or anything like that, and I don't typically base characters around it (not saying you do, just not sure why else they take precidence over other aspects of their character)

I love your art and hope youu have a nice day!

I’ll try to answer this in the best way possible, but my wording might be off because I am more ill than usual, so bare with me.

1. Experiences with creating Original Characters is not a monolith — what you like to do with characters may not be what another creator likes to do with them. Some people never make backstories for their characters and keep them mainly for designs. Some people like to create backstories, and both of these things can exist and are okay. What you personally find interesting isn’t the same for everyone.

Even if I do have backstories for many of my characters, not all of them are even close to finished yet or even fully fleshed out, I often start with basics and go from there. If you are interested in the backstories of my characters, I have a toyhouse in which I post them.

2. Race, Culture, Age and Disability is a huge part of a lot of people’s lives, I can attest to that for myself. A lot of what I put down as “descriptors” for my characters are for people to get the absolute “bare bones” of who this character is, kind of like a bio on social media. It may not personally interest you, but Culture is a huge aspect on how people develop and think, the way people grow up and who they are around influence their thoughts, likes, dislikes, career, life choices and more. I find that many people from different cultures are often very happy at the representation of their culture being present if done respectfully, and causes a lot of happiness to feel seen.

I have a particular interest in researching humans, cultures, disabilities and diversity. You don’t have to have those interests, the same way I don’t particularly have to have an interest in “likes vs dislikes” of a character.

It would concern me if someone doesn’t care about peoples race or ethnicity, the same way it concerns me when a white person says “well, I don’t see color”, it erases the diverse experience of being human. It erases culture, experience, struggle and more. A lot of POC, myself included, find solace in knowing someone may understand a specific experience of what it’s like growing up a certain way. That we are not alone in our struggles.

And this all relates to Disability as well. Able-bodied people are not going to understand the life of a disabled person they haven’t lived in. Growing up disabled, becoming disabled later in life, in general /being/ disabled is a different way of life than the average person. We have struggles and experiences not everyone can relate to — which means by sharing this in a description of a character — it can actually tell a lot about what they’ve been through and understand.

Other disabled people may not understand what life is like for another disabled person — I have had numerous asks and messages by other disabled people and able-bodied people alike telling me they are happy to see representation of a specific disability, or that they discovered a disability through my artwork and they were able to research it or even apply it to their medical training. This is a huge reason for why I do what I do.

I’m glad this is a question in good faith — Thank you for liking my art, and i hope you have a good day as well.

If you have anymore questions, I have an FAQ:

rentry.co

FAQ

@SPROUTwiki's Frequently Asked Questions: What program / brushes do you use? I use CSP (Clip Studio Paint) on my IPAD and Cintiq. I use a lo

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appreciation post

84 notes View Post

outdatedsymphony

3 months ago

Literally this, as a fellow intersex person who cant really pass for either, yk without procedures i don't want anyways. I stand by you, it's bullshit that we have to identify ourselves to the government like it's some one or the other box. Stand with us because it's not just our rights we're fighting for. It's human rights. Lets all remember that.

Feeling extremely disappointed in the community response to Trump's gender order regarding X gender markers on documents. Can y'all quit with the victim-blaming and "I'm so glad I don't have an X gender marker, I knew it was a bad idea" statements for two seconds to support those of us who are targeted by this?

I have X on all of my documents. Birth certificate, passport, ID, you name it I have an X on it. I'm intersex & trans. I'm percieved as ambiguous 100% of the time and I can't pass for shit. Stealth is not an option for me, I am visibly intersex/trans no matter what.

Having either M or F on my documents wasn't any more feasible than having an X on everything at the time I got my documents. Which I had to work my ass off to get, by the way, because I was homeless and had no documents and I needed to obtain everything from scratch, which of course is made as hard as possible to do. (How do you provide proof of identity without any identity documents? How do you provide proof of address without an address? How do you pay for any of this when you can't even afford your own groceries and you get all your needs met through local mutual aid? How do you drop anything off or attend interviews or court without transportation?)

Goddamn right I was getting an X on my documents after having to go through hell to obtain them. If I had to work that hard for them, my documents were going to be how I wanted them.

Now I'm being told the president is trying to invalidate my documents, that depending on how things go I may be held if I try to go anywhere due to my passport having an X gender marker, that we don't know the ways this will be enforced and whether I will still be able to use my documents or not, and my trans community is saying it's actually my own fault for having an X gender marker in the first place and that I was just begging to be discriminated against by having one.

I am in a very vulnerable position and I should be supported by my own community when anti-trans anti-intersex discrimination targets me and people I care about. Y'all are dropping the ball and abandoning your siblings when we need each other most.

Also, for the record, I believe that no documentation should have gender markers. However, the US requires gender markers on documentation at the moment and that fucking sucks. It seems like this will be the case for the foreseeable future. The way people have been saying "nobody should get an X gender marker because gender markers shouldn't exist" just feels very "your strategy pales in comparison to my strategy, firebombing a Walmart" and then not firebombing a Walmart. While we can and should work towards gender markers not existing in the future, people with X gender markers exist right now and maybe y'all should support us instead of constantly throwing us under the bus.