Part of me wants to shift the entirety of Magical Fantasy Adventure Land into the normal world instead of splitting it into a separate realm.
Part of me is still annoyed that this fucker still doesn’t have a proper title. Or at least something that sounds better as a place holder.
it’s called Mafalia. that’s your world’s name. ‘MAH-FAR-lee-uh’.
That actually sounds really good as a world name. I’m curious to know where that came from?
it’s the acronym. “Magical Fantasy Adventure Land”-ia becomes MaFAL-ia: Mafalia.
i always find if you need a placeholder name for something, write it out and make up an acronym, adding and removing letters or vowels if need be.
for example:
“The House Where Clio Fell in Love With Him”
“The HouseWhereClioFellinLoveWithHim”
“THoWeCliFiLWH”
“ThrowecliFiLWH”
“ThrowecliffiLWH”
“ThrowecliffiLWH”
“Throwecliffe”
“Thrawecliffe”
hence ‘the house where Clio fell in love with him’ becomes ‘Thrawecliffe House’. what’s a ‘thraw’? i don’t know. is it on a cliff? maybe; that’s an author’s preogative.
suddenly the name of the house itself throws up new questions which an author in answering goes off down a rabbit hole of worldbuilding.
Holy fuck. That is absolutely amazing advice.
Thank you so much!!!!!
As someone who regularly smashes words together for humorous purposes, I’m appalled I’ve never thought to use it in my writing. Bless you.
good advice
My favourite example of this is Dragon Age. The setting is called Thedas, which comes from calling it “the Dragon Age setting” in development! TheDragon Age Setting The DAS Thedas
the sad thing is, everyone thinks they’re so forgettable, or they don’t mean anything to anyone. but you don’t see your high school friend, smiling to themselves, when they think about your quirks or how dramatic you used to be whenever you got a crush. you don’t see the person who saw you around a lot but was always too shy to talk to you. you don’t remember the person you helped, and maybe you didn’t do much for them, but you didn’t know that they were having a shitty month and you sparked their first real smile in weeks. you don’t see the person that secretly loved you too, who never forgot the soft words that you said, or the way you smiled whenever you saw them, or how you reminded them of sunshine and flowers; and how the thought of you pops into their mind more than you will ever know and in the randomest of places. you will never know that a soft song or strawberries or a sunset will remind someone of you. they will go to the beach and think of you for some reason, until they remember that the last time they saw a color as beautiful and as profound as the ocean was when they looked in your eyes. no one knows their impact on people, or their worth. no one thinks they will be missed when they leave, but they don’t know that once you go into someone’s life, even for a fleeting moment, you stay forever, and you take up a soft place that no one else could ever replace.
Student: Pirates are actually bad because they steal things and break the law
Expert: Pirates are nuanced because many of them were disaffected sailors and escaped slaves only doing what they had to do to survive in a harsh society
Master: Pirates are good! I wanna be a pirate!
Grandmaster: Pirates had an advanced democratic, anarchistic society that valued indivual freedom, the community, and liberalist views, both on sea and on land. They have mostly targeted pre-capitalist opressive merchants and kingdoms, some of their most important figures being women (Mary Reed, Anne Bonny) and/or not harming innocents (Edward Thatch (“Blackbeard”))
This is what I was trying to imply by the “Pirates are good!” comment tbh
sky's stuff 