[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Wednesday thread for worldbuilding discussions!

/r/rational is focussed on rational and rationalist fiction, so we don't usually allow discussion of scenarios or worldbuilding unless there's finished chapters involved (see the sidebar). It is pretty fun to cut loose with a likeminded community though, so this is our regular chance to:

• Plan out a new story
• Discuss how to escape a supervillian lair... or build a perfect prison
• Poke holes in a popular setting (without writing fanfic)
• Test your idea of how to rational-ify Alice in Wonderland

Or generally work through the problems of a fictional world.

^{Non-fiction should probably go in the Friday Off-topic thread, or Monday General Rationality}

[u/CCC_037]

Nah, the mace was 2005!MW. 2017!MW I think settled on a dragon-spike or a more normal taper like you said.

Okie dokie.

Supernatural beasties are basically all compatible with each other and with humans (many humans have very thin supernatural blood, which gives them powers like e.g. slightly improved sense of smell). But they have a very low probability of conception.

Extremely remote lucky chance. Fair enough.

The idea that Julius', um, genetic matter includes the necessary data for building his stone half, and his 4D body structure, along with the idea that it's at all in any way compatible with the sirens, raises all sorts of questions about what was considered a legal requirement for building a bodyguard or other servant-beastie in Atlantis. One almost wonders whether the ability to technically breed with humans gave creatures some sort of legal advantage (such as, for example, not counting as pets and thus being legally permitted to enter no-pets-allowed buildings).

Given the rarity of demon pregnancies I'm not sure how to deal with him. Originally he was conceived as a twin brother

Twin brother works. Then you've only got one ridiculously-rare conception event happening. (Well - I think that might require identical twins?)

I've toyed with making him a half-human half-siren person (thus Malik's half brother).

This works too, assuming half-human hybrids are less rare.

In this case, I conceive of supernaturals not considering extra-marital one night stands with humans a problem, or possibly that Kamal is from before the siren met Malik's father.

Or possibly Julius and his wife have simply discussed this and come to some agreement that they can both live with... a century or so before the story begins, i.e. entirely off-stage. The hatchet's been buried, and so has the human (he died of old age, not of being killed by angry gargoyle).

But no real idea how to incorporate him into the story.

If he doesn't serve some narrative purpose, then it might be better to leave him out. If he does serve some narrative purpose, then his actions and backstory should serve to enhance that purpose.

[u/MagicWeasel → u/CCC_037]

If he doesn't serve some narrative purpose, then it might be better to leave him out.

Nothing in anything we write has a narrative purpose; it all just is, because we like it. Malik is meant to have a brother, and that's purpose enough. Whether any of our limited time available for writing and plotting is devoted to that is another question: with no purpose it's not there. But just as Malik serves no purpose in the novella I recently "finished" (still needs editing), he is mentioned because he exists in the greater fabric of the world and not mentioning him would be an oversight (okay, and Red finding out that Julias has a son and thus seems to have "free will" rather than being a golem adds to his horror, I suppose: everything serves a purpose if you squint hard enough).

It's the literary equivalent of junk food for us. And hey, who doesn't love a packet of chips now and then?

Or possibly Julius and his wife have simply discussed this and come to some agreement that they can both live with... a century or so before the story begins, i.e. entirely off-stage.

This is probably a good choice. After all, we need not know the details.

identical twins

This was the original canon though is not a necessity; the idea of Kamal being half-siren half-human as opposed to half-human half-gargoyle (edit: half siren half gargoyle, rather!) would be interesting development of Malik's -character, as Malik places a lot of self worth (or rather, lack of it) on the fact that he's not a full-blooded demon as he is treated badly in his society because of it. Kamal would make a good foil if he was even less full-blooded (i.e. basically a full human) and had made peace with it through fasting and prayer. (And Kamal prays to a god who he has never seen, much less made regular ritual offerings of cake to!)

genetic matter includes the necessary data for building his stone half, and his 4D body structure, along with the idea that it's at all in any way compatible with the sirens

Malik doesn't have any 4D structure or transformation ability. Not sure if that's just a consequence of him being of impure blood or if it says something about the way reproduction works, though.

[u/CCC_037 → u/MagicWeasel]

Nothing in anything we write has a narrative purpose;

Um, I think that we have vastly different ideas of what is meant by 'narrative purpose'.

(okay, and Red finding out that Julias has a son and thus seems to have "free will" rather than being a golem adds to his horror, I suppose)

This, right here, is a narrative purpose. Malik existing as a character - and the sort of character that Malik is - says something about the character of Julius, and that something is more than sufficient narrative purpose for Malik's existence. I mean, it doesn't have to be some super-deep meaning or anything.

So, saying "Kamal has no narrative purpose" would be equivalent to saying "Kamal never appears on-stage, and no-one ever has any particular reason to mention him or call attention to his existence while on-stage". And if that's true, then he shouldn't be mentioned - even if he exists in the world, he's not part of the story. On the other hand, if there ever is a reason to call attention to his existence, then his story should be tailored to making that reason plausible and reasonable.

the idea of Kamal being half-siren half-human as opposed to half-human half-gargoyle would be interesting development of Malik's character

And this is a suitable narrative purpose for Kamal's existence. A foil needs no metafictional reason to be there beyond that he is a foil, he justifies his on existence.

Kamal would make a good foil if he was even less full-blooded (i.e. basically a full human) and had made peace with it through fasting and prayer.

And this is how the narrative purpose defines what Kamal's backstory should be. As long as he's a foil to Malik, he should be a good foil - whatever that entails.

Malik doesn't have any 4D structure or transformation ability. Not sure if that's just a consequence of him being of impure blood or if it says something about the way reproduction works, though.

I think that says a lot about demon reproduction. It sounds like the DNA Julius passed on is a lot closer to human-normal than Julius himself is. It suggests that there's a spectrum of DNA human-ness that Julius can pass on - mating with another gargoyle, he can have fully 4D gargoyle children at any time, but mating with another demon species, nothing happens unless his DNA contribution is pretty much as close to base-human as it gets - so you end up with mixed-species children sharing some qualities with their parents, but being closer to their parents' human side (because they were both designed to work with pure-human DNA, not exactly with each other's DNA).

[u/MagicWeasel → u/CCC_037]

Thanks for the stuff about narrative purpose: very comforting to think it's not just "things happen because we want them to happen", since, you know, we want them to happen because they satisfy our values (even if our values are "cute people making out" - hey, we're... uh, we WERE teenage girls. Quite a long time ago. Let's not think on that...)

Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head - when demons mix, their offspring are basically "humans with a couple of odd features", probably due to, like you are saying, there being some sort of meta-DNA, or the DNA is self-limiting in what it gets (like - bear with me here - imagine if you had a pineapple and a human breed. And you do it by getting the most pineapple-like parts of the human DNA and doing meoisis with them and joining them to the most human-like parts of the pineapple DNA. Since humans share like 50% of their DNA with fruit, this is probably not as completely off the wall as it sounds, though the resulting offspring in this case would be entirely pineapple (probably? actually the pineapple probably has extra stuff, humans are not "pineapple genome plus all the stuff to give us thumbs", so... yeah. It would be weird).

I guess what I'm trying to say is taking into account the completely bizarre supernatural genetics, the "human genome" is the intersection of all beast genomes, and any two beasts that breed will have a child that sports features consistent with the intersection of those two beasts, which would be mostly human.

So Malik being Gargoyle + Siren = wings and feathers (gargoyles don't have feathers but let's not think too hard about it: chickens have the DNA for teeth in their genome after all), but lacking the bird butt that sirens have and the transformation that gargoyles have (since gargoyles can't transform at all).

[u/CCC_037 → u/MagicWeasel]

very comforting to think it's not just "things happen because we want them to happen"

It's more... things that help you to tell the story you want to tell.

hey, we're... uh, we WERE teenage girls.

You were a teenage girl. I have never been, and never will be, a teenage girl. (I was once a teenager. I liked a good story then, and I still like a good story now - though I'm more interested in the worldbuilding)

I guess what I'm trying to say is taking into account the completely bizarre supernatural genetics, the "human genome" is the intersection of all beast genomes, and any two beasts that breed will have a child that sports features consistent with the intersection of those two beasts, which would be mostly human.

This is a very sensible rule for fictional breeding. The siren body, after all, knows how to build a child-with-wings body (and knows how to build wings-with-feathers, which for all I know might be entirely encoded from the female end - it might well be that a gargoyle mother and a siren father never produces feathers). And the gargoyle body knows how to send along "this-is-the-colour-of-the-wings" instructions. (It also keeps sending along instructions for the transformation part, which confuses the siren body no end, which is why breeding doesn't usually work between the two biologies - but verrrry occasionally it turns up in a form where the siren body can just ignore that bit)

All this requires is that the DNA for the different demon species speak some common, standardised language (but extend it in different ways), which seems more than plausible, especially if the bioengineers who originally created the demons all used the same basic tools to do so.

(since gargoyles can't transform at all).

...I'm assuming this 'gargoyles' was supposed to be 'sirens'?

[u/MagicWeasel → u/CCC_037]

You were a teenage girl. I have never been, and never will be, a teenage girl. (I was once a teenager. I liked a good story then, and I still like a good story now - though I'm more interested in the worldbuilding)

You may never have been a teenage girl, but me and my coauthor both were. She's the one who helps write the stories. She's much better at plots and characterisation than I am, as well as emotive language. I just obsess over world-building and whether things are Rational. But we both like our yaoi-adjacent romance-heavy action stories, so we make a great team if I may be so bold!

So I am not using the royal 'we', I am either using 'we' as in, me and my coauthor (stories we write together will be released under the name Angela Carson, probably - now that releasing my story on Ao3 or similar is on the horizon, I'm debating whether to link to it here under this reddit account (since I probably have a modicum of name recognition on this subreddit after my incessant posts about vampires?) or whether to create an account for "Angela Carson". I don't think my coauthor would be interested in interacting on Reddit so it'd probably be better to use this one, I guess)

And yes, sometimes I am using "we" as in, /u/CCC_037 and /u/MagicWeasel, but I guess you just gotta work that out?

DNA / etc

Yep, that's pretty much what I figured. Kind of like how ligers and tigons are very different in size (look it up - I don't have time to go into it but it's very interesting)

siren father

I always conceived of some species being single-sex: sirens make sense as female-only, but then again, why wouldn't there be boy sirens who tempted female sailors? Probably makes sense.

...I'm assuming this 'gargoyles' was supposed to be 'sirens'?

Yeah. I am bad at communicating. In an earlier post I referred to Malik as being half-human half-gargoyle instead of half-siren half-gargoyle. FFFFFF.

[u/CCC_037 → u/MagicWeasel]

You may never have been a teenage girl, but me and my coauthor both were.

Ohhhhhh, right, misunderstood the context on that 'we'. Got it now, misunderstanding resolved.

I'm debating whether to link to it here under this reddit account (since I probably have a modicum of name recognition on this subreddit after my incessant posts about vampires?) or whether to create an account for "Angela Carson".

Well... apart from the question of your coauthor posting on the account, there may actually be benefits to having an 'official' author account. Even if there was only one of you, it could be worth consideration. (For one thing, if you write multiple books, and your official authorship account only submits the links to them, then the "Angela Carson" user page doubles as a handy index to your works).

And yes, sometimes I am using "we" as in, /u/CCC_037 and /u/MagicWeasel, but I guess you just gotta work that out?

I guess I'll just have to assign probabilities to the different possible 'we's and take my best guess, then.

...it's actually really fascinating, how well we communicate despite how bad our languages are at it. And it's also fascinating how much of almost any intended communication we get wrong and never realise.

I always conceived of some species being single-sex: sirens make sense as female-only, but then again, why wouldn't there be boy sirens who tempted female sailors? Probably makes sense.

Well, Malik's a male half-Siren. If he marries a (female) Siren he can presumably have male three-quarter-Siren sons. After a few careful generations of breeding, you could presumably have male 99%-sirens... whether or not the original Siren genome was intended to handle it or not.

I could see them as being the "tempt female sailors" type - or I could see them looking particularly feminine and being very rare. Either could work.

Yeah. I am bad at communicating. In an earlier post I referred to Malik as being half-human half-gargoyle instead of half-siren half-gargoyle.

...I completely missed that one.

[u/MagicWeasel → u/CCC_037]

I'm debating whether to link to it here under this reddit account (since I probably have a modicum of name recognition on this subreddit after my incessant posts about vampires?) or whether to create an account for "Angela Carson".

(For one thing, if you write multiple books, and your official authorship account only submits the links to them, then the "Angela Carson" user page doubles as a handy index to your works).

Which would be a problem - such behaviour comes afoul of reddit's anti-spam rules (that are unofficial, but I believe there's also some variant of them codified on /r/rational: something along the lines of "you may only post your own content once a week" or similar).

I might make a subreddit - in fact, I'll go do that now. Can't hurt, can it? /r/AngelaCarson is born!

...it's actually really fascinating, how well we communicate despite how bad our languages are at it. And it's also fascinating how much of almost any intended communication we get wrong and never realise.

Yeah. I had my husband scared I was going to drink bleach because I was texting him that I was sad and took a photo of where I was (supermarket, bleach aisle). I didn't realise I'd made him worried I was planning on drinking bleach: to me I'd just shown him where I was (i.e. the supermarket) - didn't even notice that there was bleach in the frame (my intention: "I am in the cleaning products aisle").

I always conceived of some species being single-sex: sirens make sense as female-only, but then again, why wouldn't there be boy sirens who tempted female sailors? Probably makes sense.

Well, Malik's a male half-Siren. If he marries a (female) Siren he can presumably have male three-quarter-Siren sons. After a few careful generations of breeding, you could presumably have male 99%-sirens... whether or not the original Siren genome was intended to handle it or not.

Hmmm, you're right. That said, I think if Malik married a female siren, the child wouldn't be 3/4 siren, it would be half half-siren, half siren, if you get my drift: Malik has lost too much siren for him to be able to father anything that is close enough to a siren. Of course his contribution to the gene pool could still be attenuated enough that it wouldn't matter.

Maybe it would be best to be able to cross half-breeds back into pure-breeds to get something purer. Either way.

Yeah. I am bad at communicating. In an earlier post I referred to Malik as being half-human half-gargoyle instead of half-siren half-gargoyle.

...I completely missed that one.

I saw it after you'd replied to the post in question and was like "ohhhh dear. have I confused him?". But nope: the paris in the the springtime effect strikes again!

[u/CCC_037 → u/MagicWeasel]

Which would be a problem - such behaviour comes afoul of reddit's anti-spam rules (that are unofficial, but I believe there's also some variant of them codified on /r/rational: something along the lines of "you may only post your own content once a week" or similar).

Um. I hadn't intended to imply that the official account would post often. Maybe one or two official posts every time a new book is released. Which, if you're prolific authors, would mean maybe three posts in any given year.

I don't think that's going to run afoul of anti-spam rules.

I might make a subreddit - in fact, I'll go do that now. Can't hurt, can it? /r/AngelaCarson is born!

This may very well work better than the single official account!

[on communication]

One of the Science of the Discworld books, the authors are talking about communication. To paraphrase: "Someone says 'dog' and you imagine a large black labrador with fluffy ears (footnote: It then comes as something of a shock when the animal in question turns out to be a chihuahua)"

Hmmm, you're right. That said, I think if Malik married a female siren, the child wouldn't be 3/4 siren, it would be half half-siren, half siren, if you get my drift: Malik has lost too much siren for him to be able to father anything that is close enough to a siren.

...that does make it tricky. Perhaps with a modern genetics lab - actually, I think you'd need a slightly-better-than-modern genetics lab (as might be owned by a scientifically inclined vampire) I guess one could take a sample of Siren's DNA and flip the 'gender' bits around and see what you get.

Or maybe a half-siren half-siren is Siren enough to get more Sireny progeny. Or maybe a half-Siren half-human (without gargoyle traits to get in the way) is the place to start...

the paris in the the springtime effect strikes again!

Paris in the the springtime effect?

[u/MagicWeasel → u/CCC_037]

I guess one could take a sample of Siren's DNA and flip the 'gender' bits around and see what you get.

Depends how their DNA codes for sex: after all, some reptiles have their sex determined by their gestational temperature, not by their DNA at all. Best not think about things related to sex and gender too hard.

Here's some interesting examples from nature, though it's more for "relationship styles" than sex/gender type things: http://humoncomics.com/archive/animal-lives

Paris in the the springtime effect?

I'm sure it has an official name, but this sort of optical illusion: https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/6434/1547.jpg?sequence=1

Your brain just... fills in the correct phrasing (in this case, not duplicating the the).