New CBB

Drow.



Actually this is only a problem if your conworld is on a planet: I solved the problem by describing my conworld as being flat, with multiple suns that only give off a cone of light. Seasons, day/night, weather, and climate are determined by how much time each sun spends over each part of the world. (I'm handwaving away the effect of wind.)

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As usual, the idea of Utopian society, where nobody really needed to work, and every cared for each other. God it makes me feel so...GAY.

Ah.



And there's my problem. As I said, I like to make my conworlds more or less realistic; while I am intrested in experimenting with different models, I'm pretty fond of planets.

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PROTO-ONURE: Jutésa coconóco ga zuntús, na en rógcag ma pohús.

This was impossible because you can't be blue (definition 2) and gay (definition 1) at the same time, right?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

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PROTO-ONURE: Jutésa coconóco ga zuntús, na en rógcag ma pohús.

Don't mind Eldin, he just loves to make corny puns.

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Yea but he could still try a little harder. that'swhatshesaid

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PROTO-ONURE: Jutésa coconóco ga zuntús, na en rógcag ma pohús.

It's true.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

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L1:
Fluent (on a good day):
Written:
Beginner:
Working on: ~ Eil

Well, OK, then:

@Cordoma:
Why is it impossible to have "a race of beautiful, lesbian, blue skinned people"?
The topic of the thread is "Conworlding ideas that you later realized wouldn't work."
I was just guessing why that one wouldn't work.

@Avjunza and @Micamo: Why would you guess it wouldn't work?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Drow are (supposed to be) jet black.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

He's saying he dumped the idea because Ketsuban already did that.

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Oh, so it would work. It's just that s/he (Cordoma) thinks Ketsuban "stole" his/her (Cordoma's) thunder, or at least got to it first.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Well, I still don't think the idea would *work* per se. Most of my criticisms of the Safir would also apply to such a race.

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Oh.
@Ketsuban, @Cordoma: What do Ketsuban and Cordoma think?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

I wanted to put the lost city of Atlantis on a doughnut outside the universe. Specifically, I wanted an isolated, ancient-history society on a doughnut-shaped world. (It's doughnut shaped because A Wizard Did It.)
I thought it would be cool if the map worked like one of those old arcade games where is you run off the edge, it puts you right back in the same place on the other side of the rectangle. I worked out some geography, did some math because I'm geeky that way, made up a sinusoidal projection of my doughnut, and was on the way to some serious history building when I started letting my conpeople look up at the sky.
By the time I crunched the numbers so it was small enough to keep the population down, I realized that you could clearly see a good bit of the planet's surface from inside the doughnut hole. Worse, you could practically throw a rock across it with a decent-sized giant crossbow. Their shipping and technological development would have been radically affected by this: Why go all the way around the world when you can throw it across the hole? And guess who's trying to invent people throwers...
In the end, I had to scrap the idea. The socio-political dynamic I needed just wouldn't work with doughnuts.

(Still like the doughnut. Maybe if I made it bigger...)

Dear Chagen:

I read your post about Mount Jendai. It would work with the following tweaks:

1) It MUST be enormously massive. Like Olympus Mons on Mars massive. Wikipedia it! It's huuuuuuuuge! If a ginormic extinct volcano like Olympus Mars exists on Mars, Mount Jendai can certainly top it with no problem, so use it.

2) For the seasonal problem, consider this. I used to live in Peru, not far from the equator. It's a lot closer in Peru than in Pennsylvania, where I live now. There, day length really didn't change from season to season, so..... Mount Jendai (or some other mountain, if you need to keep Jendai where it is) would have to be on or near your planet's equator to have equal day length all year long.

3) Measuring hour length at night with a sundial? Only if you have a nice, big full moon at night would that work. The consolation prize is NOBODY's sundial works at night. Anywhere.
Evvah. Hence the name "sun-dial". Unless you've got a binary, trinary star system, or your planet is in the fourth dimension or higher (don't get me started, now!). Dig? I knew that U could.


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"What we have here, if it has a name, is some...green"
Lord Edmund Blackadder, Money

Dear Alias:

I read your post about the "Donut in the Sky". Keep the idea!!!!!!

It could be one of the following:

1) An ancient, and by ancient, I mean "ye aulde lange syne auncieaunte" sort of space station. You know, like one of those torus-wheeled gizmos that Stanford invented, or a
Bernal Space-Sphere thing. Google-image "torus wheel space station" if you don't know what I mean. These things are pretty darn big (and have to be, for gravitational purposes).
They also have a protective glass (?!) or some kind of transparent duranium~specium~Kosmo-DNA created covering that lets light in but keeps everyone safe and toasty and warmikins inside.

2) It's just a friggin donut-shaped planet, created by wizardry, held together by wizardry, and readers will just have to accept it. This is sort of the premise behind the whole
"Ringworld" series, I think (never read).

3) Your world is a four-dimensional object. Among other things, it sounds like it could be a hypersphere, which I imagine in our 3-D perception of one of it's vigintillion-googlplex to the nth powwah cross-sections could look like a donut to us, but is perfectly spherical all the time everywhere. In this case, you could literally be inside the planet, looking inward towards what we 3-D stereversal quisps would perceive as the "core", but there'd be sunlight and crazy bird-seraphims singing and zip-zapping in and around globulous lakes that float like a giant blob of blobby water in zero-G with little rivers branching forth, and trees, all a kaleidoscopic mish-mash of leaves, roots and branches kind of floating around the lake, positioned on islets of land partially visible, like from some old YES or BOSTON album cover, or the movie "Dragoncatchers". If you have never been to the 4th Dimension, I strongly suggest that you astrally-project yourself there. it's a gas (and a solid, both at the same time)!

Dear Cordoba and Ketsuban:

Look, I just got finished watching a Three Stooges marathon with my son. So don't make me get all super mega-voltron Moe Howard all up in here on you two with the
"I don't wanna b/c he did it first". Caramba! Why, I oughtta....!

Listen, the idea of a beautiful, lesbian, blue skinned people is valid and ought to take life.
It CAN WORK b/c, in nature, there exists beautiful, pebbly skinned reptiles that, while not "lesbians" per se, do recreate their own race without another sex. It's called "parthenogenesis". No, this is not some new Prog-rock band like Marillion.
Google it, and then you can chortle like Dr. Frankenstein as you write feverishly your new story.

About the whole chicken&egg "who did it first" argument. You both need a "time out".
When you read the phrase "big, desert planet", what's the first place you think of?

For me, it ought to be Tatooine, b/c I am a Star Wars terminal superfreak.
But I ALWAYS think of the planet from Dune, which is...(herp/derp)...Arrakis.
But, guess what. BOTH of these were inspired by/stolen from Edgar Rice Burroughs'
Barsoom, which is Mars. So...who did the idea first? Who cares! Who told a good story(z)?
ALL OF THEM!

I'm going to bed. Remember to brush your teeth!

Hi Avjunza:

I read your post. I really like Micamo's suggestion. We need more "mutliple sun" representation in sci-fi/fantasy lit!

Another suggestion came to me when I was talking about Edgar Rice Burroughs in another post. It's too much to explain here, so here's the ERBzine link

http://www.erbzine.com/mag14/1494.html

read it. You'll laugh. You'll cry. If you'r lucky, you'll plotz.
Essentially, the inconsistency with geography, as it were, could be solved by:
- A narrator unfamiliar with the geography of the world in question
- A group of natives that are less than competent in understanding geography

OR
- They simply understand geography in a way that is fundamentally "alien"

Good luck!