#dragons a fantasy made real
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Does anyone remember Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real? That documentary where a T-rex fights a dragon and convinced an entire generation of kids that Dragons were real.
(Unless you count Yi Qi as a dragon)
#dinosaurs#dinosaur#dragons#dragon#dragons a fantasy made real#Dragons: a fantasy made real#speculative biology#speculative evolution#fantasy#wyvern#paleobiology#paleontology#t rex#t-rex#tyrannosaurus#tyrannosaurus rex#mythology#animal planet#Discovery Channel
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One time I saw a joke documentary about dragons when I was a kid. They said stuff like dragons were real and were hunted to extinction by humans. They had a dragon corpse surrounded by knights in a cave as proof and I believed they were real for years.
#in my defense#i thought you had to tell the truth in documentaries#it was made for the hell of it#i begged to stay up late on a school night so I could watch it#i'm not bright#dragons a fantasy made real#i wanted them to clone the dead dragon
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"The last of a legendary line. A legend made flesh and blood. A creature that has fired our imagination for thousands of years. A creature that burns bright in the memory of all human kind. But if dragons were at last delivered from the realm of myth then what would we find? What stories would they have to tell us? It is human nature to exaggerate what we fear. And so it is likely that we would have overlooked much of what dragons once were. They were soaring creatures that spouted fire. They sacrificed themselves so that they might save their young. They were above all, creatures that did what they must in order to survive. How easy it would have been for us to forget that part of the story. How easy it would have been to forget that they must have been so much more than mere monsters."
- Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, Animal Planet
#dragones#dragons a fantasy made real#animal planet#as a child I always loved this ending like from the animal planet version!!#especially because if you guys know me#well you know I LOVE ALL DRAGONS WITH MY WHOLE HEART AND SOUL#no dragon killing or slaying or speaking badly of dragons in this house or them being the bad guys#no sir#we love and respect all dragons on this blog!!#quotes
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Being into Palaeontology and Biology now means I can’t look at WoF the same way again because the amateur scientist in my brain is freaking out over how much stuff happens in such a short amount of time. You’re telling me these dragons diversified, evolved, and adapted into multiple different tribes throughout the span of a few thousand years, and at two different points in time??? Yeah right. Hell when you think about it, the history of the tribes and what they describe create the implication that it only took a few centuries. That’s insane. How am I supposed to insert spec evo into these fantasy dragons NOW Tui?!??!?!?!
#ik this is a fantasy series but my unhealthy habit is trying to insert real world biology into everything cause i think its fun#i just cant hold it in#everytime i look at a wof dragon i have to be like hmmmm what adaptions could this animal have made to suit its ecological niche#history in wof is already really messy and poorly established but this just makes my autistic brain scream#wof#wings of fire#wof dragon#mudwing#seawing#rainwing#nightwing#sandwing#icewing#skywing#silkwing#hivewing#leafwing#spec evo#speculative evolution
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I can’t believe I didn’t think of this explanation for the climactic and dietary oddities of Westeros; @sanguinarysanguinity, you’re a visionary.
Also, both the quantity and fervor of responses to my GOT mutterings were surprising, so: sure, I will continue these semi-resentful reports. The tag to follow/block will be ‘a medievalist does GOT.’
#game of thrones#a medievalist does got#yes i KNOW it's a fantasy novel yes i recognize that he's deliberately mixing made-up species with real ones#but *deep breath* if his fake world is going to be so obviously europe/central asia with the labels scraped off#i want to know where the pumpkins come from!!#dragons seem a good answer#dragons DID exist in the medieval european imaginary! pumpkins did not!#currently reading#fun... with... medievalism?
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man. i've always loved the orphanage as one of dao's creepiest places, but ngl i have not properly registered it as an Actual Thing That Happened until now.
#like idk i always took it as the game going ''this is what happens when maleficar run rampage''#and ig never considered it a super canon thing that happened. just a very well done very fucked up place for the dark fantasy vibe#it's always been filed in my head as ''sidequest that Exists with No Real Relevance except for flavour''#especially cos it just never gets mentioned by anyone in the alienage. which made it feel very detached#but like. no there were not only raids in the alienage but they fucking raided THE ORPHANAGE#im still putting a pin in that for now bc i am Not ready to process that from Noya's pov rn hdslkfjlfd#i'll probably turn down the extent of the raid/slaughter cos damn. that is A Lot#laya plays dragon age
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Here’s an idea, Warner Bros. Discovery
resienseRemember when Animal Planet aired a bunch of documentaries that were not real?
There was a really good one, about Dragons, and then there were the other ones that caused like a shit storm.
if a remember correctly, there was one about Megalodon, and then some follow ups that showed on Shark Week. Then there was one about Mermaids which also had a follow up, and the there was one about Cannibals in the Jungle, where there was a tribe of hobbits that had killed tour guide and an American scientist, and the third guy with them was put into jail.
Now, misinformation and deceit aside, i think these were great little thought experiments. And looking at the manner in which streaming movies are taking off, and how cheap it is to produce these kind of things, wouldn’t be great if they followed the map made by The Last Dragon and do a series of films in the form of fictional documentaries on these things? I mean they said they would stop, and they clearly aren’t, and the Megalodon documentary pulled in like a butt load of viewers, so you know it works.
What i am saying is: make a series of obviously fake documentaries (or hell, full fledged movies) about a world where these documentaries are actually true! like hell yeah Dragons went extinct and now universities are scrambling to recover remains for their museums and study. The Government is trying to cover up the existence of Mermaids. Megalodons have been lurking in the seas, still extant. And there are uncontacted cannibalistic tribes in the hear of the forest that are actually an isolated tribe of Homo Floresiensis.
You are telling me an Indian-Jones-meets-the-Mummy-meets-the-Monsterverse type franchise around these ideas won’t work? Get on this Discovery (and for god’s sake make sure you tell your audiences it’s fictional this time)
#discovery#animal planet#warner bros#franchise#ideas#mermaid#mermaids the body found#dragons#the last dragon#megalodon#cannibal in the jungle#mockumentary#it was fake#not real#discovery channel#homo floresiensis#fake documentaries#jack tanner#a fantasy made real#lost tapes#maybe include lost tapes too#imagine those specials with movie level budgets#where are all my 2000s kids who loved discovery and animal planet at these days?
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Now that I’ve mentioned it I wanna infodump about my alien dragons bc I haven’t talked about them in a long time and mentioning them just activated the neurodivergency
Doing everything in brief bc I’m on mobile and also have to work on moving today which I. Haven’t done yet. But I WILL-
Anyway. The basic premise for them is I wanted to tell a story about aliens living on Earth for so long people didn’t realize they weren’t originally from Earth. The fact that their biology is similar enough to an Earth organism to be mistaken for one by people without genetic sequencing or looking through the evolutionary lens at things (not realizing they seem to have no common ancestors) is the whole point.
The fact that they can breathe Earth’s atmosphere, the fact that they can consume the food that grows on Earth to meet their dietary requirements, the fact that they have surface level similarities to Earth life is all intentional! Because their story is that a ship crash lands towards the end of the last Ice Age, enough survive that they manage to gain a foothold on Earth, but soon enough they themselves have forgotten their own history, and now both humans and dragons believe that they have always shared this planet. Dragons have their creation stories, they say they were born of a giant, metal egg that flew in the heavens and spewed fire; that’s why they’re scales are as tough as that metal egg’s shell, that’s why they fly just like the egg, and that’s why they can spew fire as that egg that bore them; but those stories are the only remnants of their history.
But I also wanted them to still be alien, to still be such that a reader would look at them and the assertion that they are from Earth and start to see that things aren’t what they seem, it’s just the characters who never question it, because that’s the way it’s always been. Dragons have been here as long as human history recalls. But the reader can start to see that things might not be what they seem. (But neither side is hiding the truth, because neither side knows.)
And so we have the dragons. No special name, no special words to refer to them, they’re just dragons. In this world the mythos of dragons isn’t mythos, they’re right next door and you can go talk to them. Stories of dragons aren’t of mythical beasts, they’re stories of heroes of legend, just like humans.
Of course, the reader would quickly notice that they don’t quite line up with our classical ideas of dragons.
For one, they’re human-sized. They typically walk on four legs, but will often stand up on two to work with objects or even just have conversations. Standing up on two legs has the same social connotations as standing up from sitting; you might hang out on four legs with your friends, but if someone you want to be respectful towards approaches you you will stand up on two and straighten up unless invited to return to four. Of course, there are exceptions. It is not unheard of for groups of solely dragons to walk on all fours even in formal settings, though it is not the norm. Not the majority, but not unusual either. With humans present, however, it is considered quite rude to remain on all fours in a formal setting (barring, of course, obvious physical maladies necessitating it).
Dragons have opposable digits like humans, although they possess six rather than five, having a thumb on either side. They have similar ranges of dexterity and so both species are fully capable of using one another’s tools and machinery. Dragons also have lips dexterous enough to allow human speech, and so can speak human languages with no issue. Their digestive systems can also process human foods, including dairy; dragons themselves nurse their young.*
Their eyes are often noted to be exceptional, one of the most blatant indicators of their non-Earth origins to those looking. Their eye structure doesn’t match that of any known species.
In a way they could almost be likened to proto-eyes, for the whole organ is dark and light receptive, functioning similar to a pupil. In order to adjust focus and reduce the amount of light let in dragons have thick, dark membranes around the outside of the eye, that constrict to a circular opening like a drawstring bag. This opening moves and changes sizes, the eye itself remaining fixed in the dragon’s skull. The ocular membrane is not distinct from the rest of the eye’s color, the best indicator of where a dragon is looking being where their eye has a reflection rather than matte, as the matte black indicates the presence of the ocular membrane rather than the eye underneath. Many common nicknames and pet names used by dragons for humans they love; be it platonic, familial, or romantic; often involve the eyes. ‘Jeweleyes’ is the most common, akin to ‘sweetheart’, for the first dragons who grew close enough to look into a human companion’s eyes long enough to truly observe them likened them to precious gems for their multitudes of colors, both across the species and within the individual.
Dragons have three sexes, not two, and quite differing familial structures as a result. Dragons have males and females, akin to many Earth species, with the males having similar ranges in overall size to human females and draconic females conversely matching human males in this way. This, along with their scaled hides, is why many believed they must be related to reptiles in some fashion when draconic origins were first being investigated.
However, dragons have a third sex, known as nesters.
Nesters are non-reproductive, bearing no genitalia. Their size ranges are double that of the average draconic male, and they are so heavy that few are able to sustain flight after puberty. They have a front facing horn from the center of their foreheads akin to a unicorn, although it is curved like a blade. This horn sheds from time to time much like claws shed their sheathes. Nesters also grow a mane of hair-like fibers around their shoulders and upper chests akin to a lion’s mane after reaching puberty.
Nesters are the primary caretakers of draconic young, with their evolutionary purpose in times long past being to guard the children while the males and females hunted. Males and females produce eggs, but once the eggs are laid, it is the nester who takes over and broods over them, later raising the hatchlings who come from them in time, nursing* them when they are newly hatched and caring for them until they are adults. As such, they are what would be considered a dragon’s parent, with many dragons sharing the same parent, but with many different biological ‘parents’. The term ‘guard’ is used akin to ‘mom/dad’.
Long ago, dragons had only males and females, but lines that produced nesters produced more successful offspring, although the nester did not directly contribute genetics. In time, nesters became a commonplace part of draconic biology, and dragons grew to have three sexes as opposed to two.
Nesters were archaically considered the leaders of their clans, being the strongest as they were. Nesters would fight for clans not unlike male lions might fight for prides, their front facing horn being used for combat against both predators and other nesters. Thankfully, unlike lion prides, nesters did not kill any offspring present upon defeating the previous guard, as they themselves are non-reproductive. The reason they had to fight for a clan is because they require a lot of resources, they need a lot of food to remain healthy. A clan could only afford to have so many nesters before the resource consumption outweighs the protection provided when every day is a fight for survival.
Thankfully, this was long ago, and there is more than enough food to go around in the modern day. Many dragons still live in clans composed largely of males and females with a few nesters, but many also choose to live their own way, and many also intermingle with humans and their families. Gender stereotypes have also diminished, with nesters no longer being upheld as natural leaders and the voices of males and females rising to prominence. (Dragons never had much stereotyping or equality differences between males and females, only between those two groups and nesters.)
Common nester stereotypes include a mixture of those attributed to male and female humans, with nesters being seen as both child-rearers while also being ferocious combatants. To be weak is seen as undesirable, and a nester who doesn’t want to raise hatchlings might often be told they will change their mind later, especially by older generations. They are expected to be strong and brave, the last line of defense but the most powerful one of all. Thankfully, time lessens the strains of these expectations, but they have still shaped draconic society and influence it to this day.
There’s so much else I could say but I mostly just wanted to pick up nesters and show them off. Non reproductive third sex twice the size of the others whose ‘role’ is to raise the children, lead the clan, and absolutely annihilate threats that get too close.
Dragon kid to human kid on the playground: my guard could beat up your dad >:(
Human kid who’s never actually seen a nester: nuh-uh >:(
Elementary school teacher who knows nesters are like 10 feet tall at the shoulder and can lift entire cars: I have no doubt about that sweetie how about you two talk about something else-
* = Dragons produce a milk-like substance from glands in their throat that is fed to hatchlings orally similar to birds. To make it easier for them to feed without spilling it is first curdled internally to create a cheese that is then deposited into the hungry mouthes of young hatchlings. Dragon mouth cheese is my favorite form of psychic damage :)
Instead of pre-filled baby bottles there’s mouth-cheese charcuterie boards
God bless the unknowing human who thought to snack on their nester friend’s weird cheese plate
#the biggest L i ever took is having adhd but being allistic#i cant ever say ‘activated the autism’ when i get special interest activated 😔#im allistic but only on a technicality i swear 😭#sci fantasy#sci fi#sci fi and fantasy#worldbuilding#aliens#alien biology#alien species#the story is meant to kind of be ‘you open the book and think it’s fantasy but oops it was sci fi all along’#sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and all that#and the dragons are just aliens#tbh ive had the idea of ‘what if dragons were real they’re just from another planet and went home’ since i was a kid#ive just recently started developing it to a point of realization <3#‘this is brief????’ Yes#there’s so much else i could talk about#i went on rant entirely about their teeth once#like how dragons are naturally polygamous as a result of not needing to have both parties focused on one set of kids#so reducing the evolutionary pressure that made them resource guard mates#and how romantic relationships aren’t really a thing the way they are with humans#*usually!#dragon queers are very much a thing ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤🤍🤎#i could also talk about their fire stomaches which is basically a heavily muscled organ in front of the stomach#that fills with flammable gas produced during the digestion process#that becomes highly pressurized#and is expelled and ignited by a hard - rock like organ in the roof of the dragon’s mouth that produces a spark#to result in the breathing of fire#how a dragon who looks ‘fat’ in having a large stomach means a dragon with a VERY full fire stomach#aka Armed And Dangerous - but i rlly gotta start moving asdfghjkl
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Also once again struck by how amazing tbe art and the story is on this show and this episode and especially how much I fucking love two parts in particular: 1, the battle of titan!belos vs feral!Eva and king, and how king is animated/drawn in those scenes, and 2, everything about titan!Luz and all the scenes involving her and just aaaaaahhhhhh I love it!!! She's so badass and so anime fun and I love the art and the designs!!!!! Also I love king referring to the collector as 'they', I love king's dad who is 'both a king and queen', I love the end credits scenes all of it, every detail, I love the characters, I love the love, all the reunions, the i loaf you pun, and also i love the collector and want to give them a hug, I love everything.
#this show i love it so much#its literally like made for me haha i was definitely like luz i just realized that lmao#i mean ok i wasnt the kid getting in trouble for snakes or making weird creepy looking art etc#but i was the weird kid daydreaming and thinking abt my superpowered werecat oc who was me but powerful and confident and of course magical#and a 'half-cat' as i put it at the time#imagine if this show was a thing when i was luz's age aaaa#i was drawing pokemon and cats and dragons and my oc emily and reading and scaring all the boys by holding cicadas and#other bugs in my hands and calling them cute and the kids ran screaming away#i was sick enough as a preteen/teen that i couldnt rlly enjoy escaping in portal fantasy stories bc i needed medications#like i couldnt pretend what if that was real for me and i could run off to a magical world. bc i wouldnt have my medicine with me#but still they were important to me i needed them anyway even if it made me sad sometimes too#anyway!
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i always think i can be normal about things i enjoy but next thing you know i have a 6 page semi-historical, semi-fictionalized timeline, spanning from Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars in the 1st century BCE to modern day, literally just for my BBC Merlin AU where everything’s the same but they’re lesbians. sick in the head fr, send help
#ok not everything is the same#AS DEMONSTRATED BY THE TIMELINE#its really fun to combine actual history with the show lore and sprinkle in some stuff from arthurian legend too#i love putting dates to things#like arthur was born in 465CE/AD - why? bc i said so and bc it fits w the timeline#is king arthur a real historical figure? no. are legends clear about time period? not very. are there enough bits to make reasonable guesses#for this fantasy type timeline? absolutely#the romans left the british isles in the early 5th cent? no no in this universe they were pushed out by the old kings riding dragons#uther’s one-off line about conquering camelot rather than inheriting it finally has a place in the lore#bc i MADE ONE#arthur pendragon long may she reign
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dr tanner is so handsome
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Anyone remember this docufiction?
I have it on DVD. I haven't watched it in a LONG time. I think I might give it a rewatch soon. It's from 2004. I randomly remembered it existed the other day. 😂
#feykrorovaan#dragons#Dragon's World:A Fantasy made real#early 2000's mockumentaries were something else#dragon#memory unlocked
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can we start using "a ridiculous amount of gold" and "a dragon's horde" as legitimate sums of money everyone just KNOWS the exact number/amount for without specifying in fantasy novels, fanfics (aus), whatever forms of media we can reasonably add it to?
#And it's like a REAL specific amount#especially when accounting for exchange rates#so a dragon's horde could be $250 million US dollars but 67023 golden coins & 28888 silver ones#do the gold and silver coins have names?#No. they're JUST labelled as gold and silver coins#BUT because of modern outsourcing metals they're mostly made of gold/copper mix and silver/nickel/platinum mix#tangent aside...#fantasy#high fantasy#writing#ALSO IF ITS SO SPECIFIC BETWEEN CURRENCIES IT GETS TO BE VAGUE CUZ HOWS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO KNOW HOW MUCH IT COSTS IN YOUR MADE UP CURRENCY
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How Do I Make My Fictional Gypsies Not Racist?
(Or, "You can't, sorry, but…")
You want to include some Gypsies in your fantasy setting. Or, you need someone for your main characters to meet, who is an outsider in the eyes of the locals, but who already lives here. Or you need a culture in conflict with your settled people, or who have just arrived out of nowhere. Or, you just like the idea of campfires in the forest and voices raised in song. And you’re about to step straight into a muckpile of cliches and, accidentally, write something racist.
(In this, I am mostly using Gypsy as an endonym of Romany people, who are a subset of the Romani people, alongside Roma, Sinti, Gitano, Romanisael, Kale, etc, but also in the theory of "Gypsying" as proposed by Lex and Percy H, where Romani people are treated with a particular mix of orientalism, criminalisation, racialisation, and othering, that creates "The Gypsy" out of both nomadic peoples as a whole and people with Romani heritage and racialised physical features, languages, and cultural markers)
Enough of my friends play TTRPGs or write fantasy stories that this question comes up a lot - They mention Dungeons and Dragons’ Curse Of Strahd, World Of Darkness’s Gypsies, World Of Darkness’s Ravnos, World of Darkness’s Silent Striders… And they roll their eyes and say “These are all terrible! But how can I do it, you know, without it being racist?”
And their eyes are big and sad and ever so hopeful that I will tell them the secret of how to take the Roma of the real world and place them in a fictional one, whilst both appealing to gorjer stereotypes of Gypsies and not adding to the weight of stereotyping that already crushes us. So, disappointingly, there is no secret.
Gypsies, like every other real-world culture, exist as we do today because of interactions with cultures and geography around us: The living waggon, probably the archetypal thing which gorjer writers want to include in their portrayals of nomads, is a relatively modern invention - Most likely French, and adopted from French Showmen by Romanies, who brought it to Britain. So already, that’s a tradition that only spans a small amount of the time that Gypsies have existed, and only a small number of the full breadth of Romani ways of living. But the reasons that the waggon is what it is are based on the real world - The wheels are tall and iron-rimmed, because although you expect to travel on cobbled, tarmac, or packed-earth roads and for comparatively short distances, it wasn’t rare to have to ford a river in Britain in the late nineteenth century, on country roads. They were drawn by a single horse, and the shape of that horse was determined by a mixture of local breeds - Welsh cobs, fell ponies, various draft breeds - as well as by the aesthetic tastes of the breeders. The stove inside is on the left, so that as you move down a British road, the chimney sticks up into the part where there will be the least overhanging branches, to reduce the chance of hitting it.
So taking a fictional setting that looks like (for example) thirteenth century China (with dragons), and placing a nineteenth century Romanichal family in it will inevitably result in some racist assumptions being made, as the answer to “Why does this culture do this?” becomes “They just do it because I want them to” rather than having a consistent internal logic.
Some stereotypes will always follow nomads - They appear in different forms in different cultures, but they always arise from the settled people's same fears: That the nomads don't share their values, and are fundamentally strangers. Common ones are that we have a secret language to fool outsiders with, that we steal children and disguise them as our own, that our sexual morals are shocking (This one has flipped in the last half century - From the Gypsy Lore Society's talk of the lascivious Romni seductress who will lie with a strange man for a night after a 'gypsy wedding', to today's frenzied talk of 'grabbing' and sexually-conservative early marriages to ensure virginity), that we are supernatural in some way, and that we are more like animals than humans. These are tropes where if you want to address them, you will have to address them as libels - there is no way to casually write a baby-stealing, magical succubus nomad without it backfiring onto real life Roma. (The kind of person who has the skills to write these tropes well, is not the kind of person who is reading this guide.)
It’s too easy to say a list of prescriptive “Do nots”, which might stop you from making the most common pitfalls, but which can end up with your nomads being slightly flat as you dance around the topics that you’re trying to avoid, rather than being a rich culture that feels real in your world.
So, here are some questions to ask, to create your nomadic people, so that they will have a distinctive culture of their own that may (or may not) look anything like real-world Romani people: These aren't the only questions, but they're good starting points to think about before you make anything concrete, and they will hopefully inspire you to ask MORE questions.
First - Why are they nomadic? Nobody moves just to feel the wind in their hair and see a new horizon every morning, no matter what the inspirational poster says. Are they transhumant herders who pay a small rent to graze their flock on the local lord’s land? Are they following migratory herds across common land, being moved on by the cycle of the seasons and the movement of their animals? Are they seasonal workers who follow man-made cycles of labour: Harvests, fairs, religious festivals? Are they refugees fleeing a recent conflict, who will pass through this area and never return? Are they on a regular pilgrimage? Do they travel within the same area predictably, or is their movement governed by something that is hard to predict? How do they see their own movements - Do they think of themselves as being pushed along by some external force, or as choosing to travel? Will they work for and with outsiders, either as employees or as partners, or do they aim to be fully self-sufficient? What other jobs do they do - Their whole society won’t all be involved in one industry, what do their children, elderly, disabled people do with their time, and is it “work”?
If they are totally isolationist - How do they produce the things which need a complex supply chain or large facilities to make? How do they view artefacts from outsiders which come into their possession - Things which have been made with technology that they can’t produce for themselves? (This doesn’t need to be anything about quality of goods, only about complexity - A violin can be made by one artisan working with hand tools, wood, gut and shellac, but an accordion needs presses to make reeds, metal lathes to make screws, complex organic chemistry to make celluloid lacquer, vulcanised rubber, and a thousand other components)
How do they feel about outsiders? How do they buy and sell to outsiders? If it’s seen as taboo, do they do it anyway? Do they speak the same language as the nearby settled people (With what kind of fluency, or bilingualism, or dialect)? Do they intermarry, and how is that viewed when it happens? What stories does this culture tell about why they are a separate people to the nearby settled people? Are those stories true? Do they have a notional “homeland” and do they intend to go there? If so, is it a real place?
What gorjers think of as classic "Gipsy music" is a product of our real-world situation. Guitar from Spain, accordions from the Soviet Union (Which needed modern machining and factories to produce and make accessible to people who weren't rich- and which were in turn encouraged by Soviet authorities preferring the standardised and modern accordion to the folk traditions of the indigenous peoples within the bloc), brass from Western classical traditions, via Balkan folk music, influences from klezmer and jazz and bhangra and polka and our own music traditions (And we influence them too). What are your people's musical influences? Do they make their own instruments or buy them from settled people? How many musical traditions do they have, and what are they all for (Weddings, funerals, storytelling, campfire songs, entertainment...)? Do they have professional musicians, and if so, how do those musicians earn money? Are instrument makers professionals, or do they use improvised and easy-to-make instruments like willow whistles, spoons, washtubs, etc? (Of course the answer can be "A bit of both")
If you're thinking about jobs - How do they work? Are they employed by settled people (How do they feel about them?) Are they self employed but providing services/goods to the settled people? Are they mostly avoidant of settled people other than to buy things that they can't produce themselves? Are they totally isolationist? Is their work mostly subsistence, or do they create a surplus to sell to outsiders? How do they interact with other workers nearby? Who works, and how- Are there 'family businesses', apprentices, children with part time work? Is it considered 'a job' or just part of their way of life? How do they educate their children, and is that considered 'work'? How old are children when they are considered adult, and what markers confer adulthood? What is considered a rite of passage?
When they travel, how do they do it? Do they share ownership of beasts of burden, or each individually have "their horse"? Do families stick together or try to spread out? How does a child begin to live apart from their family, or start their own family? Are their dwellings something that they take with them, or do they find places to stay or build temporary shelter with disposable material? Who shares a dwelling and why? What do they do for privacy, and what do they think privacy is for?
If you're thinking about food - Do they hunt? Herd? Forage? Buy or trade from settled people? Do they travel between places where they've sown crops or managed wildstock in previous years, so that when they arrive there is food already seeded in the landscape? How do they feel about buying food from settled people, and is that common? If it's frowned upon - How much do people do it anyway? How do they preserve food for winter? How much food do they carry with them, compared to how much they plan to buy or forage at their destinations? How is food shared- Communal stores, personal ownership?
Why are they a "separate people" to the settled people? What is their creation myth? Why do they believe that they are nomadic and the other people are settled, and is it correct? Do they look different? Are there legal restrictions on them settling? Are there legal restrictions on them intermixing? Are there cultural reasons why they are a separate people? Where did those reasons come from? How long have they been travelling? How long do they think they've been travelling? Where did they come from? Do they travel mostly within one area and return to the same sites predictably, or are they going to move on again soon and never come back?
And then within that - What about the members of their society who are "unusual" in some way: How does their society treat disabled people? (are they considered disabled, do they have that distinction and how is it applied?) How does their society treat LGBT+ people? What happens to someone who doesn't get married and has no children? What happens to someone who 'leaves'? What happens to young widows and widowers? What happens if someone just 'can't fit in'? What happens to someone who is adopted or married in? What happens to people who are mixed race, and in a fantasy setting to people who are mixed species? What is taboo to them and what will they find shocking if they leave? What is society's attitude to 'difference' of various kinds?
Basically, if you build your nomads from the ground-up, rather than starting from the idea of "I want Gypsies/Buryats/Berbers/Minceiri but with the numbers filed off and not offensive" you can end up with a rich, unique nomadic culture who make sense in your world and don't end up making a rod for the back of real-world cultures.
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Your post about the origin of paladin in D&D made me think of a long standing pet peeve of mine - when people insist that a knight, guarding a palace, without employing holy magic, is not a "real paladin" in modern media. Do you have any particular thoughts on the way that D&D has so heavily coloured definitions of things in this way?
(With reference to this post here.)
It's just basic lack of media literacy. People who get hung up on how Dungeons & Dragons defines its character classes are in the same boat as folks who misidentify bog-standard sword and sorcery fantasy tropes as Discworld references because they've only ever been exposed to the genre via Terry Prachett's parodies of it, or folks who see colour-coded alchemical symbols and think they've caught you name-checking Homestuck – they all need to read a second book!
#gaming#tabletop roleplaying#tabletop rpgs#dungeons & dragons#d&d#media literacy#taxonomy#arrant pedantry
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Hello!
With the implosion of other social media sites recently, I thought I'd establish a presence here and try this place out. If we've met on other sites, hello again! If you're new to my work, allow me to give a quick intro.
I specialize in realistic, floppy, poseable plush made with faux fur fabrics. I've been making plush since childhood, but I've been working with faux fur since 2014. My favorites to make are canines, felines, and mustelids, but I make all sorts of wildlife.
I'm an animal nerd and love to create true-to-life, life-size replicas of real species and natural color variations, but I do stray from realism from time to time! I really love fantasy as well. My plush-making journey started out with dragons after all, and someday I'll get back into making them.
Some of my recent work:
You can also find me on most other social media sites under the name "purringfayestudio." I'm currently taking a break from selling my work, but hope to resume sometime next year.
#custom plush#plush artist#fox plush#wolf plush#white tiger#mustelids#wolves#fennec foxes#fox#plush animal#faux fur#sewing#serval#purringfayestudio
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