This is a real tiny nitpick, but if your fantasy world is based in place with two suns where it’s never night, your character can’t then say someone has a “midnight aura”. Like, canonically they don’t know what midnight is 😑
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Yesssss. Reading a fantasy book where the months are named the same as ours and it’s driving me crazy. The dolphins are “dolphinum” but it’s still, like, August. Whyyyyyyy
In my WIP fantasy novel, I made the choice to have the fantasy leads have their own word for 'thunder'.
…
Then I had to go back and remove all uses of 'thunderous', 'thundered' and 'thundering' from the dialogue.
That'll learn me.
It reminds me of a character in The Lost Metal using the code name "Moonlight," forgetting that that term makes no sense on the world she goes to because that world HAS no moon.
I don’t mean to generalize, but I’ve noticed people from Earth always have a hard time with this kinda basic cultural stuff. It’s like they’ve never been anywhere else.
YESSSSSS I dnf-ed a book 5 pages in because the words they used to describe days and night made NO SENSE for a planet with three suns that set at different cycles!
I usually give people a lot of leeway for this kind of error because writing a book is incredibly hard, but I did recently laugh about a fantasy protagonist saying her brain was programmed to work a certain way. 🤣
Character literally has never seen rain or rivers and then talks about being caught in a downpour of emotion
Like, 1) that makes no sense
2) I think that’s a real missed opportunity for the character to instead say something like being caught in a sandstorm to nail home the desert aspect
Like you said; nitpick but I'm with you 100% on 2). I love making up "isms" and phrases that a culture in a different area would come up with. Admittedly the hardest one I struggled with was using "Christ!" as an exclamation (because I write how I talk and I may use that one a lot).
Have you read the Nevernight series? It has a whole worldbuilding around the fact that it’s got several suns. The worldbuilding is inspired by Ancient Rome. It’s great.
I bought them ages ago and finally got around to reading them last year. About to dive into book 3 soon. I have a harder time trusting male authors with female protagonists but so far so good 👀
Yeah, not to be That Guy, but I've cut out a lot of cis straight male authors. Like, it's one thing to just have a dearth of female characters with any personality-- but how are they so bad at writing romance.
Like, look at any shonen anime for example -- How did Naruto end up with Hinata. why.
Haha yeah and then there’s those authors that end up with huge nasty scandals and you start noticing gross things in their work that you didn’t notice before (cough gaiman cough)
oh that's a good point! In the timeline of the fantasy story I'm working on, the moon and stars are absent from the sky and only the oldest generations remember such times before but one of the current MCs won't, gotta remember that for myself!
I mean, if you want to get *real* technical, you CAN have old phrases in the language that still refer to moon/stars, but the people themselves don't know what it means.
IRL examples are people from diasporas where flooding was common now generations later living in places with no floods
But that gets really tricky so you might want to be careful.
Like, references to flooding are restricted to proverbs and mythology/legends. But you don't see them in day to day metaphors as much... if that makes sense?
Anyway its interesting stuff when researching folkore seeing how ppl moved
But also, it's your story so feel free to ignore me 😜
I'm just coming from the angle of someone utterly fascinated by how one culture will absorb the gods of another and how which gods they worship is indicative of their living climate. That's my personal obsession
or you see them in day to day metaphors so frequently that the meaning of the words have shifted completely. like people understanding "shuttle" as a method of transport for people or things rather than something that is shot like from a bow or in weaving - the original meaning is obselete
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"a WHAT aura? What's a midnight??"
2 suns were close while a single star rotated around them
The planet had long days but there were still nights because the planet also rotated
During the height of summer seasons the rotating sun was the outlier that caused non-nights.
…
Then I had to go back and remove all uses of 'thunderous', 'thundered' and 'thundering' from the dialogue.
That'll learn me.
How do you look in night sun v day sun? Whole cosmetic lines designed to prey on folks insecure they only look good under one.
Writing a story that does not take place on Earth, but characters still refer to the ground as “earth”
Day
Day
Dim
Dimmer
Day
Oh SH WHERE DID THE LIGHT GO
Day
Day
Dim
Like, 1) that makes no sense
2) I think that’s a real missed opportunity for the character to instead say something like being caught in a sandstorm to nail home the desert aspect
I really loved book 1, and book 2 was a fun evolution (and bisexual revelation!) Book 3 is so different. I really need to go over it again!
Like, look at any shonen anime for example -- How did Naruto end up with Hinata. why.
IRL examples are people from diasporas where flooding was common now generations later living in places with no floods
Like, references to flooding are restricted to proverbs and mythology/legends. But you don't see them in day to day metaphors as much... if that makes sense?
Anyway its interesting stuff when researching folkore seeing how ppl moved
I'm just coming from the angle of someone utterly fascinated by how one culture will absorb the gods of another and how which gods they worship is indicative of their living climate. That's my personal obsession