Extinct prehistoric deer Sinomegaloceros, which boastged a triceratops-like frill over its head.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/30/20: The Best of Twittersnips (SFF Novels)
A selection of randomly generated SFF novel titles that appeared in my Twitter feed 2017 – 2020. Any one of them would make a fine book.
SF, Fantasy, and Steampunk Novels
| Rebellion’s Acolyte
Shadows of Stinging Grass Dowsing the Dragon Harry Potter and the Brawler of Blackworth Harry Potter and the Assassin’s Blade A Ring of Dust and Shadow The Last Werehawk How Bright the Protector Court of Dogs Reign of Daggers The Skinwalker’s Kiss The Bear, the Barbarian, and the Belfry The Electric Covenent The Girl in the Phantom Slippers Thermoprison |
Headless Juggler
Not sure what this is or what it means. But it’s cool nonetheless.
Experiments in AI-generated Writing
Over the past few years there has been a lot of attention devoted to the idea that AI — artificial intelligence — will eventually be writing fiction. There’s tons of example in the Twitter and YouTube communities, mostly due to the efforts of comedy writer Keaton Patti, who uses predictive text to compose random, hilarious bits of writing based on infomercials, Hallmark movies, and the like. They’re entertaining, but often attributed to a bot forced to watched movies or TV commercials. Nothing could be further than the truth. Predictive text as exists on a cell phone and a neural network trained to read, and generate, text are two different things. Neural network text tends to meander off topic, according to Janelle Shane, and shows a lack of meaning and context. In other words, it doesn’t quite all fit together. At the present point, anything it generates still needs human tweaking to become readable, and amusing, and not a random word salad.
Before InferKit went to pay-only ($20 a month to use the engine, which I can’t afford) I generated a ton of random nonsense. Every once in a while the neural network came through out something unexpected. Like this bit of a top-secret memo.
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To: RvB-Scot
Just remember the following; His Majesty’s Air Force bombed CERBERUS to bring her up to Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). And being a Black Uncle Tom, it worked brilliantly. |
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… or this piece of literary fiction (tweaked by me.)
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All over, the redwood forests are burning. Woods are stripped and harvests burned; I saw the sun fall like a dragon’s breath. The sound of the fire makes me paralyzed and the whup whup whup of burning wood, some flames with faces like babies. | |
I was able to string a group of thematically connected phrases into song lyrics that could have been written by the Canadian rock group Rush.
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CONNECTION AND SPEED
Hopelessly lost on the moon, |
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Mostly, though, the random pieces — paragraphs and sentences standing out in a list — were parts of reviews for movies, albums, books, or DVDs.
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On the Slopes also features songs such as “A Lighter Shade of Blue,” “Sweet Simple Kettle,” “Moon to Go Blue” and “Let Me Take Your Picture.” During this trilogy of 5 discs, the Twilight movies will only appear on one side of the disc. However, each (side) of the 1 disc is an animated horror movie. | |
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In a scene worthy of a filmmaker’s wildest imagination, the cousins marvel as the hypnotic beings merge into a grinning formation: Three dwarfs, a gothic crossdresser, a recently deceased mermaid and a magician. | |
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PULSIVE ARTIST PORTRAITS, by Olafur Eliasson. Scenes from the author’s experiences of living with and, increasingly, alongside the disabled. |
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The review below was as long as it got.
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Teach Me to Read It comes from Scottish author Ewan Morrison (my usual fave.) It’s a historical tale of swordfighter Ewan Marnin, who goes on a treasure hunt around the world. This limited edition features scenes from all the books, though here I only saw the action from Journey to the Sunset in particular (maybe it was because it was the one I read first?) | |
Predictive text generates more coherent pieces. Using the Harry Potter keyboard from the robotnik.com site, I generated this short Harry Potter chapter, which sort of makes sense if you squint at it sideways.
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Harry is not quiet with his magic
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Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/23/20: Christmas Songs
Harry Potter seduces Professor Snape with the Christmas gift of a book
Most Christmas songs are recognizable by their titles. There’s something Merry, something Snow, maybe something God or Jesus. Sometimes there’s an anomaly, like “I Want a Hippopptamus for Christmas.” But mostly it’s white bread.
Here’s some titles yet to be used for your self-created Christmas tunes.
Christmas Carols
| Young Father Christmas
The Old Gray Sled A Shiny Christmas All Around Us Peaceful Mary by the Fire Twenty Boughs of Holly March ‘round the Eggnog Bowl The Fifty Bells of Christmas Ho Ho Ho in the Snow A Jack Frost Holiday Krampus Down the Mountain In the Snow is a Manger Old White Pine Tree What Reindeer Said This? Jolly Joyful Old St. Nick The Bright Town of Bethlehem Blessed Are the Elves Who Work on Christmas Eve Father Christmas is Coming Snoopy’s Sleigh Ride Young and Jolly Sinter Klaas Peaceful are the Wise Men Ho Ho Holly Evergreen Hang a Child’s Silver Star |
Reindeer Heart
Fresh, nutritious reindeer heart. If it was Rudolph’s, it would glow.
Recipe here.
Rogue Reindeer
Since it’s near Christmas, let’s look at the world of fantastical reindeer.
This caribou man, opposite, was included in an AD&D manual as a decorative illustration. He wasn’t listed as a monster with his own stats, which was too bad. (He’s definitely Quebecois because of the hairy chest.) A homebrew gamer did decide to go ahead and tackle Rudolph, however.
Rudolph the Red by Pikeyfaux
I’m not sure why Rudolph’s alignment would vary so, unless he was up against opponents who didn’t believe in the spirit of Christmas, like Mr. Scrooge or The Grinch.
Is Santa on a crusade against evil here… or on a campaign to foment evil? It’s hard to say. Refer to his official AD&D entry.
Mostly, though, reindeer-human hybrids represent a more pagan Yuletide.
Reindeer Princess, by Artgerm
Shamen Shapeshifter, by Stephanie Lostimolo
Now, on to reindeer centaurs.
In Greek myth centaurs were horses with the torso of a man from the waist up situated where the horse’s neck and head would be. But fantasy artists have been playing with them for ages using different animals. Reindeer have taken their turn.
Combine this idea with Santa Claus, and you’ve got a winner.
The most sinister winter monster of all, however, is the Wendigo, which many artists represent as a skeletal being with the skull of a reindeer, or some other cervine, as its head. In some Native American cultures it’s a symbol of madness and cannibilism. It’s the dark side of the cheery sleigh-puller as Krampus is the dark side of Santa, and it celebrated as such.
The closely related ijiraq is a similar creature from Inuit lore that kidnaps children.
Reindeer by Tobiee
A peryton is a legendary creature depicted as a deer with the wings, feathers, and tail of a bird. It’s also a fake legendary creature. It was invented in 1957 by author Jorge Luis Borges in his Book of Imaginary Beings, supposedly from a long-lost Medieval manuscript. References to it have never turned up elsewhere. To make things more confusing, other beings mentioned in the book, like the kraken and phoenix, are “real.”
Since then, perytons have slowly eased their way into fantasy media, including the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons where they’re the least threatening monster ever, despite their penchant for eating human hearts.
This version of a peryton uses a reindeer and a bat instead of stag and bird.
A mer-reindeer, anyone?
Illustration by Margot Rogers
Or would you prefer a reindeer gryphon?
Ardea rangifer, by Kuroi-kisin on DeviantArt
Or a dragon reindeer?
Reindeer Monster, by Drawfluent
As terrible and powerful as all these reindeer creatures are, rest assured they are still below humans in the food chain.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/16/20: Christmas Characters
Cold Miser and Heat Miser
Santa, and Father Christmas and Sinter Klaas before him, is the penultimate character representing Christmas spirit, but he has many helpers.
In Germany, there’s his evil counterpart Krampus, and since 1823 (when A Visit from St. Nicholas — better known as The Night Before Christmas — was first published) his reindeer. In the twentieth century Santa accrued Mrs. Claus, his elven helpers, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who shot to fame with a 1964 stop-motion animated TV special. You can read about the character’s genesis here; it’s a fascinating tale. In fact, it’s hard to remember a time without Rudolph.
The same decade brought us Frosty the Snowman and the 1970s a slew of other TV specials that tried to replicate Rudolph’s popularity: The Little Drummer Boy, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, Nestor the Long-Earred Donkey, and The Year Without a Santa Claus, from which the above screenshot was taken. First aired in 1974, it should have been a worthy successor to Rudolph with its characters of Heat Miser and Cold Miser, but it took decades, at a slow simmer, for it to reach cult status. And that could be attributed to Heatmiser, a grunge band that took its moniker from the hot-headed puppet who melted thermometers in his bare hand.
In the four decades since there have been other contenders for Christmas icon status, among them The Elf on the Shelf and Olive, the other reindeer, who unfortunately had her heyday the Christmas after the 9/11 attacks. It was so sad to wander through Macy’s, whose holiday decorations were Olive-themed that year, under that black cloud. Olive the little fox terrier deserved better.
In some other universe, perhaps there were Christmas characters like these with their own animated specials.
Christmas Characters Deserving Their Own TV Special
| Humbug the Selfish Witch
Sissy the Blue-Nosed Sheep Greta the Buck-Toothed Shepherd Girl Mistletoe, the Cold-Hearted Wolf Noel the Sky Penguin Snickers the Three-Humped Camel Norbit the Chanukkha Hamster Olive the Bow-Legged Penguin Jingle Jangle the Dimwitted Fairy Cookie the One-Earred Otter Blizzard, the North Pole Squid Aloyisius the Littlest Owl |
Fairy Queen
Sarrazine, by Olivier Ledroit
French comic artist Olivier Ledroit’s fairies have a wicked, wide-eyed, kinky look even as they verge into disappearing into their own ornamentation. Like Louis Wain’s schizophrenic cats, they’re hypnotic.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/9/20: Healing Herbs
Page from a 16th century German book on herblore depicting a plant with an animal-like root
It’s common in fantasy books for characters to be wounded, and commoner still for said characters to experience miraculous cures from native plants. Sometimes these are authentic, like those in the Brother Cadfael series of historical mysteries. Others are fictional. Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series had hurtloam, Tolkien had athelas, Narnia had the juice of the berries of the sun, held in Lucy’s diamond vial. There are more, I’m sure.
What a writer doesn’t want to do is mix up fictional ingredients with a real-world setting, as John Boyne did in his novel A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom. In a passage about dyeing a dress, a historical character uses ingredients from the video game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms. Luckily, the author was a good egg about it and promised to change it in the next edition.
If you’re looking for something that sounds impressive, but has nothing to do with Hyrule or any other video game, here’s some randomgenned suggestions.
Herbal Remedies
| Balm of Curly-leaf Frogstongue, stirred fifty times with a wooden spoon
Essence of Sweethazel picked at midnight Brew of Ostrichwort, left to ferment for 20 days Oil of Harespike and Purse-of-Cream Tincture of Mouselip root Tea of Everblooming Earthenlung (may cause hallucinations) Hairy Owlfoot tea, an expectorate Distillation of Marshbane and Monkeyglove Sunclub blossoms, reduces fever and promotes a deep sleep Infusion of Evening Marswhoot, acts as a stimulant and increases appetite Kittencap pollen, soothes a burn Oil of Monksthorn A strong brew of Mammaw and Moonpimple Oil of Buttershoe mashed with Pink Proudberry stems Fragrant Toadwill stems and flowers, calms nerves and promotes virility Odious extraction of Flytouch Infusion of Foxnettle Bark Balm of Devil’s Cream Solution of Cat’s Butter prepared with a wizard’s whisk Distillation of crushed Sparrow’s Toe Tisane of purple Kis-willow buds blessed by a holy man |