Tag: Worldbuilding Wednesday

Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/10/23: Led Zeppelin Songs

 When it comes to Led Zeppelin songs, their titles recall mostly about one thing: Blues, Blues, Blues. Unlike Beatles songs, they didn’t dabble in storytelling or psychedelia. This makes the song titles themselves not too interesting, but they’re also easy to recreate. Maybe there’s a bootleg of these around somewhere…   Led Zeppelin Songs, what …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/3/23: Hungarian Names

Above is a portrait of the most recent of Hungary’s exports: the Vizsla, wearing a traditional peasant outfit courtesy of AI art. The speedy, good-natured hunting dog joins the rank of other notable exports like paprika, ghoulash, video pioneer Ernie Kovacs, and Gene Simmons (by way of Israel) to name a few. Situated in Central …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/19/23: Shades of Green

  Now that Spring is here, it’s entirely appropriate to talk about shades of green, and how they are named. Pictured above is a set of green PMS colors, once the standard for the printing industry. Basic colors of ink were mixed together to create the colors in the squares, which were referred to by …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/12/23: Dark Acadamia (Secret Societies)

 Now let’s get down to what makes a Dark Acadamia setting truly dark: the secret societies! There are for students, and in the Ivy League schools, for the elitist of the elite. Dartmouth has its Sphinx Society, Princeton its 21 Club, and Yale, the most notorious one of all: The Skull and Bones, thrust into …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/5/23: Dark Acadamia (Schools)

 For some reason, there aren’t as many fictional colleges around as there are cities, states, and countries. Of them, Miskatonic University, H. P. Lovecraft’s creation and the setting for many of his stories, is the best known and detailed, even having a map. (I’d call those stories Dark Academia before the term existed, even though …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/29/23: Dark Academia (Campus Locations)

Dark Academia is one of those -punk subgenres/aesthetic styles, but without the punk in its name. It deals with, basically, anything you’d see at the site of a old, respectable university in Europe or the U.S. — a library full of weighty tomes and classic literature, old money, gothic architecture, dark wood, leather seats, well-kept …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/22/23: States of Confusion (The Wild West)

On to the second part of the Western states! As promised, I am puncturing some cowboy myths. Cowboys didn’t always ride horses. They likely weren’t white. It was a career that attracted the outcasts of society, so many were black, Hispanic, mestizo, Native American, or of mixed race. It was not considered a fun or …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/15/23: Cults

Cults can be amusing, or terrifying. The quintet of fellows above date from the early 1970s, members of a West Coast cult called The Source that even had its own rock group, of which they might be the members (or perhaps Doug Henning wannabees?) Note their similarity in costume to pictures of Aleister Crowley done …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/1/23: The Best of Twittersnips (Plants)

A selection of plant-related Twittersnips from the years 2017 – 2020.   Plants Plants Butterstink Blessed Weaselwand Thimble of Thorns Toadbeard Herbal Infusions Weeping skullcap Extraction of crushed foxpot Essence of sweethimble and pussy-pine Frogboot stamen solution that reduces a fever Brew of hairy queenspike bark and greatblossom seeds Nurestink Pollen Oil Pink Fiddlerus Velvet …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 2/22/23: Return to Melniboné

I went to generate a pic of Elric on a Melnibonéan dragon by using the prompt “Albino warrior, black armor, rainbow dragon” and look what I got! But it’s so cool looking I’m going to keep it. A more conventional Elric was generated later and you can see him to the side. I did an …

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