Right.Khemehekis wrote: ↑07 Apr 2019 08:41So just an analogue. Like elephants vs. oliphants. Got it.elemtilas wrote: ↑01 Apr 2019 01:18 Physically, Men are quite close to human: rarely reach to six feet in height, are generally slight of build (though there are beefier & huskier ethnicities), they live longer on average than humans and they come in a rather wider variety of quite distinct shapes and colours.
Though, re Potchka & "Please, don't be a racist, peoples of all ethnicity should be allowed to exist in all conworlds if human exists.", I'm afraid I fail on many counts! Not least of which there being, among Men, no "Asians" proper at all. Not many "Europeans" either. Plenty of "Africans", though, if that helps!
Actually, yes. Has quite the interesting history & cultural context depending on whether one is inside or outside Japan. In Japan, hentai is any sexually perverse or bizarre act --- Orcs (& Hotai) are definitely up for that kind of thing! So maybe there is some subconscious inspiration there.Oh, OK.Hentai . . . interesting.
No, I'm afraid any similarity there is quite accidental!
Is this your first time hearing or reading the word "hentai"?
Now, now! Let's not be hasty! I don't think of myself anything like close to being our generation's Tolkien (any of the four writers Tolkien, for that matter).Elemtilas, once you've finished getting The World online, you ought to pitch your Elves -- and your world -- to the film industry folks and see if they'll give you a deal. You could be your generations J. R. R. Tolkien, and you could find your very own Peter Jackson. Your Elves are more interesting than the standard recycled fantasy most elf-langers and elf-worlders put out. (I've never played Dungeons & Dragons or similar games, nor did I know many classmates who did, so I have no idea what the experience is like, but the impression I get from reading posts on conworlding boards that mention using their conlang/conworld for D&D campaigns is that said campaigns are very low on originality, creatively fenced-in, color-by-number.)
Movie deal? Wouldn't that be an odd thing indeed!
Re D&D, I played it a few times but never very seriously. I concur about the creative fencing in, and I think that, leastways as far as making a world into a game setting goes, largely comes down to a matter of fitting that setting into the broad & already existing framework of a gaming franchise. I personally feel that The World would make for an interesting game setting, but I'd either have to castrate it in order to make it fit the little pigeon holes of the gaming industry & the expectations of gamers used to that kind of game or else come up with an entirely new game mechanics.
Also, I've long been of the opinion that a lot of worldbuilders, especially young ones & especially new ones, mimic their favourite settings (games, movies, online content). And this is not a bad thing, after all, any of the great composers, in their early works especially, have pieces that mimic or rely heavily on the music of their mentors, tutors or favourites. This only becomes a problem if they can't get out of that early mimicry. I think the nature of D&D & game settings in general kind of molds worldbuilders into deeper mimicry.
Indeed. I always rather liked Joerg's take on elves. Techian elves! Now there's a name I haven't heard in a minute!The only other elves I recall that stood out in the Internet conlanging community were WeepingElf's Albic elves (actually humans) and Danny Wier's Techian elves (which had races like Caucasian and Asian, and practiced human religions).
Probably not. A lot of drudge work, really. And so many other projects on various back burners that it'll probably never get done.Is it ever going to all be online? Maybe in ten or twenty years' time? Do you suppose you could get an Angelfire site or something?Not really whole lot here, to be honest. Most of it, honestly, is off-line, on-paper. Most of the stuff on the Daine is completely unrevealed. Languages are mostly unrevealed. The Chorography is now long unpublished (and now in dire need of correxion). A number of stories are unrevealed and more languish unfinished or unbegun.
I have a site at conlang.org which, as of now, consists of a woefully incomplete wiki.
Good to hear!!I polished up Bodus (though my astronomical calculations need more eyeballs), and created 67 new Shaleyan fungi, plants, and animals. I'm getting closer to being able to present Shaleya and the Shaleyans in a CBB thread.
And since Bodus and Shaleya are both basically utopias, I should probably present Kebsabhaz, my hateworld, as well. You know, to be fair and balanced. Or just to mix things up.
I for one shall look forward to it!
I don't think we've ever had a Finnish-American president either. With only forty some presidents in all of history, I think we'd have a long way to go before we even get to a tithe of the European ethnicities. To say nothing of the African or Asian!And then the Italian-Americans. Italians are Whiter than Japanese, but they're not WASP's the way Germans are. Italian-Americans could be forced to drink from the Colored fountains in some parts of the U.S. South in those days. Plus, to this day, the U.S. has never had an Italian-American president, whereas in World War II, they had already had one German-American president (Herbert Hoover, originally Huber).I always thought the internment was rather one-sided. I mean, it's not like there weren't zillions of Krau...I mean German-Americans! in the country!
Coloured only. Another stupid idea among stupid ideas.
Cool! Didn't know that! Sort of like the way many Americans of the Lost Generation joined the Spanish Civil War?[/quote]Well, in those days, it was not unheard of for Americans to join the British military in order to fight. Presumably you could have gone that route.
Yep. During WWI and WWII, Americans fought for a variety of other countries including Poland, China, Britain, France, Germany & Canada.
Skinchanger is term I use for shapeshifter. Not an uncommon ability among Daine, but those who can fóol the beasts they shift into, those are rare indeed!Oh, this sounds so cool! And I see Daine have a sort of division of labor by the sexes: queens are always girls, and sheriffs are always boys. And what's a skinchanger? Is that someone who helps others shapeshift?Daine militias are, I think, something akin to the Swiss model. Basically, everyone is expected to learn how to use hunting and fighting weapons; everyone is expected to make or obtain their own kit and maintain it & themselves in readiness. There are quasi militaryesque units that are kept on duty at all times. The Sheriffs being the most prominent: especially in the marches they're the ones who are on guard for rogue visitors and stray megafauna. They're the ones who will, in time of dire need, will raise the hue and cry and will stand in defense of the whole queendom until the Greatqueen's armies can mobilise and get in place. Sheriffs are always boys and are generally taken from folks who are highly skilled with weapons and martial arts, trackers, hunters, scrappers and skinchangers.
On division of labour by sex, yes! Queens are always girls, mothers (obviously) and mother-sisters (obviously), midwives, maranderi artists. Those are some examples of girl only labours. Sheriffs, rangers, weaponsmiths, shéep herders, dog hunters & trackers. Those are always boys.
Girls personalities, spiritual & intellectual constitutions make them better at certain tasks just as boys are naturally better at some other things. But that doesn't mean there is necessarily a prescribed division on those counts. The more open compassion of girls helps make them great healers in general; but the detail orientation of boys makes them great healers too. She throws her heart and spirit into her healing. He inserts his mind and intuition.
Even though there are many such divisions of labour & distinctions of personality, I don't think much of them. There's no "Women are from Estarea, men are from Ares" among Daine. They understand girls and boys as being complimentary to one another, as each needing what the other offers and rejoicing when they work as one.
Men have lost sight of that, I think. Both *there* in Yeola and *here* in Earth. We're too concerned about "equality" as a kind of sameness and have forgotten that male & female are indeed quite different. Naturally complimentary, we have too frequently destroyed that in favour of a hierarchy of power and now suffer the struggles that this wrongsightedness brings with it.
Yep! Mind you, Biblical names are not common in the Eastlands. Except among the Jews. Among Kristians, you'll find some folks named after evangelists or apostles, but most folks have good old fashioned Avantimannish names. Jhonam, Marcam, Hertez, Bartram, Mariyez, Wolfam, Harctam, etc.Nice name -- Yavenam! Does Avantimannish have equivalents for all the common Biblical names (James/Jim, Rachel, Sarah, Paul, Peter, Mark, Thomas/Tom, Ruth, Elizabeth, Mary, etc.)?Ah, Jhonam is an ordinary ethnic name. Yavenam is the usual form for John.
Meiriez, Maqthalliez, Yevannez, Suosaniez, Marethez, Ruodez, Weruniqez, Yavenam, Matuwam, Yllucam, Maracam, Pallam, Pitram, Iaqonam, Amtarawaz, Tomam, Saianam, Filippam, Parathalanam, Iyevadanam, Tawadivam. Not common names by any stretch of the imagination! Kristian names in modern times come usually through the medium of Talarian, which is kind of obvious from the paucity of vowels and the fracture of glides.
Interestingly, in Avantimannish, there are special declensions for names (you can see that names in -ez are fem. and names in -am are masc.) that differ from the usual nominal declensions:
NOM wolfaz Pallam
ACC wolfa(m) Pallam
GEN wolfes Pallo
DAT wolfe Pallo
It is Germanic, after all! (More than a nod to Gothic.)Oh! So just like Old English!Mind you, weraz = male Man; mannaz = "human being" in Avantimannish.
Hah! I can barely get a couple articles onto the Wiki! And you want ten novels already!Sounds straight out of a novel! Maybe you should put out a trilogy, tetralogy, pentalogy, hexalogy, heptalogy, octalogy, ennealogy, or decalogy of novels set in The World before you shop around for a movie deal! Good stuff.The Hidden Queen is on the one wing the de facto ruler of the Daine of Auntimoany (the Empress of Men, Yesseraê, is their de jure sovereign). The Hidden Queen is also the ruler of Ôntumûn, the ancient land that was before the coming of Men. It is, perhaps, what we might call . . . not entirely there? Or rather there, but not entirely present. . . . Cosmically, her place is at the centre of the collegium of Daine queens -- elevated above them but still of them; equal in dignity to the true queens of Men & Teyor. They sit at the feet of the Heavenly Queen whose wings in turn caress the throne of the One above.
Transhumanism is exactly where I was headed!That's getting into the domain of transhumanism, a complicated and controversial issue in human states. Blue skin or Na'vi-style bioluminescent freckles are permissible most places, and even porcupine quills are now legal in most human countries. People get away with sexdactyly on Kankonia, 5% of Kankonian humans being sexdactylous, but I can't see most places allowing heptadactyly or higher, nor hypodactyly for humans. (Tetradactyly would,on the other handon both hands, be the norm on Hapoi, whose sapients are the Reds.) If someone doesn't like his quillhawk, he can get regened when he's old enough to object.
Some dystopias create warborgs, genetically-engineered sapients bred to fight in wars. The biological horror, they are!
Sexdactyly --- never heard that word! I've heard of it as hexadactyly. Six of one hex of the other.
Interesting: I don't have any (humanoid) races with more or fewer digits than five.
Well, Daine. Daine have thrée digits in their wings! In some individuals, the wing-thumb is separate and mobile; within the wing-hand are two long digits composed of two broad fused digits each. So, back in the evolutionary past, there must have been five wing-hand digits.
Men'll smoke any damn thing. These Mentolatian bidis are little different than their Indian conterparts: cheap, poorly processed tobacco wrapped up in cheap leaf wrappers. *Here* I wouldn't smoke bidis. Too much child labour involved and too little pressure can be brought to bear on the unregulated nature of the industry, unlike clothing or other sweatshop industries which do at least have some attention among Occidental consumers.Oh, that's so cool! I've never read about a conworld that had bidis before!Bidis. Mentolatian death sticks! That's the kind of crap Men like smoking --- adulterated weed wrapped up in barely smokable leaves. Tsk. Thankfully, the habit hasn't caught on among Men, and Daine, as you know, already know how to smoke properly! The bidis made in Mentolatum are generally very thin and rather short and are smoked in a small mouth-pipe device of silvered bronze with a little finger ring so you don't have to keep it in your mouth. Might as well aerosolise a tar pit and breathe that in!
*There* I wouldn't smoke bidis either! Mostly because they're the kinds of cheap things the urban destitute smoke when they can't find dry leaves in the gutters. Proper Mentolatian bidis, like their Indian counterparts, are nicotine laden death traps. Even Daine can become hooked on the things. And that's a terrible thing to see, a Daine who knows better struggling to get off something his body craves so deeply.
Heh. Your description seemed just spot on!North Korea? To be honest, I didn't have any particular country in mind.Say it ain't so! North Korea is a socialists' paradise, struggling against the decadent US and its henchcountries, not a repressive third world country!
Daine everywhere would puke at the NKs. Daine generally prefer long hair. Else how can they braid it and plait it and decorate it with bits of bling?Bernie Sanders would puke at the North Koreans, by the way. They don't let boys grow their hair long.
Wings? Sign me up!Yes. In places where the vast majority of people are unaware of GST, they'll assume someone with blue skin, bioluminescent freckles, porcupine quills as a mohawk, and wings came from another planet.
This makes sense.Only in countries that both (1) are dystopias, (2) have longstanding norms against homosexuality, and (3) require everyone to genetically tweak their children before birth. Kebsabhaz is quite homophobic, but it doesn't screen all zygotes before you can become a parent (the amount of "freedom" Kebsabhaz gives to parents is such that Dylan's friend's Pentecostal parents would be allowed to do what they do to him), so Kebsabhazian pachams who had the genes to be gay but weren't designer babies would be dealt with some time after they began puberty.
I can imagine!I guess. Although I wouldn't be happy living in a Leholan country that frowned upon synaesthetes.
It's all work in progress, in a manner of speaking. I've long known that a child of rape will be broken and quite probably end up being his father's doom.A work in progress -- coolness! One more thing to put into your novels/movies.I'm working on the scheme now. The resulting baby arrives the way she does, simplistically, as a result of a curious mixture of genetics, thaumic orientation, the will & disposition of the parents, various physical and physiological parameters.
It's not like you can choose one from column A and two from column B. But if you work at it sufficiently, you'll be sure to end up quite unexpected!
Karma.
There's that permissive will again. Evil happens, but ever in the service of the good.
Probably most of those did not know anything going on behind the scenes. They woke up one morning to disaster and got all December 7th on the matter. I think that's a normal American response. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but could only wish it were otherwise than you've described!Don't forget that George W. Bush received warnings that Osama was planning to strike earlier that year, and didn't investigate. And that he advised Willie Brown not to fly on September 11, 2001. 9/11 may have been Mohammed Atta's plan, but passively-aggressively letting it happen was the Bushies' plan.
And then, to think that after George W. Bush let it happen, millions of Americans said, "We must get behind Bush and not question ANY of his positions! I'm so glad Gore lost! Bush is The Right Man!" . . .
Their economy is much more like early Christian societies. They "are together and ha(ve) all things in common"; while they don't have property to sell, they do hold real & cultural property in common and of the produce of their common labour, they "divide them among all according to each one’s need".Nice!Heh --- lack of a money economy is another similarity!
Or I guess, given the history of the World, Christian societies end up being Daine-like in nature!
I see. What counts as "indecent" exposure? Daine would be like can't get much more "exposed" than we already are!And there are town councils, for the different incorporated cities on Bodus. They deal with infrastructural things like the postal service, as opposed to moral/cultural/social issues like teen curfews or indecent exposure laws.
Oh, wow! Great minds think alike! Oezha makes you feel as if you're having an orgasm, after all, kind of. There's such a glorious history of oezha use on various Leholan planets. Did you know, for instance, that in the Povoian civilization that once existed on Kankonia, a boisangatru (warrior assigned to special operations to expand the Povoi's empire) was given oezha the night before a fight to see an omen of how to win the mano-a-mano combat? Or that Sivrut, a trendy religious movement in the dying days of the Povoian Empire, stated that oezha was the secret, just-discovered, long-lost key to understanding life and the afterlife?Hihi! Oezha...oazha is an old (very old!) Daine word for orgasm. With or without perception altering plant derivatives.
Interesting lore there! There are plants the use of which induce similar sensations in Daine. Usually (ab)used by peripubescent boys as part of a stupid kind of game. They usually end up passing out. Sometimes they end up dead.
What does the mano-a-mano combat entail? Is it like a combat between champions? Can a battle or war be settled in that manner? In the (very!) old days, Daine wars often were settled by champion combats. War between Daine is so very rare anymore (I guess there are enough other non-Daine people to fight it's just not worth slaying your own); but the traditions survive! Champion combats and war games are events you find during the quarter fairs.
Do go on...and on! Tell me more.If you lived on Kankonia, I imagine you would belong to the Hazumi faith. Hazumas has saints, and Hazumi priests have liturgies wherein they cook these delicious liturgical sharks!
Yes. I imagine that's what she'd look like as a Daine! She was very premature and died I think pretty much right away after birth. She'd be about Yaviê's age now. A trouble maker and no mistake!Thanks for sharing your lovely poetry! And your daughter is beautiful -- black hair and green eyes? Does that look like a Daine version of her?
No, I'm not wishing to die tomorrow!Wait, "soon coming"? Are you saying you're terminally ill? Does this mean the world will never get to see your published compilation on The World? This is more bad news.Good thing about crosses is we don't bear them alone. And anyway, the day is soon coming when I can set it down and look up...
to see her face...
But I am mortal and do eagerly but patiently await the day when I'll cross over.
Oh, that's good to hear. So they're from the Fifth World Generation!Goodness! They're eleven & twelve somethings! Beautiful, smart, creative boys.
Of course, this problem had me all in a twist for the better part of last week.A mystery that humans cannot know! You've just stricken the golden mean between having rubber-forehead aliens with entirely human souls and psychology and having aliens that no human reader can identify with because they're not human enough, and you've made them the center of your conworld! Brilliant!If you only knew...No, I think what's really a travesty is that none of the Daine are bisexual! We need bisexual Daine, lesbian Daine, gay Daine, asexual Daine, transgender Daine, genderqueer Daine! Oh, and please make one of your Daine agendered or bigendered!
Or rather, if I only understood well enough to be able to explain!
These things don't exist among Daine because they aren't human --- that doesn't mean they're a race of perfectly binary nothing in between. The reality is that their experience and their nature is entirely other. And, as with many things about Daine I don't talk about, I just don't have the understanding to make it plain. And, worse, mislead through poor explanation.
I don't think I'm any closer to a proper explanation. I will say that there are certain behaviours that Men (and presumably humans) would interpret as homosexual or bisexual acts. Some of them probably not repeatable here. I'll also say that Daine would scratch their heads at such interpretations. Finally I'd posit that the reality is probably more like all (or overwhelmingly most) Daine are neither one way nor the other and also both / and simultaneously. So, yeah. No lesbian or bi Daine --- but really no straight or asexual Daine either, if you take my meaning.
The only things I can say with certainty are the matter of "gender reassignment". That's kind of ordinary bio-magic. Also, Daine, in general, can't be cross-dressers. On account of them being either normally naked or else everyone regardless of gender wears basically the same articles of clothing.
You don't have to report back, but I must admit to curiosity on the matter.No. But I could!I would not be surprised! Did you ever ask?
I'm of the opinion that this is one of those things that parents are aware of (either consciously or unconsciously) simply as a matter of their intimate understanding and observation of their children. Possibly also depends on the constitution and devotion of the parents. Some parents may well be so horrified that their kid could be same sex attracted that they'll repress the intuition, ignore the signs, fight against it. Whatever. I just don't understand why people, parents most of all, have to behave that way towards their children.
As of today, more than 2M articles. But apparently they're not all very "deep".If I recall correctly, there are over a million (or was it a hundred thousand?) articles in the Waray-Waray Wikipedia.
I think you must be the only person on any planet in the known universe who's worn a turtle neck so consistently over such a long period of time. I think the last time I wore a turtle neck was when I was eight. And I hated it. If there isn't a category for turtleneck wearing, there ought to be!Are you saying I'm the only person on Earth who's worn a turtleneck that consistently for that long? It would be pretty cool if I were!
I hope the world record book people are paying you well!
Wow. That's quite the history!Basically, the Tzielites learned that the human genome had been completely deciphered, and they had found out where evil lay in humanity's genome. They got to work taking the DNA and zygotes and embryos of Halenean humans and cut and spliced and engineered to completely eliminate the parts that would make evil possible. Then they set the first Shaleyans up on their planet, never before colonized by sapient life, with walkie-talkies and other technology, and raised them to the adulthood of the first generation. From there, Shaleyan civilization began, and the Greys of Tziel began watching them from more of a distance. But over the next few generations, they saw many Shaleyan humans were LGBTQIA. Sometimes they went naked in public. Sometimes they masturbated in public. They developed a culture that included a transvestite subclass. And they'd even make "beyond-life pacts" wherein two Shaleyans would consent to the surviving one of the two continuing to have sex with the other's corpse after the first of the two to die passed away! They also discovered drugs like phamein, and used them, albeit responsibly. This was to the utter mortification of the puritanical Sahandists of Tziel, who had an extremely Sahandocentric view of what should be considered moral and what should be considered immoral. They called the people of that planet "Akhlayit", or "those who are destined to fall", which over the millennia evolved into the word "Shaleya" in the Shaleyan language. The Tzielites completely abandoned their Edenic planet-creation and stuck to life on Tziel or joined a ufopolis. They closed down all the Tzielite bases on Shaleya.
But, did any of these naked, beyond-life pacter, responsible phamein using people actually do anything évil? Seems like, perhaps, the Tzielites got exactly what they bargained for.
Accommodation and Repair Vessel?Yep! Special xenomedical expertise like you'd find aboard an ARV!
Actually, more than you think end up being or becoming permanent. There are a number of marriage types that last for a season or a year or some other defined period of time. Marriages whose purpose is to make children obviously expire when the youngest kid comes of age. Of course, partners can always "re-enlist" as it were. No matter what kind of marriage you've made, if kiddoes come into the picture, any Daine would do the right thing and do the family thing!Oh cool, so marriages aren't permanent there! What an interesting concept! And on Bodus, it's the opposite: puberty begins between 3 and 4, and the Seeking occurs between 4 and 7. (As I stated in the Bodus thread, ages 4-6 on Bodus are like ages 16-24 in Western civlization!) Then again, Bodus is the fifth planet from a large sun, so it takes 3.65 Earth-years to complete one Bodus-year.Some regions of Westmarche and Withwandiê are known for the practice. The marriages thus made are generally not life-matings. They're ways of spreading genetic influence across a wide area and end up being either temporary unions or marriages for making children.
And as for fourteen or fifteen year olds doing those kinds of things, puhleeease!! That would be like an eight or nine year old human having such a relationship!! They don't even hit puberty until their mid to late twenties!
Divorce is quite uncommon, if for no other reason than that most, especially younger, Daine are bound within temporary marriages of some kind. As Daine get older, the likelihood of making a life marriage increases dramatically. In part, divorce is uncommon because of the nature of Daine courtship. As with many things in Daine life, it is not anything like a private affair. If you're still quite young (say under 70 or 80 years), your parents and her parents will probably be talking about the courtship; your siblings will be grilling her and hers will be grilling you; for quite a while, you and your sweetie-pie can't even get a moment alone, as you'll have friends or relations nearby. Watching. Considering. And in those moments when your heart stops thumping and your mind reengages a bit, you'll have a chance to consider and ponder as well.
Turghun as I've said are the complete opposite. For them it's literally instant and irrevocable attraction the moment a girl and boy meet who are destined for one another. They can tell a little in advance, if they pay attention to their intuition, that The One is nearby. And for this reason, it's not uncommon to observe how unjoined Turghun boys & girls rarely look each other in the eye. Maybe they feel they aren't ready or don't like each other for one reason or other and are afraid they'll end up joined.
Definitely. Except instead of "children should be seen and not heard", it's going to be "Why won't my children speak to me instead of playing Angry Birds all day?"