On Climate

Whoa. Okay, I seriously did not expect to be dead for quite as long as I was. I'm about to be incredibly busy again, but hopefully healthier, so posting will hopefully get more regular.

Had a hard time deciding what to write for this rant. I have this great long list of things I need to write, so here's a worldbuilding one as sort of a warmup. (Yes, it's a "things the writer thinks would be interesting to see" rant, alas.)

Remember the weather rant? Weather's a good plot device, moves people around, screws things up, all that good stuff. Zoom out, a bit, though: weather happens in the context of the local climate.

Climate is a pretty big deal.

On Knowing What to Expect From Character Interactions

Not all character interactions in a story, especially an RP, are fun and butterflies. (Well, they darn well had better not be, anyway.) Interactions can and should go sour, they should spiral into arguments or awkward silences or send the characters off sulking in opposite directions, because realistically nobody is universally liked, and nobody universally likes everybody. A "negative" interaction can be just as sound and interesting as a "positive" one, often even more so. Sometimes, though, when I see an interaction go bad, shortly afterward I see one of the players involved, often the initiator, react with surprise and dismay: why won't anyone interact with me?, they say.

Well, here we go to answer that question. Note: This is about the reactions of characters, not about how to respond to constructive criticism from players.

On Discrimination In Fantastic Settings

This applies to both RP worldbuilding and story-writing, and has already been done (probably better) here.

So incredibly often I see settings that are clearly not historical, but set in some romanticize, fantasticized past, a "here there be dragons" sort of a place, with corrupted, vaguely rose-tinted versions of the sexism, racism, ablism, homophobia, and other discrimination that ruled in the corresponding time period of world history. "It's historical," creators too often shrug when asked why. "To omit those aspects would be unrealistic." Or sometimes, slightly more justified but wait no not really, "Utopian societies are unrealistic." News flash: If we do ever get rid of discrimination, there will still be societal strife from different sources.

"Unrealistic." Your main character's dating an elf, he has a magic sword and a hyper-intelligent flying horse that doesn't need to eat and you're saying you can't cut the discrimination of the time period you're supposedly emulating-- because it would be unrealistic.

Bullshit. Is it really that hard to imagine a society without those issues?

Now, plenty of good writers do include discrimination in their societies, but they treat it realistically, as the complex problem that it is, and show its effects. They show how it gets into all facets of society, not just as a few jokes made by less savory characters, or a few incidents of ill-treatment. They don't just treat it as an excuse to have characters be horrible to whatever group. They show that no group is perfect, depict everyone (not just the good guys) as people, and don't use the tired, rotten trope of the hero high on the societal privilege ladder saving his poor simple minority friends who can't help themselves. They don't apply the rosy filter of "but it was the good old days" to it. And of course if the setting is actually historical and properly researched-- medieval Europe or imperial China, for example-- historical accuracy is a legitimate answer. "Alternate timeline" settings may also pass, depending on what ways they are alternate in. But if it's not portrayed as a complex problem, and hasn't got any real basis in history to be true to, I really don't see why it's necessary. 

This is probably not the last you'll hear from me on the subject; future posts may go more in-depth.

Writing rant disclaimer:
Some of you may have read some of my fiction or participate in an RP I am part of. If you notice that something in my writing has something I have labeled as a problem in my rant, go ahead and tell me so! I may not have noticed that I'm doing whatever it is, so that can help me! However, I do want to keep this place polite, so please no unnecessary bashing of my characters, or, for that matter, anyone else's, be it a fellow commenter or a fellow RP'er.

Blog note: You might notice the "Frustrations" label. "Frustrations" posts are usually going to involve a fair helping of my opinion and social commentary. Keep this in mind, and feel free to disagree in comments, but do so civilly, please.

On Weather and Terrain: Pitting Characters Against Their Environment

The Female Characters series of articles is still in progress, but now for a break: let's talk about the weather! (No, really...)

Conflict, when handled properly, is interesting. I've said it before, I'll probably say it a million more times. A story doesn't run without a primary conflict, which usually presents itself in RPs as a main enemy. There's also usually a healthy (or even poisonous) dose of inter-party conflict. Other character-driven conflict often puts in an appearance as well, with NPCs interacting with the player characters. There's no shortage, in other words, of character-driven conflict. What doesn't always get enough of an impact, I think, is the conflict that the environment itself causes by way of weather and terrain.

On Female Characters: Not So Different, Really

"What do they think their mothers do, when the lords are at war and a raiding party strikes? Stay in their solars and tat lace?"
--Salma, from First Test in Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series

All right, this is here by popular demand; I was going to get around to it eventually after some unrelated rants, but people convinced me to do it now.

Too often I read female characters that have me frantically backing away. Sometimes it's because they're written solely as props to male characters; sometimes it's because they're written with personalities that draw heavily on stereotypes and just plain don't make sense. These two major problems have slightly different root causes; the former tends to be more overtly sexist, while the latter, I think, stems from the idea that Man Minds And Woman Minds Are Inherently Different-- and that each cannot truly comprehend the way the other works. This is laughably untrue. I don't dispute that there are different genders (not the same as sexes, by the way), but the lines are a lot blurrier than society drives us to believe, and they certainly aren't incomprehensible to each other.

On Female Characters: Obeying the Laws of Physics (also some biology)

Disclaimer: This is mainly written for the dudes, because I'm assuming most females have a pretty good idea of how females work physically.
Okay, so you want to write a female character. Shying away from personality differences for a moment (that's a whole other rant), you're probably going to be including some of the physical differences. If you're into females, you may be thinking about going for fanservice. So for this rant, I'm going to cover the biological and clothing-related aspects of being female. Physical stuff comes first; clothing is after.

On the Player Character

This is going to be a fairly basic, commonsense guide to writing a player character for an RPG (play-by-post, or tabletop, or what-have-you). Some of you are going to read this and think, "well, duh!" And that's fine. Not all of this is obvious to everyone, though, so I'm just aiming to help.

So, you want to create a player character! Depending on the game, you may have a class system to work with, or you may have free rein. Regardless, you'll want to create a character that's believable. So, onward!