afoot and light-hearted

More often than not I’ll crack into a sprawling fantasy series and, while I appreciate the luscious descriptions of furniture, landscapes, and clothing, all I’m focused on is that I don’t actually know how this world works. I only know what it looks like.  

Including some functionality to your universe can add to immersion and give your reader a strong foundation on which to build their mental model of your universe. 

You certainly don’t need to use all of these questions! In fact, I recommend against that, as all of these certainly won’t make it into your final draft. I personally find that starting my worldbuilding off with 5 to 10 functional questions helps pave the way for glittery and elaborate aesthetic development later on.

How is the healthcare funded in your world?

How does healthcare functionally differ between the wealthy and the poor? (i.e. can only the wealthy go to hospitals? do poor families often have to rely on back-alley procedures?)

Where are health centers (i.e. hospitals, small clinics, etc.) organized in your cities?

Does it differ in smaller towns?

How does this affect people’s ability to get healthcare?

Is healthcare magical, and if it is, how does that affect the healthcare system? 

If healing is instantaneous, how does that affect people’s views on injury, illness, and chronic ailments?

If you have both magical and physical healthcare, which one is deemed superior and how does that affect society? 

What illnesses are common in your world? 

How does this affect daily life? 

What do the people in your world think illnesses are? 

Is it a miasma theory? 

Humor theory? 

Demons? 

Do they know about biological viruses and bacteria? 

How does this affect healthcare?

How do people get water? 

Is the water sanitary and if not, how do they sanitize it?

How does agriculture work? 

Is it large corporations or individual farms?

What sort of agricultural technology exists in your world and how does it affect food production?

Are farmers wealthy or poor?

What sort of natural resources does your world/country(ies) have and how are they obtained?

How does this affect the average wealth of the country?

How does this wealth affect the culture? 

What livestock or beasts of burden are most valued? Least valued? Why?

What is considered a luxury good vs. a regular good?

What forms of transportation does your world have?

What classes use what forms of transportation?

How far has the average citizen traveled, given your transportation limitations?

Which cities are the most accessible and which are the least? Why?

How do popular transportation methods change how cities/towns are laid out?

Does your world have public transportation? What is it?

Is there a coming-of-age aspect to travel?

Describe your world’s postal system or whatever equivalent there is. 

Who pays for it? 

How reliable is it? 

Are there emergency methods for transporting information?

How does your world keep time (i.e. watches, sundials, water clock, etc.)?

Does your world have a currency system, barter system, or something else? 

If you have multiple countries, do different currencies have different values across said countries?

How does this affect travel?

Do you have banks in your world and if so, how are they run?

Who owns the banks? Government? Wealthy? How does this affect the economy and/or class system?

How does credit operate in your universe?

Does your world operate more on big corporations or small business? Something in between?

How are workers/labourers treated in your world? 

Are there workers unions and if so, what are common views on unions? 

Describe your tax system. If you don’t have a tax system, explain why and how your world is affected by that. 

Can certain social classes not own property, certain livestock, certain businesses, etc.? Why?

How are business records kept? Are business records kept?

If your world has technology, does your world prioritize developing entertainment tech, communications tech, transportation tech or something else entirely?

What does this say about your world?

How does this affect your economy?

To the closest approximation, what type of government does your world have? 

How are rulers/presidents/nobles put in place? 

How much power does an individual ruler have? 

Is there a veto process? 

If you have multiple countries, do they have different types of rulers?

Describe any large-scale alliances (i.e. countries, factions, etc.) that are present in your world. 

How did they come about and how are they maintained? 

Are they strained or peaceful? 

How does it affect the greater politics of your world?

Describe how wars are fought both internationally and nationally. 

Do methods of war differ between countries/races? 

What about philosophies about war?

If there is a military, what is its hierarchy structure?

How does the military recruit?

Is the military looked upon favourably in your society?

What weapons are used by each country/type of people during warfare, and how does that affect war strategies?

Describe the sentencing system of your world. 

Is your accused innocent until proven guilty, or guilty until proven innocent?

How are lawbreakers punished? 

If you have prisons, describe how they are organized and run, and who owns them. 

Does differing ownership change how the prisons operate?

What are the major ways in which laws between countries vary? 

Do laws between cities vary? If so, how and why?

How does citizenship work in your world? What rights and privileges do citizens have that others do not? 

Can certain classes or races not become citizens?

Are there certain taboo subjects or opinions that artist/authors/musicians are not allowed to depict (i.e. portraying the official religion in a negative light, explicit sexual material, etc.)? What does this say about your society?

How do people get around these censorship laws?

What is the official hierarchy of duty in your world? (i.e. is family the most important, or patriotism? What about clan?)

How many languages are there in your world, and how many languages share a common origin? 

How many people are multilingual? 

Which language is the most common?

How is multilingualism viewed?

How are different languages viewed? (i.e. is one language ugly/barbaric while another is romantic and sensual?)

Henry Tilney is probably my favourite of the Austen heroes, actually, but he is a tricky one because a lot of his dialogue is really ambiguous so I think how appealing people find him as a character is very dependent on how they read him. 

On the surface, he can come across as very condescending and arrogant, but my interpretation of his character has always been that he is a) incredibly jaded and b) highly ironic, and rarely literally means what he’s saying. One of the key quotes that defines Tilney for me is actually when his sister tells him off:

“You may as well make Miss Morland understand yourself - unless you mean to have her think you intolerably rude to your sister, and a great brute in your opinion of women in general. Miss Morland is not used to your odd ways.”

What this says to me, and how I’ve always read him, is that almost everything he says is sarcastic, satirising ideas about gender and language (tbh I often think Tilney as a character is the closest to being an insert for Austen’s own opinions, his manner reminds me a lot of her letters). This sarcasm is made sharper by the fact that he is, in some ways, a fairly cynical person. I mean, you have consider that Tilney is a man who:

grew up in the shadow of an authoritarian, domineering father

lost his mother at 17

has an older brother that he knows to have committed multiple indiscretions which who knows what consequences

has watched his sister, who he’s very close to, be isolated and unhappy at home with their father and unable to marry the man she loves

So, personally, I’ve never seen it as him considering himself superior to others, precisely, as it is him having seen a lot of the worst of people and seeing that possibly more easily that he really sees the good in them. Tilney’s educated and has read a lot, and on top of that as a clergyman his work directly involves interacting a lot with other people, and all of that combines to make him probably the most perceptive character in the book. He’s certainly a lot more perceptive than Catherine; in some respects his relationship with Catherine mirrors Knightley’s with Emma, but where Emma is blinded to reality by her own arrogance, Catherine is naive and inexperienced with an overactive imagination.

But Tilney also never treats Catherine with anything other than kindness and consideration - he jokes and teases, but there’s never anything malicious in it and he jokes about himself just as much. He appreciates Catherine’s love of Gothic novels and doesn’t tell her it’s a waste of time but uses it to connect with her further. He doesn’t know about how far Catherine’s imaginings have gone so cheerily jokes around with her about his house being filled with horrors. He doesn’t hold it against her when she apparently breaks her engagement with him to go with the Thorpes, and he doesn’t ridicule or shame her for not seeing the truth about them but admires her optimism and ability to see the best in people.

He also handles the whole debacle at Northanger pretty magnanimously - I mean, Catherine accuses his father of murdering his mother and he would have every right to be furious about it, and could easily have been nasty about it. But he takes it in stride and while he does expresses some disappointment, he gently encourages her to use her common sense and think more rationally. 

And that’s because Tilney genuinely delights in Catherine’s optimism and her character. He loves spending time with her and all the individual things that make her her; all he encourages her to do is to mature and think a little more about some times, not to change anything about who she is. I think she helps bring some of that optimism back to him, which is why he’s so willing to cut ties with his father rather than give her up at the end.

As a character, Tilney’s also deliberately subversive for a hero at the time. He enjoys all the same novels as the women, he shops for fabric for his sister’s dresses, his closest friend is his sister. He’s a much more feminine hero than many of the other men in Austen, which is a deliberate choice as he’s a subversion of the “Gothic hero” that was popular at the time and which the book is generally satirising. 

There is a level of arrogance of some of what he says and does, yes, but he’s actually a much gentler, softer character than most fictional heroes. A lot of his traits are refracted in Austen’s other men in particular, but none of them have quite the same combination of warmth and humour that Tilney does. 

All that said, I think it’s important to remember with any kind of reading of Northanger that it was the first book that Austen wrote and wasn’t published in her lifetime. If she had lived longer, there’s no telling whether it ever would have been or if she would have rewritten/edited it, if we would still have it in the form it’s in. And I think you can definitely see Austen learning as a writer in Northanger and figuring out what makes a hero and a heroine - and then going to deconstruct those ideas further and in a more mature way in her later books.  

“Kaz,” Inej asked suddenly. “Why crows?”

“The crow and cup? Probably because crows are scavengers. They take the leavings.”

“I don’t mean the Dregs tattoo. That’s as old as the gang. Why did you adopt it? Your cane. The Crow Club. You could have chosen a new symbol, built a new myth.”

Kaz’s bitter coffee eyes remained trained on the horizon, the rising sun painting him in pale gold light. “Crows remember human faces. They remember the people who feed them, who are kind to them. And the people who wrong them too. They don’t forget. They tell each other who to look after and who to watch out for.”

Xaden x Violet (Fourth Wing)

Violet x Xaden (Fourth Wing)

OMG I CAN'T WITH THIS ART! Throwing my laptop to the side and continue reading Iron Flame, BYE. (Special Edition in link above🔥)

Some parapet quick render

3D done in Blender.

Ridoc: yeah it came out of nowhere

🗡️ Violet and Xaden - Fourth Wing 🗡️

He set it up in a way that had me thinking it was some awful, unspeakable thing, instead it was...that.