#chefwhatnot

thank u!!!

Cool Zephyr Fact's:

KINDA lore for the World but she isnt actually that tall "in-universe" shes kinda tall-average. rali is actually like what we'd consider an average human height in Real Life (like 5'4") which makes zephyr something we'd consider a freakishly tall height but shes actually just like Normal Tall to kemonomimi oc world. there are very tall people in zerali world

i've been toying with some lore stuff that i was writing like 4 years ago for her and rali again where she has some sort of princess or diplomatic role n rali is her weird little assistant. i havent thought much abt her role in everything but her father is some sort of really powerful shithead guy in pretty much every canon ive written for my ocs

she dated ralis brother for a bit before she even knew rali was a person that existed and it was so catastrophically bad that shes a woman and a lesbian now. (this is partially a joke about the original incarnation of zephyr as an OC before rali even existed but that's more lore about Me than my ocs)

He's the first-ever Simic hybrid to be created as part of Vannifar's Guardian Project, her initiative to try and protect the guild/"prepare for war" as tensions were rising pre-Bolas.

He's mentioned to be adept at both open combat and infiltration, and has been modified both physically and mentally by the Simic mutation process. He's likely close with Vannifar, being her apex experiment. We unfortunately know nothing about him beyond that, because WotC is allergic to Simic story presence for some reason, and that's part of the reason I've learned to imprint on underdeveloped blorbos. (I literally wrote a multi-paragraph speculation on Belaxis's life a few days ago, for fuck's sake.)

He's just so intriguing to me. Who is he? What is he like? How does he feel about his role? What's his relationship to Vannifar?

I guess vaguely once a month is just how these things work now, I do try to read everyone's tags and replies and stuff but a lot of them I just don't really have anything to reply with sorry! as always I appreciate the supportive words and well wishes and stuff <3

I also love the trifurcation of responses to [go to bed]: one group of people is like "yeah u right I sleep now thanks", one is like "sorry but I can't", and one is just like "no! I refuse!!!" lol

I did get two different "posts that have 10k to me" tags though, on [one] that actually passed 10k and [another] that is still barely triple digits and will probably stay there XD

anyway [chess kirb] was on the radar which is neat

also my birthday is this weekend :)

oh yeah and reminder that I also have a craft blog @sleepy-princess-craftery

Fantasy France-China (French language, China political history)

I’ll be covering the Chinese portion of this ask, and Rina the linguistics.

When I see “political history inspired by China” the first things that come to mind are Chinese imperialism and dynasties. For starters, you should check out our post on culture-blending for additional support in writing this.

Chinese Imperialism

Chinese imperialism and colonization is still imperialism and colonization. Even as POC, we’re still responsible for the genocide and suffering of countless numbers of marginalized people. 

Some elements of Chinese Imperialism I encourage you to research:

Genocide (& Ethnic cleansing)-- including ethnic groups of Vietnam, Korea, Central Asia, and modern examples including Hong Kongese, Tibetan, Taiwanese and Uighur people.

Chinese nationalism! The Boxer Rebellion, Opioid Wars, Sino-Japanese Wars.. The repercussions of these events are all still huge in Chinese politics today.

Jess adds: “there's a thing that's been going on for a while to make Mandarin the only dialect spoken/promoted at the expense of others… back in the day in Taiwan they discouraged/forbade Taiwanese being spoken in certain places like schools and only taught in Mandarin.”

Differences between Dynasty / Time Period

You have to do research on the specific dynasty that you’re drawing influence from. The Yuan dynasty ruled by Mongolians? The Qing dynasty ruled by Manchus? China’s political history is huge and just as any civilization, we have different eras that all had different laws, rulers, relations, etc.

(And as always, feedback and input from our Chinese readers would be appreciated-- and input from those who have been impacted by Chinese imperialism as well!)

~ Mod Emme

Conlanging

On a quick conlanging note, it’s very theoretically and logically possible for any world to have a language that has a French phonetic inventory, but I would strongly recommend distancing yourself from French in every other aspect as much as possible. 

That includes: 

changing the orthography (French has a pretty distinct system of denoting vowel quality with diacritics, but these representations aren’t 1:1 with the IPA and are by no means the only way of romanization that’s out there, so you can and should be flexible in your own fictional language)

Changing morphology (I dunno, make it agglutinative like many Germanic languages do, that might be fun! Or look at what kinds of affixes can be attached to French noun and verb stems and do something else!)

Changing basic word order (French uses way more combinations than English, but its main construction is SVO, like many Romance languages, so maybe pick something else! Research the typology of word order to see possible real-world combinations)

Changing other grammar (like types of noun and verb marking. One very easy way to make it un-French-y is to not mark nouns with gender)

And lastly: this depends on both your worldbuilding and how much you plan to use the language in the story, but being loose as heck with vocabulary and adding borrowings/calques from other languages in your fictional world has the added bonus of pissing off the linguistically conservative Académie Française (basically a committee of people who think they have to protect the “purity” of the language). 

Obligatory linking of my naming language conlang guide here. If your readers recognize it as French-y, you’ve done something wrong; see Emme’s discussion above! 

it’s just scribbles, but if it were in close up it would look like this