I don't know what to blog about.
Mar. 8th, 2011 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleI keep wanting to pull some sort of passive-aggressive BS about not getting the comments I want, but I am honestly pretty clear in my own head that the problem is my desire to constantly be the center of attention. A natural desire, yeah, but not a reasonable expectation, and I have to admit my expectation was that when I began blogging on a daily basis I would become an awesome, godlike amalgam of John Scalzi, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yuki_onna , copperbadge , and theferrett .
I am not unhappy with anyone's commenting habits. I am unhappy with my own blogging. I'm not entirely sure why.
In more interesting and less self-indulgent news (still wondering if posting about passive-aggressive BS is in this case the same as indulging in it. Probably at least a little bit), I am world-building for the LARP sequel. This last LARP, people asked me a fair number of questions I had to quickly spitball answers to, because my notions of goings-on in the Lightning Age outside the framework of my story are somewhat sketchy, at best.
I know that the Fatimid Dynasty of the Caliphate continued its reign, or that its successors maintained many of its attitudes and policies, and that Sufism became much more widespread and accepted. I know that Islamic refusal to sexually objectify women lead to women dressing in male clothing rather than embracing other notions or definitions of modesty.
In Southern Africa, the lack of European colonialism helped the Kingdom of Mutapa, or Monomotapa, prosper rather than decline, and that the mid-1800s military rise of the Zulu lead to Monomotapa allying with and later absorbing many contemporary African nations.
In Europe and northern Asia, the Mongol Empire never dissolved in civil war. The historical position occupied by colonialist and imperialist European nations was instead dominated by the Khanate and the Caliphate instead. The only European power that avoided becoming part of al-Andalus or the Khanate was Prussia, which merged with Cossack, Russian, and Scandinavian powers in solidarity, and fiercely maintained its cultural hegemony by deporting criminals and political prisoners to Siberia and specifically the prison colony of Tunguska. The methane clathrate deposits of the Tunguskan coastal ice fields became a fuel source for steam technology, and eventually Lovecraftian beings beneath the ice awakened, leading to a prison revolution, and an unstable government that maintained sovereignty only because it could threaten the world's fuel supplies, and had a unique method of developing biotechnology.
In southern Asia, the Chakravartin Raj formed as a reaction by Buddhist and Hindu monarchies to the threat of Caliph and Khan; and Korea and Okinawa, by alliance, managed to exert considerable influence over Japan, portions of China, and Kamchatka, forming (relatively recently) the Twin Kingdoms of Joseon-Uchinaa.
My goal throughout this, which I do not believe to be an unqualified success, was to create a world in which Europe never held a world-spanning Empire, in which multiculturalism was embraced, but that would still highlight rather than erase the problems of imperialism and colonialism. The existence of Prussia is due to a desire to avoid a simple reversal, where my intent could be construed as showing white Europeans oppressed by dangerous and exotic cultures -- not a flavor of Orientalism I have any wish to dabble in. I wanted to be respectful where I could rather than be appropriative -- which has also spurred my omission of the 'New World' of Australia and the Americas. In the world of the Lightning Age, it is known that there are powerful and independent societies in these places, but trade has not been established. It is difficult to treat Australian Aboriginal, Native American and First Nations peoples and cultures in all their variations without offensive appropriation, and Australian Aboriginal peoples in particular have objected to their stories being co-opted and retold by others. It is my hope that by acknowledging their existence in my worldbuilding without explicitly discussing them or including them 'on-stage', I am treading in the space between appropriation and erasure, both of which I want to avoid. It is my expectation, of course, that I have handled this less than perfectly (along with the rest of my world-building), and I am open to differing opinions and correction where I have erred into offensive territory.
With that said, obviously, there's still a lot of worldbuilding left to do.
yuki_onna , copperbadge , and theferrett .I am not unhappy with anyone's commenting habits. I am unhappy with my own blogging. I'm not entirely sure why.
In more interesting and less self-indulgent news (still wondering if posting about passive-aggressive BS is in this case the same as indulging in it. Probably at least a little bit), I am world-building for the LARP sequel. This last LARP, people asked me a fair number of questions I had to quickly spitball answers to, because my notions of goings-on in the Lightning Age outside the framework of my story are somewhat sketchy, at best.
I know that the Fatimid Dynasty of the Caliphate continued its reign, or that its successors maintained many of its attitudes and policies, and that Sufism became much more widespread and accepted. I know that Islamic refusal to sexually objectify women lead to women dressing in male clothing rather than embracing other notions or definitions of modesty.
In Southern Africa, the lack of European colonialism helped the Kingdom of Mutapa, or Monomotapa, prosper rather than decline, and that the mid-1800s military rise of the Zulu lead to Monomotapa allying with and later absorbing many contemporary African nations.
In Europe and northern Asia, the Mongol Empire never dissolved in civil war. The historical position occupied by colonialist and imperialist European nations was instead dominated by the Khanate and the Caliphate instead. The only European power that avoided becoming part of al-Andalus or the Khanate was Prussia, which merged with Cossack, Russian, and Scandinavian powers in solidarity, and fiercely maintained its cultural hegemony by deporting criminals and political prisoners to Siberia and specifically the prison colony of Tunguska. The methane clathrate deposits of the Tunguskan coastal ice fields became a fuel source for steam technology, and eventually Lovecraftian beings beneath the ice awakened, leading to a prison revolution, and an unstable government that maintained sovereignty only because it could threaten the world's fuel supplies, and had a unique method of developing biotechnology.
In southern Asia, the Chakravartin Raj formed as a reaction by Buddhist and Hindu monarchies to the threat of Caliph and Khan; and Korea and Okinawa, by alliance, managed to exert considerable influence over Japan, portions of China, and Kamchatka, forming (relatively recently) the Twin Kingdoms of Joseon-Uchinaa.
My goal throughout this, which I do not believe to be an unqualified success, was to create a world in which Europe never held a world-spanning Empire, in which multiculturalism was embraced, but that would still highlight rather than erase the problems of imperialism and colonialism. The existence of Prussia is due to a desire to avoid a simple reversal, where my intent could be construed as showing white Europeans oppressed by dangerous and exotic cultures -- not a flavor of Orientalism I have any wish to dabble in. I wanted to be respectful where I could rather than be appropriative -- which has also spurred my omission of the 'New World' of Australia and the Americas. In the world of the Lightning Age, it is known that there are powerful and independent societies in these places, but trade has not been established. It is difficult to treat Australian Aboriginal, Native American and First Nations peoples and cultures in all their variations without offensive appropriation, and Australian Aboriginal peoples in particular have objected to their stories being co-opted and retold by others. It is my hope that by acknowledging their existence in my worldbuilding without explicitly discussing them or including them 'on-stage', I am treading in the space between appropriation and erasure, both of which I want to avoid. It is my expectation, of course, that I have handled this less than perfectly (along with the rest of my world-building), and I am open to differing opinions and correction where I have erred into offensive territory.
With that said, obviously, there's still a lot of worldbuilding left to do.
