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?)
Feel free to add your own questions in reblogs or in comments!
yeeeeouch! (<- me feeling pain from thinking about concepts and ideas)
i can pretty much guarantee that ↑that↑ is not a heading you see everyday.
now i will not be giving advice on writing cyclopses, (though it may be sort of the same thing) i still hope this will be helpful for some people out there that are looking to provide a more diverse cast to their wip!
i have never ever ever read a book, watch a show movie etc etc that involves a character with one eye. (aside from those badass characters who wear eye patches bc they lost sight in one eye in some badass way)
for context: i am one of many people who was born with microphtalmia, an eye disease that results in one or both eyes develope smaller than normal at birth. i myself was born with a smaller left eye, which resulted in my left eye being removed exactly twenty days after birth.
microphthalmia (along with many other eye diseases) typically leads to being half or fully blind. i lucked out and only lost my left eye which i am so so thankful for.
i would really really love to see more representation for my community in literature, especially so people would come to see that being half blind isn’t as unusual and weird as people make it out to be.
without further ado, i present to you, a list of information, facts, and first hand experiences from yours truly!
i’ve had prosthetic eyes made to fit my eye socket for about fifteen years (i’m 16 lol) (the first 6ish months after the surgery i never had a prosthetic)
in my life i’ve had four different prosthetic eyes made because just like other people, my eye socket grew alongside the rest of me, meaning the prosthetic needed to be made bigger
i’ve had my current prosthetic for four years now, the past ones lasted about 2-3 years at a time. this one will probably last me through the rest of my life unless i need/want a new one
as opposed to most media/assumptions, my prosthetic (along with most prosthetics) is PLASTIC (people always think it’s glass) and only half a circle!!
i’ve had three surgeries related to my eye
i do not have depth perception which makes doing certain things very difficult (estimating distance, how close/far i am from something etc)
driving is not affected too much, i just have to turn my head more than other people. i believe being blind in the right eye might be more difficult, but i couldn’t say
doing my make up is kinda easy, except for eyeliner is a pain in the ASS since most people close their eye to do it on their upper lid, but clearly i can’t close my right eye whilst doing it lol
my family as well as my friends and even myself often forget i have a prosthetic, which sometimes results in awkward/funny situations
i hate walking with people on my right bc i can’t tell where they are unless i’m constantly looking down at my/their feet
i sucked at basketball bc i had such a disadvantage (no depth perception, i could only see half the court, i was constantly turning my head) but professional swimming is much easier for me since it’s not a contact sport and doesn’t really require for me to be paying attention to a million things at once
i rarely have to take my prosthetic out, and if i do, it’s either to clean it, (we do get eye crusties on our prosthetics just like other people do when they have pink eye or sever allergies) it’s bothering me/really dry, or i want to take it out to show/scare people lol
a lot of people don’t realize when i first meet them that it’s fake bc my recent prosthetic is amazing accurate to my real eye. others notice and assume i have a lazy eye since it doesn’t move
for some reason people think i can’t cry out of my left (prosthetic) eye??? i still have a tear duct??? i actually think more tears come out of my left tear duct than my right lol
i am extremely self conscious about it, but i know there are other one-eyed beauties out there who aren’t which is amazing!! i try to live vicariously through them lol
i make sooo many jokes about my eye lol, and i’m usually ok w other people making jokes as long as they aren’t like overly rude/offensive, then i’ll feel a lil bad about my self
people never really made fun of it, but kids in middle school likes to wave things in front of my left eye/on my left side that i couldn’t see which got really annoying after a while
getting custom designed prosthetics are available, but they’re really expensive (so are normal lol) they costs thousands of dollars, just like other prosthetics do
i run into things that are on my left side ALL THE TIME it’s actually kinda funny lolol
i try to hide my left eye/turn more to my left side in photos bc my eyes aren’t always looking in the same direction, which really gets to me
i wear glasses for both protection and bc my right eye is -1.75 lmao but i did used to wear non-prescription glasses purely for safety
i do have contacts to wear during the summer, swim meets etc, for when i don’t want/can’t wear my glasses but need to see. bc of this, i have a second pair of glasses that have no prescription
if doctors/scientists managed to figure out a way to fix microphthalmia (a birth defect), or do a sort of eye transplant, i would not be able to have that done to me because all parts of my left eye have been removed from my body
microphthalmia is NOT the only disease that results in the haver losing sight in one or both eyes!! there are many others, but it is not my place to share any experiences for something i have not experienced!!!
for once i just want to see a clumsy character who has one eye that WASNT a result of some tragic event.
so please please please consider including a character with one working eye in your wip. it would mean the world to myself and all the other members of the community (there’s a lot of us, trust me) plus, i wouldn’t mind starting an acting debut playing a half-blind female protagonist, that would be so dope.
that’s about all i can think of for now! please send an ask or reply to this post if you have any questions, i’m willing to answer any!!! and if you happen to be a member of the one eye club, please add to this post!! that would mean the world to me:)
no fuck you im not making a pillowfort. im not unlocking my twitter. until the literal day this site becomes a blank 404 error crater on the face of the internet i am here with my little pictures and indecipherable text posts from users just as unkillable as i
LIFE IS STRANGE: BEFORE THE STORM (2017) ✖ ARCANE (2021—)
With the recent influx of more Twitter refugees from dsmptwt I think now is the best time to remind people:
Likes on tumblr act as a bookmarking function. There is no algorithm here. Reblogs are the only way a post will get shared, and the only way a blog can grow. The tumblr fandom may be more chill than twitter but its much harder for fanarts and analyses to circulate if you don't reblog their stuff.
If you're on mobile you can use the fast-reblog option! Hold down on the reblog button of a post, then move your finger to the icon of whichever one of your blogs you want to reblog it to:
It's quick, simple, and super easy so if you aren't already doing that then I highly recommend you do so!!
[Edit: and as mentioned by ppl in the tags, the shortcut is e + reblog button on desktop 👍]
In light of tumblrs stupid new banned tags I will continue doing just whatever I want
MADOKA MAGICA ☆ WALPURGIS NO KAITEN