• WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I have a set of rules for my fantasy worlds like the writers for coyote and roadrunner. One of them is that I don’t like to numerically represent distance, size, or time. “She was 2.5m tall” should always instead be “I had to tilt my head all the way to meet her gaze.” I think it’s more impactful.

    Because of that, every world that I write has a really lax system of keeping track of years/year equivalents passing. The idea is that “counting [years] is for distant lovers and diasporas.” For instance there is a kingdom that was founded when a mysterious person made a prophecy that a comet would cross the sky in 100 [years]. So they took it upon themselves, much to the chagrin of outside parties, to count to see if it comes true. When it did, they all freaked out and had decided to delve into developing prophecy and counting time. That resulted in a culture everybody else hated because 1) monarchy is gross and 2) keeping a numerical history is taboo. It’s like “why are you being so dramatic about the flow of time?”