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One piece of Creative Bullshit I'm particularly proud of is Sabine's house, which I made up on the spot as she walked home in chapter two. It's an old smithy, remodeled after the town smith relocated from Pierpoint Road (which used to be a commercial street from the port to the Market Square, but which slowly turned residential after the port closed) to Market Square. I've never described it in exhaustive detail, but there's an elm tree outside, and a large yard, and a roof that's surprisingly easy to climb. Sabine's stepmother also apparently keeps unearthing scrap iron in the flowerbed.

The opera The Raven King, which gets referenced at least once in the story, I also made up on the spot because I needed something to fill the empty spot where Nathan's godawful poem would have been. So somehow I thought up this opera about a fellow named Arvid, who gets a god to turn him into a raven so he can bring back the soul of his dead fiancee, Melisande (Orpheus much?). However, he fails to bring back Melisande's soul, and as the way between heaven and earth turns out to be too treacherous for some souls to navigate, the god dictates that Arvid remain a raven and guide the souls of the dead into the afterlife. Naturally, during Arvid's transformation into the Raven King, theatres like to show off their tech prowess (and the talents of their resident mage, if they have one) by making black wings sprout from Arvid's back in the most spectacular fashion they can manage. Vitae is secretly an enormous snob over having seen it once, and mentally picks apart Nathan's performance of one of the arias.

And in answer to my own question, I know I, for one, have a tendency to get hung up on names and place history, and random little details like why garnets are so damn hard to come by in Emanon. To the point where I just can't continue, because I don't like to type in NAME and come back to it. Because I'm stubborn like that. Which is why I keep lists of spare names for each culture in MOSI, just in case.

Creative bullshit: I kind of have a whole notebook on it, and I rather think think this is how Reverend DEATH and Hierophant Hellfire came to be, with me bullshitting about the religion in different regions. Claire's entire personality could be said to have come about this way... as well as Kita as "Lisette".

Things I didn't expect? Well... there's the whole Feragel/Indio thing, which kind of came out of "oh, that would be a mildly ridiculous pairing" and went from there to become cannon, not to mention the whole Allemande knew the whole time thing... and Indio's blindness later on, and the Antimony/Stone thing, not to mention the dogs (oh dear god, the dogs... )... yeah, I think if plot points didn't bonk me upside the head, I'd never get anything done.

And the last part? Names. Names so much. Especially middle and last names. If those ever do get settled, it's because I make Sims of them and bullshit my way through the family names, then change them later on.

Oh, I know what you mean. I've always known a lot about the social conditions of the countries and recent developments in magic and medicine, and absolutely nothing about politics, geography, and history. These days, whenever I come to a point where I know I can't avoid one of these three roadblocks any longer, I find someone I know who knows a lot about the subject and pick their mind until I'm satisfied.

For example, I had to ask a classmate for help with the geography of MOSI, as well as how to explain the cultural spread and cross-pollination that would result in the region's current cultures. It took a couple hours, and started something like:

Rae: Okay, I'm going to draw you a really shitty map.
Dan: Hey, most of what we know of the world started with really shitty maps.

I generally go by the rule that water runs downhill and toward the sea, and wherever there's lots of water, there's bound to be agriculture. It only just occurred to me, however, that where there are mountains, there are earthquakes. sweatdrop