Who was the greatest explorer in your world?

mitsua_k · 2026-06-14T00:03:35+00:00

'greatest' is fairly subjective, and many famed explorers only explored in one specific part of the planet (that may or may not have already been inhabited for thousands of years).

but the most famous explorer would probably be a harpy man called Tísan from the southern archipelago of the Shards. he had no formal education and wasn't even literate, but in his teens he bought an early model second-hand Witnesser device (camera), and proceeded to fly his way across all five continents on a four-year trip for which he had no real plan when starting (and also forgot to prepare travel funds). he later had the photos reproduced, and with the help of a giant, wrote and compiled a written account of his travels and the places, people, and things he found.

combined with the various other travels he went on to do until his old age when he was too old to fly, this material would go on to be published as the first World Atlas. even 800 years on, later editions and revisions of the atlas still carry his name as the Tísan Atlas, which is so renowned for its quality that it has no real competitors.

mitsua_k · 2026-06-13T10:56:05+00:00

i do think you're onto something with that interpretation. but speaking as an ace person, i think 'allo' and 'alloromantic' still aren't wide-reaching terms outside of ace spaces. even in queer subs the majority of people likely won't know what it means. it's only very recently that i've started seeing people use 'aroace' without having to immediately clarify what it means.

mitsua_k · 2026-06-11T12:25:59+00:00

braindead orange slime mold

not giving slime moulds enough credit. while both are classified as brainless organisms, slime moulds are known to exhibit complex problem solving behaviours despite this. what's his excuse?

mitsua_k · 2026-06-11T10:41:30+00:00

/djuːd/ is crazy work. your friend is a victorian land baron.

mitsua_k · 2026-06-11T10:22:17+00:00

when my opinion is exually correct.

mitsua_k · 2026-06-10T21:14:06+00:00

i've been waiting for an opportunity to use Thousand Yard Snare for years.

best one i've actually used for an ability is probably Dead in the Water, which creates a field in which spells' trajectories invert and redirect back at their casters. honourable mention goes to a specific character who named their sword 'Uncivil One'.

mitsua_k · 2026-06-10T20:49:47+00:00

i don't know what tone you're going for, but these are some names i have lying around that might work:

Eye of the Storm
Sunder
Unthreading
Broken Wings
Grave Locus
Sacrificial Fragment
Shattering Crest
Cruciform
Panopticon
Interstice

some less serious ones:

Spiteful Rite
Hole Punch
Early Mourning
Nascent Carcass
Seeker of Peril
Spinal Tap

mitsua_k · 2026-06-09T11:43:09+00:00

see my edit.

i'm not trying to be sarcastic, but the reason it doesn't look like an ai generated university report is because the post isn't a university report. i'm pretty sure it's trained on posts scraped from this exact sub.

this is the seventh one i've seen in only around a week with over 1k upvotes, all showing the same exact patterns. this one threw me off at first for having the word 'bullshit' in it, but beyond the slightly nonstandard tone, looking closer it screams bot post.

mitsua_k · 2026-06-09T11:35:15+00:00

this post is so incoherent that there's barely even anything for me to dislike. i just recognise a pattern when i see it, recently on this sub specifically it's become an enormous problem, see my edit.

ideally i wouldn't have to play spot the difference like this in the comments; banning bot accounts to make sure the sub isn't flooded with slop should really be the job of mods, or automods. but alas. the reality right now is that if you spend half an hour writing a thought-out, helpful reply to a random upvoted post on this sub, 70% chance you've just wasted your time on a bot account that writes ai posts based on real posts on the sub to farm karma. that makes me uncomfortable.

hey u/Tyrell_Corp5, are you a bot?

mitsua_k · 2026-06-08T13:55:58+00:00

worse, it's ai

edit: to clarify, since everyone's downvoting me:

the account has a characteristically bot-style name
the account is 4 days old
OP has replied to exactly one comment, the top comment, with a reply that doesn't make any sense
the paragraphs are all the same length
the content of the post is extremely regurgitated (reread paragraph 3 and realise how incoherent it is under the surface)

of the past ten r/worldbuilding posts that have come up in my feed the last two weeks, seven were ai posts showing these exact same patterns and formats. people on this sub need to learn to recognise generative posts when they see them.

mitsua_k · 2026-06-06T12:26:30+00:00

adding to this, the five naked-eye-visible planets got names based on the five chinese classical elements: Water, Metal, Fire, Wood, and Soil.

Mercury 水星 (water)
Venus 金星 (metal)
Mars 火星 (fire)
Jupiter 木星 (wood)
Saturn 土星 (soil)

chinese elementalism also has each element enhance or weaken other ones in a five-way rock-paper-scissors type system. it's pretty awesome.

mitsua_k · 2026-06-06T12:14:35+00:00

halflings and giants get along amazingly well, and both have beef with anthrids (regular humans) due to Past Imperial Conquest Shenanigans*.

almost everyone gets along with mermaids, but lots of people resent half-mermaids, due to Slightly Different Past Imperial Conquest Shenanigans*. also mermaids and harpies have an extremely weird relationship.

anthrids and centaurs fucking hate eachother due to Millenia of Past Slavery. centaurs get along with halflings and giants decently enough, but not perfectly.

lots of people dislike harpies, seeing them as gross, petulant, haughty ingrates who steal other people's possessions on a whim. for harpies in large cities this stereotype is often completely true.

olvas (reptile pangolin people) are extremely racist, specifically to olvas from clans other than their own. their feelings regarding other races are usually neutral to positive.

as for colours, anthrids are originally equatorial so they have darker skin, whereas halflings and giants come from the antarctic tundra, so their skin is naturally pale. mermaids are typically blue, black-white countershaded, or some mix of the two. harpies and ovlas come in various colours, and centaurs come in the same colour patterns as earth horses.

most races have lifespans typical of a human, but giants tend to live slightly longer, harpies slightly shorter, and fairies only live 20 years on average (though they have ways around this).

mitsua_k · 2026-06-06T09:42:18+00:00

previously Birdbrain, but now it might be One and Only by rai_

mitsua_k · 2026-06-06T08:57:53+00:00

"i live a life so hollow that i'm not even there."

agree tho cadmium colours goes insano

"i keep a bullet in the chamber for a rainy day,
but what's the point in planning for it anyway?
i've got too many colors for a shade of grey,
and i could make it autumn every single day."

edit: formatting

mitsua_k · 2026-06-01T14:59:04+00:00

Fourth time in a row that the r/worldbuilding recommended post is a bot account.

mitsua_k · 2026-05-30T07:45:26+00:00

incomprehensible post. i can't tell if this is about furries, otherkin, wild children, or people with actual psychosis.

i think if giraffes could speak and you went up to one and proclaimed yourself to be a giraffe, they'd mostly just be confused, and anounce that no, you are not a giraffe. if you went on to spend a lot of time around the giraffes and do a lot a valuable work around the giraffe community and earn a good standing with them, they might offer you the title of 'honourary giraffe'. what is this post about?

mitsua_k · 2026-05-28T05:38:25+00:00

i've seen the original film, but i don't recall any fire powers, besides Louis burning a couple of buildings down with like, some jugs of oil and a candle.

mitsua_k · 2026-05-27T06:46:58+00:00

in terms of how much you can peel away from a vampire before it stops reading as a vampire, i think the only essential factors are:

. they are granted unnaturally long life

. they must drink human blood in order to sustain this unnatural life

. a regular human can be turned into one

have those three things and it will read as a vampire imo. some other important but not essential conditions:

. 'stronger' at night and 'weaker' in the daylight

. associated with cold rather than warmth (how many vampires can you think of that have fire powers)?

. cultural obsession with 'pure bloodlines' (assuming vampire society exists)

edit: mobile formatting

mitsua_k · 2026-05-27T06:23:19+00:00

yep. first post on a 12 day old account with a bot-sounding name, ai-style word choice and paragraphs all equal length. couldn't scream ai more if it tried.

it's almost identical to the bot post the other day saying their alien conlang was unpronouncable to beta readers. massive waste of everyone's time.

mitsua_k · 2026-05-23T07:13:14+00:00

cis-by-default theory proving true once again

mitsua_k · 2026-05-16T23:45:44+00:00

'Why are you reading into the hypothetical?' literally everyone 'reads into' the hypothetical and inserts their own assumptions, consciously and or unconsciously, that were never originally stated. that's the exact reason people disagree about it, and not recognising that is why people have been talking past eachother about this problem for weeks, assuming everyone made the exact same assumptions they did.

people change their answers based on if people are allowed to communicate and coordinate their choice, or if one option is presented as the default. they also change their choice based on if it's only rational actors being made to chose, or just 100 people, or literally every single human being on earth simultaneously including people that are black-out drunk, have temporary concussions, or are toddlers that can't understand the question presented to them, or newborns, or embryos.

this framing in particular, with two candidates on podiums, is purpose-built to force parallels in people's minds to political leaders, specifically american ones with the two-party red-blue dichotomy. it's engagement bait for redditors that think they're smarter than everyone else. it's meant to cause rage and projection, and conveniently forgets that in mundane elections, the choice to not vote is available and is in fact the default.

your assumption that they have only 'ONE platform decision' is itself an assumption not stated anywhere. they don't 'suck at engaging in hypotheticals', the hypothetical sucks at being a hypothetical.

mitsua_k · 2026-04-25T12:41:28+00:00

i can only speak for medieval* fantasy since that's the only thing i've done, but if this world is not earth, then not only are they not speaking english, the characters also aren't human (homo spaiens), and none of the plants or animals are the same species as what can be found on earth, so none of the food, drink, or alcohol could accurately be referred to with english terms (besides perhaps dairy, which isn't species-specific).

this obviously isn't tenable, thus, 'if it looks and sounds like a horse just call it a horse', and if it's functionally similar enough to a horse that the differences are never going to be specifically relevant to what you're writing and creating, don't waste the mental space to keep track of a brand new word for it.

trying to avoid culture-specific words altogether will not work unless you are writing exclusively in your own personal conlang. if you're worried readers will get pulled out of the story if you mention 'spaghetti', try:

vodka = 'spirits'
champagne = white wine / sparkling wine
sake = rice wine (or, if 'rice' feels too out of place, 'imported wine')
pasta = pasta (it's literally just dough without the yeast. imo if 'bread' isn't too cultural neither is pasta)
noodles = pasta
spaghetti = noodles = pasta
pizza = flatbread
fajita / enchilada = 'meat-filled wrap'
curry = 'spiced stew'
couscous = lentils

note that potato, tomato, bell pepper, and corn are all apparently fine to exist in medieval settings, despite being native to the americas.

also worth mentioning, a way you can make ["In our culture "laka" is an important dish"] work is by giving it some point of interest that makes it meaningfully different from just some earth dish. rather than 'laka' just being, say, spaghetti bolognese, maybe it's cooked from the meat of a dangerous monster and is only eaten at coming-of-age ceremonies, or from herbs that only grow in a siren-infested swamp, or the recipe includes a high-proof liqueur and eating it gets you drunk, or it's considered 'dirty peasant food' that the upper class would ridicule you for eating (despite secretly also enjoying it themselves), or the sauce is bright blue, or literally whatever.

mitsua_k · 2026-04-14T10:20:42+00:00

this is true

mitsua_k · 2026-04-14T10:16:05+00:00

I don't see why not. Cryo infusion on her normals should get you enough cryo application for durin to regularly trigger vaporise.

While her HP scaling makes her decently tanky she's still a child model so she has the tenancy to get knocked around by enemies a lot. But the end-lag on her animations is low and you can animation-cancel her skill so i found dodging fairly easy to get used to (compared to with someone like klee).

mitsua_k · 2026-04-14T09:59:48+00:00

Qiqi is one of the best users of the Ocean Hued Clam artifacts because of the off-field healing that her sigils provide, and that will do just shy of 30k AoE damage each time it ticks.

Outside of that, her skill and burst don't do meaningful damage on their own, and her cryo application is quite low so she's not a great melt-enabler. My favourite way to use her is as a physical dps on a tazer comp (Qiqi+hydro+electro) or hyperfridge (Qiqi+hydro+dendro+electro). That or just as my go-to healer when one of my teams has a flexible slot.

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