The Desert Mermaid

WHAT IS THIS? COULD IT BE? Is it a COMPLETED INDEX of Scatterstone?

YES! It is the final installment of Scatterstone! I told you I'd get it up before the Sun became a red giant! I just barely made it!

It's been fun, it really has. I'm hoping to come back and revisit these little guys at some point, too, somewhere, somehow. But in the meantime, enjoy your closure!

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( So! Where did we leave off? )

HOLY SHIT, AMELIA, IS THIS A SCATTERSTONE POST? YES IT IS! Forgot everything that's happened? That's okay, you can go back and read it using the index here!

Oh, Nolly thinks Alricshire is much more straightforward about who's male and who's female, but I suspect there are a few hobbits even in Birchdale that might surprise her.

Fodzi's character wasn't supposed to be quite so talkative. I wanted to just hint that there are different cultures and, for lack of a better word, races of dwarves in this world, because it always bugs me when nonhuman species seem to have their own monoculture (although both of these particular cultures do seem to share gender attitudes). But it was only going to be a suggestion of a bigger world. Then somewhere along the way westrider and I started talking about counterculture dwarves (I still love the idea of greaser dwarves with studded leather jackets and blue jeans and big elaborately-carved combs for their gelled-up beards), and suddenly here was this Triple Peak dwarf with a speech style like that pretentious hipster with a thesaurus in his back pocket carrying on about souls and poetry. I love this guy.

The story of Manjusha's castle is a long one that might not make it into this narrative, but if it doesn't I promise I'll put it somewhere.

Anyway!

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( Counterculture Dwarves And Disappointed Dragons )

What's this? A Part 13? Better read it!

Has it been so long you've forgotten what happened before? Don't worry! You can catch up using the index!

Dwarves have words for physics concepts like "mass," "force," "gravity," and "momentum," but the Common Speech doesn't do much with math and physics. Thus, dwarves have to get creative when translating. "Earthpull," for example, is one term for gravitational force.

Dwarves have a generational kinship system even more simple than the Hawaiian one since it does not distinguish genders. Everyone in a dwarf's parents' generation (including parents) is addressed with a term that is usually translated as "uncle"; in his own generation as "cousin"; and in his children's generation as "nephew."* While specialized terms distinguish biological relationships, in casual conversation nobody uses them; they're considered clinical and dry. Thus Orlof and Hruldar's use of "Dhul," which literally means "nephew," is rather akin to addressing him as "son."

They also seem to have the same casual prejudice against left-handed people (or trolls, at any rate) that humans do.

I did not expect to have this much fun coming up with the dwarven bits. Dwarves were never my thing, especially since they always seemed so one-dimensional in fantasy. And then my determination to go beneath the gold and the maille takes over, and you get Mighty Dwarven Knitting and those darn dwarven kids being all punk with their beardstyles and Twilight-style stupid teenager love triangles and, of course, rollercoasters. Hot damn, I love it when writing goes like that.


*I propose we refer to this as the Duckburgian Kinship Model, since complicated Duck family trees might (okay, do) exist, but the uncle-nephew dynamic does seem to be how kinship works on a cursory examination of the Duckverse.

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( Part 10 - Mine Cart Carnage!  )

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Hey, everyone! I hear Part 11 is up!

BUT AMELIA WHERE IS THE--oh, never mind, here's Part 1 and the index.

The guy who informed Arie that she doesn't swear was ¾ wrong. He was all the way wrong about ladies having no need for some good cuss words. Everybody stubs their toes, after all. But his assertion that all fairies are female is subject to variable levels of truth. Woodfairies have a complicated life cycle, but the upshot is that they grow on trees. As such, they have no reproductive organs and are not male or female (or, given how their chromosomes work, they could be considered both). However, as they have high voices, delicate features, slim bodies, a love of frilly dresses and sparkles, and names that sound like they were chosen out of a Bath & Body Works catalog (Terwu'arie literally means "Shadowrose"), humans and other such species generally automatically assume they are female. As such, the common speech refers to them using female-gendered terminology. Following convention, I am using it that way here.

In contrast, dwarves do come with the more recognizable binary reproductive systems. But aside from the primary sex characteristics, dwarves have no visible sexual dimorphism. All dwarves, male and female, have blocky builds, big muscles, and swathes of face and chest hair. And as the gender-free Dwarvish language offers no clues, and nosy questions about their reproductive systems mostly just annoy them, figuring out a dwarf's sex is only possible after the third date (or, for more traditional dwarves, after the wedding).

Fortunately for speakers of languages where gender is a required bit of coding, dwarves also don't seem to give two shits about how other species perceive them. They are perfectly content to all be referred to as "he" in the common speech, and where nouns come in masculine/feminine pairs, they always go with masculine. I'm using that convention here. To be honest, I have no idea what sex either Orlof or Hruldar might be. They refer to each other as 'husband,' but they could just as easily one male and one female, or two females, as two males. It doesn't actually matter, but it's an interesting bit of trivia.

In completely unrelated annotation, the thing Orlof refers to as an "oven" is actually a cast-iron Dutch oven set over a large earthenware brazier. For some reason, I feel it is important that you know this.

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( Heavyweight Knitting Champion )

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Nextward to Part 9!

Hey, look! An index!

Well, FINALLY. Setting the stage takes a lot of work. Hopefully it's worth it, since this installment introduces all sorts of fun new characters for you to try to keep track of.

A couple of you might recognize the name of Kuen from my various doll posts. Yes, that's her--the doll was modeled after the character I'd thought up years earlier. The sprites have an extensive, multi-universal history, but Kuen herself has always lived here in this Playtime Universe. She seems to like it there, though she also seems to have an ability to dimension-hop. I could go on for hours about her.

The actual term for an overhand catch in juggling is "clawing the balls." I thought writing it that way might be distracting.

Anyway.

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( Part 6 - Strange People, Strange Fish, And A Very Helpful House )

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Now! With Part 7!

Part 1 also has an index!

Even if it's in character, it always bugs me when somebody tells a recently traumatized character "Don't think about [your recent trauma]." It is completely unhelpful.

Of course, with the lack of licensed therapists in most Standard Fantasyland trade caravans, I can sort of see where they wouldn't feel they had a lot of options.

For a shortish installment, this sure took a while to lay out. Still not sure why, but I'm eager to get going on the next installment. Largo's getting behind on real adventure. It's almost time for him to catch up on that front.

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( A Sudden Need To Leave, Proper Disposal Of Dead Bodies, And A Moral Dilemma )

Part 5

First, if you haven't read it yet, enjoy Part 1

I'd just like to say that this may be the first time the traditional Big Dumb Jock Rival has ever made fun of Our Hero for not being as big a reader as he himself is. Somebody ought to write that down.

Remember, kids, before inciting a mob, you should always make sure you have all the facts.

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( Scatterstone Part 2 - Cooking As Diplomacy, Realistic Dreams, Possible Trolls, And Mobs With Poor Senses Of Direction )
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On to Part 3!