Iilu healing question

[Aurora Rossa]

I think it works like this: Mark would like living in Verduria but find Terra Pvlchra immoral. I would like living in Terra Pvlchra, but find Verduria immoral.

As for the Iliu, Mark never said he favored their ideas anywhere.

[Jaaaaaa]

I think it works like this: Mark would like living in Verduria but find Terra Pvlchra immoral. I would like living in Terra Pvlchra, but find Verduria immoral.

As for the Iliu, Mark never said he favored their ideas anywhere.

As for Terra Pvlchra, Mark never said he found it immoral anywhere.

[Whimemsz]

I think it works like this: Mark would like living in Verduria but find Terra Pvlchra immoral. I would like living in Terra Pvlchra, but find Verduria immoral.

As for the Iliu, Mark never said he favored their ideas anywhere.

Eddy, remember what I said last night, about you needing to stop digging your hole? Please listen to us...you aren't stopping digging! you aren't learing! YOU NEED TO!!

You've already pissed a whole lot of people off, and I think everyone was coming to forgive you, after Mark wisely locked the Sexism threads. But now you say things like this........



Just stop digging the hole, man.

[Delthayre]

I think it works like this: Mark would like living in Verduria but find Terra Pvlchra immoral. I would like living in Terra Pvlchra, but find Verduria immoral.

As for the Iliu, Mark never said he favored their ideas anywhere.

Errr...Eddy, I think you may misunderstand Zomp's intent toward Verduria. I don't think he's trying to create his dreamland (although it's likely he's fantasized about walking among his creations), he's trying to create a relatively plausible and interesting world the reflects the tendencies of human beings as history has demonstrated them (non-human areas largely excepted). This is the idea behind conworlds. it's a creative excercise.

Attempting to create idealized realities reflecting an individual's convictions isn't unprecedented, but I don't expect that it's the point of Verduria. I don't think that broad ethical generalizations are part of it.

[Shm Jay]

You wouldn't want to create your dreamworld unless you were trying to use the thing for didactic purposes or unless you were trying to use it as an escape from reality, such as: my life is a failure, so I'm going to make up my own little country and crown myself king, so there, life!. But most healthy people are not interested in a diadactic world, let alone a self-crowned world (I don't know what to call it).

And it is certainly offensive to have your conworld hijacked for someone else's didactic purposes.

[Salmoneus]

Yes, we normal and healthy people just invent elaborately detailed fantasy worlds that are just as distasteful as the real one. Leaving behind one imperfect world, we expend our energies creating other imperfect worlds.
That far more rational than escapism, and infinitely more rational than attempted to use one's creation to convince other people of your beliefs, I'm sure we can all agree.

Incidentally, although everyone says that the first thing you should do in a hole is stop digging, I suspect that continuing to dig is actually the better option, provided that you dig almost horizontally, building a ramp with which to leave. Prvided, of course, that the hole is shallow enough to allow you to throw the earth out of it. But even if it isn't, I'm sure you could work out a way.

[Glenn]

Yes, we normal and healthy people just invent elaborately detailed fantasy worlds that are just as distasteful as the real one. Leaving behind one imperfect world, we expend our energies creating other imperfect worlds.
That far more rational than escapism, and infinitely more rational than attempted to use one's creation to convince other people of your beliefs, I'm sure we can all agree.

Salmoneus, I understand your point, and I do in fact sympathize with it;
but people's motives vary.

Many people do, indeed, create imaginary settings and stories that reflect their own hopes and ideals, and act them out in doing so. On the simplest level, nearly all of the fantasy/SF battles of Good Vs. Evil out there do this to some extent; other works comment in more subtle ways on other issues.

As I said above, there are also authors who deliberately create settings with negative features, in order to highlight and criticize them. One such creator, who has been going through my mind throughout this debate, is the British-Portuguese writer Ricardo Pinto, author of the Stone Dance of the Chameleon series. Pinto has created an imaginary world that contains a great deal of cruelty and inequality; he has not done so because he likes these things, but because he opposes them, and opposes what he sees of them in the real world, and he has created a hero who specifically rejects such values.

There are people who create worlds that reflect historical cultures or languages that interest them. There are people, as noted by Delthayre here and samisto elsewhere, who are trying to create as diverse and well-rounded a world as possible. And there are people (everyone, hopefully) who are just having fun.

In my time on this board, I have seen conworlds that delight me, some that move me, and others that trouble me--but I wouldn't question their creators' right to do so.

***
I don't think it's a bad thing to express one's beliefs or desires for the future in a conworld, but I think that this is most effective when it is done subtley, and not blatantly; by laying out the features of your world and letting readers draw their own conclusions, not by pointing and saying, "This is Good. This is Bad. And that's how I think it is."

At the moment, I have started forming the first inklings of a long-range story set in my own conworld, such as it is--something that (I hope) might even form the seed for a novel, years down the line. This storyline touches on a number of things that are near and dear to my heart--the need for mutual contact and understanding between different cultures and religions; the need for diplomacy, as opposed to war; the value of honesty, integrity, loyalty, and love; the need not to forget the pains of the past, but to put them aside, and move on into the future. However, if I succeed in expressing these things, it will be through imaginary nations and cultures that have the same kinds of positive and negative features as our own, and through characters who are not paragons of virtue, but simply human beings, doing the best they can. (That's my dream, anyway. )

Enough said; I hope that some of the above at least made some sense...

p@,
Glenn

[So Haleza Grise]

As I said above, there are also authors who deliberately create settings with negative features, in order to highlight and criticize them. One such creator, who has been going through my mind throughout this debate, is the British-Portuguese writer Ricardo Pinto, author of the Stone Dance of the Chameleon series. Pinto has created an imaginary world that contains a great deal of cruelty and inequality; he has not done so because he likes these things, but because he opposes them, and opposes what he sees of them in the real world, and he has created a hero who specifically rejects such values.

Just like the creators of many alternate Earths or dystopian futures; eg. Phillip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle springs to mind, where he has a bit to say about the creation of fictional worlds and their relation to the real.

[Jaaaaaa]

As I said above, there are also authors who deliberately create settings with negative features, in order to highlight and criticize them. One such creator, who has been going through my mind throughout this debate, is the British-Portuguese writer Ricardo Pinto, author of the Stone Dance of the Chameleon series. Pinto has created an imaginary world that contains a great deal of cruelty and inequality; he has not done so because he likes these things, but because he opposes them, and opposes what he sees of them in the real world, and he has created a hero who specifically rejects such values.

Just like the creators of many alternate Earths or dystopian futures; eg. Phillip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle springs to mind, where he has a bit to say about the creation of fictional worlds and their relation to the real.

And need I say 1984?

[Nuntar]

Yes, we normal and healthy people just invent elaborately detailed fantasy worlds that are just as distasteful as the real one. Leaving behind one imperfect world, we expend our energies creating other imperfect worlds.
That far more rational than escapism, and infinitely more rational than attempted to use one's creation to convince other people of your beliefs, I'm sure we can all agree.

Rational? Who said anything about being rational? It's art!

As Lucy said, "Art must be unconfined! Art must have freedom!" There is no way it can possibly be right for someone to attempt to force me to subvert my art for political purposes, even if they are benign ones. Next you will have Eddy telling me I can't write music unless it expresses contempt for sexism.

Of course, as regards the range of reasons for creating conworlds, not all of which are solely for art purposes, I agree completely with Glenn.

[vlaran of verduria]

The land of the babblers must be sold in Cork. It will have evvvrryyyyyyyythhhiiinnnnnnnngggg to me

[Salmoneus]

Yes, we normal and healthy people just invent elaborately detailed fantasy worlds that are just as distasteful as the real one. Leaving behind one imperfect world, we expend our energies creating other imperfect worlds.
That far more rational than escapism, and infinitely more rational than attempted to use one's creation to convince other people of your beliefs, I'm sure we can all agree.

Rational? Who said anything about being rational? It's art!

As Lucy said, "Art must be unconfined! Art must have freedom!" There is no way it can possibly be right for someone to attempt to force me to subvert my art for political purposes, even if they are benign ones. Next you will have Eddy telling me I can't write music unless it expresses contempt for sexism.

Of course, as regards the range of reasons for creating conworlds, not all of which are solely for art purposes, I agree completely with Glenn.

Yeah, that was sort of my point - "art is free". Hence my response to Shm Jay's comment that the only reasons why Eddy or anyone else might possibly want to create a conworld that's more moral than the real one would be that either they wanted it to be didactic or their own life was a miserable failure. And, of course, his claim that "healthy" people wouldn't be interested in a didactic exercise.
I felt firstly that there were many reasons why people might conworld, and that it was hardly Shm Jay's place to explain Eddy's motivations, and to further explain why his own motivations were superior. Secondly, I felt that it was a tad foolish to use the word "healthy", as in the opinion of the majority (probably including most psychiatrists), conworlding is not the "healthiest" of pursuits in any case. In act, most people would see creating a world for didactic purposes as one of the healthier motivations.
In conclusion, my post was intended to be ironic. Apologies if this was not made sufficiently clear.

[Nuntar]

ok i get it

[vohpenonomae]

I think the Polylang thread is a decent start at a Polylang construction kit. Asking other people who've worked with polysynthetic conlangs is good too. But I agree, it would be nice to have a small document explaining what polysynthesis is and how many different ways there are to make it work in a language.

I've offered to write a polylang supplement to the LCK; but I don't think Mark responded to that particular offer--though he may not have seen it.

[ketske]

For my own personal enjoyment I printed the practical course, but straight off the net it was pretty scary, so I doctored it up, no content change, just purdier... I don't have 'em on this comp.. but they look dandy.

If ya like, I can see about producing them..