2011 Halloween Workshop!

@Tzu: Thank you! I love, love your advice!

@bojela: doh... that shows you how terrible I am at picking out names XD
Awww, cute asura pic! I like how he's using the pumpkin as a stepstool to yell at someone XD

@UnOrthOdOx: wow, how long does it take you to make something like that?! That looks amazing! The glow looks so wicked :O

@DBAA: Hmm... kinda confused, are you planning on using the boards side by side so it's like 1 huge single painting (i.e., making it easy to make a huge painting since you're working on tiny bits) or making it an actual grid like spacing each board apart by an inch or so, much like looking through a grid window or putting the boards at random depths on top of each other so it's like a 3D effect? As for whether you paint directly on the board, I'd test a little corner just to see if it soaks through or turns out a different color Also, I liked your digital piece with the pumpkins from last year so I'm glad you're not counting digital out


@Konig: I just did a quick search and found from TotPK: King Elswyth, King Kole, King Millius, and King Wenslauss as the only Elonian monarchs and Queen Nadijeh being a sunspear. Are those the only ones around or are there more? Because if that's it, then wow, how are you supposed to make a naming pattern from that D:?!

Kole is Slavic meaning victory of the people, Elswyth is a female anglo-saxon name meaning elf from the willow trees, and assuming Wenslauss is from Wenceslaus, it's also Slavic meaning 'greater glory' (I couldn't find Millius from a quick search). My advice is:
1) follow the slavic trend and find something that has successful and leadership connotations (from a baby name site, you can sometimes list by origin... I'm not sure on that other naming site you mentioned)
2) follow part 1 and change possible names you dislike only slightly slightly as with Wenceslaus to something you like.
3) Go the LotRO route and pretend there are actual common naming conventions like -slauss and -wyth

But yeah, I'm terrible at picking out names, too, and that totally stinks that there aren't any more naming examples to help out D:


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These are my super boring updates brought to you with a copy pasta from my blog

Lit update: (lots have already been said on this board already)



Razah’s Development and Awareness of the World

September 17, 2011

One of the things I LOVE about writing Razah’s backstory is trying to figure out how he would see the world given that he literally has all the knowledge in the universe basically downloaded into him thanks to Abaddon. The Wiki likens him to Data from Star Trek. I like to think of Razah as having the strengths of both humanity and the demons spawned from The Mysts (plus some other bonuses). He’s sentient, of course, and has the abilities of humans (senses and emotion) in addition to pseudo-immortality (kind of like LotR elves, they can live practically forever in a happy and safe environment, but they can die when seriously wounded) and the ability to access mystical abilities from the universe.

So, with this in mind: who is Razah when he first ‘wakes up’ and given all the knowledge of the world? I imagine it as a sensory overload, which is why he spends to first part of his life in essentially a coma. When he wakes up, he’s much like an amnesiac. He can communicate, but he can’t access the knowledge that was implanted within his mind. When he finds triggers, it’s like an avalanche of information, because there’s just too much information that he doesn’t have context to. It would be like sitting in a class of astro-physics armed with ten-thousand reference books behind you. You look in one reference book for the answer, but then have to go to another and another… In the end, you’ve read about it and have the information, but you don’t really understand. Another example is memorizing a German passage, when you don’t know German. Sure, you can recite it perfectly, but you don’t know what it means. You need a dictionary to parse it bit by bit, but because of idioms, your self-translation probably makes even less sense!

Given Razah’s background, how will he develop and gain awareness of the world? In my version of his backstory, I like to think that he couldn’t do it by himself, all alone in the Heart of Abaddon area. He would need external help and exposure to outside stimuli to give him that push to grow. Specifically, he wanders Elona and meets Zinka, a 6-year old orphan girl. From here, the plan is to follow Piaget’s Theory of Intelligence and Intellectual Growth along with some of Erikson theories. According to Piaget, during the Preoperational stage, children use symbolism to understand the environment around them. In other words, the sun moves, so therefore it is alive. For Razah, seeing through the eyes of Zinka gives him the basic building blocks to understand the world around him in very simple cognitive schemes. Through assimilation, new experiences are put into pre-existing simple schemes and whenever there is conflict, or disequilibrium, the schemes are altered in order to accept the new schema.

After the preoperational stage comes the concrete operations stage where children can start inferring things by seeing other’s behaviors. Finally, the last stage for Razah, which will be the very last part of my story, is the Formal Operations stage. He doesn’t need purely logical thinking to understand the world around him. He can now ponder hypothetical situations and form - what I believe is the most important part of what makes him human – an imagination.

Anyway, this is probably going to be the only non-story update I write, so I hope this update wasn’t too boring and you’re all looking forward to reading about Razah’s Tale and his personal journey.