Idle musings

[malymin]

kalium talking about creature roleplay made me think about some stray ideas I had for original species as a kid and teen. I don't remember most of what I was thinking of back then, but I did remember a focus on making magical properties of gemstones correlate to their chemical structure, nature of formation, and physical properties.

Hydrate Class

Gemstone creatures that incorporate hydrate minerals and mineraloids. Hydrates are minerals that incorporate H20 mollecules into their structure, and are dependent on the presence of these water mollecules to display their signature properties. Examples of hydrate gemstones include opal and turquoise. 

Associated with desert oases.

Jupiter Class

Gemstone creatures that incorporate amber and jet.

Amber and jet have many curious similarities. They're both ancient, fossilized plant matter: amber being formed from tree resin of various evergreen species, while jet is a variety of coal formed from the wood of monkey puzzle trees and their relatives. They're both often, historically, found washed up on shores. They both form static electricity when rubbed, too. The modern word "electricity" is derived from the ancient Greek word for amber, elektron.

"Jupiter class" is a cheeky little reference to Sailor Jupiter, a character simultaneously associated with electricity (via her associated planet being named after the thunder god Jupiter in English) and plant life (via the Japanese name of the planet Jupiter is Mokusei (木星), or "wood star").

I didn't watch Sailor Moon until I was an adult, though, so I know this is a name I retroactively applied to the concept later. I just don't remember what name I used to tie together the "wood magic" and "electric magic" aspect of these creatures together elegantly.

Comments

[stepnix]

Gemstones are a nice base for a scheme like this. Plenty of physical properties and cultural associations to work off of

[kalium]

Damn that's cool! I think there's something kind of... satisfying about classifications? They're like a pattern that you can play with and bend, something about the variation within a set. You get me? It's hard to verbalise but I think if you know it you get it?

Like elemental types would be the common example but they feel so tired by now. But there's so much more in nature that you can work with and this is the sort of cool but also nerdy system that I like. I'd love to see more about these creatures.

[malymin]

Yea! I kind of wish there were more good spaces to indulge in classication-as-play RN. I feel like there used to be more room for it in online nerd culture, but not only are a lot of non-fandom spaces gone or vestigal... I feel like there's less room for it in fandom itself, these days. Being interested in meticulously cataloging information or analyzing lore seems to be treated as morally and politically suspect, or just worthy of outright mockery, in most of the places I find myself. As an autistic asexual who "understood" this steriotypically "male" side of fandom behaviors more than I understood shipping culture, I find myself feeling really unwanted because fucking social media users consider the way I have the most fun "a privileged cis dude thing" or "reddit (derogatory adjective)" or whatever the goddamn fuck. Oh but we love autistic people here, we're so accepting and progressive!!!!!!!!!!! As long as they're not bad at understanding social cues, or don't get my jokes I refuse to explain, or intellectually disabled, or smart in the wrong way because I think people in STEM have less soul and empathy than liberal arts majors, or... Like man I'm so sick of y'all LOL.

I feel like the thing about elemental systems is that even, just, like.. approaching them from a fresh angle, helps. In addition to science, I like to look at mythology. You can create subtypes of the elements: water as a black sea of pre-divine primordial chaos vs the cycling aerial renewal of rain and the water cycle, for example. celestial solar fire, cthonic hellfire, ghostly atmospheric plasmas like St Elmo's fire, the Promethean tool-fire of metalurgy and glassblowing and cooking and kilns. When imagine my personal take on a stock "volcano dragon", for example, i don't just make it molten fire and black rocks - I make it the fertile lava-soil that fertilizes crops, the sulphurous hydrothermal springs, the poisonous ash-clouds filled with volcanic lightning. Just by letting elements mix in the way they do in nature, in the portfolios of mythical gods and monsters, or both - you can make a more nuanced and interesting elemental creature.

[kalium]

Oh, you too! I've mentioned this before, how fandom/creativity/you get the picture sometimes like being back in a toyshop with pink and blue aisles again, except suddenly it's being peddled by people talking about how wonderful and progressive and welcoming they are. And probably going on about destroying the gender binary while they're happily propping it up all over again. Don't get me started.

Elements: oh yeah I definitely agree that there's a lot of ways in which you can play with the system and get creative. It's not something I personally use, funnily enough my main setting doesn't have anything more than a barebones classification despite me saying I like them. But those are some cool takes on the idea and proof there's more than just "fire mane, red colour, bad temper" out there. I guess it's just not something I'd use myself but would happily work with in an existing setting (kats, etc).