I see this a lot, no one has actual names, or any reference for names, that are legit Native American, varying among the tribes, for their characters.
Babynames.com and shit like that will give you names made up by white people.
However, I’ve got your solution.
Native-Languages is a good website to turn to for knowledge on a lot of native things, including native names. If you’re unsure about the names you’ve picked, they even have a list of made up names here!
Please don’t trust names like babynames.com for native names, they’re made up and often quite offensive to the cultures themselves.
Thank you!
Native Languages is a great website. I use it for my fact-checking since it always has reliable links to tribal sites.
Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but – it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration – why do assholes always come out on top? – and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.
“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”
This is fascinating if you’re into math or sociology or computer programming or all of the above.
Everyone, everywhere, without exception, should play this thing through.
Don’t check just this – check out all of Nicky Case’s work.
They’re a brilliant creator and I heavily recommend checking out at least one of their projects. Their website can be found here.
Parable of the Polygons – an interactive experiment that shows how tiny individual biases can collectively cause segregation on a massive scale.
To Build a Better Ballot – an interactive experiment that shows the alternatives to the voting systems we currently use and how they can be more representative and democratic, along with their faults.
Coming Out Simulator – a short interactive story/novel about coming out, based off of Case’s own experiences. Not one I’ve played myself but still one I can recommend.
Loopy – a very simple but useful tool to show how systems interact with each other and how things can self-propagate.
a game about news cycles, vicious cycles, infinite cycles.“ A short five-minute game about news and media. Warnings for violence, blood, death and stress.
Make sure the system you use matches the kind of players you have, for an optimal experience
Admin Note: This is part of the ongoing series called “D&D isn’t the only TTRPG if you don’t want fantasy play another goddamn game!”
I already reblogged this once but this is important:
Like I run a D&D blog. I understand that D&D is the most well-known and popular RPG in the world. But a lot of the time I see people going like “Hey I want to run a D&D campaign and throw out all the D&Disms and here’s all the notes I have for running a campaign about courtly romance and chivalry in a historical setting” and I’m just like STOP YOU DON’T NEED TO RUN THIS USING D&D
There’s a sort of a mistaken assumption that because D&D is the biggest game on the market and that it’s fantasy that it should be the go-to fantasy game but look it’s not D&D isn’t a generic fantasy game it’s a very specific kind of fantasy all of its own, one that steals liberally from swords & sorcery and high fantasy and adds fucking extradimensional cube robots for good measure
So next time you’re thinking about a fantasy campaign in a decidedly non-D&Dish setting consider instead of jamming the square peg that is D&D into a round hole trying to find a system that actually supports what you’re trying to do
And this is not to say that you shouldn’t play D&D: D&D is hella fun. But there’s a lot of genres and styles that D&D does a piss-poor job of doing, and because of that it’s so good we’ve got other games
*cracks knuckles*
All right then. I’ve been meaning to dust off my own D&D sideblog for a while, so here we go with providing some examples. I’m limiting this specifically to other types of fantasy outside of the standard high fantasy and sword & sorcery millieu.
Courtly Romance and Chivalry
There are a number of options for this, and they range from standard secondary world fantasy to more historical and mythological settings. My list here shouldn’t be treated as fully extensive.
Blue Rose – based on the romantic fantasy subgenre, specifically as seen in the works of Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey. A lot of courtly drama and intrigue and swashbuckling, based in a fictional world.
Pendragon – naturally based off of Arthurian mythology, and having a lot of stuff given over to the court of Camelot and the chivalric adventures of the various knights. The same company also has a kickstarter for a spin-off called Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne that might be worth checking out.
Historical Fantasy
This one’s a bit more prominent as historical settings serve as an inspiration for a variety of fantasy worlds and games, and this of course invariably extends to settings that actually use historical settings with a degree of fantasy elements thrown in. Note that I’m going to emphasise Europe here simply due to greater familiarity with games in that millieu, and as a European myself I’m ill-equipped to judge how accurate or respectful games using other settings actually are.
Because of this, feel free to add other examples in reblogs
Chivalry & Sorcery – one of the early tabletop games inspired by D&D, taking a more pseudo-historical approach.
It’s based on 12th century France and strives for a degree of historical accuracy and medieval politics.
World of Darkness, Dark Ages (including Vampire and Mage) – while the World of Darkness has earned some negative attention lately (and for good reason), the dark ages RPGs are still an old favourite of mine. Also worth checking out is Mage: The Sorcerer’s Crusade, set during the Renaissance. The Mage stuff has a really cool open-ended magic system worth checking out.
Ars Magica – this exists along very similar lines to the dark age material above, based around mages and magic-users in a ‘Mythic Europe’ setting. It also has a really cool open-ended magic system, and one of my personal favourites.
Awwww shit heck yes I might want to add to this list but this is a really good starting point
replying is how you make friends! reply to anything you want and be friendly. don’t make rude jokes if you’re not friends already though!
quote retweeting is a no-no. when you “retweet with a comment” it’s not liked by content creators because it makes a new tweet out of their tweet and they don’t get the likes and retweets they would get if you’d just retweeted it straight up. if you want to comment on a retweet, reply to it or post a new tweet starting with “LRT” which stands for “last retweet” (it’s fine to quote retweet dumb memes and so on.)
you can make your tweets private. this means no one but your followers will be able to see what you post and no one will be able to retweet your content. you can switch back and forth between private and public at will. some people make a separate private account to tweet personal stuff and let mutuals follow it only. it’s a good way to keep things separate.
what is privatter? privatter is a third party web app that content creators can allow to be attached to their twitter. it lets them tweet content that they can make exclusive to logged in users, followers, mutuals, or a specific list of users. as long as you are logged in to twitter and fall into the intended category, you’ll be able to see it.
you can mute people you follow. (and those you don’t, ofc.) you can also mute words and phrases and entire conversations. if you mute someone you follow and they reply to you, that reply will still show up in your notifications. it’s a good way to keep the peace!
you can limit notifications to people who follow you or to mutuals. (notifications from people you follow will still show up regardless of which option you’ve selected.)
miscellaneous tips and warnings: if you accidentally unfollow and refollow someone, it won’t show up in their notifications as long as it’s within a couple minutes. no more accidental stuff. everyone can see who everyone follows so watch out. people will know if you unfollow. if you want to report someone and want them gone forever, report a tweet where they used a curse word. screenshotting tweets for harassment is a no-no and can get you banned. don’t be lame. don’t be a dick. vaguing others is generally really bad form and so is complaining about content within a fandom you’re in. use the mute tools at your disposal and don’t be a spoiler. you won’t come back from a rep like that and everyone sees everything.
that’s it! happy tweeting!!
how do i keep all my content together on twitter?
threads are your best friend!! you make a tweet with your commission info and links and so on and pin it to the top of your page. then reply to that tweet with a copy and pasted link to the tweet where you posted the art/fic/etc you want to not lose. reply to that new tweet with the next piece of artwork and so on. you can also make a unique hashtag for your content to use when you post, so that when you search that hashtag later you’re able to see just your art. good luck!
From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:
– don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.
– archive everything on your blog you want to keep
– tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.
– tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.
– go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.
– support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.
Also, go read the source policies and official Tumblr statements in addition to user analyses and reactions. It’s important to keep abreast of developments over time; staying informed is your power in this situation. Memes and reaction posts are funny and are a useful way to vent / provide commentary, but some of them create an inaccurate picture of what’s happening and should not be taken as evidence on their own of what developments have happened.
the All Around: speaks, reads, and writes both languages pretty well
the Conversational: one language is stronger than the other; can speak the other language a lot better than they read/write it (a lot of kids of immigrants are this type)
the High Schooler: understands what’s being said to them in the other language, can’t really speak it
don’t have your characters randomly drop words from their other language mid-sentence around people who don’t speak it lol
languages are a mindset thing. like personally if i’m around english-speakers, i’m speaking english and i don’t really switch to my other language (which is portuguese)
so like if you’re writing a bilingual character who speaks spanish and have them say something like “hey chad let’s go to the biblioteca” to an english speaker i’ll probably spend 5 minutes laughing and then close your story lmao
exception: the character is speaking in their weaker language and forgot a word (”where are the…? uh… llaves…. keys! keys, where are they?”)
otherwise really the only time your character should be randomly switching languages mid-sentence is if they’re talking to another bilingual
like i don’t speak spanish but i’ve legit never heard a spanish speaker say “ay dios mio” to gringos lmao
conversations between two bilingual people can take a few different forms:
Pick One: they pick one language and kinda stick with it for the whole conversation (a conversation i might have with my portuguese-speaking mom: ”you okay?” “yeah, i’m good. how’re you?” “i’m fine, but your dad-”)
Back-and-Forth: someone says something in one language, the other person replies in the other (”tudo bem?” “yeah, i’m good. how’re you?” “tou bem, mas o seu pai-”)
Combo: they speak a combo of the two languages, a popular example being spanglish, though basically every bilingual has their own combo language (”tudo bem?” “sim, tou bem. how’re you?” “i’m fine, mas o seu pai-”)
when in doubt: just ask a bilingual to look at your stuff and tell you if anything sounds weird
combo languages can look different depending on the bilingual
me and my cousin (native english speakers) speaking our portuguese/english combo sounds a lot different than my mom and my godmother (native portguese speakers) doing the same thing
the kids of immigrants usually come up with their own unique way of saying things that are different than native speakers
if you’re writing a bilingual family the older kids’ll probably be more bilingual than the younger ones
also, to clarify: bilingual characters might say words in another language on purpose in front of non-speakers
either to fuck with them or just ‘cause the word captures what they’re feeling more (i use “caralho” a lot)– basically the point is that accidental switching is relatively uncommon
i know earlier i said that people will forget words if they’re speaking their weaker language but tbh i do it with my stronger language too so really it works both ways
filler words are weirdly universal
so like while bilingual people don’t usually switch languages around people who aren’t bilingual we’ll throw filler words in
“ele me olhou e, like, eu juro que eu quase deu um soco nele-”
a lot of languages borrow words from english so it’s not too weird to have a random english word in an otherwise non-english conversation (my aunt @ my mom: “lilian você viu meu post no Facebook?”)
also sounds in general are just kind of a language transcending thing
you wanna find out what someone’s first language was?? break one of their bones lol
legit me when i cracked my rib: “AIIIIIII JESUS CHRIST TAKE ME TO THE HOSPITAL”
so if your character gets hurt they might make a sound of pain associated with their native language but will probably still speak in the language of the people they’re surrounded by. probably. it depends on just how much pain they’re in
if two people start speaking another language in public there’s a 40% chance they’re talking shit and a 60% chance they’re having a conversation like: “where’s the bathroom” “i don’t know, ask the waitress she’s right here” “i can’t just ask-”
this is the most accurate bi/multilingual reference post on here y’all should take notes 👀
I’m forever haunted by the knowledge that Dracula is a public domain work and I could literally just write Dracula AU (No listen, but hear me out, The Batchelor), and every second I’m not doing it feels like an affront to whatever god thought it would be a good idea to keep me alive.
The Batchelor where classic literature’s famous monsters are tired of being isolated and alone and come together to try to fix the misconceptions surrounding their stories and find true love at last.
The best monster-fucker crossover to ever crossover.
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