Misc Worldbuilding

This is in my notebook dated 7/13/14:

"We are of Above We are of Below but We live in neither now the only way out is forward"

the Azure Dragon is the leviathan, the endless sea dragon, and her daughters are the waves and the rivers, the tidepools her grandchildren, and all the sea serpents are hers (she did not take it well when Chenek romanced one of her daughters)

In San Francisco, Making a Living From Your Billionaire Neighbor’s Trash - The New York Times

"Trash picking is a profession more often associated with shantytowns and favelas than a city at the doorstep of Silicon Valley. The Global Alliance of Waste Pickers, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, counts more than 400 trash picking organizations across the globe, almost all of them in Latin America, Africa and southern Asia.

But trash scavengers exist in many United States cities and, like the rampant homelessness in San Francisco, are a signpost of the extremes of American capitalism. A snapshot from 2019: One of the world’s richest men and a trash picker, living a few minutes’ walk from each other."

This would absolutely be a profession that Robin would run into when shopping in the goblin market.

Indigenous Wonderworks and the Settler-Colonial Imaginary

"But even with those hard-won advances, deeply entrenched settler-colonial biases mean that our literatures already aren’t “literary” enough for many whitestream scholars and critics; adding the pathologization of fantasy and the scorn of genre snobbery on top of it is hardly something to be relished. Deficit remains the defining trope for Indigenous peoples in the settler-colonial imaginary. In this construction, “real” Indigenous peoples are always Other, always diminished, always the reduced shadow of our former greatness. So if the “real” is that which is passed away or gathering dust on the museum shelf, the “real” of Indigenous experience must therefore only be about deficit and loss.

The “real,” then, can be an extraordinarily troubling category, and realistic fiction and criticism can unintentionally reinforce disempowering narratives that offer little to minoritized readers but a very limited and often pessimistic range of legitimized representations. If the “real” is only about language loss, we miss the extraordinary language recovery efforts of many Indigenous communities; if the “real” is only about dysfunctional and abusive families, we don’t see the many Indigenous families where substance abuse is not a problem or is only part of a much more expansive and complicated set of experiences, where there is strong and loving support across the generations, where education is prioritized as an expression of tradition, not in opposition to it; if the “real” is only about dispossession, then we’re not offered the stories about communities fighting and succeeding to regain lands and inherent territorial rights and relational obligations to the other-than-human world."

What assumptions am I taking for granted? Who am I overlooking? There are stories there.

Patti Vocabulary

Chaturanga (Sanskrit: चतुरङ्ग; caturaṅga) is an ancient Indian game that is the common ancestor of the games of chess, shogi, makruk, xiangqi and janggi. Chaturanga developed in Gupta India around the 6th century A.D. In the 7th century, it was adopted as shatranj in Sassanid Persia, which in turn was the form that brought chess to late-medieval Europe.The exact rules of chaturanga are not known. Chess historians suppose that the game had similar rules to those of its successor shatranj. In particular, there is uncertainty as to the moves of the Gaja (elephant), the precursor of the Bishop in modern chess.Raja (King) - Moves like the King in chess.Mantri (Minister); also known as Senapati (General) - Moves one squarediagonally, like the Fers in shatranj.Ratha (Chariot); also spelled Śakata - Moves like the Rook in chess.Gaja (Elephant) - Three different moves are described in ancient literature:Ashva (Horse); also spelled Ashwa, Asva - Moves like the Knight in chess.Padàti/Bhata (Foot-soldier); also spelled Pedati, Bhata; also known asSainik (Warrior)—Moves like the Pawn in chess.Raja - Mulians

"One elephant (Gaja), one chariot (Ratha), three horses (Ashwa) and five foot soldiers (Padhata) form a Patti;"

Mantri - the chosen of the blood

Ratha - those who can be ridden

Padàti/Pawns - the rank and file of the blood

Ratha chariot + charioteer

Flame-bearer

Gaja/elephant/defender/alpha’s claws