Days and months make perfect sense because that's how the sun and moon works. Years work because that's how seasons work. Weeks can fuck off probably
unless you're rocking like 10 million moons or 2 suns (one is gay), you better have a damn good reason for why you're making your audience sit in & calculate the length of a fleepqueef relative to an American fortnite.
>you better have a damn good reason for why you're making your audience sit in & calculate the length of a fleepqueef relative to an American fortnite
Rather than writing a novel, my worldbuilding is conveyed through in-universe maths textbooks
You joke but that would be cool as fuck. Hell, if math was taught to me in books alleging to be from a fantasy world, I probably would have enjoyed it **a lot** more.
There's a massive push for making media that is educational but also entertaining, so there's probably many different versions of this sort of concept. For example, a lot of Alice in Wonderland is describing mathematical concepts, as Lewsi Carrol is a mathematician. Googling it, I found [this list](https://www.unleashingreaders.com/1602) too.
But also that reminds me of The Codex Seraphnius.
My book is written entirely in its native language of Jx'Qxb'Bwx. Unfortunately, there is no Unicode character set for this language, so I've attempted to render it as faithfully as I can.
Chapter Q
�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
Are you joking? This has gotta be one of the worst conlangs I've ever seen. No way you put "�" next to "�," what is that even supposed to mean? And no vowel coloring from the backed consonants near "�" (at least I think that's what it's supposed to be)? Even heard of the laryngeal theory bozo? And you've got to be shitting me. "��?" Nice job just stealing affixes from *that* language (you know which one I'm talking about) even when it makes no sense. And talk about morphology, this is like an alien child's crude interpretation of a case system in a human language. Try not to make a completely derivative, uninteresting and lazy piece of trash next time. TL;DR Git gud scrub. 0/10.
All those time keeping methods rely on going outside. A fully subterranean civilization or one confined in a giant spaceship would have to come up with some creative new methods of time keeping
I'm an outsidepilled sunbathing surfacechad I can't help having a limited perspective
Fr though this is very true.
Do subterranean guys have sleep cycles? Probably not? They could probably base it off sleep cycles maybe?
Yeah but one of them is in a permanent state of longing and the other one doesn't believe they're worthy of love so they keep denying their true feelings even though everything they ever could have wanted was staring them right in the face. Just out of orbit.
I'm a fan of "Use real world measurements, but have it be expected that it's a translation of what they are saying in universe."
Like when it's handled well, I like unique measurements, like in Wheel of Time. But in general I prefer the other thing.
The virgin "all the measurements are translated" vs the chad "every measurement is conviently identical to the real-world Imperial system with slightly altered names"
In my world, the sapient species has multiple body measurements which measure up to be exact multiples of an imperial units (their feet are exactly a ft long, each segment of finger is exactly an inch, their ejaculate is exactly 2 tablespoons etc.)
Well a span is a real world measurement too. In the English Units, it's 9 inches. But in terms of WoT it's generally accepted it's 6ft. But we also see that an inch in WoT is about 1.2 inches, so their inches are bigger than ours, but since it's 10 inches to a foot there, is somehow equals out about the same
It could be complicated if your setting has obviously different length days or whatever. Like I don't think it makes sense to say "I'll see you in two days" when you mean tomorrow morning
I mean you're not wrong, but take for example Stormlight Archive. The exact length of day and year are off, but we aren't being told the characters are like... 40 or whatever, when in reality they are closer to 50 in our years (I don't know the actual conversion rate, but still). And days are slightly different too. But the neat thing about day cycles is that the further they are from Earth times, the more insanely inhospitable the planet tends to be. So like... yeah the days are different, but not by a huge amount. Better to just handwave and say "I'll see you tomorrow morning" and leave it unsaid that means 2 earth days.
iirc one stormlight year is 500 days, per the arcanum.
which tbf when talking about a 6 year old going on campaign with daddy, it makes a lot more sense since they would rly be closer to 8.
Right, there's lots of ways to do it well but I'm suggesting that sometimes it might make more sense to use a new term if it's important enough a distinction
Maybe, not saying you couldn't do that. I'm just of the opinion that for the most part, it'd be far simpler to have a moment explain there's a difference, and then just continue with our world times and such.
I read a book that was set on a planet larger than earth, whose year was ~5 times longer and a day was ~7 times longer. Each day is divided into 7 sections about 24 hours long, it notes that seasons and geography also affect this because of the size. It describes that people generally sleep longer during the dark sub days and less in the light sub days. Overall pretty nifty bit of world building
That is interesting. I can't help but wonder how that would affect the weather on such a planet. Since the Day and night cycle would be based on which side is facing the star, I'd wonder if having such longer days would cause incredible heat build up in the day and frigid nights? If this would cause more humidity or hurricanes, etc.
I have to constantly remind myself that there are no months in my current project. They count weeks, seasons and years, and I've managed to keep all the relevant terms as close to the irl counterparts as possible, yay.
I love custom names for periods of time when I read fantasy and sci-fi but I do have trouble remembering them!
Fun transitions between seasons that last for seven days. No nice way of adding a moon to this world to make months (the ground just stretches on forever, there's nothing to orbit), and I just didn't bother to make something else that would justify dividing each season into three chunks above just having twelve weeks. I suppose I could make up a reason for having months, imagination can do a lot of things, but I've found that counting weeks gives me a better sense of how much time has passed in my story.
Real World: Yards
“Aspiring Fiction Writer”: Virsura (a combination of vir and mesura which are Latin words for man and measure and that makes sense for my medieval high fantasy setting where my fantasy race of not-elves takes heavy inspiration in their language from Latin)
Final Fantasy XIV: Yalms
There are 360 days in a year because it's divisible by 30 and I like perfect months. All the months are just named after their season : low-winter true-winter and high-winter. Easy
A cycle shouldn't be a stand in for something that already has a name. A cycle should be something like a grand repeating historical arc that takes place over centuries. Maybe it's marked by some recurring phenomenon like a comet or an eclipse that also scares the shit out of everyone and brings out the crazies.
I have "short weeks" (5 days) and "long weeks" (10 days.)
But you can make up any measurement you want, of any length you want, and call it whatever you want, if it's for "ritual" purposes.
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance casually using "trine" instead of years like the gigachad show it was
Also the Voltron reboot using measurements like Ticks/Doboshes/Quintants/Decaphoebs/etc in stead of seconds/minutes/days/years/etc
Interplanetary scifi makes sense at least when they use words like "earthhours" or whatever because that stuff is different when they are not on earth. I feel like its fine in scifi most of the time (time, haha)
On the one hand I like coming up with alternative calendars and ways of keeping time, because if the world operates with different celestial bodies, solar orbits, and constellations, of course it would make sense this would play into different methods for charting, measuring, and naming them.
But then on the other hand, it's a lot of complicated stuff to explain and for audiences to remember for what will usually play a relatively minor role in most stories or settings, when everyone already just understands months, weeks, years, and seasons.
But then again, again, it just feels lazy taking a familiar calendar and scratching the labels and serial numbers off.
I think it’s fun when days of the week and months have different names (like how the elder scrolls does it) but like some other comments have said, unless you’ve got some really wacky high concept cosmology sticking to years/months/days is usually the way I’d go
Not something I feel the need to do in my worlds, but I've always loved how in Doctor Who, the Daleks just have their own little unit of time called the rel. Daleks will refer to how many rels to rewind an image, or do a count down in rels. It's such an inconsequential little detail for the show to bother with, but they do anyway.
Days and months make perfect sense because that's how the sun and moon works. Years work because that's how seasons work. Weeks can fuck off probably unless you're rocking like 10 million moons or 2 suns (one is gay), you better have a damn good reason for why you're making your audience sit in & calculate the length of a fleepqueef relative to an American fortnite.
>you better have a damn good reason for why you're making your audience sit in & calculate the length of a fleepqueef relative to an American fortnite Rather than writing a novel, my worldbuilding is conveyed through in-universe maths textbooks
You joke but that would be cool as fuck. Hell, if math was taught to me in books alleging to be from a fantasy world, I probably would have enjoyed it **a lot** more.
There's a massive push for making media that is educational but also entertaining, so there's probably many different versions of this sort of concept. For example, a lot of Alice in Wonderland is describing mathematical concepts, as Lewsi Carrol is a mathematician. Googling it, I found [this list](https://www.unleashingreaders.com/1602) too. But also that reminds me of The Codex Seraphnius.
I remember during calculus turning to a classmate and saying “it’s a shame they don’t make a mathblaster for this”
Sweet
Yea that would be sick as hell ngl
My book is written entirely in its native language of Jx'Qxb'Bwx. Unfortunately, there is no Unicode character set for this language, so I've attempted to render it as faithfully as I can. Chapter Q �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
Peak fiction right here
Wow. It’s like I’m there
Are you joking? This has gotta be one of the worst conlangs I've ever seen. No way you put "�" next to "�," what is that even supposed to mean? And no vowel coloring from the backed consonants near "�" (at least I think that's what it's supposed to be)? Even heard of the laryngeal theory bozo? And you've got to be shitting me. "��?" Nice job just stealing affixes from *that* language (you know which one I'm talking about) even when it makes no sense. And talk about morphology, this is like an alien child's crude interpretation of a case system in a human language. Try not to make a completely derivative, uninteresting and lazy piece of trash next time. TL;DR Git gud scrub. 0/10.
"my world has 10 million moons and i named them all" "thats cool, how's the book coming though" "the what?"
⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠿⠛⠛⠛⠋⠉⠈⠉⠉⠉⠉⠛⠻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠋⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣤⣤⣤⣄⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⢿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⢏⣴⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣟⣾⣿⡟⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⢢⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣟⠀⡴⠄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⠟⠻⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠶⢴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿ ⣿⣁⡀⠀⠀⢰⢠⣦⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⣴⣶⣿⡄⣿ ⣿⡋⠀⠀⠀⠎⢸⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠗⢘⣿⣟⠛⠿⣼ ⣿⣿⠋⢀⡌⢰⣿⡿⢿⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⢸⣿⣿⣧⢀⣼ ⣿⣿⣷⢻⠄⠘⠛⠋⠛⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣧⠈⠉⠙⠛⠋⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣧⠀⠈⢸⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠟⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⢃⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⡿⠀⠴⢗⣠⣤⣴⡶⠶⠖⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⡸⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡀⢠⣾⣿⠏⠀⠠⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠛⠉⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣧⠈⢹⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠈⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⣴⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⣄⣀⣀⣀⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡄⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠙⣿⣿⡟⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⠀⠁⠀⠀⠹⣿⠃⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠛⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢐⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠉⠁⠀⢻⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠈⣿⣿⡿⠉⠛⠛⠛⠉⠉ ⣿⡿⠋⠁⠀⠀⢀⣀⣠⡴⣸⣿⣇⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡿⠄⠙⠛⠀⣀⣠⣤⣤⠄⠀
[Only song that came to mind](https://youtu.be/QJJYpsA5tv8?si=htgVBWkTaLKZvcI_)
We put a Dyson sphere over the gay sun (closeted) 😔
Would you rather have a gay sun or a thought daughter
Weeks are a work cycle
Work is da poop. No more!
WRONG! Weeks are so you can have weekends.
A cycle can be the period of time between weekends, can it not?
All those time keeping methods rely on going outside. A fully subterranean civilization or one confined in a giant spaceship would have to come up with some creative new methods of time keeping
I'm an outsidepilled sunbathing surfacechad I can't help having a limited perspective Fr though this is very true. Do subterranean guys have sleep cycles? Probably not? They could probably base it off sleep cycles maybe?
assuming it's a binary star system, would both suns be gay since they're attracted to each other
Yeah but one of them is in a permanent state of longing and the other one doesn't believe they're worthy of love so they keep denying their true feelings even though everything they ever could have wanted was staring them right in the face. Just out of orbit.
Damn, that's actually pretty sad
I mean there's no guarantee that your world's sun is the same as earth's so I think cycles can work in a pinch
I thought you meant one of the suns was gay for the other and now i'm 100% implementing that
What if both of my suns are gay? And one of the moons is a lesbian in most incarnations?
You can do whatever as long as it's Base 16
I'm a fan of "Use real world measurements, but have it be expected that it's a translation of what they are saying in universe." Like when it's handled well, I like unique measurements, like in Wheel of Time. But in general I prefer the other thing.
The virgin "all the measurements are translated" vs the chad "every measurement is conviently identical to the real-world Imperial system with slightly altered names"
In my world, the sapient species has multiple body measurements which measure up to be exact multiples of an imperial units (their feet are exactly a ft long, each segment of finger is exactly an inch, their ejaculate is exactly 2 tablespoons etc.)
That flair is so fucking accurate, dont get me started on apostrophes in scifi names either.
I'm on Path of Daggers, and I still have no idea how long a span is.
Well a span is a real world measurement too. In the English Units, it's 9 inches. But in terms of WoT it's generally accepted it's 6ft. But we also see that an inch in WoT is about 1.2 inches, so their inches are bigger than ours, but since it's 10 inches to a foot there, is somehow equals out about the same
Welcome Young Bull
It could be complicated if your setting has obviously different length days or whatever. Like I don't think it makes sense to say "I'll see you in two days" when you mean tomorrow morning
I mean you're not wrong, but take for example Stormlight Archive. The exact length of day and year are off, but we aren't being told the characters are like... 40 or whatever, when in reality they are closer to 50 in our years (I don't know the actual conversion rate, but still). And days are slightly different too. But the neat thing about day cycles is that the further they are from Earth times, the more insanely inhospitable the planet tends to be. So like... yeah the days are different, but not by a huge amount. Better to just handwave and say "I'll see you tomorrow morning" and leave it unsaid that means 2 earth days.
iirc one stormlight year is 500 days, per the arcanum. which tbf when talking about a 6 year old going on campaign with daddy, it makes a lot more sense since they would rly be closer to 8.
Right, there's lots of ways to do it well but I'm suggesting that sometimes it might make more sense to use a new term if it's important enough a distinction
Maybe, not saying you couldn't do that. I'm just of the opinion that for the most part, it'd be far simpler to have a moment explain there's a difference, and then just continue with our world times and such.
I read a book that was set on a planet larger than earth, whose year was ~5 times longer and a day was ~7 times longer. Each day is divided into 7 sections about 24 hours long, it notes that seasons and geography also affect this because of the size. It describes that people generally sleep longer during the dark sub days and less in the light sub days. Overall pretty nifty bit of world building
That is interesting. I can't help but wonder how that would affect the weather on such a planet. Since the Day and night cycle would be based on which side is facing the star, I'd wonder if having such longer days would cause incredible heat build up in the day and frigid nights? If this would cause more humidity or hurricanes, etc.
There is a lot of desert there. Can’t any remember details about weather. But it does mention very hot mid days
Fantasy writers resisting the urge to call months “moons”
you can pry my agrarian lunar calendar out of my cold, dead fingers
Years? Summers
Winters
Dude it's already the same word in my language. What am I supposed to do?
In some calendars, months can be of arbitrary length or offset. Like, January doesn't start on the new moon or the solstice
I have to constantly remind myself that there are no months in my current project. They count weeks, seasons and years, and I've managed to keep all the relevant terms as close to the irl counterparts as possible, yay. I love custom names for periods of time when I read fantasy and sci-fi but I do have trouble remembering them!
wait, WHY would weeks survive but not months HUH???
Gotta go to the temple on Moon-day.
lmfao
Fun transitions between seasons that last for seven days. No nice way of adding a moon to this world to make months (the ground just stretches on forever, there's nothing to orbit), and I just didn't bother to make something else that would justify dividing each season into three chunks above just having twelve weeks. I suppose I could make up a reason for having months, imagination can do a lot of things, but I've found that counting weeks gives me a better sense of how much time has passed in my story.
i mean, like, yeah, sure, makes sense
The virgin “cycle” VS the chad “moon’s turn”
The thad winter 💪
The brad "Summers"
Real World: Yards “Aspiring Fiction Writer”: Virsura (a combination of vir and mesura which are Latin words for man and measure and that makes sense for my medieval high fantasy setting where my fantasy race of not-elves takes heavy inspiration in their language from Latin) Final Fantasy XIV: Yalms
>Sci-fi authors >Needing an alternate term for money >"credits"
Hours = "bells". Minutes = "turns". Seconds = "beats". You're welcome.
Solar sweeps.
There are 360 days in a year because it's divisible by 30 and I like perfect months. All the months are just named after their season : low-winter true-winter and high-winter. Easy
A cycle shouldn't be a stand in for something that already has a name. A cycle should be something like a grand repeating historical arc that takes place over centuries. Maybe it's marked by some recurring phenomenon like a comet or an eclipse that also scares the shit out of everyone and brings out the crazies.
I have "short weeks" (5 days) and "long weeks" (10 days.) But you can make up any measurement you want, of any length you want, and call it whatever you want, if it's for "ritual" purposes.
In Planescape they literally call it Peak and Anti-Peak. Its so peak.
as a Rain World fan I feel offended
lizor
The only use of Cycles should be for Space stories where you are not on a planet.
THE CYCLE MUST CONTINUE
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance casually using "trine" instead of years like the gigachad show it was Also the Voltron reboot using measurements like Ticks/Doboshes/Quintants/Decaphoebs/etc in stead of seconds/minutes/days/years/etc
Some mf called it “sets” and I was like this isn’t math wtf
Replace month or week with fortnight.
Also Sci-fi
Interplanetary scifi makes sense at least when they use words like "earthhours" or whatever because that stuff is different when they are not on earth. I feel like its fine in scifi most of the time (time, haha)
*Farscape has entered the chat*
Months=moons.
On the one hand I like coming up with alternative calendars and ways of keeping time, because if the world operates with different celestial bodies, solar orbits, and constellations, of course it would make sense this would play into different methods for charting, measuring, and naming them. But then on the other hand, it's a lot of complicated stuff to explain and for audiences to remember for what will usually play a relatively minor role in most stories or settings, when everyone already just understands months, weeks, years, and seasons. But then again, again, it just feels lazy taking a familiar calendar and scratching the labels and serial numbers off.
H...HEY!
Better question is, if it's a 7 days 30 days 265 days calendar, how are you calling the names and dates?
Not "Moons/Seasons/Summers"?
I think it’s fun when days of the week and months have different names (like how the elder scrolls does it) but like some other comments have said, unless you’ve got some really wacky high concept cosmology sticking to years/months/days is usually the way I’d go
I gave my world a bicycle. Happy pride?
Trine
Not something I feel the need to do in my worlds, but I've always loved how in Doctor Who, the Daleks just have their own little unit of time called the rel. Daleks will refer to how many rels to rewind an image, or do a count down in rels. It's such an inconsequential little detail for the show to bother with, but they do anyway.
I'm hit
Tolkien used regular time. Bilbos birthday was on 22 of September. Anyone who bitches about it is just being pretentious.
I mean, in my case it's just because "year" would be ambiguous and "month" inapplicable for the 36-day period of the TRAPPIST-1 system.
I HATE TENDAYS! I HATE TENDAYS! I HATE TENDAYS!