This post and the next are continuing the theme of
sensitivity and offence – deliberate or otherwise. Everything will be
from my perspective, and the views expressed are not intended as
guidance of any kind.
If this is a delicate subject for you, please skip forward to Light Verse. Thank you.
I've just spent half the morning on Universe Sandbox. Investigate at your own risk!
And all because I'm trying to establish some kind of calendar for my fantasy planet, and I wanted to know if my ideas about two moons would work. I started by thinking that I could just copy Mars' set-up, but those moons zip round mere hours. Blink and you'd miss it, not to mention that they're both really tiny.
I'm hoping more for an inner orbit that defines a "week" (of however many days) and slower, outer orbit of between 3-5 "weeks". I was even OK with a "weird" ratio, like 3:8 or something, so that a double full moon would be a notable affair. But it turns out that astrophysics is complicated. Who'da thunk?
This all started because I've been thinking about special dates recently, and that I really need to come up with a calendar for my fantasy world. Book one got away with hand-waving it because Kerrig doesn't care about dates much, but other books in the Fragments series cover different time periods, and reflect a variety of cultures. I need to start syncing things up, and figuring out how these different cultures mark out their weeks, months, and seasons.
Tasty, tasty research! World building! Orbital periods, annual ceremonies, climate patterns and socio-geographic culture building! The sweet, sweet crossover between physics, humanities, and art. All fun stuff, but not actually writing.
Oops.
I think I need to re-read last Saturday's post, and then put all this world-building into the "not now" pile until the draft if done. And by then, I'll know where to find the most narratively satisfying place for the special days. Because physics is cool, but what really matters is telling a good story.
Lesson: Basically, this: