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Dear Author/Artist - Worldbuilding Ex
Jan. 27th, 2018 08:58 pm(No longer a placeholder! Thank you and I'm sorry!)
Hello, dear worldbuilding author or artist! I'm so happy you're here. This was one of my favorite exchanges last year, and I'm so excited to do it again!
My ao3 account can be found here under the same username. If you feel like browsing a tumblr that will probably be no help at all, check out here.
Specific dislikes (i.e. please no): non-con, underage, or overt animal abuse.
Specific likes: Equal time for women characters, zaniness, fun & whimsy, worldbuilding, sci-fi/fantasy/horror weirdness, solarpunk, time travel, queer relationships, kidfic, poetry, and pretty much any story the author had fun writing/piece of art the artist enjoys making.
Specific art likes: I am a huge fan of a lot of different kinds of art, including traditional and non-traditional art. I like bright and muted palettes, I like collages, anime, and water colors and everything in between. I'll give more specific art prompts in the fandom prompts sections as well, but I really want you to make something you enjoy making!
Specific in-universe meta likes: Give me all of it! Do you want to draw up blueprints of something? Do you want to write an owner's manual? What does wikipedia look like in any of these universes? Emails, text conversations, overly descriptive set pieces, I love it all.
And, after all, optional details are optional! If you have an idea already, go for it!
Friends at the Table (Podcast)
I love the Twilight Mirage! This season is fantastic, and I love the invitation to just be as much on your bullshit as possible at all times. In that vein, here are my prompts:
Worldbuilding: Jazz Assassins Lifestyles:
So I nominated this before we learned that the Jazz Assassins are actually part of a larger Castlerose Agency of assassins, and that they just regenerate into the bodies of 20th century pop musicians... maybe? I love jazz a lot, but I also love Bowie and Freddie Mercury a lot, and I love a lot of other 20th century pop musicians. (Relevant episodes: Twilight Mirage 16, 23, 26)
I was really taken with Signet's relationship with Belgard, and that's why I'm requesting the next two:
Worldbuilding: Life with a Divine
Worldbuilding: Relationship between Divines and Excerpts
What's it like to be an Excerpt to a machine god? I imagine it's wild, even if it's not as terrible as life as a Candidate was back in Counter/Weight. What's the training like? What's the protocol like for new Excerpts? How do they distinguish between machine intelligence and useful machine? What's it like for the Excerpt when they die?
Signet and Belgard in particular have a really interesting relationship. What's it like being in the cockpit? Signet pilots with some sort of aerial silk situation -- how did she figure that out initially? Also, feel free to lean into the bugness -- maybe some sort of list of beetles that make up Belgard's carapice?
When Janine (Signet) was describing Belgard booting up, I had a really clear picture in my mind of being inside a Turkish lamp that was also a beetle, so maybe something like that?
ART: Beetles, bright colors or muted, draw a new divine, draw Signet when she met Belgard for the first time, Draw Belgard when she saw Signet for the first time, etc!
Worldbuilding: The Divine Fleet:
You know what? Go nuts. Design a mech, design a Divine or a describe the elevator system of the By and By, transcribe a Gig Kep-hart video from any timeframe. Build a color palette for any of the ships, do a fashion lay out of any of the outfits mentioned in the worldbuilding episode, etc! There's so much room for expansion of this world, and I am here for all of it. Be the most on your bullshit you can be!
ART: What does the Twilight Mirage itself look like, either pre- or post-holiday special? The By and By's top-floor national park? Gumption's Gambit is basically the Millennium Falcon of the Divine Fleet and it's wonderful, so you can draw something like that.
City Of A Thousand Festivals
City Of A Thousand Festivals is a fantastic writing project by Charlie Day. Each day is a new festival in Buentoille, and it is a cause for celebration. It's 365 days of celebrations big and small, or, to put it in exchange terms, basically 365 five-minute fandoms. Here's the link to dig in: http://cityoffestivals.co.uk/
I requested any or no characters or original characters, and there are plenty of characters in the writing to explore. For instance, there's King Velemuud the Foreigner, from April 29th's Slug Eating Contest, or Jinni Metchlasin from September 9th's Festival of the Savior Returned.
Worldbuilding: Festivals
There's so much here to celebrate! Pick a festival that sounds good to you, or pick a date that is important to you, and write about one of the festivals. How would someone attending the festival experience it? What would it look like through a child's eyes? Write about another festival, one of the "Other Festivals Happening Today" found at the end of every entry. How does a festival begin?
How would a family celebrate? What unusual event happened at this year's [x festival] and what does the newspaper say about it?
ART: Festival art! Celebration! Bright colors or not! Celebratory or somber!
Worldbuilding: Education
With this many festivals going on, what does the education system look like in Buentoille? Do children get school off for festivals, or are the festivals incorporated into the learning? What do the teachers teach day to day? How is history taught in this city with so much of it ingrained into daily life? How about math?
Worldbuidling: City Planning and Worldbuilding: City Management
What does the city government look like in Buentoille, and how to they manage a city with this much happening all the time? I'm reminded of Hannibal Buress's joke about what it takes to get a parade in New Orleans (NSFW). The police department has a parades department, and you can throw a parade for five people with $300 and a day's notice.
Who's in charge of, like, traffic management? What are the permits like? What festivals can happen without permits? What are traffic patterns like? Has the city been planned around the festivals, or have the festivals been planned around the city?
ART: You ready to draw some maps? How about some parade routes? Have you ever just really wanted to design a form for an application for a festival in a fantasy city that is always celebrating? Here's your chance!
Worldbuilding: Calendars
What the heck would a calendar POSSIBLY look like? There are so many celebrations! How do people plan their days, and how do the calendars fit everything in? What does a city-wide calendar look like? What would an individual's day calendar look like? How about someone who was very involved in one of the festivals?
ART: Draw a calendar!
Venus Fly - Grimes ft. Janelle Monáe (Music Video)
This music video is a phenomenal piece of aesthetics while also making absolutely no narrative sense whatsoever. I love the world they inhabit so much. To be clear, I nominated the Venus character as the character played by Grimes, and Woman with the Flaming Sword as the character played by Janelle Monae, but don't feel penned in by those names and designations. You may name them whatever you like, and build whatever fantastic world around them you choose. I'm also okay with pure worldbuilding. It's okay if you only take one aspect of the video and expand on it, or if you try to pull all the disparate parts together into a single narrative. It's okay if you want to write highly aesthetic smut with varying levels of costumed debauchery. It's all fantastic!
Just a summary of the visuals sounds improbable: It opens with the Woman with the Flaming Sword standing beneath a globe, lit from within. The fabric of our very reality seems to be made of bubbles, leaves, and feathers. A wingèd Venus takes a bite from an apple, then sets a bubble of gas on fire, revealing her name. The Woman with the Flaming Sword grips two strands of a pearl necklace and then... band break.
What is this world they inhabit? The lyrics, frankly, offer no clues. ("Why you looking at me?" the Woman with the Flaming Sword asks, again and again like a frantic Medusa, devoid of her powers. "Oh, why you looking at me against them?") It's the peak of aesthetics and the nadir of sense and I LOVE it.
Worldbuilding: Mythology, Worldbuilding: Cosmology, Worldbuilding: Fashion
One interpretation of the video is that they are goddesses or other divine, ethereal beings, creating and destroying worlds through a glorious interstellar dance. They could also be angels, demons, one of each, fates, muses, or witches. Are they partners and lovers, or bitter rivals locked in an eternal dance?
Is their clothing intentional? What purpose does it serve? Is it purely decorative, or are there other
ART: Draw the two characters, or the background of one of the scenes! Close up on the drum, or maybe one piece of each of their costumes, strewn about on the floor. Focus on one thing: The globe. The burning gas bubble. The band break. What does their world below look like?
Candy Land
Hi, hello, yes, this is my most ridiculous request. I am okay with any tone here: fluffy happy and sugar sweet would certainly be within the tone of the "fandom," such as it is, but it could be fun to go as gritty grim-dark as you want. Do you want to do a "crack taken seriously" kind of a thing? Go for it! Do you want to ship the Duke of Swirl and Mr. Mint, or any of the other characters? (Please no incest and underage... I just realized I didn't put incest in my official DNWs above, so consider this a personal request that I realize is an optional detail.)
Worldbuilding: Royal family; Worldbuilding: Court Culture
Candy Land clearly has a royal family, and some court intrigue! I've nominated the Duke of Swirl, Mr. Mint, Queen Frostine, Princess Lolly, King Kandy, and Plumpy, but feel free to add others or write about other people in the royal line (the Granddaughter of Queen Frostine, or King Kandy's great-grandfather who founded this Land of Candy, for instance). What is the culture of court like? What are the relationships between the family? What are their struggles as they rule over their subjects? Are they fair rulers, or unfair?
Worldbuilding: Incoming Portals from other dimensions
The children got there somehow. What are these portals, how do you access them, and what kind of safeguards do they have on Candy Land's side? Does the appearance of the children throw the world into disarray? Are they seen as horrible alien invaders who are coming to consume the resources of Candy Land, or are they welcomed as guests?
Worldbuilding: Human and non-human citizenship
Is anyone here actually human? Is there a distinction between humans and non-humans? What are the relationships like? Is Plumpy a king in his own right?
Worldbuilding: Environmental protection of wetlands and other ecosystems
Listen, I'm sure the Kingdom has a department for this. What is involved? I'm so here for anything about Candy Land's Environmental Protection Agency.
ART: What does the interior of the castle look like? Expand upon the map where it interacts with the natural environment or the incoming portal(s). Do a botanical illustration of any of Candy Land's foliage! Plumpy portrait? Plumpy portrait!
Stranger Things
How great is Stranger Things? Answer: SO GREAT! I love the show, I love the creepiness of the Upside Down, and I love the interaction between the Upside Down and our dimension. I nominated Barb and the Demogorgon as the characters with the most interaction with the Upside Down, but other characters would be great as well, either canon or original. If you want to write about Will's experience exploring, that's great! I've left a prompt below for an intern at the Department of Energy, but any of the DOE employees would be great lenses through which to examine the Upside Down.
Worldbuilding: Portals between the worlds
We saw some of these portals in the show, but it seems a little unclear about how they actually work. What research was the Department of Energy doing on the portal in their basement? What was the report like from the intern who was sent in the first time? (Have you seen The Life Aquatic? You know those interns? That's what I always think about in these scenarios.)
Hello, dear worldbuilding author or artist! I'm so happy you're here. This was one of my favorite exchanges last year, and I'm so excited to do it again!
My ao3 account can be found here under the same username. If you feel like browsing a tumblr that will probably be no help at all, check out here.
Specific dislikes (i.e. please no): non-con, underage, or overt animal abuse.
Specific likes: Equal time for women characters, zaniness, fun & whimsy, worldbuilding, sci-fi/fantasy/horror weirdness, solarpunk, time travel, queer relationships, kidfic, poetry, and pretty much any story the author had fun writing/piece of art the artist enjoys making.
Specific art likes: I am a huge fan of a lot of different kinds of art, including traditional and non-traditional art. I like bright and muted palettes, I like collages, anime, and water colors and everything in between. I'll give more specific art prompts in the fandom prompts sections as well, but I really want you to make something you enjoy making!
Specific in-universe meta likes: Give me all of it! Do you want to draw up blueprints of something? Do you want to write an owner's manual? What does wikipedia look like in any of these universes? Emails, text conversations, overly descriptive set pieces, I love it all.
And, after all, optional details are optional! If you have an idea already, go for it!
Friends at the Table (Podcast)
I love the Twilight Mirage! This season is fantastic, and I love the invitation to just be as much on your bullshit as possible at all times. In that vein, here are my prompts:
Worldbuilding: Jazz Assassins Lifestyles:
So I nominated this before we learned that the Jazz Assassins are actually part of a larger Castlerose Agency of assassins, and that they just regenerate into the bodies of 20th century pop musicians... maybe? I love jazz a lot, but I also love Bowie and Freddie Mercury a lot, and I love a lot of other 20th century pop musicians. (Relevant episodes: Twilight Mirage 16, 23, 26)
- In canon we have Armstrong as a solo act and the Duke, Charlie M, and Young Master Roach, as well as Mr. Fahrenheit and the Thin White Duke. Staying on the jazz theme, has Armstrong ever worked with the Queen of Scat, or has The Duke teamed up with the Lady Day?
- Who else have they reincarnated into? Write me a mission description that's an all-hands on deck situation that requires everyone from the We are the World, or the job they have to pull when they become the cast from Kanye's Monster. Feel free to design their mechs as well!
- What musical collaboration is your favorite. Please be on your bullshit with me!
I was really taken with Signet's relationship with Belgard, and that's why I'm requesting the next two:
Worldbuilding: Life with a Divine
Worldbuilding: Relationship between Divines and Excerpts
What's it like to be an Excerpt to a machine god? I imagine it's wild, even if it's not as terrible as life as a Candidate was back in Counter/Weight. What's the training like? What's the protocol like for new Excerpts? How do they distinguish between machine intelligence and useful machine? What's it like for the Excerpt when they die?
Signet and Belgard in particular have a really interesting relationship. What's it like being in the cockpit? Signet pilots with some sort of aerial silk situation -- how did she figure that out initially? Also, feel free to lean into the bugness -- maybe some sort of list of beetles that make up Belgard's carapice?
When Janine (Signet) was describing Belgard booting up, I had a really clear picture in my mind of being inside a Turkish lamp that was also a beetle, so maybe something like that?
ART: Beetles, bright colors or muted, draw a new divine, draw Signet when she met Belgard for the first time, Draw Belgard when she saw Signet for the first time, etc!
Worldbuilding: The Divine Fleet:
You know what? Go nuts. Design a mech, design a Divine or a describe the elevator system of the By and By, transcribe a Gig Kep-hart video from any timeframe. Build a color palette for any of the ships, do a fashion lay out of any of the outfits mentioned in the worldbuilding episode, etc! There's so much room for expansion of this world, and I am here for all of it. Be the most on your bullshit you can be!
ART: What does the Twilight Mirage itself look like, either pre- or post-holiday special? The By and By's top-floor national park? Gumption's Gambit is basically the Millennium Falcon of the Divine Fleet and it's wonderful, so you can draw something like that.
City Of A Thousand Festivals
City Of A Thousand Festivals is a fantastic writing project by Charlie Day. Each day is a new festival in Buentoille, and it is a cause for celebration. It's 365 days of celebrations big and small, or, to put it in exchange terms, basically 365 five-minute fandoms. Here's the link to dig in: http://cityoffestivals.co.uk/
I requested any or no characters or original characters, and there are plenty of characters in the writing to explore. For instance, there's King Velemuud the Foreigner, from April 29th's Slug Eating Contest, or Jinni Metchlasin from September 9th's Festival of the Savior Returned.
Worldbuilding: Festivals
There's so much here to celebrate! Pick a festival that sounds good to you, or pick a date that is important to you, and write about one of the festivals. How would someone attending the festival experience it? What would it look like through a child's eyes? Write about another festival, one of the "Other Festivals Happening Today" found at the end of every entry. How does a festival begin?
How would a family celebrate? What unusual event happened at this year's [x festival] and what does the newspaper say about it?
ART: Festival art! Celebration! Bright colors or not! Celebratory or somber!
Worldbuilding: Education
With this many festivals going on, what does the education system look like in Buentoille? Do children get school off for festivals, or are the festivals incorporated into the learning? What do the teachers teach day to day? How is history taught in this city with so much of it ingrained into daily life? How about math?
Worldbuidling: City Planning and Worldbuilding: City Management
What does the city government look like in Buentoille, and how to they manage a city with this much happening all the time? I'm reminded of Hannibal Buress's joke about what it takes to get a parade in New Orleans (NSFW). The police department has a parades department, and you can throw a parade for five people with $300 and a day's notice.
Who's in charge of, like, traffic management? What are the permits like? What festivals can happen without permits? What are traffic patterns like? Has the city been planned around the festivals, or have the festivals been planned around the city?
ART: You ready to draw some maps? How about some parade routes? Have you ever just really wanted to design a form for an application for a festival in a fantasy city that is always celebrating? Here's your chance!
Worldbuilding: Calendars
What the heck would a calendar POSSIBLY look like? There are so many celebrations! How do people plan their days, and how do the calendars fit everything in? What does a city-wide calendar look like? What would an individual's day calendar look like? How about someone who was very involved in one of the festivals?
ART: Draw a calendar!
Venus Fly - Grimes ft. Janelle Monáe (Music Video)
This music video is a phenomenal piece of aesthetics while also making absolutely no narrative sense whatsoever. I love the world they inhabit so much. To be clear, I nominated the Venus character as the character played by Grimes, and Woman with the Flaming Sword as the character played by Janelle Monae, but don't feel penned in by those names and designations. You may name them whatever you like, and build whatever fantastic world around them you choose. I'm also okay with pure worldbuilding. It's okay if you only take one aspect of the video and expand on it, or if you try to pull all the disparate parts together into a single narrative. It's okay if you want to write highly aesthetic smut with varying levels of costumed debauchery. It's all fantastic!
Just a summary of the visuals sounds improbable: It opens with the Woman with the Flaming Sword standing beneath a globe, lit from within. The fabric of our very reality seems to be made of bubbles, leaves, and feathers. A wingèd Venus takes a bite from an apple, then sets a bubble of gas on fire, revealing her name. The Woman with the Flaming Sword grips two strands of a pearl necklace and then... band break.
What is this world they inhabit? The lyrics, frankly, offer no clues. ("Why you looking at me?" the Woman with the Flaming Sword asks, again and again like a frantic Medusa, devoid of her powers. "Oh, why you looking at me against them?") It's the peak of aesthetics and the nadir of sense and I LOVE it.
Worldbuilding: Mythology, Worldbuilding: Cosmology, Worldbuilding: Fashion
One interpretation of the video is that they are goddesses or other divine, ethereal beings, creating and destroying worlds through a glorious interstellar dance. They could also be angels, demons, one of each, fates, muses, or witches. Are they partners and lovers, or bitter rivals locked in an eternal dance?
Is their clothing intentional? What purpose does it serve? Is it purely decorative, or are there other
ART: Draw the two characters, or the background of one of the scenes! Close up on the drum, or maybe one piece of each of their costumes, strewn about on the floor. Focus on one thing: The globe. The burning gas bubble. The band break. What does their world below look like?
Candy Land
Hi, hello, yes, this is my most ridiculous request. I am okay with any tone here: fluffy happy and sugar sweet would certainly be within the tone of the "fandom," such as it is, but it could be fun to go as gritty grim-dark as you want. Do you want to do a "crack taken seriously" kind of a thing? Go for it! Do you want to ship the Duke of Swirl and Mr. Mint, or any of the other characters? (Please no incest and underage... I just realized I didn't put incest in my official DNWs above, so consider this a personal request that I realize is an optional detail.)
Worldbuilding: Royal family; Worldbuilding: Court Culture
Candy Land clearly has a royal family, and some court intrigue! I've nominated the Duke of Swirl, Mr. Mint, Queen Frostine, Princess Lolly, King Kandy, and Plumpy, but feel free to add others or write about other people in the royal line (the Granddaughter of Queen Frostine, or King Kandy's great-grandfather who founded this Land of Candy, for instance). What is the culture of court like? What are the relationships between the family? What are their struggles as they rule over their subjects? Are they fair rulers, or unfair?
Worldbuilding: Incoming Portals from other dimensions
The children got there somehow. What are these portals, how do you access them, and what kind of safeguards do they have on Candy Land's side? Does the appearance of the children throw the world into disarray? Are they seen as horrible alien invaders who are coming to consume the resources of Candy Land, or are they welcomed as guests?
Worldbuilding: Human and non-human citizenship
Is anyone here actually human? Is there a distinction between humans and non-humans? What are the relationships like? Is Plumpy a king in his own right?
Worldbuilding: Environmental protection of wetlands and other ecosystems
Listen, I'm sure the Kingdom has a department for this. What is involved? I'm so here for anything about Candy Land's Environmental Protection Agency.
ART: What does the interior of the castle look like? Expand upon the map where it interacts with the natural environment or the incoming portal(s). Do a botanical illustration of any of Candy Land's foliage! Plumpy portrait? Plumpy portrait!
Stranger Things
How great is Stranger Things? Answer: SO GREAT! I love the show, I love the creepiness of the Upside Down, and I love the interaction between the Upside Down and our dimension. I nominated Barb and the Demogorgon as the characters with the most interaction with the Upside Down, but other characters would be great as well, either canon or original. If you want to write about Will's experience exploring, that's great! I've left a prompt below for an intern at the Department of Energy, but any of the DOE employees would be great lenses through which to examine the Upside Down.
Worldbuilding: Portals between the worlds
We saw some of these portals in the show, but it seems a little unclear about how they actually work. What research was the Department of Energy doing on the portal in their basement? What was the report like from the intern who was sent in the first time? (Have you seen The Life Aquatic? You know those interns? That's what I always think about in these scenarios.)
Worldbuilding: Geography of the Upside Down (Stranger Things)
We sort of got a map in the interior of the house, but what else is there, and how does it interact with our plane? There are clearly structures that mirror the structures in our universe: does Upside Down construction stem from the our universe, or is it the other way around, or do they happen at the same time? Does the same space take the same space in both places, or are there folds in different ways? What happens to any natural features from Hawkins in the Upside Down? Bob was able to identify a lake from Will's map, what else is there?
Worldbuilding: Game Theory and the Upside Down
There's some game theory intrinsic to the show already (D&D used as a framing device). Go ahead and expand on this: what are the "rules" of the Upside Down? Are they narrative based, or not? What does the Prisoner's Dilemma look like there (maybe nothing, if there are no humans, but... maybe if you got two Demogorgons who had committed a crime together...)
Worldbuilding: Demogorgon Sociology/Zoology/Biology (Stranger Things)
Demogorgons: what are they? We just don't know! What are their social structures like? Are they mammals? Amphibians? What is their larval or young stage like? Are they animals, or are they, like the demodogs, part of a larger whole? Is there a female demogorgon? Does she fall in love with Barb? (Listen, I ship it, but it's fine if you don't!)
ART: Maps maps maps, biological drawings, blue prints, machine designs, landscapes, etc! I want it all!
