2024 Summer Camp Pledge

Summer Camp is coming, Summer Camp is coming again

The sun is shining (occasionally), the trees are covered in leaves, the birds are singing and the bees - well, they're sheltering from the rain showers but nevertheless! Summer has arrived and Summer Camp prep time with it! Last year was my first time participating in Summer Camp in a different world, Immortals. I greatly enjoyed it, especially seeing the community spirit, and certainly hope to enjoy it as much this time again. This time I'll working on a really, truly brand new world (look, the only thing on here is a map). Sadly, the Immortals world didn't work out as my main project since alternate history ended up causing me more stress than fun; anxious perfectionism will fucking suck like that sometimes. But I already predicted last year that I would end up creating a new and truly secondary world before this Summer Camp and lo and behold!

Goals

Last year I succesfully went for the copper badge and that worked out really well for me so I'll be doing the same thing this year. Additionally since my world is still so very new and empty, I like the freedom to only choose those prompts that interest me at the moment. Things can start snowballing once Dlynaeth has had the chance to grow a bit.

Week 1

Theme - Change

Hold your horses, I don't even know what the status quo is yet! But in all seriousness, I do have some ideas about changes that might have taken place in the past. My initial scope/focus will be on the Taesáf (a sort of argali sheep inspired, faun-like people), who originally evolved in the large central mountains of Dlynaeth but migrated to the western coast long ago. They left behind "cousins" whose descendents now live deep within one of the faerie-rich areas of the mountains and have changed much in the long intervening years. The way the Taesáf view nature and the way interact with it has also changed over the years and opinions are divided on whether they are going in the right direction. There is a neighbouring people on the other side of the river and lake with whom they have good relations, trading much and helping each other with magical expertises but this probably wasn't always the case.

Categories and Tags

Look, there's nothing much to categorise yet so I'm assuming that I will get some ideas on how I want to organise my world during Summer Camp as I start writing. Everything will be tagged as a summer camp article and with whatever tag seems appropriate at that moment. And then I'll probably try and create some method to the madness in August.

Update your meta

I know, it's only meant for older world but I do actually have a reasonably complete meta! And because I only wrote it approximately a month ago, it's even up to date!

Week 2

Theme - Refuge

This is one of those themes where I both feel as if refuge will be strongly interwoven into my work anyway and I have absolutely no idea in which direction the prompts are going to go because there are so many possibilities. I didn't find it terribly useful last year to already brainstorm specific ideas so I'm just going to let the prompts surprise me and see what makes me cry "shiny!".

Accountability buddies

Well, that one's easy for me - it's the Discord summercamp channel! I love spending time there and I've changed my discord name to include a counter for prompts completed; that will provide just about the right amount of peer pressure for me to make sure I really go for that shiny copper badge.

Styling and CSS upgrades

I've been working on developing a theme for Dlynaeth and spent this week setting up the CSS for things like quotes, articleblocks and tooltips. There's still some specific things left that I want to fix before SC starts, especially links which are still WA red. And undoubtably there will be elements that pop up during SC where I will curse myself for forgetting about them, but theming isn't something to be rushed in my experience. My technical expertise far outstrips my design skills, so I'd rather be careful in this regard.

Week 3

Theme - Belief

This is an area I haven't thought about much yet, but I'm sure will eventually take up a lot of my worldbuilding. I love thinking about belief and faith and mythology and pantheons and all that stuff so it will definitely come. Reading some other homework the idea popped up that Dlynaeth has existing gods, but they're not doing a great job of it. There's also lots of aspects of belief and superstition surrounding the fae peoples, mixed in with the facts.

Inspirations

I'm not sure I have many direct inspirations this time, as just things that put me in the mood to create Dlynaeth or that touch on certain emotions and themes. There is a pinterest board but it's still very small and a just a mix of pictures that provide ideas for new peoples and some scenery that made me go "ah yes, that's roughly what Dlynaeth looks like". I have a good playlist on youtube of my favourite music that usually helps me stay in the flow, I've been taking some walks around the neighbourhood and the nearby estate woods/park now that the weather is nice, things are going really well with my horse right now which gives me a lot of joy and relaxation and I've been playing my harp again. All these things together generally help me to be in a state of mind where inspiration will come whenever I happen to cross a nugget that makes my brain go ping.

Preparing images

Since I really don't know most of what I'll be writing until I see the prompts I haven't put too much effort in preparing lots of images. I've made a sketch of one of the neighbours of the Taesáf which I'm pleased with. I might make a little sketch of the boats of their northern neighbours, depending on how difficult that turns out to be. But mostly I'm happy to just go look for images on Pexel and similar places if I really want them for the prompts - drawing is very time consuming for me so I don't expect I'll do much of that during Summer Camp. That's also why my big preparation project, drawing a nice map, was something I did in april! So that's prepared and I'm still over the moon with how nice it turned out.

Week 4

Theme - Decay

A classic theme for fantasy worlds! It's never interesting unless there's some fascinating lost old things to be found, right? (I lie, there are definitely exceptions to this.) The main idea that pops up into my head is how the relationship between the Taesáf and nature has decayed even as they've progressed in their magic and technical understanding of it. The pressures of an alliance that is powered by their help with agriculture and the need to produce more or more interesting things has increasingly started pushing their relationship into one of exploitation rather than symbiosis. I think fae-rich areas might also sometimes produce some interesting effects on time and on the growth or decay rate of anything living there.

Optimising your environment

Which reminds me, I really do need to restock my tea. Otherwise I nowadays have a beautiful home libary as my office which is a very comfortable and inspiring place to work. A do-not-disturb sign might be a good idea since my partner can be a bit scatterbrained about when not to disturb me and I lose flow and concentration easily. At other times just sitting at the dining table with my laptop and staring into the garden works perfectly well. I also copied the demo Deck of Worlds set onto coloured post-its in case I need some extra help with the prompts. Overall, I feel like this is all more than prepared.

Review your homepage

Honestly, since there's nothing much in the world yet and I dread sorting this out when the time does come, I'm going to leave this for now. I did some CSS work earlier to make sure the panels and links are all the right colours and that's enough for now.

Nnie's Camp Chill Guidelines

Camp Chill (ID 4574878) by Rin Garnett

- Remember the prompts are suggestions, not requirements.

- Write what you're passionate about, leave what you aren't.

- Relax when you feel tired.

- Fight off any pesky brain-squitos trying to make you doubt your work.

- Don't abandon your non-summercamp goals! Write that article you're itching to write, even if it doesn't fit any prompts.


(Shared with permission from Annie Stein. Read her thoughts on 'Camp Chill' on her Camp Pledge.)

To use this block on your own camp pages: [block:1050823]

Copper Party

Thank you to BlueFairy74 for this wonderful badge for all of us who are aiming for copper!

Copper-Badge [img:5650241] by Blue Fairy 74