Reading Challenge: WorldEmber 2023

For the third year in a row, the fine folks at World Anvil have challenged worldbuilders like me to throw some love at some of our favorite articles from the competition. You can see my responses for 2021 and 2022 here and here, respectively. And as with last year, we've also been asked to throw in some New Year’s Resolutions as well.

But first…

A 2023 Recap

A Look Back on Last Year’s Resolutions

Though there were only three “official” resolutions on my list last year, I found a couple of extras in the preamble I wrote before spitting out my goals for 2023. So here’s where things ended up for each of those, plus each of the numbered resolutions:

I want my mantra for 2023 to be “room to breathe”

I was fairly successful here. I did my best to avoid taking on extra responsibilities and projects wherever I could, and I did a decent job of slowing myself down overall.

Take time to figure out what’s next

I don’t know when in 2023 I finally said out loud “I’m making a comic book,” but I do know that I spent a good long while trying to figure out what the story might be and how I might create the art. And it wasn’t until Spooktober in October that I finally committed by making the The Blood of Seven Queens: Prologue.

Don’t spend money I don’t have

This one was mostly a fail. I have a real problem with saying “no” to the artist part of myself, who spent most of my 20s, 30s, and early 40s hiding in a darkened corner of my mind. He’d been hiding there since an art teacher crushed his spirit in college, and once he felt safe enough to come out, he just wanted all the art supplies and he wanted them now.

I’ve gotten better, but I’m still struggling with how to let that part of me know he’s safe, that he’s got time, and that I’m not going to shove him back into that darkened corner again.

Don’t release anything without a plan

Another quasi-fail here. I am getting better, but I keep letting the excited parts of myself commit to things before I have time to analyze exactly how long they’ll take to complete. This was especially true of a series of erotica novels I released under a pen name in 2023. My therapist and I spent a lot of time working through my anxiety over this part of my year.

Be kind to myself

This one… I guess it’ll be a struggle for the rest of my life. I wish I could go back in time and give Younger Me the hug that he so desperately needed. Oh, how different my life might have been.

2023 Articles I’m Most Proud Of

Since I love the number 5 and I’m already feeling like this article is too self-indulgent and self-centered, let’s limit this to five articles:

1. The Family Tree of Frieda Jacobs, while technically a 2022 article, was fleshed out in early 2023 with 40+ portraits I created in Daz Studio and Photoshop.
2. It’s kind of a cheat to list Bestiary February here, since it’s a compilation of nine articles I wrote during that event, but I was really happy with some of the strange things I came up with.
3. The Battle of Frankburg Bridge was my attempt, during Summer Camp 2023, to up my Military Conflict game. It rated an honorable mention from judge Sable Aradia, a writer whose work—particularly around military conflicts—I deeply admire.
4. Albus Lepus, my entry for the Treasured Companions challenge, was another favorite. It tells the story of my version of Alice in Wonderland’s white rabbit.
5. “Something Between a Conversation and Death,” a short story I wrote during WorldEmber, was the culmination of a couple of years worth of worldbuilding about the Bekiskapan—the half-naked warrior culture I created on kind of a lark during the “On the Shoulders of Giants” challenge. It also serves as an important bit of backstory for me to build upon in The Blood of Seven Queens.

New Years Resolutions for 2024

1. Write, illustrate, and release at least one issue of The Blood of Seven Queens.
2. Find a new job or start generating enough solopreneur income to make up for the position the university took from me in November (and try to start believing that the layoff was not my fault).
3. Be kinder to myself.

10 Articles and What They Taught Me

Because I am totally overwhelmed by the awesomeness waiting for me in my Reading List after a month of focusing exclusively on writing, I’m letting a roll of the dice decide which ten articles I’m going to read and learn from for this challenge. I’ll still read everything else and comment on as many things as I can, but I want to complete this challenge before I get totally intimidated by it.

#1. “Heavenly Council of Ki-rins” by Kitoypoy

Kit is one of my favorite people on World Anvil and the World of Wizard’s Peak is among the finest that WA has to offer. I could’ve picked any number of articles to include here, which is part of why I decided to use a random number generator (as mentioned above).

The thing I learned from this one, aside from the fact that Sgt. Kill Flayer will always make me smile with his observations on the world, was how Plot Hooks (which Kit includes a number of near the bottom of the piece) can help a reader understand all of the nuance and possibilities a given piece of worldbuilding has to offer. In this one, for instance, we get plot hooks ranging from the dark (a kidnapping) to the joyful (the appearance of the Klaus the Gift Giver).

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#2. “Dreams” by Hanhula

The dream-like quality of Midjourney art seemed particularly well-suited to this article, but my favorite part here was actually the use of the sidebar to relate tangential but important information. I particularly enjoyed the sidebar on “deities and dreaming” and now Han’s got me thinking about how I can better utilize my own sidebars in the future.

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#3. “The Book of the Unquiet Dead” by Drunken Panda

There’s a humor here, both in the quotes and throughout, that I want to try and emulate in the future. I especially love the use of footnotes to both further the narrative and make us chuckle along the way.

Part of what I’m learning from these first few articles is to slow down with each article I write and think more about little tid-bits I could add to give them that extra something that each of these first three writers have included in their work.

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#4. “Rutas Surge” by Barron

The first thing I loved here was that, while I didn’t exactly know what a Rutas was, I didn’t feel like I had to know. The opening had the feel of a classic TTRPG rulebook where I’d flipped to a random page, started reading, and could refer to the index if I wanted to—but I didn’t have to. This is definitely something I want to continue to focus on in my own worldbuilding.

I also really loved the thought that obviously went into the symbols for the warning system. And then, as if I didn’t love the article enough already, Barron went and gave me a little story at the end.

This just goes to show that you can throw just about any combination of elements into a piece that you want, so long as you keep the reader from feeling confused and/or dumb.

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#5. “Ryelobite” by Emily Armstrong

Emily is one of my favorite Anvilites. Her creativity and sense of humor align so well with mine that I’m learning from her work even as I’m laughing hysterically.

First: I love the design of these guys. I’m not sure if Emily used the new or old method that she spells out in her “How I Art” article, but I adore what she’s done here either way. And also, I’m thinking I want to create a “How I Art” article for my own world. Would you guys read that?

Second: What I'm seeing/learning from the text here is how an author can modulate tone. There's still an undercurrent of humor that makes this feel like 100% Culinarypunk, but Emily has made me realize here that not all Culinarypunk articles have to have me rolling on the floor laughing—which means maybe that not every Eden article I write has to be the same thing either.

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#6. “Mageseekers” by Satrium

I‘m so glad the random number generator sent me over to Satrium’s world just after Emily’s, because I learn so much from both of them on a regular basis—and because they're both bright lights in the community as far as I'm concerned.

Shout-out to Satrium’s brilliant Reading Challenge Tracker, which has allowed me to keep up to date on who has been kind enough to mention my work in their own Reading Challenge articles!

But now, onto this article about Mageseekers. What I’m digging here and thinking about incorporating into my own work is more of a system of standardized headings for each article type. That’s something that’s built into World Anvil already, but sometimes there are so many fields that I get overwhelmed. By picking a select few that I’m going to use on every article of that type (as Satrium has done here with “Mageseekers”), I might be able to feel less intimidated by the blank screen while writing certain article types.

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#7. “Abyssal Merfolk”

I don't know why I love merfolk so much, given that the open ocean scares the crap out of me, but whatevs. What's important is that I love these merfolk more than most, and it's because of Mochi’s final section on the Benthic Sprawl. It feels only natural that merfolk would be sensitive to the environment, given how traditionally insensitive we land-dwellers have been to the seas.

The thing Mochi’s article has me thinking about regarding my own work is unfinished, underdeveloped, or abandoned concepts. For example, I like what I did with my own merfolk, but I never did develop what there cities or settlements look like. Something for me to think about in 2024.

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#8. “Bringing Life to a New World” by RPG Dinosaur Bob

This is an excellent overview of how life arrived on Bob’s world of Cartyrion, and is inspirational on a number of levels. First, I just love that Bob found a way to craft a history article outside of the timeline and/or chronicles interface. For a number of years, I’ve struggled with where to put and how to craft stories of my world’s history that didn’t fit neatly into any of the WA-provided templates, and which were also too big to just be an entry on a timeline. Bob’s provided a great example here.

I’m also really impressed by the way that the excerpts for each of the article’s Bob’s embedded are written with their proximity to each other and/or ordering in mind. The result is that, rather than it feeling like a collection of thrown-together links to other articles, those links and excerpts all feel like a vital part of the article we’re reading right now.

It’s the little things, the attention to detail, that make writers like Bob rise to the top of our community where we can look to them for inspiration.

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#9. “Powers of Malkora” by Strixxline

This was a great overview of how power and magic work in the world. I was already poised to love and devour the leylines section, as I've been intrigued by leylines since I first read the word in the Rifts Roleplaying Game guidebook ages and ages ago. What was a pleasant surprise for me was that there was another section/element which enthralled me just as much: the conflict between the primals and the gods. Such a great idea, that.

This article makes me want to run off to my world and see if I’ve got something as comprehensive to explain the various magics and powers of my world. Between this one and Bob’s entry above, I’m wanting to look into creating some further foundational articles for the Clarkwoods Literary Universe—places I can point to, like I think both Bob and Line can do with these two articles, that will get people up to speed on critical aspects of Eden in a short amount of time.

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#10. “Goldbrook Annual Guild Fair” by TJ Trewin

I've got a lot more exploring to do, but this introduction exceeded all of my lofty expectations. It's so wonderful to see TJ take all of the things I love about his previous work—care with the design, an immersive overall experience, and great writing—and then transfer that over to an entirely new world, genre, and feel.

Then he went ahead and created a whole interactive element where you can collect stamps as you explore the world and in the process so fully expanded my understanding of World Anvil can do that I want to run out and create an equivalent for my world right away (but I won't, because what he’s done here shows care and time and thought and that’s what I want to emulate most of all).

Just brilliant work here. I can't wait to check out more of it as a dig my way through my Reading List queue.

Who?

My Fellow Anvilites

What?

Ask not what your anvil can do for you. Ask what you can do for your anvil!

When?

January 1–27, 2024

Where?

Right here.

Wherefore?

Seriously, art thou Romeo?

How?

Somehow.