Reading challenge - Summer Camp 2024

Pandora9

First I would like to share a great discovery I made while reading everyone's SC homework. Pandora's Crimson Court world is a portal fantasy, with someone from our world thrown into the fantasy world he used to read about. I got hooked on the bit of stories inside the article and now I really need to know what's going to happen to the characters!

I love the idea that everyone in that world knows about people coming from other world, and the distinction between people coming in their own body or inhabiting the body of someone from the fantasy world, something that everyone of course finds super creepy. This world is also centred around a demonic court, and I'm always a big fan of well written ruthless court politics.
Pandora's articles are full of cool little concepts, and I love how they all come together. The article I'm sharing here also has a cool creepy concept, with creatures able to kill people and erase their memories from everyone's mind, and I'm really curious to see how people are going to make use of them in their schemes...

nnie

Nnie's Solaris is one of my favourite worlds on WA, and she keeps coming up with great ideas and presenting them in great articles. One of my favourite aspect of her world is the creepy Oort cloud and the terrible Eldritch Horrors that live beyond it. They can contaminate and wrap the mind of people, and spread that come too close to them and spread around this contamination.
Unfortunately for people in this world, some minerals from the oort cloud has become a great source of energy, which means that it's been spreading everywhere...

Another's aspect of Solaris that I love is the way nnie has designed the planet and their ecosystems. Here, Uranus has a very cool system of temporary islands that rise in the atmosphere before sinking down and getting destroyed by the internal pressure of the planet. It's also interesting to see how this has impacted the culture of the people living there by preventing them from having permanent settlements.
Another article that stood out to me was the gigantic medusae that floats in Neptune's water, with other organisms using its tentacles as an habitat, like a reverse coral.

The last of nnie's article I wanted to mention is her city on Saturn, as its an enormous city divided into different layers, with the poor people and outlawed activities banished in the dark layers at the bottom. I find this concept very cool and this is very similar to what I had in mind for My City of the Hundred Fiefs - which reminded me that I've forgotten to actually talk in much details about those bottom layers XD
Nnie is also great at writing very visual description and I love all the little details she's shared about this city and how she's designed each of its layer.

Hanhula

Among all of Han's articles, the one that stood out the most was reaving thirst and the tale that goes with it. I love how Han has described this disease and how this is all caused by some simple salt. This makes it super dangerous and hard to avoid. Treatments are limited and leaves sequelae, including making survivors crave contaminated salt and succumbed more quickly the next time...
Han's writing is always beautiful and this story has stayed in my mind since I've read it.

Another of Han's article that I loved was one about a big network of caverns and the people who explore them to claim rare ore and treasure. I'm always a fan of dangerous cave, and here I love 1) that countries fight to claim them, 2) that the ore dissolve in the water and contaminate it, thus making the caves dangerous for reasons other than monsters.

Mochi

Very fascinating new world, with some spatial explorer arriving in an empty space station and starting to explore. Feels very similar to the start of the new Alien film, and I'm looking forwards to see what happens in this story...

Among Mochi's articles this SC, what really stood out to me is a combination of two super cool ideas: planktonic storms, with plankton in the air that can prevent people breathing and forcing them to wear masks, and giant mussels standing upwards on beaches to eat all this plankton. And of course, a problem with the mussel population threatens nearby people by leaving the storms completely uncontrolled.
I love the idea of this swarm of plankton in the air coming to choke people as a fun variation of toxic fume. And these gigantic mussels that act as a natural protection against them is so cool and fitting! I love when worldbuilding ideas just clip so perfectly together like lego.

Rin

I love Rin's explanation for how psyonics power works in this world, from metadimensional energy flowing through people's brain, and the limits to the powers and dangers this results in. It's also interesting that it started as a disease and can still be very negative if not carefully controlled.
The metadimension is also be used for space travel to jump from one point of space to another by going through this dimension. It's very creepy and dangerous and I find it fascinating XD The whole system of metadimension/energy is very cool and I love how this all works.

KittyMonster

One of my absolute favourite articles of past SC / WE was KittyMonster's uyetsoub (a parasitic entity that eat people to replicate itself and take their place), so I was super happy to see an article about its species family! Although RIP the poor people from this world XD
All those creatures are really fascinating, and I love their biology and the impact they have on society.

Rumengol

In Rumen's new world "Their world", people developed a new biology tech to stop more physical strength and become cleverer, and it was so revolutionary that everyone wanted it before it could get fully tested. The side effects suddenly started appearing, making all people who had it use it both go mad and "necrotize", effectively becoming clever zombies. Of course, the people affected were all military personnel and wealthy elites, and so society crumbled. It's only a question of time before all of them rot away, but the rest of humanity need to be able to survive for that long...
I really love this premise for a zombie world. The article I'm sharing was supposed to be a centre that researched the side effects and tried to stop them, but since their leader also got a brain implant, it didn't end well...

Kefkejaco

I love the way magic works in Kef's world, but what really interested me in this article was the way other countries tried to replicate one country's flying ships. Without knowing their secret technology, instead they came with another one of their own that wasn't just an imitation but something different, with different advantages and limitations.
This is something I should consider also doing in some of my world rather than have people only focus on stealing/buying the secret of other countries' technologies. This has the potential to be very fun.

Stormbril

Stormbril has made a new cool postcard formatting for this SC, and I love this small compact format. I also love the new illustration style he's recycling from his architecture courses, with people/objects drawn in white on top of a photo. It's a great way to personalise an illustration to your world without having to put massive effort to draw a full scene.
This article here is about mushrooms growing on books. This is horrifying, but I also love all the nicknames people give them, and I feel that they would be perfect cultural in-world symbolism of book-lovers. I want merch now!

TJ

I love the mechanism by which floating islands' work in TJ's world: it's a fun scientific explanation with porous volcanic rocks filled with gas, and so the islands are impacted by atmospheric pressure and rise and fall through the day and seasons.
I also love how TJ has explored in other SC's camp how those floating islands would impact ecology, with packs of island birds migrating with the islands and potentially spreading diseases everywhere they go.

Jacob-W

This article is a fun article written in prose and highlight the ridiculous intricate administrative system of the army. I love all the silly rules they have to determine the MC's salary depending on the exact order in which she received a promotion/got married/ got denied being discharged...

Panther

More floating islands! This one is a cute tradition that people have when their islands are moved close to each other by air currents, with their inhabitants immediately visiting each other to catch up and gossip. I love the visual of people being super excited at seeing each other and sending harpoons to temporarily chains the islands together XD

Catoblepon

Cato's also had floating islands, but what I love about this article is that people don't use flying ships to move from one island to the next. Since the islands don't simply move by themselves, people have instead tied rope from one island to the next and use them to drag wooden platform between them! I find this low tech approach both very cool and funny XD

Angantyr

Ang's article is about an event during which some kind of magical currents in the world temporarily became visible to everyone, allowing everyone to manipulate them. I found it interesting that people were mostly horrified by this and focused on all the negative consequences of the magic and this really upset and endangered their lives.

Emy

Emy's article is about a forcefield that protects an island. I love the image of the forcefield suddenly becoming visible to throw back cannon balls with an enormous noise.

Solarcat

Solar's article is about the first spaceships in her world piloted by her "Afterlife Intelligence" i.e., dead people's souls. Here the army was nice enough not to experiment directly on their people and to use prisoners of wars instead. Unfortunately for them, when you put former enemies in command on your spaceship, this is unlikely to end well...

BlueFairy74

BlueFairy's article is about mirrors that allow people to travel from one place to another. What I like about them is that it's not instant transportation but instead people are forced to go through a path made of clouds. This is a cool imagery reminding of dreams, but it also hide some unexpected dangers...

Barron

Barron's article is about a volcano used as a weapon during a war. This is a super cool and horrifying concept that I was just waiting to see XD

elspeth87

I love magic systems with runes, and it was fun to see Elspeth's system and how she designed them and to compare the symbolisms she chose with mine.

Janet

This is a cute little tale in prose about how 3 cooks came up with a pie recipe to satisfy an angry king. I had a glimpse at it without intending to read it immediately, but then I couldn't move away until I had reached the end XD

TinkerTech

A "virus" affecting mechanical body parts and robots, with nanorobots that heal people having gone completely out of control. Very cool ideas, with a contagious disease affecting robots and a cool mechanism for it.

Ononomad

Very impressive fire storm in the dessert that throw sand around and sometimes transform it into glass and make it rain down on people. This is a super cool idea and the transition between sand -> glass is very natural.

Moonlight-bard

A fabric in which people can store memories/sensations and later access them. This is a very cool idea and it's fun to think how this would impact life and how you could carry your best or most comforting memories around and tap into them throughout your day.

Racussa

A terrible factory incident with chemical poisoning and what people did to save the river and slowly decrease the pollution. I always love when things focus on chemistry. It was nice to see that terrible accident like that don't just doom the entire region and really interesting to see the way people dealt with it.

Butcher of Seville

Dried dandelions used as a protection. I love that this involves a simple plant you can pick up and have an immediate effects. Makes me want to feature plants a bit more in my magic system rather than just an chemistry/alchemy.

Thereasonwhy

Cool mix of magic and henna "tattoos". This is a bit similar to what I do with temporary woad tattoos, so I love seeing another take on it.

---

My favourite articles among those I wrote

My main character for this new world: Lady Olénie of Glass, an article with a lot of art that I like.

Magic system: Glass and Magic Lenses explaining how they are used to transform magic wavelengths and cast spell, and Runes, explaining how this symbolic writing system works and how it's linked to magic. I love how I've developed this system and how well I managed to make the hard rules work!

The past of my world: Dragonic magic manifestations, explaining how the emperors used to invoke dragon constructs to fight their enemies and how this ended up killing them and ending the empire, and The Last Emperor's Experimental Notes, which details the last experiments carried out by the emperors before their fall. These two were a real surprise, as I really don't like vehicle prompts, but then this sparked an idea that is now fundamental to the past of the city and current days' politics.

Animals: Painted magpie, clever animals whose love of pretty colours is being exploited to pollinate flowers, and Tower cats, the little bosses of the city who keeps it free from vermin and dangerous magical creatures. Those two are just fun and cute articles.