Alan's Inspo-August

First of all thanks to EBelt for organizing this little project! I was going to take a break from writing for a month after Summer Camp and focus solely on my CSS and imagery, but I value stories of inspiration a lot, so I was happy to see this pop up! Great idea, EBelt!

Link to EBelt's article

1. What is the main thing or one of the main things that inspired your world(s)?

The simplest and most straightforward answer to this is my life-long love of science fiction and fantasy. Waking Materia is, like many worlds, a mishmash of original ideas and homages to my favourite works in fiction, spun to fit a (hopefully) coherent flavour. It's in the context of this flavour that I'll give my main answer.
Since I was very young I was fascinated by the genre -- both in writing and visual art -- of magic realism, sometimes called surrealism, metarealism or fantastic realism (Phantastischen Realismus). I'm very much a "less is more" person; to me the fantastical is at its most powerful when sprinkled lightly over the real. I find it's then that the magic really jumps out and surprises you. It's not that I mind wholly fantastical settings, I just have the most fun exploring the liminal, the in-betweens and the almosts, from an otherwise familiar perspective. One way that we all do this is through dreams, which feature prominently in my writing.
For more on the genre in visual art, my favourite painters include Salvador Dali, Remedios Varo, Giorgio de Chirico, Johfra Bosschart, Paul Nash, Ernst Fuchs and Zdzisław Beksiński. Go check them out! Its these sort of visuals I want to capture in my writing.

2. What is your favorite aspect of your story/world and what inspired that aspect?

With all of the above said, I now want to great a magic-realist world. In a nutshell, the realist world is Waking Materia. The magic is the Duskscape: a coterminous realm of dead & dreaming souls, alien but strangely familiar vistas and oddly beautiful demonic cities. The realms are separated by a phenomenon known as the Veil, but this barrier can weaken, and one can bleed into the other. I call the setting "Waking" Materia because it experiences the surreal the way a half-awake person experiences last night's dreams: in brief and often fleeting ways. But even a brief encounter in the Dusckscape could spell great danger!

3. What are some writers/worldbuilders that inspire you to write/worldbuild?

One of my first -- and still most beloved -- forays into magic realism was the novel House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, in which the occasional intervention of the spiritual or psychic was treated with a sort of calm, elegant matter-of-factness in an otherwise mundane, character-driven story. It's a wonderful novel and I recommend it to anyone who has read this far into my blatherings.
Later came the Earthsea novels by Ursula K. Le Guin. While not magic-realist, for me these novels encompass a sort of simple but wondrous voice that I aim to achieve in my own writing. One of my life goals is to write something described as "Le Guin-esque".
I could write a lot more about books (if you get me talking about Steven Erikson's Malazan: Book of the Fallen series or much of anything by Iain (M.) Banks, it's hard to shut me up), but I'm going to finish off with some multimedia. Though animation is still treated with some stubborn hesitation by certain groups of art critic, to me one of the greatest storytellers of our generation is Hayao Miyazaki, perhaps better known by his company, Studio Ghibli. With movies like Porco Rosso and Princess Mononoke, I truly believe he has no equal in terms of blending the mundane with the fantastical, like dish that is perfectly spiced. Obviously the animation and scores help, but had they been pure prose, I'd have felt no different.
Just one brief post-script: for those who enjoyed the liminal-spiritual magic of Princess Mononoke, check out Mu-Shi-Shi. It is both a manga drawn by Yuki Urushibara and an animated series by Artland. Many sublime bits of storytelling to be found here, in the in-betweens of the world.

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I think that's sufficient, right? I hope you enjoyed this little piece, and please feel free to follow up if you've watched/read/enjoyed any of what I've listed, or have recommendations of your own!
Until next time,

Alan

The Skygardens of Kaln were built in First Age Nefirot. Only one such garden survived The Deluge, located on the far Voidward stretches of the Emerald Expanse. It is now maintained by the Knight-Sages of Tallarax.

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An alley in Kintyria-Mors.

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A dreaming spirit in the Duskscape.

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The demonic city of Kloster Storkenfels. Cities even more alien than this are found in the Duskscape: an adjacent realm not only of dreaming & departed souls, but also of intelligent life utterly unfamiliar to the Waking psyche.