May-terial

An unofficial challenge with 4 prompts

You know what's cool? Stuff. Especially the stuff that stuff is made out of. We should write about that stuff.

Here's the challenge: one article per week during the month of May. Each article will be about a new material for your worlds -- and each prompt should provide an interesting kick-off point to make each material unique and interesting for you. This will be an un-judged challenge, for your own satisfaction and fun, as well as for a badge that I will design once I have more time! I'm currently moving, so can't get it done quiiiiiiiiite yet haha.
The prompts may be opened all at once, or if you want to, opened on the first day of each week. It's up to you! There will be badges for 1 prompt done, 2 prompts done, 3 prompts done, as well as a special one if you complete all 4. There's no minimum word count for the articles, no maximum, no specifications other than to write a material using the material article template. It's up to you to decide how much fun you want to have! I will say, however, the spirit of doing 1 article per week is to give you more time to write something more complete than a standard Summer Camp style article, if you like.

You may post your articles in the comments of this article so they can all be collected, but I think better yet, share them on the Community Stream with the hashtag #Mayterial!

The Badges

1 Prompt

2 Prompts

3 Prompts

4 Prompts

The Prompts

Prompt 1

May 1st - 10th

Click to reveal the Prompt!

A material once only known for being dangerous that has found a surprising new use.

Examples and ideas:

There are many examples of materials that were thought to be useful, and later discovered to be dangerous (like asbestos!), so why not try and imagine the reverse?

Plenty of things that are radioactive might have once only been dangerous, but are now quite useful as well.

Prompt 2

May 11th - 17th

Click to reveal the Prompt!

A soft material used for large-scale industrial and in-home domestic applications.

Examples and ideas:

There are a lot of ways for a material to be soft -- whether it is natural fibres, or if it's a hard material that is spun into a more soft form of itself.

Industry and domesticity are interesting ends of the scale of life; what do they share in common, or what differences can be exemplified?

Prompt 3

May 18th - 24th

Click to reveal the Prompt!

A living material that is useful both alive and when it is "killed".

Examples and ideas:

The most interesting thing that comes to mind for this is Mycelium. You make a form from a substrate of wood chips, organic waste, that kind of thing, and let mycelium impregnate it. The mycelium grows a kind of chitin that will solidify this form, creating a brick -- then you can keep it alive for the bricks to grow together when placed beside one-another, or cook it to kill the mycelium and have a rigid "grown" brick.

Prompt 4

May 25th - 31st

Click to reveal the Prompt!

A material used worldwide that is only found in one specific location.

Examples and ideas:

In Sci-Fi, this might be unobtanium. In other cases, this could be things such as very specific trees or a specific animal wool.

The interesting thing to think about here is how the uniqueness of the material impacts everything else around it, especially considering large scale trade.

Does the material cause the location, or does the location cause the material?

Good luck and have fun :D