Creus Meta Descriptor

This is a meta piece, answering the questions laid out in this worldbuilding video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XzEXgd2L34

Motivation

It's easy to look at life too closely and start observing the color drain away. The sense of wonder people have as children turns into teenaged rebellion into jaded and cynical bill-paying adulthood, and a lot is lost in the process. Media that recaptures that wonder, that ideal of the world as a bright place full of things to discover, is something special - not necessarily something that is childish or aimed at children, but something that lights off the spark again, that has people want to see and explore and embrace adventure. It's my wish that I can, through my own consumption of said media and my own ability, contribute to it's body corpus in some small way.

Genre

I've always found that genre fusions create a lot of interesting dynamics. Creus is a clockpunk world that's transitioning into magic fantasy - quote the old Clarke saying about magic and sufficiently advanced technology here. More relevant than the genre label is the feel, of course, and I'm striving very hard to capture the late 19th century 'scientific progress' Victorian feel in a way that I feel a lot of steampunk media misses; what defines that era in history is I believe a boundless optimism more than anything else, what with the rapid increase in living standards, the nearly unrecognizable day to day life of someone compared to their grandparents, etc. Taking this and adding high fantasy adventure should make for interesting reading, I hope.

Scale

The worldbuilding and prose writing within Creus is planned to be fairly deep in scale - while Creus is a simple world with one geopolitical state, I plan to write from the perspective of individual characters in the world and their day to day slice of life. For any of these characters, a lot of the vertical slice of the world they interact with will be at a fairly deep level of detail. This also lets me get away with handwaving stuff that the characters aren't immediately interested in. The focus here is on how relatable, non-fantastic people live day to day and handle their conflicts and concerns in this world, whether they're a corner baker or the absolute monarch.

Mood

Optimism and sense of wonder. Not that the world is all hunky-dory; serious problems will happen and it'll take serious thought and work for the people in my world to resolve them (or not). Nevertheless, I want this to be a world where someone can close their eyes and imagine being on a bustling street corner, power-wagons clacking past, mail flying overhead on ziplines, power-shafts creaking, and some locals arguing at the corner cafe about the flavor of their fruit parfait. An adventure in Creus should resemble a pleasant dream.

Themes

1. Cynicism vs Optimism - this I believe should root most of the stories I want to tell in Creus. There will be conflicts, bad actors, malice, and evil, but it's how the people and the world react and handle it that creates an interesting story.
2. Progress and it's Price - In the real world, this began to foment after WWI, but in Creus there's already a vigorous discussion about the Principality's "Progress" mantra. This is a well trodden theme in the real world and it's inescapable in any setting that features a change in technology and day to day life.
3. Growth - The world is changing with the characters in it, and these will come to a head more often than not.

Conflict

As alluded earlier, the principal conflict is that of individuals and groups adapting to and butting heads with the changes happening in the world. This is something I highlight in my first prose work in Creus, Fulcrum, and my further writing in Creus will likely involve similar conflicts.