Summer Camp 2022 Progress Report
Introduction
Preparation
Homework 1: The Pledge
The Motivation: Aside from getting more eyes on my work and the pride that comes with overcoming a challenge, I'm motivated by a strong desire to meet the standards I've set for myself in my New Year's Resolutions document. I've never actually managed to complete a set of New Years' resolutions before - even when they were practical - so I think it would do wonders for my morale. The Challenge Goal: I intent to participate in Summer Camp 2022 and, if possible, earn the diamond-level badge. The Creative Goal: As laid out in my New Year's Resolutions (see above), some of my goals for the year include putting down at least 100k words across all my creative projects, winning NaNoWriMo, and getting a piece of writing into a state where I can think about starting the publishing process. WASC will hopefully help me move towards those goal more quickly. More specifically, though, I want to use WASC to focus down on places, characters, and lore that will find themselves into The Fortress of Salt or a novel involving The Garbage Man. This is not to say that I won't expand on my other worlds, but my focus should be on the Manifold Sky and Sealed Kingdoms settings. Barring that, I'd like to get Tales of the Transmuter into a state where I can start running one-shots in that setting, as that would be a great way to get outside feedback on the TTRPG system I've been working on for a few years now.Homework 2: Themes
Expanse (Copper Prompts): My 'Expanse' prompts will most likely be set in the Sealed Kingdoms setting. That's a space opera setting with a lot of potential lore around it, as it has been developed over literal decades of homebrew tabletop roleplay among my friends and me. Star systems, planets, unusual phenomena, and megastructures are all fair game. This might also be where I integrate Calculiopolis (my successful NaNoWriMo project circa 2018) into the broader Sealed Kingdoms setting. Leadership (Silver Prompts): My 'Leadership' prompts will most likely be applied to my Sealed Kingdoms setting, though they may also come up in the Manifold Sky setting as I try to add enough major figures to flesh out the factions that I haven't touched upon as much so far. I've decided that I'm going to shift perspectives between the crew of the Revelation and the crew of the Dewhollow in The Fortress of Salt story. This is both because I want to improve the pacing of the story (a 14 year interstellar journey from a single perspective would prove boring at points) and because I like the idea of setting up the antagonist as a more sympathetic villain that serves as the foil for the protagonist (sort of a 'there but for the grace of God go I' scenario). Discovery (Gold Prompts): As with the Expanse prompts, my 'Discovery' prompts will most likely be set in the Sealed Kingdoms setting. I might also use this opportunity to flesh out the Tales of the Transmuter setting, though, because the whole idea behind that one is that the characters on Gulderry Island are relatively new to the world and rarely set foot outside of the Transmuter's estate; for them, the village itself is a whole new world to explore. This might also be a good opportunity to put more into the otherwise little-explored Northern and Southern Tesseracts of the Manifold Sky setting. Monstrous (Diamond Prompts): My 'Monstrous' prompts will most likely be centered around monsters (in both senses of the term) in the Manifold Sky setting. As mentioned in the Discovery prompts section above, the Northern and Southern Tesseracts need to be developed more, including the unique hazards - such as wildlife - created by the fast evolution of an irradiated ecosystem. Furthermore, in the interest of providing new and unique antagonists for roleplayers in the Manifold Sky setting to deal with, I should really be creating more villainous (or at least morally complex) characters in general.Homework 3: Resources
Most of my image and music inspirations for the Manifold Sky setting are alreasy present in my world meta, but for the sake of the homework assignment for this week, I'll post some examples below. Obviously, 1940's/50's jazz is a big influence on the Manifold Sky setting, as the setting features widespread mechanized warfare between pre-semiconductor societies. Because it's a non-Euclidean setting, though, there's also some influence from more surrealist sources like Autechre, Chuck Salamone, and the sorts of vistas that come from AI generation like Artbreeder.
Autechre - Medrey
Kay Kyser & Sully Mason - Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
Mason Lindroth & Chuck Salamone - Singing Sands
Sungazer - DRUNK
Autechre - Doctrine
Judy Garland - Get Happy
Homework 4: Plans for Success
This Summer Camp, I'm going to do things a little differently and try to get most of my writing done during the daylight hours. I will be working during my lunch breaks and spending up to an hour at home on each night of the challenge, ideally right after I get home from work. This way, I will have a better time achieving a good work-leisure-creative time balance in my life, whereas before I had a little bit of an obsession with getting it all done in a single, marathon session. I recently acquired a cheap, basic laptop for use specifically for creative work during breaks in the work day. While I really need to invest in a stronger PC for 3D work and the like, the fact that this laptop is cheap and week is actually a benefit: if I don't have a way to play games on it, It'll be that much easier to focus on getting my writing work out! As for support systems, I know my brother SpaceSuitIan will be following along with his own WASC entries - or, barring that, participating in a parallel art challenge. The other people in my personal friends/playtesing group will also likely help keep me to task. Other than them, I have people here on WA and on the Discord who regularly look in on my work, and I appreciate that feedback from my fellow writers greatly. Thank you all, and see you in June!Prompts
Bronze Prompts
Silver Prompts
Prompt 10
A military conflict resolved through excellent leadership:
Prompt 14
A title that commands respect from those in the know:
Prompt 16
A tradition or ceremony which confers an honor on someone:
Gold Prompts
Prompt 17
A settlement that was lost or discovered:
Prompt 20
A lost or discovered artifact of significance or power:
Prompt 21
A technology lost, forgotten or shrouded in mystery:
Diamond Prompts
Prompt 29
An organization considered cruel or monstrous by some:
Prompt 31
An artifact that embodies a hideous or monstrous idea:
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