August 2023 Reading Challenge

Articles Read

"A cuisine from a sparse, barren, or remote region of your world"

1. Greymarsh Menu, from Costrus: this paints such a clear picture of the setting and environment, just from the food. I would love to try to write a "menu" article like this at some point! The formatting is also beautifully done.
2. Zultin, from Realm Gate: an interesting method of cooking that uses the inherent magic of the people in everyday life.
3. Reindeer Cheese, from Scarterra: one of quite a few reindeer-related articles in this world-- I love the depth on that.

"A species now considered extinct"

1. Great Moving Islands, from Creus: what a fantastical and magical creature that really gives the world that epic fantasy feeling. I like this author's practice of writing a prose passage to introduce each article.
2. Sundrop Lotus, from Costrus: Beautiful species, and as with their menu article a wonderful layout, even for a relatively short article. I like the extra information in the sidebar. I need to utilize those more.
3. Space Whales, from Humans Are Space Orcs: Interesting to see an article that takes less of an encyclopedic approach and more of a personal journal approach. I tend to veer very objective in my articles, but it's neat to see these different takes and uses for World Anvil.

"A children's tale or song based on a real event"

1. Children Fear the Heartless, from Summer Camp 2023: This looks like it's an incredibly new world to me-- it doesn't have a name, just summer camp prompts. Nonetheless, I really like where this person is going with this story. They chose to make something that feels more like a young adult story to me, which is its own type of children's story unto itself and one that usually goes neglected in favor of nursery rhymes and fairytales.
2. The Dragon and the Mice, from Valley of Plenty: This one has a very sinister message, to my ear. I like that the rhyme at the beginning scans well and feels organic. I also think this says a lot about the values of this world!
3. The Song of the Blessing, from The Minds of Gods and Demons: I love that there are multiple versions of this to show the differences in values and the change over time. I think it could benefit from the author having a clear melody in mind, since it's meant to be sung-- some of the lines aren't very even. But songs are hard, so I don't blame them!

Worldbuilding Goals

I don't tend to like to set goals very much, since worldbuilding tends to be a free and spontaneous process for me, and I prefer it that way! That said, looking at these articles, I'd like to branch out more into adding different types of content to my world. I loved the fictional passages in Creus and the extra sidebar information (and beautiful formatting to keep it clear!) in Costrus. I'd like to add more art to my articles, in a wider variety. I'd also like to add relevant sidebars to more articles. One article group I'd love to expand upon that I think could benefit from sidebars is my elvish temple-campuses-- I submitted Ohtánio-in-Morigana as a summer camp prompt so I can't do anything with that, but I could certainly work on the other two I've made and perhaps even write the other three.
I had a great time during this year's Summer Camp. I'm glad it was as long as it was, though I wish we had a different mix of prompts (in my opinion, too many settlements and not enough documents). Some things I really enjoyed fleshing out were my nuél-orokhim (and the many related articles) and the Verdini Family article. I do have a few I'd love to revisit more heavily in the future-- maybe I'll do a short word-count sprint in September or something.
Outside of Worldember and Summer Camp, I'd really like to play more with the timelines and maps-- things that don't rely on the word count. I tend to focus so much on "big number go up" (particularly during the events) that I feel like I haven't completely utilized all the features of this site!
Finally, to be honest, I've really missed my usual tradition of writing (at least part of) a "Homesick Halfling's Guide To..." document. It simply did not work with any prompts this year, which I was incredibly sad about.
A thousand words is so many words for this, you guys. Uh... here. In no particular order...

Autumn Wishlist for OperaQuest

Heraldry

• Almaviva
• Hawthorne
• Cape H schools (primarily WUAK)
• Dancamort
• Val-Nurem
• Sister Cities
• Kyolondë

Timelines

• Scaladosian history
• Dancamort/Three Brothers Isles history
• Cantonovan history
• Verdini family history
• The Extinguishing (major events)
• Volian Revolution (major events)

Maps

• Scalados (use pre-drawn!)
• Cantonova (draw this)
• Aquatic Kingdoms and Liberty Coast (draw a new close-up one)
• Western Woods (draw! keep it very "here be dragons"!)

Potential Worldember articles?

• "Great Cantonovans" exhibit from Royal Institute
• People from previous
• Hawthorne Family
• Kyolondë
• Volian Revolution rebels (they need symbols and a faction name! flesh them out!)
• Other elven temple-campuses that don't have full articles: Ruiménya, Threnlíla, Sladkóro