2025 - Against the Fall

Table of Contents

Preparation

Bingo

Theme

Goals Article Overview

Stats

Superlatives

Article List Comments

This page is an overview of WorldEmber 2025, the annual word-count-based challenge. It was my third WorldEmber and the first one where I was a sponsor. For more on what I sponsored, check out my Organization Judging Guidelines.

All my WorldEmber articles were in my main project, wow that's a lot of stars. If you're not familiar with it, it's a soft sci-fi setting of intrigue, adventure, and people doing their best. Come January, I'll update this article with a list of everything I managed to write for WE.

Preparation

Bingo

2025 WorldEmber Bingo

Open full size

Theme

This year's theme was Against the Fall, inspired by sungazer's song and album Against the Fall of Night. Core to wow that's a lot of stars is the idea that people are always fighting to make the galaxy a better place. This WorldEmber, I wrote about the bad things that are happening or have happened, and what people are doing to defend against or recover from those things.

Sungazer is a jazz fusion band, which is a genre that takes the tradition of jazz and builds upon it with other influences. I want this to inspire worldbuilding that is in clear conversation with what came before it. What happened in the past of this setting that is now foundational for its present and prospective futures.

Goals

10k Words

Between my weekly writing group and no holiday travel, I managed to surpass my 10k goal and reach 13k! I even removed unfinished articles from my final count.

Filling in Gaps

My focus was high-priority articles that I hadn't gotten around to yet, and I did reasonably well. There are a few more I wish I'd been able to get to.

Good Enough

I overall managed to keep the perfectionism gremlins at bay, but it was a struggle. It still helped though, and I'll keep practicing through 2026.

Extras

In the last days of WE, I finished by my scavenger hunt and short story. At time of writing, four people have completed the hunt!

Article Overview

In all stats, the WA word count is what World Anvil says, including bbcode. I've replaced my usual "real" word count with a "bare" word count - it excludes both bbcode and subscriber-specific (backstory) content. This makes for a larger discrepancy between WA and "real" counts than in previous years.

Stats

Here be numbers!

Category	Total Words (WA/Bare)	Total Articles	Average (WA/Bare)
Places & Things	4,170 / 2,523	4	1,042 / 630
People & Groups	0 / 0	0	0 / 0
Flora & Fauna	0 / 0	0	0 / 0
Culture & History	4,692 / 3,325	4	1,173 / 831
Prose	4,517 / 4,103	1	4,517 / 4,103
Totals	13,379 / 9,951	9	1,486 / 1,105

Superlatives

Longest

Fall of Night at ~4,000 words

Shortest

Burn at ~430

Fan favorite

The Lost Jump Gate

Rin favorite

Fall of Night

Category winners

Legion Incursion
Sponsored by Dimitris Romeo Havlidis

Progress

13,379 / 10,000

Want your own progress bar?

Cozy Cottage

Cozy Cottage Enclave

Cozy Cottage Enclave badge by Rin Garnett

Cozy Cottage Oath:

• I will stop to stoke the fire when it dwindles. Rest when you are tired and for as long as you need.
• I won't force the fire to fit a different stove. Let your plans inspire you, not control you.
• I will follow sparks of joy, not chase dying embers. Write and read what you enjoy, not what's forced.
• My flame is beautiful and undying. Believe in yourself and your ability to create, including when it's a struggle.
• I will tend to all flames under my care. Working toward non-WorldEmber goals adds to your successes.

(Cozy Cottage oath is inspired by the Camp Chill guidelines from Annie Stein. Insert this badge into your own pledge with [img:5035416], or include the oath with [imgblock:5035416].)

80%

As part of my "good enough" goal this year, I aimed to publish and notify on articles when they were 80% complete, instead of my usual aim of 100%.

100% complete is hard to grasp, and easy to find reasons why you fall short. By aiming for 80%, I published articles before I got too stressed about their imperfections.

I also took an iterative approach this year. Usually, I get one article from 0% to 100% before moving on. For WE, I outlined several articles at the start, then spent the rest of the event gradually adding to those outlines until I had complete articles.

These two changes made a huge difference, and I'll likely continue with them into 2026.

Article List

Expand the table below for an interactive list of all my articles from this WorldEmber. As above, I've included the WA word count as well as the "bare" word count (if all code and secrets were stripped away). The impact rating is how large of an area the article topic affects.

Use the Roll button to open a random article in a new tab.