The Reading Challenge: WorldEmber 2022

WorldEmber 2022 is over. This was, by far, the most personally difficult major WA challenge since I joined... and I did SC2022 up to Diamond while getting married. But I achieved my goal of 25k words like every year, while managing to follow my original plans of writing some "Blue Anvil" articles with snippets of explicit prose in them.

10 Wonderful Articles From this WE2022

1. Xiuthan by Stormbril in Cathedris

An amazing article about a truly terrifying, tragic god husk.
Xiuthan's article gave me a good look into using subscriber's only snippets to give insights into future content, and how one sided relationships can come from someone's misunderstanding of the shared interests.

2. Catoble da Pon by PanthersEye in Agia

I saw a reference to Catoblepon, and I had to check.
I loved how the author got both some traits from the mythological beast and from our dear community member at the same time in her rendition.
This article is a great demonstration on how to blend several outside references into your world in a way that does not seem out of place for those that are unaware of the sources.

3. Talgrad by TJ Trewin in Melior

A rough story of an unfortunate child finding what turned others into gods, but which seems to have only recently started to bring anything good for this one.
Talgrad is beautifully illustrated with a WIP sketch, which still massively supports the tone and feel of the article.
It is a reminder that perfect is the enemy of done, and that there are other options between "no art" and "perfect art".

4. The Marvelous Toy by Dani in Luridity

This one is NSFW!

As with any of Luridity's articles, a hilarious galore of spicy puns sprinkled with many illustrations including (as seems to be custom) a gif.
The article contains both an in-universe interview as well as a related narration of events that included two of Luridity's finest characters, Sascha and Fate. A great demonstration of how to balance different narrative tools!

5. Afterlife Intelligence by M H Biscup in Vazdimet

An excellent, quite unsettling concept. The potential consequences remind me of the second half of the "The tragedy of droids" analysis by PopCulture Detective. I was particularly interested on how I found the potential for disaster to be from all sides: Everyone in the equation is given a lot of control on a lot of high-stake things.
I would like to find for myself some of these equations, as they seem ripe for stories to unfold.

6. Lord Enélien Cenlys - The Dark Lord by Amélie I. S. Debruyne in Dark Lord Seduction Plan

A fun, light way to learn about the most important character of this story! Narrated, in-universe articles are tricky, but this "private journal" format is surely refreshing and entertaining to read.
The use of boxes and lists for the Dark Lord's traits is well implemented, having the items connect instead of feeling like a grocery list.
It makes me think about how the interests of my world's narrator influence the tone and message of the articles, a thing I only barely, very lightly explored in the Sidrar's Wader article.

7. Lapahele: The Edible City by Garrett Grace Lewis in The Many Dreams of Ca'eam

A bit of a scary concept. A city where you are trapped if you are about to experience a big change - but you don't know which one. Choose between eating the city and escaping back into reality where the change awaits, or stay there. Your life is changing nonetheless.
I learned how a catch 22 can be turned into a very interesting concept!

8. Talbenth by Simo in Hislariya

The world of Hislariya is one that always feels cosy, intimate, as if narrated in a whispered, soft voice.
Talbenth in particular is a more to-the-point article describing this small, shy dragon, but is nonetheless another read that makes you want to give them a big hug.
I would like to learn how to find this intimate, soft narrative tone in some of my articles as well.

9. Burnout by JRR Jara in Krap Inc

That was a trip to read, I could hear the corporate music playing in the background.
This is a good example of using templates and narrative voice creatively, and made me think about how and why could a condition be encouraged or discouraged in an encyclopedia. So far, several agendas being pushed in all these words!

10. Stars by Catoblepon in Shattered

Such a beautiful concept and an article full of little mysteries. The stars gave me the impression of a quite poignant species, big, old, and maybe powerful, but also fragile, unsure, scared.
It made me consider how to evoke those feelings of old grandiosity and fragile reluctancy in a world as small and non-magical as Symbols of Power.

The apprentice historian by Naelin

THE CHALLENGE

This article is based on the challange "New Year's Resolutions 2023". The challenge's prompts (summarized) consisted in:

1. Read 10 articles written by someone else, and leave a like and constructive feedback comment on them.
2. Write in an article a paragraph about what you learned from it.
3. Write new years' resolutions for your worldbuilding and creative projects.

Check my WE2022 articles at the bottom of my pledge

This year,
I Am Resolute to...

In My Creative Projects

Most articles in Tierras Mágicas talk about the Canterburians. This year, I want to focus on the Clan of Elementalis and the other factions.

I need to finally sit down and update the conclusion to the Civil War on Karte. There are like 10 articles pending on it!

I want to learn to propely hand sew and to tailor my clothes. Maybe in the future I will have enough physical space to get a machine as well.

I am working on a massive Guide to Bone Cleaning using WA as a platform. There are a lot of hands-on "field" research I need to do in order to write my conclusions there!

Devoting this year's WorldEmber to adult-oriented articles reduced my reach and ability to participate in competitions a lot. I want to keep working on building an adult fiction WA community to compensate for those limitations and provide a forum for other people in the same position!

In Other Venues

Gift-giving! My family doesn't traditionally gift anything for any ocassion, so we are terrible at it. This year I want to learn and make a habit of giving nice gifts, and put to use the beautiful stationary I accumulated over the years.

Settling down. 2022 was life changing and crazy. Starting in April I want to tone down the level of crazy stuff going on and try to rest my mind a bit.