Wild Things Happened: A WorldEmber 2020 Roundup

Hey ho on 2020's back

My first WorldEmber has been quite a ride through the path of this dumpster fire of a year: One that bought me an astounding amount of good things that I plan on keeping close to my heart for as long as I can.
I've met amazing people, read amazing worldbuilding, and my own articles got amazing at times, so I think this deserves a wrap-up.

What I have achieved

• I achieved my stretch goal of 25k words
• I ended up in the #12 of the authors with more likes. I have no idea how this happened!
• At least 5 of my articles finished among the 20 most liked for their categories, and some even got into the shortlists!
• I learned how to make complete illustrations in an incredibly short amount of time: Drawings that would normally take me several weeks were finished in a couple of hours.
• I made 27 new articles for my world!
• I improved my articles' layouts a lot!

The Shakiraverse

"So does anyone want to participate in writing a world based on Shakira?" or something like that were the words by the amazing TC. And I took the bait.
So now I co-author this absurdist, marvellous word, which gets incredibly difficult to write for at times, but it is super rewarding and fun.
For Worldember, I made these three articles for Shakiraverse:

Welcome to Shakiraverse, an introductory article for the world and his planes/categories

The Blind-Deaf-Mute, a horror story based on the song "Ciega, Sordomuda"

A request to the skies, a creation myth for the plane of Love Stories, based on the song "Ojos Así"

December's journey

---

Eyes like That by TJ

What WorldEmber Brought for me

Crowned Teal'Jin by Naelin

Winter Teal'Jin by Naelin

I wouldn't be writing this humungous article if this month had not been just as full of things as it is.
I met a lot of wonderful people, and I have interacted a lot with incredibly supportive peeps.
I also met a specially wonderful person, directly thanks to WorldEmber. Alongside an awesome friend, they helped me feel more secure about my worldbuilding, and get the courage to talk about my world's sensitive topics and shut down my internal critic when it got in the way of things.
The articles that I was too prude to write became the ones that people liked the most.

So the motto for 2021? Just write the damn article!

Oh and this specially wonderful person became my boyfriend. The things that WE brings!

Favourite Articles From Other People

LOVE AND TREASON

TC narrates an epic about a hero of unknown name who managed to steal magic from a godess.

TC's articles not only have a beautiful display, the writing style is also incredible, and I specially like how they write about love in their articles.

THE BLUE ANVIL

Forbidden Tomes, by , has a special place on my heart for many reasons, but I will cite only those pertaining the actual article: I laughed. A LOT.

The humour is on point, and the hidden content is, huh, one of the best pieces of media I saw in WA.

---

THE SACRED SPIRAL

The awesome Dr Emily Vair-Turnbull brought this religion with amazing iconography and tenets.

The layout is beautiful, and it seems like this will be expanded with dozens of new characters!

TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY

Qurilion did a ton of great articles for WE, but I am a biased man, obsessed with Megacorpolis.

BFF explains the terrible things you can order as a pet in this city, if you have the money.

---

P R E T T Y

Can I just say that Ondo's article is just beautiful? Seriously, look at that layout, the countries' coats of arms, the races' portraits, everything!

Seriously an awesome article, easy to read and very interesting.

SOMEONE HAS TO

MGatta tells us about a position reserved for the one dedicated to keeping an ancient, widowed fey in line. I admit I chuckled at the "impressive bakery business" detail, but seriously, this is a great concept that opens lots of doors for expanding in new articles.

---

FIGHTING AND MORE

Reading through Evan Arix's article was quite a rollercoaster which I won't spoil. A great concept with a lot of tidbits which I hope to see expanded later on.

HONOUR THEM

The quote at the start of Melu's article was... woof, what a way to set the mood! It still feels ominous reading it again and again.
She beat me to the "funeral traditions" topic in an awesome way.

---

GOING BACK HOME

One of the possible settings for Juan Belío's Project: PANDORA, this time an universe in which people have to try to go back to earth fully, and find a new family in the way.

I'm looking forward to try this setting!

RISE AND FALL

You can read about the most important character from Ynarkael's world in this great article.
I particularly loved the use of autobiographical and theatre play quotes, which quickly tell you about his mind and his legacy.

---

ESCAPE

There is an incredible amount of detail on Catoblepon's article about the virtual world inside her world.

The quote at the start is specially astounding, I loved it.

GREAT NAMING SKILLS

Pierrot says "what hasn't been said about dragons?" and yet their article manages to be interesting, cute and a fun read. The illustrations are very pretty and Pierrot makes a great work at describing each biome's varieties.

---

My Best From WorldEmber 2020

LEISURELY PLEASURES

This is one concepts that I had in mind, but wasn't planning on writing down. It turned out great AND in the shortlist for its category!

Now I can flesh out some characters that work in there!

THAUR'S LEFT HAND?

This character is older than Symbols of Power, and yet I felt that I couldn't write about someone for which so many things are mysteries. Turns out, people like some mysteries to be around.

---

RAPTOR PUPPIES!

Nothing can go wrong with raptor puppies. I want one of them myself.

I have been struggling with this concept for months, but once Janet hinted about a prompt for pets, the ideas started flowing.

HAVE A GOOD DEATH.

This article was not easy to write, but it was 100% worth it.

Heavily influenced by Caitlin Doughty's Order of the Good Death, Death Doulas is about an extremely important (tough not sufficiently widespread) profession in the archipelago.

---

TIME FOR A REVISION

For the past SummerCamp, I created one of my favourite minor characters of this world, Lush Enis. I decided to expand on her by writing about her legacy here.

The actual document is a bbcode hell but it was satisfying and extremely fun to do.

WHOLE-SAD-SOME

My almost-17 years old kitty passed away due to cancer last September. I decided to do this article as a homage to her incredibly sweet personality.

Many a tear has been shed by rereading it, but they were of the good kind.

---

"TERROR HORSEY"

The hierdes are not just older than this world, but even older than The Servant.

I am not entirely convinced with the article and I will probably edit it later, but I loved how the illustration for it turned out.

LOVE

"How many references to this one are you going to put in here?"

You can figure out how important this article is. This was my last one for WE, for a good reason.
Done entirely in one day, it fills the love-story prompt by narrating my own. Maybe it is kind of cheating the prompt, but I don't care.