World building - important artifacts

One of the nice things about having a lazy Saturday at home is that something random on TV will spark inspiration. This weekend, it was the History Channel (which, every once in a while, remembers that their focus is history), and 101 Objects that Changed the World. The list is basically a bunch of tangible items that represent some major change in the world, or some major event in history. It includes things like the hard hat (which allowed major buildings and bridges to be built safely), the cannon ball shot at Fort Sumter (beginning of the US Civil War - the list is a bit US-centric, shockingly enough), and the Coca-Cola contour bottle (first major company to use uniform packaging).

It made me wonder what objects would be considered "essential" in a world that I'm currently building. There's the big important thing, in this case a golden rope that magically binds the different territories of the land together, but that's not something that the average person would encounter on a daily basis. The clockwork servants, however, are things that are so common that they fade into the background.

To me, an important object for a world is something that helps differentiate the world you're creating from the real world. It can also help you figure out how your setting got to where it is when your story is taking place. A story is a snapshot of time in a greater timeline, and it's helpful to remember that there's a history to the world you're writing in that influences the way your story takes place.

Comments

Wanna Hear Me Talk?

I mentioned in my last post, but now I'm doing the official promotional thing. I'm going to be doing a couple of presentations at the Flights of Foundry convention next weekend! Specifically, I'll be doing a game demo for Rolling Realms on Saturday, September 28 at 1pm Pacific. On Sunday, September 29 at 3pm Pacific, I'll be doing a panel presentation on copyright and public domain basics; finally, also on Sunday, September 29 at 5pm, I'll be on a panel sharing my handwork (specifically my crochet, cross stitch, and blackwork) with a few other fantastic people. This is my first time doing this kind of presentation, and so I'm a wee bit nervous. Still, I'm super excited, and the fact that it's all online means that I'll at least be in my home, and the cats may or may not make an appearance on camera. So! If you're interested in what's looking to be a fabulous online convention (that's FREE!), come join us next weekend!

Calm Your Mind with Needle and Thread

I was fortunate enough to be able to host a workshop at GeekGirlCon last weekend, which went extremely well. My friend Erin was in town for the convention and was kind enough to co-host the workshop with me, which worked wonderfully because she was able to answer some questions that I didn't know how to answer, and also keep us on time (she's a professor, so she's experienced with dealing with classrooms full of people). I thought it would be a good idea, for my own benefit if nothing else, to document the first part of the workshop, which was a talk about embroidery and mental health. I've made the PowerPoint and list of resources available on a separate page of this blog ( here ). I don't know about you, but the last few years have not been especially kind to my mental or emotional health. I discovered early on in the pandemic that going back to something I learned when I was a child, cross stitch, was something that could help ease my anxiety and give me somethi...

Hope is a Four-Letter Word

I've been bouncing around with this for the last few weeks, ever since I read a couple of quotes from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book overall had some interesting ideas about reframing the idea of trying to get everything done. Even though there were a couple of things that made it clear the author was not approaching things with an eye toward neurodivergence (his discussion of distraction, for example, only talks about the "choice" to be distracted, and not how some people's brains simply don't focus the same way others' do), I was feeling generally positively toward the book until I got to the last chapter, and read this: "Hope is supposed to be 'our beacon in the dark,' [environmentalist Derrick] Jensen notes. But in reality, it's a curse. To hope for a given outcome is to place your faith in something outside yourself, and outside the current moment - the government, for example, or ...

Search This Blog