Worldbuilding Exchange letter 2021

Hiiiiii, I'm very excited to be doing this again! Last year was fun, this turned out to be exactly the joyous experience I figured it would be since it's so right up my alley, and I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of good stuff we produce collectively this year.

My favourite sorts of worldbuilding stuff is any in-universe documentation -- essays, transcripts, characters debating -- and I also love information-dense art like schematics, strategic maps or anatomical charts, but if you wanna write something character-centric, I'm not opposed to that either! I like fics that are just solid thousand words of exploring a mood or infodumping, so don't feel compelled to make a super structured narrative.

I have some requests that involve sex and relationships, but outside of those I would like the focus to not be on relationships any more than I want the focus to be on characters, except as a tool to communicate something else. All depictions of platonic and familial relationships are welcome, though, I just don't really care for romance. I would like any discussion of sex work also be values-neutral and focused on the labour aspect, especially if sex-negative attitudes are a thing in-universe. I'd prefer anything written for me to be gen unless descriptions of violence necessitate it to be bumped up to teen.

Fandom 1: Transformers (Aligned continuity)

I'm still deep down my Transformers hell, having been going back to the High Moon games and Covenant of Primus and genuinely being very curious about the far history of the world and how exactly we got where we are. The Thirteen Primes, the history of Cybertronians and Quintessons, the Golden Age and civil structure of Cybertron, all of that is still very underexplored, and interesting to me. Bonus points if you write about the distinction between the very much divine and magical Thirteen and the regular mortal mecha who came to be known as Primes afterwards, and how that continuum of legacy affected the way the later Primes were treated. What sort of place was Cybertron before its degradation into wage slavery and functionism?

Fandom 2: Indivisible (Video Game)

Take what I said about Transformers, apply it here too. I've been slowly replaying Indivisible between the other stuff we'll get to in a bit, and the world is still just... so fascinatingly different, with different assumptions and different roles and rules for characters and I'd really want to see more people's thoughts on it. How does the magic work? What are the underlying rules (logical or symbolic!) of prana, especially if different parts of Loka have different attitudes towards it. How do the regular people in this world exist alongside Vetala and the Deva and Asura, now when they've been kicked out of Mt. Sumeru, and how did that go when it happened sixteen years ago? Also -- my pet consideration of gender would be very interesting to see explored. We have a canon nonbinary character in Ginseng, and attention is never drawn to it, but I'd really just like to see more consideration of... that.

Fandom 3: Hollow Knight (Video Games)

Another game I'm still playing, another one where I'm still curious about the history of Hallownest and what it may have looked liked at the height of its prosperity. Considerations of economy, military, education and religion are the most interesting to me, especially if they're approached with an eye towards how the different classes within Hallownest interacted with them, from the worker bugs in the outlying towns and traverse ways, to the independent villages around the kingdom's heart. How did the average citizen live? What did Crossroads, the Fungal Wastes or the Kingdom's Edge look like at the height of the Kingdom's prosperity?

Fandom 4: Darksiders (Video Games)

Another game I replayed in 2020 was the first Darksiders, and I'm probably starting DS3 as soon as this event is over. These games appeal to me mostly as an aesthetic excercise, but War is one of my favourite video game protagonists and his relationship with the Hellguard and the angels is frankly kind of hilarious to me after reading Abomination Vault. Anything focused on War and Heaven, and War and humanity, for that matter, would be interesting to me, but also anything focusing on how Heaven feels generally about the Horsemen, the Charred Council and cultures such as Makers who live outside of their rules and protection is good, too. I want to know more about the different forces at work in the universe and why Heaven doesn't seem to be able to do anything about that.

Fandom 5: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)

Also another game I replayed in 2020 with my friend! This game is all about its worldbuilding, and so there's a lot to dig into there -- the difference between the matriarchal Nora and the patriarchal Carja/Oseram, the way some cultures are insular and some are more open, my favourite being everything about the Banuk, and how strange their social structures must be, considering they're nomadic. How are children raised? What is the family structure like? For that matter, I would really like to know more about how the different tribes approach queerness, since we do have some queer characters in the game, and also related-but-not-related, how that might affect how the different cultures approach families and sex. Bonus points in this one for any discussion of sex work, tbh.

And... I think that's it? I think that's it. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!