Worldbuilding Exchange letter 2024

[yvannairie]

Hello! I skipped a year last year but I'm back now and once again very excited! Last year's collection had a lot of good stuff, and I'm very happy the exchange is ongoing :D

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 would also prefer 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. Depictions of platonic and familial relationships are fine as flavour, 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, with the caveat that I don't consider the acknowledgement of the existence of sex worth a teen rating in the first place.

Fandom 1: Infinite Dendrogram

Man, this anime gets me. I'm currently about halfway through volume five, almost at where it meets up with the anime's ending, so all my requests are made from a place of knowing absolutely nothing about the myth arc or the upcoming storylines. More than anything, I'd like explorations of how Dendro facilitates players with no interest in physical combat or spellcasting -- how jobs like Mechanic or Cook develop, and how jobs like Stonemason or Carpenter might develop into high-rank jobs or even Superior jobs. Similarly, I'm curious if Dendro features any created dungeons aimed at non-combat jobs, and if there are tians specialising in training such jobs. Also, are there non-combat domain Embryos, and how the heck would that even work??

Fandom 2: Xenoblade Chronicles 3

I was in the soup with this fandom last year. Any story with an infinite war is my catnip, and if you wanna write nitty-gritty military plans for how Ferronises and Levnises engage with each other, I would be all over that. Similarly, I'm really curious as to how the region/resource war between the Colonies and City shakes out, if there have been informal alliances or simply tense coexistence after the events of Future Redeemed -- however, I really disliked most of Future Redeemed, so I would rather the focus be a few generations down the timeline, and get a little more into the necessity of Lost Numbers rather than having all of the City be all of the Resistance. Bonus points if you can coherently tie the existence of Colony 0 into either of these topics.

Fandom 3: Transformers Prime

Ah, the ol' reliable. Rather than asking for very niche economic and political things, I would like explorations of the various pre-collapse cultures of Cybertron. Beastformers, warframes, nomadic mecha, all probably lived very distinctly before the city-state system came into existence and drew most functioning labour under its control. Really niche down for this one, the tags in the nominations are very much just giving a place to start. If you wanna write about the daily life of a single mining outpost in the middle of the Sea of Rust, I'm excited to read it.

Fandom 4: Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW comics)

I'm caught up until the end of 2023, and there seems to be plenty of Restoration stuff in the horizon, but hey, more the merrier. I would definitely want to see some original characters for this, how the various militia soldiers adjust to life post-Forces, how Eggtech gets collected and turned into something useful, how resettlement is tackled locally and what other political forces outside of the Restoration there are at work. Are there pro-Eggman citizens? Anti-Restoration ones? Where does Starline get his whole attitude? Bonus points if you can incorporate the Scrapnik Island's folks somehow, I loved those little guys.

Fandom 5: AER -- Memories of Old

I've been idly replaying this game as a way of destressing, and decided to throw it in in case there was someone else out there. Nothing too particular in mind, although I would like the focus to be on the present day, perhaps a little before Auk's journey. How do the other people in the sky live? How do they get around? How much of the past is remembered, how much is taboo? I'm up for literally anything, but especially if it involves the shapeshifters and their religion and rituals.

And that's it! As is usual of me, I'm not particularly picky on formats, I like a bit of everything and it's a lot of fun for me to see how my requests get interpreted. See you on the other side of all the words!