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Dear Worldbuilder Letter (2018)
Jan. 28th, 2018 05:25 pmHello!
My AO3 name is Eida, and I have requested the following fandoms/topics:
Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2
Dream Zanarkand
Fayth and Aeons
Guado Society
Religion
Dresspheres
Houston Houston Do You Read - James Tiptree Jr.
Famous Love Songs and Stories
Sisters
Original Work
Mythical Creatures in Future Society
Soulmate Marks
Winged People
I have requested both fanfiction and in-universe meta for all three.
My DNWs are as follows:
○ I do not want anything containing a sexual relationship involving characters below the age of 18
○ I do not want detailed descriptions of gore or torture
Here are some things I generally like in fic:
So far as in-universe meta goes, I don't know if I've ever meta type of document that I didn't like in that context. I'll just throw a list out in case it offers any inspiration (though some will work better with some fandoms than others):
○ Academic papers
○ Advice columns
○ Annotated bibliographies
○ Excerpts from biographies
○ Excerpts from history books or other textbooks
○ How-to guides/Instruction manuals
○ Internet forum threads
○ News articles
○ Religious texts (possibly with commentary)
○ Reviews of any sort of media (i.e., in-universe book or movie reviews)
○ What if space-traveling future humans came across a planet that appeared to be full of creatures straight out of Earth myths and legends?
My AO3 name is Eida, and I have requested the following fandoms/topics:
Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2
Dream Zanarkand
Fayth and Aeons
Guado Society
Religion
Dresspheres
Houston Houston Do You Read - James Tiptree Jr.
Famous Love Songs and Stories
Sisters
Original Work
Mythical Creatures in Future Society
Soulmate Marks
Winged People
I have requested both fanfiction and in-universe meta for all three.
My DNWs are as follows:
○ I do not want anything containing a sexual relationship involving characters below the age of 18
○ I do not want detailed descriptions of gore or torture
Here are some things I generally like in fic:
○ Relationship development
○ Hurt/Comfort
○ Seeing characters be competent at what they do (and discovering their niche)
○ Characters who are comfortable with each other, and willing to engage in good-natured banter
○ Missing scenes and perspectives from characters we didn't get to see much of in canon.
○ Exploring the viewpoint of non-human characters who might think and behave differently than humans would
So far as in-universe meta goes, I don't know if I've ever meta type of document that I didn't like in that context. I'll just throw a list out in case it offers any inspiration (though some will work better with some fandoms than others):
○ Academic papers
○ Advice columns
○ Annotated bibliographies
○ Excerpts from biographies
○ Excerpts from history books or other textbooks
○ How-to guides/Instruction manuals
○ Internet forum threads
○ News articles
○ Religious texts (possibly with commentary)
○ Reviews of any sort of media (i.e., in-universe book or movie reviews)
Final Fantasy X & X-2
(Feel free to either use or ignore the information from the Ultimania guide, FFX-2.5 ~Eien no Daishō~, and FFX -Will-, whichever you like.)
Dream Zanarkand
○ What is life like in the Dream Zanarkand? Is it basically like a real-world city, with people being born, growing up, and dying just like in the real world, or are there some things that are different due to the fact that its people are pyrefly-constructs?
○ Dream Zanarkand is basically a giant aeon; Ifrit’s fayth said that Jecht “touched Sin and became real,” and Yojimbo’s aeon calls Tidus “a fading dream, but one touched by reality.” That implies that the other denizens of the Dream Zanarkand are somehow not real; what does that mean?
○ Because Dream Zanarkand is well, a dream, it’s likely bit more idealized than the real Zanarkand. What are the differences? How does the Dream Zanarkand reflect the desires of the fayth who create it?
○ We know that Bahumut's fayth, at least, has visited the Dream Zanarkand; have any other fayth? Is it a sort of fayth vacation spot, or somewhere you only go if you have a purpose (such as using a couple of its inhabitants to break Sin's cycle of death)?
○ We know that Bahumut's fayth, at least, has visited the Dream Zanarkand; have any other fayth? Is it a sort of fayth vacation spot, or somewhere you only go if you have a purpose (such as using a couple of its inhabitants to break Sin's cycle of death)?
Dresspheres
○ The Songstress dressphere is the only one we really see having an influence on the person using it (and even then, it only seems to affect Yuna, specifically); can other dresspheres also have an influence on the person using them? What is that like?
○ Regarding the dresspheres we don’t get much information on—who were the people whose memories were used to create the dresspheres? What was recorded on those spheres?
○ Do the dresspheres ever come into wider usage? Does anyone ever start manufacturing them deliberately, rather than just coming across spheres and discovering they can be used as dresspheres?
Fayth and Aeons
○ What is the process for creating a fayth? Can anyone become a fayth, or are only certain people qualified to be turned into fayth?
○ What is it like for a fayth when their aeon is summoned? For that matter, what is it like for the summoner? Does some sort of mental connection open up between them while the summoning is active?
○ Shiva’s fayth says to Tidus “Even we were once human. That is why we must dream. Let us summon a sea in a new dream world. A new sea for you to swim.” What do the fayth get up to in the Farplane after being freed from their dreaming (besides potentially returning Tidus to Spira)?
○ Are aeons direct extensions of the fayth, or do they have any kind of separate personality/consciousness? (Tidus is part of an aeon, and certainly seems to have a mind of his own; does this carry over to the other aeons? Then again, the fayth of Bahamut tells Yuna to “summon us,” which certainly implies that the fayth and aeon are one, at least in most cases.)
Guado Society
○ What have the relations between the Guado and the other peoples of Spira been like? Their relationship with the Ronso gets… rocky… after Seymour’s actions, but what about before that? They obviously disapprove when Jyscal marries a human and has a half-Guado child, which implies that they have some isolationist tendencies.
○ The Guado are the guardians of the Farplane, viewed by most as the physical location of Spira’s afterlife; have they always granted non-Guado passage to visit, or have they ever tried to keep others out?
○ Jyscal was said to have introduced Yevon’s teachings to the Guado around 25 years before FFX; what about before that? It’s likely that the Guado have their own spiritual traditions, which very likely involve the Farplane to some extent; what were/are those like?
Religion
○ What was religion like prior to the rise of Yevon? What were the rituals like? Did any remnants of the old religions remain after the religion of Yevon became dominant in most of Spira? Are there any underground groups practicing older faiths in hiding?
○ What more is there to the religion of Yevon’s teachings than the general “Sin is the punishment for humankind’s wrongdoings, summoners are the only way to defeat Sin, Sin will only disappear once humans have sufficiently repented, etc.” stuff we see in-game?
○ What developments happen after FFX/X-2? Some people still feel attachment to Yevon’s teachings, but are there any other religious movements gaining steam, or are the younger generations mostly giving up on religion altogether?
Houston Houston Do You Read - James Tiptree Jr.
Famous Love Songs and Stories
○ When Connie explains the nature of Earth’s current society to Lorimer, she says “The love stories I’ve heard from your time are so, I don’t know, so weird. Grim and pluggy. It doesn’t seem like love…” What are the differences between the songs from the old society and the new? What themes and topics do newer love songs/stories use that weren’t present in the older ones, and vice versa?
○ Connie also talks about certain gene-lines being “fated.” For instance, “Tamil and Alcmene O” are supposed to be fated in their story, and she says that “Connies are fated too, a little… We love to be with Ingrid Anders. It’s more one-sided.” It seems like “being fated” (requited or not) would be a major theme in the songs/stories—though I imagine that there would also be songs/stories about people from gene-lines who weren’t “fated,” or even from gene-lines that usually didn't get along, but fell in love anyways.
○ Do people ever try to create modern adaptations of love songs/stories from the old pre-plague society? Or what kind of annotations do people add to the originals (like how there are editions of Shakespeare and such with annotations that explain things that might not otherwise be understood by a modern audience). (Given that Kay/Andy seems to feel that experiencing "physical anger" is an interesting novelty, and Connie claims that nobody in their society really has aggressive fantasies, it's clear that the world has changed enough that quite a few things would probably need some additional explanation.)
Sisters
○ The two Judys tell Lorimer “We each have a book, it’s really a library. All the recorded messages. The Book of Judy Shapiro, that’s us.” Everyone writes a record of “adventures and problems and discoveries” in order to help their current and future sisters; what sort of things do they write? How do the entries change as time passes?
○ There are around two hundred people from each genotype around—which is enough to make a rather large group, but small enough that they could all fit in one auditorium. Do members of a given genotype tend to cluster together in communities (or, conversely, do some sets of sisters prefer to keep some distance from each other)? Do they ever have family reunions? They have books for each lineage, but might there also be a massive sister group-chat/web forum going for each set of sisters?
○ Connie mentions that there are now “over a hundred new types started. Of course it’s hard for them, with no sisters. The donors try to help.” What is it like for these people from new gene-lines? They’ll be the making the first entries in new books, and they’ll soon have small sister-groups as more members of their type are born--how will being a part of a new, smaller sister-group be different from being in a larger, older one? What sort of relationship do they have with their “half-sisters” from the older clone-lines?
Original Work
Original Work
Mythical Creatures in Future Society
○ What mythical creatures are considered more or less suitable for space travel? Maybe hobbits are considered ideal astronauts due to their smaller size, or maybe vampires are considered good potential astronauts if they don’t actually need to breathe… though they’d still presumably need air around to avoid decompression. Dragons the size of buses are presumably right out. (Or are they?)
○ Does magic play well with high technology, or not? Can you have dragons with cybernetic implants and unicorns using VR rigs, or do creatures with magic naturally short out electronics? Do you wind up with separate “tech sectors” and “magic sectors” which might use different methods to achieve the same end?
○ What if space-traveling future humans came across a planet that appeared to be full of creatures straight out of Earth myths and legends?
Soulmate Marks
(I’m using “soulmate” in the singular here, for convenience’s sake, but I’m also totally okay with the idea of a person having more than one soulmate, if that’s the direction you want to go in.)
○ What if only a certain portion of the population gets soulmate marks? (Maybe it’s random, maybe there’s some genetic factor; in a fantasy setting with multiple sapient species, maybe only some of said species get soulmarks [i.e. humans and hobbits get soulmarks, but elves and dwarves don’t].) What does it mean to have, or not have, a soulmark? What if a soulmarked person has a soulmarkless soulmate?
○ In a setting where your soulmate mark only shows up when you meet your soulmate, what impact does that have on romance? Are all romantic relationships prior to meeting your soulmate just considered “for fun” or even “for practice”? Do you have situations where people get married to someone they love, but who isn’t their soulmate, in the mutual understanding that they’ll get divorced if either meets their actual soulmate? Or do people just not date anyone but their soulmate at all?
○ Is it possible for whoever your soulmate is to change during your life, if you yourself have changed as a person? Or, if your original soulmate dies, do you get a backup soulmate, or are you just plain out of luck?
Winged People
○ The issue of transportation is a lot different when either some or all of your population is capable of flight—even in an otherwise low-tech setting, having winged people means messages can be carried by air, without having to depend on carrier pigeons (which have a number of limitations). This also has major implications for warfare—a group of winged warriors can travel much more quickly than a squadron of cavalry. How does this impact society?
○ How would things be designed differently if one has to take wings into account? Would towns contain elevated “takeoff platforms”? Do taller buildings have large balconies to allow people to enter from upper floors? What sort of clothing would winged people wear?
○ How did winged people come about in the first place? It’s possible that they evolved naturally (and I'm always down to read about speculative evolution), but in a fantasy setting it’s also possible that they were deliberately created—either by a deity or by mortal magic-users. It's possible that the winged people themselves don't know--if that's the case, what kinds of origin myths do they have?
