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weakinteractionMy last ever worldbuildingex letter! Thanks for reading it.
I do want to emphasise up front that I would, very genuinely, be delighted with anything created for any combination of character and worldbuilding tags I've picked (as long as it avoids my DNWs). Many of the worldbuilding tags are essentially prompts in and of themselves, to be honest, so if you've already got ideas, please do just go for it, but this letter is here if you do want more detail.
My AO3 name is weakinteraction -- exactly the same as this dreamwidth account. I'm requesting Fic, Art or In-Universe Meta for all of the fandoms below; please note that in some cases I have suggested certain characters that might fit well with particular worldbuilding tags, but that shouldn't be taken as meaning I'm not open to the tags being explored in other ways. (In all the fandoms, I've requested the worldbuilding-by-itself-is-fine "Any or No Characters" tag, so I really am open to anything.)
The last thing I want to say at the top is please don't read anything into differing lengths of the sections for particularly fandoms/tags than that there are some things I am more waffly about than others -- I would be equally thrilled to get something for any of these.
General likes
DNWs
Bernice Summerfield Series
Characters: Any or No Characters (Bernice Summerfield), Bernice Summerfield (Bernice Summerfield), Irving Braxiatel (Bernice Summerfield)
Worldbuilding: Daily life at the Collection (Bernice Summerfield)
What's life like when they're not off on adventures/having a major crisis/etc.? How does the fact that the whole thing's an asteroid affecting things? (Safety procedures/acclimatisation for people who are used to living in other environments/etc. -- I could readily imagine "onboarding" materials for either Art or Meta for this one.) Which artefacts need special care and attention? What sort of inconsequential things does everyone have Strong Opinions about and form the basis of office politics?
Children of Time Series - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Characters: Any or No Characters (Children of Time), Original Character(s) (Children of Time)
Obviously, please do use any characters you think work best for what you're doing, but I do just want to mention here that one of my favourite things about this series is the non-human POVs so if you want to play with any of those (or your own invented ones for some other species), please feel free to go all out.
Worldbuilding: Life on Earth during the Ice Age (Children of Time), Other alien life (Children of Time), Other failed terraforming projects (Children of Time), The Old Empire (Children of Time)
Life on Earth during the Ice Age -- how inhospitable were things? Were people reduced to completely subsistence level existence or did certain aspects of Old Empire technology/supplies survive? How did people understand their past? (I'm particularly intrigued -- given the significance of "the Messenger" to the spiders in the first book -- by what they would have made of the left-behind satellites that were presumably visible. What sort of astrological beliefs would they arrive at with that sort of stimulus?)
Other alien life -- obviously, the second book ends with a huge hint that there's more to know here, but if you want to explore slime moulds and other such things that's fine too.
Other failed terraforming projects -- either in their own right, or being visited by one part or another of the general Earth-derived diaspora.
The Old Empire -- either from its own point of view, or that of the humans of the post-Ice-Age era. The book seems to me to be positing a society teetering right on the cusp of a possible hard take-off singularity that rebels against that possibility and ends up falling. What other technology apart from things like Kern's experiments were the NUN types against? What was the solar system like by the end -- there certainly seems to have been widespread colonisation.
Encanto
Characters: Any or No Characters (Encanto), Original Character(s) (Encanto)
Worldbuilding: Christianity in the Encanto (Encanto), Legends about the Encanto in the outside world (Encanto), The early years before the triplets got their gifts (Encanto)
Christianity in the Encanto -- it takes a lot for me to get interested in religion in fiction, but this has me intrigued. The consistent framing of the magic as a "miracle" hints at how they've assimilated what's happening into their belief system, but surely the residents at least sometimes consider the theological implications? I'm not sure whether the current priest is old enough to have been one of the original refugees but if not, who ordained him given that they're cut off from the outside world (and if he is, what's the succession plan?).
Legends about the Encanto in the outside world -- what it says on the tin, really. Who knows how much, and how accurate is that knowledge? (As I mentioned in the general likes, I do love it when external perspectives on canon events only represent a partial understanding.) Does anyone ever go looking for the Encanto? (and end up living there? in which case what do people outside think happened to them?)
The early years before the triplets got their gifts (Encanto) -- presumably life was quite a bit harder then. Obviously the magical Casita and the whole mountains keeping them safe aspects would have hinted that there was some sort of magical protection, but presumably there'd be a lot of hard work to get things into the state we see that they did. And although it's not technically part of the prompt, I'd also be interested in how things went soon after they got the gifts (e.g. was Julieta always a good cook, or did you used to have to swallow down something fairly unpalatable if you wanted healing? how unpredictable was the weather while Pepa was getting to grips with her powers? etc.). DNW exception: If you are exploring this time frame, obviously there will be elements that would normally cross over into my "kidfic" DNW present fairly strongly, but that's fine if it's exploring this sort of thing.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Characters: Any or No Characters (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Original Character(s) (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
I like all of the canon characters who are in the tag set, so feel free to include them as best suits, but I don't have a specific desire for any of them in particular so I just left it at "Any or No" and OCs.
Worldbuilding: Hooloovoo, bad poetry (Vogon or otherwise), cocktails, methods of space travel
Hooloovoo -- how does being a "superintelligent shade of the colour blue" even work? are there any other colours that are superintelligent or indeed just sentient in any way? do new Hooloovoo keep coming into existence whenever people discover how to make a particular shade (very specific prompt -- a Vantablack feud sort of situation, but the paint is sentient?), or are there other conditions involved as well?
bad poetry (Vogon or otherwise) -- I'm very open to receiving some actual poetry here but there's lots of different directions this tag could go in. What are Vogon poetry slams like? How do you even begin to make cross-cultural judgements about the Very Worst Poetry in the whole galaxy? Is there a whole thing to determine it, or was that Guide entry written by someone on a deadline who would rather be on a beach knocking back ...
cocktails -- we hear a bit about these, mostly in relation to the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, but any expansion on the general topic very welcome. How are ingredients sourced? Which planets have the best mixologists? Do the effects of alcohol vary with species? Do other substances act as intoxicants for other types of people? (Are there weird ways that even a Hooloovoo can get drunk?)
methods of space travel -- One of the recurring jokes is that new methods of space travel "avoid all that tedious mucking about with" the previous methods, but presumably in practice they all kind of co-exist depending on technology/cost/etc.? Does that have practical implications? (Some sort of Galactic "rules of the road" about who has to give way to whom etc. could be quite fun on the Meta side here.) What other methods exist that aren't covered in canon? How many people are still mucking about with various types of STL travel because they don't know any better/prefer it for some sort of aesthetic reasons? Were there other FTL things before hyperspace came along?
Jupiter Ascending
Characters: Any or No Characters (Jupiter Ascending), Caine Wise (Jupiter Ascending), Diomika Tsing (Jupiter Ascending), Jupiter Jones (Jupiter Ascending), Original Character(s) (Jupiter Ascending)
I've put in the tags for these specific characters as well as the general ones because I think they're relevant to the worldbuilding tags (I do sort of imagine Tsing still being assigned to the same general volume of space later on).
Worldbuilding: effects on Earth of the movie's events (Jupiter Ascending), effects on the galaxy of Jupiter inheriting Seraphi's estate (Jupiter Ascending)
Both of these tags boil down to exploration of what happens next, but there is so much to explore there. I found that I couldn't completely disentangle these prompts into one category or the other so here they all are in one big lump, but obviously if we've matched on one particular tag focus on the ones that are most relevant to that.
What (if anything) does Jupiter decide to reveal to the people of Earth about the nature of the galaxy? How does Earth's status in the galaxy change? (Is this a unique situation or is there a rarely used but "standard" set up for "this planet turns out to be the home planet of a recurrence"?) Does Jupiter go on a crusade to try to stop the Harvests everywhere, and if so how successful is she? Do other Entitleds get involved in economic/social/political/military manoeuvres against her and if so is Earth back to being at risk?
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
General note: I am intensely agnostic about SMAX. I have no preference at all as to whether you include ideas from it, ignore it completely, or treat it as a source of inspiration without feeling bound to the details.
Characters: Corazon Santiago, Deirdre Skye, Planet, Miriam Godwinson, Any Faction Leader, Any or No Characters, Original Character(s)
(I ship Corazon/Deirdre.)
Worldbuilding: Impact of discovery of human psi powers on society, Social Engineering, Sister Miriam's "We Must Dissent" and the development of a posthuman culture, different factions' perspectives on Transcendence, life in a base for ordinary citizens at different points in the timeline
Impact of discovery of human psi powers on society -- The game does jump quite quickly from the early mind worm attacks revealing that psi powers are real to empaths everywhere, and there are later bits that imply the far future implications, like the Telepathic Matrix, but especially in the early days it must have caused huge ructions in a society that was already only precariously clinging on in an alien world. What does it mean for ideas about privacy? How does it affect people's view of what it means to be human? Do some factions shun telepaths? (Or are they just too useful even in the ones that we might imagine would be suspicious, especially in fighting mind worms? And obviously all the faction leaders seem to turn out to be powerful telepaths, given the connections they form with Planet.) Or were there hints that there was something to it even back on Earth? (maybe all those '60s parapsychology experiments caught on to something?) For art, I would be very up for something that gets at the same type of vibes as some of the related Secret Project videos (from the creepiness of the Empath Guild one to the outright horror of the Psychic Amplifier to the everything's-great-or-is-it Telepathic Matrix one).
Social Engineering -- the social engineering screen is seriously my favourite game mechanic ever; none of the later Civ takes on the same idea have quite given me the same feeling of pressing a lever here and getting an outcome over there but also an unintended consequence to deal with in the corner. How do the faction leaders weigh up these choices? (Given that these often determine diplomacy as well -- what do they do if their neighbour is pushing for something that isn't necessarily what they would go for?) Or taking a more ordinary citizen's level view of things, what's it like to go through an upheaval? (The fact that you just have to pay a bunch of money for it with none of the disorder in Civ II suggests that the Psych Chaplains and similar are doing a lot of stuff to people to get them to accept new models, for example.) Art-wise, some sort of chart or diagram representing connections between different areas? Or a map produced by a probe team of the likely willingness of an enemy population to adopt certain models? Or a propaganda poster?
Sister Miriam's "We Must Dissent" and the development of a posthuman culture -- on my most recent playthroughs I've been being fairly maximalist and waiting around to collect all the Secret Projects and techs before transcending, and the various Miriam quotes that pepper the videos and sound quotes towards the endgame have stuck with me. I have a sense of the Believers having become irrelevant in geopolitical terms but continuing to have cultural significance for those humans who are uneasy about the pace of change. (One day I may yet write up my Thoughts On The Canon SMAC Story based on all the quotes, etc.) What other things does Miriam "dissent" from that we don't hear about directly? Does the burgeoning posthuman culture engage with her ideas or just consider her irrelevant? How do people who share her feelings about the direction of society, but not her religious beliefs, feel about her? And so on.
different factions' perspectives on Transcendence -- the Transcendence ending fits much more neatly into some factions' story than others (I would say Gaians, University and Hive all lead fairly naturally to that point and arguably UN too as it would very definitely keep the peace); I'd be interested in any of them but perhaps particularly so where it's potentially a bit counter to their overall focus. Do the Morganites see it as some sort of ultimate type of ownership? The Spartans as a way of ensuring they continue to exert power? Similar to the sorts of points above, how the Believers would manage to square striving for it I find particularly intriguing (maximising the amount of sentience worshipping God? it's a doomed heretical project that damns anyone who takes part in it but one or more people have to sacrifice themselves to that fate for the greater good, to ensure that the people who stay behind are looked after, given that one faction or another is going to do it eventually?)
life in a base for ordinary citizens at different points in the timeline -- what is it like to live on Alpha Centauri? How much of a difference do the different types of facilities make as they become available? What are the impacts of different Social Engineering choices the leaders make? What's it like in the bases of factions that go hard on the terraforming compared to those that take more of a reaching-an-accommodation-with-Planet approach?
Star Trek Timelines
This is very much a long-shot request, but in case there is anyone out there familiar with this game, I would genuinely love to receive something exploring the specific worldbuilding that's used as a pretext for jamming all of the different eras of Star Trek together at once. (I have to say that although for whatever reason the term "gacha" is rarely if ever used directly in relation to it, this game is basically Star Trek: The Gacha, so I can't necessarily recommend getting into it unless you have an iron will in terms of keeping your wallet closed.)
Characters: Any 20th Century Character(s) (STT), Any 32nd Century Character(s) (STT), Any Borg Character(s) (STT), Any Starfleet Officer(s) (STT), Any or No Characters (STT), Gabrielle Burnham (STT), Original Character(s) (STT)
A few quick things about some of the more specific tags: I think the 20th Century chars (people like Edith Keeler, Gillian Taylor, etc.) must have quite an interesting perspective on being drawn into all this madness, and I'm also interested in the 32nd Century (S3/4 Disco) chars given that the "present day" before the crisis happened is clearly meant to be a general post-Voyager 24th Century, which to them is a long way in the past. The Borg I'm particularly interested in because they have the biggest status change relative to any of the other factions (with everything that happens in Episode 9). And Gabrielle Burnham, having seen all manner of changes to the timeline during her Red-Angel-ing time, must have more than a few opinions on all this, I feel. (As I'm fairly sure I've said elsewhere, from my point of view her role in S2 makes her the Sarah Connor of Star Trek which means I'm guaranteed to love her.)
Worldbuilding: disappearances due to temporal anomalies (STT), fate of the Q continuum (STT), interactions between different versions of the same person (STT),relations between the factions (STT), what actually happens when characters are fused (STT)
disappearances due to temporal anomalies (STT) -- there are occasional mentions of people disappearing as well as appearing because of the anomalies, and obviously the people who appear from the player's point of view have disappeared from somewhere else. Overall, though, it feels underexplored; how do people cope with the original versions of their friends and family vanishing? Is it better or worse if there are countless other versions of them around? Given that there are multiple versions of people in the game timeline, are there other timelines that are becoming massively depopulated to balance that out?
fate of the Q continuum (STT) -- I suppose what I'm really looking for here is expansion on Episode 10's revelations; have they really just got fed up and abandoned the galaxy to de Lancie Q trying to sort everything out? or is something else going on?
interactions between different versions of the same person (STT) -- one of my favourite silly things to do is staffing shuttles entirely with variants of the same character, which means I'm often speculating about this. Who feels really awkward around themselves? Who is judgemental of what an old fuddy duddy they turned into/what a callow youth they were? Who just gets straight down to the selfcest?
relations between the factions (STT) -- the whole set up basically boils down to an uneasy truce overall with the individual vendettas that underpin most of the episodes seemingly locked in stalemates. But what other rivalries are there that the game doesn't explore? (Section 31, and so by extension the Federation more generally, are anti the Terran Empire, but we don't seem to get much on how the Prime Klingons and Cardassians feel about the KCA, for example.) Given that ship crews seem to drag in people from across all the different factions, how do they get on when working together?
what actually happens when characters are fused (STT) -- What is the fusion process? (something to do with the transporter?) Why does it make you better at applying your skills, if that's already you? How does the whole rarity star-rating thing work out in-universe? Can people tell each other's rating at a glance, or is it something you only find out when you try to fuse with another self and find you can't? etc.
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Chraacters: Any Bridge Officer(s) (Lower Decks), Any or No Characters (Lower Decks), Beckett Mariner (Lower Decks), Brad Boimler (Lower Decks), D'Vana Tendi (Lower Decks), Original Character(s) (Lower Decks), Sam Rutherford (Lower Decks)
Worldbuilding: Cerritos ship's logs, Mariner's pre-Cerritos career, layout of the Cerritos, rivalry between beta shift and delta shift, role of California-class starships in Starfleet (Lower Decks)
Cerritos ship's logs -- not just Boimler's, though obviously more of those would be great. But in general how do the different members of the crew record the ridiculous situations they get into? I would be into a range of different logs all from the same time (perhaps showing how unaware of each other's plotlines different characters were?) or one character's logs over the course of a season, or anything in between.
Mariner's pre-Cerritos career -- We get lots of different snippets of information about this but how does it all hang together? Exactly how many times has she been demoted and promoted and then demoted again? What happens when you're such a frequent visitor to the brig?
layout of the Cerritos -- this is probably my most obviously would-work-really-well-as-art tag in the whole thing, but written explanations great too (somewhere I still have a copy of the TNG Technical Manual ...). I have the sense the creators are being much more careful about this in canon than they really need to be, so I would love to see further exploration of how it all fits together. Things I've particularly enjoyed in canon have been the amount of EVA and the fact that we finally get to see Cetacean Ops. (I agree with Boimler, I guess?)
rivalry between beta shift and delta shift -- How did it get started? Is one side more intense about it than the other? What do the bridge officers think about it, if they're even aware of it? Are there any tacit agreements about what's going too far and what happens if they get broken?
role of California-class starships in Starfleet -- again, something canon gives us quite a bit on, but definitely worthy of expansion. How many are there? How are they viewed back at Starfleet Headquarters? Are there captains who deliberately seek out these postings?
The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Any SC Character, Any ship Mind, Diziet Sma, The Excession, Skaffen-Amtiskaw
Worldbuilding: far future, the Reality, what drones get up to when humans aren't around, convergent evolution, criteria Culture citizens set up for being taken out of Storage
Far future -- What happens in "the end"? There are hints in some of the last few books that the Culture is potentially hanging around too long as a High Level Involved civ for its own and the wider galaxy's good. Does the entire Culture eventually Sublime, or does it invent a new role for itself that no one's ever really gone for before? Do increasingly large subsets of Cultureniks form new factions a la the Zetetic Elench that do Sublime, eventually leaving behind effectively a continuity Culture made up only of those who refused to do so? Or does something even weirder than that happen?
The Reality -- Banks already gives us quite a bit of worldbuilding on this, with the Grid and infraspace and ultraspace and the whole thing with the reality being a toroid that universes move across the surface of, but there's definitely room for lots more, I think. (How different are all the other universes?) And of course, there's the Excession which acts as a bridge between different levels of it (I'll be completely honest -- you can just write me 1000 words like the epilogue and I'll be very happy indeed)
What drones get up to when humans aren't around -- We very rarely see drones except in the context of their contact with one or more humans. How do they socialise with each other? What are their leisure activities? We see a bit of drone-to-drone communication from an external POV a few times; what's it like to them? Compared to the amount of Mind-to-Mind communication we're made privy to in later books, that's still something there's very little on.
convergent evolution -- there's a lot of this about in the galaxy, given that "panhumanity" seems to be a lot of different separately evolved human species and the Homomdan-Idiran thing and the Affront-Paddresahl similarities. (I admit I had to look "Paddresahl" up; they're the gasbags who Sublimed and left the Culture to deal with the Affront.) What is it about different environments that lend themselves to particular forms? Is the mentorship thing we see/hear about in those latter two cases something that Involved civilisations are somehow expected to do if someone new pops up with a similar body-plan, or just something those particular ones chose to? etc.
criteria Culture citizens set up for being taken out of Storage -- we find out in the appendices to Consider Phlebas that Balveda had herself set up to be woken up when the Idiran War could be justified (it's not called "Storage" exactly there but perhaps that's a translation convention given that that's all presented as in-universe materials-for-Earthlings), and there are mentions of people waiting until the Culture decides to Sublime (see "far future" above, I guess), but what other sort of things do people have as their personal reasons for skipping ahead a few centuries/millennia? Is there kudos/competitiveness around having creative criteria?
cardigan - Taylor Swift (Music Video)
Characters: Any or No Characters (cardigan), Original Character(s) (cardigan)
Worldbuilding: Travel via piano (cardigan)
Just anything at all exploring the conceit behind the video would be great. Does it work with any piano, or does the particular piano have to be magical in some way? Or is it about the person playing it? Or both? How many different places do they lead to and what influences where you end up? What are the risks and dangers (either seen/implied in the video or completely other ones)?
I do want to emphasise up front that I would, very genuinely, be delighted with anything created for any combination of character and worldbuilding tags I've picked (as long as it avoids my DNWs). Many of the worldbuilding tags are essentially prompts in and of themselves, to be honest, so if you've already got ideas, please do just go for it, but this letter is here if you do want more detail.
My AO3 name is weakinteraction -- exactly the same as this dreamwidth account. I'm requesting Fic, Art or In-Universe Meta for all of the fandoms below; please note that in some cases I have suggested certain characters that might fit well with particular worldbuilding tags, but that shouldn't be taken as meaning I'm not open to the tags being explored in other ways. (In all the fandoms, I've requested the worldbuilding-by-itself-is-fine "Any or No Characters" tag, so I really am open to anything.)
The last thing I want to say at the top is please don't read anything into differing lengths of the sections for particularly fandoms/tags than that there are some things I am more waffly about than others -- I would be equally thrilled to get something for any of these.
General likes
- I love worldbuilding in all its forms; my favourite canons split pretty evenly into ones where the worldbuilding feels all wonderfully detailed and I just want even more of it, and ones where I have a ton of nagging questions that I want filling in/inconsistencies I want to see resolved.
- That said, I am definitely not averse to shipping if you want to include it. I have listed for each fandom any ships I particularly ship among the selected characters, but I am in general open to being persuaded on any given pairing. I multiship all over the place and don't have any hard NOTPs.
- I love canon-divergent AUs; if you want to explore the worldbuilding in question by taking a road-not-travelled approach, that's A-OK with me.
- Fic: I am in general happy with many different types of fic; Just the characters doing something that they're stated to do in canon but with the details glossed over would be fine with me, if there's more detailed exploration of how they do it to show the worldbuilding. But I genuinely have no restrictions on things like person, tense, and am very open to epistolary fic, interactive fiction, and so on. Again, go with your inspiration.
- In-universe meta: In my personal categorisation of such things, the things that are described for the purposes of this exchange under this heading are "also fic", but yes please to anything and everything that fits in the category of things you might find in that universe. Encyclopedia entries, newspaper articles, instruction manuals, teaching materials, etc. Even better, something that takes this a layer deeper, like a historical overview presenting bits and pieces from different sources and pointing out the contrasts/conflicts between them. I particularly love the sort of thing that presents a distorted view of the version we "know" from canon, but that you can see where it's come from (slightly random example if you know it: "Living Witness" from Voyager). But in general, anything you can imagine that would fit into the meta category would be great.
- Art: I'm open to any and all types of worldbuilding art. Maps! Diagrams! Fictional landscapes! Portraits of characters illustrating worldbuilding elements (fashion, gadgets they're holding, etc.)! If you're inclined to include them, I do love Easter-Egg-y type stuff in art, and for some of these fandoms I would really love something that reproduced the feel of being from that universe, where appropriate (e.g. for technological canons, some sort of computer interface around an image as though it's being viewed through that). I'll be honest -- I've never felt like I'm very good at prompting for art. I've tried to provide some more specific ideas where they occur to me, but they really are just suggestions; if they're absent/not working for you, but something I've put in the other bits of the details has sparked off an idea, go with it by all means.
DNWs
- character or ship bashing (in particular, where there are conflicting canon ships for any ships you might be writing, quietly ignoring them/AU-ing them away/handwaving everyone as being happily poly are all far preferable to me to devoting large chunks of the fic to demonstrating that the canon love interest is The Worst and breaking them up; OTOH, angst where everybody feels bad about it can work just fine -- I like a good wallow, sometimes)
- non-canon-divergent AUs like coffee shops, A/B/O, etc. (canon-divergent ones, on the other hand, are a big yes as mentioned above)
- pregnancy/kidfic (in the sense of the primary focus of the fic being on raising children; brief appearances from children who exist in canon or whose existence fits in with the bigger picture are fine; I'm not demanding that every couple everywhere is childfree)
- watersports
- scat
- emetophilia
- bloodplay
- breathplay
- vore
- violent non-con (coercion/mind control/etc. are fine)
- incest
- underage (my definition isn't quite the same as AO3's: what I don't want is people under 16 having sex; for characters in the 13-15 range I am OK with it being mentioned that they're sexually active if that's plausible given their canon circumstances, but I wouldn't want it front and centre)
Bernice Summerfield Series
Characters: Any or No Characters (Bernice Summerfield), Bernice Summerfield (Bernice Summerfield), Irving Braxiatel (Bernice Summerfield)
Worldbuilding: Daily life at the Collection (Bernice Summerfield)
What's life like when they're not off on adventures/having a major crisis/etc.? How does the fact that the whole thing's an asteroid affecting things? (Safety procedures/acclimatisation for people who are used to living in other environments/etc. -- I could readily imagine "onboarding" materials for either Art or Meta for this one.) Which artefacts need special care and attention? What sort of inconsequential things does everyone have Strong Opinions about and form the basis of office politics?
Children of Time Series - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Characters: Any or No Characters (Children of Time), Original Character(s) (Children of Time)
Obviously, please do use any characters you think work best for what you're doing, but I do just want to mention here that one of my favourite things about this series is the non-human POVs so if you want to play with any of those (or your own invented ones for some other species), please feel free to go all out.
Worldbuilding: Life on Earth during the Ice Age (Children of Time), Other alien life (Children of Time), Other failed terraforming projects (Children of Time), The Old Empire (Children of Time)
Life on Earth during the Ice Age -- how inhospitable were things? Were people reduced to completely subsistence level existence or did certain aspects of Old Empire technology/supplies survive? How did people understand their past? (I'm particularly intrigued -- given the significance of "the Messenger" to the spiders in the first book -- by what they would have made of the left-behind satellites that were presumably visible. What sort of astrological beliefs would they arrive at with that sort of stimulus?)
Other alien life -- obviously, the second book ends with a huge hint that there's more to know here, but if you want to explore slime moulds and other such things that's fine too.
Other failed terraforming projects -- either in their own right, or being visited by one part or another of the general Earth-derived diaspora.
The Old Empire -- either from its own point of view, or that of the humans of the post-Ice-Age era. The book seems to me to be positing a society teetering right on the cusp of a possible hard take-off singularity that rebels against that possibility and ends up falling. What other technology apart from things like Kern's experiments were the NUN types against? What was the solar system like by the end -- there certainly seems to have been widespread colonisation.
Encanto
Characters: Any or No Characters (Encanto), Original Character(s) (Encanto)
Worldbuilding: Christianity in the Encanto (Encanto), Legends about the Encanto in the outside world (Encanto), The early years before the triplets got their gifts (Encanto)
Christianity in the Encanto -- it takes a lot for me to get interested in religion in fiction, but this has me intrigued. The consistent framing of the magic as a "miracle" hints at how they've assimilated what's happening into their belief system, but surely the residents at least sometimes consider the theological implications? I'm not sure whether the current priest is old enough to have been one of the original refugees but if not, who ordained him given that they're cut off from the outside world (and if he is, what's the succession plan?).
Legends about the Encanto in the outside world -- what it says on the tin, really. Who knows how much, and how accurate is that knowledge? (As I mentioned in the general likes, I do love it when external perspectives on canon events only represent a partial understanding.) Does anyone ever go looking for the Encanto? (and end up living there? in which case what do people outside think happened to them?)
The early years before the triplets got their gifts (Encanto) -- presumably life was quite a bit harder then. Obviously the magical Casita and the whole mountains keeping them safe aspects would have hinted that there was some sort of magical protection, but presumably there'd be a lot of hard work to get things into the state we see that they did. And although it's not technically part of the prompt, I'd also be interested in how things went soon after they got the gifts (e.g. was Julieta always a good cook, or did you used to have to swallow down something fairly unpalatable if you wanted healing? how unpredictable was the weather while Pepa was getting to grips with her powers? etc.). DNW exception: If you are exploring this time frame, obviously there will be elements that would normally cross over into my "kidfic" DNW present fairly strongly, but that's fine if it's exploring this sort of thing.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Characters: Any or No Characters (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Original Character(s) (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
I like all of the canon characters who are in the tag set, so feel free to include them as best suits, but I don't have a specific desire for any of them in particular so I just left it at "Any or No" and OCs.
Worldbuilding: Hooloovoo, bad poetry (Vogon or otherwise), cocktails, methods of space travel
Hooloovoo -- how does being a "superintelligent shade of the colour blue" even work? are there any other colours that are superintelligent or indeed just sentient in any way? do new Hooloovoo keep coming into existence whenever people discover how to make a particular shade (very specific prompt -- a Vantablack feud sort of situation, but the paint is sentient?), or are there other conditions involved as well?
bad poetry (Vogon or otherwise) -- I'm very open to receiving some actual poetry here but there's lots of different directions this tag could go in. What are Vogon poetry slams like? How do you even begin to make cross-cultural judgements about the Very Worst Poetry in the whole galaxy? Is there a whole thing to determine it, or was that Guide entry written by someone on a deadline who would rather be on a beach knocking back ...
cocktails -- we hear a bit about these, mostly in relation to the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, but any expansion on the general topic very welcome. How are ingredients sourced? Which planets have the best mixologists? Do the effects of alcohol vary with species? Do other substances act as intoxicants for other types of people? (Are there weird ways that even a Hooloovoo can get drunk?)
methods of space travel -- One of the recurring jokes is that new methods of space travel "avoid all that tedious mucking about with" the previous methods, but presumably in practice they all kind of co-exist depending on technology/cost/etc.? Does that have practical implications? (Some sort of Galactic "rules of the road" about who has to give way to whom etc. could be quite fun on the Meta side here.) What other methods exist that aren't covered in canon? How many people are still mucking about with various types of STL travel because they don't know any better/prefer it for some sort of aesthetic reasons? Were there other FTL things before hyperspace came along?
Jupiter Ascending
Characters: Any or No Characters (Jupiter Ascending), Caine Wise (Jupiter Ascending), Diomika Tsing (Jupiter Ascending), Jupiter Jones (Jupiter Ascending), Original Character(s) (Jupiter Ascending)
I've put in the tags for these specific characters as well as the general ones because I think they're relevant to the worldbuilding tags (I do sort of imagine Tsing still being assigned to the same general volume of space later on).
Worldbuilding: effects on Earth of the movie's events (Jupiter Ascending), effects on the galaxy of Jupiter inheriting Seraphi's estate (Jupiter Ascending)
Both of these tags boil down to exploration of what happens next, but there is so much to explore there. I found that I couldn't completely disentangle these prompts into one category or the other so here they all are in one big lump, but obviously if we've matched on one particular tag focus on the ones that are most relevant to that.
What (if anything) does Jupiter decide to reveal to the people of Earth about the nature of the galaxy? How does Earth's status in the galaxy change? (Is this a unique situation or is there a rarely used but "standard" set up for "this planet turns out to be the home planet of a recurrence"?) Does Jupiter go on a crusade to try to stop the Harvests everywhere, and if so how successful is she? Do other Entitleds get involved in economic/social/political/military manoeuvres against her and if so is Earth back to being at risk?
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
General note: I am intensely agnostic about SMAX. I have no preference at all as to whether you include ideas from it, ignore it completely, or treat it as a source of inspiration without feeling bound to the details.
Characters: Corazon Santiago, Deirdre Skye, Planet, Miriam Godwinson, Any Faction Leader, Any or No Characters, Original Character(s)
(I ship Corazon/Deirdre.)
Worldbuilding: Impact of discovery of human psi powers on society, Social Engineering, Sister Miriam's "We Must Dissent" and the development of a posthuman culture, different factions' perspectives on Transcendence, life in a base for ordinary citizens at different points in the timeline
Impact of discovery of human psi powers on society -- The game does jump quite quickly from the early mind worm attacks revealing that psi powers are real to empaths everywhere, and there are later bits that imply the far future implications, like the Telepathic Matrix, but especially in the early days it must have caused huge ructions in a society that was already only precariously clinging on in an alien world. What does it mean for ideas about privacy? How does it affect people's view of what it means to be human? Do some factions shun telepaths? (Or are they just too useful even in the ones that we might imagine would be suspicious, especially in fighting mind worms? And obviously all the faction leaders seem to turn out to be powerful telepaths, given the connections they form with Planet.) Or were there hints that there was something to it even back on Earth? (maybe all those '60s parapsychology experiments caught on to something?) For art, I would be very up for something that gets at the same type of vibes as some of the related Secret Project videos (from the creepiness of the Empath Guild one to the outright horror of the Psychic Amplifier to the everything's-great-or-is-it Telepathic Matrix one).
Social Engineering -- the social engineering screen is seriously my favourite game mechanic ever; none of the later Civ takes on the same idea have quite given me the same feeling of pressing a lever here and getting an outcome over there but also an unintended consequence to deal with in the corner. How do the faction leaders weigh up these choices? (Given that these often determine diplomacy as well -- what do they do if their neighbour is pushing for something that isn't necessarily what they would go for?) Or taking a more ordinary citizen's level view of things, what's it like to go through an upheaval? (The fact that you just have to pay a bunch of money for it with none of the disorder in Civ II suggests that the Psych Chaplains and similar are doing a lot of stuff to people to get them to accept new models, for example.) Art-wise, some sort of chart or diagram representing connections between different areas? Or a map produced by a probe team of the likely willingness of an enemy population to adopt certain models? Or a propaganda poster?
Sister Miriam's "We Must Dissent" and the development of a posthuman culture -- on my most recent playthroughs I've been being fairly maximalist and waiting around to collect all the Secret Projects and techs before transcending, and the various Miriam quotes that pepper the videos and sound quotes towards the endgame have stuck with me. I have a sense of the Believers having become irrelevant in geopolitical terms but continuing to have cultural significance for those humans who are uneasy about the pace of change. (One day I may yet write up my Thoughts On The Canon SMAC Story based on all the quotes, etc.) What other things does Miriam "dissent" from that we don't hear about directly? Does the burgeoning posthuman culture engage with her ideas or just consider her irrelevant? How do people who share her feelings about the direction of society, but not her religious beliefs, feel about her? And so on.
different factions' perspectives on Transcendence -- the Transcendence ending fits much more neatly into some factions' story than others (I would say Gaians, University and Hive all lead fairly naturally to that point and arguably UN too as it would very definitely keep the peace); I'd be interested in any of them but perhaps particularly so where it's potentially a bit counter to their overall focus. Do the Morganites see it as some sort of ultimate type of ownership? The Spartans as a way of ensuring they continue to exert power? Similar to the sorts of points above, how the Believers would manage to square striving for it I find particularly intriguing (maximising the amount of sentience worshipping God? it's a doomed heretical project that damns anyone who takes part in it but one or more people have to sacrifice themselves to that fate for the greater good, to ensure that the people who stay behind are looked after, given that one faction or another is going to do it eventually?)
life in a base for ordinary citizens at different points in the timeline -- what is it like to live on Alpha Centauri? How much of a difference do the different types of facilities make as they become available? What are the impacts of different Social Engineering choices the leaders make? What's it like in the bases of factions that go hard on the terraforming compared to those that take more of a reaching-an-accommodation-with-Planet approach?
Star Trek Timelines
This is very much a long-shot request, but in case there is anyone out there familiar with this game, I would genuinely love to receive something exploring the specific worldbuilding that's used as a pretext for jamming all of the different eras of Star Trek together at once. (I have to say that although for whatever reason the term "gacha" is rarely if ever used directly in relation to it, this game is basically Star Trek: The Gacha, so I can't necessarily recommend getting into it unless you have an iron will in terms of keeping your wallet closed.)
Characters: Any 20th Century Character(s) (STT), Any 32nd Century Character(s) (STT), Any Borg Character(s) (STT), Any Starfleet Officer(s) (STT), Any or No Characters (STT), Gabrielle Burnham (STT), Original Character(s) (STT)
A few quick things about some of the more specific tags: I think the 20th Century chars (people like Edith Keeler, Gillian Taylor, etc.) must have quite an interesting perspective on being drawn into all this madness, and I'm also interested in the 32nd Century (S3/4 Disco) chars given that the "present day" before the crisis happened is clearly meant to be a general post-Voyager 24th Century, which to them is a long way in the past. The Borg I'm particularly interested in because they have the biggest status change relative to any of the other factions (with everything that happens in Episode 9). And Gabrielle Burnham, having seen all manner of changes to the timeline during her Red-Angel-ing time, must have more than a few opinions on all this, I feel. (As I'm fairly sure I've said elsewhere, from my point of view her role in S2 makes her the Sarah Connor of Star Trek which means I'm guaranteed to love her.)
Worldbuilding: disappearances due to temporal anomalies (STT), fate of the Q continuum (STT), interactions between different versions of the same person (STT),relations between the factions (STT), what actually happens when characters are fused (STT)
disappearances due to temporal anomalies (STT) -- there are occasional mentions of people disappearing as well as appearing because of the anomalies, and obviously the people who appear from the player's point of view have disappeared from somewhere else. Overall, though, it feels underexplored; how do people cope with the original versions of their friends and family vanishing? Is it better or worse if there are countless other versions of them around? Given that there are multiple versions of people in the game timeline, are there other timelines that are becoming massively depopulated to balance that out?
fate of the Q continuum (STT) -- I suppose what I'm really looking for here is expansion on Episode 10's revelations; have they really just got fed up and abandoned the galaxy to de Lancie Q trying to sort everything out? or is something else going on?
interactions between different versions of the same person (STT) -- one of my favourite silly things to do is staffing shuttles entirely with variants of the same character, which means I'm often speculating about this. Who feels really awkward around themselves? Who is judgemental of what an old fuddy duddy they turned into/what a callow youth they were? Who just gets straight down to the selfcest?
relations between the factions (STT) -- the whole set up basically boils down to an uneasy truce overall with the individual vendettas that underpin most of the episodes seemingly locked in stalemates. But what other rivalries are there that the game doesn't explore? (Section 31, and so by extension the Federation more generally, are anti the Terran Empire, but we don't seem to get much on how the Prime Klingons and Cardassians feel about the KCA, for example.) Given that ship crews seem to drag in people from across all the different factions, how do they get on when working together?
what actually happens when characters are fused (STT) -- What is the fusion process? (something to do with the transporter?) Why does it make you better at applying your skills, if that's already you? How does the whole rarity star-rating thing work out in-universe? Can people tell each other's rating at a glance, or is it something you only find out when you try to fuse with another self and find you can't? etc.
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Chraacters: Any Bridge Officer(s) (Lower Decks), Any or No Characters (Lower Decks), Beckett Mariner (Lower Decks), Brad Boimler (Lower Decks), D'Vana Tendi (Lower Decks), Original Character(s) (Lower Decks), Sam Rutherford (Lower Decks)
Worldbuilding: Cerritos ship's logs, Mariner's pre-Cerritos career, layout of the Cerritos, rivalry between beta shift and delta shift, role of California-class starships in Starfleet (Lower Decks)
Cerritos ship's logs -- not just Boimler's, though obviously more of those would be great. But in general how do the different members of the crew record the ridiculous situations they get into? I would be into a range of different logs all from the same time (perhaps showing how unaware of each other's plotlines different characters were?) or one character's logs over the course of a season, or anything in between.
Mariner's pre-Cerritos career -- We get lots of different snippets of information about this but how does it all hang together? Exactly how many times has she been demoted and promoted and then demoted again? What happens when you're such a frequent visitor to the brig?
layout of the Cerritos -- this is probably my most obviously would-work-really-well-as-art tag in the whole thing, but written explanations great too (somewhere I still have a copy of the TNG Technical Manual ...). I have the sense the creators are being much more careful about this in canon than they really need to be, so I would love to see further exploration of how it all fits together. Things I've particularly enjoyed in canon have been the amount of EVA and the fact that we finally get to see Cetacean Ops. (I agree with Boimler, I guess?)
rivalry between beta shift and delta shift -- How did it get started? Is one side more intense about it than the other? What do the bridge officers think about it, if they're even aware of it? Are there any tacit agreements about what's going too far and what happens if they get broken?
role of California-class starships in Starfleet -- again, something canon gives us quite a bit on, but definitely worthy of expansion. How many are there? How are they viewed back at Starfleet Headquarters? Are there captains who deliberately seek out these postings?
The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Any SC Character, Any ship Mind, Diziet Sma, The Excession, Skaffen-Amtiskaw
Worldbuilding: far future, the Reality, what drones get up to when humans aren't around, convergent evolution, criteria Culture citizens set up for being taken out of Storage
Far future -- What happens in "the end"? There are hints in some of the last few books that the Culture is potentially hanging around too long as a High Level Involved civ for its own and the wider galaxy's good. Does the entire Culture eventually Sublime, or does it invent a new role for itself that no one's ever really gone for before? Do increasingly large subsets of Cultureniks form new factions a la the Zetetic Elench that do Sublime, eventually leaving behind effectively a continuity Culture made up only of those who refused to do so? Or does something even weirder than that happen?
The Reality -- Banks already gives us quite a bit of worldbuilding on this, with the Grid and infraspace and ultraspace and the whole thing with the reality being a toroid that universes move across the surface of, but there's definitely room for lots more, I think. (How different are all the other universes?) And of course, there's the Excession which acts as a bridge between different levels of it (I'll be completely honest -- you can just write me 1000 words like the epilogue and I'll be very happy indeed)
What drones get up to when humans aren't around -- We very rarely see drones except in the context of their contact with one or more humans. How do they socialise with each other? What are their leisure activities? We see a bit of drone-to-drone communication from an external POV a few times; what's it like to them? Compared to the amount of Mind-to-Mind communication we're made privy to in later books, that's still something there's very little on.
convergent evolution -- there's a lot of this about in the galaxy, given that "panhumanity" seems to be a lot of different separately evolved human species and the Homomdan-Idiran thing and the Affront-Paddresahl similarities. (I admit I had to look "Paddresahl" up; they're the gasbags who Sublimed and left the Culture to deal with the Affront.) What is it about different environments that lend themselves to particular forms? Is the mentorship thing we see/hear about in those latter two cases something that Involved civilisations are somehow expected to do if someone new pops up with a similar body-plan, or just something those particular ones chose to? etc.
criteria Culture citizens set up for being taken out of Storage -- we find out in the appendices to Consider Phlebas that Balveda had herself set up to be woken up when the Idiran War could be justified (it's not called "Storage" exactly there but perhaps that's a translation convention given that that's all presented as in-universe materials-for-Earthlings), and there are mentions of people waiting until the Culture decides to Sublime (see "far future" above, I guess), but what other sort of things do people have as their personal reasons for skipping ahead a few centuries/millennia? Is there kudos/competitiveness around having creative criteria?
cardigan - Taylor Swift (Music Video)
Characters: Any or No Characters (cardigan), Original Character(s) (cardigan)
Worldbuilding: Travel via piano (cardigan)
Just anything at all exploring the conceit behind the video would be great. Does it work with any piano, or does the particular piano have to be magical in some way? Or is it about the person playing it? Or both? How many different places do they lead to and what influences where you end up? What are the risks and dangers (either seen/implied in the video or completely other ones)?
