i said in the Year in Review that i'd like to make more regular, longer blog posts talking about my creative endeavors for the month, and that's what i intend to do, but truthfully, i haven't been doing very much in February. what i wanted to show off this month is the Blender tutorial donut i started working on at the end of January, but since then i haven't really touched it. something to work on in March, i suppose.
i still want to talk about something i've done this month, and thankfully, there has been something i've been chipping away at that i'm actually pretty excited to talk about, and that's my fantasy academia writing project.
it feels like something i've been working on for way longer, but i only started brainstorming last April. it was born of a combination of me really enjoying Dungeon Meshi at the time and a Tumblr post i happened upon talking about a story idea focusing on wizards and their published papers (since they're typically portrayed as having big libraries and ivory towers and all that). that got my gears turning, and i started writing down some rudimentary ideas for it right away. my dad's a writer, and he's always told me to write down my ideas as soon as i have them so they don't go forgotten. i can even show you the very first few paragraphs i wrote for it:
i think they're more or less completely unedited from the night i first wrote them down, so it's a fun little snapshot to the very beginning of the project.
i thought it'd be interesting to write about a typical fantasy magic academy with all the standard fare, but from the perspective of the staff and faculty instead of the students. i specifically wanted to write about someone burnt out and a little bit pathetic, doing quiet but important work behind the scenes, so i created Tillie, who's an administrator. Wilbert came soon after, partly because i love writing foils, and partly because i just wanted to use the name Wilbert for a character. it's a fun name. the reason they're named Crowmere and Foxbard is because i really liked the song The Fox, The Crow And The Cookie at the time, and i thought the contrast between the two animals would suit them perfectly.
from there, i took some inspiration from Dungeon Meshi and built up the world as a similar sort of "Standard Fantasy With Bonus Features", for lack of a better term. while Dungeon Meshi's focal point is food and ecosystems, my project's focal point is the things we create to help us understand the world and interactions between people. that makes it sound a lot more high-concept and fancy than it actually is. it's mostly just a slice-of-life where people talk to each other.
another theme is the experience of living in a world on the cusp of drastic change. the city the academy is in, Lorecastle (which was a half-serious placeholder name that stuck) has a lot of technologies that aren't usually seen in this brand of fantasy world, like telephones and radio. the idea is that there are technological and magical innovations that are more or less confined to a select few big cities like Lorecastle, while the broad majority of the world sees very little of it. add to that some big things happening and people who've got big opinions about it, and you've got a stressful world to live in! this idea was added in the last few months. maybe it's obvious.
i haven't actually written down very many real rough drafts, but the story structure is more or less just following a handful of people going about their daily lives while big things are happening around them, just out of view. it's a really exciting concept to play with, and i wish it was easier to get something down on the page, but i haven't properly written stories in a long time, and i've gotten real rusty. i do want to get back into it this year, and maybe putting together a page about the project for the site'll get me warmed up enough to give it another shot.
it might help that i have a small audience here on Neocities. maybe? somehow knowing that there are people who want to see my work makes it easier and harder at the same time. but it'd be nice to finally show off instead of keeping it all close to my chest.
