on creating fantasy worlds (and why i do it)

when i'm blue or stressed out, one of the best ways to calm and occupy my mind is with a good creative worldbuilding exercise. it's instant, it's free, it gives me a problem that doesn't have any consequences if i never arrive at a solution for it. i could be on the tube thinking up a magic system. no animals harmed in my pursuit of creating a farm system for creature ranchers. the laws of the mermaid kingdom make no sense? i can pick that up another day— or never.

but even outside of those reasons i find myself doing this even when i have nothing to stress over or i simply want time off the screens. the ability to go as deep or as shallow as you'd like is one of my favorite things about it! sometimes i'll create a fantasy race that has every single aesthetic i like and explain away the details later, or i'll create the foundations of an elemental magic system that functions very closely to a bit like in information theory. if a water "bit" and wind "bit" are present, these could easily scale into a stormy spell if one had enough energy. magic with a bit of a programming flavor has been done before, but is that a concern of mine? (the answer is that i'm having fun and that's what matters).

sometimes (if not often) real world examples help me get a broader view of what a concept could be beyond my current understanding. if i wanted to be different and use a calendar that isn't like the one we use today, there have been many calendars way before the Gregorian was universal. why not make four seasons eight? or just three? how much of real astrophysics do i want to include in this universe, or do i base the layers of the universal planes on the sandwich i had today? then again, i could learn about the different perspectives other cultures had on the moon and incorporate those elements into the faith i'm creating for the people of this nation. (i wonder what it would be like if a planet had many moons, and thus many moon gods to worship? i would have to differentiate them in some way...)

worldbuilding also reflects my current understanding or view of the wide, wide world we live in. even when powered by the many many free oracle tables to help me craft different factions in a megacity, i can't help but try to find real world equivalents to help crystallize the concept into something i could theoretically present to someone if asked. i could go as grimdark or as everbright as i want, and sometimes the world i create reflects the mood i was in when i made it. in a way, worldbuilding is a skill that improves the more you engage with the world and reimagine it.

create enough worlds and you'll have a baby mobile of nifty little things to dive into. i've created world maps, curated vision boards, written little songs to the gods, scribbled outfits certain cultures would wear, generated repositories of notes for every single element i've found respite in detailing.

i don't have much else to say other than i just enjoy it! it fuels my creativity and that's a big part of what keeps my days fun. maybe for others that looks more like an early morning jog, or a late night coffee ritual, but mine looks more like scribbles on the corner of my journal. perhaps one of these days i'll write a blog post about habitmaxxing...

thanks for reading!

p.s. i posted this and pckt for some reason didn't publish the last 5 minutes of my editing :( i'll keep copies of my posts elsewhere before hitting post next time!