World Ember 2024 Prep

This is my first time doing Worldember so I'm going to do my best to do this challenge. So, to gear up for it, we'll go along with the prep and see how it goes through continuing to work on the sacred timeline.

I am a full-time caregiver for my mom who has severe dementia and we're organizing a move into our own place if we can get her on Medicaid. So, I'm only going to pledge to go for the minimum of 10,000 words but aim to hit that 50,000 word goal and get the awards if I can. It will depend on timing and how many good days my mom has between now and the end of December.

This time around, to build around what I did in Spooktober, I'm going to work on Magic Systems, Items, and Factions in my setting. Likely those I don't expect Marvel to cover on their own. So expect articles about magic and mysticism from DC and Image Comics, or City of Heroes and Champions Online. Maybe even some things from the Thurian and Hyborean ages, or from the Indiana Jones films this time. Things that will flesh out parts of the world that won't likely be released in a Marvel Multiverse supplement moving forward.

I am working on the Meta for the first time and will continue to update throughout Worldember prep and during my work on the timeline for this universe. As a young teen, comic books, especially Marvel Comics, were my escape from the world. As life has gotten stressful, and the greatest hits of Marvel stories are being revived in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it has once again become a safe haven for me. And, I want to share that with others while also providing a place for entertaining, cooperative storytelling with others. I'm working on fleshing out that much and more in the meta.

I reviewed my homepage and I believe I have it in the shape I want it. A catchy tagline up top with credits for all of the supporting material I'm using from the various entertainment companies I'm basing my canon off of. Then more detail below before the long list of media that I have directly pulled from to include in my timeline. It's a difficult thing to balance legal citation and credit with selling the setting's premise but I think it works. Feedback is always welcome.

I went in and looked at the article on how to create a world primer and then found some examples to reference as I built my own. It's not entirely finished, but it's in a place where I can go back this week and put in the finishing touches. Like finish up the article block, put in some of the more essential elements on the side bar that people may want to reference, and some general prettying up.

World and user follow buttons were created and added to the global content fields so that they appeared across my articles.

I created a self-assigned subscriber group for Anvilites and visitors to check out what's in the world freely. A tourist group as it were. This was added to the global content field for now.

So far, the only worldbuilding project that I've done is the timeline and map and it's not entirely ready for primetime. So I didn't add it to the primer or the global content fields.

I am not a coder and so the CSS was done with quite a bit of trial and error. I've never been one to go overboard with flashy design. Usually, I just try to work with what's there and then enhance it to better represent what I'm going for. I changed the article title font, adjusted the quote text so it wasn't so large and overwhelming, then I went in and did some work to specialize the Spooktober 2024 article titles.

To get myself inspired, I watched Season 2 of Invincible, Season 3 of Vox Machina, and Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. I might try to squeeze in Thor: Ragnarok as well, as I'm thinking I'll start at the end of the Earth-19616 main timeline and work backword on articles that involve anything magical. I also spent quite a bit of time working on completing and fine-tuning the 2 timelines that set up the backstories. I always start my RPG worldbuilding with timelines, though I do put more detail into them than most do. Generally because I get to running the game right away and the timeline is the main source of information. This time has been different, thanks to the tools in World Anvil and because time for running games is difficult while I'm a caregiver around the clock. I'm hoping it's holding interest and is interesting for anyone that wants more insight into comic books and how they are a kind of modern mythology for the height of Americanism. A period that may have just been put in the grave if we can't save it.

I did finish my moodboard last week and I thought I updated this article, but I guess I didn't. I have shared it with the friends that are going to help me as my community for encouragement and feedback, and I have it available for anyone to view if they would like. It does contain images from several films, comic books, and video games so I don't want to share it publicly.

I have already built a superhero themed playlist with soundtracks and original scores from superhero films and cult classics. Today I added enough new discs that I'm only two away from being caught up in the MCU films to where the starting point for this reality is set. Then I included music from more classic and cheesier films like Spawn, The Crow, and Batman (1989). I'll put a more complete accounting in the inspriation section of the Meta.

I have a couple of friends who are down as editors for Earth-196169 to assist with encouragement and feedback, and I am a part of Discord. One of my friends is going to help me figure out how to build stat blocks, so that will help. I should be good in this department.

This is challenging for me because I'm an around-the-clock caregiver for my mother who suffers from severe dementia. I'll be writing every moment I'm not helping her with something or putting her to bed. This has been my way of managing stress and getting some personal time when I can, so it should work out as long as I don't burn out.

Another challenging part of this week's homework, but I'm doing my best. We go out every day. My mother gets antsy and anxious when we're stuck in the house all day. There's a bit of time away from the computer every day. I hope to take more time tomorrow and Friday to get away from the computer and touch some grass.