2024 Year in Review...
Reading Articles
Godpath by Hallucigenia (in Waking Materia)
Not everything needs to be explained to the tiniest minute detail of how something works. The Godpaths is a good example of this. No one knows how it works, they just use them anyways, and that totally works. Things in the world need some mystery about them, no matter how hard your magic system gets. Also I like the idea of meeting myself in the time echos. I'm not sure I would get tired of it, but...
Three Laughing Mice by Demongrey (in The Million Islands)
A set of children's tales that each get a little more dark. I don't really have much else to say. It's an excellent piece of prose, each piece accomplishing the goal of teaching a lesson.
Adamnification of Norrab by Mochimanoban(in Yonderverse)
This article does a lot to inject agency and conflict into a universe that for the most part is lacking in that sort of thing. The author stated in the comments that this was outside his comfort zone and its admirable that they were willing to go outside of that and write about this sort of thing anyways.
AS2-25 Bore Pistol by BCGR_Wurth (in Manifold Sky)
One thing I like about this author's item articles is how efficiently they are written, always packing a lot of information in a short article. Take this Pistol that's actually a reciprocating bladed weapon that can turn an armored target into swiss cheese in seconds.... Lovely! As short as the article is, it goes into detail the effects of the weapon, how recoil is dealt with, how it compensates for penetrating different materials and more. It makes it easy to picture the item in your head.
Europa by SpyglassRealms (in Asra Planeta)
It feels like the author tries to leave no stone unturned with anything they write and this article is a good example of that. It is an excellent very technically detailed piece of work going in-depth into everything you would want to know about Europa in the context of Astra Planeta.
Chaos Magic by Kefkejaco (in Niorath)
Chaos Magic is... chaotic, and this article does a good job of showing that. There's really not much more to say. It is a well written article that does a good job of explaining how chaos magic works in the context of the world, how stupidly dangerous it is, and why people are dumb and/or ambitious enough to try using it anyways. It's a good read and I recommend it.
Teleporter's Cravings by LittleRaider (in Nonogarn)
Reading Teleporter's Sense first will give you a much better picture of this condition article. Teleporter's Cravings shows the dangers of not testing medicine thoroughly enough and making things worse which does a lot to increase the depth of worldbuilding here.
Paws and Claws by Tillerz (in Alana)
Speaking of depth in worldbuilding... Why doesn't your fantasy world have a pet shop or at least a reputable breeder of some dog, cat, or magical beast? It seems like such a dumb thing to forget that existed for hundreds of years (and thousands of years in the case of dog breeders).
The article doesn't even describe a very fantastical place. It's a pretty mundane pet store with an interesting story behind it that sells pets, which just made me like it more.
The article doesn't even describe a very fantastical place. It's a pretty mundane pet store with an interesting story behind it that sells pets, which just made me like it more.
Gnelson Engine by Harldawg (in Tellus)
This article should tell you pretty quickly in the first paragraph that it's basically a magical steam engine, so I could immediately picture the technology with no further elaboration needed. Because the first paragraph did its job, the author was able to spend the rest of the article describing related things and got a pretty sizeable amount of worldbuilding done in a short article.
Fire Powers by Blue Fairy 74 (in Elaqitan)
Fire magic in fantasy usually comes down to who can create the biggest or most intense fireball, and I am certanly part of that line of thinking with one of my chracters! That said, I always appreciate when someone tackles fire magic and gives it more nuance than that, and this articles gives it a lot of nuance, incorporating all aspects of fire into the spells and also describing the differences between multiple types of magic. They still have the big explosive fire magic too!
Resolutions
That aside, I really have only one resolution when it comes to Worldbuilding this year. This resolution is driven by the fact that I now have half a million words in my Fantasy world, and a quarter million words in my Sci Fi world. Some of my articles I would say are well written and formatted, but the majority of them are fluff and/or trash articles, especially in my Sci Fi world, where 200,000 words are currently sitting in the "old" folder and haven't been updated yet. So with that said, this is my Resolution for 2024:
Iterate and Improve
That's it. I'm going to be spending most of the year going back on all my old articles and updating them for 2025. Basically just bring them all to the same standard. My newer world, Manalith, will have new content through the year. The other two worlds, Vreathe and Cairn Sector, are going to be going through some major overhauls before new stuff gets posted. I'm also going to take a look at the CSS and update it at some point this year. New art will come along with many of the article redos.
2024, Stats and Commentary
Hidden (Click to Show)
Vreathe
New Words: 152,287 (+43%)New Views: 37,169 (+153%)
New Likes: 552 (+108%)
Total Words: 506,946
Total Views: 61,532
Total Likes: 1,061
Followers: 103
Cairn Sector
New Words: 24,751 (+9%)New View: 14,010 (+40%)
New Likes: 104 (+17%)
Total Words: 278,026
Total Views: 48,884
Total Likes: 683
Followers: 65
Manalith
New Words: 24,181 (+197%)New View: 399 (+1,813%)
New Likes: 30 (+Inf%)
Total Words: 36,430
Total Views: 421
Total Likes: 30
Followers: 9
Vreathe is now my dominate world. It has overtaken the Cairn Sector in views, words, likes, and everything else. That's probably not going to change anytime soon. The world will still be the one I work on the most.
My poor Sci Fi world keeps getting neglected! This is half because I spent a rather large amount of time working on art for it that I still haven't been able to show, and half because I'm just not burned out of writing fantasy yet.
I actually started Manalith way back in 2020, but didn't work on it very much. Now that I have a much better idea of what I want to do with it and how much of the Kitchen Sink I want to throw at it, I started working on it much more.
Totals across all worlds
New Words: 201,219New Views: 51,578
New Likes: 686
Total Words: 834,806
Total Views: 110,837
Total Likes: 1,744
World Ember 2024 Stats
Total Words: 50,517Total Articles: 29
Average Words per article: 1,742
Total Likes: 114
Top Article (Vreathe): Alchemiche de Irrelith (13)
Top Article (Cairn Sector): Zorren System (8)
Top Article (Manalith): Werewolf Clans (10)
Community Interactions
This chart shows article interactions between me and 50 members of community that I read the most. Data was gathered from July to December. In 2025 I plan to gather data over the whole year.
Total Articles I read this year: 1,036
SC Articles: 258
WE Articles: 140
(July - December only)
People I interacted with: 129
People who interacted with me: 154
For every 1.5 articles I interacted with during this year, 1 of my articles was also interacted with, which is quite an excellent ratio and much better than recent years.
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to read much more than a thousand articles a year so I predict the ratio of my interactions to others will be between 1 and 1.5 in 2025...
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to read much more than a thousand articles a year so I predict the ratio of my interactions to others will be between 1 and 1.5 in 2025...
The reason I am showing this section is because there is always someone making a journal post wondering why no one reads their work. The reason is that no one knows you exist. World Anvil doesn't have a Twitter-like algorithm that displays articles that you might like (and also, in my opinion, WA's Articles page is beyond useless). You have to ineract with people so they know you exist.
Most Liked Article of 2024: Magma Ducks (39)
I was not expecting this article to be as well liked as it was. It was just a silly article about ducks that live in lava, but it actually helped to add a lot of relevant lore to my world and helped me get a grip on how animals are corrupted with magic on Vreathe.
It was also the article I submitted to Tillerz Duckuary 2024 unofficial Challenge, and I was surprised when I won that one. I guess the lesson here is that my world needs more ducks?
(Secret New Year's Resolution: Write a Duck related article in 2025)
Thank you so much for featuring the Adamnification of Norrab! You're so right, my world is lacking articles like this. It's something I want to do more of, because turns out I kind of really enjoy writing about conflicts! Obviously that's not all I'll write, but it's nice to know that writing about cultures, history, and conflict doesn't have to be scary, and is actually quite fun. Rewriting and revamping old work is an admirable goal. I can never get myself to stay focused on rewriting old articles, no matter how much I want to do so. I wish you the best of luck!