Day 12 of Writing Meme

( Days 1 to 11 )

12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?

Unfortunately, the story I did the best on worldbuilding was one that I spent too much time on worldbuilding and not enough on actual writing, so I guess I'll have to tell you about it. =D

Red!AR is an alternate reality (AR) based on this chapter cover for Bleach. tenebris and I were pondering over why Ichigo wore gloves (he had been wearing gloves for a couple of covers now), and I specced a fantasy world around the reason - he has to keep his dark side in. Which evolved into how Ichigo got his dark side, and the answer became blood rituals and his mom dying in a magic circle, and then the rest of Red!AR came naturally.

So! A short version - the guys in that image are all mercenaries, each with their own magic. Which is pretty wide-ranging, almost X-men like in the range. We've got elementals - ice (Hitsugaya), fire (Ichigo and Renji) and earth (Chad), we've got people with outrageous powers like luck (Ikkaku), and we've got Ishida, who is like an apothecary and a pyrotechnics expert all in one. Oh yeah, and we've got fucked up - when Ichigo takes off his gloves, people die.

They work for this pretty seedy guy called Urahara, taking on any jobs that comes their way. Occasionally, that means running errands for Matsumoto, who's a goddess avatar. In this particular world, goddesses (and gods, but we don't see as many in this story) walk the earth through humans (aka avatars) that channel them. As far as goddesses go, Matsumoto's goddess is pretty minor. The major goddess has two avatars - Rukia and Orihime. Rukia channels the dark side of the goddess, Orihime the light side.

As with any verse that has multiple goddesses/gods, someone's always not happy that the lead goddess is the lead goddess, which means that goddesses and gods take sides, and sometimes humans are caught in the clashes in between.

Otherwise it's your pretty run of the mill fantasy - villages, taverns, festivals, plots to kill goddess avatars - oops! did I say the last part aloud? *wink*

I really hope to stop plotting this AR and actually write it someday.


( Days 13 to 30 )