Small details

So in working on my wiki recently, I have made note of some small, deliberate details of my writing, and I thought I'd share a few of them here.

The somewhat shaky return!

After abandoning this log for going on six months, I’ve decided to come back to it, we’ll see how long this lasts.

I’ve been focusing much more on world-design as of late, creating the kind of detailed background only scene in IPs with dozens of contributors. This is of course in line with my goals, which is to create a world on par with major brands(Star Wars, Star Trek, etc) while firmly establishing all of the rules and boundaries myself. When and if others are allowed to contribute, they will be forced, by the existence of my extensive groundwork, to follow my designs.

Of late, I find myself fascinated by the Kami, one of the more enigmatic races from my Course Books. They served as the enemies during the imaginatively named Kamian Succession Wars and are, if I’m going to be perfectly honest, here, basically space-nazis. But the fascinating challenge, here, is to explain why.

Of course my regular readers(E.G. nobody) are aware that I am quite the student of history. By that, I mean I read a lot. I don’t know that much, but I am an avid scholar, and this is because I seek to understand why things happened.

Not all that long ago, I found myself reading through the biography of Albert Speer, who is often reffered to as "Hitler's Architect", and was the youngest member of Hitler's cabinet during WWII. This was while I was, for reasons I cannot fully grasp, trying to learn about Spandau Prison and more specifically Rudolf Hess(who, it is vital to note, was bat-crap crazy). 

Getting inside the mind of someone like Speer, trying to understand what he did, and why, is a fascinating challenge, but more importantly: its a window into a world we can only peek through. What happened in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s that allowed WWII and the holocaust to happen?

While I still haven't fully figured that part out, its the study that is really more important. Isaac Azimov said that Science Fiction is an existential metaphor, which allows us to tell stories about the human condition. In writing about the Kami(who are, in fact, not human), their culture, their values, I'm learning more about the sort of climate that has made so much of our history happen.

Most recently, I spent quite a bit of time on JAL 667 and it's lost civilization, which was entirely too much fun to write about. The whole use of the wiki is of great value in my thought-processes. While creating JAL 667(its a planet, in case you don't click links) I added the Denehi System, which is a major population center despite having never been mentioned in the Course Books.