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WORLDBUILDING ASSIGNMENT - THEME PARK ("MARS ADVENTURE")

MARS ADVENTURE is advertised to the outside world as an immersive and educational environment that can not only teach visitors about our solar system but let them experience what it would be like to live in a futuristic, spacefaring alternate-earth. After receiving some generous donations that proved to be very influential in the project’s development, namely by certain companies headed by certain CEOs that are known for vociferous advocacy of space colonization, the masterminds behind Mars Adventure allowed their beneficiaries significant creative input on the facilities, layout, and attractions. Through their collaboration, Mars Adventure took on a life of its own, transforming from an innocuous and educational foray into the utopian future into a multimillion-dollar investment loaded with parenthetical, borderline propagandistic promotion of space colonization. The park is built to resemble a sprawling space metropolis; part utilitarian space station and part human civilization.
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WORLDBUILDING ASSIGNMENT - "DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM"

1: What is your reaction to the text you just read? I was pretty enthralled and I have every intention of continuing to read the novella once I have free time. I'm interested by the concept of a hedonistic, terminally depressed society that's transcended death, currency, and space. Those restrictions define our society as a whole so I, as a writer, struggle to think outside of those constraints. 2: What connection did you make with the story? Discuss the elements of the story with which you were able to connect. I wasn't able to finish the story within the window of time that I was allowed, but Lil was a more relatable vessel than the narrator, who has survived a few decades and is more representative of the outlandish new normal of this world. Conversely, Lil is closer to my age group. Disneyland is an immediate hook. I want to know where it fits into the story and this universe. 3: What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium woul
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WORLDBUILDING CLASS - PROJECT #7 - CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN DEOS

tw: discussion of rape While physical conflict is encouraged between Xan tribesmen as a method of rooting out the weakness in one another, this controlled violence as much an act of brotherly love as it is an expression of bitterness and hatred, such skirmishes are only permitted under strict regulations and do not usually end in death. To deliberately single out your comrade and undermine them through cowardly means is unacceptable. Xan prize courage and strength first, not sneaky backstabbing, especially for avarice's sake. An insatiable need to dominate others is meant to be directed to the outside world, against rival tribes, not turned inward. Betrayal, indolence and selfishness - theft, rape, and murder. If you murder someone, you have ultimately allowed your petty squabbles with that individual to overwhelm your obligations to the survival of your clan. You have not only betrayed your tribe-sibling but the tribe at large. Theft, rape, and murder are the three cri
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WORLDBUILDING CLASS - PROJECT #6 - THE XAN

Xan are the people of Deos -- spindly, scaly, crimson. They live in colonies scattered throughout Deos's underground. These colonies are based in a horticultural tribal structure and reside within the few pockets of sustainable life that riddle the subterranean wasteland; while situated in these springs, the denizens of the colonies devise instruments to capitalize on the resources inherent to their claim. Sustenance is extracted from water springs, mushroom gardens, and burrowing prey. Once a claim is established, the tribe as a whole remains rooted there until they are ousted by an invading force. However, raiding parties will be dispatched into the outer reaches of that territory in search of other resources. Though Xan have made significant technological advancement (particularly in mining and construction) they still retain a combative, warlike edge. Tribes are often hostile towards one another. If a tribe is sitting on a spring, then a Xan's first inclination is to fi
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WORLDBUILDING CLASS - PROJECT #5 - INTRODUCTION TO DEOS

Deos sluggishly drifts in a small and desolate solar system, surrounded by a sparse smattering of stars, an asteroid belt which aimlessly circles the outer periphery of its galactical claim, and its solitary neighbors, a pair of suns which bombard it with constant heat and fire. Its outer appearance leads one to assume that it is a gas giant such as Jupiter, but beneath the turbulent storms of noxious crimson fumes stretches a vacant landscape every bit as inhospitable as its exterior. No life exists on its surface; only crags and mountains of red stone. But then you look beneath. Deos's people, a resilient and warlike society of aliens referred to as the Xan, live in the subterranean networks winding through the bowels of the planet. Food and water can't withstand the perpetual glare of the sun, therefore, it thrives in the shade. Light is provided through the wealth of bioluminescent organisms that have adapted to Deos's terrain, food is collected from the insectoid c
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WORLDBUILDING CLASS - PROJECT #4 - THE HUNTER HUNTER

Before the Civil War, slave hunters trawled the Northern free states in search of free blacks - men, women, and children - that they could then capture and transport to the South. Until slavery was abolished in all parts of the United States, this unscrupulous (and illegal) trade proved to be especially lucrative. Members of the so-called "Reverse Underground Railroad" often found conspirators in the form of local lawmen seeking to grease their palms. North of Kentucky, these insidious opportunists easily traipsed over the borderline and into the Indianan wilderness in search of quarry. But as these human hunting brigades stole deeper into the forests, not all of them emerged with prizes in hand. Not all of them came back alive. As the activities of these outlaws were illegal, they were loath to report the disappearances and assaults to authorities, but surviving slavers described a tall, black woman with wiry hair and wild eyes that lived in the middle of the forest, on
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WORLDBUILDING CLASS - PROJECT #2 - WILD PLANET

The windswept, sunblasted planet of Deo creaks along on its axis, perpetually subject to radioactive bombardment on both sides by the twin suns. From afar, the planet resembles a marble, its surface painted with bright candy cane swirls. The planet's axis is black and gangrenous like a patchy wound. On the planet's surface, the air is thick with plumes of red dust and the sky is an impenetrable crimson void. The planet's terrain beneath this poisonous canopy presents an even more inhospitable image: haphazardly jutting knifelike peaks clustered together like needles on the back of an irate porcupine, perilous canyons, basins filled with stagnant waters, and sprawling red wastelands. Days pass without any ostensible change in the sky. There is no moon and therefore there is no night, just a perpetual daylight like a radioactive glow, and the planet is flanked on both sides by a circling pair of suns. When the sky darkens, it is because of the dust storms broiling on the hori
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