The World in my eyes.

Yes this is a Depeche Mode reference 

An entire cosmos has been brewing in my head since I was in single digits, it's changed and matured with me but certain core elements have remained elements have remained the same.

• Elemental Magic.
• Mystical Martial Arts Action!
• A tone of pulpy/romantic(as in Romanticism) high adventure.
• Touches of Grimdarkness. 
• Space travel&Battles!
• The Luminiferous aether is real.
• The Races of the setting are humanoids with animalistic features like the"Beastmen" of 90s Jrpgs and the Thundercats;they also have none human skin colors.

As I got older,consumed more media and learned more about genres and aesthetics I further built upon that those core Ideas.

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Retro Futurism.

Is a big part of how I envision the setting, in particular the Retrofutruism of the 70s to the early 90s.

"Why that particular range"?

Because I was born in 1989, I'm among the last of the 80s children and I grew up in the 90s as the digital and Internet revolutions happened.

One of the most beloved books of my youth was Transport On, a part of the World of Tomorrow series...

Unfortunately my mother was never able to find the rest of that series.

The world presented in that book is engraved into my soul.

Like a lot of old sci-fi  the "World of Tomorrow" seems odd if not laughable by today's standards, those worlds have all manor of advanced technology and yet...

Commuters are desktop sized at the smallest, there is no Internet,social media, 3D Printing,little automation, and if there are robots they won't be employed the way that drones are now and likely will be in the near future.

Seriously few of the old luminaries of sci-fi saw the Internet ad how it would change everything coming. 

 "Why is that the cases"?

Most of those authors saw the future as a better version of their presents,rather than an entirely new paradigm. Much of the modern bleeding edge,sci-fi that is coming out now will seem odd if not comical to the children of the 2040s.

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Steampunk.

Steampunk Is something that I wouldn't know by name until long after my first encounter with it, the Wild Wild West staring Will Smith. My major touchstone for the genre however is the web comic "Girl Genius", though the Author/illustrator describes it as Gaslamp fantasy, there is quite a bit of aesthetic overlap.

Aesthetic is what appeals to me most about Steampunk there is something delightful premodern  about it, and in the more fantastical takes on the genre the is a sense of whimsy and wonder that I love and feel is missing in a lot of modern sci-fi.

Dieselpunk 

What I've said about Steampunk largely applies to feelings on Dieselpunk as. My touchstones for that would be the movies Indiana Jones,Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and maga/anime series Full Metal Alchemist.

Magitech.

The notion of using magic as,to fuel,or augment technology, a notion regarded as profane by many traditionalist. It is the logical outcome of how magic behaves in a number of settings.  I can't remember my first encounter with the concept, but it stuck with me and when I started encountering it I embraced it. My touchstones for it are the Metropolitan and City on Fire Novels by Walter Jon Williams, and the Blazblue game series.

Alchemy.

The quasi and sometimes outright mystical precursor to modern chemistry. Alchemy is the perfect analog for a lot of modern sciences in a fantasy world, and in a setting where the supernatural is an unquestionable fact alchemy and chemistry would have never separated.  The closest thing to a major touchstone is Sith Alchemy from the Star Wars EU. Other minor touchstones are the archetypal mad or wise man who can brew up that special something that the heroes need.

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So what is this world actually supposed to be like?

Synthesizing so many disparate elements into a coherent setting isn't easy, and succinctly explaing what that synthesis is supposed to be is even more difficult. The classic it's like" X Meets Y" kinda works but only kinda because so many different elements are in the mix.

That's

1. Battle Chasers.
2. Treasure Planet.
3. Thundercats(2011).
4. Skies of Arcadia.
5. Megaman Legends.
6. The Golden Sun franchise.
7. Outlaw Star.
8. Final Fantasy X
9. Final Fantasy XII.
10. Phantasy Star Online.

Different pieces of media pictured that all have some aspect of what's in my head and would need to be "X Meets Yd" together to make a short hand for the setting;if I was going to list every source the list would be much longer.

So would I present the setting to the audience?  Ideally I'd just show it to people after I'd devised a coherent visual lexicon for it, from it's many influence.

"Visual lexicon"?

The look and feel of a setting.

When you look at any of the big sci-fi properties their is a conceptual through-line that defines those franchises and sets them apart from anything else in their respective Genres.

Star Trek.

Star Wars.

Blade Runner.

Mobile Suite Gundam.

The ideal of setting presentation is off the table for me,because I've never been able to draw. That something that enables an illustrator to translate what's in their head to an image on the page, is missing in from me.

That leaves me with two...

1. Hire an illustrator to work with me and develop the look of the setting and be what I've researched illustrators don't like being, a facilitator of someone else's artistic vision. 
2. Produce prose fiction about the setting. 

No.1 is going to be very expensive and "problematic" unless I find an artist who's mercenary about their craft or rely likes/believes in my project.

No.2 Is cheaper, though I'll still needed to pay editors and a cover artist. However going prose has other issues. "A picture is worth a thousand words", simply showing the setting to people is more expedient than describing it. Heavily descriptive writing has fallen out of vogue, and the most commonly used tool for justifying exposition is a character type that I've come to be irritated by.

They are the "Conveniently-Ignorant", The character that through reasons with varying levels of justification is ignorant of the setting's history,politics,current events, and metaphysics, they exist to ask questions on behalf of the audience,questions that no native would ever ask because they had them answered as they grew up.

Side note: Being "Conveniently-Ignorant" is why so many protagonist are young people who are living on the literal or figurative fringes of society. 

I'd prefer to write stories about people,even youth's on the fringes, who know precisely how their world works and rarely if ever ask exposition facilitating questions. Thus the audience would have to learn how the setting works by watching the characters navigate it. 

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If I was going to make a more concise attempt at the "X meets Y" premise summation I'd say that my setting, The World In My eyes is...

Eberron.

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Outlaw Star.

Maybe that wasn't as difficult as I thought that'd be.








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