My Cards for the Worldbuilding 4x4x4 Festival

[ysabetwordsmith]

magibrain is doing something really new for the September fest in allbingo. It runs from September 1-30. The idea is to combine four prompts in a way that enriches your setting and characters. This is not a great match for my usual approach, but I'm willing to give it a try. The rules aim for getting one line (row, column, or diagonal) on each card. I'm also allowing myself the option of using individual prompts as usual. So I've got four chances to get a proper bingo out of this fest. I suspect that my best bet on that will be if any of the lines give someone ideas to prompt for a set of four. (See all my 2016 bingo cards.)

If you'd like to sponsor anything, especially if you have an idea for what character, series, or situation it would fit -- talk to me and we'll work something out. I've had a few requests for this and the results have been awesome so far. This is a good opportunity for those of you with favorites that don't always mesh well with the themes of my monthly projects. I may still post some of the fills for free, because I'm using this to attract new readers; but if it brings in money, that means I can do more of it. That's part of why I'm crossing some of the bingo prompts with other projects, such as the Poetry Fishbowl.

Underlined prompts have been filled.


WORLDBUILDING

Bingo in Row 1 on 9-3-16

Knowledge base	Oppression & rebellion	Ideals	Sex / gender dynamics
Notorious villains	Hazards	Diversity & tolerance	Climate
Technology	Languages	Bones of the Past	Forest
Famous heroes	Balance of power	Underground	Wildlife

CULTUREBUILDING

Authority Figures	Talents / Aptitudes / Abilities	City Layout	Population Diversity
Emergency Response	Social Services	Natural Disaster Risk and Response	Taboo
Current Events	Politics	Careers and Vocations	Major Cultural Figures
Attitude Toward Science and Education	Wealth and Poverty	Housing Arrangements	Subcultures

GROUP DYNAMICS

Threats from Outside	Generalization / Specialization of Members	Generations	Failures
Group Purpose	Group Permeability	Sense of Group Identity	Role Fluidity / Rigidity
Instigators	Common Arguments	Loyalty	Followers
Rivalries	Threats from Inside	Acquiring New Members	Alliances and Cliques

CHARACTER BUILDING

Naturalistic Intelligence	Hot-Button Topics	Influential Past Events	Home Life
Gender	Kinesthetic / Physical Intelligence	Aspirations and Goals	Sexuality
Skills and Talents	Methods of Relaxation	Visual / Spatial Intelligence	Response to Stress
Integrity / Hypocrisy	Interests	Physical Description	Verbal / Linguistic Intelligence

Comments

[alatefeline]

This looks really cool. I think that this might be a better match for you than you realize; you often weave together several prompts during the Fishbowl. I'll look forward to seeing what happens!

*laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith]

Apparently you know me better than I know myself. I literally just finished a bingo poem.

Tonight we were watching X-men cartoons, and saw a two-parter, "The Time Fugitives." So there's Bishop looping his ass around and around, trying to save his time, and Cable chasing him, trying to save his time from Bishop's hacking.

I got to thinking about how most time-travel stories are either adventures or puzzles (or railroads, but I think that branch is stupid so I don't write it). Bishop kept trying to save the day in very brute-force ways. But relatively few parts of history could be changed by altering single linchpins. A few, sure; stop an assassination, prevent a spy from finding a message. Most of history depends on watersheds instead: vast flows of influence running together. You can't stop that kind of momentum by changing one event, as Bishop discovered. How could you?

Well, actually, you'd have to work on the root causes, and that's not an adventure. You'd need activists for that, instead of soldier or scientists. Which got me thinking about humanity's occasional tendency to sprout activists who are so far beyond what anyone else can do, they might as well be time travelers. Nobody's written that before. And I have a time travel series.

I checked my cards, and damn if the top row of the first card wasn't "knowledge base," "oppression & rebellion," "ideals," and "sex / gender dynamics" -- a perfect match for both The Time Towers and my topic. \o/

So I met my goal for the month, which was one bingo, and my dad's a history teacher, which means I can send him this piece with their next batch of poetry.

Re: *laugh*

[stardreamer]

Heh. Just tonight I was thinking about one very small decision point that could have had extensive repercussions. What if, after the first (or second or third) hijacked airplane, all or most of the airlines had simultaneously said, "Enough of this shit, we're going to STOP it," and installed locks on all the cockpit doors of commercial passenger craft? A couple of decades down the road, this ends up preventing 9/11 because hijacking just doesn't work any more.

Re: *laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith]

I think I suggested that one when I was two or three. "Why don't they just lock the door?" "Because they can't." "That's dumb. They should have a lock to keep the bad guys out." I think of it whenever the same problem recurs.

Terramagne aircraft customarily have either a locking, blastproof door or a completely separate cockpit, depending on model. Some situations, you do need access between cockpit and interior; but if you don't, it's a needless chink in the armor.

Really, just one airline needs to do this. Everyone wants to use the one that can't be hijacked, so all their competitors are obliged to copy the improvement or else go out of business.

And that's an invention, not an adventure. So much of history focuses on war, but inventions have changed more.

Re: *laugh*

[alatefeline]

Sounds exciting! I hope it gets sponsored soon. :)

Re: *laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith]

Figure late this week, or mid-month, depending on how other stuff works out.