When musing the design of a world, I usually become stuck in an ideological struggle with myself between applicability and abstraction. The two are certainly not mutually exclusive, but interference does occur between them, and managing that is my greatest difficulty.
I enjoy abstraction because it can provide manifestation for thoughts. Abstract creations can embody an idea entirely inapplicable to reality yet nevertheless cognitively conceivable. Abstraction can also present applicable concepts in a way that encourages a certain perspective otherwise not easily attainable, if at all. In my mind, abstraction does not hinder applicability, but by opening new perspectives not necessarily pertaining to reality it can lead to unintended, unanticipated, and therein perhaps detrimental misinterpretation which may squander the intent of the work.
I am frustrated with this, tonight.
I have lately been designing a world I am currently calling Kimaera, from the Latin chimaera, which itself is from the Greek khimaira. I took a compromise. Anyway, Kimaera is, quite simply, my dreamworld. Not in that it is a world I would like to exist, but rather a world which has existed, for some reason, in my mind (while sleeping) for as long as I can remember. It is not particularly interesting in terms of storytelling possibility or visual intricacy; yet because it has been the realm in which all of my dreams have taken place seemingly since I was born, I figured that it may be worth exploring consciously.
A reality like this is naturally quite surreal, and I find myself asking why I am bothering to construct it. Like most of my creations, it is hardly the type of thing that one would sell. Stories and experiences are published, not the settings in which they take place. Kimaera is a new effort and I have hardly put the kind of work into it which I have poured into Aeramar, but this concern applies to both Kimaera and Aeramar, anyway.
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