#wdym i'm using this ask as an excuse to delay the make me write tag

[bluberimufim]

Hi, and happy WBW to you! (as usual I am @writeblr-of-my-own) Sorry that I missed last Saturday ask, but it was a busy week and stuff happened!

So, for today's question something a bit easier and relaxing: tell me a piece of worldbuilding you are extremely proud of! Go on, blabber about it as much as you like!

Happy (late) WBW!!!

I'm sorry I took so long to answer! I got distracted. For 2 days.

You are about to read one of the nerdiest things you've ever seen.

The dystopia WIP (bc of course this is about the dystopia WIP) is set in a world very different from our own in terms of general philosophy. My inicial concept for it was basically "Hey remember the period in between the two World Wars where people were weirdly obsessed with industry and thought machines were the Best Thing Ever? What if it just never stopped being like that?". If you're thinking "wtf?? I don't remember that???", allow me to exemplify by mentioning that Le Corbusier, the architect poster-boy (man??) of modernism, referred to houses as "Machines for Living" (as in, the house is a machine designed for you to live in it).

But I digress.

And from this idea, I developed a sort of... mainstream art movement, I guess, for the world of the dystopia WIP. It's kind of a mix between two real-life art movements: Futurism and Baroque.

Futurism is all about striving for improvement and technological progress above all else, and actively eliminating all history behind you. The quote that basically became Futurism's slogan is, I think, "a car is sexier than any woman", meaning that industry and progress is the most important thing in the world. The futurists were also obsessed with war and thought that countries should constatntly be at war because it breeds inovation. There were fascist undertones, as you might guess. 'Twas pre-WW2 Italy, after all.

Baroque is all about taking the canons of classical tradition and altering them to fit your style, while displaying mastery over them. It's basically about innovating and expanding on Renaissance-era art. The general idea most people have of Baroque art is the drama and pathos of it all, with oblique compositions and tons of light-dark contrast. It technically started off as catholic propaganda and is regarded by many as the origin/prototype of totalitarian architecture (think Nazi Germany or Soviet Union government buildings).

What would the combination of these two be called? Baroque-Futurism? Futuristic-Baroque? I don't know. And I honestly don't think I will ever need to name it in the story, so I just leave it.

In terms of how this would manifest visually, I've kinda drawn some ideas but nothing too final. I remember making a prototype of a variation on the solomonic column, a staple of the Baroque period.

And this shapes the way the characters see the world. There's a scene (the only scene I wrote, I don't even know where it would be set in the timeline) where two characters are discussing the night sky and they say that a starless sky is beautiful because it means humanity's power (expressed through light pollution in this case) is so great that they can blot out the cosmos itself. There's even a city in this world, called the Humming City, that is considered beautiful and awe-inspiring because there are so many machines and technological equipments running at the same time that they create an audible hum, like the one you hear from home appliances at night when everyone is asleep, but much, much louder.

I literally sound insane. But I had a lot of fun!