====== 700 Posts and Counting ======

I'm impressed I've been able to keep this up for so long. I didn't even notice the 700th post at the time. Almost nobody IRL knows about this little project of mine. I feel ashamed to bring it up. I aggressively separate my online persona from my meatspace self, which is probably why I'm so averse to sharing the Lonely Galaxy outside of the internet.



Sometimes I feel like conworlding is what you get when you strip away all the curb appeal from speculative fiction. There's no plot and there are no characters except those that serve the history of your world. It's pure setting. If you're like me, you //love// the sort of trivial details that make a setting feel more alive but don't move a story forward. There are some media franchises I know almost solely through extensive wiki walking, without ever having read the books or played the games. WH40K and D&D being the foremost examples I can think of. I guess you can think of the Lonely Galaxy as a fan wiki for a franchise that doesn't exist.



I also compare my artistic attempts for this project, both visual and literary, to getting your hair cut at a barber college. You're definitely not going to have a huge range of fancy styles to choose from, and you're taking a risk that the experience may not be perfect, or even satisfactory, but you're helping someone learn, and the price is right. I think there's a bit of joy to be had from seeing someone's raw unfiltered imagination. No focus groups, no test audiences, just the stuff rattling around in someone's brain.



The thing is, I'd never want this to be my job. With pay comes expectations, and expectations breed stress. Here there are no expectations. We owe each other nothing beyond common courtesy. I write when I feel like it, draw when I'm in the mood, etc.



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