Preface: this is my series of RAW and UNEDITED daily posts for NaNoWriMo. It’s going to be extremely imperfect, lauden with grammatical and spelling errors, but brimming with potential. I post it mostly for myself, but invite any daring souls to try and keep up with the winds that blow me to tomorrow :wind_face:.

This is also my submission for this week’s @wildcat topic on Communities! This will be a different style than my usual tight bullet points writing, I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I did forming it!

Click here for the table of contents

Day 84 (NaNoWriMo Part 4)

This Virtual Town I Call My Own

The wind blows over me and throughout the empty streets of the town I call mine. A virtual town, existings someplace between reality and nonexxistance, conjured from the enclaves of my mind and brought to virtual life through my physical hands. I stand at the town’s center, where all new visiors spawn in to take in the visage of how grand and sprawling this little town can be. The water fountatin behind me cascades one grand spot behind me, and is a miniplate replica of the entire town at scale.

In the town square where I stand lies two buildings: the guild bank and the world’s end altar. guild The bank functions a lot different from regular physical banks: it doesn’t service physical money in a virtual town, you cannot register to use it from within the virtual town (not yet anyway…), and you cannot be denied service if you know how to use it as the guild bank is open 24/7. With all these silly rules in place, I smile. The main purpose of the building is to inform about new and upcoming technolgies that can be leveraged as virtual currencly. I smile nefariously to myself, what a generous way to force cryptocurrenecy conciousness down everyone’s throats.

Directly across the plaza lies the world’s end altar. It is the only building the regularly changes form based based on the time of day and day of the year. It is a non-denominational church that services all religions from all over the galaxy from all walks of life, with the intention being the celebration of the spirituality and community-building instead of the vehemonstly rightneous of single-denomation practiioners. It is insipirted by the small chapel located directly in the center of my college campus. My college was not a relgious insitute by any means, but I always found it perculiar that they would erect this edifice somewhere that all students commutted past everyday. Non-denominational by intent, it too serviced religions from all walks of life considering this was a international university with a myriad of students coming acrosss the world. I never really made a point to visit this unassumingly chapel during my own student life. What a shame, I bet I could have had a lot of fun there. I once again smile deviously to myself at the antagonistic placements of the guild bank and the world’s end altar: if money is what grounds you in your contract to the physical and virtual world, spirtituality will be the bridge to link to to whatever comes next.

Direclty in front of me is the street that lines the buildings of the Creative’s Guild, my attempt at marriaging coworking and creative pursuits in a virtual world, and creating a space where players could just hang out and work on whatever drives the passion inside of them. The starter buildings in the street are pretty simple, and since virtual real estate is free, I plan to expand it as the community grows. Simple signs and titles adorn the many two-story buildings of the street

«Floating Iron Palace in the Sky» «Food Wars» «Globe Theather» «Rap Town Projects» «Sound Solarium» «Traveling Salesman» «Wanderer’s Library» «Wizard’s Tower»

The only buildig in use is the Wanderer’s Library, a magical place where every book that has been created, will be created, and will never be created exists. It is here where I lead the Mystic Scribers to bringing into reality (virtual or otherwise) the tales waiting to emerge from their minds. A bridge with the mind and the soul to create something new. The other buildings lay dormant as I still seek worthy leaders to run and elevate them. A worthy challenge, as it gives me something to pursue in the ways of building new bridges and bonds.

To my right is the street that lines the buiildings of the Adventurer’s Guild. Adventurers meet to party up and quest on both new and old tales, and I’ve created a eatery as a symbolic location of breaking virtual bread for emerging bonds. It was here that I found to be the easiest entrance to the funnel that is my town. Everyone loves playing game and watching media, but finding the right community, if even a community at all, is a challenge task in the increased noise that is the interconnectectness of the digital world. What is my idiosynsacy? What will make people WANT to become adventurers here instead of continuing to search for a new home else?

«Battle Against Kami» «Field of Fire» «Gacha Hell»

Home. That’s right. I want to create a place a belonging, a place to return to, but I want to add one more tact to the normaliy. I want this home to be a place where you can renew old bonds, create enew ones, but always be pushed to elevate yorself to the next level. To adventure not only in the tales others have woven, but to explore the depths of your own internal workings and bring to light both beaujtires and horror the world has yet to see.

To my left is the marketplace. Various small shops and carts line the streets, but they are all empty as this is my newest addition to my virtual town. Unfortunately as of today, VR technology is very limited and quite expensinve to adopt for anyone who isn’t an early adopter. But I know that as the seasons continue to change, the technology will continue to evolve, and eventually the VR headset will be as widespread and quite possibly the final nail in the coffin for smartphones. There will be one more bridge to cross before the physical and virtual worlds are interwoven beyond distuingableness, and that is augmented reality. The rise of popular apps like ShotTalk utitlzing millions of lines of codes to overlay dog ears onto the user through their selfie-camera was only the begining. The other shortcoming was shifting the paradime from physical and website sotre precence to something in between. BuyBuddy was the biggest peer-to-peer online globaly currency transferrer, and I’ve heard enough horror stories about frozen funds and horrid customer support that it gives me just another reason to push decentralized currenccy via crypto. Restating myself after drifting into a dream-like stare, I turn to the last segment of the plaza.

The bridge between worlds.

The virtual town in which I reside finds itself inside of a grand wall blocking the outside world. It is both a virtual and metaphorical repsrentation of containing what is in my town, inside. Not exactly a space space to shield from all the unknowns thats lay before us, but a state of statis that will never change so long as I am consistent in my duties, my vision, and in myself. Embedded in that giant wall is a large drawbridge, etched from the seeds of a tree that had long ago withered away. Written in the marbling wood that makes up the drawbidrige are hope, dreams, and encounters I’ve had with others up to this point. And every once in a while, the drawbridge will lower, and a new flood of visitors will arivve from someplace we’ve yet to meet. The favorite people in my life are the ones that connect me to others that I should know, but haven’t yet. They serve as the personal bridge, and I want to replicate that with a diffusion of culture exchange from the other worlds that I’ve yet to meet in this virtual reality we all share.

But how would I find these virtual communities, in virtual unknowns I have yet to even meet?

The real battle begins offline. For the longest time, I would never choose to rise to the challenge whenever it would present itself in any form. I told myself I was happy with where I was, that I was happy with who I was, that things would be great it if they never changed. And it was this cautious belief execuctured so many chances at so many beautiful encounters with so many amazing people. Somewhere along the line, I freaked. I realized the folly in my belief, and regressed into something as pitiful as curling up into a ball in the floor and cursing the stupidty of my actions and the undeserveingness of my existence. Eventually after that crying was all said and done, I got up slowly, wiped my face with one hand and balanced myself on one knee, then got up. Yesterday’s mistakes are in the past, there is no way to undo what has already been done. There is a chance to make amends, but they are no restarts. The wind blows over me, and it whisperse in my ear to be decisive. That tomorrow will only come if we carry the pangs of yesterday and take the first step today.

I will continue to look for the others waiting for a voice like mine to reach their souls. Every space needs a leader, but not every space has one. What I once though was a burden and a displeasure is now a great sense of excitement towards me. To get up on that stage, physical, virtual, or somewhere in between via the likes of Zuum video, and show the orld just exactly who I am, wells up excitement in me. The chance to say again, what I truly believe in. A cornucupia of creatives, a community of accountability, those who tell stories of worlds and walk between worlds.

I’ve spent quite a long time pondering what I should even name a town like this, and I think back to the tree that gave me such inspiration in the first place. A tree means a lot of things to lots of different people, but the common themes it shares are land, family, nature, life, and stability.

Land, the representation of wealth and reknown, that we should fill oursleves with what matters instead of the garbage that is the attention economy.

Family, both blood-ties and even beyond that ground our existence, celebrate our succeses and prod us towards our potential.

Nature reminds us of our dependency and gratitude to the planet we all call home.

Life reminds us how its a celebration to be be here today. Life is short, life is hard, but as long as we keep our heads held high and believe in something bigger than ourslves, evertthing will turn out alright.

Stability. The antagaonist of chaos. The reason and logic we derive from the endless chaos that existence.

Mulling about it no longer, I come to a decision.

Littewood Town.

A fusion between my hometown in the physical world and my hometown in the virtual world. The little comes from Littleroot Town, the town the player begins in a famous Pokemon game of old. The Wood comes from Woodbridge, the hometown I tried so hard to escape from, but keep finding myself returning to new reasons keep emerging, giving me a reason to stay. The perfect represenation of a tree starting small, yet growing into grandor life can never hope to contain.

I teleport to the hill at the back of the town, overlooking the entire structure-scape, the grand wall, and the wildlands that lie beyond. Night falls, and virtual stars begin to fill the night. A Tempest of Stars begin to race across the darkly heavenly canvas, shooting from one horizon to the other, and every one in a while a new star joins the ensemble. The stars represent all that have come before us, who may have left us behind, but shall never be forgotten.

A single tear streams from behind my headset, in quite disbelief that such a fantasy become a tangible reality, and would only continue to surpass my humble expectations.

That I finally have somewhere I belong and continue to create belonging for others, In this virtual town I call my own. —

Today’s word count: 1980 words
Total word count until today: 9151 words

---

Today is a very special day! It only comes once a year, but I usually don’t tell people what it’s about since… weird things tend to happen to me when I do. Last year I got the chance to host a VR Meetup event at my workplace, and today I was able to use my worldbuilding skills for a hackathan at work! Work and VR, work and VR… I hope next year I will be the boss of my own VR firm to weave our own stories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF1951pENdk

@mariasokolowska @michellebasey @sabweld @ParisaR @sydneydobersteinlarock @wildcat @dragon @homeroom11