The Subsector Project

  Hi, hey, welcome to the worldbuilding documentation. I’m not really sure how to start this off, so let’s go with a little about me:

I’ve been writing for years, I’ve put hundreds of thousands of words on (virtual) paper, but I have rarely actually put anything on the internet. I hold the firm opinion that anyone can write, yet I have never put it into practice in the real world. Until now, my writing has been for me, and me alone. It has sometimes given me solace, sometimes been a maddening obsession for weeks or months at a time, but it has never been something I’ve shared.

What misery, to be alone with the reflections of your thoughts bouncing off the page back at you?

I don’t think I can do this forever, so I think that the time has come to actually let other people in, to allow the shared eyes of the internet to view what I’ve wrought, with my own name attached to it and everything. I’m going to start from square one with this, with only the barest idea of where we’re going, and we’ll figure out as we fly.

All very good in theory.

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  That’s the internally-motivating factors out of the way, but let’s take a step back and begin with the question of Why? Big question, for sure, and I have been trying to dissect it a little bit myself. I think that’s a loaded topic, and I can break it down a little more succinctly by splitting it into three chunks:

• Why make a fan work when you could be making an original world with more control?
• Why write down both stories and worldbuilding for people to read?
• Why bother making this website?

Great questions all, and very valid (I’ve always said you have great questions, and you really just up and showed me how correct I can possibly be). I think I’ve been repeatedly asking myself those questions since I started this project, and since I started actually making steps towards having something to put on the internet. In terms of answering them, I’m not sure I can say definitively, but I’ll give it a shot! Let’s break it down one-by-one:

Why make a fan work when you could be making an original world with more control?

  I think fanfiction, and larger fan works like what I hope this will become, are uniquely suited towards drawing people together. You don’t need to bother with a preamble to show someone a fan work, you already have a shared language, so to speak. Maybe you and I are on two different sides of the world, but if we both love Warhammer 40k, we’ll be able to communicate with one another.

Original worlds are lovely, but not something I’m interested in putting out into the universe right now. My interest lies in exploring a corner of someone else’s world, putting up my own coat of paint and hanging a few pictures. I want to create, surrounded by the context of a universe I enjoy, and able to toy with the features and expectations the genre creates. Grimdark is fun, The Warp is fun, Space Marines are fun. A preexisting world is both an enjoyable background, and an interesting constraint to retain my focus and intrigue my thoughts.

I suppose I could make my own knockoffs, explore the space with them in a much more free way, but it’s almost too much freedom, ya know? Science Fiction in big, bold letters, means a lot to me. It doesn’t lend itself, in my brain, to something more campy, more pulpy, more episodic.

In short, I think that Warhammer 40k scratches a particular itch for me right now. It might not last forever, but until I’m done with it, I think I’ll enjoy my time in this space.

Why write down both stories and worldbuilding for people to read?

  I’ve actually done a lot of work under various pseudonyms over the years on the “just the stories” side of fanfiction. I have a great appreciation for the stories that people have written, the characters and worlds they’ve explored through them. I think, though, that it can be interesting to view the other side, the side that the writer usually keeps to themself, of planning out the world and making the locations and factions come to life.

That’s the thing that I hope will set the Subsector Project apart- you get to see behind the curtain, really under the hood, how the sausage is made from the mind of the writer. You certainly do not have to read the worldbuilding if you don’t want to. I am a firm believer that the prose should stand on its own without outside knowledge. If I don’t do a good enough job of communicating the world in the stories, that’s a failure on my part, and I hope everyone will call me out for that if I ever get lazy.

I think it’ll be fun! You’ll get to see the process from behind the camera, I’ll get to double my output so there aren’t a lot of giant gaps between stories, everyone wins!

Why bother making this website?

  As I mentioned at the very top of the page, I’ve written a lot of shit, and most of it has either not been published, or has been published pseudonymously on fanfiction outlets across the internet. I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m really tired of starting new projects and not finishing them, or exploring a world and ending up at a dead end.

The rub is: If I write for myself, I will write forever, and never have anything to show for it. I need to put this somewhere so that other people can read it, and so I can sleep at night.

I’m not looking to make money from this, I’m not looking to try for the “best writer ever” award, I’m just trying to get words onto paper that other people can read.

And maybe you’ll enjoy those words.

And if you do, maybe you’ll even tell me you enjoyed them.

I’d like that a lot.

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  Anyhow, that’s what I’m going to try and do with this place. I do hope you’ll follow along. If you’re reading this in the future, cool. You’re one lucky duck who has a giant backlog of my writing to chew through.

I’ve never made a website, I assume it’s obvious to anyone who has that I’m an amateur at best, but I’ll give it the old college try. I’m a firm believer that if the writing is good enough, people will put up with crappy formatting. As an avid reader of the All Guardsmen Party, I can attest that the writing kept me hooked far more than the 2006-era web design.

Maybe I’ll hook a few of you along the way, maybe not. Either way, it’s going to be here for you to read if you like that sort of thing.