LISTLISTLIST I LOVE LISTS THIS ONE IS SPECIAL IT IS A LIST OF LISTS OF CREATIVE AND ART

Creation and Absorption Grand Catalogue

Hiya! What is this very long sheet of paper we have here? Oh, it is the CaA catalogue! Here you shall find every external link I have ever put in the aforementioned newsletter on creation and absorption, split into sections for specific kinds of creations and resources. You'll see.

All you gotta do is scroll down!

Creation

Writing Programs:

  • Scrivener - the writing program I use to write my longer stories and collections! It is paid, though it’s not overly pricey.
  • LibreOffice - a good option for if you don’t wanna be tied to a major corporation like Google or Microsoft for your document editors. It’s got a whole suite of free programs! That don’t try to connect you to the C L O U D.
  • Obsidian - A wonderful notetaking program that uses markdown. Very smooth, very wiki-able.

Books/Essays/Blogs on art:

Channels and Videos:

  • WORLDBUILDING CHANNELS: They make showcases and guides, so do check them all out: Nakari Speardane, Worldbuilding Notes, lipamanka, QuiietJay, Abstruse Skhedios, Artifexian, and Biblaridion.
  • CJ THE X! - thought I’d throw them in here because why not. if you’re not familiar, CJ makes music and video essays on philosophy, art, and beauty. has an extremely energetic and unique style of delivery.
  • Quotidian Writer - youtube writing advice can be very hit or miss, but this channel’s videos have helped me :). she uses book excerpts to support her points, which is always a good touch.
  • Worldbuilder’s Log by Artifexian - ah heck, i haven’t listed this here yet, so here goes. this series is a detailed look into what goes into building an entire world from scratch, as Artifexian makes his own. an awesome resource for planetology, climates, and geography!
  • Alien Biospheres by Biblaridion - another real good resource, though this one starts from the point where the planet is already made, and goes straight into the speculative biology side of worldbuilding.
  • Alien Anthropology: Doing without Agriculture by Biblaridion - a fascinating look into alternative forms of civilization for a very non-human alien species.
  • I’m Politely Begging You to Write Nonfiction by Writing with Andrew - A delightful video that makes a very strong case to add some creative nonfiction into your writing practice :0. Inspired me, that’s for sure!
  • How Democracy Really Dies by Hello Future Me - simultaneously a measured look into what causes totalitarianism to arise out of democracies and some good advice on worldbuilding dictatorships.

Writing Generators:

  • A flash fiction prompt generator over on itch.io. It’s a delightful little thing that isn’t just random—it seems to be exclusively prompts that real people have written!
  • writing prompt generator - a fun program from itch.io where you can generate little prompts. the abstract option is especially fun.
  • Cascade Dice - a wicked-cool framework for using a pair of dice to generate story ideas.

Misc Creative Resources:

  • A list of worldbuilding resources - what it says on the tin. a fantastic list of resources, very comprehensive, honestly. just found it a few minutes ago, lol.
  • r/conlangs resources page - a grand list of resources for if you want to get into making your own fictional languages (conlangs) for worldbuilding or otherwise!
  • Decker - an AMAZING program able to make games, slideshows, visual stories, and much more, all with a real cool pixely style!
  • If you’ve been around the writing/worldbuilding scene long enough, you probably know about picrew, but I figured I’d link this picrew character maker in case you haven’t heard of it yet. Great for visualizing your characters!
  • The Biodiversity Heritage Library - a collection of really cool, Creative Commons images that you can include in your works or just have as inspiration :).
  • The Phrontistery by Stephen Chrisomalis - A wonderful website full of weird, obscure, and lost words. Maybe you don’t use any of them in your writing, but they can be an inspiratory window into strange and historical realms.
  • Lit Theory 101 | Narrative Structure & Time by Strange Pilgrims - This essay details some good literary terms on narrative that you can add to your toolkit :)
  • Paint Chip Poetry - For you poets out there, here’s a fun little game to play with a group of friend poets! Poet friends! It’s a great way to practice free poetic creation :).

Absorption

Longform Stories:

  • Ursula K. Le Guin Works:
    • Always Coming Home - My favorite book currently!! It’s a measured, loving, and honest fictional ethnography of a far-future culture living in California.
    • The Dispossessed - A sci-fi novel about a physicist alienated from an anarchist society who travels to a capitalist society, determined to unite them.
    • The Left Hand of Darkness - A sci-fi novel that’s story mixed with anthropology. About gender and the clashing of cultures.
  • All the books in the epic fantasy world of Osten Ard by Tad Williams (including the two series Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and The Last King of Osten Ard).
    • There are seven books total, and both series are finished, and the sequel series doesn’t require you to have read the first! I like the prose, the worldbuilding is deep, and, oh, have I mentioned that the original series partially inspired A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin? Because it did. Lots of political intrigue and shocking plot beats, highly recommend.
  • Finnegans Wake by James Joyce - I still haven’t read this book yet, but just reading the first page left a huge impression on me. Do it. It is a WILD experiment with what’s possible with writing.
  • Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer - an entrancing and disturbing ecological sci-fi story where boundaries and names fall apart.
  • The Magnus Archives - Primarily a horror podcast, but it has some very interesting writing decisions that make its plot and story stick out to me. The ending especially is one I wouldn’t have guessed leading up to it, but that makes perfect sense. It’s very much a story that fits very well with its themes.
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh! - you (might) know it, you (likely don’t) love it, it’s the best-known work to come out of the ancient Sumerian/Babylonian literary tradition. It’s fascinating, there’s a ton of parallels with the Hebrew Bible, and Gilgamesh’s despair over death is poignant.

Short Stories:

  • Story of Your Life (1998) by Ted Chiang - This is the my favorite short story. It explores linguistics and physics in a heart of a story wrapped tight in symbolic cords.
  • The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (1973) by Ursula K. Le Guin - A short story that’s more challenge to the reader than a story. A challenge about imagining utopia and our expectations of how it would actually work. Treat it like a one-way dialogue.
  • The Woman Who Went to Hell (c. 1885) by Patrick Minahan - FASCINATING! This is a wild folk tale from Ireland that mayyy be a very late evolution of the journey-to-the-underworld myth seen in so much of ancient mediterranean and near-east literature. Or maybe it’s its own thing, but whatever it is, it’s awesome.
  • Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (c. 1900 BCE) by an unknown author - Also FASCINATING! An ancient Egyptian story about some guy who tells his tale of being stranded on an island with a giant snake god. You have to read it, and read it all the way through.
  • The Library of Babel (1941) by Jorge Luis Borges - More worldbuilding than story, but that does not lessen it any. A thought experiment of what a world would be like if it was just… a giant library. Explores how people tend to try extracting meaning from the random world.
  • The Egg and the Chicken (1960s) by Clarice Lispector - one of those foundational sort of short stories that i read and was changed, much like most any Le Guin work. dreamlike, wandering, yet always trained square on the theme… which, funnily enough, isn’t even clear. isn’t that awesome?

Poetry:

Literary Magazines:

  • Strange Pilgrims - Publishes weird short stories, essays, and flash pieces.
  • ONLY POEMS - Publishes, well, poems. This one isn’t new per se, but did recently start a Substack.
  • Fang & Flower - Dedicated to gothic literature!
  • The Alchemist's Cabin - Wants raw, experimental, personal works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Films:

  • Stice’s Satyricon (2021) - A WILD film! It takes a lot for stuff to make me gape at its strangeness, and this was most definitely a lot. Shows just what you can do with art!
  • The Wolf House (2018) - I put this at the top because it is the most creatively-presented moving picture anything I’ve ever seen. It’s ostensibly a stop-motion animation, but one done through paint and weird sculpture. And its themes are poignant: colonialism, generations of abuse, parenting, among others.
  • Yellow Submarine (1968) - another wild film, but one with very different vibes. ‘Tis a Beatles animated film where they visit a surreal world and sing a bunch of songs. It’s awesome! Reminded me a fair bit of Fantastic Planet (1973) at some points.
  • 9 (2009) - an animated movie from my childhood. It’s about a bunch of puppets trying to make it in a post-apocalyptic world, rife with symbolism, well-crafted all around. Also, it was released on 9/9/2009, which is fun.
  • Video Diary of a Lost Girl (2012) - a strange film about succubi who suck the souls out of the men they make love with. There are silent films, resurrection, and a fair bit of blood magic. Oh, and it’s very low-budget, which is always fun!
  • The Leather Boys (1964) - wow, this film is not only historic (it broke several conventions against explicitly gay characters in film from the time), it is just simply good. the love triangle hurts my heart so much, but it’s very compelling, and that ENDING, whew. love a movie that leaves me and my friends discussing for an hour afterwards.
  • Un Chien Andalou (1929) - speaking of a film sparking discussion… well, there are so many ways you could discuss this. it’s a surreal film that seems to have no central meaning or consistent plot. but things sure do happen. you have to see it to understand.
  • Mind Game (2004) - WOW! like, WOW! this animated movie shot to the top of my favorites list because of its sheer creativity, fablelike nature, and messaging. it’s inspiring, it makes you feel good about life, it’s fuckin awesome, man.

Videos:

Art Books:

  • Ars Goetica - WOW. I mean... WOW! A collection of beautiful illustrations of various demons.

Music:

  • My partner's Camp Boneyard 4 set! - a yearly internet concert thing hosted by underscores’ underscord. and my partner played in it this year!

Games and gamelikes:

  • Slay the Princess - In case you’re not familiar with this game, it’s one of my favorites, and it has some fantastic writing and story. You kinda must play it to experience it. Very inspiring.
  • Centoquest by Bibliomancer - A FANTASTIC text adventure game where you explore a house and make a poem from bits and pieces of writing scattered about.
  • Frantic Fanfic - a creative writing party game to either have dumb fun with or practice some writing on the fly with friends!
  • This little game/story/thing called void is an interesting use of the tool Twine, with themes of the divine and of being.

They sure are art!:

  • The Diaries of Virginia Woolf! - A fascinating look into a wonderful writer whose books, I’ve heard, are some of the best of the 20th century (you can bet I’ll be listing them here when I’ve gotten around to reading them).
  • The debate between sheep and grain - Now here’s something from leftfield! This is an ancient cuneiform piece of writing that was apparently part of a whole genre of inanimate-objects-dissing-each-other. I think this could be a delightful thing to inspire weird literary traditions for worldbuilding.
  • unlws - this one’s wild. it’s a nonlinear conlang that bends and experiments with what written language can do. very inspiring if you’re interested in strange or alien conlangs.
  • Vivian Maier's Photography - a wonderful photography collection from the 1950s and beyond. were taken by a woman just being happy dabbling in photography, with no visions of releasing her work ever. they were discovered after her death.

OTHER

Search Tools:

  • An open-source stuff look-up tool from Creative Commons. I think you should use it for whatever articles/videos/games you make; or even better, make your own assets!!
  • Marginalia Search - a great alternative to the big company search engines. focused on the small and obscure internet.

Research:

Misc Things: