Easter Eggs/Guilty Pleasures

[plasticroyal]

Are there any elements or aspects of your world building that you've included as a bit of an easter egg or any that are a guilty pleasure?

I know it can be really tempting to include things you think others might find overdone or silly but they can be really fun too! As always, it's the way they're written that dictates their success.

In my current WIP, I have a breed or large, rideable cats (closer to lions/jaguars than house cats) that are very common among the nobility. At first I thought the idea sounded too silly but I fell in love with it and it's here to stay.

So, what are yours?

 

[Vaporo]

As part of my world building, there is a powerful weapon called "Barskular." To most people, it appears to be an unremarkable sledgehammer. I had actually originally added it as a kind of joke with myself. In middle school, I had make a video for class that involved a joke with a sledgehammer. I had thought the joke wasreally funny at the time, but looking back, well... Thinking back on my horrible joke, I added the hammer to my world building as an ambiguously powerful weapon that would show up from time to time throughout history. It was never intended to be more than a one-off chuckle with myself. However, fast forward a few years and that hammer has evolved to have destroyed twelve gods.

 

[Nomadica]

In my current WIP, I have a breed or large, rideable cats (closer to lions/jaguars than house cats) that are very common among the nobility. At first I thought the idea sounded too silly but I fell in love with it and it's here to stay.

I like it, though IRL I wouldn't want to be that much smaller than any of the cats I've had.

 

[plasticroyal]

It was never intended to be more than a one-off chuckle with myself. However, fast forward a few years and that hammer has evolved to have destroyed twelve gods.

I love the mystery behind it (in the context of the story) - have you explored the weapon's history?

No no I don't think that would bode well for us Nomadica haha and thanks

 

[Aurora]

No easter eggs for me as I'm still creating my world but yours sounds neat with giant cats.

 

[Malik]

Spoiler: MINOR SERIES SUBPLOT AND EASTER EGG

There's a character in my series who, unbeknownst to him, has a magical shield, just a plain wooden jobbie that's been in his family for generations, with a charm on it that makes anyone he's fighting attack someone else that he's fighting beside. The shield has never once been hit except incidentally; it's like a hundred years old and still in near-perfect shape, which is one of the running jokes of the series: he keeps the shield oiled and hand-rubbed and absolutely gorgeous. The magic doesn't work if he's alone, of course, but the charm is insanely handy on the battlefield. He becomes the Wedge Antilles of the whole series without knowing exactly how until right near the end. He just walks through battlefields whacking people and never getting attacked. He jokes that he's invisible, but he's a huge burly guy.

In the last book, he discovers the charm, and gives the shield to his best friend, whom he really wants to see survive the cataclysmic war that's brewing. Knowing that his best friend has the shield, he charges into the final battle beside him.

 

[plasticroyal]

Malik that sounds really cool, gotta love a bit of fluff when it comes to magical objects in fantasy, they're always fun to play with. Does he find out who crafted the shield?

And thank you Aurora, any posts on here about your world yet?

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

The thirty cats and three kittens in my current story are all named after my favourite couples from anime/manga/video games, and the kittens are named after Cloud and Tifa [of Final Fantasy VII fame]'s adopted children Marlene and Denzel, as well as Nagisa and Tomoya [of Clannad fame]'s daughter Ushio. Their names are so far never mentioned, but I might list them in the author's note just for fun or something.

 

[Crimstone629]

I haven't yet put in any easter eggs for my world, having just started writing the story, but these all sound great! The stories behind them are cool and the ideas themselves are really interesting, in my opinion.

 

[Simpson17866]

I realized recently that I need to tone down the references (pop culture and otherwise) in my WIP. Every other story I've written, the references are quick Easter Eggs that flow naturally in the narrative, but my WIP spells all of them out over the course of entire paragraphs.

I will need to spend a bit more words on making my combination of "Richmond is a Hard Road to Travel" and The Dresden Files plot-relevant, but even that one can be trimmed a bit, and none of the others need to be anywhere near as long as they are now.

 

[Malik]

Does he find out who crafted the shield?

He does.

Spoiler: MORE SPOILER ABOUT THE SAME SPOILER

In the last book he learns about the history of the shield and how the charm got laid on it, and it explains why every member of his family who bore it has lived through every single battle, for generations.

 

[Tort76]

My one WIP has a Balrog, but after much searching it might be easier to switch to something less copyrighted. I put references all over my work to pop culture from the 80's to now. Most mean something to me or my character.


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[TheCrystallineEntity]

^You could have a Balfrog, as a reference to Cave Story, though that might be copyrighted, too.

 

[Steerpike]

A name, like "Balrog," can't be protected by copyright. It is possible for there to be trademark protection in the name, and there are a couple of trademark registrations for the name for toy action figures, figurines, and the like, but a general appearance of a Balrog in a story isn't likely to implicate trademark concerns.

The Balrog, as an overall character, could potentially have some copyright protection associated with it, but that would only apply to the extent you're lifting the entire Balrog from Tolkien's work rather than simply using the name for a different sort of monster.

 

[pmmg]

I am not sure that some of the Easter eggs people are discussing above really count as Easter eggs, cause I think they have to be more than just known to the author to apply. I wonder if these might fall into the category of little darlings.

If the author is bringing into their stories things that are meaningful to themselves, while there might be a guilty pleasure felt at bringing them in, I have to question if they are really different than the normal creative process. Ideas have to spring from somewhere.

Generally, I don't like Easter eggs in stuff, cause when I recognize them, they take me out of the immersion experience, and I wish sometimes more self control was employed. But, that is probably just me. Seems many people like them (and, honestly, I have liked a few I have seen.)

 

[pmmg]

The Balrog is a difficult one. I am pretty sure that it is a creature made up by Mr. Tolkien and not a borrowed creature from a different mythical or fantastic source. It is, though, essentially a demon and demon's of a similar appearance would not seem a stretch to envision. For myself, I would not use a Balrog. But as I have seen elsewhere on the board, if you are writing you are making up things that are Balrog's why call them something else. Its a tricky question. Sometimes, I think, you do have to make the effort and find a different name for things.

 

[Mytherea]

Dunno if it counts as an easter egg, per say, but in my last book, an urban fantasy, I have a PoV character (a police detective and a casual gamer) bitten by what he thinks is a werewolf. He then spends the full moon tied to his defunct radiator, playing Skyrim on his Xbox (my head-cannon has him avoiding the Companions quest-line, for obvious reasons). Though he finds out later there's no such thing as werewolves, there are draugar, 'cept they look (to him at least) pretty much human, not like Skyrim's blue-eyed zombies. Not sure if I'm going to include it in book two (if I ever write book two), but I've had fun playing with the idea that he calls the four-hundred-year-old draugr assassin a norse mummy, which only serves to mildly annoys the assassin, since he doesn't get the reference. At this point, I almost feel I have to lampshade it, at least a little, since most of those who're familiar with draugar only know the Skyrim interpretation.

I have one short story that's just a walking, talking collection of references and nods to every sci-fi TV show I could think of, though most are really obscure (like, you'd have to have seen that one Star Trek: The Next Generation episode to get the reference of a character named "Gloria, from Cleveland"). I don't usually have easter eggs that reference other stuff I've written, though as a reader, I find it fun when a writer does include nods to their own work. It makes their stories easily re-readable, since every time I read, I find a new reference and I feel this little spurt of triumph at finding a new one. Like, "Hah! I got that! I totally got that!"

 

[Aurora]

And thank you Aurora, any posts on here about your world yet?

Just saw this. No easter eggs in my world, sorry.