November 23, 2022 - Edition Ellie #2

Hi!

So I’m aware that the last Edition Ellie might have been a little basic. In fairness to me, though, I haven’t written posts like this in quite a while. I used to do things like “How to make *blank* in Little Alchemy 2” or “A *blank* themed outfit in Love Nikki” because I was bored and I quite enjoy fashion design / styling. If you look at Wonderland of My Creation as opposed to here, it’s very different. Wonderland of My Creation was… less formal. Less coherent sentences, less capitalization, less world building, in general it was slightly lower quality than this one (I mean, you can be the judge of that, but I’m definitely putting more effort into Wanderland Univerze than I did in Wonderland of My Creation. I hope it shows…).

What should I do for these posts then? I could write stories, but I wanted to make this month a little basic so I don’t have a good story. Also it’s almost the end of the month which is slightly annoying. I used to have a way tighter upload schedule (At one point, I posted every single day. I went crazy.) so I could pack a ton of stuff in each month, but now I don’t know how much of each story I’ll be able to add.

But that doesn't matter. Let’s not focus on the possibly inevitable downfall of these stories for the second time. Instead, let’s focus on emeralds themselves.

I have a big bookshelf right outside my bedroom for all the books that don’t fit on the bookshelf inside my bedroom. On that outside bookshelf, I have a ton of encyclopedias and various “reference books” (National Geographic, DK Encyclopedias, Smithsonian, How To Ace Middle/High School, etc.) and every month I go through pretty much all of them to try and learn stuff about my theme. Yes, I could easily just Google it or something, but that’s not nearly as fun. I don’t go through every book because what’s the point of looking for a mention of emeralds in the Animal Encyclopedia? I also go to the library to use the best reference book of all time (in my humble opinion): World Book. If you haven’t heard of World Book, it’s a gigantic yearly updated collection of encyclopedias. Each one is for a different letter (Some letters span two books, like C. #3 is C-Ch and #4 is Ci-Cz.) and they have sections on basically everything ever. Like, seriously. Everything. Okay, maybe not everything, but pretty close. 

Other sources that I use that aren’t from my bookshelf are Encyclopedia Britannica, sometimes the NYPL Research Catalog, legit YouTube channels, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Also I don’t use this on a regular basis, but last year I was doing a research project for school and I found that some colleges post libraries of their students’ dissertations, and yes, they’re a lot, but they have so much good information in one that it was almost worth it to read 34 pages of dense writing on the social structure of Teotihuacan the night before your presentation so that you can get an A on the project (I did, if you’re wondering. However, it was a group project, and if I put in like 65% effort, one of the members put in like maybe 30% and she also got an A, so I’m not completely sure if my grade was deserved, but hey, I’ll take it.), then they’re extremely helpful.

I couldn’t find much about emeralds, which was quite annoying (This might be my final push to go and buy the geology encyclopedia from the bookstore that I’ve been eyeing for a few months…). Apparently in jewelry making, there’s a specific shape called the Emerald, and it’s basically just a rectangle with more corners. Emeralds are considered precious stones because ~in ye olden days~ the rarity of a gemstone was attributed to its value. The term is outdated now, but jewelers still find it useful. Apparently there are a bunch of emerald deposits in Colombia, a country in South America that’s just south of the Isthmus of Panama. Just to be clear, I’m talking about Earth right now, not Wanderland Univerze.

Oh, have you ever heard of birthstones? They’re exactly what they sound like: gemstones for every month of the Western calendar year. Guess what - the May birthstone is the emerald. No, Ellie isn’t born in May because in Wanderland Univerze, May doesn’t exist. I’ll explain that at some point. The calendar and stuff is a little complicated.

Gosh, this post is a little bit long for an originally uninspired writer's block rant.