I Am A Worldaboo

From a very young age, I have been very interested and curious about different cultures around the world.

Some of the toys I used to play with were electronic world maps that taught you about different countries.

I also used to play a computer game called Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

I mostly just played it for the sandbox mode where you "traveled" for fun, and learned words and phrases in different languages.

As a teenager, I went through an "international food" phase where I would only eat foods from abroad...only to eventually realize that the "international foods" I had been eating all this time were Americanized versions.

When I first got a hold of that mythology book in the art studio I used to go to on Saturdays, this proved to be a gateway into the world of mythology...thus igniting a multicultural renaissance in me.

In college, I joined several cultural student clubs.

This is actually how I met my cohort friends, whom I still text regularly and meet in person on occasion.

While I was in college, I had an idea for a fantasy universe inspired by the myths and legends of cultures all over the world.

During quarantine in 2020, I had plenty of time on my hands...along with lots of drawing material.

Thus, my idea eventually blossomed into a multicultural fantasy epic, which I call Mythika.

I have always had a passion for drawing.

In my adolescent years, this included creating cartoon characters (mostly female, since most of my friends have been female throughout my social history).

Eventually, this morphed into an international-themed collection of female characters representing different countries in the world.

This character compilation was called World Women.

Eventually, at the start of 2022 (coincidentally, as the Winter Olympics were happening), I decided to flesh out my World Women characters and write an entire cartoon universe for them.

I figured that I needed some way to represent their different countries without having to compel myself to reference current events and memes.

Thus, I decided to set their "current year" in the future (specifically, about half a century in the future from when this post comes out; not so far in the future that it looks like a science fiction movie).

This decision also serves to illustrate how cultures are constantly adapting and never stuck in the past.

This makes World Women my answer to the "world of tomorrow" trope.

This website, Mythology Worlds, is another way I showcase my interest in different cultures in the world to a wider audience.

After quite a bit of thought, I have come up with a term for someone like me whose passion is cultures all over the world.

I thought of the term "weeaboo" used to refer to someone who is overly obsessed with Japan and Japanese culture, then saw how the "-aboo" part was combined with different words to refer to obsessed interests in other topics (usually cultural).

With this in mind, my new term for someone who loves cultures around the world as much as I do is...

Worldaboo

P.S. You can check out my postings from my Mythika and World Women cartoon universes on my social media, by scrolling down to the bottom, and clicking on the Facebook and Instagram buttons to view my accounts.