another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!
(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.
actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)
a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.
deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.
the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.
and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.
however.
you do have to know which one you're doing.
the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).
and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.
the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.
the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.
point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.
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Being in the Pennyworth fandom will have you googling shit like "How to fortify an umbrella against acid rain" to try and give a smidge of credibility to the storyline you're plotting.
Meanwhile, the official writers are just giving interviews like, "Yeah, the mad cultists who got turned into super weapons by a drug activated by a popular song sung by Alfred Pennyworth's pop star girlfriend survived the nuclear bomb that got dropped on London, so now there are these irradiated mutant cultists cannibals roaming the streets of London who go ballistic for 70s pop ballads. What do you mean, 'how did we plan to resolve that?'"
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yes, yes i know edgeworth’s big wet eyes and loser boy personality have captivated us all, but listen. listen.
phoenix wright
phoenix “genuinely unable to reconcile the girl on the stand with the girl he dated for eight months, a cognitive dissonance so profound it’s ultimately explained by them being literally two different people, but which he first sits with for five years and does not talk about at any point to anyone” wright
phoenix “don’t mention that name to me. i don’t want to talk about it. i don’t want to think about it. i am just going to keep myself in this state of perpetual crisis mode focus on other people’s problems until eventually i die and get to hang out with mia on the astral plane and never have to deal with any of these emotions ever again” wright
phoenix “overnight loses his career and reputation and sense of identity while gaining an adopted, probably pretty traumatized eight-year-old daughter, and rather than leaning on his friends for help, or getting therapy, or taking any time to process any of this, he *checks notes* spends seven years dedicating all his free time and energy to investigating the weird fucking circumstances around it and maintains a friendship with the guy he suspects was behind it all” wright
phoenix "runs across a burning bridge and falls through it, half a day after the game establishes that he is terrified of heights, because his friend is on the other side of that bridge" wright
phoenix “i sure felt surprised. maybe i had my poker face on” wright
phoenix “looking back on it that was actually a pretty dark period in my life” wright
phoenix “don’t ask me how i got started. i don’t remember” wright
phoenix “only you stood still, your eyes calmly watching” wright
phoenix “sometimes, life just sucks” wright
just
phoenix wright
crunchiest man in the world
and all i wanna do is chew and chew and chew on him
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Obsessively reading everything in game by and about Gortash and the dude is
On a philosophical trajectory that ends in immortality thru technology / the machine
Doesn't have an original bone in his body, but he can backwards engineer anything
Halfway to being a decent scientist but doesn't have the education and is deeply impatient
Overconfident in the veracity of his own results and conclusions
Accurately predicted that the brain would metamorphose and become more difficult to control and then did nothing about it
Outsources his propaganda / arts and humanities
Charming, but he got there in a Pavlovian way (learned from trial and error and probably doesn't consciously know how he does it)
Vindictive af (learned / reinforced)
Darwinian (in the worst way)
Sociopathic, obviously, but extremely Rationalist about it
Never asks questions he doesn't know the answer to and probably thinks this makes him sound more authoritative
Completely incompetent as a strategist (but doesn't know it)
Not nearly as narcissistic / full of himself as he pretends to be
Thinks what he wants is praise but it's never enough because it's not actually what he wants (he wants to be wanted)
Bane makes him feel wanted (conditionally)
Durge made him feel wanted (unconditionally)
Understands intellectually that Durge got ambushed, but he feels abandoned
See also: thematic parallels between Gortash and
Silouv Yali (the Adamantine Forge & the construct Grym)
Oliver (in the shadow-cursed lands)
Astarion and Gale, obviously
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