#your worldbuilding is bland

[ignus-moth]

ok so i was thinking about the trope of being sorted into different groups and stuff in media, (those dystopia books, fantasy based on element stuff, the owl house, guilds/classes in games, harry potter) and… what the hell do the houses in harry potter do except draw the line between good and bad?? putting a kid not doing so well with a bunch of other kids that are bullies or not doing so well IS A BAD IDEA

you know what would have been way more interesting?

HOUSES BASED ON THE WAND CORES

unicorn, dragon, pheonix (common, uncommon, rare). but that is only 3, so maybe add in kraken scales (id add that between uncommon and rare) or something so it’s four.

SO harry can still be special boy, phoenix core, but there should be drawbacks and different pros and cons of the cores so it’s not super unbalanced.

Unicorn cores maybe have a better time with aim and control, and as such is good with spells that are ranged or need precision. However the precision means powerful spells are more difficult to cast and requires more practice. Maybe they take an extra class about how to learn and practice spells specifically for unicorn cores.

Dragon cores are more powerful in short bursts, like explosions and such, so prolonged spells are more difficult so require more attention and endurance. The short explosions of energy means they are better for straight combat. The easiest to get used to, despite being the second most common. They have a class for practicing spell endurance.

Kraken cores work best when manipulating large physical objects and mass. Levitation, moving things around, and manipulating shape is easiest. Manipulating anything organic is much more difficult to learn, but ultimately easier. Manipulating the mind is just as hard as usual. Has an extra class about healing, as they are the best healers.

Phoenix cores are incredibly difficult to use, not just skill-wise but mentally. The core stores magic the best but humans are squishy and can’t take that magic very well. It is more powerful but, if used too much, can seriously damage the brain with concussion-like symptoms. It is easiest to loose control with this core and hurt people, so they have a few extra classes on how to control this. Phoenix core spell casters must see a doctor and therapist once a month, and again if there is any incident.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I have a big google doc thing where I keep track of media and stuff (putting everything in loosely ranked categories), which is mostly just for my own reference so I know what tv shows I've already seen before, etc. and I never really look back through it, typically just a quick "okay, watched two movie in the past 8 months, need to quickly slap them somewhere in the lists. okay. done. save document. exit". But today I was actually reading through some of the old notes and there are like... MULTIPLE places where my comment is basically "It would have been good if it were about elves" or "I wish there was a fantasy show made in this same style" or "It's well made, but I just keep thinking about how I would like it more if everyone was an elf or was in old 1700s costumes" or etc like...... lol.... Most biased media ranking system on earth blatantly made by someone with an extremely hyperspecific range of narrow interests. It'd be like if a food reviewer only had 5 foods they actually liked, so they'd just go to a pizza place and be like "eh, the pizza was okay, but I just think it would be better if it was cereal instead. :/ ...2 out of 10"

[themanwhomadeamonster]

me reminding dd players that so much of the worldbuilding and lore is inferred from npc dialogue and their routines and that you really should be paying attention to what anyone and everyone has to say because the series design intentionally wants you to look out for these things rather than just drop it on your lap and that's not necessarily a design flaw that's just their way of storytelling to line up with the game's thesis

[maaaxx]

I have two more wips that I do not have time for rotating in my brain like a chicken

One is a modern au (im sorry but I love those) where lu ten is still alive and its pretty stereotypical but its how i want it to be and yeah

One is an au where ozai makes an attempt to be a good father (hes not perfect and actually royally fucks up zuko and azula still but he does care about them and love them and stuff)

Anywho you guys should tell me which of these you'd be more interested in

[sweetheartsoldier]

Tired of stories where the author worldbuilds a whole religion only to chicken out at the last moment by making the main character a skeptic. You mean to tell me that there’s all this richness in lore and culture, but you’ve trapped me with the one person in this society who doesn’t care about it? So bland. I could meet an agnostic easily enough by walking down the street, but your story is my one chance to hear the perspective of someone who follows whatever religion you’ve contrived. You made this whole world; convince me that your character really is from there.

[catcatb0y]

I'm procrastinating fuck

[spookygibberish]

Last year I listened to a worldbuilding podcast that was very queercore hopepunk (2/3 of the hosts were straight...) and I have kind of come to detest the ideology, as well as all these nitty little microgenres. the podcast itself was not bad per say, but it was so utterly bland and the kind of writing advice that almost seems to discourage people from making challenging or transgressive art via prioritization of escapism as the ultimate goal for a fantasy work + the repeated adage that "realism is no excuse". You can set out to make a cozy, fluffy, fantasy world where people never behave in evil ways, are ever selfish or cruel, and never fight over resources and ideology, but if your love for human beings is conditional on human behavior only ever being perfect and good all the time then idk if you actually have much love for human beings at all. it's the kind of advice that encourages easily digestible fluff over all, and if you actually internalize it your never going to get out of it the power to write something like The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness, or Parable of the Sower. is all.

[werewolfetone]

My demands for the next big thinly veiled british history ripoff high fantasy tv show that gets popular after hotd inevitably ends:

Some sort of wales equivalent and some sort of ireland equivalent in the worldbuilding. I'm sick of worldbuilding where the main country is Just England and maybe some hint of scotland if the authors are feeling goofy... if you're going to make me sit through your world which is obviously just mediaeval britain with the labels filed off I am NOT also watching you pretend like england is the only place the exists again, especially since acting like british history would be even kinda the same without wales or ireland is ridiculous

More accent diversity. once again, there are other places that are not england that exist in the world. and more language diversity I'm not having the whole everyone ever speaks ~common~ shite again

More racial and religious diversity. put black people in there. if the sole significant religion is some sort of bland protestant xianity with catholic aesthetics again I'm killing the hostages

Codpieces

Those slut breeches they wore in like the 1500s that were like the puffier version of short shorts

Lesbian sex onscreen to make up for the fact that I don't think we're getting it in hotd

Ok that's it actually I can't think of anything else

[wanderingswampbeast]

Long Post: Why I Don’t Like The Drow

I’ve been ranting about this to a friend on discord (a lot of points I make will come from him) but I’ve finally figured out what my issue with the drow is outside of inherently evil groups being dumb.

The drow are boring. Drow lore is less of a dive into a unique culture and more of a list of fucked up things they do. Like, I cannot name a single interesting aspect of typical drow society that does not directly involve murder, sexism, or slavery, or Lolth. And even then, most of those things are written about in an incredibly bland fashion with them.

The Drow don’t really have much depth to them, and are just kind of evil for evil’s sake (or “because Lolth said so”). They do slavery, but the only real purpose of doing slavery for them is “because Lolth said so”. It isn’t for cheap labor, it’s to be more evil. They betray each other purely because that’s what evil people do. They’re misandrist, not for any real societal reason, but because Lolth hates men. There’s none of what would make slavery an interesting topic or story element, no justification for why they should be allowed to commit one of the worst injustices possible, no real economic reason for it. They just do it because Lolth says they should, and from a writing perspective it hammers home the fact that they’re evil. They aren’t evil because they enslave and murder, they enslave and murder because they’re evil, if that makes any sense.

Them being written as comically evil as they are also hurts them from a worldbuilding perspective. They’re so reliant on slaves for menial labor that the lower class of their society struggle to get jobs. Drow culture so obsessed with betrayal and dumbass house wars that even when actively under attack from the outside they sabotage each other. They’re so decadent that their buildings are held up with magic and semi regularly collapse when a spell fails. To put it bluntly, drow society feels like one that should have collapsed in a few centuries, which, funnily enough, is way longer than D&D elves live.

Their culture being so monolithic also makes writing anything about them difficult. Every drow antagonist is going to have near identical motivations, methods, and ideologies as every other drow antagonist. Every drow protagonist is going to ultimately feel very similar to Drizzt, because leaving their fucked up society to become a do-gooder is such a common backstory element that they added a whole extra god just for doing that. In fact, you can divide 90% of drow characters from any official materials into these categories:

Manservant

Ambitious male, usually a wizard (5 bucks says he has long hair and a widow’s peak)

Dommy Mommy Warcrime Woman

Drizzt Do’Urden or one of his many duplicates

Self-loathing and/or resentful Drider

And finally, their existence almost purely to be humanoid enemies you can fight at nearly any levels is just kind of lazy. This is a problem that I have with the “evil races” of a lot of fantasy but having a group that’s evil by birth just feels like an excuse to not have to write actual motivations for your antagonists. It’s the difference between “go attack this camp of soldiers because they’re part of the SkullMurder army and their general wants to use our land to build a dread fortress” vs “go attack this camp of soldiers specifically because they’re drow/goblins/orcs/the dreaded peepee-poopoo folk”. Using stuff like this just feels like an excuse to not have to write an actual antagonist since it comes pre-written in the group’s lore. This has the side effect of whenever such a group is the antagonist of the plot, the players or audience know near exactly what to expect. The orc is here to conquer, the goblin is here to steal, and the drow is here to enslave or do some dark ritual.

I’ve legitimately heard people say “well if XYZ can’t be inherently evil anymore, who will we use as bad guys?” It’s very simple: whoever the fuck we want. Write an evil queen, or a scheming wizard, or an underground slave trade network. For God’s sake, anyone can be evil, you don’t need to tie that to a specific ethnic group and write it as “they’re just like that”. Write an actual character for your antagonist.

[mr-damian-s-power]

Sorry I did not mean for this to be this long.

I have two, both relating to the worldbuilding. This one is about how the visual aspect fails and the other is the written aspect, but they boil down to this: The Boiling Isles is the most bland, boring ass ‘dark’ fantasy world I’ve ever seen.

First off, even in the background it never really feels like fantasy world, maybe just a historic district with Halloween decorations.

The woods are just regular woods in autumn, Bonesborough is just a standard medieval/renaissance town with some eye and teeth iconography. The only time I felt we were in actual fantasy world was that brief scene in Latissa, the buildings look like they’re made of flesh, there’s pustules acting as street lights, the overview shots are far more natural and feel like they belong in the environment. The colors are dark yet vibrant, and it gives off a spooky, kind of Halloween-Town feel. I love that!

But we literally spend 98% of the time in Bonesborough, whose colors are predominantly shades of muted blues, grays and whites, and overall it feels too empty and tidy, like it’s not really a place where people have lived and worked for centuries at the very least. Yeah it has doors with eyes on them or roof races in the shape of teeth, but imho, they showed that one shot in the first episode and never lived up to it again, only harking back on it slightly for occasional ‘character observing the area’ shots.

Honestly I thought the Collector-controlled Isles were far prettier and more fantastical. Part of this I think is due to the artstyle, especially with the character design, bold, vibrant colors work better. And a lot of scenes just have such cold, impersonalable backgrounds. They don’t even have to be some eye-bleeding color explosion, just…not gray. There are some cartoons that have gray and muted backgrounds but they work with their art style.

And the woods aren’t much better. We seemingly only get ‘oh right, dangerous fantasy world would have scary woods’ when it’s plot convenient, but otherwise? It’s just more muted colors in a honestly pretty sparse forest. They apparently originally wanted far darker colors but it melted together too much so they opted for ‘bloody red’. I’m sorry but go look at the woods and tell me in what world is that a crimson color?

I know there’s a lot of crap that goes on behind the scenes and that with backgrounds and environments it’s especially difficult because you don’t want to muddy it up or distract the audience but I think that Latissa is a good example of how to do it right, it’s simple yet feels like it’s it’s own place with history and environment. Just a few bolder colors, make it more cramped and claustrophobic, that kind of thing.

The other thing with the environmental storytelling part of it is Dana took inspiration from Heirymonous Bosch’s paintings of Hell and illuminated manuscripts, and I just don’t get the feeling at all with the Isles we see for the majority of the show.

The second of far more agregous in my mind.

It’s seemingly stuck in the middle of wanting to be ‘like Earth but with magic’ and ‘ooh look at how different and inhospitable it is!’ For a world that’s supposed to be filled with monsters that will kill you for breathing and just stepping outside is risky to your life, the characters seem able to galavant about both civilization and wilderness without a care.

We get all these little asides in the first season about how they have boiling rain, skin-eating fairies, etc, but pretty much never factor into the story, and when they do, it’s either easily brushed off or used in the stupidest way. *coughBelossdeathcough* We have characters mock Luz and say she’s not strong enough to handle it, and even ignoring any Mary-Sue claims Camilla seemed to have no trouble with the more dangerous Collector Isles when she had nothing but a bat. When taking Luz’s OPness with sticky-note magic, it really neuters the dangers of the Isles, because it seems that half of the problems can be solved by being physically strong or clever with no magic required.

I am more forgiving of this, but the magic, especially near the end, went kinda off the rails in some aspects in power scaling, but also didn’t really stuck to the cooler concepts of that.

Abominations went from just creating and controlling golems to being able to craft anything with the material, yet we don’t get to see anything really big or flashy or even practical, Darius’s goo-form appears twice, making weapons or shields only happens a handful of times and it’s very quick and forgotten about(imagine if Amity went full on Mecha with abomination goo in the finale).

Bard magic can do completely OP things like control someone’s body like a puppet or change the molecular structure of something(put a pin in that) yet in the finale Raine just keeps flicking their bow across the strings to send out energy blasts and doesn’t use it to try and control things and sabotage Belos.

Illusion magic is able to dip into Oracle magic a bit and see memories, we even get a shot of Gus seeing Belos’s entire backstory yet this is never used or mentioned outside of Gus knowing Hunters a grimwalker. Even without that we see Gus can craft gigantic, in-depth illusions that can confuse and pyschologucally harm people, yet he never does this after Labyrinth Runners.

Plant magic, which in a fantasy world like the Isles would mean a number of poisons, toxins, and man-eating plants are at your disposal, and Willow’s only move is…vines. Granted, vines that seem indestructible and are able to take down things that likely wouldn’t be vulnerable to vines, but still…vines. (Which are also green despite the plant color of the Isles being red and it could e been a cool little aside for both Luz and the audience having to get used to seeing red for plants but oh well)

And the others…we don’t care about. The closet one is potions that seem to cover a wide variety of magic types(scrying potion-Oracle, Eda’s potions-Healing)and don’t need magic to do but whatever, why have Eda use her Potions upbringing to supplement her lack of magic when she can turn into a harpy and fly and..that’s kinda it.

Magic also supplements as variety of things, such as technology, and honestly? Not the biggest fan of how that was used just to give our quirky teen protagonists phones and computers-that they don’t even use that often so I don’t get why they were necessary except for ‘haha that Instagram right? Sooo relatable!’ It’s there just for asides and making the world confusing. Like how we can seen scrolls being used in Thems the Breaks, 30 years prior. Yet they seem to be only used for Penstagram, which also apparently only got updated to 2.0 during the second season, so what were they being used for before? And why is Penstagram so established if it’s that new and scrolls were used for other things before? I mean, as background jokes they used searching up disinformation and conspiracy theories and had characters not recognize any media site or conspiracy theories when using the Internet, so it might be a case of wanting their cake and eating it too.

Which is another issue that I can’t stand in isekai/other world type media. Regular human/person growing up it’s a regular human is able to reconfirm e the fantasy version of something, yet their mythical friends can’t understand that a car is like their horseless carriage.

Luz can catch on to the fact that scrolls and crystal balls are just our phones, computers and televisions but from a Halloween display, yet the witches can’t even tell what a shoe is (when they are 99% humans with pointy ears), or when one was made of mud. They refuse to accept animals or concepts that have the most basic information and dismiss Luz, like seriously, how hard is it to figure out what a paper clip is? Or that opposum are real when you know that animals like raccoons exist? Or the most annoying, there is a thing called a crow phone. We hear them call them ‘crow phones’ several times. But when Amity went to Willow for help about Luz? ‘I don’t know what this…pho-oo-on is?’

It’s done only for jokes and yeah it’s not supposed to be taken seriously but all it does is make the witches and demons seem incredibly stupid. Seriously Belos probably didn’t have to put that much effort into his campaign because apparently the residents of the Boiling Isles will accept literally anything at face value(didn’t even use that to make a point on propaganda smh).

This extends beyond the witches’ mental capacity and into ‘what exactly is this world?’ They don’t have technology above some steampunk blimps and automata, except for when they do because how else do they have modern western clothes like t-shirts and sweats? You can’t even say ‘oh it came in through a trash slug’ because Eda can literally customize and order t-shirts. In the literally the same episode, we see witches referring to the ‘four humors of the Titan’, which many people took as an idea that they have very limited medical and scientific knowledge, like no further than the 1600’s…only for Raine to be like ‘I changed its molecular structure!’ And it’s like what? How do you know what molecules are, or how to use your magic to change them in a way that just improves taste? You guys can’t figure out what a cheese grater is but you know about molecular properties?

Honestly I’d rather have a fantasy world just have phones and cars but they run on magic than this, because at least I don’t have to wonder how they know all these common modern ideas yet can’t figure out an umbrella even when someone tells them point blank.

Yeah, maybe it’ll be harder to explain an umbrella, but it’s not like the world tries to make any sense with he boiling rain thing. In fact, pretty much everything in the natural world in the show doesn’t make any sense because right when you can excuse it as ‘total fantasy, rule of cool’ it throws in something that kinda ruins it. In the case of the boiling rain, that’s not how boiling water works at all. I saw someone suggest it just being ‘stomach acid’ from all the titans’ giblets leaking into the sea, but even if we do that ‘it’s magic’ explanation of clouds heating the water up before it rains, it still has the thing of ‘if this is such a common thing, than why is anything vulnerable to it?’ Like the flora evolved and grew from the Titan, yet it doesn’t have natural protections against the rain? That leaf that Eda, Raine and King use in the finale seems to hold up fine so why isn’t all flora like this, or at least have it be part of their life cycle? On further note, why isn’t every building infused with a rain protection spell? Why isn’t there building material made to be rain resistant? Why does Eda have that magic barrier umbrella when we’re first introduced to it and never see it again. In fact, why isn’t that a thing? They have mass-produced clothing merch and stress toys yet they can’t make a push-to-activate protection spell for commercial use? It would’ve been cool to see how witches adapted and changed to the hostile environment, and far better than ‘lol like our smartphones’.

The ‘because magic’ excuse is also lame because it doesn’t even go that far or use it for crazy environments. Like the Titan is the size of Vermont, which is huge for a living being, but it is so tiny in the show. Apparently the Titan is based off of ‘the Earth is a corpse’ motif in several real mythologies but those corpses are far, far bigger, so big you can’t even recognize that it is a body. Yet several times characters get across the isles in minimal time, covering distances that shouldn’t be possible-not just in air, but on foot too. How did King and Steve get around the entire Titan in a motorcycle(even though the most advanced vehicles were steampunk airships) on dirt and cobblestone roads? How can something the size of Vermont(for reference, that’s about the size of Sardinia and Sicily and twice the size of Jamaica)be viewed in its entirety from a bird’s eye view and close enough off-shore that individual buildings can be seen? Or that it’s big enough to sustain several different biomes that are alluded to(but never seen)including a desert?

Then in the finale it’s big enough to reach into space from a prone position…yet we also see that the world is a globe. So these creatures, who were numerous and loved food, lived on a planet that was so small compared to them that they could reach into space by laying g flat and extending their arms straight up. This would’ve been a great spot for pure ‘because magic’, like the entire realm is a giant flat plane that eventually just falls off into nothingness and above the sky is like celestial heavens, but apparently not!

Also despite the fact that earlier it was stated that all landmass is made up of Titan carcasses there apparently was regular land just off shore, so close that the Titan is nearly touching it. Which from how much of the isles can be seen from just off-shore makes you wonder how nobody ever noticed that land or went over there.

There’s a lot of other things, like how abominations was said to be a good career path yet we don’t see evidence of that outside of Blight Industries which seems to be very exclusive, or that the ‘authoritarian’ government is completely laughable, but overall the isles feel like a bunch of people say around, said ‘hey wouldn’t it be cool if?’ And then added it in without any thought. But then both the show and fandom act like every aspect is some never-before-seen, not-like-other-shows star when it can’t even decide on its tone for the main setting.

You know, I was talking about this issue with a friend not too long ago. The Demon Realm loses its 'edge'. When it's introduced, they wanted to make it out like it's a dangerous place to live. There are vicious monsters around every corner, vegetables run away from being eaten, people have no qualms with harming or even killing children. Bump doesn't step in to stop Boscha from bullying Luz because it 'wasn't fatal' or something. So they clearly want to set this place up as a 'survival of the fittest' World.

But then, if they kept it this way, it would interfere with the story. You see, the Demon Realm is supposed to be a world worth saving, and the way it was initially presented isn't really that. If they kept everyone how it was, would the Day of Unity really have been THAT bad? "Hmm, is it really that bad that a bunch of bloodthirsty psychopaths are going to die?"

To achieve this, they had to really 'neuter' the Isles. Now, later in the series, a lot of the danger is just gone. Characters walk around willy-nilly with no threats around them. Where's the Witch-eating furniture? Where's the Boiling Rain? The monsters? Painbows? Gorenados? Where did they all go? Having your cake and eating it! This show's mantra!

Amphibia does a better job selling a dangerous world IMHO! There's a monster around every corner and the world is quite inhospitable, but the people are resilient and make due.

-

Ugh, yep! This is a world with 'magic technology', but the characters are still stupefied by our normal tech. This would have made sense if the Demon Realm were a low-tech medieval world, but it isn't. They want the characters to have magic phones, but still go "durr, what is this 'phone' you speak of?" It really does make the Witches look stupid if anything!

Owl House has plenty of issues with its worldbuilding! We could be here all day discussing them!

[adobe-outdesign]

Is there a pokemon you haven't reviewed that you're really itching to? Maybe one that bothers you a lot? I'd love to hear about some of your least favorites

(I'm pretty sure I've reviewed all of the Pokemon that I don't care for already, and it's not that big of a list to begin with. That said, I'm doing the Grimer line for this one because I don't care for the originals that much, even if I love the Alolan forms.)

Grimer... is kind of boring, if I'm being honest. Slime monsters are a classic in fantasy and RPGs, and you can see a lot of different takes on them across the board. The beauty of a slime monster is that they don't have a solid body, so you can do whatever you want with the design.

Not only do we already have a slime monster in Gen 1 in the form of Ditto, but Grimer is pretty standard. It's a blob with arms, a wide open mouth, and big eyes. Color-wise, it's pure purple to represent its poison type with no details on its body. (For the record, I thought this line had stripes for years, which would've made them a bit more interesting, but the 3D models confirm that the stripes are shading.)

What I do like about Grimer is that A) the expression is kind of fun, especially in the earlier sprites, and B) it does have some great lore. I love details like how it dies if there's not enough trash and filth for it to eat, and how this has caused them to slowly become endangered because the Pokemon world has been cleaning up its pollution. It's good world building, and adds some much needed interest to the line.

Ultimately, while I find Grimer pretty bland, Muk is really what kills the line for me. There are so many things you can do with a pile of slime, and all the line does is... get bigger. It does change its eyes, gain a strand of slime over its mouth, and loose an arm (or rather, the other arm is merged with its body). The shape of it is kind of nice, and I like the mouth even if the eye is a bit of a downgrade, but overall it's about as uninteresting as an evo as you could get.

All that said, while the Kantonian version of these Pokemon don't do a lot for me, the Alolan regionals knock it out of the park. My main complaint was that the original line felt very standard, so Alolan Grimer imminently works on fixing this by making the body green (also clever as it's another toxic color, as well as a standard slime color) and giving it a blue tongue with a bright yellow mouth outline and two small teeth (actually crystals). Some black accents around the eyes help them pop a bit as well. This instantly makes it stand out a lot more.

The reason for this change is that the line now feeds primarily on chemical waste instead of regular waste, having been introduced to Alola to deal with their trash problems. Once again, great worldbuilding!

And if Alolan Grimer wasn't enough, Alolan Muk improves on the line even further by massively changing the design. What was one yellow line around the mouth is now four different colors, (yellow, green, blue, and pink), which are incredibly bright. Under normal circumstances they'd look clashy and garish, but they work perfectly when used to represent chemical poisons and the like. It's also nice that the line actually has stripes after all these years, and they ripple in its animations, which is even cooler! (The blue stripes don't move, which is odd, but I digress.)

And in addition to that, Alolan Muk expands on A. Grimer's little "teeth" by including more crystalized poisons all over its body, giving it a jaw full of jagged, uneven "teeth" and "claws". The line went from being way too similar and fairly standard to incredibly distinct and unique. It's basically a perfect example of how regionals can be used to improve on older, plainer designs.

Overall, the original line is harmless but pretty par for the course. The Alolan versions are a big improvement all-around and a much appreciated addition to the line.

[danaedanette]

About racism in ACOTAR

I hate the expression "lesser faerie". It's really horrible to name entire species like this, and more so to call them "lesser" to their face. Plus, we already know that you're racist and arrogant, it's in your name : High Fae. We get it, you're better than everyone else, blabla. No need to overkill it and call others the "lesser" beings, it's insensitive and frankly, if we think about it, it can also come across as insecure. "I'm a HIGH FAE I'm BETTER than you, you're LESSER" yeah yeah, we know.

SJM did not think real hard about this and it's sadden me, because writing about fae is really about limitless opportunities. Faes have some rules like no lying, or the time in fae realms is weird, and some others (and we all know that SJM followed and respected exactly zero of those rules). But as with their appearances and their powers, writers can go crazy and do almost anything they want. And we have SJM, renowned all around the world for her ACOTAR series and her fae writing, and what does she serve us ? Bland ass character. The most human looking her fae are, the most powerful they are. The most "high". Like, not only her faes are raging misogynists, they're also racists. We want escapism, not a carbon copy of our own world with a pinch of glamour

Also, I want to talk about Cassian. Now, we know that Illyrians are considered with contempt by about everyone, so I won't bother pulling quotes from the book. We also know that Cassian, as a bastard, know what it's like to be rejected and hated for something he has no control over, here, his birth. He was just born this way, exactly like "lesser faeries" are born this way. And yet, all Cassian has to say on the matter is : "and we're not lesser faeries, though some try to call us that. We're just — Illyrians". (ACOMAF, chapter 16 page 151) Maybe he doesn't mean anything but it's just feel so... condescendant to me. I feel like there is a subtext of "we're better than lesser faeries" in his phrase.

So. I guess there is no real point to this rant except that SJM is a shitty author. She can't name a specie (or rather, specieS, plural) "lesser faeries" and just leave it there and expect the readers to merrily keep on reading about Feysand fucking in the sky. There is so many issues with using the name "lesser faeries" that need to be adressed. And I genuinely think that SJM just didn't understand that there were issues in using this name in the first place. It's kind of impressive having so little thoughts about your own worldbuilding and about the words you're using when, you know, you're a writer.

So... yeah. If you have thoughts about it, I would love to exchange !

[inflammatoryfandomblog]

Why is the worldbuilding in ATLA more cohesive than in TDP?

because the writers actually remember it as a context for its story and characters.

........... ok more elaboration.

the worldbuilding in ATLA and TDP is very similar in the respect that they have color-coded elements where each "nation" has each element. in both series the color-coding exists to make each group obviously and immediately different.

in ATLA the cultures deeply matter to the characters and story. as early as the first episode you see hints about the culture of the water tribe from katara and sokka. you know sokka has put this immense pressure on himself to be a Warrior and his sexism is partially an outgrowth of that. katara is fascinated by waterbending and her culture but there are no resources for her to learn because of the war, and you immediately get the idea she's also hoisted on a "mom role" from a very early age. all of this reinforces the patriarchal standards of water tribe culture and also the fact that they're impoverished thanks to the war. the characters would not be the same if you transported them to a different setting.

like some of the dialogue can be clunky and the entire conceit of the world is obviously kiddish ("fire nation" "water tribe" "earth kingdom" "air nomads" is not going to win any realism of the year awards.) but it's a very effective introduction to these characters and ties them explicitly to the setting.

in tdp it matters fuck-all. rayla is a moonshadow elf and the effects of their honor culture are clear on her. out of all the characters i'd say her, runaan, and ethari are probably the most developed in the aspect of "the setting should inform the characters." yes runaan and ethari are shitty parents but honestly like what would you expect from an honor culture society where one party is an assassin who allowed rayla to become one thanks to her guilt complex, even when ethari expressed doubts?

this is basically thrown away to tell her "oh dw all your parents (dads + bio parents) are all Good and Did Nothing Wrong." they also scrub away all of her flaws that she exhibited in the first season, or really anything that might make her seem like a "bad person." the moonshadow elves are just scrubbed to be Vaguely Good Guys With No Problems And Whose Choice to Ghost a Teenager Must be Respected (finger wag from the writers.) this could have been genuinely compelling drama for rayla. the setup is there. but they just forget about this stuff i guess.

how about callum and ezran? how does the culture of katolis or indeed any of the human kingdoms rub off on them? does their culture actually inform anything they do? i mean besides the fact that the human kingdoms aren't magical because of dark mage lords eating magic or whatever, which, by the way, the idea of dark mage lords doing this is like. in supplementary material and there is 0 indication of it happening in the actual show. do they have a particular culture or perspective at all? does even something as simple as the fact that they are princes and might have some differences with the common people ever come up? no. they're just bland POV characters who are high-minded to a kind of absurd degree. their context is very clearly supposed to be "Normal." which isn't a context at all because nobody's context is actually Normal. it should be normal to the character, but a grave mistake for the writer to treat it as such.

with the elves it's a little better but still not great. they have at least thematic set-up but moonshadow elf culture is the best of them, which isn't saying a whole lot. what exactly is the relationship between the dragons and the elves for example? who knows!

the writers frequently forget that their characters are situated in a particular situation in a particular world. i mean my favorite example to throw around is the time one of the writers said (on twitter) that khessa's comment to janai ("have fun with your pet") was meant to be a tease about their relationship. and that's insane to me. "have fun with your pet" does not work as a cheeky little tease when you are talking about a pow who's afraid for her life and you are a cruel monarch that tortures people for funsies? like this is khessa endorsing SA if you decide to take the show's context with any level of seriousness. this isn't a coffee shop au? this isn't a high school au? this is supposed to be a high fantasy with actual stakes that addresses Deep Themes? the context to a situation that these hacks themselves wrote should matter?

etc. etc. xadia does not feel like a real place because the setting is completely disconnected from the characters, and only matters to the story insofar as "wow look at this Cool Place you will find your Macguffin in!" It's just about worse in every way even if on the surface it may appear to contain """nuance."""

[realunderlake]

Fantasy Ideology Part 1: Magic

I don't know if this is anything, but sometimes I like to think about the ideological and social impacts about elements of fantasy worldbuilding.

Like, take magic for example. There are generally different ways it's presented in fantasy fiction. Sometimes, it requires an innate aspect of being to use (a la the force in Star Wars, or however the heck harry potter magic works.) Sometimes this innate aspect is heritable, and sometimes it is completely random. Other times, magic is something that requires rigorous study. And yet, we seem to have one broad conception of magic in most fantasy media: Wizards sitting off in their tower, doing spells and stuff. Most settings don't think about how magic would impact the world that much, and instead make the world a bland, medieval Europe pastiche.

But lets look at magic from a social perspective, taking the classic DnD approach of "A wizard can be taught magic, though it generally takes a long time, and they should start from adolescence." You know what Magic is then comparable to? Because it's not a university professor... It's a Knight. For much of human history, aristocrats were warriors, because learning to be a *good* warrior, who used the most high tech stuff (whether that be chariots, or the couched lance) took a lot of effort, and you had to start pretty young, similar to how magic works. Thus, the social consequences of magic should be obvious, magic should be something that is used by the upper classes of a society, as they are the ones that are able to invest the time and energy into mastering it.

Perhaps however, as technology advances, magic becomes more widespread. Rather than having to painstakingly craft your own equipment, you can get it mass produced. Rather than working on outdated theories of physics (Aristotelian perhaps) you can observe the effects and costs of magic in a much more scientific way, increasing the effectiveness, and perhaps lowering the barrier to entry. Magic would be less blacksmithing, and more welding.

But in an instance like that, the ruling classes would not simply give up this power that they have, unless they have a reason to do so. Perhaps a king supports an up and coming magical bourgeoise to counteract the power of the magic-wielding noble class, for example. A good example of this is in the webnovel Mother of Learning, where the social forces have driven magic to be more equally available, after a devastation of the magic using ruling class through a combination of calamitous war, and the magical equivalent of the black death. In this gap of experienced mages, most of the polities have begun to allow "middle class" non-mage families into magical academies to bolster their ability to fight in the next continent-spanning conflict. This in turn has led to a backlash by the magic-wielding aristocracy, who have engaged in power struggles with the central government of the kingdom in which the story takes place, with many of these "Nouveau Riche" mages taking the side of the monarchy which has formed an unsteady alliance with these more progressive voices.

In any setting that puts some thought into how magic works in it's society, magic should be, by necessity, controlled by the ruling class. Whether that be because the ruling class are the only ones with the means to produce mages due to the required investment, or because those with the power to warp reality itself have decided that they, quite reasonably, want to be in charge.

Most wizards are written as weirdos off in towers because of Lord of the Rings, and because of cultural assumptions from Europe. But crucially, Europe never actually had wizards, and Gandalf was an angel, not a mortal man.

Even in settings where magic is not something trained, but instead something innate, there would be some method by which mages interact with society on a systemized level. Having them be simply random hermits makes no sense. Ars Magica, the TTRPG, for example, has a situation where most mages have a magical "gift", but said gift also makes it impossible for them to be liked or trusted by normal people. Despite this handicap, the Order of Hermes in that setting controls a good amount of political clout, with powerful Covenants being able to ignore the rulings of kings, and the Tribunal of Transylvannia basically co-ruling much of the Kingdom of Hungary with it's actual king.

These interactions of magic with class dynamics has interesting implications for the developments of ideologies. Will access to magical education be seen as a proletarian struggle in the development of socialism? Will Aristocracy persist for longer periods due to the inherent bias of the elites literally having magic? Can liberalism exist in a society where some people can warp reality with a snap of their fingers? Will it do *even better*, due to the radical individualist message meshing with the individual power held by magic?

Interesting Questions.

[intermundia]

Other than the ROTS novel would u mind recommending any books that follow George Lucas’s themes and world building? Cause I’ve heard a lot about how some of the authors kinda end up misrepresenting the Jedi and their beliefs either due to misunderstandings or for the sake of the plot and I’m just starting off reading Star Wars novels so I’d like to stick as close to the og canon as possible before I branch out.

unfortunately the issues with the jedi are a pervasive problem, so i was having trouble coming up with a good answer beyond i guess the other prequels novelizations which are decent to start with bc they're based on the scripts lmao

SO i went up the mountain to consult the sage, and @gffa gave some great advice:

"The High Republic books are actually really pretty good about sticking close to Lucas' worldbuilding and Light of the Jedi is a GREAT place to start, Soule's writing in that book was really good.

Padawan by Kiersten White is the only book that has ever come close to dethroning the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Stover. Good worldbuilding AND Obi-Wan characterization!

If you don't mind a kids' Choose Your Own Adventure book, Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure was actually really great, it had good thematic moments, it had Anakin being an adorable disaster, and Mace Windu: Theater Nerd!

Force Collector only had the briefest of established characters, but the worldbuilding was pretty perfect for me. During the time of the sequels, a Force-sensitive young man is basically set on a quest to discover the truth about the Force and the Jedi and I like the way the Force abilities worked here A LOT.

Brotherhood is a mixed bag. It comes with some serious side-eye of the way it writes Anakin (if he's an unreliable narrator, it's a good book, if you take him seriously, fucking YIKES the way the book treats Mace), it's not actually about Obi-Wan & Anakin that much, but the Obi-Wan half of the book knocks it out of the park."

so give those a shot!! i haven't read the high republic stuff yet (obikin brainrot too strong) but i've heard very good things!! i enjoyed padawan far more than i expected to, so big plug for that.

honestly one of the worst parts about being a star wars fan is dealing with the fact that lots of the novels are unfortunately not that great at delivering the same kind of depth and magic as lucas's films, let alone his values or his worldbuilding.

imho their target audience of the novels is often older and more jaded, their authors are less familiar with or interested in jedi altruism, and the plots aren't significant enough to matter (that's the trouble with writing within a fixed larger continuity).

the result are books that are enjoyable but bland, or ones that are trying to be edgier and almost smarter-than-the-source-material, and thus veer further away from the spirit of lucas's saga. this is NOT to dissuade you from reading them!!!

obviously i enjoy them a lot, but you do kinda have to set your expectations beforehand and understand what you're getting into and what you'll get out of it haha. you're wise to start closer to canon and then branch out, so you'll be able to parse what transformations are happening.

good luck and report back! 🫡

[karuvapatta]

Next part of the Untitled Jonelias Magic AU. Thank you @ceaseless-bitcher for your feedback, worldbuilding ideas, and line suggestions!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

***

“Do you have an appointment?” the secretary – Rose? Rosie? – asked politely, opening her calendar.

“I do not,” Jon said.

“I see,” she said. “Well, forgive me, Mr Sims, but Master Bouchard is currently in a meeting. If you have a message for him, I would be happy to pass it along.”

“Look,” Jon began, then shut his mouth immediately thereafter. The secretary – Rosie; he was pretty sure her name was Rosie – regarded him with a bland, polite smile, her hands folded neatly on the desk. Behind her were the doors to Master Bouchard’s office, presently out of Jon’s reach.

“Is there anything I can do for you, then?” she asked.

He should have written a letter. He should have refrained from coming here in the first place.

“Is it possible to arrange a meeting?” he asked. “I—I really need to speak with Master Bouchard.”

He didn’t want to accost the man after one of his lectures, or seek entry to the research floor without invitation. That seemed to be a step too far. But maybe he would have no other choice, if Rosie continued being this difficult.

“I will have to confirm it with him. I will let you know once I have any details,” Rosie said.

“Thank you,” Jon said curtly. He wrote down his contact information, and could not help one last heated glare in the direction of Bouchard’s locked office door.

It was foolish. It wasn’t important. The sense of urgency gnawing at his stomach was entirely unwarranted. He needed to put that feeling to rest and move on. If Bouchard refused to see him, he would do just that. He would stop showing up to his lectures, stop reading his papers, stop hovering near the research department…

Half-heartedly, he wished that this would be the end of it. And yet the reply arrived two days later, with the meeting set for next week. Jon didn’t know how to feel about that. He spent altogether too much time trying to come up with something intelligent to say, some compelling argument as to why he wanted to see Bouchard in the first place. Yet when the time came, his mind was blank and his throat was dry.

“Mr Sims,” Bouchard greeted him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Jon swallowed. The office was just as he had remembered it, with Bouchard silhouetted against the large window behind him. Jon felt uncomfortably exposed where he stood; he could not see the man’s face clearly, with the afternoon light nearly blinding him.

“Take a seat, please,” Bouchard said, pointing to the familiar chair in front of his desk.

Jon moved slowly. He placed his hand on the back of the chair, fingers twitching against dark wood and embroidered fabric. Bouchard’s pale eyes were on him; he could feel them as acutely as he felt the sunlight on his skin. He had questions, so many questions echoing in his head, and yet he struggled to voice any of them.

Bouchard was a patient man. He sat back, fingers steepled together, and said nothing at all as Jon hovered awkwardly in front of him, at war with his own thoughts.

“Have you chosen an apprentice yet, Master?” Jon asked.

He hadn’t meant for these to be the first words out of his mouth, but now he couldn’t take them back.

“Oh my,” Bouchard chuckled. “Gossip really spreads like wildfire, doesn’t it?”

This wasn’t an answer. Jon frowned at him.

“Why do you want to know?” Bouchard asked.

Still the same frustrating non-answer. Jon’s frown deepened; his fingers clenched tight around the back of the chair. The bracelet shifted against his skin, responding to the movement, or perhaps the sudden flash of anger.

“Does it matter?” he asked. “You will not tell me anyway.”

Bouchard’s mouth twitched into a smile. This—he found it amusing. Jon was a source of entertainment for him, for whatever reason. The reasonable thing to do would be to turn back and leave; Jon, of course, stayed right where he stood.

“What is it that you want from me?” Jon asked.

“Why do you assume I want anything from you?” Bouchard asked calmly.

“You—” Jon bit his lip. This was wrong, this was all wrong. He was making an ass of himself. But—well. “Why did you reject my application?” he asked. This was a reasonable question, was it not? “Is it because of the—” he pressed his fingers to his wrist and the bracelet bound tight around it, feeling it thrum gently, matching the rhythm of his pulse. “I didn’t think it mattered,” he added quietly.

“It does matter,” Bouchard said. “To you, most of all. Why pretend otherwise?”

It was driving him insane, the way Bouchard insisted on answering Jon’s questions with even more questions. What would it take to get a normal reply out of the man? Why was he toying with Jon?

“I have been practicing,” Jon said. “You know I have. I—I want to learn.” He dropped his gaze, throat seizing with embarrassment. But he needed to say the words out loud, he needed to have them out in the open. “Master, I know I’m capable of this with your guidance. I want to be your apprentice. Please.”

He braced himself for whatever might come next. Maybe he ought to apologize for his outlandish request, offer an explanation, play it off as a joke… except he couldn’t bring himself to lie right now. Bouchard would probably know if he did. So he glanced up, chancing a look at Bouchard’s face, to better judge his reaction.

Their eyes met; Bouchard smiled.

“To answer your earlier question, Mr Sims,” he began. “Yes, I already made my choice. But I had to wait for you to make yours.”

Oh.

Jon still didn’t know why. But now he had the chance to find out.