The Two Types of Fantasy Worldbuilders

they say I am an author and I suppose I am I suppose my primary purpose the reason for which I was formed in my mother's womb and for which I rise out of bed every morning to walk this Mortal coil I suppose that purpose is to tell stories but to say I am just an author that could not be farther from the truth for I am so much more than just an author I am everything and anything I am a seismologist and an ecologist I know all the intricacies of evolutionary biology and biochemistry and I know the patterns of the Winds and the clouds and the tides I am an astronomer and a cosmologist an archaeologist an economist and a paleontologist there is not a field I have not dabbled in nor a textbook I have scorned I consult with experts until I become one and I push the frontiers of every discipline I touch at night questions plague me what factors influence the likelihood of AO Genesis does altitude affect the prevalence of ejectives in a language are shrimp conscious can they become conscious how could we theoretically bioengineer shrimp such that they become conscious would such an experiment be ethical if shrimp were conscious how many would it take to change a light bulb they say that true Renaissance men cannot exist in our modern era that the amount of knowledge we have accumulated in every field fastly exceeds what anyone can learn in their lifetime but I know I must have it all however many sleepless nights it takes however much pain it brings me my mind is a ravenous beast and I must feed it for if the tales I write are misaligned from the shape of reality how could I live with myself if my secondary Creations are not internally consistent onto the subatomic interactions of which they are composed how could I ask anyone to respect my skills as an artist my Creations must be more than plausible they must be more than mere fantasms spat Into The Wind by a maladaptive Daydreamer they must instead be so logically consistent so inevitably possible that in some world out there in the Multiverse they are real then when I look out into the stars at night I can imagine the space of immense but finite possibilities that our laws of physics allow and I can imagine that somewhere out there in the vast reaches of possibility my characters are looking back at me and smiling hey so I have some questions about the World building in this manuscript yeah what what's up well in chapter 3 you introduced this mind reading ability that some people have but then you just never mention it again and I'm just thinking you know if certain people have the ability to read other people's minds in this worlds don't you think that would have some effect on society or the plot or anything oh yeah cow tools what cow tools it it is that like a a book or something no no no you you know The Far Side the Gary Lon comic um yes so there's this really famous Far Side comic that basically depicts a cow standing in a barnyard with like a whole bunch of tools laid out in front of it and the tools are all these like strange meaningless shapes but the comic is effective because of the absurdity of not knowing what any of these tools are for I don't really see what that has to do with mind reading if the reader understands everything about your world building it'll take the mystery away instead what you should do is give an illusion of depth an illusion of meaning and let the reader do the rest of the work in their heads like with the cow tools comic okay in certain contexts I can see how that might be good advice but we're not talking about vague or mysterious elements of the world willing here we're talking about blatant contradictions listen I don't know what to tell you this is a classic cow tool situation but you do this all over the manuscript like for example in chapter 5 you make this huge deal about how no horses are able to live in this world because all of them died off 50 years ago because of some curse or something but then in the next chapter the characters just go get a horse cow and then in chapter N9 you introduce these killer ant things and you say that one bite of them is enough to kill a grown person but then the main character falls into like a pit of them and gets bit in a thousand times and he comes out perfectly fine and nobody even mentions how insane that is cow tools none of this is cow tools this is just you throwing ideas at the wall and then contradicting yourself the moment you get some idea you're like better you have to have some self-consistency oh you could say the same thing about so many famous novels like in Allison Wonderland did she really go to Wonderland or was it all just a dream we'll never know that is not even remotely comparable to this whatever man art is Art okay absurdism is not the same thing as incompetence cow tools cow tools [Music]

Channel: Generic Entertainment

Views: 671,907

Keywords: Worldbuilding, Fantasy, Booktube, Writing, Science Fiction

Id: gri-SMx0GAI

Length: 4min 36sec (276 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 26 2023