Why does worldbuilding give the feeling of something crude and lacking in refinement as a method of storytelling? Even at its best (Tolkien), there's something childish about it. What separates it from other literature? Is it that in works with worldbuilding, the fiction is presented with some pretense of being real, while other literature always retains a certain self-awareness about being fictional? Discuss.
>>25332330The world needs to be relevant to the plot for it to deserve to exist.Or else you're just having a sperg out about something that will never exist and has no relevance to real life. The plot is where the author "says something" or has a "moral" they're trying to import by way of proxy characters.
>>25332330No
>>25332330Apropos of the OP pic Jack Chick has a fairly coherent world across hos comic books
>>25332522I've read all the Jack Chick comics. Ask me anything.
>>25332522You seem to suggest that a coherent worldview, in itself and regardless of whatever it may be, is a praiseworthy trait.
>>25332330>Even at its best (Tolkien)nice b8
>>25332527are you a homosexual by any chance? asking for me
The importance of worldbuilding becomes apparent when you read or watch stories from theater kids who treat it with reckless disregard. Nerdy fantasy writers tend to err in the opposite direction and overdo it. It should be developed enough to be coherent and support the major themes of the story, but should also be unobtrusive.
>>25332527What does he think about Catholicism and why?
>>25332641>The importance of worldbuilding becomes apparent when you read or watch stories from theater kids who treat it with reckless disregard.for example, gays on thrones cant decide if its about bannermen or professional soldiers with mass produced armor, and drove a wagon train of pillaged food for hundreds of miles
>>25332645like everyone else who isnt a papist apologist, he thinks the celibate clergy are faggots
>>25332330If you think about how Joyce reconstructed his own city of Dublin - a place he knew well - you'll see that it requires incredible study to rendere the liveliness of reality of just one small place. To attempt to do it with a whole world usually results in the author displaying his superficial knowledge of this or that topic, as very few people can know enough to sensibly built several civilizations and a global history. The same can be observed if you ever read a well made historical novel: the amount of study that goes into building something like The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is beyond anything any fantasy or sci-fi writer attempts nowadays. If you try to study any historical period or place you'll see that the amount of detail, events, is too much to handle for most writers - hence the feeling, often, that historical novels are also a kind of "fantasy" novel, with poorly written contemporary people wearing costumes to fit into another time.Tolkien, must be said, is probably the only one who achieved something with his world building, first by being a scholar of the middle ages, and second by spending literal decades building it. LOTR world is miles away from anything else in fantasy in terms of depth, and it feels more alive. Today I feel that encouraging adolescents to take "world building" as part of writing is just to encourage escapist fantasies, instead of reflecting on inventing aspects of reality that are closer to them and could give insight on real life - es. building a character, picturing a scene and so on.I also suggest, if one wants to read a novel with proper "world building", to check Salammbo by Flaubert, which is the closest book I have read to an actual historical "fantasy", where he rebuilds history and customs of non-roman civilizations around Carthago after reading 100+ books on the subject. Somehow he's the only authors who speaks about the past and manages to convey a feeling that whatever people thought or felt back then was at the same time completely foreign to our way of thinking and feeling, while still maintaining some faint points of contact. A genius. This is the effect that "building another world" should make - the rest is isekai.
>>25332718btw this isn't to say that there's no value in attempting writing a world. Everyone writes about whatever they want, and fantasy novels also have a right to exist, as do manga and light novels. I just think there are more interesting aspects to start, such as characters, and that today it seems to me that a lot of the focus on building a fictional space for things to happen and a system of power/magic to make it work looks more like something you'd use in building a videogame than in building literature.
>>25332335have you read malazan book of the fallen by steven erikson and if so is it an example of the world being important enough to justify is expansive world building?
>Even at its best (Tolkien)
The orcs and haradrim show Tolkien couldn't give 2 shits about worldbuilding. The story is told from a very narrow perspective and you basically learn fuck all about the enemy's society or motivations. Everyone is either a good guy or a faceless extension of one of the main villains.You genuinely learn more about the Empire in the first Star Wars film than you learn about Sauron's forces in 6 god damn novels.
Worldbuilding is a meme and a case of putting the cart before the horse when it comes to writing. No one will give a shit about your world if the story isn’t compelling to begin with.
>>25332718Developing a setting is essential to any story. "Worldbuilding" amounts usually to little more than trying to develop the merchandise you want to sell as you write.
>>25332330Our world is mostly fiction. If something feels off it's because you're not synced.
>>25332330you consider it childish because you enjoy it and you see yourself as childish.
