Imaginary Yonder

#WorldBuilding #EK

A quick scan of world builders shows, I think, on the one hand the highly detailed world builders who get great creative joy in sticking to scientific guidelines, and on the other, the creators who love to be totally free of the realism of our world with strong fantastical elements. I think most people fall somewhere in between, and there’s this tension between wanting to have some realism so you don’t break immersion, but you also want to follow your “what if” question that guides your building.

My answer to the question of “how realistic should a world be?” is “it depends on your goal.” I’ve taken a very leisurely approach to my world building in the sense that I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time experimenting with “enough earth realism” to build a continent that will, hopefully, let me explore how “nature” affects human cultures and societies (one of my world building Feynman questions).

In other words, I want to build a world, but I don’t want full control over it’s form. My earliest attempts of world building were very much working off cultural archetypes in our world without too much thought of geography, but they felt too much like their source inspiration – in which case I may as well just do some historical setting drama, but that’s not what I wanted either. I wanted the world to emerge, and for some surprises to work its way in which I haven’t anticipated. So my solution was to “build an apple pie from scratch”, as the legendary world builder World Building Pasta calls his blog.

This log isn’t a “how to” but a log of the scrappy process I took, and to see whether I’ll fulfil my goal in the long run. I fly by a lot of the detailed process of the steps, because there are already excellent videos that I followed by Artifexian and Madeline James. If anything, this log will be a curiosity for non-world builders, and maybe even an inspiration to other world builders that scrappy and cherry-picky scientific world building is fine depending on your goals.

#WorldBuilding #EK

The calling (Why World Build)

I've been thinking a lot about why I, or anyone for that matter, builds fictitious worlds. Often times people seem to world build for particular projects, such as creating a narratively consistent setting for a story or a game. I began that way, with the desire to create a setting for a series of story ideas I had. But over the years the story has fallen second place to the world building itself, and I’ve often wondered what it is about world building that is so compelling to myself, and as it turns out, to a large number of others.

There is definitely an element of a power fantasy to world building. Playing god, and it’s a wonderful form of escape where you focus on the details and do the creation. I lean towards the human cultures, history and geography side of world building, rather than the space or magic side of things. I get a lot of my fun from having some constraints in place. In my case that’s the constraint of geography, and, for a lack of a better word, humanity.

#FieldNotes #EthnographerB

“After countless formations and abandonments, the first world emerged. It was vast with inhospitable heat. This did not remain.

The second world was modest in breadth, but too dark and cold for nurturing life. This too was forsaken.

The third world was formed upon the lessons of the past. It's expanse and climate erring on tough, but with potential to be fostered.

The name of this land is Sua.”

—

Geghdol told me an interesting story today. It came up spontaneously as we were hanging out after a meal and his brother's sons became rowdy in the lead up to their rest. It was, according to Geghdol, a version of the creation myth of the Northern Itān tribes. Geghdol was insistent that this is an ancient tale, verbatim told to him by his dōroxam, who was told by her dōroxam before that.