World Building · 9:39pm Dec 19th, 2012
People often praise me for world building. That is not bragging, for two reasons. First, it's true, and second, I'm not particularly proud of it. For me, it is a rude and crude craft I associate with making campaign worlds for D&D, not actually telling stories, characterising people, putting together a plot, everything I actually admire about literature (or things passing for literature, like fanfiction). So, for me being able to do worldbuilding is nothing praiseworthy. Sure, it's nice that people like something I do, but it feels a little embarassing that it's something I don't value that highly myself. Likewise, I'm not looking for "good worldbuilding" when I'm (desperately) looking for FiM fanfics. If it's there in a fic that needs it, I'm glad that it's there, but it isn't a seller. (People who try to kindly recommend me stories, knowing I have trouble with that because of my peculiar tastes, always try to find world building things to recommend, because they assume I must love it.)
It feels a little hard to say this when folk genuinely like it and are just trying to be nice, but while I know I'm no genius at characterisation and abysmal at writing, I think I have at least some skill with plotting, and it is so rarely anyone notices anything I do that I find cleverl. It's probably because it isn't but sometimes it feels like...
...like the Muppets movie.
In it, Kermit has this scene (I hope I remember this correctly) where he leaves the swamp of his youth to seek his fortune. Anyway, he's riding a bike. Now, the thing is it looked really good and everyone - I mean critics and so on - said it was an amazing scene and it must have been so hard to make a felt frog ride a bicycle!
Except it wasn't. The puppeteers knew it wasn't that hard, relatively speaking. And the thing was, they had a scene later with balloons, I think it is Gonzo doing it, and he flies up and so on... and not a single critic praised the baloon scene. Which took them all this work and so on. So they were a bit miffed.
And just like me, they perhaps shouldn't have. They got the praise for the Kermit scene, after all...
So when I said in the author notes for chapter 43 that "at least it contains world building etc" it was actually a somewhat bitter joke. I feel rather like a failure when no one notices Gonzo with the balloons.
PS: According to comments, I directly contradicts canon and this should really be an Alternate Universe. Since said commentor also claimed everything that has things that hasn't been in the show is also a sign of Alternate Universeness, and that feels distinctly wrong to me, but I'll assume he did find canon breaks, so I'm apparently not much of sa world builder either...
Alternate Universe indicates that the author intends to purposely not follow canon for their setting.
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I wouldn't have phrased it that way, but yea, that is succinct.
I would say that there is an alternate universe when you're making fundamental changes to things we already know: in the Lunaverse the roles of Celestia and Luna were switched, and a different bunch of ponies are the Element Bearers. That's clearly not normal Equestria. There's a series of fics wherein Vinyl Scratch and Octavia are Bond-esque secret agents. That's clearly not canon, but it doesn't gainsay anything we know - and of course they would have been incognito anyway! So that's not an Alternate Universe. It's an alternate interpretation of the extant universe.
I think you're comparing your behind-the-scenes to everyone elses' highlight reels. It's not something you struggle with, so you don't see it as difficult, so you don't see it as worth that much. For what it's worth, I feel the same way about characterisation. Like yeah, I do it, and I try make it as good as I can, but it's not one of the things I sweat for hours over like prose construction, plotting, dialogue, that sort of thing. World building is one of those things that comes with Ideas, Big Ideas that slam into your brain and make you think 'yeah, that's a good Idea' rather than the tiny little ideas like 'what do i call this character' or 'how do i get these two in a fight' that you have to dig and scrape for.
I think that "AU" requires more than just a few small details that someone who watches the show casually might never pick up on, even if they saw the episodes in question both before and after reading the part of a story that doesn't quite match. Just like "romance" requires more than just an in-passing mention of a kiss between Carrot Cake and Cup Cake in a story that is really more about Pinkie or something.
And it is true that just because something comes easily doesn't mean that it isn't important, at least to a lot of one's readers. A lot of the time people find humor in my work where I intended none... I'm mostly thinking of a series of organ-based undead that I create for D&D... so you have intestines that fight like constrictor snakes, stomachs that spit acid, lungs that blast forth waves of sonic destruction, eyeballs that roll along the ground (because floating eyes have been overdone) and then report what they have seen via a visual illusion they project, globs of fat that fatigue the living with their touch and then smother them, and spinal cords that paralyze and then wrap around the helpless victim's throat to strangle them to death. And I thought that this was going to be horrifying... but people kept finding it funny. I just shrugged and was somewhat glad that they liked it in the first place, never mind if all of them agreed with me on why it was good.
The "highlight reels" versus "behind the scenes" point is good too.
As another fan of your stories who also loves worldbuilding, I thought you might be interested in this article: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/06/168631403/at-home-in-fantasys-nerd-built-worlds
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Thanks - I'll check it out. But part of the point of my blog post was that I DON'T love worldbuilding. In fact I'm not terribly interested in it. It's just something I do. I don't consider it an important or difficult skill, really.
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Hah, I noticed only now that my comment was pretty ambiguous. I meant "I like your stories; I also like worldbuilding", not that "I, too, like worldbuilding like you!"
And at least to me, it's a valuable skill whenever people are writing stories in fictional settings, just as characterization or description are. Indeed, worldbuilding is kind of foundational to those two, whenever you go beyond what has been shown in the show.
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I'm not really thinking it's worthless, and in, say, fantasy stories it's probably more useful than in modern low-key drama. But I consider it fairly basic and it doesn't need to be that well done for a story to be good enough for the other, more important, elements to work.
Let's say I have a restaurant. Now, comfy chairs is a good thing in a restaurant, and for those longer fancy dinners and the like they are indeed very important. But what do you think I want to hear from the pleased customers in my restaurant?
A, "They must have a great chef, everything was really tasty!"
B, "You get such great service at that place, the staff is really fast and super-perceptive!"
C, "Have you eaten at sieurin's?" "No? Should I?" "Yeah! They've got REALLY comfy chairs!"
Of course, getting complaints are worse - but it feels rather unfulfilling. Especially since I have worked - even professionally, in a way - with world building and done much greater jobs because that was the focus. But here, it would only get in the way of the story. So its even the case that the chairs aren't really that comfy, its apparently that everyone here are used to getting splinters up their flank when they go out for a hayburger!