Idea #75: Thesis on the flexibility of G4

Hey, I’m an Engineer. That means I solve problems. Not problems like “Why is Monarchy?”, because that would fall under the purview of Ideology. No, I’m all about worldbuilding

Part 2: Idea #75 Part 2: The Why of Worldbuilding
Bonus: Idea #75: Bonus 1

[1] Introduction

(Now that I’m done being a TF2 nerd and reminding myself that I’ve still haven’t finished my TF2 prototype fic)

If you’re already in the fandom, then the following statement should be fairly self-evident. If you’re not, in summary, the breadth of topics and genres FIM’s fanfiction scene has spawned is almost an order of magnitude wider than many other equally popular shows, with also more well known background characters (fanmade or canon) than basically anything. Its almost absurd. Its not the first time a talking animal show had gone on screen, but MLP FIM seems to be the only one that ignited that creative spark to such a varied degree.

There were clearly elements of the show that attracted avid worldbuilders to the scene. I believe there were certain elements that G4 specifically had that made it so flexible, which I will first explore by examining other similar shows that lack these elements.

Hypothesis: G4 had the rare combination of a familiar foundation, a setting that was similar enough to our own world that anyone can approximate what the average citizen is doing day to day, and an implied depth and breadth of history and that let those who wish it to dive deep into alien cultures, pony or not.

Note: By “ease of worldbuilding,” I specifically mean stories that can easily feel as if it can take place in canon, even when authors add in new elements or take place completely away from canon events (different countries, time periods, etc). Ship fics and total AUs don’t count, because these stories are almost entirely setting-agnostic and character focused.

[2] Generation 1, the supposed Hardcore one.

This is kinda the direct predecessor to G4, since this was what Faust got inspired by when she was a kid. The timeline is a bit jumbled, with the pre-TV series movies being shuffled around in the TV showings itself, which is bound to be a bit confusing for the poor kids who only got around to see the TV series. Especially since the movie/special that supposedly introduced several recurring characters ends up at the end of the first season.

Anyways, the first G1 media: “Escape from Midnight Castle”.

First thing I noticed that the entire thing was over in 20 minutes, which is uh, for an existential threat of eternal night and enslavement and the intro to this new universe you’re showing to everyone, that’s a bit fast. Which it is, the pacing is blistering fast.

You get about a minute of seeing what the ponies are doing before BAM! Flying lizard things swooping down snatching ponies up. Also, remember Firefly, Twilight, and Applejack? Yea this is the first and last time you’ll see them ever again. The same is true for the characters in the second special. It mostly stabilizes by the time of the TV series proper. Weirdly, there are only 4 returning characters from these TV specials: Molly the human, a wizard gnome Moochick and his rabbit assistant, and Spike the dragon. None of which are ponies. 

😐

The three ponies above, however, seem to be much more notable characters in side material, primarily comics, especially Firefly. Applejack's (who’s a silly pony) clumsiness comes from there, and Twilight got reworked from a unicorn who can teleport to a hermit who grants wishes.

World building for ponies:

Their world feels ... really small. Everything seems to be a day's walk from each other. The entire population (of what seems to be less than 50) seems to exist on a singular field and a singular castle. The only portion of their lives that we are shown is that they farm, and they have a forest nearby with a water volleyball net and a running-around area.

Moochick:

He is a small gnome wizard-person who lives amongst giant mushrooms and a rabbit assistant, and appears to own a shit load of magical artifacts and secret knowledge. While there may be something there about how this stuff was acquired, he seems barely able to remember what he was doing an hour ago, and his narrative role appears to be a walking Deus Ex Machina. We have Problem, He has Solution. 

Celestia letting Twilight do her thing with minimal involvement was a very good call.

Seaponies:

They show up to sing, help the ponies cross a river gorge when Applejack falls from an old rope bridge, and offer their assistance if they need to cross dangerous waters again.

They show up later to help them cross dangerous waters.

That's it.

Their musical number seems to make them outnumber the ponies, which is, uh, strange.

Compare that to Gilda, where backstory wise, we immediately get that she was Dash's old classmate and friend.

Villain-Tirac:

Tirac ... he's more of a force of nature than a character. The only thing we really get about him is that he hates everything and wants to cast the world in eternal darkness. The atmosphere of his realm, his malice, all of that is conveyed well, but perhaps due to time, budget, or 80’s story writing, backstories don’t seem to be a thing.

Interestingly, Tirac seems to be the only villain that gets straight up deleted upon defeat.

Villain (sort of)-Scorpan

Scorpan is a winged gargoyle-thing who shows up helping Tirac capture ponies to pull his chariot. Why he needs to corrupt ponies when there are already flying creatures in Tirac’s arsenal isn’t explained, but oh well.

Scorpan is honestly the most interesting character here, since he shows signs of displeasure early on, and later revealed that he is friends with Spike, who Tirac is essentially holding hostage. When Tirac is defeated, Scorpan turns into a (human) King whose lands Tirac has conquered. Like basically everything else, he no longer appears despite his prior friendships.

Also, we have no idea what happened to Scorpan’s prior kingdom either.

However, the conquered bit? Remember that.

Rainbow of Light:

It's a Pokemon. It gets treated like a Pokemon. The Locket it is stored in is its PokeBall. The characters point it at the bad guys and let it do its thing.

We don't really know what it can do, so whether or not it wins feels kinda like a coin flip.

Summary:

So, there are bits of energy here and there. The visuals for Midnight Castle are jagged and sharp, quite jarring compared to the rounded edges of the ponies. The sense of malice is palpable, but the issue is that Tirac is treated as more a force of nature than an actual character. The world feels incredibly constrained, with no real rules that can guide your expectations for what might lie outside the borders, borders that are rarely crossed outside a few key locations.

This tiny size issue occurs everywhere. Each new species or villain only exists in a single location. There doesn’t seem to be a single city on the planet, only isolated communities (this may also have implications)

G1, weirdly enough, is even more of an adventure show than G4 was, though often in a heavy “monster of the week” format, with few episodes dealing with everyday life.

Which is, uh, a problem.

---

A lot of episodes, outside a few filler episodes, follow a very similar script. Some sort of villain threatens Ponyland, oftentimes with a magical artifact or spell, and the ponies have to stop them. It is like every episode is a Tirek rampage, an eternal night, an enemy invasion. 

It has been said that every sentence, or scene in this case, has to advance either plot, character, or the setting (aka world building). In G1, the vast majority of the runtime is focused on the plot, with only a little bit about character histories or motivations, oftentimes only the villains since they’re the ones being introduced. 

This is a bit of a limitation of the set up, I feel, of adventure stories, though G1 takes it a step further. The runtime focuses super-heavily on the new threat, and focuses almost nothing on what a regular day is like, and shows no functioning society. We often get just a few minutes of the ponies playing a game or harvesting fruit before disaster strikes. I will get back to this later.

With such a limited view of the world, it makes “Ponyland” feel extremely tiny, like the entire world could fit on a single island of Hawaii. 

Everything can be walked towards in a single day, population counts are tiny to the point a single mob could feasibly capture an entire species (which happens multiple times). There are no shorthand implications to who the ponies could be trading with to make manufactured goods, like volleyballs and baskets and ribbons. Nor whether they have the capability to make their own.

Basically, Ponyland isn’t a functional world to live in.

But boy do I have some wild theories from what little we get.

Conclusion: MLP G1 doesn’t actually give you a functional society to work with.

---

[2.1] Wild G1 Theories

A common theme of several villains were conquerors, from distant history or recent times, and having a fairly good go at it before ponies got involved. Several of them appear to be immortal, or close to it. 

Next, every new species we run into, unlike G4's, seem to consist of the entire population, which often goes from less than 100 to single digit counts. There is no mention of faraway towns, or distant cousins. In fact, some casually mention that their old home got conquered or destroyed.

It seems the only explanation for how the world came to be is because it is a post-apocalyptic setting. The frankly absurd number of creatures who have acquired an absurd number of artifacts of ridiculous power (mind control, life steal, reality warping, large-scale matter reconstruction/destruction, city destroying summons, phenomenal psychic power, imagine if every other G4 episode had Alicorn Amulet type things), and successfully used them to conquer or destroy implies that population numbers are utterly gutted.

Small isolated communities are the only places that survived, if only temporarily until some other power hungry asshole wanders over and decides to have a little bit of genocide, as a treat. (Ponyland almost got flooded, twice. Which isn’t a lot but considering the entire show has only 2 seasons is a bit much.)

How the communities operate though, there’s like, almost nothing there. They have as much thought put behind them as a kid who is messing around with ten toys who exist because that’s all they have. Apple trees for the ponies seem to be the only thing that’s kinda touched upon, but everything/everyone else? An episode of monkeys with primitive electronics that they somehow acquired the raw materials on their own to make a long range remote camera and radio?

Who fucking knows???

Also, the amount of characters who show up once and disappear really doesn’t help give the world permeance.

I will touch upon my issues with Adventure story world building in a more dedicated section.

---

[3] Equestria Girls, or the [Earth + A Thing] Stories.

I will admit, I have only watched a few of the movies, and not much else of the material. Most of this is from talking to other authors who have written in it. I have read a few EQG fics though, and there’s a pattern that quickly emerges.

Almost everything revolves around the Humane 7 and/or the magic leaking from the portal. In canon you have Sunset stealing an artifact from the portal, then Sirens attracted to magic from the portal (leading to Canterlot High), then you got a tournament thing that has its stakes raised because of magic from the portal, you got a camp trip with the characters touched by magic from the portal. 

This makes EQG great for character studies, character drama, Slice of Life, but take the magic away, leave the school setting behind, you’re left with a vaguely North American high school with a few minor cultural quirks like personal crests. The multi-colored hair and skin is treated as little more than an aesthetic thing, and doesn’t really affect the plot or culture.

EQG, like many stories that take place in Earth-like settings, have what I call the [Earth + A Thing] issue. In summary, this is a story that takes place on Earth, or something so close its basically is in all but name. The only difference between our Earth and the fictional Earth is the addition of a Thing, whether it be a macguffin, a set of characters, and/or some secret hidden from society, ranging from a hidden civilization, aliens, magic, etc.

For EQG, this Thing is primarily the Humane 7 characters, and the macguffin of leaking magic.

There’s nothing wrong with having stories about The Thing on Earth. In fact, the vast majority of stories in all of history follows this format, from Beowulf to Back to the Future. Plenty of beloved stories within this category. Fanfiction is also for the most part [Story Universe + A New idea] since we’re not trying to invent a new universe here.

However, it does greatly limit the scope of the worldbuilding expansions you can add, because they’re for the most part just regular society. A Jurassic Park label would mean nothing if all you did was follow a group of researchers observing penguin behavior in Antarctica, because the entire point of Jurassic Park are the dinos and/or park. You can add a little bit of magic, travel the world, reinvent some of the characters, but if you don’t involve the dinos in some way, you’re wasting other people’s time. 

A few more examples, consider The Simpsons. Leave the town of Springfield and you get ... its just America again.

Cherynobol. Leave Cherynobol, and you’re just in Russia now. There is nothing left that makes it unique among other stories that take place in Russia.

Magical Girl shows are like this too, with the small (or relatively small) group of girls and their enemies being the primary focus of world building. Rare are those where magical girls are so common they’re integrated into everyday life to the point you’ll run into one every other block, it takes far more effort to try to invent a society of magical girls elsewhere and elsewhen when you have the main plot taking up much of your brainspace.

I will note that Nanoha seems to come very close to going over the line towards worldbuilding explosion, however the heavy focus on Nanoha and her team, and the almost complete neglect of the implied apocalypse the magical society barely survived is a tragedy in storytelling. It was a multiverse where magical artifacts of unimaginable power were used in reality warping wars until most civilizations were destroyed, with the few remaining desperately trying to seal away the WMDs left sitting around. But nope, we just get a twenty year snapshot of a single familial group. I have heard a few proposals from some friends of mine to explore this time period, but I have not run into any of these stories that were published. Though to be fair, I haven’t dug that far either.

Outside of a few exceptions, for the most part you’re limited to worldbuilding around the Thing, which is usually pretty restrictive if you want to feel in any way canon compliant.

Note that this applies even to worlds that are obviously not Earth, like Spongebob, Disney's Robin Hood, Arthur. Outside of the occasional gag like whether the water acts like water in Spongebob, the world still uses Earth-like shorthand for the construction of their society. They might as well be humans in costume. These characters are what’s known as “Funny Animals”, which I will mention later. Though on the surface they’re obviously not humans, and therefore the show is incompatible with Earth, they’re still essentially humans in culture and personalities, existing in a world that is basically Earth.

Again, nothing wrong with this, since using Earth-analogs means you don’t need to work on recreating a world and its history from scratch while also focusing on developing the characters and plot, and sometimes, having foxes be your protagonists are just cute. But since it is just an aesthetic, it makes it harder to write meaningful stories outside the core cast without feeling like a completely original work.

[3.1] Not Remotely Earth

However, going the complete opposite direction and creating something that doesn’t resemble Earth whatsoever causes its own problems. The only things that the characters can recognize is what is shown in canon, anything else is a complete mystery, and has to be rebuilt by the next writer from scratch. If the story primarily takes place within a small town, then that place is going to be referenced and explored endlessly, as seen with “The Owl House’s” Boiling Isles.

It makes the world feel extremely small, limiting the scope of most fanfics. 

This can be somewhat sidestepped if canon worldbuilds, hard. Star Wars’ EU is a fantastic example. There are likely a few hundred planets you can choose from, and an almost mindboggling amount of history to dance through. However, this takes a lot of time and effort to create. If Star Wars only had the OG Trilogy to work with, there’s really not a lot of places to expand upon, especially with the Empire’s racism further limiting the amount of aliens the audience can see, and the Rebels constantly on the run limiting our view of what a regular city is like.

[3.2] Schools

I am personally not terribly fond of stories that take place almost entirely within a school. A child typically has limited freedom in where they can go, what they can do, etc,  so all you get of the world is the limited viewpoint of school-children. Schools typically have similar events that take place if it wants to look remotely like a place of learning.

You can get a detailed account of how the school works, the classes, the history, important topics, important school events, but the focus is still on the school. You don’t really get a good idea of how this society works. Especially since half the time, the child doesn’t know either.

[3.3] Conclusion

For flexible worldbuilding, one should try to make the new, different planet, still feel familiar enough for people to import their own experiences, and allow the assumption of things offscreen to be similar in function to our own world. Instead of [Earth + Thing], it should at minimum be [Earth x Thing], whatever sets your world apart from the rest has to be integrated with all of society.

[4] Action/Adventure Stories: FMA/Star Wars/LOTR/Blade Runner/G1, etc

First off, it is not impossible to have an interesting world, and an adventure plot. Star Wars has a very expansive history, and a very wide landscape from its galaxy spanning setting. Decades of material has been written on these worlds, from books to games to comics.

However, I believe it and others in the genre have an issue with over focus on a small portion of the setting.

The issue with adventure stories is that there is generally an important threat taking up both the protagonists’ and viewers' mental real estate. Regarding the quote about plot, characters, or worldbuilding, the threat and the characters’ response to the threat tends to take up the majority of the run time. What worldbuilding there is is typically focused in ways that relate to said threat, and less on the world around them. It makes the Threat feel Regular. Expected.

To the readers/viewers, this leaves a bit of a Sword of Damocles hanging over them. If you’re writing something anywhere near the canon timeline, this Sword is going to keep hanging there, asking to be dealt with. The bigger the threat, the bigger weight its going to have on plots, and the more fanfiction writers will also focus on them. I am guilty of this myself.

To go back to Star Wars, much of the conflicts in canon media tend to be the result of a Sith plot or the aftermath of Sith meddling. This means that in a story that takes place during canon, the characters tend to be pressured into dealing with it, resulting in more plots tilting in the same direction. Many stories ticking similar beats isn’t in itself a bad thing, but it does hamper it in the broader sense of worldbuilding diversity, and the types of stories that are easier to tell within it.

Generally, I believe it is more believable for a new conflict to arise than an existing conflict to suddenly solve itself. All stories are generally about dealing with some conflict in the first place, after all. However, with large, very pressing conflicts already present in the original work, they make easy targets to slot into the antagonist hole, something especially common in adventure type stories.

MLP G1 made almost every episode or arc about a world ending threat; the show writers clearly fell into this hole. All of their mental energy was spent on following the threats, on dealing with the threats, that none of it was spent on just what the average person’s day was. Any fan story one may write within G1 has to contend with the twenty or more local monsters wanting to enslave, mind control, life drain, drown, or send you to the shadow realm because the entire show was just about those. It’s all you think about and remember.

Conclusion: It is easier for future writers to escalate than de-escalate, as seen with the increasing amount of explosions action movie sequels tend to have. A low stakes setting can go in more directions without tossing canon out the window entirely and resorting to low-stakes AUs, like Coffee Shop or High School AUs, because they already allow for the possibility to do so without interrupting the rest of the timeline. 

[5] Earth

Technically, most stories could be called “Earth” fanfiction. Take Earth’s history, and categorize that as the “canon” story, and every work of fiction that takes place on Earth can be reclassified as Earth Fanfiction this way. 

There’s technically no reason why “The Office”, “Moulin Rouge”, and “Citizen Kane” can’t have happened on the same planet. They all exist in a setting everyone recognizes, then you add something to them that's for the most part, normal. Compare needing to explain away why nobody is worried about giant robots raining from the sky fighting each other.

Hell, this applies to basically every single sitcom in history. If they exist too close, simply change the location a bit and you’re good to go. 

However, if the normal was more “alien invasion,” then its hard to imagine a low stakes story coexisting in the middle of said invasion.

Conclusion: This is mostly a reiteration of some of the ideas stated earlier. Earth’s history as experienced by most of the present day population is fairly “normal”. From this normalcy, you can take your own experiences and add new ideas to this and create a story out of it.

If the “normal” was WW2, well you’d end up with a bunch of war and post-war stories, which we saw during that period.

[6] Actually Animals

So, we’ve talked about setting, we’ve talked about the type of plot beats, now let’s discuss the characters’ species themselves, possibly one of the most distinctive parts of MLP. But first, I’d like to cover the scale of anthropomorphization. 

Humans are the “0” part of the scale. The first step on the scale is “Little Bit Beastly.” This typically consists of just slapping animal ears. Basically, anything that’s basically just a headband. Catgirls are the most famous example. From what little I’ve run into, writers seem to either use the added traits as a neat aesthetic, or go heavy on the instinctual responses. Fan writers tend to exaggerate it more, I don’t recall the last time a “catgirl” purred onscreen.

A half step up replaces the entire head, but changes nothing else

The next step 2 is full on “Beast man”, basically a full on anthropomorphization. Still humanoid and bipedal, but furry, often with paw-like hands. This is typically the furthest live action shows went, when limited to practical costumes, since it’s not exactly easy to make the human body move quadrupedally without looking weird. You might have more animalistic tendencies here, too. Note they are typically specifically a unique species, despite having bits of other animals on them.

Step 3 are “Funny Animals”, which strangely enough often takes a step backwards in terms of animalistic behaviors. These types of characters tend to show up more in animation, where it makes it easier to keep characters distinct. They’re obviously not human, with fur, tails, muzzles, etc, but still bipedal, have functional hands, etc. Oftentimes they’re effectively human in all but name, being able to be replaced with a human without much of the plot changing. Mickey Mouse is a famous example. Those who want to dive a little more into animal behaviorlike Beastars and Zootopia can do so at this level, too.

Step 4 is “Civilized Animals”. These characters are roughly half-animal characteristics, half-human characteristics. They may have homes, clothes, be bipedal, have thumbs, but generally their day to day resembles an animals’ more than a humans. “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” is an example.

Step 5 is “Partially Civilized Animals”. While still clearly intelligent, they are much more closely resembling an animal. See, “The Lion King”

Step 6 is “Talking Animal.” These characters can communicate their thoughts and desires to either nearby humans or the audience, but those desires are primarily animal based. See, the dogs in “Up”, Courage from “Courage the Cowardly Dog”.

Anything below this starts being more and more incoherent, to the point they’re just animals, and so aren't really useful to talk about.

In fandom-o-vision terms, I don’t believe there’s much mechanical differences between Type-1 and Type-2 furries. They’re both still basically in a humanoid body shape, there’s not much difference in story types you can tell with one that you can’t tell with the other, outside of ease of hiding the traits. 

Type-3s tend to exist in a near-human like world, often times an animal for the sake of aesthetics. Ducktales is a notable one. None of the characters really display any animal-like behaviors, to the point there’s no story you can really tell in the world that can’t be told anywhere else. You have to use the named characters for the fanfic to make any sense as a Ducktales story.

Type-4s seem to jump straight to “intelligent woodland creatures” territory. Having tables and pencils in burrows and tree hollows. They may wear clothes and walk upright, their priorities tend to be more slanted towards the animal side. MLP G1 seems to roughly exist in this area, except they farm? Maybe?

Type-5s and 6s tend to just either coexist with humans or act as a fictional nature documentary. Needing to fit within their ecological niches is likely going to cause issues in making them feel distinct, going too far from the niche makes it require an increasing amount of suspension of disbelief, like a giraffe in the arctic.

An interesting observation I made while doing TvTropes research on this topic is that MLP G4 seems to exist in a 3.5 zone, something the last TvTropes editor noted to be somewhat unique. There seems to be a sharp divide in animal stories: either they exist on an Earth in all but name, or they’re smart, and well-dressed, but still animals living in the wilderness. G4 takes that smart animals part, and considers what kind of society they would build when given a long enough time span. Especially when there’s an immortal goddess horse helping out. One piece of media that seems to do something similar would be the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, though that world still feels pretty restrictive; there’s no sense of a wider society.

Redwall is another, though from my brief dive through the wikis, this seems to be primarily an action/adventure series, with the “good animals” fighting off bad animals wanting to hurt them. 

G4 presents an entire civilization, a nation, for a non-human species, roughly designed by and for that species, something that just doesn’t seem to come up all that often in Type-4s. Except, MLP ponies aren’t really ponies, are they? While they superficially look like earth equines, and have horse like mannerisms and diets on occasion, they’re technologically minded, and magical, more fitting an extraterrestrial label than anything commonly seen in Type-4s.. More than half of the creatures introduced in G4 are mythical ones, too, so you have much more freedom in creating a culture and/or ecological niche for them. A regular giraffe might have trouble walking around the arctic, but a giraffe with a heavy wool coat, goggles, snowshoes, and a mission to collect ice samples would be somewhat more plausible.

Another thing against worldbuilding with animals (rather than funny animals) is that you risk depopulating the biosphere of regular animals. While good for what it is, I don’t think having that many sapient species in one place helps get a good idea for what the rest of the people are like, and also it is an easy trap to just have one species all act a certain way, something that is lessened when you have multiple of that one species having unique personalities. Also, having like 50 species not just on one planet but one continent evolving sapience starts feeling a bit unrealistic. Hell, in Zootopia, it seems like the only large source of wildlife is the ocean. On land it seems to be limited to just birds, reptiles, and insects.

If you want to just use Earth animals, you really need to develop them in a way to make them distinct from all other talking animal stories, the same way its extremely hard for stories with humans to feel distinct if you are restricted from using the main cast. 

Oh hey, furries.

[6.1] Furries

Furries are pretty interesting from a fandom standpoint, seeing as there’s no one piece of media that really started it, more so just the vague collection of all bipedal animal characters, and a need to be distinct when making an OC. The setting is ... whatever you want to tell a story in. The plot is whatever you want to write about. The only requirement is having furry characters. Since furries are basically Type-2s (Beast men), they are distinct from the animals they are inspired by, so they don’t depopulate the local wildlife. It might be still a little bit weird for an anthro-cat and a cat to interact, but seeing as they generally vary greatly in body shape, its believable for them to be separate species (aka humans and apes). 

It depends heavily on the author on how much non-human instincts they have, but they have free rein in how much they want to dive into the different cultural habits of species clearly not human.

[7] An Examination of Stories that come close to the ideal of expandable world building

[7.1] RWBY

So, for the first few seasons, I think the show comes close to trying to portray a society, and showing the viewers around the unique world the characters live in, how it functions, what makes it unique, etc. There is even a decent amount of implied history, with numerous abandoned cities from expansion attempts, and myths that may or may not be fictional.

However ... it falls into the same issues I’ve mentioned Action/Adventure stories has pretty quickly, along with the somewhat limited POV of a mostly school-locked group of characters for 3 seasons. There is the ever present threat of monsters outside the city walls, and the hunters who stand up against them, dominating the forefront of everyone’s minds as the most important things to pay attention to, on top of the multiple villains who try and succeed at invading a city. 

New Hunter and Grimm worldbuilding rarely pops up in fanfiction, outside of what canon shows us. RWBY’s uniqueness in this regard is primarily due to Oum’s visual combat choreography, not potential history. On rare occasions, there would be some secret addition to hunter life, either under the table missions or strange quirks of semblances and aura. The most people add to Grimm are just new monsters to fight.

There is one bit of unique worldbuilding that is almost entirely divorced from the constant power-plays between the characters, villains, and monsters, and that is the slightly divergent species of Faunus. For those that don’t know, they’re basically people who are A Little Bit Beastly (Type-1), with additional ears, tails, horns, or other slightly animalistic traits. They exist as a somewhat independent society, partially because of racism dividing them, forcing Faunus to group together in safety or to fight for better treatment.

Whenever I see people try to explore an alternate culture, Blake’s or some other Faunus’s unconscious habits, instincts, culture, unique abilities, etc, often become a focal point because of her heritage. They’re an entire population with animal bits, maybe they have a bit more animalistic tendencies too. How do they hide or manage them, to try to fit in? How does it feel? Etc. 

[7.2] The Owl House

I have not watched the entire show, and the entire series hasn’t finished airing yet, but so far I have noticed it having some similar issues with G1, despite not being primarily an adventure series and more slice of life.

A big restriction TOH places on itself is the Boiling Isles itself. The aerial shots we see make the Isles feel rather tiny, isolated. Everything can be reached within a few hours of walking, everything outside isn’t much worth caring about. Whether there’s anything beyond the seas isn’t talked about either.

The second thing is a lack of consistency, a lack of thematic coherence to character design. The only "species" we are in constant contact with are the witches, humanoid beings with pointy ears with magic, at a magic school. This is rather generic, seeing as most fantasy and some sci fi also use that design/set up (elves, Harry Potter, Star Trek). The rest of the background denizens that are not Witches are called Demons, except there’s almost no consistent design around any of them, even within their own (way too broad) categories. 

For example, “Bug Demons” range from Hooty, an owl face on a wall, to grotesque flailing giant insects, to tiny fairies with giant jaws, all with what seems to be varying levels of sapience. Almost every new Demon Luz runs into is a new design, we literally can’t predict what they might look like if we’re just given a category. The best you can do is clone the city in other places, but at that point why bother.

The Palismans might be interesting, but they don’t really seem to get all that much character focus outside a single episode, and for the most part merely act as semi-intelligent tools.

A third thing is that half the time conflicts are still started by monsters of the week, edging into action/adventure territory, and an easy selection of villains to choose from instead of a cast of neighbors and classmates.

This trait, or rather lack of one, tends to force you into using the onscreen characters to make it explicit that it is an TOH fic. 

The fact that a day to the market seems to result in at least three different persons trying to eat you, capture you, life drain you, scam you, etc, does not help to make it seem stable.

[7.3] Zootopia

Astute readers may have noticed this famous furry movie not being listed earlier. From what few fics I’ve read, it does provide a decent enough setting for people to delve into cultural worldbuilding. The almost biological divide between predator and prey animals, the implied very real childhood differences between the species (bunnies have more children than most, etc), can provide interesting conflicts, the setting of the mixed species city makes it easily identifiable.

However, whether Judy likes it or not, she’s an action hero. Our one view into Zootopia is a city on the brink of a species war, which may or may not have been brewing for years, which colors our expectations. It nudges writers to continue to fit characters into certain roles to expand upon the conflict.

Also, the most unique piece of the Zootopia universe is the city itself, where it is implied where the greatest diversity of species reside. Outside of that, the universe starts to lose a bit of its distinctiveness when not relying on named characters.

Outside of that, I believe what Zootopia needs is simply more screen time. More movies, TV shows, books, etc, that portray something other than the pred-prey conflict, to show what makes living in Zootopia unique, and not a permanent state of stress. Imagine the tone G4 would set if all we got was The Movie.

[7.4] Homestuck

Now, I must first note I have never actually read Homestuck. All of my knowledge is from second hand sources, retrospectives.

But man, do y'all remember the Trolls? They get points for a simple, yet distinctive design. All you need is a grey-skinned humanoid with orange horns.

IIRC, the Arc the Trolls were introduced in was also slower paced before The Shit Went Hard, showing us a culture one could compare and contrast with our own. The fans of the day dug deep, immersing themselves in this culture, because it was fun to speculate and roleplay.

While Homestuck eventually became super heavy on the adventure plot, and the fandom collapsed after the ending, in its heyday the fandom was one hell of a creative juggernaut in the art and music side.

Though, there never seemed to have much of a fanfiction reputation.

[7.5] Furry fandom

This is also one I don’t exactly interact with much. However, as mentioned, the only key part you need to get the setting across is have a significant percentage of the population be anthro-animals.

To make your setting feel furry, all you need are furry characters.

On the other hand, if you want to make yourself distinct, you’d need to put in more effort in developing the culture and history, unlike being able to have a picture of the character that wordlessly tells everyone what and where it comes from.

[8] Retrospective on G4

To the reader, I ask, when was the last time someone created a sprawling fantasy world, with deep history, multiple distinct countries ... and the protagonist works as an accountant? And no, Dragon Maid doesn’t count because the vast majority of the story takes place on Earth. Monster Musume too, has an extremely limited view of the unique parts of its world.

Discworld also comes close, though I feel most of its worldbuilding is heavily character focused. The primarily text based media makes it hard to get a feel of what the average denizen is like outside the POV characters. Discworld, often being a parody of common fantasy tropes, makes it harder to feel unique when you stick a random dude outside the named cities without literally trying to write in Pratchett’s style.

For the most part, it seems that if writers want a simple, low-stakes story, it is typically set on Earth, or an Earth-like setting, where you don’t need to spend time to familiarize the viewers/readers to a new environment. Fantasy and sci-fi settings tend to only really be used for action/adventure stories, where the uniqueness of the setting is used to directly explain and help push the plot and/or conflict.

Then we had MLP G4, where outside the single adventure arc that’s over in two episodes, the rest of its first season follows someone who is a librarian/eternal grad student hanging out with her friends in a small town, learning about holidays, rituals, seasonal events, local sports. With the relatively straight forward, yet vague, magic system, and the implication that the ponies are surrounded by the very broad category of “mythological creatures”, you can basically pull any fantasy quadruped from history and plop them in somewhere as either a forest monster or sapient creature, or even both.

The fact that Gilda and the other introduced species are from a unique culture is very important. It established both that they existed in the first place, and that there’s an entirely different country, maybe countries, out of view. 

Though rare, invented species did show up in fandom. Deer/Reindeer were popular even before the comics included them. Sphinxes showed up on occasion too. Kirin, specifically eastern-dragons, showed up if the author wanted a distant exotic creature before the canon version showed up. Other pony subtribes like the Arcponies and Eurypegasi from the Immortal Game are also a thing, though those are a lot rarer. Instead, ponies of different cultures are more likely to be mentioned. Hippogriffs even showed up specifically as a pony-griffon hybrid way before the movie introduced them as more griffon-seapony shapeshifters.

This is something that TOH makes it hard to establish with the near random body shapes and sizes you might run into on a daily walk around the city.

Even the cutie mark system served as very effective fanon fuel. The G1 Transformers basically had to state name, rank, and job whenever a newcomer appeared, because otherwise they were just a colorful robot who is sometimes also a car. Cutie marks fulfilled the same purpose by just existing on screen. Find one of them with a pleasing color, maybe a unique expression or pose, and a neat Cutie mark, and background pony is a go.

With this, by the first season alone G4 could fill up a small room with background ponies with fan names, personality, and hobby/specialization. Compare this to the number of fandom named griffons, changelings, dragons, yaks, etc.

Perhaps by some miraculous accident, it seems that a large portion of Equestria’s world building are all both easily recognizable and easy to expand upon. While the fairy-tale esque medieval fantasy setting isn’t the most unique, by just having everyone be a pony, you instantly make it something distinct without having to say a word. 

Conclusion:

When making a new, unique setting that is easy to worldbuild upon, you generally want to keep the construction simple, to make it easy to remember. At its core, G4 is just “Loosely medieval/urban fairy tale fantasy world”, “magical 3-tribe ponies”, and “mythological creatures.”

The vaguely modern fantasy world sets up something familiar to work with, close enough to our own that you can have donut shops and bookstores coexisting with magic schools and weather control teams. 

The ponies that populate it are instantly recognizable, obviously different culturally and physically, yet still human enough to relate to.

Mythological creatures are both a distinct yet extremely broad category, something you can tack onto the world and have ponies run into them without the encounter ever seeming out of place.

The vast run time of the show is spent on exploring the area the characters are living in, further helping make the world feel unique and lived in.

These core pieces are all simple, yet extremely broad, easily recognizable pieces of art, joined in such a way that you can stick almost anything onto it and yet have it still instantly recognizable as an MLP story. Not only can you tell action-adventure stories with monsters and distant civilizations, you can also settle down in a cozy town to tell personal stories.

I believe the main pieces of world building one should take note of, if one wants to make a setting easy to make fanfiction out of, is:

1. A setting familiar to the average watcher, yet distinctly not Earth. The world should be, for the most part, functional. At minimum, the world needs to be developed like a character, with histories, traditions, varied cultures, and depth, and actively explored by the characters either passively or actively.
2. The average population should be distinctly unique, easily identifiable by just looking at them. They should decidedly not act like humans, aka not like humans in a suit, but they should still be relatable. After all, stories about ponies are stories about people, too, but not so much like people that you can replace them with people without causing issues.
3. The neighboring creatures can be either more alien or more generic, but try to roughly follow the same rules as the core species, if you're intending them to also be sapient. Monsters can be held to an even looser standard. They’re additional, bonus material to the core cast that can be either expanded upon or be left as background detail. Having a common underlying theme allows for easier extrapolation of more creatures.
4. Keep most stories personal, not of world ending importance. It is hard to pull back once the escalation ball starts going.

TLDR, Grading shows via the system stated above.

MLP G1

1. What society? [0]
2. Ponies are ok, but we don’t really get a day to day view [1]
3. Pretty much anything, though everyone seems to be on the verge of extinction [0.5]
4. Extinction level threats every other week [0]
5. Fanwork effort: Requires rebuilding a culture from scratch

MLP G1.5

1. Basically Earth but with Ponies [0.5]
2. Ponies that basically act like humans [0.5]
3. Nope [0]
4. Everyday teenager life [1 ?]
5. Fanwork effort: A bit generic, likely forces you to be limited to named characters.

MLP G3

1. Ech

MLP G4

1. Pseudo fantasy/modern society, with familiar cultural analogs and unique ones. [1]
2. Ponies have distinct mannerisms, still easy to relate to [1]
3. Mythological creatures are both a distinct yet broad category. Griffons, Minotaurs, Dragons, Phoenixes, Hippogriffs, to name a few. Diamond Dogs, Zebras, and Bison early on, established that most other animals are fair game, which we later saw with the Yaks, Abyssians, and Parrots. G4 also has both mythological and MLP unique fauna and flora, with Hydras, Manticores, Windegoes, Poison Joke, Tantawurms, etc. Timber Wolves are one of my favorites. [1]
4. Adventure, high stakes save the world episodes are primarily season openers or finales, rarely if ever mid season events. Much of its runtime were focused on interpersonal stories or exploration. S1 even had a ballroom party as a finale. [1]
5. Fanwork effort: waves hand at Fimfiction

EQG

1. Its basically Earth. [0]
2. Outside of Sunset, they’re basically humans. The skin colors and “marks” don’t do anything culturally. [0]
3. More humans. [0]
4. Generally low stakes after the movies, good character drama. [1]
5. Fanwork Effort: Primarily focused on named characters and characters around Canterlot High.

MLP G5

1. Not far removed from G4. Cities and towns aren't too fantasy, yet with a decent identifiable aesthetic. [1]
2. Ponies, though my need slightly more effort to make a regular pony feel in G5 than G4 [0.9]
3. Other ponies. Outside world unknown, not enough data points. [0.5]
4. Events so far are more character focused than world expanding, needs more data points [0.5]
5. Fanwork Effort: Like Zootopia, it needs a few more episodes to get a better sense of the inhabitant’s daily lives, and what kind of place exists outside their borders. Right now, the world still feels a bit too constrained, but that can be easily remedied with additional episodes.

Ducktales

1. Duckberg feels basically like present day Earth [0]
2. Outside of a few gags, Ducks basically act like humans. There are not any special duck-like habits. Even regular ducks exist in-universe. [0]
3. Various other Birds and Dogs [1]
4. Decent balance of low stakes traveling around and city destroying problems. [1]
5. Fanwork Effort: Primarily focused on named characters. Hard to find a reason to go outside of them that provides a unique enough aesthetic that you can't do with humans. The Ducks can’t even fly under their own power.

Jurassic Park

1. Earth, specifically the Dino-themed parks [0]
2. Humans and Dinos [1]
3. .... More Dinos? Genetically modified creatures? [0.5]
4. Dinos threatening to eat everyone [0.5]
5. Fanwork Effort: Primarily focused on named characters and/or dinos related to Ingen’s efforts. It would be interesting to see someone tackling the implications of Ingen’s almost magical genetic engineering technology.

Star Wars

1. Not Earth, but culture is vastly different [0.5]
2. Humans and various aliens [1]
3. Humans and various aliens [1]
4. Yet Another Sith Plot [0]
5. Fanwork Effort: Primarily orbits named characters and/or dealing with problems caused by The Sith Plot.

Fullmetal Alchemist 

1. 1920s Earth-like, But with Alchemy [1]
2. Humans [0]
3. Homunculus [1]
4. Its a Homunculus Plot [0]
5. Fanwork Effort: I admit that I don’t read much FMA content, but most seem to orbit named characters and The Plot.

RWBY

1. Remnant is ... a decent enough fantasy setting, outside the Grimm. However the heavy school focus early on limits our view of the society outside the area around Beacon, and the Fall of Beacon afterwards turns it fully towards adventure. [0.5]
2. Humans and Faunus [0.5]
3. Grimm [1]
4. Its a Grimm/White Fang plot [0]
5. Fanwork Effort: A lot of them orbit the plot along with the named characters, though its culture and aesthetic is distinct enough for a few to go do their own thing.

Naruto

1. The Elemental Nations is a decent setting, if you’re familiar with the tropes they use. [1]
2. Humans primarily, with animal sidekicks [0.5]
3. Other Nations that are barely explored [0.5]
4. Its a Space Rabbit/Asshole Elders/Vengeful OP Old Guy Plot [0]
5. Fanwork Effort: Often dealing with the problems in the escalating plot if you’re anywhere near Konoha, though the aesthetic is distinct enough for stories to take place in other nations.

Girls Und Panzer

1. Earth but Obsessed with Tanks, heavily limited by the school-only view and the focus on tank tournaments. [0.5]
2. Humans [0]
3. Other Schools of Humans [0]
4. Tournament plot [0.5]
5. Fanwork Effort: The school’s small scale and the heavy focus on tanks tends to make everything revolve around tankery, meaning fics tend to involve tanks as well. Most fan-writers seem to assume the rest of the world is mostly normal, except for extremely popular WW2 to Cold War tank games. Its telling that in each new “Arc”, the show writers come up with some problem that has to be solved by another tournament. 

The Owl House

1. Boiling Isles is an interesting setting, but extremely constrained. Hard to get a read on average culture [0.5]
2. Witches basically act like humans, barely visually distinguishable [0.5]
3. Demons seem completely random in design even within their own categories [0]
4. Relatively low stakes, except it seems half of the residents want to perform grievous harm upon you. [0.5]
5. Fanwork Effort: Character focused, its world has too few rules for a consistent aesthetic.

 Zootopia

1. Zootopia, mostly familiar enough with a twist, though managing that many species may be a bit of a pain, though the main uniqueness of this setting is the city itself, go outside and its a bit more generic furry. [0.5]
2. Various animals [0.5]
3. Various animals [1]
4. Species war/tension; really needs more material to work with that's not in a state of high tension. [0]
5. Fanwork Effort: Character focused, its world does not have an especially unique aesthetic, and also there’s not much of the world explored in the first place. If it at least takes place within Zootopia itself, there’s a bit of wiggle room to explore there.

Team Fortress 2

1. 1960’s wacky Spy Earth [0.5]
2. Mostly Humans [0]
3. The occasional Robot, but from the looks of it, the rest of the planet, outside of Australia and Australian-sourced tech, is fairly ordinary, if slightly more advanced because of Magic Gold Bullshit [0.5]
4. Two secret Megacorps being controlled by an even more secret organization fighting for land. [0]
5. Fanwork Effort: Its about Red vs Blue or nothing. Unless you literally namedrop Australium, its going to be almost indistinguishable from regular Earth.

Lupin the Third

1. Earth, time period varies based on when it was made, though the original was 60’s to 70’s with the occasional wacky lost super science [0]
2. Lupin and Crew [0]
3. Regular humans [0]
4. Lupin and crew stealing shit around the world [1]
5. Fanwork Effort: Its either about Lupin and crew or its not a Lupin story.

Kaguya Love is War

1. Present day Earth [0]
2. Kaguya and friends [0]
3. School children [0]
4. School stuff flavored Rom Com[0]
5. Fanwork Effort: Its either about Kaguya and friends, otherwise why are you here?

Kantai Collection

1. Present day/ 20 min future Earth being attacked from sea monsters.[0.5]
2. Humans and shipgirls [1]
3. Abyssals[1]
4. Base side slice of life/training + naval combat[0.5]
5. Fanwork Effort: Kancolle is unique among many shows in that they have loads of characters to build upon, even if never shown on screen, because the base they pull upon are century old warships, of which every country built a whole shitloads of them, with histories that you can base personalities off of. However, you are also simultaneously trapped into always going into naval combat because that's the premise of the thing. Being in the Kancolle world and not having Abyssals be a Big Problem that the on-screen characters have to deal with makes it feel a bit off. Authors who write Kancolle also tend to be people who are history/war nerds.

Some of my own WIP original universes for comparison’s sake

Multiverse Ultimate

1. The between spaces outside universes, relatively simple but also alien to everything familiar, dark wasteland. [0.5]
2. Goo-blooded sapient creatures [0.5]
3. Goo-blooded non-sapient creatures [1]
4. Fixing a post-war collapse [0]

Untitled Fantasy setting + 500 years

1. Fantasy setting but with more tech [1]
2. Probably humans I guess [0]
3. Standard fantasy faire [0]
4. Lich guy gets real tired of people gunning for his bounty so he buries himself for a few centuries, unearths himself afterwards to just bum around and relax. [1]

Untitled My Little Slime Mold

1. Vaguely anarchist commune??? [???]
2. Sapient slime molds that relatively recently came into their own and are going exploring out of their hole. Future Earth? [1]
3. No fucking idea. Different slime tribes? The last time I looked at this idea was high school. [???]
4. Exploration/slife of life? [1]

Part 2: Idea #75 Part 2: The Why of Worldbuilding

Comments

[Nitro Indigo]

Pokémon - not just Mystery Dungeon, the whole franchise - is another setting that lends itself well to Elsewhere Fics. The setting is similar enough to our world, we see all kinds of ways people live throughout the various media, and the "point" of the franchise is a myriad of species with consistent mechanics* rather than a group of characters. The high-stakes plots are usually wrapped up in one instalment.

Also, for years I've had an idea for an original fantasy setting inhabited by a variety of dragons and griffons, with the intention being that the world is easy to expand.

I feel the same way about Zootropolopia, and you've reminded me that I'm looking forward to the Disney+ series.

* I don't just mean game mechanics; Pokémon work the same in every continuity. Pikachu is always an Electric-type, always evolves from Pichu and into Raichu, and is always frail but quick. Compare this to Digimon, where what type (Data/Virus/Vaccine) a given species is, which species digivolve into which, and whether digivolution is permanent vary between instalments, even in the same medium.

[AppleTank]

5603334
Pokemon is a good point, I completely forgot about it. A large portion of the anime is just wandering around exploring places. However, I feel like I'd still dock like, half a point from Pokemon due to how the vast majority of what we learn about the Pokemon world is just how utterly obsessed everyone is about Pokemon.

The most the average 'Mon gets in characterization kinda makes it feel as if they all share a single Hat with the rest of their species. As for humans, they're all obsessed with Pokemon, but we only rarely run into Pokemon outside the context of competition. Even the schools we run into are all about learning about Pokemon competition, or tasks that facilitate competition (breeding, healing, tracking). It feels almost expected for a battle of some sort to feature eventually, like the entire point about Pokemon is battling and nothing else.

It shouldn't be that hard to just ... have a story with Pokemon be around for mundane things, and while examples do show up on occasion, they don't seem to be the primary focus. One who gets interested in Pokemon get shown tournaments often enough (plus, the games), that's going to stick in their minds more.

1) Earth but Pokemon day everyday, though there's interesting history there that nobody ever really looks at. It's always modern day. [0.75]
2) Humans and Pokemon [1]
3) More Pokemon. Too much Pokemon. Anything could be a Pokemon. [0.75 ?]
4) Exploration with occasional big events [1]

[Nitro Indigo]

5603536 I guess you're right, but Pokémon also has the benefit of being around long enough for people to come up with all sorts of ideas about what the world is like.

I just remembered, Temtem is a Pokémon-inspired game with a lot of worldbuilding that isn't just centred around the 'mons. Unfortunately, it's still relatively obscure, so it doesn't have much of a fanfic scene; 2/4 of the Temtem fics on AO3 are porn.

[AppleTank]

5603653
Yea, Pokemon as a franchise is old enough that much of the low hanging fruit's been taken. Though, from my cursory glances, it seems that people still want the same fruit over and over again. Which isn't bad, but I'm curious about how many are about something different, especially of different time periods. The Star Trek Pokemon crossover is certainly a rarity in this sense, though still leans a bit into the Planet of Hats trope. The complete lack of physiological differences probably doesn't help.

There also doesn't really seem to have a lot of fandom famous background characters, so people have to pull up OCs for special encounters, though I guess there's just enough characters (and 'Mon?) in general to make it less of a big deal. Cutie Marks are seriously a giant cheat code.

Regarding the second thing, might be interesting to take a peek at the lore of Temtem.

[Nitro Indigo]

5603658

The complete lack of physiological differences probably doesn't help.

What do you mean?

Also, the obsession with background characters is pretty much unique to bronies.

[AppleTank]

5603660
How 99% of the time, each Pokemon within their species is perfectly identical.

[Logarithmicon]

Nitro pointed me this way via r/Mylittlepony, and I found this a truly fascinating read: I deeply agree with many of your points about what made FiM such a great world for exploring in fanworks.

One topic I like to harp on frequently about is how FiM - especially the early seasons - did a really good job of implying there was something going on just "off-camera" - the sense that there was a world beyond the scope of what we saw in any given episode, and therefore that world was worthwhile exploring. That once the episode was over and the credits rolled, things could keep happening "in the background", and it was up to fans to explore that. You seem to have hit on the same idea, although you go a bit further into and summarize better into words some thoughts on why the world is so appealing to explore.

The mix of danger/adventure and slice of life that you identified is a key part of this: For the slice of life moments, it contextualizes the world the ponies are living in and makes the moments of quiet peacefulness seem all the more sweeter, and when the threats do come around, it makes us all the more emotionally involved because we've seen the good lives the ponies are acting to protect and defend.

All in all: A great exploration, and I'm going to have to go back and read some of your prior Idea blogs, because this is some good analysis.

[AppleTank]

5604061
Ayy, thanks for the comment. Fair warning, most of my other idea blogs are just me rambling about stupid shit, dropped ideas, wild theory crafting, the very occasional review. There's a reason why this one is the only one without the "Random Ideas" label.

[SigmasonicX]

Finally got around to reading this. Good job.
It's funny how FiM managed to hit on the perfect recipe partly by accident. No creator with full control would deliberately have an action opening and then have 24 episodes that barely connect to the opening; and we know that Faust wanted season one to have more stuff with Luna, etc. The thing is, by having a "main story" for fans to focus on, that naturally inclines them to pay less attention to everything else.

Gravity Falls fans felt less inclined to build a world out of what we saw in monster of the week stories because the fandom was more focused on the mystery behind Stan and the books. The Owl House has the mysteries with Eda and the ship fuel. FiM had basically nothing like that in season one. At most you had people wondering if they were really going to the Gala or if that plot thread was abandoned. I think that played a big part in the fandom looking elsewhere.