And I think his thinking is interesting enough for lifting it out of our FB chat (with permission).

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Julain:
But she was more interested in doing something that would work {more} than artistic pursue per se

tbh she wasn't that wrong.
for instance we discussed a lot the books we didn't liked
one the series she considered as a strong counterinstance to what she wanted to do was that cats one
the one with the tribes of cats that speak and have indian names ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_(novel_series

also there are similar book series like this with other animals normally associated in our culture with the night and/or mysticism... one about sapient owls (gahoole) and another about sapient bats (silverwings)

it's interesting to me because I try to understand why a series like Harry Potter worked, but most fantasy series are so "partial" in their content and structures, and clearly lack much of the inventivity we see in more iconic pieces of work

with various degrees of success... say His Dark Material vs idk, Eragon or something

see the thing with HP is that it's one of the rare pieces of fiction I know which possess an internal coherent universe

b[ecau]ce it blends a lot of elements which make sense together rather than random elements you lump together in hope they'll stick while showing clear signs of being grafted

that was the genius of the old ***** Rowling

even great sci fi books like HDM suffer from this at some level. Like yeah, steampunk parallel world with daemons, great. But then why sapient polar bears ? You don't know why. you're just supposed to accept that this world has sapient polar bears (and some semi sapient speaking foxes and shit as well, let alone witches) for some goddamn reason. And Pullman managed to blend well the whole thing to the narration, but in the end it still feels like he shoved the whole sapient polar bear in meteoritic armor in it without thinking about the coherence of the universe

Bartimeus was great in this sense, but was unfortunately too short for its own good...

obviously HP makes zero sense when you think about it ; it has dragons and goblins and magic ; but it works because it harkens back to known elements and symbols which are already strongly present in our fantasy lore, history, and common imagination. Giants, witches, dragons etc. She just combined all this shit with the mundane elements of school, growing etc. And several aspects of high victorian UK culture. That was the whole point

most fantasy can't really create those crystalline like structures of narration with interesting lores and aesthetics. They tend to create linear stories which insert from time to time known elements from our imagination to keep the story up. That's part of why fantasy tends to be hoplessly repetitive ; even great pieces of fiction like say Elric or Conan
tbh I wish I could write something like this with a strong aesthetic. But I wonder if we didn't exhausted all possible universes...

HP's aesthetic makes sense because it harkens back to both an extremely escapist fantasy (magic) combined with an extremely restrictive and disciplinary one (the victorian era board school). No wonder it worked. People want to feel they're free while worked by a disciplinary structure ; and be successfull inside of said constraining, unequalitarian disciplinary structure

me:
hm ..... HP here is Harry Potter?
Julian:
yeah sorry hahahha

idk my point would be like "the aesthetic must derive from the problem"

HP aesthetic makes sense bc it's about a boy without parents lost in a crushing, enormous scholarly world of magic with its own disciplinary structure but also its own mysteries and whimsical aspects ; so the "wizarded" mundane stuff like alive books or weird candies, the big brick walls, the gothic architecture etc. Jurassic Park aesthetic is a combination of tropical and steel, highly-security driven structures combined because it's about a paradise which is in fact with an anxiously controlled world where one fears to release the big predators, and subsequently destroy said paradise. Mad Max aesthetic of rusted old cars with spikes and skulls and shit in desert areas makes sense because it's about the collapse of civilisation and the survival of crazied bands of warrior trying to grasp what exists of this world while living a liberty they couldn't before

I feel most series fail in this aspect

they either create problems with no aesthetic or aesthetic with no problems. Or link the wrong ones
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PS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartimaeus_Sequence - surely was good for me.

It has always been my contention, and my principle, that the world, the universe of a story, is a character too. It is every bit as important as any protagonist, because the world is what determines what a protagonist - or any character will do, can be, can achieve, or can even think about.

A truly good writer will have characters that are completely shaped and formed by the world they live in - whatever that world is. They cannot know more than they would than if the world were truly real, and they were truly alive within it, and constrained by their lives within it. The choices a character makes must come from that knowledge only they - and not we the readers and writers - can have. Their values and personalities must derive from how they were raised within the world in which they were born, and those values may be very different than our own, in the real world.

Because of this, no fiction can be truly good unless its world makes sense, unless the story universe is consistent, cohesive, rational, predictable, and understandable to the reader. The world must be attended to with all the love and consideration the characters would get, and done well, is a character in its own right - with almost a personality, certainly a feeling, unique to itself.

In every thing I write, this is my fundament, my foundation. It is what I strive for and it is a major part of what I believe defines truly great fiction.

If the world is false, every choice any character makes will be just as false, for it will be based on nothing.

If you know your world, and you know your characters, you need not fear writing even a thousand pages.

6930035 (Chatoyance)
Yeah .... I know Julian as very good thinker, writer (mostly various essays - I have whole folder "Julian on .. topic X" . I also found him via his french (!) text, and so far we managed to remain friends ...not small thing considering my impulsive/rejective selectivity when it comes to friends ... :/ )

We discussed things a little further, I was exploring new for me LJ and found there interesting entry:
https://valinye.livejournal.com/185415.html sounds like well-thought-out world!

Which brings up one of the more interesting things about the Gen4 fandom; I have never encountered a fandom so thoroughly entrenched in unwavering adherence to the scripture of canon. Daring to not be a clone of a show pony is tantamount to sin... And I have the bruises from the stones over the years to prove it.

on this Julian responded "Did they ever heard of Star Trek fandom" {next quote from our chat}

Nah I mean This fandom is notorious for taking canon religiously When it should be understood as fluid and variable. There are series where canon is in big part meaningless because it came from a media and/or a financial context which forced narration toward a certain degree of contradiction and absurdity. Trek can be extremely stupid on some aspects

As far as I understand Julian spend A LOT of time watching Star trek carefully, as he tend to do with any media ... I somewhat wished all of us somewhat meet at least virtually because we share some basic worldview ....

I was also trying to think about how this culture of role-playing (apparently absent in my childhood) can be used for making real-world humans a bit more ..characteristically hero.

PS: can you re-check video embedded at main page of this group? It seems whole YT channel is gone, and I only have one screenshot, not whole thing....

https://www.fimfiction.net/group/22/the-conversion-bureau/thread/122343/the-world-the-most-important-character-of-all - longer version of what Chatoyance was saying here .....

As for small, but important details .. For example pony/horse tails. If they grow like dog's tail (observed on my dog when he lost some of tail fur :/ ) then obviously tail 'arm' is basically flesh, something you really better not jam, hit, or otherwise damage. Yet, i think in https://www.fimfiction.net/story/359176/pandemic tail was more like long hair , so it was possible to cut it off like hair ....

"Laura, you're going to feel a tug," said Kevin as he grasped some of the hairs of Laura's tail. "Tell me if this hurts at all."
Laura stood with her back to the doctor, blushing slightly as she held the bottom part of her panties down so that Kevin could better see. She glanced at her mother, who gave her an encouraging look. "All right."
Kevin pulled gently on the hairs.
"No pain," said Laura. "But, well, they're pretty firmly attached, if that's what you were looking for."
"Yes, I can see that." Kevin pressed his fingers against a spot right above where the hairs emerged. "Do you feel any pain here?"
"I did," said Laura. "All day yesterday, it ached right there, but not now."
"And you didn't tell me?" asked Sarah.
Laura sighed. "I didn't think this would happen. I was planning on going to Doctor Conner if it didn't go away."
Kevin drew back and took another look at the tail as a whole. It emerged from the end of the very structure that once hosted such a thing in the distant evolutionary past. He grabbed a ruler from his bag and measured. "It's about five inches long."
"I was sure it was four inches when I first saw it," Laura said.
"But how could it have grown that much in just a half hour?" Sarah said. "Or for that matter, how could that much hair sprout overnight to begin with?"
"Your hair did the same thing, Mom," Laura said. "It wasn't nearly as long last night."
Kevin put his ruler away. "Laura, you can dress now."
Laura yanked her panties up as Kevin stood. She slipped on her nightgown and turned to face him. "Should I try to cut the hair off?"
"Since it appears to be comprised of only hair, it wouldn't hurt you to do so," said Kevin. "But if it is indeed growing that fast, I have a feeling it will just come back." He took out a small flashlight. "Let me take a look at your eyes."

- bold by me ....

And bit of worldbuilding I only noticed recently, while rewatching all those PMV/songs (thanks for PeachClover for idea)

Well, cafe! As you (hopefully) can see, ponies sit on heaps of hay, and big mushrooms serve them as tables! I really much like this bit, because it shows pony world as quite different from ours. Ponies do this not because their place is poor, but because for them this is comfortable way to live - with something we probably can call biotechnology but without all our still-present undertone of exploitation/unfairness. Not sure if this lovely bit survived for all seasons..

6929976
This other person complained about worlds that are either too paradise or too plain. What do you expect? Those who can actually envision and understand what makes a paradise are looking for an escape and don’t want to ruin it with the conflict that is story. I understand that Japan has Iyashikei, healing, anime which is like a paradise in that it has very little conflict and is meant to soothe viewers from conflict in the real. Western audiences don’t understand the value of such things; they are impatient and set themselves up to be agitated when going into a book or movie.

If you really want answers as to why Harry Potter is popular and all of the other mentioned books are not, it is because HP was written for humans about humans doing superhuman things. All of the other books are written for their respective non-human species about their respective non-human species usually doing super-them things. What the person above doesn’t understand is that His Dark Materials was written about humans; it is not written for humans. In HDM, humans have an artificial society placed on top of nature and the other sentient beings within it are the dominant and stronger races who do not prove their dominance by conquering nature but by living in spite of it. Because the book is written for a non-human audience, it doesn’t expressly state what would be obvious to that intended audience.

Transformation fiction is popular for the very reason that it bridges the gap between alien perspectives. A character who is new to something can take hours learning about the minute details of the function and asthetic of something that although mundane in one world is a unique wonder to another. This is not considered a waste of time because it is new and different to the character even if the audience may be acutely aware of the thing.

6930715
I don’t think it survived past the first season. Almost everything is artificial after the first, however, I did finally come to an interesting conclusion. I had always wondered why the library was a tree-house but every other building was made out of dead trees. The answer is that earth ponies can make things grow faster but don’t usually have the deep understanding to direct and control the growth on a lower level. Therefore I concluded that the oak was grown from seed to building with every door and shelf as part of its design by Celestia as a gift to the town.

To repeat what I said above, westerners (if not all humans) tend to hold the idea that they are separate and above nature and that happiness and prosperity is found by distancing themselves further from it, but that is not the way ponies would do things. Notice that ponies don’t have air conditioning. They could walk through the cold of Hel or the heat of Tartarus, admit that the weather is not ideal, but continue with what they are doing anyway because they do not seek to run from nature.

6931090 (PeachClover)

Because the book is written for a non-human audience, it doesn’t expressly state what would be obvious to that intended audience.

Now you stirred up my curiosity :} I actually very like doing this:

A character who is new to something can take hours learning about the minute details of the function and asthetic of something that although mundane in one world is a unique wonder to another.

On second answer - I think ponies 'just' have somewhat more capable bodies - we also have sort of 'air conditioning' built into our noses and bodies overall.. just it doesn't work very well in all climates existing on earth. I also quite like crystal ponies - and while in show canon their city was probably started like any far-away outpost in human history - I just like to imagine them more like adventurers and poets, who come north not for war or resource extraction but because they liked snow and polar lights, for example. So, they (gradually?) modified their bodies to stay comfortable at low temperatures. Nearly any moment in imaginable history might be explained by human history/motivation/forces.. or something just as widespread as levitation in our world (in other words - not widespread at all). Something that literally and metaphorically can't fly in our world - may fly with flying colors somewhere else ...

Also, another moment - I started to wonder how telekinetics may affect overall body structure ...Because, you see - our anatomy, and anatomy of nearly all live beings here (plants including) work in absence of obviously telekinetic forces. But beings who nearly constantly during their individual life and many generations can pull some parts of themselves by force field actually may become quite ..strange, relative to others, who can't do this ? (a bit like imaginable martian and moon humans may look like? just with variation truely alien biology may accept/allow something our biology nearly completely prohibit....)