underused settings in world building

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LinguistCat
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Re: underused settings in world building

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elemtilas wrote: 09 Feb 2019 05:39
Khemehekis wrote: 09 Feb 2019 05:17
LinguistCat wrote: 08 Feb 2019 15:59 This is funny since, in fanfiction, while not as common as high school aus or coffee shop aus, there are at least some university aus out there. How many are based on fantasy stories and how many actually have fantasy elements I wouldn't be able to tell you. But there's definitely at least some market for these stories out there. Then again, fanfiction has the advantage of people already knowing and relating to the characters, whereas writing a completely new story might have trouble pulling people in.
What's "aus", besides the German word for "out"?
aus < alternate universe(s) < Australia
I suppose Australia IS an alternate universe [:P]

But yeah, I did mean "alternate universe" and forgot not everyone would know that abbreviation in context.
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Re: underused settings in world building

Post by Khemehekis »

I would have written "AU's".

When I saw "aus", I actually wondered if it was a borrowing from the German word, and referred to a fish "out" of water setting.
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Re: underused settings in world building

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Khemehekis wrote: 07 Feb 2019 00:41
Reyzadren wrote: 31 Jan 2019 23:28 Quick example: Most members here present low fantasy conworlds with bronze age analogues or get really technical with scifi, except 1 conlanger who does urban fantasy (you go girl! [:D]). I guess I am one of the few who use "typical mixed fantasy" for the conworld.
The Lehola Galaxy is based on new-age conspiracy theory. It has planets with Greys, planets with reptoids, starchildren and other splicechildren, abductions, ARV's, ufopoleis, and governments that attempt to enslave humans.

I don't do fantasy. There are no elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons, etc. in Lehola. It could be called science fiction, but it's not science fiction in the model of Star Trek, nor is it particularly close to Isaac Asimov, Olaf Stapledon, or Poul Anderson.
The 8th World, the world where Long-longs live, has elements inspired by some alternative beliefs to the fact like pleistocene civilization(e.g. "Atlantis", Lonmai Luna is set as the 8th World version of "Atlantean" language) and illuminati-freemasonry-new world order conspiracy theories, which I used to be somewhat fascinated with(and I am outgrowing of them).
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Re: underused settings in world building

Post by k1234567890y »

back to the topic, how many creations have used elements from the Voodoo religions for a fantastic setting, or have religions with elements inspired by Voodoo religions in a more realistic conworld setting?
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Re: underused settings in world building

Post by Curlyjimsam »

Salmoneus wrote: 08 Feb 2019 16:32
Curlyjimsam wrote: 08 Feb 2019 15:10
Salmoneus wrote: 02 Feb 2019 01:25 No, we have a lot more school settings. School has the great advantage that everybody has to be there, whether they want to be or not, which automatically creates a narrative. University, people are only there because they want to be, and they have much more power over their own lives, which is much less interesting.

Hence, we have a lot more books and TV shows set in schools, and often those that try to transition to university settings struggle with that transition.
Is part of it just that there isn't such an established base of university-based tropes for writers to work off? ... University stories haven't really been anything like as solidly established yet (for whatever reason)
I think this is sort of missing the point. Yes, uni stories with fantasy are less common than school stories with fantasy largely because uni stories are less common than school stories. But this doesn't actually address the question of WHY this is the case - why school stories have been a massive genre since the 19th century whereas uni stories have always been niche. This is the question I'm answering in the post you quote - so when I say "X is true because Y", and you reply, "no, Z is true because X (for some reason)", that's kind of missing my point...

Sorry, I assumed - from the context of the thread - that your X was the same as my Z, namely "there aren't many fantasy stories with university settings". Whereas if I now get you correctly you are saying your Z was actually "there aren't many stories with university settings in general" (which is the more literal reading; I seem to have read more into the context that was intended).

In any case I don't think "people have no choice but to be at school, but do have a choice about university" can be anything more than a pretty partial explanation for why there are so few university-based stories, given that plenty of other genres don't involve characters who are required to be wherever it is the story needs them to be. So people generally become police officers or private investigators voluntarily, but we still have a detective genre.
[of course, another reason is that school has been almost universal in the developed world for a century now, whereas uni for a long time was a niche experience. But I don't think that reason suffices by itself - both because mass higher education has been around surely long enough now, and also because being a niche, aspirational experience hasn't stopped all sorts of other genres].
"Universal schooling" still directly affects many more people than "mass higher education", though. If 99% of people go to school and 30% go to university, that's a pretty big difference. And people are generally at school for a lot longer. But then you could argue that a big part of the school genre is actually about a "niche experience" itself, seeing as earlier works in the genre are so often set in boarding schools rather than the type of schools most children actually attended.
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Re: underused settings in world building

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Curlyjimsam wrote: 18 Feb 2019 14:14 In any case I don't think "people have no choice but to be at school, but do have a choice about university" can be anything more than a pretty partial explanation for why there are so few university-based stories, given that plenty of other genres don't involve characters who are required to be wherever it is the story needs them to be. So people generally become police officers or private investigators voluntarily, but we still have a detective genre.
But being a detective isn't the point of detective novels. Being a detective is not itself interesting, and there are very few stories about it (though there are a few). What's interesting (apparently) is murder (and to a lesser extent other violent and shocking crimes). The author wants to write about the murder, and the detective is just there because they're people closely associated with the investigation of murders.

This is why there are detective novels, but not traffic enforcement novels - not because the paperwork of being a detective is more interesting than the paperwork of regulating traffic, but because detectives are more likely to encounter murders (etc). That's where the interest is.

Similarly, the point of education stories has never been how interesting it is to learn things - the joy of learning is almost always at best an incidental flavouring to these stories, and often is entirely absent. Instead, school stories are mostly driven by a) interpersonal conflict between students who cannot escape that conflict by avoiding each other, and b) them-and-us conflict between tyrannical authorities and rebellious students (who cannot evade the tyranny simply by avoiding it). When you put your students in university, where they can easily avoid their enemies and where teachers are less authoritarian and less individually powerful, a lot of that dynamic gets weakened.

In this sense, the closest analogy to the school story is the sitcom - coworkers or cohabitants are forced to spend time together despite the interpersonal conflicts that arise. The sitcom has to be comic, however, because adults have more agency - in reality, when things get to bad at work, you just change jobs. And indeed, sitcom elements are commonplace in school stories too*, but there you can ramp the drama up more without loosing plausibility.

A school is essentially a pressure cooker that produces drama.

[Actually the closest, near-exact, analogy is the prison story. This is less popular, perhaps because people don't as easily empathise with prisoners, and because it's more depressing. But it's still a more popular genre than the university story...]



*it's no coincidence that so many of the great school stories, from Billy Bunter and St Trinians up to Buffy, Freaks and Geeks and Veronica Mars, have been at least in part comedic.
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Re: underused settings in world building

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k1234567890y wrote: 15 Feb 2019 03:52 The 8th World, the world where Long-longs live, has elements inspired by some alternative beliefs to the fact like pleistocene civilization(e.g. "Atlantis", Lonmai Luna is set as the 8th World version of "Atlantean" language) and illuminati-freemasonry-new world order conspiracy theories, which I used to be somewhat fascinated with(and I am outgrowing of them).
Ooh, cool! I don't ever remember reading about long-longs living in a world like that.

Even though Leholans have visited Earth often since the twentieth century, the Earth is not ruled by Illuminati, nor by a "New World Order" (except maybe Trump + Putin?)
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Re: underused settings in world building

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Khemehekis wrote: 12 Mar 2019 01:26
k1234567890y wrote: 15 Feb 2019 03:52 The 8th World, the world where Long-longs live, has elements inspired by some alternative beliefs to the fact like pleistocene civilization(e.g. "Atlantis", Lonmai Luna is set as the 8th World version of "Atlantean" language) and illuminati-freemasonry-new world order conspiracy theories, which I used to be somewhat fascinated with(and I am outgrowing of them).
Ooh, cool! I don't ever remember reading about long-longs living in a world like that.

Even though Leholans have visited Earth often since the twentieth century, the Earth is not ruled by Illuminati, nor by a "New World Order" (except maybe Trump + Putin?)
xd

I have had that thought for a long time...just have not said that explicitly on CBB
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Re: underused settings in world building

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Even though Leholans have visited Earth often since the twentieth century, the Earth is not ruled by Illuminati, nor by a "New World Order" (except maybe Trump + Putin?)
xd

I have had that thought for a long time...just have not said that explicitly on CBB
I recently saw a Wikipedian banned for using the screenname DonaldPutin666.
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Re: underused settings in world building

Post by LinguoFranco »

I have one “world” (more accurate to call it a country” that exists in an AU. It’s a Caribbean archipelago that used to be a hideout for pirates and a place of refuge for criminals. Eventually, it reforms and becomes more civilized like much of the world.

I never got past the planning stage, but I also considered an AU WW1, where Mexico receives the German telegram and decides to declare war on the US. The US enters WW1 like in our timeline, but focus fighting on their own side of the world against Mexico, Colombia and some other countries, with the US being allied without Cuba and Panama.
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