#Lazy worldbuilding and a cop out in my opinion

[aquaburst3]

By popular request...or an anon commenting me last night about enjoying me creating posts about the flaws in TWST and wanting me to talk about the worldbuilding aspect specifically along with me having some free time between jobs, here it is!

Disclaimer: Keep in mind this is all personal opinion. If you enjoy the worldbuilding in the game and find zero problems with it, great! I don't care. You are entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to mine.

Where do I even begin? The shorter question would be, "What isn't wrong with it?" xD But seriously, oh, boy—there's a lot. Hell, this is pretty much my go-to example how NOT to write an urban fantasy world.

The closest thing I can compare the world of TWST to is the movie Bright—and that's NOT a good thing. For those of you who never had the misfortune of watching that late 2010s trainwreck, it's about a cop played by Will Smith teaming up with an orc to retrieve a magic wand. Sounds cool, right? However, like with TWST, the worldbuilding is something to be desired. It's an alternate universe where two thousand years ago there was a big war between The Nine Races where the orcs supported the Dark Lord, but an orc defected and lead an army that defeated him. Despite everything, it's pretty much exactly like real life with a few added fantasy elements. It even brings up real world pop culture references, containing such cringey and problematic lines like, "Fairy lives don't matter" after the Will Smith cop squishes a pixie that's on par with a raccoon in that world.

The worldbuilding in TWST feels like that. It's exactly like real life but with a few Disney and fantasy elements slapped on top, like magnets on a fridge. There is hardly any deviation from real life. Things like planes, cell phones, methods of measuring, days of the week, etc all exist just as they do irl. When you stop and think about it, half of these things shouldn't exist and the other should be a little different.

Yana also never thinks of the implications all of this alternate history. Magic always existing and the Greek gods being real should have a huge ripple effect, creating a completely different history compared to real life, but yet it doesn't. Hell, the whole idea of knowing that the Greek gods are real alone would massively change world history, since they would be a proven concept, snuffing out every other religion in existence! The world should be more massively different than ours with Disney sprinkled on top. There's no imagination about how a world like this would work. To quote Lindsey Ellis, "You cannot import elements from our real world without including all of the history that comes with them. You can, but it's lazy, and it sucks." xD Sure, you can write a fantasy world with cars and stuff, but the histories and the ways those exist in those worlds cannot be the exact same. There must be some divergence for it to make sense.

None of the new worldbuilding elements sense or feels woven in. It feels like Yana tossing out whatever idea she comes up up with at the wall and seeing what sticks. A lot of it starts to fall a part or even contradicts itself.

Take the whole Stitch or Tsums events. The existence both of these imply that aliens exist. That brings up a lot of questions like...

What is this world's policy for alien life?

Are aliens well known entities for this world?

What are other's reaction to this?

How did his story play out in this world if that's the case?

Everyone in this world has a Disney counterpart, right? If that's the case, wouldn't that mean there's some TWST version of Stitch running around Night Raven?

Is any of this ever addressed? Nope. That's stupid. World shattering shit like that should be addressed. While I know these are probably more than likely corporate mandates, especially since Tmus are a Japanese Disney product while Stitch is super popular in Japan, she could've added a disclaimer saying that it's a crack au that has nothing to do with the canon. The fact that these are both canon is mind boggling.

Plus, both of these events create a giant plot hole. If aliens are known to exist in this world, then why the fuck can't Yuu go home? If aliens exist, wouldn't there be portals and other ways for them to go home? It just makes Yuu and the rest of the cast look like total dumbasses for never thinking of this!

It goes beyond stupid events, but happens in general. The game routinely brings up similar elements without thinking of their implications on the game as a whole. Take the whole existence of STYKs. It was never once brought up or foreshadowed in the game, but brings about a lot of questions that are hardly explored. Like if this has existed for hundreds of years, how the fuck hasn't anyone heard of it? If STYKS is attached has a branch which is like our world's, someone should've blew the whistle eons ago. Surely, someone as smart as Idia or another mage should've been able to hack them and expose that to the public. Right? Wouldn't there be more of a public outcry for stealing people away, including royalty? Wouldn't there be government oversight about this? None of these questions are never addressed. Yet that element is slapped in without a second thought. Same also goes for all of the new lore in regards to Lilia's past, those pointless prophet dreams or how Playful Land works.

The magic system and how overblot works also fall apart the more you think about it. According to the light novel, only one out of ten humans is a mage. The percentage goes up in other races, but it remains about the same. But that makes no sense. TWST isn't like the HP universe where mages are isolated from the outside world, they are a part of society. Wouldn't it be the DOMINANT gene after over centuries of mages fucking mortals? I think it being more like the ATLA or BNHA universe where mages are the majority would make a lot more sense. That's what I did in my fic. Hell, it would make the world more unique, because usually fantasy stories have it where mages are a minority.

How overblotting works is never fully explained. All that we know, despite being on the seventh fucking story arc, is that whenever a mage uses Okay, sure. But there are times where that isn't the case. Characters who hard use up any magic like Leona and Vil overblot. Even if you argue that they were emotional during those bits or something, wouldn't the other part play a bigger role, since they used up so little magic in those cases? How in the fuck is that unknown concept to the general public? Wouldn't that be common knowledge? Diseases like Alzheimer's aren't something that everyone experiences, but this existence of those things are still common knowledge. Hell, why is it extremely rare in the first place? Wouldn't it be more commonplace? I feel like having it be a biological consequence of a mage using up too much magic and it being a well known down side to the world like how it is in my writing makes a lot more sense and is much simpler.

The lore around the fae also make zero sense. Common elements in fae lore like never thanking them or accepting gifts from them for you owe them a favour to cream and honey making them drunk are never brought up or mentioned. These are not random tropes brought up in shit like Baldur's Gate 3, but ingrained shit to the fantasy genre. You can't strip them out, because it is what makes the fae, fae. Hardly any types of fae from folklore are ever brought up outside of dragons and Tinkerbell style pixies. Characters like Vil who act very fae like are completely human. To be honest, I genuinely get the sense that Yana has done no research into this topic at all, because that's how out of touch they seem compared to how they are in folklore and other fantasy series. But if that is actually the case, then she should've looked into it more or consulted another writer who knows a lot about it.

Plus, the whole idea behind Briar Valley also makes no sense. They are completely isolated from the rest of the world...because…well, nothing, besides possibly vague hatred of tech. That's dumb. Countries don’t isolate themselves for no reason. There is always some sort of explanation for them to do that, whether it's manufactured for political gain like Panem or out of protection like Wakanda. Seriously, am I the only one that thinks that Brier Valley is just the fantasy Amish? As for the Spinning Wheel Wars, that will be explored in more depth as the fics go on.

If you want to see a world similar to TWST done right, watch The Owl House. That series, too, has a modern fantasy world. Unlike TWST, it seems like a fantasy world with modern elements instead of the other way around. Despite having phone-like devices and manga, it feels like stepping into another world.

Either way, if you wondered why I came up with completely different worldbuilding for my fics—this is exactly why. The worldbuilding in this game is pure dogshit. I wanted to create something leaps and bounds better than the bullshit we got. The fact that me, an amuetur writer, gets complimented and praised for the worldbuilding in my fics and it being better then the game is truly sad. Yana is a seasoned professional with a published manga with dozens of volumes under her belt, she should be better at this than me, not the other way around! Same goes for @stormkitty97, because she helps me brainstorm ideas for my shit and uses it in her writing, too.

The biggest sin of all is that there are some genuinely really cool ideas in TWST. The idea of turning into a monster whenever you use up too much magic is terrifying. The story could've done so much more with that if it made more sense!

As much as I might get hate for saying this, Yana reminds me a lot of Stephanie Meyers in the sense that she can come up with cool concepts and ideas, but has no idea how to execute them properly. I would love to see a better professional writer tackle a concept similar to overblot, because it would be cool and scary in the right hands.

I think one big lesson that amuetur writers like myself can learn from the worldbuilding in TWST is that if you are a "Pantser", aka someone who writes on the fly, like Yana, great, all the more power to you. Hell, I confess that I'm more like Brandon Sanderson in the sense that I'm a mixture of both a "Pantser" and an "Architect" Writer, and I came up with some elements of my worldbuilding on my TWST fics as I was writing like the characters being able to teleport. But for fuck's sake, have a solid plan for your worldbuilding and stick with it. Because constantly throwing ideas at the wall beyond the outlining stage will eventually make these contradictions arise and make your world fall apart. Also, if you are building a modern fantasy world like TWST, always think through the implications each element bring. Adding in elements from our real world will always drag along all of the history tied with it. Having your modern fantasy world seem like TWST or Bright is the last thing you want.

#aqua rambles #twst critical #twst negative #twisted wonderland

[queenofzan]

anyway here are my fallout opinions, abridged:

fallout 1 excellent. v good. disappointed they copped out and made it “easier” by getting rid of the timer. absolutely not a game i could play today but had i access to it when it was released i would have...probably not gotten very far unless i watched someone else play it first. i was even worst at video games as a child. WHATEVER GOOD GAME GOOD WORLDBUILDING FUN

fallout 2 very good. again sad to see so much stuff cut or dummied out and it being more linear in some ways BUT extremely fun to see the classic sci-fi villains “people who had privilege before The Event” show up and be assholes, and also explicitly believe they are the Real United States (and not like. everyone they left to die and fend for themselves in the former united states). UNFORTUNATELY fallout 2 started leaning more into some racist bullshit that enabled later very racist bullshit. like i see where they were coming from in fallout 2 but. they did it badly and enabled future Worse Shit. president robot was not as fun as the master

fallout 3 was a slog tbh. not opposed to the change in format and gameplay style but the writing was SO BAD. i don’t want to be the protagonist’s son and follow around the guy actually doing shit! i also don’t want a FALLOUT GAME to railroad me into siding with anyone but gosh you sure can’t do shit to the brotherhood of steel in this game bc you have to have them for the endgame. lazy. did have some very good classic fallouty quest lines. also a huge fan of introducing in-game radio, i’ve been a sucker for that since watching danny play gta

fallout new vegas is the love of my life, the light of my soul. has some problems but the political situation and developing worldbuilding is delightful. i love the fact that there is no clear “good” choice, there are legit real and thoughtful and narratively consistent downsides to everyone you could side with. the choices that are best for your character are not necessarily what is best for the people around them, and they feel real enough that it really can make you feel guilty about letting down the ones and zeroes. caesar’s legion is one of the most interesting fictional representations of both the strengths and weaknesses of absolute rulers

fallout 4 is definitely better than fallout 3. i am still yelling about these basic-ass failures of science fiction premise awareness and genre conventions but it’s not nearly as bad as the literally bad writing of fallout 3. it also is trying to have more nuanced factions with competing needs again. not doing it as well or as tightly as new vegas or like. fallout 1, but it has some truly kickass companions and the fundamental hopefulness about humanity that the trekkie in me loves

“ani i thought you said these were your abridged opinions” i’m a wordy bitch and this IS the short version

[funkytoesart]

FULL offense but Dreamworks was a giant pile of cowardly dog poo for making most of the female background characters in HTTYD large and buff women, quite explicitly stated in canon multiple times that in Berk culture being large and buff was the beauty standard, and yet made all the main female roles with substantial dialogue and relevance to the plot thin. Like a few would be understandable (Valka only, i mean she was a societal outcast like hiccup), but i guess we gotta make them, y'know, """"sexy"""" for the modern audience, but pretty much all of them?? At least in the movies??? Dreamworks remake HTTYD movies with Astrid big and buff like her parents and society challenge 🔪🔪🔪

#funky's personal tag #sorry if this rubs anyone the wrong--you know what????!!!? Nah i'm not sorry #I'm rewatching httyd1 and my ONLY complaint is this #like why? #Oh i know #modern day beauty standards #Anyway I'm not actually complaining about Astrid's design like I do like it it just doesn't fit with the story and worldbuilding that #dreamworks created and it SHOWS #Lazy worldbuilding and a cop out in my opinion #also remember when I drew astrid fat once and brought this opinion up and people said i was 'skinny shaming' LMAOOOOOO🤡 #not deleting this i'll die on this hill #sorry i just get really fired up when I think about how we could have had female leads that were large and buff and DESIRABLE #but no #dreamworks were cowards #especially since one of Astrid's original designs WAS large and buff #like we could have had it ALL~~

[pocketsizedquasar]

Hi! Sorry for pestering, but when making characters or stories with POC, It makes sense that in a realistic setting, history and surroundings would impact the characters differently depending on their race, but in a fantasy setting, do the same rules apply? Is it different for a white person to write POC in a magic, non-earth without racism in it?

I’m a white person, and creating only white characters feels like a bad choice, but it also seems wrong for me to write about racial issues I have no experience with. Would a sword-n-sorcery world or a videogame world or smthn that just never had a racist system be a reasonable solution, or would it be a lazy cop-out? Is it worse to ignore racial history than portray it from a poor perspective?

Hello! Sorry this took a minute to get back to you; I just wanted to make sure to give this the thought it deserves akskas. Also caveat that I am just one POC and we are not a monolith, and there are POC who are likely to disagree with me! and that's okay

First things first, I'm just gonna direct you to Writing With Color, which is an absolutely wonderful Tumblr page that collects advice of all kinds on how to write characters of color, worldbuilding cultures, etc. etc. They have a very extensive archive full of guides and answered questions about writing POC in all sorts of genres, so I highly highly recommend checking them out.

The thing with creating fantasy (or sci fi or whatever it is) POC or cultures of color is you have to rely a lot more on coding, since you usually can't directly say someone is Korean or Latine or whatever the case may be -- you can hint at culture and appearance, describing things like food and holidays and skin tones, give that culture its own name within your world. But this is the sort of thing that should be done with a lot of research and the help of sensitivity/beta readers of the culture in question. I think the best thing to do to get an idea for how to properly execute coding is probably to read SFF by authors of color and see how we write ourselves! There's lists and stuff all over tumblr/the internet so -- see how authors of color describe different cultures, how they describe skintone and features and holidays and appearances and etc. etc.

Fantasy racism is sort of...a tricky thing to handle. Oftentimes fantasy falls into the trap of, like, making a fantasy oppressed class as a stand-in for real-world racism to avoid writing any actual POC, or they'll have different "races" (i.e. elves and dwarves and whatever) to avoid writing any actual POC, and that's definitely...not great? Try not to have any wholly non-human races as a stand-in for POC; there is a long history of racist and antisemitic tropes that come from this.

White writers will also often fall into the trap of like, trying to give their fantasy racism a reason to exist, like "oh we hate x group bc they allegedly killed the king" or whatever -- but the thing is, real world racism isn't ever based on a logical reason like that. It's not "this group of people did a bad thing" or "this type of magic is inferior so we hate this group;" it's "we are looking for political/economic benefit and need a justification, so we will fabricate one."

But the thing is, you can create cultural differences without going into suffering and oppression and analogues to real-world racism. People from different backgrounds will move around the world differently. My Persian ID would affect how I viewed the world even if I didn't experience the racism that comes with it (though that absolutely also affects my experiences). Does this culture place a lot of importance on family? What kind of family? How does this culture view food, view death, view mourning, view celebration? Everyone within a particular culture is obviously going to be unique and have their own perspective, but that culture still informs them and how they move about the world. So like, you can have characters of color who don't just Feel like a white person with a brown face slapped on, without going into racism or things that might not be your place to talk about.

This is not to say Don't write about fantasy racism and oppression -- a lot of fantasy stories deal with magical racism of some kind or other. There's fantasy oppression stories that don't deal with race at all.

@equalseleventhirds has talked abt this as well, but there also just. Is value in admitting that your own story has limits. That you as a white writer are limited in the story that you are able to tell, and maybe that story Is a white story, and that's okay. This is not to say Don't try to include POC in your cast (IMO I think trying and learning from when you -- inevitably -- fuck up is valuable, and like I said, getting feedback from sensitivity readers and betas can help point you in the right direction), but it's Also valuable to just be like, "Hey. There's some stories that I just cannot tell authentically, so I won't."

God this is long and a bit rambly, but I hope it makes some semblance of sense? Basically TLDR: including POC is good but be careful how you do it and find a sensitivity reader; SFF has unique issues with race and racism so be cautious not to fall into those; consume media made by POC; this stuff is complicated and there will never be a rigid "you should always do this" or "it's better to do this" answer that I can give you or that everyone will agree on, so it's good to always be seeking research and the opinions of multiple people in marginalized groups and coming to a conclusion from there.

So, yeah

#writing #fandom racism #racism #fandom crit #fandom critical #cw racism #long post #quasartalks #ask #pandoras-tupperware #fantasy #sff #sci fi fantasy #sci fi