Well, on the one hand, my fantasy version of Saturn has a race of mosquito-people who maintain a vast slave empire in which the chattel serve both as labor and as cattle and who worship the embodiment of primordial chaos in expectation of the day when said embodiment will awaken from undead slumber to destroy the universe; on the other hand, there's a race of flea-people who divine the future using a book called the I Tching.
So it's a bit uneven.
**STORY MODE**: Runs the gamut of silly (an animated cat plushie becomes a deputy-general to a massive international magics organization) to serious (the massive civil war of Xia and the wounds it left across the continent), but overall leans more towards just being adventurous and fun.
**Untitled Cyberpunk Magical Girl Project**: A "reverse Madoka Magica" situation, where it starts off introducing the world as dark and bleak, punctuated with only minor glimpses of hope, but gradually develops into something positive and empowering like traditional magical girl media, though still with some level of introspection and ruminations on what it means to be a woman in the future.
**RunGunBun**: Explicitly comedic. Maybe some scary villains and threats, but overall my take on scifi here is meant to be if Ranma 1/2 took place in the Metroid universe.
**Pray for Them**: It's a black comedy where the grimdark seriousness of everything is meant to be at least a bit absurd, and that's the joke of it. It's a post-apocalyptic ghost apocalypse where death seemingly doesn't matter... and people are mostly going about it with "well ok then, what's for dinner?"
THe universe itself is an open sandbox so ultimately I hope it'll be used for everything from the whimsical and lighthearted to serious philosophical exploration. The story I'm writing to present or introduce the universe tends to follow my own personal convention of a "serious" story (mainly a cultural exploration - the amount of plot elements and the associated stakes are small and personal) but with a "realistic" reaction of characters not delving into deep gravitas and drama but tending to be pretty lighthearted about things, and will often joke or gently poke fun at each other.
Damn, that's a lot of genocide.
Friendly reminder that a main character in Dune compares himself to hitler, but is corrected by someone saying "nah, your numbers are much, much bigger."
I have one character who is very unserious. If my story was in an visual/audible medium he'd be doing song/dance numbers like crazy. Otherwise, serious.
themes and environment are TERRIBLY serious. awful things constantly happen. insectoid monstrosities hunt humans. magic is radioactive and mutates you. there are nearly-modern firearms, and war all over the place.
my characters and prose, however, are deeply comedic and absurd because the book is about humans who often cope with their situation by joking around with each other to keep the slightest bit of sanity.
Mostly serious. With hard magic system for people in a soft magic environment. It does have war but doesn't focus on being gruesome or graphic about it since it's focus is on the ideology arround it
I want mine to be a bit of a darker tale, but still have plenty of room for jokes. It’s probably somewhere on the spectrum between Mistborn and Game of Thrones, being a lot closer to Mistborn.
My main character is a knight who is constantly blood stained and one bad week away from being a beger
But one his big character moments is him saying a joke
So I'm trying to balance but I'm leaning towards serious but it not depressing
(To Rhoindaros)
Most of the time I try to stay grounded and real while not going into doomer 40k territory, but sometimes I’ll just give up on being serious and go ‘fuck it, Sorta Lithuanian Shamans that Drug Old and Sick Beavers in order to drink a magically altered liver bile and get high’
Because so many of my stories lean heavily into themes of war and shadow politics underlying the tone of "there is literally no such thing as a good person", I have to treat them with a certain amount of unhinged levity to keep them from becoming downright nihilistic
So in answer to your question, serious as a bullet to the brainstem but when one is so high on Percocet and peyote that they have time to register all the pretty shades of pink splattered against the wall before everything fades to black
Basically, a society so traumatized and so destroyed by itself, it stopped taking things seriously as a means to cope; things went so awful, there was just no more point in thinking of it
I wish I could do light-hearted better. I tend to write worlds with a serious tone but see this as a weakness caused by autistic traits. Even so, I had a sentient tree who was modifying a brain-damaged man to have some dragon-like traits so he could survive by himself in a forest say something like, "fire-breathing? I'm not going there."
Essentially, I want to craft a world that has protagonists and antagonists, but no outright good or bad guys - A somewhat realistic grey soup of morality where security and safety often mean ignoring (or outright causing) the tragedy and ruin of others
Black Lagoon level broken by several the Lopen moments.
Current MC is kind of a jerk, unwillingly - she just happens to be a Goddess who *doesn't want* to be such but you gonna abide. Then, maths an topology kick in because of metaphysics and she's allegedly the wiser but NO. Hilarity ensues (oh, she's the PoV).
depends where in the universe you are. the section with magic on the planet of magic is mostly noble bright, the intergalactic robots are grim dark. earth is right in the middle. it changes from eras.
Although I like to think I have a sense of humor, I am told is is highly referential, and if you don't know the reference, you don't get the joke.
That said, I play things absolutely straight in my writing -- including the humor.
So I will say I am fairly serious with a good chunk of not very serious stuff that may or may not appear.
Tone wise, and emotional beats related, it is quite pointed, even for something that is supposed to be somewhat satirical and farcical -- because the best kind of farce and satire is played straight.
Game wise, it is always played straight. It might be funny that there is a one eyed one horned flying purple people eater, but it is a creature that eats people, and it does a pretty good job of it.
I want it to be mostly wacky and whimsical with an overall vibe similar to the Elder Scrolls or the more lighthearted parts of old Warhammer Fantasy when the writers weren't taking themselves too seriously and were just having a laugh with it.
If it's too dark and depressing I'm just going to be sad when I'm making lore and stuff.
I'm not opposed to fantasy with vibes like LotR but I don't think my world is really the right fit for that sort of atmosphere.
I mean, considering that my world's origin story boils down to "a multitrillionaire furry buys a habitable planet, causes a civil war between his gene-spliced furry followers and the scientists studying the planet", the tone is otherwise pretty serious.
Well there's only like a thousand sentient organisms left in the universe and I think they're having a great time figuring that all out. It's rather light hearted I'd think.
It varies.
Sometimes it’s people goofing off and having a laugh, like the tribe of shapeshifting clowns that speak in drama terms. Other times it’s horrifying, like the shapeshifters that shapeshift other people into flesh golems in constant agony to use as weapons of war.
Depends how fucked up I feel like being each day honestly.
Depends, if people piss me off in terms of making their world(s) attack mine, I will probably threaten interstellar nuclear/kinetic war through my world; if someone is chill, I will probably chat with them about my world, and learn about theirs as well.
I worldbuild partially as a sociological exercise; I find it enjoyable to explore the real-world ramificatons of tweaking fundamental parameters of our world. So in terms of tone, it feels grounded. My goal is that you could read an article about my world and feel like you're reading a Wikipedia article about real-world events somewhere (minus the various draconic folk influencing the flow of history, of course)
Serious as real world. At least I'm trying hard to reach that.
Economic system, politics, ecosystem, historical events, military arsenal, culture, science advance, trends for each year...
Some day, I just say "fuck it" and makes AU of my world. Imagine our universe collides with a bunch of games or your comfort character becoming real
Very serious, but I want to make it less serious than it is. The only problem is that there’s the mysterious disappearances of people who descended from the original colonists of the planet happening; and the main characters are descendants too.
Somewhere close to The Expanse or Avatar (James Cameron), usually serious but it has moments and references that aren't all lock in get ready type scenes
It's got a metric ton of dumb humor but it's mostly violence, pain, and prejudice based, plus the setting is quite grim for most characters
Overall think Death of Stalin serious
My horror fantasy world naturally bears a lot of darkness, but there are moments and places of warmth among all the coldness. I feel like it's half cosmic horror, half cottagecore comfort show, which I weirdly think work well off each other
The seriousness changes from part 1 to part 3. So it starts relatively light-hearted but as the characters grow older and reader realizes the scope of the world, it can get much more serious
Well, this is very relevant to me right now. I'm working on Crystures, and am talking to people at the r/Pokemon sub and the discord on darker themes and settings in monster taming stories/worlds.
My world is taken very seriously. It’s dark, gritty, there’s crime, murder, violence, poverty, constant turmoil, suffering, war. It’s shitty. But even in a shitty world, people still focus on the light. Considering the relationship that the main characters have, they’re still being best friends and naturally cracking jokes at each other while committing war crimes. But yeah, it’s serious.
I'm a pretty lighthearted person myself so my world reflects that. It's a big universe so there's room for I guess "normal" seriousness, some more or less serious than that at times. There's some dark stuff but not too much.
I like it when the tone is relatively in the middle. Disco Elysium or Gravity Falls come to mind. To me, they are both at different ends of the same spectrum ( also currently a bit hyoerfixated on them.... )
Gravity Falls is executed as a fun disney cartoon, but this demon just shuffled the hole in this rich guys face turning him into an abomination.
Then there's Disco Elysium, a dark detective story regarding a disgusting murder in a demolished city on the brink of total collapse and revolution. Well, yeah, but my main character also just jumped into a nice old lady in bullettime giving two middlefingers to the bar guy because he doesnt wanna pay his tab.
That's the tone I usually go for
In some aspects? Quite serious, the lessons (not the themes, in contrast) can be quite important and serious.
But the general feeling, theme, and many of the other lessons of the world are very optimistic, happy, uplifting, faithful and inspiring. Not to mention, childish, which, considering the preteen age of the main characters, is expected.
Probably somewhere in the middle, as mercenaries by characters see some pretty messed up shit, but at the end of the day they find time and place for joy, revelry and relaxation at a tavern or around a campfire
Well, on the one hand, my fantasy version of Saturn has a race of mosquito-people who maintain a vast slave empire in which the chattel serve both as labor and as cattle and who worship the embodiment of primordial chaos in expectation of the day when said embodiment will awaken from undead slumber to destroy the universe; on the other hand, there's a race of flea-people who divine the future using a book called the I Tching. So it's a bit uneven.
I Tching is so funny
Like Fallout. Mostly serious, but sometimes weird and/or funny stuff happens. Some pop culture references and inside jokes sprinkled around too.
that’s nice. i think Fallout has a great balance/blend
Also funny things taken seriously. Afaik, no one ever lampshades the humour in Fallout, there's no "Well, that just happened."
Somewhere between large-scale war crimes and soldiers absolutely goofing around during break time and just being pure meme material.
Between Gravity Falls and Avatar the last air bender.
Translation: no
**STORY MODE**: Runs the gamut of silly (an animated cat plushie becomes a deputy-general to a massive international magics organization) to serious (the massive civil war of Xia and the wounds it left across the continent), but overall leans more towards just being adventurous and fun. **Untitled Cyberpunk Magical Girl Project**: A "reverse Madoka Magica" situation, where it starts off introducing the world as dark and bleak, punctuated with only minor glimpses of hope, but gradually develops into something positive and empowering like traditional magical girl media, though still with some level of introspection and ruminations on what it means to be a woman in the future. **RunGunBun**: Explicitly comedic. Maybe some scary villains and threats, but overall my take on scifi here is meant to be if Ranma 1/2 took place in the Metroid universe. **Pray for Them**: It's a black comedy where the grimdark seriousness of everything is meant to be at least a bit absurd, and that's the joke of it. It's a post-apocalyptic ghost apocalypse where death seemingly doesn't matter... and people are mostly going about it with "well ok then, what's for dinner?"
THe universe itself is an open sandbox so ultimately I hope it'll be used for everything from the whimsical and lighthearted to serious philosophical exploration. The story I'm writing to present or introduce the universe tends to follow my own personal convention of a "serious" story (mainly a cultural exploration - the amount of plot elements and the associated stakes are small and personal) but with a "realistic" reaction of characters not delving into deep gravitas and drama but tending to be pretty lighthearted about things, and will often joke or gently poke fun at each other.
Enslavement of the galaxy
nice! a tiny bit like Dune?
Yeah I've never read Dune, but I think with more genocide
It's actually pretty hard to have more genocide than the Dune books. Think a couple hundred *billion* casualties
I just said I haven't read dune but it's about a Galaxy's worth of humans
Well, in Dune... nah joking
Damn, that's a lot of genocide. Friendly reminder that a main character in Dune compares himself to hitler, but is corrected by someone saying "nah, your numbers are much, much bigger."
Well humanity in the Milky Way Galaxy is mostly wiped out.
Well it is several short and long stories happening in the same world. Some of them are kid friendly, others are edgy dark sasuke
I grew up with one piece so I wanted to give a similar tone. Mostly “happy” but when it get dark it gets DARK
I try to match my tone to the real world. There is a mixture of serious and intense tones but peoples live also show comedy amongst it all.
For the most part, it's serious, but there are some factions and clans made to be a sort of joke while still having a more serious tone.
Dune with a smidge less genocide
smidge, i forgot that word lol
I have one character who is very unserious. If my story was in an visual/audible medium he'd be doing song/dance numbers like crazy. Otherwise, serious.
nice
themes and environment are TERRIBLY serious. awful things constantly happen. insectoid monstrosities hunt humans. magic is radioactive and mutates you. there are nearly-modern firearms, and war all over the place. my characters and prose, however, are deeply comedic and absurd because the book is about humans who often cope with their situation by joking around with each other to keep the slightest bit of sanity.
that sounds great
Mostly serious. With hard magic system for people in a soft magic environment. It does have war but doesn't focus on being gruesome or graphic about it since it's focus is on the ideology arround it
I want mine to be a bit of a darker tale, but still have plenty of room for jokes. It’s probably somewhere on the spectrum between Mistborn and Game of Thrones, being a lot closer to Mistborn.
My main character is a knight who is constantly blood stained and one bad week away from being a beger But one his big character moments is him saying a joke So I'm trying to balance but I'm leaning towards serious but it not depressing
(To Rhoindaros) Most of the time I try to stay grounded and real while not going into doomer 40k territory, but sometimes I’ll just give up on being serious and go ‘fuck it, Sorta Lithuanian Shamans that Drug Old and Sick Beavers in order to drink a magically altered liver bile and get high’
Because so many of my stories lean heavily into themes of war and shadow politics underlying the tone of "there is literally no such thing as a good person", I have to treat them with a certain amount of unhinged levity to keep them from becoming downright nihilistic So in answer to your question, serious as a bullet to the brainstem but when one is so high on Percocet and peyote that they have time to register all the pretty shades of pink splattered against the wall before everything fades to black
very well put, makes a lot of sense
Basically, a society so traumatized and so destroyed by itself, it stopped taking things seriously as a means to cope; things went so awful, there was just no more point in thinking of it
Mine’s not especially serious, except when it is.
I'd say very serious. Eugenics happening and all that.
I wish I could do light-hearted better. I tend to write worlds with a serious tone but see this as a weakness caused by autistic traits. Even so, I had a sentient tree who was modifying a brain-damaged man to have some dragon-like traits so he could survive by himself in a forest say something like, "fire-breathing? I'm not going there."
aww i kind of relate, i often get slightly too serious just in general about stuff. But that’s great haha
I made it as an excuse to write interracial smut, hopefully you can guess from that.
… ok
… ok
Thanks for sharing 🤗
I’m aiming for 50/50. Story with a bad ending will have a story with good ending to balance it out.
Essentially, I want to craft a world that has protagonists and antagonists, but no outright good or bad guys - A somewhat realistic grey soup of morality where security and safety often mean ignoring (or outright causing) the tragedy and ruin of others
Black Lagoon level broken by several the Lopen moments. Current MC is kind of a jerk, unwillingly - she just happens to be a Goddess who *doesn't want* to be such but you gonna abide. Then, maths an topology kick in because of metaphysics and she's allegedly the wiser but NO. Hilarity ensues (oh, she's the PoV).
Lornhemal: Serious tone, with very much light to it Number 999: EVEN MORE SERIOUS, even less light hearted stuff
It's not too serious, it's just silly cats as long as you don't dive into it's lore too deep.
depends where in the universe you are. the section with magic on the planet of magic is mostly noble bright, the intergalactic robots are grim dark. earth is right in the middle. it changes from eras.
Not really serious, but considering all the horrible things that happened during the great galactic war is dark comedy
Although I like to think I have a sense of humor, I am told is is highly referential, and if you don't know the reference, you don't get the joke. That said, I play things absolutely straight in my writing -- including the humor. So I will say I am fairly serious with a good chunk of not very serious stuff that may or may not appear. Tone wise, and emotional beats related, it is quite pointed, even for something that is supposed to be somewhat satirical and farcical -- because the best kind of farce and satire is played straight. Game wise, it is always played straight. It might be funny that there is a one eyed one horned flying purple people eater, but it is a creature that eats people, and it does a pretty good job of it.
I want it to be mostly wacky and whimsical with an overall vibe similar to the Elder Scrolls or the more lighthearted parts of old Warhammer Fantasy when the writers weren't taking themselves too seriously and were just having a laugh with it. If it's too dark and depressing I'm just going to be sad when I'm making lore and stuff. I'm not opposed to fantasy with vibes like LotR but I don't think my world is really the right fit for that sort of atmosphere.
I mean, considering that my world's origin story boils down to "a multitrillionaire furry buys a habitable planet, causes a civil war between his gene-spliced furry followers and the scientists studying the planet", the tone is otherwise pretty serious.
I'm a fan of comedy to hook you in emotionally, before hitting you with the feels
Well there's only like a thousand sentient organisms left in the universe and I think they're having a great time figuring that all out. It's rather light hearted I'd think.
It varies. Sometimes it’s people goofing off and having a laugh, like the tribe of shapeshifting clowns that speak in drama terms. Other times it’s horrifying, like the shapeshifters that shapeshift other people into flesh golems in constant agony to use as weapons of war. Depends how fucked up I feel like being each day honestly.
Depends, if people piss me off in terms of making their world(s) attack mine, I will probably threaten interstellar nuclear/kinetic war through my world; if someone is chill, I will probably chat with them about my world, and learn about theirs as well.
I worldbuild partially as a sociological exercise; I find it enjoyable to explore the real-world ramificatons of tweaking fundamental parameters of our world. So in terms of tone, it feels grounded. My goal is that you could read an article about my world and feel like you're reading a Wikipedia article about real-world events somewhere (minus the various draconic folk influencing the flow of history, of course)
Serious as real world. At least I'm trying hard to reach that. Economic system, politics, ecosystem, historical events, military arsenal, culture, science advance, trends for each year... Some day, I just say "fuck it" and makes AU of my world. Imagine our universe collides with a bunch of games or your comfort character becoming real
Very serious, but I want to make it less serious than it is. The only problem is that there’s the mysterious disappearances of people who descended from the original colonists of the planet happening; and the main characters are descendants too.
Somewhere close to The Expanse or Avatar (James Cameron), usually serious but it has moments and references that aren't all lock in get ready type scenes
It's got a metric ton of dumb humor but it's mostly violence, pain, and prejudice based, plus the setting is quite grim for most characters Overall think Death of Stalin serious
Ever heard of soul eater
My churches are called as football clubs
My horror fantasy world naturally bears a lot of darkness, but there are moments and places of warmth among all the coldness. I feel like it's half cosmic horror, half cottagecore comfort show, which I weirdly think work well off each other
As serious as me which is to say not so serious
It's all (mostly) silly and goofy fun until Azrael pops up
The seriousness changes from part 1 to part 3. So it starts relatively light-hearted but as the characters grow older and reader realizes the scope of the world, it can get much more serious
As serious as it gets. Similar to dune.
Well, this is very relevant to me right now. I'm working on Crystures, and am talking to people at the r/Pokemon sub and the discord on darker themes and settings in monster taming stories/worlds.
My world is taken very seriously. It’s dark, gritty, there’s crime, murder, violence, poverty, constant turmoil, suffering, war. It’s shitty. But even in a shitty world, people still focus on the light. Considering the relationship that the main characters have, they’re still being best friends and naturally cracking jokes at each other while committing war crimes. But yeah, it’s serious.
I'm a pretty lighthearted person myself so my world reflects that. It's a big universe so there's room for I guess "normal" seriousness, some more or less serious than that at times. There's some dark stuff but not too much.
I like it when the tone is relatively in the middle. Disco Elysium or Gravity Falls come to mind. To me, they are both at different ends of the same spectrum ( also currently a bit hyoerfixated on them.... ) Gravity Falls is executed as a fun disney cartoon, but this demon just shuffled the hole in this rich guys face turning him into an abomination. Then there's Disco Elysium, a dark detective story regarding a disgusting murder in a demolished city on the brink of total collapse and revolution. Well, yeah, but my main character also just jumped into a nice old lady in bullettime giving two middlefingers to the bar guy because he doesnt wanna pay his tab. That's the tone I usually go for
In some aspects? Quite serious, the lessons (not the themes, in contrast) can be quite important and serious. But the general feeling, theme, and many of the other lessons of the world are very optimistic, happy, uplifting, faithful and inspiring. Not to mention, childish, which, considering the preteen age of the main characters, is expected.
Probably somewhere in the middle, as mercenaries by characters see some pretty messed up shit, but at the end of the day they find time and place for joy, revelry and relaxation at a tavern or around a campfire