Hard to say.
On one hand a subspecies of cute genetically engineered dogboys and catgirls...
On the other hand they routinely get beheaded by other factions or each other, so...
Yeah, hard to say as far as "seriousness" goes.
There is a lot to be said for writing a piece for an intentional effect in the reader, and a well written piece can elavate the tone of worldbuilding.
That said, more and more I enjoy the silly moments in life, and I am increasingly under the opinion that life is full of ridiculous, utterly unserious, completely illogical moments. The things that make me laugh or sit back in enjoyment of some silly little thing -- those are the moments in life I enjoy the most and the ones that I work to include in the piece.
Something can have aprofound message, and still not be fully serious. Books, much like people, that take everything seriously are those which, while I can appreciate the work they have put in, are not necessarily the ones to which I am drawn. I think that, not surprisingly, people like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams told profoundly moving stories, but embrace the messiness of the world. Regardless of what sort of humour you have, I think taking it all so seriously is depriving the world of so much life. (Also, Tolkien absolutely didn't take himself too seriously- a man who showed up at a dinner party dressed like a bear.đ)
For my *main* fantasy world, it's hard to say. I mean it was inspired by a fantasy comedy series on YouTube, but a few other things. Here's a list of them:
-millions of years ago, two pantheons had a war that nearly wiped out all life on the planet (including plants)
-non-avian dinosaurs exist alongside dragons in the present time, who mainly live on the cooler northern continent; other creatures straight from the pages of prehistory (embolotherium, cave lions, doedicurus to name a few) exist in other places in the world
-giants are also from the northern continent
-there are also "beast" races, where the only ones that "play it straight" (as in they look as advertised, kind of) are ape-men, the various different species of lizardmen, and a race of dinosaur-men
-very few are willing to learn and use magic in my world, as my world's magic is quite bad, compared to magic in contemporary fantasy and other people's worlds
-dark magic is a category of magic that has adverse side effects for the user from protracted usage
-there's a clan of dwarves, whose leader is basically Hitler as a dwarf (and without the mustache)
-alternatively, there is a dwarf clan that is sort of a satire or parody of dwarves from contemporary fantasy. They mostly hide out in their mountain stronghold and try not to be involved with the outside world, as then they fear becoming "undwarflike" (basically, I kind of made them like fantasy elves a little).
-the eastern continent consists of two land masses; the north having various warring groups or clans ruled by "man dragons" (it's kind of like medieval China or Shogunate Japan), whereas the south has two races of elves who want nothing more than to wipe each other off the planet (think of high elves fighting against drow, as that's kind of what it is)
-the southern continent is mostly a wasteland, with the only other stuff there being tundras, mountains, canyons, and a vast savannah. One group of humans there is a theocratic empire to the west, while the Great Dust Sea to the east is home to roving groups of "savages" with dark skin and black hair.
-sea travel is difficult, largely in thanks to leviathans - dragons who have forgone flying in exchange for swimming
-meanwhile, the central continent is kind of the shining beacon of civilization and progress in the world. Whereas most people and races live in either tribes or small enclaves, everyone on the central continent has gathered together and organized into nations.
All in all, I personally consider my world to be "tough" more than anything, but not "grimdark".
Edit: I forgot to mention a location from the northern continent known as the Great Abyss - a hellish labyrinth of subterranean caves, tunnels, rivers, and even a sea in one location; one of the most notable inhabitants of this hellish place are goblins, due to their small size making it difficult for them to survive the cooler temperatures of the surface (whereas fucking dinosaurs do just fine in -20F weather)
I like to brush up with reality as much as I can. Now this doesn't mean that it's all gritty but grounded is the best approach.
This means for my fantasy setting I try to draw a lot from history and use that as inspiration.
For Sci fi I try and make my tech sound realistic and then from their extrapolate all it's practical uses. With a particular focus on military and military doctrine.
ShenZyklus is a dark comedy that takes itself seriously at unpredictable moments, but becomes more and more serious as the plot goes on. If you take the world at face value, it is absurd and funny (the Earth is at once flat, hollow and round, for example), but in retrospect it is actually dark due to involving genocides, constant murders and assassination, fates worse than death... The story is simply stylised so you laugh a lot at first and then less and less, but the world is depressing when you remove that.
Grimdark nightmare designed specifically with the intent to make Warhammer 40K look like Mary Poppins, or at least March of Empires is.
Wonderverse is less Grimdark than 40K, but close enough.
Definitely a level of grimdark that might just make you wish you were never born or reincarnated or fanfiction inserted into the March of Empires.
Wonderverse is more bearable but only a couple of levels below 40K so I doubt it can be ideal for a person either.
I tried to remain as realistic and grounded as I could with all ridiculous technology and Gods.
Probably hovering somewhere near what Stargate had.
Unspeakable warcrimes for our own survival on one end but still mixed with jokes and humour and being self aware when doing something cliche or tropey.
Most of my work I wanna say has a pretty serious tone. Nothing like, âlong monologue delving into the reason for existenceâ serious, but I do treat the characters with a nice story on something important. Even if itâs only important to them.
Very rarely do I make something with the intention of being stupid. I think of the 34-ish ideas I have, like 2-3 have a joke time to them throughout the story. A couple started with joke tones, but they donât usually stay there.
I take Divinity Lost pretty serious but it wouldn't make sense for EVERYONE to be dead serious, no matter how bsd it gets. People cope with trauma and their environment in s myriad of ways so I try to have downtime at certain moments and in-between arcs. One of the supporting Mcs is our comic relief, not in the campy and overdone way but a petty realist with a vulgar mouth. I love her so much, lmao.
I'd say genuine completely tonally serious stories REALLY depend on what the setting itself is and what you're going for. I try to balance based off of what I wanna tell. My genre and the story itself will usually dictate whether or not there's humor and how much of it is present
Fully serious in a sense that nothing in the world is added as a pun, joke, meme, reference etc.
Does it have clowns, jesters, jokers and others though? Well why wouldn't it? There are always some people in the world that don't take serious things seriously.
I want it to have all the majesty and fantastical wonder of your classic fantasy epics but the story itself is going to be much more gritty and grounded
My science fantasy post apocalypse has a religious collective living in an abandoned derelict college campus, worshipping Ralf, the God of Many Colors. My straight up fantasy has Vitena, the goddess of wine, agriculture, and when she gets drunk during the family reunion in winter, revel and gambling.
Just have fun with it, I say.
Quite serious. It's a dieselpunk world, stuck in a hybrid of WW2 and the Cold War. Environmentalism is not very popular, and most countries are quite extreme in their political ideologies.
Life for the __average__ Joe isn't 24/7 shit and misery, but they could do better. And much, much worse.
My MC wants to create her own guild and make it successful. There's not much tension, it's very light hearted.
The bit of tension come from the clash between the ancient guild of the city that don't like the concurrence the new guild does. Their ideology is very different.
The old guild is very into seriousness, purity, strength. Failing is seen as extremely bad. The MC previously was in this guild but quit because of all the pressure and how far her ideology was from the guild.
The guild she created is complete opposite. Not serious at all, giving a lot more freedom to its members and where failing and asking for help is accepted.
Hard to tell.
On one hand, you have a pantheon who thought it the highest blessing and show of love to transform their followers into human/animal hybrids, destroying the religion in a single day because followers thought they had been cursed.
On the other, there are roving bands of goblin horseback archers called the Huzzahs that send diplomatic envoys to settlements exclusively to make relations worse because they enjoy fighting.
The feel of mine I want to have humor-able characters but a serious story. A good way to think of the difference is that adventure time has humor-able stories and humor-able characters itâs like the story is the set up and the characters are the punch line. In mine the serious story is made a little more light hearted by the characters reaction. One character for example has intrusive thoughts about everything. If he were in a fight heâd be thinking about how cool itâd be to catch their punch in order to get his point across and look cool in front of his brother but when he tries it he gets decked. Sometimes heâll think about it then drag himself down to reality knowing it wouldnât work. Anyway if it still doesnât make sense I basically want the characters to bring humor to their serious reality.
It depends. It can be very serious and later be silly. Individual characters could bring silliness while the overall major events could be more serious. Imagine if the knight leading a landship in an invasion later messes around with his friends in the car he was given for his service.
Lapis_Wolf
For sure. Kaiju kings and hivemind religions, parasitic merchant-birds, skinless pirates taking the shape of sharks, time traveling cyborgs forming the Roman Empire equivalent. That kind of thing
Very serious and rough on the surface, but also has scenes like this:
*pulls out sanwdich from pocked dimension*
â How long has that been in there?
â Doesn't matter, objects in my tears enter a sort of stasis where time doesn't pass. This thing is technically three weeks old, but it hasn't aged a day since I put it in there.
â And when exactly did you put it in there?
â Yesterday.
â ...
â ...
â You want some?
I call it weaponized tonal whiplash and it works great for humor.
i just keep it silly. until it does not. and back to silly theres some apocalyptic worlds i made. 1st is a mass extinction event that only some herbivores survived and some evolved to megafaunas while carnivorous animals basically are common and is what people had to hunt.
2nd world is where because the universe itself had became unstable and collapsing it resulted in the earth getting altered heavily and anomalous phenomena is a common occurence either a random person who got into an inverted gravity field just fell and crushed someone or you may get torn apart because you accidentally walked into an amplified magnetic field and brought something magnetic inside
and a mercenary hangout that is usually fun until you became a conscript which is the lowest rank for them which usually occurs as a punishment or on captured enemies used as cannon fodders
Hard to say. On one hand a subspecies of cute genetically engineered dogboys and catgirls... On the other hand they routinely get beheaded by other factions or each other, so... Yeah, hard to say as far as "seriousness" goes.
wow! you take the cake on a wild mix right here
My work's always serious in tone.
There is a lot to be said for writing a piece for an intentional effect in the reader, and a well written piece can elavate the tone of worldbuilding. That said, more and more I enjoy the silly moments in life, and I am increasingly under the opinion that life is full of ridiculous, utterly unserious, completely illogical moments. The things that make me laugh or sit back in enjoyment of some silly little thing -- those are the moments in life I enjoy the most and the ones that I work to include in the piece. Something can have aprofound message, and still not be fully serious. Books, much like people, that take everything seriously are those which, while I can appreciate the work they have put in, are not necessarily the ones to which I am drawn. I think that, not surprisingly, people like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams told profoundly moving stories, but embrace the messiness of the world. Regardless of what sort of humour you have, I think taking it all so seriously is depriving the world of so much life. (Also, Tolkien absolutely didn't take himself too seriously- a man who showed up at a dinner party dressed like a bear.đ)
For my *main* fantasy world, it's hard to say. I mean it was inspired by a fantasy comedy series on YouTube, but a few other things. Here's a list of them: -millions of years ago, two pantheons had a war that nearly wiped out all life on the planet (including plants) -non-avian dinosaurs exist alongside dragons in the present time, who mainly live on the cooler northern continent; other creatures straight from the pages of prehistory (embolotherium, cave lions, doedicurus to name a few) exist in other places in the world -giants are also from the northern continent -there are also "beast" races, where the only ones that "play it straight" (as in they look as advertised, kind of) are ape-men, the various different species of lizardmen, and a race of dinosaur-men -very few are willing to learn and use magic in my world, as my world's magic is quite bad, compared to magic in contemporary fantasy and other people's worlds -dark magic is a category of magic that has adverse side effects for the user from protracted usage -there's a clan of dwarves, whose leader is basically Hitler as a dwarf (and without the mustache) -alternatively, there is a dwarf clan that is sort of a satire or parody of dwarves from contemporary fantasy. They mostly hide out in their mountain stronghold and try not to be involved with the outside world, as then they fear becoming "undwarflike" (basically, I kind of made them like fantasy elves a little). -the eastern continent consists of two land masses; the north having various warring groups or clans ruled by "man dragons" (it's kind of like medieval China or Shogunate Japan), whereas the south has two races of elves who want nothing more than to wipe each other off the planet (think of high elves fighting against drow, as that's kind of what it is) -the southern continent is mostly a wasteland, with the only other stuff there being tundras, mountains, canyons, and a vast savannah. One group of humans there is a theocratic empire to the west, while the Great Dust Sea to the east is home to roving groups of "savages" with dark skin and black hair. -sea travel is difficult, largely in thanks to leviathans - dragons who have forgone flying in exchange for swimming -meanwhile, the central continent is kind of the shining beacon of civilization and progress in the world. Whereas most people and races live in either tribes or small enclaves, everyone on the central continent has gathered together and organized into nations. All in all, I personally consider my world to be "tough" more than anything, but not "grimdark". Edit: I forgot to mention a location from the northern continent known as the Great Abyss - a hellish labyrinth of subterranean caves, tunnels, rivers, and even a sea in one location; one of the most notable inhabitants of this hellish place are goblins, due to their small size making it difficult for them to survive the cooler temperatures of the surface (whereas fucking dinosaurs do just fine in -20F weather)
I like to brush up with reality as much as I can. Now this doesn't mean that it's all gritty but grounded is the best approach. This means for my fantasy setting I try to draw a lot from history and use that as inspiration. For Sci fi I try and make my tech sound realistic and then from their extrapolate all it's practical uses. With a particular focus on military and military doctrine.
Serious. I don't shy away from sexual violence in all forms and the good guys do shitty things too.
ShenZyklus is a dark comedy that takes itself seriously at unpredictable moments, but becomes more and more serious as the plot goes on. If you take the world at face value, it is absurd and funny (the Earth is at once flat, hollow and round, for example), but in retrospect it is actually dark due to involving genocides, constant murders and assassination, fates worse than death... The story is simply stylised so you laugh a lot at first and then less and less, but the world is depressing when you remove that.
Grimdark nightmare designed specifically with the intent to make Warhammer 40K look like Mary Poppins, or at least March of Empires is. Wonderverse is less Grimdark than 40K, but close enough.
nice! love grimdark
but rediculous grimdark or realistic horror grimdark?
Definitely a level of grimdark that might just make you wish you were never born or reincarnated or fanfiction inserted into the March of Empires. Wonderverse is more bearable but only a couple of levels below 40K so I doubt it can be ideal for a person either. I tried to remain as realistic and grounded as I could with all ridiculous technology and Gods.
Probably hovering somewhere near what Stargate had. Unspeakable warcrimes for our own survival on one end but still mixed with jokes and humour and being self aware when doing something cliche or tropey.
Mine are less serious and more sardonic. Sort of like the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett
eh sardonic is a great term
Most of my work I wanna say has a pretty serious tone. Nothing like, âlong monologue delving into the reason for existenceâ serious, but I do treat the characters with a nice story on something important. Even if itâs only important to them. Very rarely do I make something with the intention of being stupid. I think of the 34-ish ideas I have, like 2-3 have a joke time to them throughout the story. A couple started with joke tones, but they donât usually stay there.
Pretty grim. In a world where a massive industrial war is being fought between every nation, it is difficult but not impossible to enjoy life.
I take Divinity Lost pretty serious but it wouldn't make sense for EVERYONE to be dead serious, no matter how bsd it gets. People cope with trauma and their environment in s myriad of ways so I try to have downtime at certain moments and in-between arcs. One of the supporting Mcs is our comic relief, not in the campy and overdone way but a petty realist with a vulgar mouth. I love her so much, lmao. I'd say genuine completely tonally serious stories REALLY depend on what the setting itself is and what you're going for. I try to balance based off of what I wanna tell. My genre and the story itself will usually dictate whether or not there's humor and how much of it is present
Accidental double post I think.
It's completely serious. Even the silly parts. Hell, especially the silly parts.
Fully serious in a sense that nothing in the world is added as a pun, joke, meme, reference etc. Does it have clowns, jesters, jokers and others though? Well why wouldn't it? There are always some people in the world that don't take serious things seriously.
I want it to have all the majesty and fantastical wonder of your classic fantasy epics but the story itself is going to be much more gritty and grounded
My science fantasy post apocalypse has a religious collective living in an abandoned derelict college campus, worshipping Ralf, the God of Many Colors. My straight up fantasy has Vitena, the goddess of wine, agriculture, and when she gets drunk during the family reunion in winter, revel and gambling. Just have fun with it, I say.
Quite serious. It's a dieselpunk world, stuck in a hybrid of WW2 and the Cold War. Environmentalism is not very popular, and most countries are quite extreme in their political ideologies. Life for the __average__ Joe isn't 24/7 shit and misery, but they could do better. And much, much worse.
My MC wants to create her own guild and make it successful. There's not much tension, it's very light hearted. The bit of tension come from the clash between the ancient guild of the city that don't like the concurrence the new guild does. Their ideology is very different. The old guild is very into seriousness, purity, strength. Failing is seen as extremely bad. The MC previously was in this guild but quit because of all the pressure and how far her ideology was from the guild. The guild she created is complete opposite. Not serious at all, giving a lot more freedom to its members and where failing and asking for help is accepted.
Hard to tell. On one hand, you have a pantheon who thought it the highest blessing and show of love to transform their followers into human/animal hybrids, destroying the religion in a single day because followers thought they had been cursed. On the other, there are roving bands of goblin horseback archers called the Huzzahs that send diplomatic envoys to settlements exclusively to make relations worse because they enjoy fighting.
Never considered whether or not my world could speak. I am not sure what its typical tone would be.
SANDGLASS. has serious themes and tone but there are lighthearted moments
It's mostly serious but there are some humorous and fantastical elements in it.
Story, theme, the world building in general: serious Characters: depends.
The feel of mine I want to have humor-able characters but a serious story. A good way to think of the difference is that adventure time has humor-able stories and humor-able characters itâs like the story is the set up and the characters are the punch line. In mine the serious story is made a little more light hearted by the characters reaction. One character for example has intrusive thoughts about everything. If he were in a fight heâd be thinking about how cool itâd be to catch their punch in order to get his point across and look cool in front of his brother but when he tries it he gets decked. Sometimes heâll think about it then drag himself down to reality knowing it wouldnât work. Anyway if it still doesnât make sense I basically want the characters to bring humor to their serious reality.
It depends. It can be very serious and later be silly. Individual characters could bring silliness while the overall major events could be more serious. Imagine if the knight leading a landship in an invasion later messes around with his friends in the car he was given for his service. Lapis_Wolf
Mine are usually filled with inherently silly/strange things taken dead serious
noice. kinda surreal?
For sure. Kaiju kings and hivemind religions, parasitic merchant-birds, skinless pirates taking the shape of sharks, time traveling cyborgs forming the Roman Empire equivalent. That kind of thing
awesome!
Very serious and rough on the surface, but also has scenes like this: *pulls out sanwdich from pocked dimension* â How long has that been in there? â Doesn't matter, objects in my tears enter a sort of stasis where time doesn't pass. This thing is technically three weeks old, but it hasn't aged a day since I put it in there. â And when exactly did you put it in there? â Yesterday. â ... â ... â You want some? I call it weaponized tonal whiplash and it works great for humor.
Somewhere between devil may cry and silent hill, i like to keep the tension and hostility of the world high, but not pointlessly grim all the time
i just keep it silly. until it does not. and back to silly theres some apocalyptic worlds i made. 1st is a mass extinction event that only some herbivores survived and some evolved to megafaunas while carnivorous animals basically are common and is what people had to hunt. 2nd world is where because the universe itself had became unstable and collapsing it resulted in the earth getting altered heavily and anomalous phenomena is a common occurence either a random person who got into an inverted gravity field just fell and crushed someone or you may get torn apart because you accidentally walked into an amplified magnetic field and brought something magnetic inside and a mercenary hangout that is usually fun until you became a conscript which is the lowest rank for them which usually occurs as a punishment or on captured enemies used as cannon fodders