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!!cJ4MGVqvOKw 09/02/11(Fri)15:35 No.29301847>>29301617 I think that's one of the things I've come to despise and love about the Discworld series (I know, it's in no way high fantasy, haha, but nonetheless it does have a massively established world and all that). I jumped in with the Moist Von Lipwig duology, so although I was entranced by those two books, a great deal of characterisation and world-building made no sense to me. In that sense I entirely appreciate why people who don't like fantasy stories with developed worlds, or single novels in which these worlds are developed, don't enjoy them. It's one thing I respect about J.K. Rowling's work - it establishes the context as human and then makes it fantastical, so it straddles the divide well enough to be interesting to most readers. In fact a lot of contemporary fiction does that, although not all of it well, and it explains why these worlds are so much more popular than their high fantasy counterparts. Maybe I'm old-fashioned as fuck, but I still enjoy investing time and effort into my reading, even of fanfiction, and the exploration of these worlds and characters, as you put it, is one of my greatest joys in reading. It's the main reason I enjoy high fantasy, and why I can enjoy Fallout: Equestria, Dangerous Business and the like. They have such an integral focus on their worlds that I can practically envision them myself (for instance, if you'll excuse the comparison, the Star Wars universe).
But yeah, you're right about that. Direct is good too, especially when it's pulled off properly, in a manner that hooks you well enough to the characters that you're okay with not having a gigantic world to imagine.
Wow, this got long. But my last point is that when I was a kid, there was this one book - the Dream Merchant, by Isabel Hoving - that I still remember and love even to this day, despite it being pretty much literary teen's fiction, for taking the human world and meshing it seamlessly with a beautiful fantasy. |