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Where can I find your setting? If it's not online, will you explore your worldbuilding on your channel?

this is one of my favorite videos of all time on this platform. Incredible.

please talk about Indigenism in Scifi in a future video

1:20 Way to piss off both Mainlanders and people who live on the island.

My world's map has south at the top. I just felt like it. :) 7:52 That's not a dynasty. 🤨 What about Windsorians(House of Windsor).

3:42 If anyone needs me I'll be rowing around the Lake of Indifference.

This is such an amazing channel !!

Could have done without the communist woke garbage. Stopped listening at that point.

_Of course_ you conlang, obviously.

I like the idea of a mapmaker slowly discovering the world through his journeys. The first book starting with a blank map and a single city.

I think there's more to it than Martin implies. Many of these stories are set in times without the massive mobility that we enjoy in the world today. Mobility leads to cultures that have representation from across the globe. But generally speaking in the past the people who lived in an area were the children of people who had lived there, who were themselves children of people who had lived there, etc. People just didn't mix geographically in the past to the extent that they do today. So if you want to include a diversity of people in your story, you have to either just "toss them in there without explanation," or "come up with some elaborate explanation." Neither of those things necessarily enhances the story.

"So, speaking of maps - Is Australia even real? - and what about Finland? - if the world is flat, where does the border start, and what’s underneath it? - and are the Sea Monsters on Old Time maps real?"

Yes but, those darker themes on Mordor are pretty cool right.

"Worldbuilding is inherently political" Yeah, how about someone try to make a World where suddenly 30% of the world's calories and a sizeable portion of the world's manastones get cut off? I wonder how a Fantasy world would handle that (because that's what Ukraine is about).

A lot of the criticisms of the video's arguments are very similar, mainly coming from the view that symbolism only exists where the author intends it, and any other reading into fantasy/scifi world for representation/coding are "incorrect". I will respond by saying that unintended effects on audiences matter just as much as authorial intent. Is the audience reading into it wrong, or did the author construct their message poorly? As an author, its your job to provide as much clarity as possible, and you cannot simply blame the audience for reading something "incorrectly" whenever it doesn't have the effect you intended. As an example, The film Starship Troopers is a satire of militarism, but was interpreted by many viewers as being a sincere pro-war film. People will see real life problems/conflicts in fantasy stories, whether the author intended it or not, and if it weren't possible to see these kinds of themes within a story/world, then it probably isn't worth consuming.

I do not see the issue with the groups painted with wide brushstrokes Say your characters fight an army of a certain race, just as people in reality, from their perspective they are evil, and if you don't want that, simply make a different perspective or leave it at that, your characters wouldn't change their perspective unless shown first hand of something contrasting, but the audience would Both are fine ways to present a conflict

2 min in and this video is woke cringe

The whole point of fantasy or science fiction is to not be real life. You, as the reader/viewer, are putting your biases on what you are reading/viewing. You can read a book and completely misinterpret what the author is trying to convey due to your perception. Take an Orc, for example. You hear all the time they are representative of black people and their culture. Which i find strange because to me, they are representative of Neanderthals. As writers, we take inspiration from around us and make it our own. If we are worried about hurting people's feelings or offending someone. We'd never write anything but biographies. Just because you think Tolkiens Haradrim are based on the Indian culture doesn't make it so. Lots of cultures rode elephants. Theres multiple cultures within India itself. Just like not all horse archers are Mongolian. Native Americans were avid horse archers. Stop trying to put real life issues into fantasy or science fiction. They are not reality nor should they be. They are an escape from reality and all the political false victim hood.

This is nonsense. These issues you’re discussing would be problems in historical fiction. Maybe. They’re definitely not relevant to fantasy or sci-fi. If YOU find these things problematic, it’s YOUR mind that’s making the connection between fictional races/cultures and real ones. Orcs, for example, are orcs, which is to say they are not real. It is absurd to connect any creator’s orcs to a real world culture and then be upset at the “representation.” In that case, YOU are the one creating such “representation,” not the creator. Stop it. Problem solved. Also, you should understand that inspiration and representation are not the same thing. Y’all like to conflate different things as if they’re the same and then get upset about them being the same. But they were only ever the same in your own mind. Ridiculous.

Im happy you're back and making videos again! As a disabled person i wanted to say that I'm ok with a fictional world having ableism but if it's clear that the author and the characters think that it's bad.

Woah you’re back. Welcome back! I really liked you fantasy map video, but I thought you quit RUclips for good

Great Video! Definitely gave form to some feelings ive had about popular media. Also what is that footage from 4:00-4:25 from? looks really interesting.

Great video. Please make more.

Amazing. Could you please provide the names of films you've referenced in the video.

I'm struggling with this exact issue in my new setting! Great video

This started interesting, but I felt like it didn't really go anywhere. I'd love to see a follow-up video where you discuss how best to introduce fantasy cultures in a story and give examples of when this has been done well. You've established what not to do, but criticism is always easier than creation; some clear-cut examples of how to do it well would be great to see.

"The delusional M John Harrison " is how I read the description, the video continued on the same vein. I feel no urge to be charitable towards an author's opinion, when the said author got his start copying Moorcock's characters. Worldbuilding is not just a conceit to flesh out a story, a world can be generators of stories on it's own. You give a place a name and a fertile meadow, someone will come to dwell there and they'll have a story. You spring up a lakeside forest beside alpine mountains and that snowy place will have it's own ethereal winter folktale. Worlds can exist without their stories being publicly told and distributed.

"settings being racist or offensive" >shows warhammer clip XD

0:00 - Introduction 1:35 - Coding vs Unrelatability (problem 1) 4:57 - No Represantation vs Misrepresentation (problem 2) 8:22 - Kitchen Sink vs Monoculture (problem 3) 11:02 - Safety vs Allegory (problem 4) 12:59 - Conclusion

Amazing video! what's the film/etc shown at 8:55?

Good to see you back again making videos 👍

Your videos always make me think and redo a lot of my worldbuilding, but in that case, this one helps to identify problems and difficulties in a very much already known obstacle. I try to ask descendants and representative of different cultures when writing, I try to never portray a culture as "alien" if it's formed of human rituals. In tabletop rpg, it's possible to talk about familiarity when witnessing a religious ceremony foreign to all my players, or insist on the weird alien way of this specie to engage with mundane activity; but in writing, it's incredibly difficult. I thank you for the thinking piece and for the four categories of mistake which does a nice check-list to keep in mind while creating. Thank you, the only thing I don't enjoy about your work is the delay between two great videos ^^

I’m really interested in world Philosohy and religion and history so I have fairly strong coding because I like to explore different culture’s philosophies and practices. So I think about how to best handle this a lot. I decided to have all Earth coded cultures as humans with the ability for metamorphosis as part of the magic system. So I still have rock people and cat people but they are like the top 1% of most powerful mages. But usually creating a stereotype for their entire culture because they are the most recognisable & influential people in power so come to be symbolic and often seen as lessor gods. Examples I took are like the animal nature of Egyptian gods and the multi-armed and divine skin colour of Hindu gods.

Excellent video on a subject that isn't covered enough! PS. What's the movie this clip 12:00 is from?

I think your background music is tuned a bit too loud and distracting.

You're back!

wake up honey, another banger just dropped

Having finished the video, gotta say it's really great stuff. A lot worthwhile to think about when creating cultures. Also your section talking about orcs really connected a lot of thoughts I've been having recently being in the middle of rereading the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. His orc replacement, the Urgles, are basically treated as inherently evil monsters during the first book, but then he spends the rest of the books attempting to show more nuance to their culture as the Urgles side with the heroes against the empire that was mind-controlling them during the events of the first book. But even in its attempts to humanize and add nuance to the Urgles, it still falls back on a lot of exoticizing tropes about warrior cultures and indigenous groups. It's a mixed back all around, but I think it's an interesting case study in how even when you try to create nuance if you're not careful you will just reinforce a different set of problematic tropes and cliches.

Yesss! New video from one of my favorite channels

Worldbuilding is not for entertainment, its there to keep your story straight.

The fact that there is a considerable market for supplementary materials, such as books detailing the specifics of spaceships in Star Wars, indicates that there are quite a few people interested in worldbuilding besides the author. I wouldn't place worldbuilding in such absolute terms, because not all worldbuilding has to be featured in the story. As long as it doesn't serve as a detriment to storytelling, worldbuilding by an author is fine. It might provide the author with some degree of entertainment outside of the task of writing the story. It might lead to some stronger continuity or logic in a story that otherwise might become too jumbled or illogical for readers in general to invest themselves in. I think the more important aspect is the worldbuilding content in the story itself. Don't substitute encyclopedic worldbuilding with good storytelling, and if some piece of worldbuilding is so complicated that it undermines the presentation of the story then ditch it. Ultimately the worldbuilding should be amenable to the normal course of prose, without having to constantly consult a map, glossary or appendix just to follow the story.

Did you made something with "the centrum"? I would love to see something from this world. I am working on something loosely based on the Early modern period and the thirty years war. I want to explore a world that is torn apart from different believes, cultures, status... What improves an society and what decays it.

I am thoroughly in agreement with the idea that worldbuilding should suit the function of the text as a matter of practicality--as you mentioned, tabletop settings (and some video games) certainly require a deeper level of thought to be made toward the mechanics of its world. I think there are certainly examples of contained stories and the like which experience a great deal of worldbuilding without really ever going into it though as well; ultimately, it's a matter of knowing when to *apply* the world in your story and recognize when your worldbuilding is a kind of procrastination rather than working on the actual thing you want to be making. I think the biggest mistake I see with worldbuilding is when the content of the world actively subverts the message or narrative of a story: establishing rules to a setting that are then subsequently ignored, making narrative parallels between your story and reality when your worldbuilding makes that comparison completely flawed, or simply inserting worldbuilding snippets because the author believes they are necessary for a fantasy or sci-fi story. Those situations are where I really get irritated by excessive set dressing because it feels like the story is in conflict with what we as the audience are told about the world rather than springing from it, which either dampens the impact of the story or makes the writing come across as amateur.

What a load of bollocks...

Yes, it's part of China.

Ohh, no, PC fantasy mapping!

He said (no) Taiwan is not a part of China. *Presses Subscribe and Like buttons*

Just a few months ago I found your channel and pointed my wife toward it, lamenting that you'd dropped two total bangers and then vanished. Very good to have you back!

I love reading world less stories and imagining what exists beyond the bounds of the page or screen.

YAYYYYYY