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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3466500" data-attributes="member: 4937">You are adding to the text what isn't there.  You might have a good point, but let's not pretend that it comes from anywhere but yourself, because it isn't in the text in question.This is the exact sort of silly statement that I predicted pages and pages ago.  So, "worldbuilding" is only "worldbuilding" if it is irrelevant and useless to the story?  What a conveinent definition of worldbuilding.  If only we could always be so Orwellian, we could prove anything.  If you define something as negative and useless by definition, of course you can 'win' any argument about its usefulness.  But if you are going to do that, don't be surprised if people don't take your argument as seriously as you think it deserves.Yes, because we know that noone has ever been intrigued by a story or cared about a story or felt a story to have a powerful emotional impact because the story had world building elements to it.   I don't think that worldbuilding which doesn't bend to the needs of the story or the game is nearly common as you are claiming, but that is hardly the most important point.The most important point is that if we discussing the essay you wrote just now, rather than the essay that was actually wrote, there would hardly be much contriversy because while you've said things that are quite true and maybe even informative for some people to read (when you haven't been defending the indefensible) you also haven't said anything which anyone is going to disagree with.  Once again, what you are saying is what perhaps should of been said, but it bears no resemblence to what was actually said. What was actually said was this:"Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid." - M. John HarrisonThat is a bit more strong than the simple platitudes you wish to make of it.  Let me respond to it rather than waste more breath on peoples attempts to read what they want to read rather than what was wrote."Worldbuilding is not dull, nor is it unnatural.  Worldbuilding literalizes the urge to create, which is a fundamental a laudatory drive of human nature.  Worldbuilding is a thought experiment in which the author lays the foundation for the story that he wishes to tell and prepares his mind for that creative act.  World building inspires the imagination of the writer and engages the mind of the reader and encourages in the active participation in the shared imaginary space that contains the writers thoughts and musings, because it shows the reader that this mental space is a serious and important one and that thought was put into it and that is worthy of consideration and even study.  Far from numbing the reader's imagination, world building encourages the reader to match the consideration and effort the writer put into the story with consideration and effort of his own, whereas a story which does not have these features discourages the reader from exploring the mental space because it obvious that what is present is all that is there and that beyond those frames is vacuuity of substance or of thought.While world building is not technically necessary, this does not actually tell us much of anything.  Lots of things that are not technically necessary, such as food to be tasty or stories to be witty or inspirational, are nonetheless desirable at times - such as when we are hungry or when we are reading anything more interesting than a technical manual.  While world building is not technically necessary, many technically proficient writers engage in it for good and sufficient reasons.  Worldbuilding is the great motivation of a writer which is closest to love, especially when it is a survey of the thing that is there - such Joyce's exhuastive detailing of his beloved Dublin or Tolkiens epic paen to medieval literature, Catholocism and the English countryside.  Writers which love things make worlds which reflect the things that they love, because they want to share these things with others.  There is nothing in that which we need demean or fear.  Since when are persons of devotion and scholars of life long study, people whom we must snear at?  Those that would snear at and demean the worldbuilders, reveal more about there own character than they do about the objects of thier scorn.  We should not fear them, because they will never build anything that will long endure, but we should regret thier wasted talents and pity thier need to hate and fear anyone different than themselves."</blockquote>

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