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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7404631" data-attributes="member: 5142">So you would agree that your was a question not asked in good faith? I hope that's true. I suppose we will see through your actions. But when you say that I am simply "arriving bad motives to those who disagree with [me]" - which is certainly a negative insinuation of my motives and character in its own right - and then I respond by saying that the reactions made by others are "sympathetically human" and that the argumentative apologies and fallacies do not necessarily require "malice or mischief," then I am not sure why you think that I am not approaching this conversation with an intent to achieve a consensus. Part of consensus requires understanding, sympathy, and an awareness of the position of others. This process also requires identifying the root issue that lies behind the emotive and argumentive reactions made. These to me are not "bad motives." They are human ones. But that does not mean that I am morally obligated to intentionally blind myself to fallacies of others when they transpire or mute my own frustrations with the discourse of the conversation. And I do think that the part of the root cause for the reaction against "worldbuilding critics" stems from confusing a criticism of the trees with a criticism of the forest. Disclaimer: Analogies are inherently imperfect, and they often entail opening unwanted doors of discussion. So when I make a few analogies here, would you please be willing, [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], to help our discussion through keeping the focus on Worldbuilding and not the subjects of comparison that I will point out in my analogies? If this thread was entitled "Why Alcoholic Drinking is Bad," we would invariably find a similar set of reactions: less in terms of information content, but more in terms of emotional content. There would be those who would likely understand that the topic is meant to discuss the problem of excess drinking, alcoholism (addiction), or how alcohol has negative physical and/or social side-effects to a person and others. (There would also be a lot of anecdotal "This is not a problem for me..." and "I enjoy drinking.") But such a thread is not even necessarily saying §"Never drink alcohol" or even "You are a bad person for drinking." But these last two points (§) are invariably the emotional reactions that people voice based on the title or from the feeling that their personhood is somehow under attack. (I had thought about also raising the analogy with the issue of "Toxic Masculinity," but I think that would be too much of a can of worms to open in this thread.) And it seems fairly clear that there are similar reactions here such that the topic is being attacked on the basis of the emotional reactions §. There is less of an acknowledgment of the problems of excess or extraneous worldbuilding and more of an attempt to discredit the problem at hand. One way I have commonly seen the argument discredited amounts in paraphrase to "you can't criticize worldbuilding because everything is worldbuilding." Another has been on insisting that the vaguely general sense of the word's meaning is somehow the most "accepted" one over against its more particularized and connotative sense in common parlance. But this runs both ways. There are others who are using it an incredibly general way and others still who are insisting that the conversation adhere to their definition, whether narrower or broader. But being a "generally vague" sense should not equate to the "commonly understood" way. And I think that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s sense of "worldbuilding" runs much closer to the common parole than the more generally broad way in which "worldbuilding" is everything created under the sun. Hussar's usage of the term is evident in sheer preponderance and character of written and video articles found throughout the Internet on worldbuilding tips, advice, guidance, etc. The character of this term's usage is more particularized to a set of activities that often transpire on a different level than a world that emerges through play. The most common sense of the term frames worldbuilding as an authorial pre-emergent fiction activity. And yet there are others who are also insisting on their definition or understanding, so putting this burden on [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] seems shortsighted, as this demand does not seem placed on others but just them. If as you say, everyone is insisting on a different definition of "stupid," then it seems a bit odd that you are admonishing one group for "redefining" a term while not admonishing another for doing the same or insisting on upholding a broader, vaguer, more general sense. Again, I don't think that he is "redefining" the term since his usage reflects common parlance of the term "worldbuilding" in praxis.</blockquote>

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