Jabrosky
Banned
I got interested in writing fantasy fiction in the first place because fantasy, with its "anything goes" spirit, is the only genre out there that allows me to combine my various interests. For example, as I've said before, it's the only genre which would allow me to write about sexy African warrior chicks fighting dinosaurs in the jungle. Few genres are more favorable to the Rule of Cool which I deeply cherish.
Unfortunately, as an atheist and a metaphysical naturalist, I tend to take a highly scientific approach to world-building. I want my worlds' physics, geology, and other mechanics to resemble the real world's as much as possible, because I believe that a world with completely different mechanics would end up incomprehensibly alien to us. I could never write a disc-shaped world balanced atop giant elephants for instance. Everything in my worlds must make sense from a scientific and mechanical point of view. For that reason I usually don't like to have magical, supernatural, or any other scientifically implausible elements in my world-building.
This causes me major headaches because keeping within the limits of plausibility precludes certain creative ideas or at least makes them harder to justify. Take for instance the sexy dinosaur huntresses I described in my opening paragraph; even if humans and dinosaurs could co-evolve in the same ecosystems, in most pre-industrial cultures women have the burden of producing and nursing children from the moment they reach fecundity at ages 13-16, so most can't really afford to hunt big and dangerous game. The only way I could get around this is to give my tribal chicks implausibly modern attitudes about gender roles or distort their biology to the point where they don't resemble humans any more.
I really wish I could take more creative liberties with the world and revel in fantasy's "anything goes" spirit, but on the other hand I understand the need for consistency and a certain degree of realism so that readers don't feel completely weirded out. Am I thinking too rigidly about this?
Unfortunately, as an atheist and a metaphysical naturalist, I tend to take a highly scientific approach to world-building. I want my worlds' physics, geology, and other mechanics to resemble the real world's as much as possible, because I believe that a world with completely different mechanics would end up incomprehensibly alien to us. I could never write a disc-shaped world balanced atop giant elephants for instance. Everything in my worlds must make sense from a scientific and mechanical point of view. For that reason I usually don't like to have magical, supernatural, or any other scientifically implausible elements in my world-building.
This causes me major headaches because keeping within the limits of plausibility precludes certain creative ideas or at least makes them harder to justify. Take for instance the sexy dinosaur huntresses I described in my opening paragraph; even if humans and dinosaurs could co-evolve in the same ecosystems, in most pre-industrial cultures women have the burden of producing and nursing children from the moment they reach fecundity at ages 13-16, so most can't really afford to hunt big and dangerous game. The only way I could get around this is to give my tribal chicks implausibly modern attitudes about gender roles or distort their biology to the point where they don't resemble humans any more.
I really wish I could take more creative liberties with the world and revel in fantasy's "anything goes" spirit, but on the other hand I understand the need for consistency and a certain degree of realism so that readers don't feel completely weirded out. Am I thinking too rigidly about this?