Flat World Issue

[Androxine Vortex]

My world is referred to as the "world disc" and there is one main colossal continent with small islands surrounding it and then enveloping that is the ocean. I have always planned on making the southern places hot and like a dessert and the northern regions snowy and arctic. But then I was thinking if it would make more sense if the middle of the world was the hottest and then spreading out toward the edge it becomes more and more cold. I have already made my map for the first idea but wasn't sure if that would make sense.

The way my world works is there is the earth and above it are the heavens and all the stars are deities and below the world is called the abyss where banished gods reside. So I am also not sure how there is a day night cycle. I can't have the sun "moving" under the world through the abyss and if the world just rotates how will there be night?

 

[ThinkerX]

I have a similar concept in mind for a yet to be written novelette.

My solution, if relevant: Envision the sun as a ball of fire fixed inside a rotating cup. The sun remains fixed in place. But daylight increases/decreases as the cup rotates. When the open portion of the cup rotates out of sight, you get night.

To those with heat vision, the cup would probably still be visible.

 

[TheKillerBs]

Just look at the mythic stories with flat earths. For example, according to Aztec religion, the Sun essentially died every sunset and was reborn at sunrise, spending the night traveling through the underworld. It was pretty much the same way in Egyptian religion, except that I'm not sure if the Sun (god) actually died or if he just traveled through the underworld alive. Mesopotamian religion was more interesting. They were seemingly unaware that the Sun caused the day, instead supposing it to just be a major star that was only visible during the day.

 

[vaiyt]

Discworld also does a similar thing with the Sun travelling under the disc and between the elephants that carry it during the night.

You could also say the Sun itself has a dark half and rotates upon itself, in which case your world has no sunsets/sunrises and something more akin to daily "phases of the Sun" (though with how luminous it is, people would probably only see the very end of the transition).