Tag: Worldbuilding
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Meditations on Immortality, Part 5: The Horrors of Eternal Life
Welcome back to this series on immortality and perfection! If you haven’t read the previous articles, check them out below: Part 1: The Paradox of Perfection Part 2: Fractals & Infinity Part 3: Swordsmanship & Perfection Part 4: Alchemy & the Magnum Opus In Part 4, we conceptually linked the attainment of perfection to the…
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Meditations on Immortality, Part 2: Fractals and Infinity
In Part 1, I talked about the overlapping ideas of eternity, perfection, and immortality and the seeming paradox of making something perfect: “…making perfection a reality seems to evoke the mathematical concept of the asymptote— ‘a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it.’ One can approach perfection, but the closer…
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Meditations on Immortality, Part 1: The Paradox of Perfection
Immortality is a recurring thing in the fantasy genre—liches, elves, gods, and so on. I wanted to write down some of my thoughts on immortality, both in terms of fiction and more generally. It’s a fascinating topic, because it naturally intersects with so many other things—mathematics, metaphysics, and the limits of the human body and…
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Building a Magic System: No-Eyes’ Necromancy
Recently, I started work on a new short story that deals with necromancy. It’s the first time in a while that I’ve had to flesh out the details of a magic system, and I wanted to share the thought process that went into it. Narrative & Inspirations First, I want to talk about the story,…
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The Narrative and Worldbuilding of Bloodborne: Part 2
If you haven’t read Part 1 of my Bloodborne analysis, read it here. In it, I give an abridged summary of Bloodborne’s plot and take a closer look at the key elements of the narrative, including the Hunters and the Great Ones. To restate, much of this analysis is rooted in The Paleblood Hunt, but…
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The Narrative and Worldbuilding of Bloodborne: Part 1
For most people, the narratives of FromSoftware’s games are (understandably) treated as kind of a joke. I don’t think anyone denies that an incredible amount of time and care is put into building these stories, but when unearthing them involves deciphering the purposely cryptic description text of a necklace hidden in some god-forsaken niche in…
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New Essay in Clarkesworld Magazine: “Frodo is Dead: Worldbuilding and The Science of Magic”
I’ve said this before: magic should not be science. Magic can be systematic and internally consistent, but it shouldn’t be reduced to a human tool, like astronomy or chemistry. A lot of writers and worldbuilders don’t seem to understand the difference–didn’t Arthur C. Clarke famously say that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?” But there is a…
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THE OCCULT READING LIST VOL. 3: Three Body Problem, Language as Magic, and New Retro Wave
This is Vol. 3 of the Occult Reading list, where I collect all the interesting stories and strange pieces of trivia I’ve picked up over the past week from books, articles, and webpages. Also included are the songs that have been on repeat for me this week. Guaranteed to make you more interesting at parties. Disclaimer: There’s…
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Worldbuilding: Morrowind and Vvardenfell
No one liked Cliff Racers, but Vvardenfell was one the greatest fantasy worlds ever built.
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High Resolution: Worldbuilding and the Small Details
I have a fascination with the metal buttons on pay phones, the pixels on old Zenith televisions, the writing on IV drip bags, and the lettering on manhole covers.
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Worldbuilding: True Names, Binary, and Mathematics as Magic
Fleshing out my magic system takes me on a journey through binary, computer coding, and metaphysics.
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Don Quixote and Evan Puschak’s “Middle Earth and the Perils of Worldbuilding”
The Occult Triangle Lab responds to The Nerd Writer’s video criticizing fantasy worldbuilding.