McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Fictional Locales, Real World

<< < (2/3) > >>

Quantus:

--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 06, 2013, 04:46:24 PM ---I've always read Gotham as mythically "big scary city where you get mugged all the time" and Metropolis as "bright shiny city of tomorrow" and both of those as aspects of how New York is seen.

(Last map of the DC universe I saw, Gotham replaced Delaware and Metropolis took up about the southern quarter of New Jersey; and New York itself is much smaller than in RL, and judging by the Manhattan Guardian miniseries, full of awesome buildings and things that were proposed but not actually built in the real world.)

--- End quote ---
I always saw Gotham as the dank and Corrupt and full of mafia, like Chicago in the old days.  And a lot of Batman renditions, especially the 90's cartoon I grew up on, they gave everything in gotham a retro, 40's style feel, with helped that accosaition.  But yes, not they are established as different cities along side teh real ones, instead of the fiction replacements they started as.  I think it was during the last Marvel crossover they mentioned that the DC earth is bigger than normal earth, and so it can support more densely populated urban areas.

The Corvidian:
All novels are alternate history, or hidden history. Even the real world cities in these novels have hidden places that don't exist in the real world, or places that real, but have hidden facets.

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: The Corvidian on September 11, 2013, 03:44:26 AM ---All novels are alternate history, or hidden history. Even the real world cities in these novels have hidden places that don't exist in the real world, or places that real, but have hidden facets.

--- End quote ---

I've never been able to understand people who balk at worlds where, say, WWII fgoes really differently, but are perfectly happy with stories in settings where everything is exactly the same as our world in every respect except for a dozen or so fictional people having mundane non-fantastical stories happen to them.  The necessary tweak to create the latter situation is immensely more subtle and difficult than the former.

Quantus:

--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 11, 2013, 04:49:30 AM ---I've never been able to understand people who balk at worlds where, say, WWII fgoes really differently, but are perfectly happy with stories in settings where everything is exactly the same as our world in every respect except for a dozen or so fictional people having mundane non-fantastical stories happen to them.  The necessary tweak to create the latter situation is immensely more subtle and difficult than the former.

--- End quote ---
I dont know whether one is more difficult than the other, but the What If scenario's are certainly far more interesting, to me at least.  You think a different outcome to WWII would be interesting?  Imagine how the world wars and modern life would look if the American Civil War went the other way, so that by the time the World Wars rolled around the US was a bickering confederation of loosely associated but independent nation states, rather than the industrial behemoth it was becoming. 

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: Quantus on September 11, 2013, 01:07:34 PM ---  Imagine how the world wars and modern life would look if the American Civil War went the other way,

--- End quote ---

I don't find that a particularly interesting subset of alternate history because there is really an enormous volume of it already out there, people have already explored options there in great depth and detail. (I've been on panels where everyone concerned just referred to it as the Civil War, and if people push me for my opinion on the Civil War, it's "Get over it, Cromwell won.")  There's quite a lot of alternate WWII stuff out there; insofar as i am interested in working in AH, I am really more interested in other divergence points that have not been used anything like as much (Qeng Ho colonising California, or the timing of the French envoys to the Mongol court working out differently such that the Mongols end up joining the later Crusades.)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page