The Spire #7

[laughing_tree]

The fundamental philosophy is this: “you’ve created a world so the stories you tell should be world-sized.” Which, y’know… is fine, but really doesn’t need to be the only rule. I mentioned Bladerunner before? That’s an exquisite example of an exception. That movie presents a huge, grinding, exotic, depressing, extraordinary new world… and then proceeds to tell us a fairly small story within it. The outcome doesn’t particularly change the fictional world or the way it runs; the protagonist doesn’t Win or Lose the day (in fact he arguably has no direct agency with the ending at all); and yet it’s rightly regarded as a masterpiece. It’s intriguing, it’s classy. It seems to say: yeah, we’ve built this world, but fuck you if you think that’s all we’ve got. That’s not even the Main Event, kids. Behold: story! That’s our angle-of-attack on The Spire. -- Si Spurrier

Comments

[strejdaking]

Yeah, that's a really dumb rule. Somebody once called this "worldburning"-this thing where in order to up the stakes, you just make the world feel needlessly small, as if nothing besides what our protagonists are doing matters and everything exist just for their sake. Which, I mean, is largely true, but you shouldn't make it obvious.