Changing the way the world works

"Breathing" "darkness" would get to me, because darkness is an absence, rather than a presence. You might be able to get away with breathing light, though. You'd also have to have, if not give, a reasonable explanation for why others creatures didn't do the same, assuming they don't, and how such a change could be accomplished.

Oddsocks said:

It seems to me that, in fantasy, anything goes in terms of physics and metaphysics, so long as everything within the world remains internally consistent...

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I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I usually don't have a problem with very unusual settings, etc., as long as the whole thing holds together logically. (I would even buy the 'breathing darkness' thing if it came with a good enough explanation. In fact, I think that's a pretty cool idea.)

One of the most outlandish books I've read was "The Scar". But while it contained so much of the fantastic, it didn't trigger any eye rolling. Suspension of disbelief is a great tool in writing!

In film we place a heavy emphasis upon tone and execution. All filmmakers need to pay very close attention to the tone they are trying to sculpt in their movie. Tone has an amazing impact on just how much suspension of disbelief that the audience will be willing to offer up.

The Arnie movie Last Action Hero (yes it was a flop, but a highly under-rated flop) presented us with a marked contrast between the make-believe movie world that Jack Slater lived in versus the real world that Arnold Schwartzenegger lived in. In the pretend world Jack Slater was able to fight twenty bad guys at once and come out with nary a scratch. But then when he crossed over into the real world, he tried to faceoff with just one bad guy, and the result was that a single bullet was enough to take him down.

One of my favorite examples of tone is from the Nicolas Cage/Meg Ryan movie City of Angels. That movie made ample usage of prolonged silence and very precisely executed and yet minimalist body movements by all the actors. The result was a ballet-like presentation of the story that leant a fairy tale quality to the whole production.

Conversely, the worst example of tone is from first big screen attempt at The Hulk with Eric Bana five years ago. The director was totally mis-matched for that film. He took the script and decided to have all his actors recite the lines with a quiet and dispassionate hush. The result was people falling asleep in their movie seats. (That same director went on to direct Brokeback Mountain, a much better match for his penchant toward silence and understated dialogue.) Another really bad example of tone was the bizarrely off-key Alexander with Colin Firth.

An odd example comes from the Kevin Costner Billy/Bob Thorton movie Bandits. It was based on the true story of a team of real life bank robbers from the 1980's. And for ten years the screenwriter tried in vain to sell that script as a serious movie. But then one producer got a hold of the script and said: "Rewrite it as a comedy." Total change of tone. Same story, just a different tone and different execution.

What I'm ultimately trying to convey concerning the issue of tone is that the audience/reader needs to get into the vibe of your story. And once they're in that vibe, you can pretty much get them to believe anything, just so long as you do not violate or betray the original quality and feel of the vibe that you initially sold to them.

Oddsocks said:

A problem here, I think, is the reliability of narrators. In a fantasy, when the perspective character believes that the world is flat, it's difficult to know whether this is true in that world, or whether it is merely the character's ignorance. This itself can be a useful and fun thing to work with, if the flatness or roundness of the world is relevant. But what is your initial response in this situation? Would you typically take this to mean that the world is flat, or that the characters are ignorant?

The examples I've mentioned are, I think, fairly standard. Obviously, the metaphysics of religious and spiritual matters, and things like the mechanics of magic, are fair game for any fantasy author to play with. A flat world is also an idea we're familiar with; even if we initially think the characters are ignorant, when they sail to the edge of the world, we can probably accept this within a fantasy setting. But how far removed can it get before you, as a reader, would give it up as irrelevant?

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I start from a type of world-planning that is somewhat different from your basic sci-fi/fantasy. I think of a scene that I just have to have work and then work out what kind of world would have a workable scene like that.
The characters are more or less from this world so their reactions parallel those of the reader, but they can offer some explanations for the somewhat strange events...which I guess are a bit meta-metaphysical since the metaphysics itself only gives possibilities, but the manipulative efforts of conflicting metaphysicians gives a more disturbing brew.

Oddsocks said:

But I'm wondering about other people's opinions on that. How far removed from our world's physics/metaphysics can a fantasy world be before you cease to be willing to suspend disbelief?

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As long as it's explained at least enough for the reader to understand, and the fantasy world's physics and logic remain consistent within that world (and yes--some worlds' consistency lies in their inconsistency, though this has to be shown as well), then I'm willing to put up with almost anything.

Oddsocks said:

A problem here, I think, is the reliability of narrators. In a fantasy, when the perspective character believes that the world is flat, it's difficult to know whether this is true in that world, or whether it is merely the character's ignorance. This itself can be a useful and fun thing to work with, if the flatness or roundness of the world is relevant. But what is your initial response in this situation? Would you typically take this to mean that the world is flat, or that the characters are ignorant?

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I found this kind of amusing because of the current story I'm writing. It's based on Native American Indian mythology, and the 20th-century white American protagonist is constantly baffled by the logic of this world at times. For example, when she learns that giant birds are the cause of thunderstorms and lightning, she tries to explain how lightning is created in her world--the scientific explanation--and the native characters in the fantasy world burst into laughter at how ludicrous her explanation sounds--because in THEIR world, thunderstorms really are caused by giant birds, and she's silly to think otherwise.

At other times it's a little iffier. The world in the story is supposed to rest upon a giant turtle's back, and while the native characters take this for granted, it's never really shown if this is so in a literal sense, or if it once was but has since changed, or what. The characters' observations and beliefs can be unreliable at times. (Witness one character pretending to be a medicine man speaking on behalf of said turtle and fooling many other people.) I think it's kind of interesting at times to keep some things uncertain, to reflect the uncertainty of the characters, though not always.

If the characters in the story say the world is flat, I think I'd sit on the fence unless/until it's shown to be true or false for certain. It's a fantasy world, and I as the reader can't be 100% certain of anything unless it's shown in the story. I'll just think, "Okay, the characters believe the world is flat," and leave it at that, until I myself find out for sure. Like my protagonist is discovering, just because SHE doesn't believe the world rests on the back of a giant turtle, doesn't mean it doesn't!

Oddsocks said:

An example: I was thinking earlier today about why vampires might die in sunlight, and I had the idea of a creature that breathes darkness, which would suffocate in light. Obviously, light and dark would have to be very different things from what they are here for this to be possible. Would you accept this in a fantasy story as a way in which the world was different, or would you put down the book as ridiculous and scientifically inaccurate?

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In a fantasy story context I could put up with that. In OUR world, darkness is an absence of light, a negativity, but who's to say it's the same in this fantasy world? In my own story, darkness seems to be an active force in itself, so I wouldn't bat an eye if it fits into the logic of the story. The only catch is you might have to explain how it fits in.

Oddsocks said:

And what about things still further removed - perhaps a setting that is not planet-like, or flat-earth-like, at all? What if this fact is never explained, because A) the characters never discover any truths behind it, and/or B) it doesn't require explanation, being just a brute fact of the reality of the story? Would this annoy you as a reader?

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Here is the only point where I'd start to take issue. If the world of the story isn't adequately described for me to at least get a basic understanding, I would be irked. The explanation doesn't have to come from the characters--in fact, if how their world works is something they take for granted, then the explanation SHOULDN'T come from them, because they logically wouldn't even consider it. (My characters, for example, had no reason to tell my protagonist that giant birds cause storms, until she brought it up--it was something that was just normal for them and they didn't think about it much because they assumed it was the same everywhere.)

But this is where narration comes in, and the uninvolved narrator. Things can be explained in this manner, or just through the way that the characters interact and react to things they consider mundane. The very fact that a character fails to react to something the reader considers outlandish is a very telling detail--it lets the reader know this is something that's considered normal in this world. (For example, say a tree suddenly uproots itself and goes walking off while the characters watch boredly and then go on their way. The reader might think, "What the..." but this helps tell that this is normal in their world--though the writer will still probably have to explain sometime why the trees get up and walk around!) I think this occurs naturally in the course of writing a story--showing how the characters react to their environment--so it doesn't seem like something that would have to be forced in. The reader will likely start to understand. The writer just has to make sure it makes sense in context, whatever that context is.

*whew*

ETA: Plot Device brought up some good points regarding "tone." Take the example of the walking trees I mentioned above. If the explanation for why this is considered normal isn't adequate, it might come across as unintentionally funny in an otherwise serious story. The way the world's logic is explained or demonstrated has to be done carefully to avoid such things.

I feel it is important to deal in objective terms, because these are what provide a basis for extrapolation. Analogy can be at odds with reality.

"Darkness" is a word meaning an absence of light, or more pecisely, the absence of electromagnetic radiation in the spectrum visible to humans, thus creating a situation where a human cannot percieve obejcts due to a lack of reflected light. That is what it refers to, nothing else. We are talking physics, not metaphor. Darkness, a term describing the absence of something, cannot, by definition contain something that light does not. On the other hand, perhaps there is something in light that interferes with the intake of a vital substance to vampires. Therefore, vampires would "suffocate" in the presence of light, and be able to "breathe" in the presence of darkness.

But of course, that's refering to the actual physical laws. The characters, as pointed out by tehuti, can be perfectly justified in believing that vampires "breathe darkness". The secret is to keep the force behind the difference secret. You can work within real physics to create a seeming impossibility, just by not revealing a real, but hidden, force that creates a strange phenomenon.

I think your last comment nailed it. The characters interpret the story, and they can misunderstand.

The issue really, is the use of our frame of reference. If you say "darkness", it is expected by the reader that this means the same as darkness means to them. The problem with creating new laws, is that there is a cascade effect. If something so fundamental as darkness works differently, how can everything else remain the same? It's all about what you take for granted.

Oddsocks said:

But I'm wondering about other people's opinions on that. How far removed from our world's physics/metaphysics can a fantasy world be before you cease to be willing to suspend disbelief?

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My willingness to suspend disbelief ends when internal consistency breaks down -- but otherwise I am willing to go very far from reality as we know it.

Oddsocks said:

However, I think other times it's really lovely if a world doesn't work the way ours does in some respects. Maybe their world is flat; maybe their planet is the centre of their universe and the sun orbits it, and so on.

...

A problem here, I think, is the reliability of narrators. In a fantasy, when the perspective character believes that the world is flat, it's difficult to know whether this is true in that world, or whether it is merely the character's ignorance. This itself can be a useful and fun thing to work with, if the flatness or roundness of the world is relevant. But what is your initial response in this situation? Would you typically take this to mean that the world is flat, or that the characters are ignorant?

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Well, part of the trick to reading this sort of stuff is being able to hold more than one scenario in your head at a time. Once the viewpoint character expressed his belief in a flat world, I would add that to my list of possibilities. The character's general reliability would determine how high or low it went on that list. As would alternative viewpoints.

Oddsocks said:

An example: I was thinking earlier today about why vampires might die in sunlight, and I had the idea of a creature that breathes darkness, which would suffocate in light. Obviously, light and dark would have to be very different things from what they are here for this to be possible. Would you accept this in a fantasy story as a way in which the world was different, or would you put down the book as ridiculous and scientifically inaccurate?

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Oh, I think that that sounds really cool, and I would have no problem accepting it.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I feel it is important to deal in objective terms, because these are what provide a basis for extrapolation. Analogy can be at odds with reality.

"Darkness" is a word meaning an absence of light, or more pecisely, the absence of electromagnetic radiation in the spectrum visible to humans, thus creating a situation where a human cannot percieve obejcts due to a lack of reflected light. That is what it refers to, nothing else. We are talking physics, not metaphor.

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I think that this is a very good science fiction answer to a fantasy question. In most fantasy stories, metaphor is a higher truth than objective fact -- that is precisely what makes it fantasy. It is entirely appropriate to the genre to use words differently from their commonly accepted meanings. As long as I am internally consistent as to what darkness is, it can be an absence, a crowd, an exhalation, a cloud, a pestilence or a shroud.

In fact, I have to say that I love your sentence: "Analogy can be at odds with reality." That is absolutely true, but there is not a clear choice between the two.

Read some Discworld novels. Pratchett's world is full of stuff like this. It really is a disk, it really does balance on the backs of four elephants, who in turn stand on a giant turtle. Darkness is more than just an absence of light. Magic exists. Things are brought to life by people's belief in them.
One of my favourite concepts is the time monks, who move time around from places where it is wasted to places where it is needed. Ever heard the phrase 'time flies'? On the Discworld, that's because the time monks are taking it from you and moving it elsewhere.

Oddsocks said:

It seems to me that, in fantasy, anything goes in terms of physics and metaphysics, so long as everything within the world remains internally consistent (not so much science fiction; it actually seems dauntingly the opposite to me).

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The main attraction of fantasy (I believe) is that it enchants us. That enchantment derives from the aesthetic of the fantasy setting coupled with whatever mystery, beauty or wonder are injected into characters and plot.

Readers don't necessarily need a logical world, but they get more enchanted when the aesthetic is intuited. A cohesive aesthetic need never be explained to the reader, but may be presented implicitly by consequence.

In our world, darkness is an absence of light. In a fantasy world, it may be a hungry fluid that devours weak light but is driven off by strong light. Or it might be dead light. The reader may not be told this directly, but may work out it from how characters interact with the world.

How far removed from our world's physics/metaphysics can a fantasy world be before you cease to be willing to suspend disbelief?

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An intuitive aesthetic - no matter how illogical - will carry me wherever the writer wants to take me.

David Brin's The Practice Effect is sometimes pitched as a SF story, but it's really a logical extrapolation of a simple fantasy aesthetic: that all things get better with practice. The world is crazy, but enchanting.

Faerie realms often show no logical consistency. Things work differently on different days. But in the best faerie stories, each situation has a dominant aesthetic that dictates consequence: when the mood is angry, playing to an angry aesthetic works, while playing to a happy aesthetic fails. When they're proud and haughty, their spells can often be undone by appealing to that pride.

I don't think that it matters whether the characters fully understand what's going on as long as the aesthetic is revealed intuitively to the reader. Fantasy is very much an intuitive reader's literature. Purely practical readers seldom enjoy it. It's our intuitions that it must appeal to - and weirder is often better.

I was thinking earlier today about why vampires might die in sunlight, and I had the idea of a creature that breathes darkness, which would suffocate in light. Obviously, light and dark would have to be very different things from what they are here for this to be possible. Would you accept this in a fantasy story as a way in which the world was different, or would you put down the book as ridiculous and scientifically inaccurate?

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Some readers demand logic in their stories, but such readers will tend to prefer SF which is largely defined by its logic. Vampires are not intrinsically logical creatures in the first place. They're symbolic creatures whose strengths and weaknesses derive from their innate predatory and morbid sensuality.

I predict that your story will succeed exactly if you get your dark-breathing vampires to be morbid, predatory and sensual, and if your aesthetic is elegant and novel.

And a final point: feel free to share any interesting examples you've read or written of very alien metaphysics/physics.

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There's a whole fantasy sub-genre (or at least a style) called New Weird that specialises in such things.

Oddsocks said:

Higgins -
Could you possibly expound on this a little bit? Because it sounds fascinating, but I'm not quite sure what you mean.

When I mention metaphysics, I'm thinking of things like...idealism versus physicalism versus various forms of dualism, or different ways time works if time travel is relevant to a story, or what magic is; how different aspects of reality (i.e. spirit worlds or similar) are integrated; and how all of these interact and how they play a part in the events of a story, what's possible in a world given the way it's set up in these respects. But one thing I'm always very conscious of is conflicting metaphysics - I'll think about working a plotbunny into a particular story, but if they require different things from the metaphysics and can't be reconciled with one another while retaining their individual impacts, then it won't go.

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I guess I'm using metaphysics in the sense of things you could posit outside of the basic physics of a world that could change or intervene in the physics of the world. For example in pre-Einsteinian physics you have a whole set of "aethers" and these could be fine-tuned (supposedly) in theory to make the world work as it does. If you posit the aethers as real, then all of Einsteinian physics goes out the window and one might suppose that the aethers would in fact have to be adjusted somehow continually, locally and globally to make the world work in a reasonable way. So...you could posit aethers or some other global-to-local interaction such as some kind of cosmic magic or balance or conflict of good and evil and at that level you could call the personages that can intervene to alter the overall magical system...metaphysicians.
Now...in a fantasy plot, you might have these metaphysicians come into some sort of conflict. It could start as something academic such as a controversy about the anomolous Zeeman effect
(See
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/spin/node8.html )...how would that work in an aetherized world? Would it work only at 2am? Or only when the Assistant Dean plays his piano in the presence of Miss Roberts? Could the Proctor of the school turn it on and off with his aetherial suprevisory powers?
I guess this is vaguely like "dust" in Pullman...but anyway...if the metaphysics is part of the McGuffin, then the metaphysics can be easier to relate to the reader.

And more off-topic (from the above site):

So much for the Zeeman effect. Let us punctuate the tale with an anecdote. A friend ran into Heisenberg on the streets of Cophenhagen, around 1920; Heisenberg had a grim expression. ``Cheer up, Werner, things can't be that bad!'' Replied Heisenberg, ``How can one be cheerful when one is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?''

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Plot Device said:

An odd example comes from the Kevin Costner Billy/Bob Thorton movie Bandits.

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Bandits starred Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thorton. Sorry, but that was bugging me.

/end_off-topic


Awesome conversation, by the way.

Higgins said:

I guess I'm using metaphysics in the sense of things you could posit outside of the basic physics of a world that could change or intervene in the physics of the world.

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My concern would be that if these kinds of ideas were taken too far, they would interfere with the story so much that average reader would get overwhelmed and decide not to read on (that average reader, btw, would be me!) For example, I liked your idea of aethers, but if I had to plow through page after page of explanation regarding this, I'd probably get frustrated and close the book. It would take a very clever and talented writer to make it work without a lot of info-dumping.

Oddsocks said:

An example: I was thinking earlier today about why vampires might die in sunlight, and I had the idea of a creature that breathes darkness, which would suffocate in light. Obviously, light and dark would have to be very different things from what they are here for this to be possible. Would you accept this in a fantasy story as a way in which the world was different, or would you put down the book as ridiculous and scientifically inaccurate?

And what about things still further removed - perhaps a setting that is not planet-like, or flat-earth-like, at all? What if this fact is never explained, because A) the characters never discover any truths behind it, and/or B) it doesn't require explanation, being just a brute fact of the reality of the story? Would this annoy you as a reader?

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This is a hot-button for me, so if I rant a little, I apologize beforehand.

This is FANTASY. If I wanted scientific accuracy, explanations and world truths, I'd read Science Fiction or non-fiction. I will wallbang a book marketed as Fantasy that feels the compulsion to explain the whys and wherefores of anything "abnormal" and "weird" and blacklist that author for the rest of my natural life for the insult.

I just don't understand the compulsion for "explaning" the fantastic and not just letting it be. PG-13 words just don't cover how upset this makes me.

Personally, I think "breathing darkness" is a mondo cool idea and just should be a truth. The vast majority of people don't understand (and I'd venture many don't care) WHY the world works as it does as long as we function in it. I don't see why a fictional world should be any different, especially one that's supposed to be weird and fantastic compared to this one.

I'd say you can get as outlandish as you want as long as it's internally consistent and doesn't give the impression of having the same world we live in. For example Voldemort (or other wizard) in HP being a threat to the muggles? Yeah right. All the fights in the books showcase him and his goons as unbelievably incompetent even when fighting on their own terms. Let's see them catch a bullet.
Or to take an example of inconsistency from film (since i saw the Mummy 3 yesterday) so the sorceress and her daughter wanted to kill the emperor for thousand of years. And they had the dagger to do it. And they knew where he was. But for some strange reason they apparently didn't ever try to actually kill him until he was revived by some other evil dude.
Same inconsistency in Mummy 1 actually. If you know how to kill the freakin' Mummy for good, just do it. Don't protect the stupid grave for thousands of years trying to prevent someone reviving it.

The breathing darkness idea i wouldn't mind, as long as it doesn't result in typical Vampire-silliness, like a black hoodie and shades enabling any vampire to stroll around in sunlight.
The things too look out for the most are in my opinion 1) internal consistency. Don't have any obvious or not so obvious contradictions in you world. 2) Take your time to think how the characters would act in such a world. What possibilities does the magic give them. How can they use the surroundings. Or: Don't let them look freakin' incompetent. HP is one of the worst offenders here i've ever seen. Feared wizards knocking the magic wands out of the hands of schoolkids. puh-leeze.
3) Think about the long-term effects in the world. And have a sense of scope.
For two examples, one take the dark elves in the Forgotten Realms world. (R.A. Salvatore Books) So they have this incredibly evil and competitive society where for example the final test in the school for fighters is a battle to the death where only the best of 50 or so students survives. Yeah right. Give that practice 4 or 5 generations and the dark elves have all of 5 fighters to send against the humans 500.000. And them being really, really evil doesn't make up for that either. The moral of the story is: if you invent a society, try to invent one that should, by all descriptions given, drive itself into extinction in a dozen generation, yet somehow has been the evil threat in the realms for hundreds or thousands of years.
Another example is from the Stargate TV series (which by the way is another example of incomptence being the omnipresent fifth element in world that can actually rival HP): In the atlantis spinoff there's this wraith race who a long time ago fought a war against some old race that created stargates and which's name i forgot. Somehow these Wraiths were outnumbered a million to one and technologically much inferior. Yet in a short time they conquered the galaxy until the other race was reduced to one city, outnumberd a million to one but due to their still superior technology could then hold of the wraiths for a very long time. How the hell does that happen?

Anyway, to not only give examples of what not to do, the fantasy book series by Stackpole (called something with dragoncrown iirc) was a pretty good example of internal consistency imo.

Doodlebug said:

My concern would be that if these kinds of ideas were taken too far, they would interfere with the story so much that average reader would get overwhelmed and decide not to read on (that average reader, btw, would be me!) For example, I liked your idea of aethers, but if I had to plow through page after page of explanation regarding this, I'd probably get frustrated and close the book. It would take a very clever and talented writer to make it work without a lot of info-dumping.

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So true. Info-dumping seems to be a big problem in my narratives...but I rarely go into describing the aethers since the conflicts among the metaphysicians have degenerated into powerstruggles of a fairly twisted kind precisely because they are are pretty much the same kind of people.
I mean, just when you think good-vs-evil has started to look plausible, you discover yet another way that that such a clear example of a simple dicotomy could be used to dupe somebody...cuz...well, how can you distinguish a good metaphysician from an evil metaphysician? Suppose some agency is empowered to make a neutral assessment: you are good or you are evil.
What if somebody bribes the agents of the agency? Suppose they cause some good metaphysicians to be labelled as evil? Just to keep the teams even.

DeleyanLee said:

This is a hot-button for me, so if I rant a little, I apologize beforehand.

This is FANTASY. If I wanted scientific accuracy, explanations and world truths, I'd read Science Fiction or non-fiction. I will wallbang a book marketed as Fantasy that feels the compulsion to explain the whys and wherefores of anything "abnormal" and "weird" and blacklist that author for the rest of my natural life for the insult.

I just don't understand the compulsion for "explaning" the fantastic and not just letting it be. PG-13 words just don't cover how upset this makes me.

Personally, I think "breathing darkness" is a mondo cool idea and just should be a truth. The vast majority of people don't understand (and I'd venture many don't care) WHY the world works as it does as long as we function in it. I don't see why a fictional world should be any different, especially one that's supposed to be weird and fantastic compared to this one.

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Ooops. I'm fond of explanations in fantasy. They are a way of putting the reader and the MCs on the same page, I think. I don't see anything wrong with inexplicable things like breathing darkness. Maybe that describes what a vampire feels is going on. And if I ever have any need for a vampire or two...obviously I won't need to explain much.

Oddsocks said:

Wow, lots of good stuff in these replies. Thanks everyone.

Liosse de Velishaf - So, the breathing darkness thing would have you throwing a book at a wall?

I absolutely agree that for anything set in this world, I would have the same reaction, for precisely the same reason - darkness doesn't exist. But in a fantasy, I would have no problem with darkness and light defined as, say, two mutually incompatible kinds of air; one of which people could see through, the other being black and opaque. This is, obviously, to set up the world as very different from ours. Light and darkness would work differently (i.e. filling a room the way air does rather than the way light does); the speed of light would be irrelevant, and because of these differences, you couldn't rely on other elements of reality to be the same as ours by default. But I think, so long as it's consistent, it could work. Does the scenario I've described here still seem troubling to you? (I don't want you to think I'm challenging you or anything - I'm just honestly trying to gauge people's responses to this kind of thing, since I've got quite a few ideas that involve weird physics like this).

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A discussion is not a challenge to see who is "right" and I would never take it that way. Your question goes back to a comment I hope I made about subjectivity, and also to the issue you noted about the effect of such a fundamental change.

First, using the words "light" and "darkness" emodies half the difficulty. Yes, to an extent, they would be the words that would promote the greatest amount of understanding for an inhabitant of our world; however, that does not negate the fact the the enormous inaacuracy of the term could lead to a situation where I would throw a book against a wall. I'm trying desperately not to let the issues with this particular example color my attitude or the interpretation of my opinion towards the concept in general. Nonetheless:

The first question is how "sight" would work in such a circumstance. If light is not our light, then the eyes would have to be structured very differently. There I'm looking at the issue from a completely physical(in the sense of physics and also as opposed to "mental") perspective. That's the first example of a ripple.

The very purpose of words is to communicate. Unfortunately, the efficiency words provide in describing our own universals is detrimental to describing other universals. I have a concept of physics in my mind, and you have the same conept in your mind, thus, we can use words to communicate information on the assumption that we are speaking of the same conceptual system. The word "darkness" represents a piece of this conceptual system inseperable from almost every other piece. My inferences about how things work are based on interactions(and that is the key word) between many parts like this. If one part is now fundamentally different, and thus the old word does not carry the same semantic meaning that I use, then I cannot trust any deductions I would make about interactions between it and other peices on the basis of my concept of physics and your description with this now altered word, and I would naturally find this very frustrating. The way you handled this issue, and not the issue itself is what would determine my reaction.

As it is fantasy, metaphysical differences are a whole 'nother ballgame. Because me concept of metaphysics applies only to a certain area, not indelibly etched into a system of caue and effect here on earth, I can afford to be much more open to differences between my conceptual system and yours.

My MS deals with the origins of Santa Claus using fantastic elements while being set in the American west, circa 1810. One of the elements in the book involves turning a Conestoga wagon into a sled and among the things I had to explain: how could a 1600-pound sled, with its mass in tact, fly?

In the end I decided not to fully explain it and chalked it up to the magic of Santa Claus. Actually, explaining it in scientific terms probably would have ruined it.

My feeling: whatever your imagination has spawned has to be believable, whether in this world or a fantasy world - it has to be believed and believable and follow the rules of that particular world.

Higgins said:

So true. Info-dumping seems to be a big problem in my narratives...but I rarely go into describing the aethers since the conflicts among the metaphysicians have degenerated into powerstruggles of a fairly twisted kind precisely because they are are pretty much the same kind of people.

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So this is something that you've already written? Sounds very interesting. I like the idea of it.

Higgins said:

I mean, just when you think good-vs-evil has started to look plausible, you discover yet another way that that such a clear example of a simple dicotomy could be used to dupe somebody...cuz...well, how can you distinguish a good metaphysician from an evil metaphysician?

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I guess that could apply to any good/bad situation, really. In fact, I prefer story lines were good and bad aren't so clearly defined. It makes things much more interesting.

On metaphysics, I basically agree with your point, though perhaps we have slightly different defintions of metaphysics? Metaphysics may or may not be a seperate system of cause and effect than physics, or may interact on a very arbitrary level. That's up to the author, and yes, the lack of information on metaphysics in our world is what I think allows for such creative lisence in speculative fiction.


The point I was maiking about "darkness-and-light-as-air" has to do with the ripple effect and our mental concepts of how the world works. If darkness and light are not related to energy, but rather to matter, then they would not have the same effects on the rest of the world, regardless of how the interact with vampires. As a form of air, for instance, light cannot reflect off a mirror as it does in our world, because it is not a form of energy. As well, you could not rely on our knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum, because if light is a form of matter, then so must be the rest of the spectrum. Visible light cannot be seperated from non-visible light, because though we can only percieve visible light, that has nothing to do with physics, and only with how our bodies percieve it. You are not considering the entire equation, and I can understand why, but that doesn't mean you should.


If light is a gas, how does your sun work? Do you have one? How do eyes work? Do you have them? How do infrared, ultra-violet, microwaves, radio waves, etc work? Do you have them? How does matter work?

Oddsocks said:

Liosse de Velishaf - All very good points. I think light and dark as air is probably a difficult example. I wouldn't be trying to implement it in any world that was supposed to be otherwise like ours (i.e. our world's mechanics with that as a change). I would only use it in a complete overhaul - something where matter itself, as well as time, energy, mind, and anything else, can be completely redefined. Something more or less compatible with how things appear at a sensory level, but in which the fundamental nature of reality was entirely different.

And I think that's possible in a fantasy. You mention reflections, and eyes, and infra red, and the sun, and in our world, these are all necessarily connected in certain ways. But I don't think a world in which, for example, reflection itself is a more fundamental principle than anything else is unworkable for a fantasy. Light, vision, and the existence of matter could all be defined in terms of, as effects or mechanisms of, reflection (vision as a reflection of external reality; external reality as a reflection of an abstract realm of concepts/gods, etc.).

So, I guess I think that if you take reality as a starting point and start modifying it, then it may be difficult to trace the implications everywhere. But if we don't assume to begin with that the world is fundamentally like ours, we're not necessarily limited by the same set of interractions between concepts. Of course, there is always a risk involved in this, because you're right that the reader has certain concepts of light and physics and everything else, and they can't rely on them in this setting. So it becomes a question of execution - can this kind of world be made to work effectly? Can it be presented so that it is understandable and yet not an info-dump? And so on.

Breathing darkness itself I'm inclined to think can remain unexplained in a fantasy world. Readers can decide whether that means nature is fundamentally different there, or whether as you said there could be a scientific explanation like light interferring with absorbtion of something in the air they actually do breathe, and so on.

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So basically, we agree on every point. As I said, but forgot I said, light was a bit of a special example, because it is so fundamental to our concept of the universe. I don't see anything wrong in theory with a few modified perceptions or even physical laws. They're used all the time in sci-fi.