This is really an anti-tweet, or something like that: it should be a tweet but I want to spend a little more time with it, so it’s going on the blog. I wanted to talk about being against worldbuilding and explanations.
I’ve always found this to be a very strange idea, being against worldbuilding. It doesn’t really follow logically. The request seems to be “don’t tell me things about this unless I ask”. That is, I’ve very rarely seen the attitude of people who hate worldbuilding go to the length of “if your story is very confusing and doesn’t give details, that’s good”. People aren’t like “I don’t want to know what’s going on”. There’s a level of inquiry that is too much, basically, and that level is just set by whoever is speaking. Do you not think there’s more to get, or think that explaining more than a certain point is “too much”? Okay, then that’s just too much explaining. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks, the questions they have. From your perspective, a piece has done enough, and who else’s perspective even matters? Who else should be able to decide if a piece has given them enough information to satisfy their curiosity?
If that’s condescending, good. That is the point of what I wrote: to show how condescending the attitude is, taken to its logical conclusion. But I don’t think people who are just against worldbuilding/explanation/etc. are all being condescending, or at least, I don’t think they know they are doing that. In what I’ve observed, this idea that there’s such a thing as too much exploration, that worldbuilding is boring, etc., comes out of our current trend of sequelizing, prequelizing, and wiki-fying. It’s not so much that people think having explanations is bad or exploring stories is bad, it’s that they are having a backlash to the current trend of “over-explaining” or, more accurately, “explanation as content”. Most of the complaints I see about worldbuilding relate to this in some way: why are lore videos so popular; why do nerds with questions dominate media sessions; why do stories so often mine themselves rather than looking for new spaces. The thing is that the people who complain about this either haven’t thought deeply enough about the thing they have an issue with or aren’t rhetorically competent enough to split the things.
And sure, I might be coming off harsh right now, but think about what the anti-worldbuilders sound like to someone like me who enjoys it. Do you think you guys come off as less condescending? You just take it for granted that you would be right, that actually there is a correct way to enjoy things and it’s by not asking more questions than you would ask. Do you not see how inherently condescending that attitude is? And that’s the thing you are communicating when you say shit like “actually nobody should explain stuff, let things be mysterious.”
One of the big things about a mystery is that people ask questions about it. You see it and you wonder about it. So what is it that you actually want from people? To not be curious about the work? Or to have your exact understanding, to want only the things you want out of it, and to desire nothing else? Is it that everybody has to come to every work with exactly the kind of mindset you have? Explain to me how this line of thinking is not inherently condescending. I don’t think it’s possible to do.
What’s the point I’m trying to get to here? It’s not just “don’t be against worldbuilding”. You can feel however you want about it. My point is that you need to take your thinking above the trends and shit that go on in everyday life. Are you against how much media now mines itself to answer little trivia? You can just say that. Do you wish people in general had more understanding of media so they aren’t confused about things as often? You can say that. You don’t have to say “I’m against it when people explain art or ask for explanations”. I think that’s a bad thing to say and think. How would people learn about art without communicating about it? What do people who don’t have the knowledge do, do they just never get it or do they rely on someone explaining? You don’t have to say something you wouldn’t totally agree with just to express your discontent for a current trend. You can control the things you say.