SJ Longthorne

I mean, science fantasy is a full-fledged subgenre of sff! And there’s lots of precedent for “nonsensical” elements in science fiction (e.g. lightsabers). I think the important thing — no matter what flavour you go with — is to be consistent with the world’s internal logic.

Pedantic nerds describing your fantasy magical world in exquisite detail for free sounds like it would be good advertising for people who are interested in magical worlds and don't care that the magic is magic

You do you. Destiny is a great example of a “soft” world as you describe it. Bungie uses the real world for inspiration, but one of their Art Directors said something to the effect of: if we have to choose between realism and aesthetics, we will always choose aesthetics.

When you say hard, are we talking magic realism or urban fantasy? Because I think both sub-genres are criminally underrepresented and need more stuff in them :D

From experience, I'd say anything that feels internally consistent does the trick. You're the one setting the expectations of verisimilitude - if someone doesn't like it, they can go read an atlas

...but at the same time...if there's even magic, why does it need to go by the real world? :D It feels like when people complain about X Y Z and you sit back and go like "...you're complaining about a TV/Film/Game...that has elves, dragons, goblins, flying cars."

Two words: fuck 'em It's your personal project and you're allowed to be creative :)

if magic's involved you're off the hook imo. literally anything that doesn't make sense in star wars? the force did it. dnd? wizards did it. dbz? chi. make what you wanna make!

If you want to go soft, go soft, and stick that middle finger up at the haters.

My partner falls firmly into the “hard” camp and I in the “soft” camp and we have had many, many debates on the subject of fictional world building lol