One of the things I hate is (usually amateur stuff on YouTube) in which the person is getting overly scared even when it makes no sense.
Like they'll over act and start hyperventilating at a leaf and saying shit like "Oh my god what is that?!?!?! WHAT IS THAT?!?!" at like...a thud in the distance.
YouTube and Ghost Hunting shows seem to be the worst offender.
Another trope I hate is a horror game one but it's somewhat related; I hate it when the game tells you when to be scared by having a "sanity" effect or by the player character gasp or scream or whatever. Worst is if they have some kind of heartbeat sound effect that plays when you're supposed to be spooked.
But yeah, if a character starts saying shit like "WhAt ThE FuCk WaS ThAt?!" then I just get more annoyed than scared.
Do not care for needless "Lore"
Like, with Freddy Krueger, being a child murderer gruesomely killed in an act of vigilant violence was enough
Then we get the "Actually, he's the bastard son of a hundred madmen, that's why he was evil" and it's like, are you for real?
It makes horror less scary when you explain it so much!
I'd argue that (extensive) worldbuilding is generally overvalued.
Good worldbuilding must always deepen the implications of the setting, never answer questions directly but hint and create even more questions than before, it has to make the main cast feel small and insignificant so when they triumph their accomplishments resonate that much more
Good lore is a process of asking questions and creating mysteries, but not solving them, unless that process itself creates more questions and mystery
Disregarding my point, I think that this is an incredibly narrow view of an artistic tool.
If anything, worldbuilding does not make a compelling narrative on its own. It can tickle one's brain with concepts of some narratives, but almost never anything more than that, I'd argue.
I do think that worldbuilding's primary purpose should be to elevate the rest of a given narrative. Worldbuilding itself can even be harmed if it means achieving that effect, I would argue, though, as it is ultimately not important.
Depends on the type of story someone is telling, some can thrive on characterization with the setting simply being an afterthought (12 Angry Men being an example), and worldbuilding without effective characterization taking advantage of the setting, is simply wasted and vice versa
But if you're going to have worldbuilding and a setting that isn't simply wallpaper, then the points I made are absolutely crucial, not everyone is a natural genius at characterization, and for authors who know their limits, worldbuilding and lore-crafting offers a way to expand their vision and realize potential they may not reach thru dialogue and character writing alone, Iain Banks is a famous example and George R.R. Martin is a typical case of someone who understands this dynamic despite excelling at characterization, and unless you're a highly skilled author it's not enough to simply have characters, but the world they inhabit has to feel alive and bigger than them
As you said, the purpose of lore should be to elevate a given narrative, but that process requires more than simply "tickling" the brain; mystique, grandeur, awe, wonder, terror, these are emotions where characterization invariably meets the implications of the setting thru implied/explicit mystery and questions inevitably asked by the audience, and I've seen so many stories where authors fail to recognize that inflection point and end up with convoluted untethered characterization, dead empty settings or worse both
What does it mean for a setting to 'not be a wallpaper'?
I strongly disagree. This seems like it is extremely narrow to consider worldbuilding as only being useful for instilling the sense of main characters of a narrative to feel small and insignificant. What would prevent you from, for example, using worldbuilding to create parallels with real-world anti-colonial struggles and making a narrative about gloom or bloom in a colonial environment?
Why specifically have worldbuilding specifically for making main characters 'feel small and insignificant' when you can (despite it still being an overrated tool in my opinion) use it for quite a bit more?
A few points I'd like to make/reiterate:
Notably, none of those things require lore development, and lore development can even hurt those, like how it is the case with what somebody else has already mentioned in this comment section.
Internal consistency and appreciation of scale are my personnel favorites, but there are so many ways to create interesting worlds so it depends on the type of story
That's a perfect example of what I mean when I say worldbuilding should make the characters feel small, so their development resonates more profoundly later on, obviously in the beginning of the narrative those characters aren't going to immediately have the power to topple colonial structures or bring about revolution are they?
I think you're stuck on my word choice of "small and insignificant" while missing the far more important "when they triumph their accomplishments resonate that much more" part, I'm not saying characters should never grow into their settings and become important aspects of the world and lore, but that as the characterization develops and mysteries are resolved, questions are answered, new mysteries emerge, new questions replace old ones and the growth of the characters compliments the growth of the lore in a kind of (dare I say it) dialectical way
I never disputed this point
That is another perfect example of how world building elevates the narrative, the main characters literally start the story as "small and insignificant", they're children in a dark forest inhabited by supernatural beings, children who encounter enclosed magical societies, mysteries, terror, the world building is not rationed or subdued, it defines the setting and the characters, it elevates the narrative, 'over the garden wall' is a new world that the children didn't know existed and as they explore that world their characterization develops alongside it, BOOM A CLASSIC IS BORN
Because usually you don't begin stories at the end, again unless you're a highly skilled author who can effectively subvert conventions, which most authors are not
There is no dichotomy here, characterization is lore development, world building is lore development, my point is as the narrative progresses the preservation of mystique, grandeur, awe, wonder, terror, etc. requires careful attention to how characterization and world building interact and without the two working in concert the lore is gonna usually suck along with the narrative, again unless someone is a subversive genius author whose works will be taught in university courses, which again is not most authors
So, you find any internally-consistent setting to 'not be a wallpaper'? That roughly means that every historical/contemporary setting qualifies as such, even though basically no worldbuilding is done, and there are definitely works in such settings that do not instill any sort of feeling that the main characters are 'small and insignificant'.
Furthermore, I'd argue that internal consistency of any given setting is overrated.
Except, it's not. I did not say anything about making characters feel small. The setting can be just a small piece of land, and the story might be focused on interpersonal relations between a few characters, for example.
Why is that only achievable by making the main characters feel 'small and insignificant'?
Nobody said anything about them doing so at all, or a story focusing on that. A story can be focused on something else entirely in such a setting.
Because you said that worldbuilding should be used specifically for making the main characters to feel 'small and insignificant'. Do you rescind that claim?
Also, on this topic in particular, this ignores the pieces of art where there is no triumph to speak of, and this also ignores how triumphs and accomplishments can be made to resonate with people without making the main characters feel 'small and insignificant'. I am also not sure why you aren't considering how making main characters feel 'small and insignificant' can also make their triumphs accomplishments feel the same - small and ultimately insignificant instead of personal and relevant to a given story.
Let's consider Over the Garden Wall again, as an example. Would expanding the worldbuilding to elaborate on topics that are completely irrelevant to the story and making the main characters feel 'small and insignificant' make the story that is primarily about their relationship better, and their accomplishments - localised entirely within their pairing - more resonant with somebody? And you do realise that you would have to actually set aside resources (including runtime of the cartoon) to communicate said worldbuilding at the cost of something else, right?
Except, they don't, unless you consider almost all characters from all stories 'small and insignificant'.
How many examples of characters can you provide that do not feel 'small and insignificant' to you?
You can use this justification to claim that all characters from almost every piece of art feel 'small and insignificant', in which case there is no distinction between characters supposedly feeling that way and not.
The main characters of Over the Garden Wall do not feel 'small and insignificant', as the narrative is focused almost entirely on them and their immediate surroundings, with worldbuilding being limited to, well, said surroundings. It is all very localised, and not expanded upon within the work. There are no explanations for how this world works, what its history is, what is where and who or why the Beast is, and so on, and so forth.
I'm not sure how that is relevant to using worldbuilding to make main characters feel 'small and insignificant', and not recognising that it can be used for a lot of other things, some of which are more general and important than this extremely narrow usage.
I maintain that lore is an overrated element of a narrative. In the case of Over the Garden Wall, for example, developing its lore would just detract from the work.
I said they are my personnel favorites, and unless you find settings that are internally inconsistent to be good writing, certainly not "overrated"
Again, I already said it's possible to craft stories thru characterization without relying on the setting (12 Angry Men as an example) BUT IF YOU'RE GOING TO INCORPORATE A SETTING then the requirements I laid out are crucial to allowing worldbuilding and characterization to mesh in ways that doesn't undermine either one, that's been my point the whole time
Yes the world should be bigger than the characters, if you're gonna have a world; unless you believe characters should be bigger than their worlds outside of character focus and viewpoint, do you find most power fantasies evocative or examples of good writing? In that case I got a million isekais for you
Why do you have such a literal view of the words I use, when I say "small and insignificant" I don't literally mean physically tiny or always at the bottom of the social ladder, when I use "triumph" I don't literally mean the characters at the end of every narrative hold a Roman style Triumph, we're talking about the broad breath of fiction as a whole, obviously I'm gonna use words that describe the MOST COMMON THEMES found thru-out the ocean of fictional works
It's relational and contextual, like with Over the Garden Wall, where "small and insignificant" means children lost in a dark forest with no knowledge of its inner workings, in another story it means something else
lmao you're just replacing the word "worldbuilding" with "surroundings" yes i.e. THE WORLDBUILDING AND THE SETTING which plays a crucial role in the narrative
Yes that's part of my original point, nothing is really answered concretely, no over-explanation of how the forest works, the mystery, the questions are still intact throughout the show and elevates and pushes the narrative along, that is what I mean by effective worldbuilding and effective lore, take the forest away it's not Over the Garden Wall anymore, it's a different show which may or may not be good
Frankly, I suspect your definitions of "lore" and "worldbuilding" simply don't mesh with mine, for me the "lore" of Over the Garden Wall is fully developed despite the narrative being unfinished
I've seen someone describe the difference between urban fantasy and horror as "in horror the protagonist and reader don't understand the monster," and I don't think it's strictly true, but I think it is directionally true.
If you're being attacked by an evil spirit and can't do shit other than try to get away, it's horror, if you know that salt that has been consecrated by a priest will kill it, the evil spirit is just an aesthetic for an action story.
Yeah, I think it stems from the fact that people don't grasp that there is an inherent terror to the unknown
It allows the mind to wander, to go into places where the writer never thought to
I think this is why collaborative horror projects (Slenderman, The SCP Foundation, The Backrooms, etc.) both stick around and also stop being good
Slenderman was spooky when he was just a weird thing in the background of photos, years later, he's one goofy doofus. Lives in a mansion in the middle of the woods, makes people kill for him so they can live in the mansion.
The mystique is gone, replaced by someone wanting to leave their mark on a legend
That sounds like 2 criteria: The monster isn't known, and the monster can't be defeated.
In Aliens, the monster is known, and can't be beaten except by means not easily available. Which would make it less of a horror than Jurassic Park, where the monsters are very known, but escape from the island is the only hope. Sime would consider neither of these horror, some might consider both of them horror.
I think both of those movies are horror, but not because of the Dinos/Aliens. The Dinos/Aliens are the Terror. The Horror comes from the False Sense of Control slowly disintegrating as the plot moves forward driven by the Terror. Both Hammond and Burke try to salvage the situation as it spirals further out of control.
Does this qualify Beetlejuice?
Yes, but Beetlejuice comes waltzing in wearing Comedy. I think the Horror comes as a kind of reverse haunted house, where the living haunt the dead with change. The False Sense of Control was their previous life, and its slowly disintegrating because of the Terror of the living intruding more into their lives. It hits that Existential Dread feeling of losing your (previous, living) identity. I think the Mother being an avant-garde modern artist helps drive the sense of unreality of the main characters experience.
EDIT: I bet you could recut the movie into a proper haunted house horror film by focusing on Lydia exclusively, and the ghosts are only shown fleetingly as she investigates the house.