Friday DE: Worlds mapping

[bjornwilde]

Eh...it's midnight somewhere and my morning promises to be busy. Have an early DE.

I just recently finished Seanon McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway, which is a sort of love letter to the many portal fantasy stories of literature. In it, there is a classification system for the various portal worlds:

"Here in the so-called “real world” you have north, south, east, and west, right? Those don’t work for the most of the portal worlds we’ve been able to catalog. So we use other words. Nonsense, Logic, Wickedness, and Virtue. There are smaller sub-directions, little branches, but those four are the big ones. Most worlds are either high Nonsense OR high Logic, and then they have some degree of Wickedness or Virtue built into their foundations from there. A surprising number of Nonsense worlds are Virtuous. It’s like they can’t work up the attention span necessary for anything more vicious than a little mild naughtiness."

Which got me wondering how our canon worlds might sit on the map, and low and behold, I found Tor.com has already done my work for me.
 

 

So here is how the grid works:
y axis = Virtue 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3 Wickedness
x axis = Nonsense 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3 Logic

Nonsense vs Logic Axis
Nonsense 3 = Environment completely pliable and redefinable. Change motivated by personal whim. Near-chaos. Examples include: The Dreaming from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.
Nonsense 2 = World on the tipping point between fantastical chaos and realistic environments. Examples include: Oz.
Nonsense 1 = Reality is pliable through wish fulfillment, but cause and effect actions are still most effective. Examples include: Neverland from the Peter Pan tales.
Nonsense/Logic 0 = Stasis, no change occurs in world.
Logic 1 = Most things follow rules of cause-and-effect but there is still doubt as to how many things follow rules. Examples include: Lyra’s world from The Golden Compass.
Logic 2 = Everything can be explained eventually, but there will always be unique exceptions. Examples include: Our own world!
Logic 3 = Everything can be explained, no exceptions to rules. Examples include: Narnia, and most any other world where its god/creator has a direct influence.

Virtue vs Wicked axis
Virtue 3 = Pure and providential, world provides everything you need. Is in an “ideal” state. Examples include: Narnia once Aslan’s control is restored.
Virtue 2 = Overriding harmony in world, active championing of human/being rights, but still threatened. Examples include: L. Frank Baum’s Oz, after the Wicked Witch and Wizard are taken out of power.
Virtue 1 = World provides for its denizens but in a limited capacity, passive promotion of human/being rights. Could be seen as only slightly better than our own world. Examples include: UnLunDun, from China Mieville’s book of the same name.
Virtue/Wicked 0 = Balance between virtuous and wicked desires, but not harmony. Examples include: The Dreaming from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.
Wicked 1 = Unbalanced. Passive or secondary limiting of human/being rights. Examples include: Our own world!
Wicked 2 = Overriding disharmony. Active limiting of its denizens. “Crapsack World” but livable. Examples include: Narnia when the White Witch is in power.
Wicked 3 = Actively malevolent, apocalyptic, near-unredeemable, near-unlivable. Examples include: The Dark Tower.

More details are here, as well as many examples.

Comments

[shakemyhand]

bwhahah, Kill IT WITH FIRE!!!!!!!!!