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What is your favorite fictional universe?

MissUtilisMissUtilis
in General Media
For me it is either the Disney Animated Canon or the Hanna-Barberaverse

Comments

  • One-Winged EagleOne-Winged Eagle
    Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
    2000-2010 DC comics.
  • TatterhoodTatterhood
    steven, but greg's okay too
  • CrystalCrystal
    Munch munch, chomp chomp...
    Tatterhood said:

    steven, but greg's okay too

    I laughed.

    Anyway, mm, Touhou and Pokemon are two easy choices for video games.
  • HexartesHexartes
    Hyrule, Nirn, or Mass Effect's, uh, partially fictional universe
  • TreTre
    image
    Dunno if I really can call a favorite these days unless Futurama/Simpsons/Adventure Time is canon (HAHA NO) but MSPA is probably the one with the most personal impact for me, through Problem Sleuth and Homestuck.
  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    the Pynchonverse

    or maybe Gormenghast
  • Obā-sanObā-san

    gay catboy hell
  • AlduinAlduin
    Probably Pokemon.
  • Section42LSection42L
    We can do anything if we do it together.
    Does Archie count?

    If so, probably that.
  • KlinotaxisKlinotaxis
    kill living beings
    p funk
  • AlduinAlduin
    Nirn is cool, but Nirn would be an awful place to live in.
  • AlirozAliroz
    ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    The Cosmere, of Brandon Sanderson.
  • AnonusAnonus
    I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
    Add Mario to my list
  • BeeBee
    edited 2016-04-08 04:56:08
    Pokemon or Psychonauts.

    Or wait, is this like, "places you wouldn't mind visiting"?  Because that's Pokemon or Psychonauts.  As far as settings to admire from a very safe distance, Mass Effect.
  • AnonusAnonus
    I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
    No, it's just favorite fictional universes regardless of criteria
  • CorvinaCorvina
    Vampire Lady of Corvidia

    (The other Jane)
    guess mine.
  • LOAD CherryLOAD Cherry
    Splat Charger Specialist
    I gotta say the Nasuverse.

    The fact that it turned half of all of the significant world leaders in history into cute girls isn't strictly speaking why, but it helps.
  • HavenHaven
    Let me tell you. About Fallen London.
    I can't really choose one, so I'm gonna go with "my dreams".
  • Sredni VashtarSredni Vashtar
    “I'm surprised. Those clothes… but, aren't you…?”
    Overside, Bas-Lag, the world of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run, Ligotti's loose mythos, the crazy dreamlands of Burroughs' late novels, the worlds of Poppy and the Lamezone comics, the Floraverse, some parts of the Doctor Who multiverse, any setting Gene Wolfe has ever invented, the Underground in Neverwhere and the Dreaming and beyond in Sandman, the Land of Ooo...
  • MadassAlexMadassAlex
    There are some obvious ones, but

    • Middle Earth. Tolkien pretty much kicked off the popular fad of intricately detailed fantasy settings, but few other authors have been as qualified as he to create a setting. Middle Earth was built to be a habitat for Tolkien's fictional languages, spawning cultures, suggesting the various stories of the setting. This is a part of what makes Middle Earth seem organic and whole, while many other fantasy settings can be summarised as "a bunch of stuff the author likes or wants to talk about".
    • Star Wars, if we're keeping some distance from the EU material. This setting is the opposite of Middle Earth; where Tolkien's setting was necessarily meticulously detailed, Lucas' setting was shifting all the time to meet the needs of the original trilogy as works of cinema. As a result, the Star Wars setting isn't so much based on "hard information", but themes and influences drawn from samurai films, cowboy cinema, pulp sci-fi, and so on. The great thing about Star Wars is that it's almost always in theme for a Star Wars story to do crazy things that other settings couldn't readily handle, because it draws influence from such diverse sources.  When we get into hyper detailed EU shenanigans, though, it comes across as just another fantasy setting (with a sci-fi coat of paint). 
    • Demon's Souls/Dark Souls/Bloodborne. Gloomy, perhaps, but that doesn't change how interesting these settings are, especially given the mode of discovery we're presented with. Video games openly invite us to take disassociated information and associate it, which means that these games can have conflicting lore theories that are equally legitimate. A bleaker take on post-modern fantasy than, say, Discworld, but just as interesting to me through its application of its medium. Not everything is so bad, though; series' director Miyazaki has been known to speak about how he enjoys portraying upstanding characters, which says plenty given how grim and frostbitten the settings are. 
    • Monster Hunter, for its relative lorelessness. The principle is simple; human beings live in relatively small communities divided by vast wildernesses, making hunters the lifeline that connects those communities with one-another. That said, we often do find remnants of ancient structures within the hunting maps, suggesting that the world wasn't always so dominated by the whims of monsters. I wonder what happened? 
    • Alien. Capitalism is an interstellar force, with humanity having failed to establish or maintain a better system of resource distribution. Having denied the optimism of Star Trek, it goes one step further and tells a first contact story, with the creature in question being nigh impossible to understand terms of physical or mental function. In most sci-fi stories, aliens are usually human-like, but this series presents the possibility of an alien species so different as to make communication or cooperation impossible. I think there's some chilling plausibility in the notions of both unreconcilable difference with an alien species and such excesses of capitalism. 
    • Warhammer Fantasy. Renaissance-era Germany provides the main inspiration for the setting's central faction, the Empire. Enter both a highly historical and highly absurd rendition of late medieval/early modern paranoia, politics, and war profiteering between the many factions. At its best, this setting can be thought of as being concurrently like the Souls games and like the Discworld books; ridiculous grimderp that is keenly aware of how ridiculous it is, up to and including in-game, mechanical outcomes for silly events. Roll for projectile goblin offset. Then roll to see whether your failed spell summoned a daemon. Sometimes in the same turn, even. 
  • TachyonTachyon
    imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    i like the Problem Sleuth universe

    like over the course of this extremely silly webcomic we get an entire universe complete with physics, afterlife, cosmogeny (via temporal loop) . . . and everything has these defined properties, such that an action performed on any part of this system will affect stuff happening elsewhere in an almost mathematically predictable fashion, but the whole world is so extensive you don't necessarily see it coming

    Homestuck pushed this idea further across a sprawling multiverse with a much more involved mythology, but Problem Sleuth came first
  • MandelbrotMandelbrot
    fight. dream. horse. love.
    i used to spend a looooooooot of time thinking about The Elder scrolls universe, and still spend a fair bit of time doing so
  • AlduinAlduin
    • Monster Hunter, for its relative lorelessness. The principle is simple; human beings live in relatively small communities divided by vast wildernesses, making hunters the lifeline that connects those communities with one-another. That said, we often do find remnants of ancient structures within the hunting maps, suggesting that the world wasn't always so dominated by the whims of monsters. I wonder what happened? 
  • BeeBee
    edited 2016-04-08 18:37:03
    I think what struck me most about Monster Hunter when I actually got around to playing it was how they made it relatively believable that humans could even survive in a world dominated by elder dragons the size of cities.  Like, surfboard-sized swords aside, their technology has massive holes all over the place, but the ways it developed were very, very specific and effective, and even random towns have defensive emplacements geared toward fighting off the locals.

    Like, it doesn't even bring all that much attention to it.  It just sort of happens as part of the setting.
  • TachyonTachyon
    imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    i actually really like the One Piece universe

    on the face of it, it seems kind of messy, a big mix of everything with tons of anachronisms

    it works because of the way it's built.  new additions to the mythology build on what was established previously, rather than outright retconning it, and the world is structured in such a way that you have all these isolated communities and ecosystems, explaining the disparate tech levels and climates

    the result is a nice balance of consistency and unpredictability, which i enjoy
  • OdradekOdradek
    My dreams exceed my real life
    I like the One Piece universe too.
  • AlirozAliroz
    ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    Odradek said:

    I like the One Piece universe too.


  • AlirozAliroz
    edited 2016-04-16 13:42:42
    ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    wrong thread
  • Section42LSection42L
    edited 2016-04-16 20:18:40
    We can do anything if we do it together.
    Aliroz said:

    I like the One Piece universe too.

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