Setting as Character

[marycatelli]

When the Red Sox won the World Series, people went out to the cemeteries to tell the dead.

This panel heavily revolved about cities.  (Chicago in the Dresden Files series)  Welcoming cities, hostile cities, cities that can not be replaced in the story with any other city.  Indeed, one audience member wanted stories with a strong sense of place not set in a city.  (I put in The Girl Who Chased the Moon.)

Comments

[michal wojcik (from livejournal.com)]

I'm currently reading an abridged translation of Mercier's Le Tableau de Paris, which treats Paris as an organic entity. far more focused on people than architecture. Certainly an inspiration for the kind of little societal/administrative details in a fictional city that would make it live and breathe.

I'm a bit tired of cities in more recent fantasy, since the focus is often far too much on architecture. Perdido Street Station tried so very hard to make New Crobuzon into a living, breathing city, but ended up sinking under the weight of Mieville's words: so much focus on industrial squalor and on material objects to the detriment of everything else. Not just over-described, but one particular part over-described.

There are several forests in fantasy that have a strong sense of being a character in of themselves.

[marycatelli]

Oh yeah, the Old Forest in Tolkien.

Cities can be a trick.