This is a sequel to my recent thread about the most original fictional settings. So, this time, we have the opposite :

Which setting did you consider so dull, run-of-the-mill and undetailed (underdeveloped), that you immediately stopped being interested in it ?

The thread is yours.
 
I was going to say Shannara, which I enjoyed as a 7th grader but even then, recognized that it added nothing particularly new. The setting's basically an open field with forests and castles positioned in a grid. The plots are the kind of thing created by RPG Game Masters ("Go and find the, uh ... Magic Black Stone and bring it back, or the wrath of the, uh... Dark Warlock shall befall us all").

IIRC there were hints at a lost hi-tech civilization, which is marginally interesting, I suppose.

When I read Dune I realized just how unoriginal much of Star Wars was, particularly the original film.
 
Eragon and it's entire "Inheritance Cycle". So... incredibly bad... I believe the appropriate term would be some combination of total rip-off and Anvilicious.

Sci Fi, I think, has a better chance of staying original. The spirit and nature of it allow for more bizarre and radical concepts. Modern fantasy (and I consider Star Wars to be fantasy) is basically too respectful of the past. Not enough development.
 
Eragon and it's entire "Inheritance Cycle". So... incredibly bad... I believe the appropriate term would be some combination of total rip-off and Anvilicious.

Sci Fi, I think, has a better chance of staying original. The spirit and nature of it allow for more bizarre and radical concepts. Modern fantasy (and I consider Star Wars to be fantasy) is basically too respectful of the past. Not enough development.

People don't want original stuff. They want familiar comforting stuff. They want it to be exactly the same... just different.

Human nature.
 
People don't want original stuff. They want familiar comforting stuff. They want it to be exactly the same... just different.

Human nature.

Wrong.

I want original.

I want baby-killing necrophiliacs as my main characters.

And gunslingers named Roland who search for Dark Towers.

I want something no one has ever seen before.
 

Susano

Banned
For sci-fi Id see your typical "rubberhead aliens with no real complexity" setting, so stuff like Star Trek ;)
Or maybe ST was original when it first came out. It certainly isnt anymore, though.
 
I was gonna say Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks but I see others have already done so. Yeah...unoriginal crap.

People don't want original stuff. They want familiar comforting stuff. They want it to be exactly the same... just different.

Human nature.

Nnnnnno.

Mayhap other people are that way - it would explain a lot - but I have never been able to stand "the same thing only different." It bloody drives me up the wall! In fiction I always try to look for something that hasn't been done before, or which at minimum gives me an unusual twist on an old idea. Anything less makes my eyes glaze over.

Which is why - paradoxically I guess - I've also made it a point to read the classics, like say Moby Dick. After all why settle for a stale 10th-generation rip-off when you can have the original?
 
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B movie plot time!

In the middle of WW2, suddenly an alien invasion happened! USSR is wiped, much of Europe is wiped, and now they're moving on to the US.

This is actually a game for PS3.
 
Your replies didn't much surprise me, I agree with all of them. :)

My biggest personal aversion is to any setting that tries to look and feel steampunk, but pulls out the least imaginative props of this style : Brass goggles, Babbage calculating engines, airships of any kind and purely Victorian Britain-based designs of anything...

Come on, writers, dammit ! Is it so hard to write good steampunk ? I think not. Maybe you just need to be more... you know... :( imaginative... :mad:
 
When I tried steampunk, it turned out like Barry Lyndon, but with added steam, clockwork, and general coolness. And tricornes worn by almost everyone.

Personally, going from The Wizard's First Rule and what I've heard about the others, I would consider Terry Goodkind to be among the worst worldbuilders the world has ever seen. I almost put Terry Brooks, but remembered something: The Midlands are a country taken over by villainous commie-satanists! Oh no! Now I'll never go to Birmingham again, for fear of getting captured, tortured in an excessively impractical way, witness lots of hilariously accidental innuendo, and then get lectured at by an imbecillic fascist-objectivist (of the sort the most ardent of US Republicans would probably send off in disgust-hell, Louis XVI would probably prefer the Jacobins to this man) about Moral Clarity. Brooks had some originality in him, Paolini has a dash of raw enthusiasm, but Goodkind is a pretentious, moronic ass. No, that's degrading to donkeys and asses the world over.

He is unoriginal because he scratches vaguely at a world, and then simply decides to spend the rest of it indulging alternately in Red Scare propaganda and sexual fetishism. That is the summary of my argument.
 
When I tried steampunk, it turned out like Barry Lyndon, but with added steam, clockwork, and general coolness. And tricornes worn by almost everyone.

Personally, going from The Wizard's First Rule and what I've heard about the others, I would consider Terry Goodkind to be among the worst worldbuilders the world has ever seen. I almost put Terry Brooks, but remembered something: The Midlands are a country taken over by villainous commie-satanists! Oh no! Now I'll never go to Birmingham again, for fear of getting captured, tortured in an excessively impractical way, witness lots of hilariously accidental innuendo, and then get lectured at by an imbecillic fascist-objectivist (of the sort the most ardent of US Republicans would probably send off in disgust-hell, Louis XVI would probably prefer the Jacobins to this man) about Moral Clarity. Brooks had some originality in him, Paolini has a dash of raw enthusiasm, but Goodkind is a pretentious, moronic ass. No, that's degrading to donkeys and asses the world over.

He is unoriginal because he scratches vaguely at a world, and then simply decides to spend the rest of it indulging alternately in Red Scare propaganda and sexual fetishism. That is the summary of my argument.

This. :cool:

Goodkind is perhaps one of the trashiest contemporary authors of fant... (sarcasm on) uh, sorry - not fantasy, but books that use fantasy to convey much higher, Objectivist ideals ! And... (sarcasm off)

You get the picture. :D ;)

Anyway, take a look at Sandstorm Reviews of blogspot - one of it's subsections is devoted to a bile fascination analysis of the brainfarting sessions that Goodkind dares to call writing :

http://sandstormreviews.blogspot.com/2006/07/stone-of-tears-terry-goodkind-bbhn.html
http://sandstormreviews.blogspot.com/2007/03/soul-of-fire-terry-goodkind.html
http://sandstormreviews.blogspot.com/2006/08/goodkind-parodies.html

As you can see, there's even a whole page dedicated to mocking his unintentionally hilarious style of writing and Objectivist fixation. :cool:
 
For sci-fi Id see your typical "rubberhead aliens with no real complexity" setting, so stuff like Star Trek ;)
Or maybe ST was original when it first came out. It certainly isnt anymore, though.
To be perfectly honest, I've always liked that sort of thing... I realize it's not plausible, but I don't mind the "rubberhead" aliens at least, though I guess if you say "no real complexity" that can be an issue...
 
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