Obspogon

"Lore" is any information about a fictional universe.
"Direct Lore" is any information about a fictional universe that is necessary to understand in order to grok the main thrust of a work. In a video game this could be any info that is required to finish a "main quest"; in a book-centric franchise¹ it's probably "all of the words in the main book/series, but not any other books in the universe"; in a movie-centric franchise it's probably "the entire movie, but not any other movies in the series".
"Indirect Lore" is any information about a fictional universe that is not necessary to understand in order to grok the main thrust of a work. This could be a lot of things - audiologs, collectibles, tie-in media, side novels, prequels or sequels, backstory information, history documents. Whatever.

None of these are perfect definitions. I am not aiming for perfection here as much as I'm aiming for a general definition that can be understood on a general level by most participants in this conversation.

These definitions are also overlapping, in the sense that the Direct Lore of a prequel might be Indirect Lore for a sequel. Is it important to A New Hope to know about Anakin's affair with Padme in Revenge of the Sith? No, but it's important to Revenge of the Sith to understand that relationship, since that is a crucial part of the story of that film. This same general logic can be applied to any work of connected media, more or less.

A Lukewarm Defense of Indirect Lore

Depending on who you talk to, Indirect Lore is either interesting/enjoyable material that adds context to a single work by adding detail to the universe; or it's the corporate death of media driven by an obsessive desire to, encyclopedia-like, catalog and capture every part of a fictional universe and rob it of any mystique. Like everything else in this post, this is a huge generalization.

I'm more in the former ideological camp than the latter, but I'm not going to pretend I don't think the latter camp doesn't have points. My main frustration with the latter viewpoint is not in its anticorporate framing (that's valid and I agree with that) but in the idea that adding information to a world is inherently removing mystique or gravitas from a work.

Frankly, I'm not so sure this comes from any structural issue with Indirect Lore exactly as much as it has to do with the general quality of the Indirect Lore. If a piece of Indirect Lore doesn't make sense, or removes an important thematic structure from the main body of a work, or doesn't add anything interesting to the world - I don't think that's bad because it's Indirect Lore, I'd say it's bad Indirect Lore.

There is a skill involved in proper Lore generation (which might be synonymous with 'worldbuilding'). It's not quite the same as being a good storyteller, and it's not the same as being a good fictional historian, and it's not the same as having great ideas -- though all of that can help. It's something between all those, that incorporates aspects of all of them. The creation of good lore requires having an eye for what "meaningfully adds to" a fictional world and being able to convey it in a way that is interesting to the reader².

(There is another element to Indirect Lore that is harder to quantify and changes dramatically depending on how many creators are involved in the work of a franchise, and that's coordination -- knowing when and where makes sense to add to the fictional universe, what additions are worthy of larger projects, what additions make sense in smaller projects. This is hard, argumentative, and inherently fraught with the desires of every creator in the space. Figuring out how to navigate this decisionmaking is a necessary step to healthy growth of a single shared universe, there's just no way around it.³)

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a distaste for Indirect Lore in general. I don't think it's for everyone and I don't think the way that large franchises build out their fictional universes via Indirect Lore is often particularly graceful. I happen to find the entire process fascinating, mostly due to how it draws out questions of how and why to worldbuild, and how and when it's useful or frustrating to the overall creative process.

Good worldbuilding, good Lore in general, helps create a strong scaffolding upon which you can tell interesting/affective stories. An overdose of worldbuilding without considered story feels like dry and encyclopedic, an overdose of story without considered worldbuilding feels incoherent and contextless.

¹_{I chose 'franchise' here mostly to avoid "IP" because I kind of hate that word for talking about "any set of connected same-universe media". It feels too corporate. That said, 'franchise' is also an incredibly corporate word so I'm aware this is kind of clunky regardless, just work with me.}

²_{speaking extremely broadly. reader, player, viewer. etc}

³_{I work as a Creative Advisor at Riot Games. This isn't a secret, I just don't talk about it much. This entire paragraph is basically what I do on a day to day basis. This disclaimer is partially to say that this entire post is not really about Riot as much as it is about Lore and how Lore figures in online discourse in general.}

#personal #lore #canon #storytelling #worldbuilding #i've had this rattling in my head in some form for a while now #here is an attempt to explain it

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in reply to @videodante's post:

graham @graham10/29/2022, 10:56 PM

This post could create an interesting dialogue with worldbuilding TTRPGs like The Quiet Year, The Ground Itself, or Anomaly, among many others. From what I've seen, those games tend to be used to create the setting for another story (usually another TTRPG) to be set within.

In that regard, would the worldbuilding game's output be direct lore (serving as the backbone and context for what norms and traditions and names exist already in the story) or indirect (serving as the scaffolding that may or may not be brought into the main story)? Does this change if the game is story/scene-based versus prompt-based?

videodante @videodante10/31/2022, 3:30 AM

I mean, I'm sure that people have a million ideas on this overall but my personal stance would be that those games are about creating indirect lore!

They're about worldbuilding in a very expansive sense, then finding the good threads and digging down into them. It's the narrative equivalent of dumping out a bunch of legos onto the ground and then, after they've been dumped out, finding the pieces that feel fun to snap together.

It's narrative brainstorming - creating fuckloads of indirect lore until a particularly interesting hook for direct lore starts to form.

it's ben @yotsuben10/29/2022, 11:09 PM

I know I made that shitpost today about lore but the truth of the matter is, I eat that shit up. I love Star Wars lore and little weird greebly bits on the outskirts of the story. I hardly have played any of Destiny but I've read a ton of the grimoire stuff and enjoyed it quite a bit!

I think a lot of the complaints about "lore (derogatory)" mostly come from when it feels like the creator has put the cart before the horse, so to speak. A bunch of scaffolding but no meat on the bones, I think. But I'm a graphic designer and not a writer, plus most of my storytelling experience comes from DMing.

videodante @videodante10/31/2022, 3:28 AM

Yeah, this is the sort of thing that I think irks me when people offhandedly dismiss "lore" as an entire concept and not realize that, I think, in the type of situation that you're talking about - what is really happening there is bad lore, either in the sense that it's actually badly written, it's superfluous, or it's just conveyed to the player in a bad way (such as revealing pointless information in a way that makes it feel like it is supposed to matter but doesn't - over-exposition).

Ultimately I guess what I want to get at with this entire project is for people to be more specific if they're saying they don't "like lore". Like, which is it? Because I think most people do like lore, when it's working in a way that they vibe with.

JP @vectorpoem11/2/2022, 7:14 PM

thanks for these thoughts, this is all great stuff.

i think one thing that kinda constantly lowkey chafes at me in all this is that the reason so many fictional universes get so much detail woven into them, today vs decades ago before franchises took over so completely, is essentially "market forces": some big franchises made so much money it convinced executives everywhere that original stuff, ie new universes/franchises, wasn't worth bothering with the risk of, so you better be able to grow a story from the soil of an existing universe or nobody will care or give you money. i resent it because it's a creative decision that was forced on us by capital, rather than something that happened because creators wanted it (and who's to say what creators would have wanted in a world where this didn't happen; the "untainted" world where franchises didn't take over is, you might say, a parallel universe, a fantasy certainly.)

leaving that aside, i think a lot of times when "lore" rubs me the wrong way it's because i am, by default and in good faith, taking the many creative decisions made in a franchise by many people as a notional single work made by a single creative entity, and seeing the part that sticks out as low quality and superfluous and ill-conceived and thinking, "it was a bad call to commit so much to this particular nothingburger of a story; Glup Shitto's journey was over and done with after Episode XIX: The Fall of Shitto and this is just noodling after the drummer stops." if it were my work, i'd hope i would have the discipline to edit that out. (not that "discipline" is or should be the end-all superego of creative work - some stories / worlds wouldn't be what they are if they weren't sloppy as hell.)

on the whole i think it's cool that we can have these ridiculous megastories that take decades to tell that pass through many hands. it's when that kind of work bloviates, or thrashes uselessly, or self-indulges past the point of being fun, i would feel pretty much the same way as if it was a 30 page one-off indie comic that sputters out around the 2/3 mark. whereas i think The Market constantly aestheticizes / asks people to say, nah this is great slop, more is always better, there's always more money in that banana stand, it's time for the next chapter in the shitto saga.

videodante @videodante11/2/2022, 9:15 PM

Super agree with the sentiment in your last two paragraphs here - the discussion gets so Big when it's about these... multi-author megastories, for lack of a better term. Like this:

i am, by default and in good faith, taking the many creative decisions made in a franchise by many people as a notional single work made by a single creative entity, and seeing the part that sticks out as low quality and superfluous and ill-conceived

is so much the thing. It's the risk of these projects, imo - these megastories encourage that read (the idea that they are the amalgamate work of many authors turned into One Voice) and I don't even think that's inherently bad but it's certainly inherently risky. It means that each piece of the whole contributes to/detracts from the overall quality of the entire project.

It's a really tricky needle to thread - that's why I think I could probably write an entire other post about "IP management" since that's also sort of my job right now. There's a creative side version of this entire subject that's a little different than the consumer side. It's something I'm still trying to pick apart.

Then there's the other thing, which is just "sometimes a dead thing should be dead" and I think I agree but also that's always going to be a subjective call, lol. What you and I might agree is the "right end to the story" someone else might disagree. Maybe it's the original author! Maybe it's a giant corporation! I dunno! It's one of those things that I think is super contextual.

Anyway regardless, appreciate the comment! This all started as a brainworm when I responded to your post a while back haha

JP @vectorpoem11/2/2022, 9:24 PM

devil's self-counterpoint: this is all being incredibly precious and maybe even a little authoritarian about cultural production - who cares if someone adds a couple of lousy chapters to one of the big megastories? isn't that all fanfic really is?? better that culture be allowed to live and breathe, stretch its limbs in every possible direction and occasionally stumble undignified than for it to be this gatekept, immaculately curated and edited thing on a pedestal somewhere. let people make stuff, and ignore the fruits of that you don't personally like - which people already do anyway; "i can't listen to post-Ozzy Sabbath", etc. destroy copyright and intellectual property and leave curation and crit to each individual beholder, a planet of 7 billion personal canons.

videodante @videodante11/2/2022, 9:32 PM

I think a lot about "what does IP look like in a post-capitalist world" (with the obvious giant caveat that I have no idea what that world would look like) and honestly I don't think it would look THAT different.

In the sense that I think that there will always be people who gravitate toward a single author, or a single group of authors maybe, who are all telling stories that connect and work together. I'm sure there'll be plenty of offshoots and breaks and alternate canons or whatever, but I imagine if I'm a big fan of Dave's Dinosaur Tales i'm not going to be quite as interested in Bill's Dinosaur Tales that have a very different overall goal with the series even if it's still Dinosaur Tales, you know?

But also, what do I know! Maybe this desire for shared canons will melt away in a few decades, be once again weird nerd shit instead of mainstream blockbuster fare. But even then, I doubt it'll disappear entirely.

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Obspogon

@obspogon

gamer

Asks are always open! name-color: green

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LORE

A Lukewarm Defense of Indirect Lore

in reply to @videodante's post:

Asks are always open!
name-color: green