What makes your setting special?

rkignazio 2024-04-30 17:52:22 UTC #1

One of the best things about genre stories is that your setting can be just as important as your characters. Promote your comic or novel by telling us about the setting! I'll go first.

Enoch: The First City
The ancient city of Enoch is a thriving metropolis nestled in a colossal canyon. Its people live in homes carved into the canyon walls, and countless bridges span from one side to the other. Its residents are modern and cosmopolitan. They speak the way we speak. They live here, love here, attend university here, avoid eye contact here. Racism, homelessness, police brutality and street harassment are all aspects of everyday life. But most people just want to make it to work on time.

And here it is. Look closely, and you can see thousands of people all milling about:

Leyelle 2024-04-30 17:57:13 UTC #2

I think the setting of my story is special because it's based in an area I used to live in, and details like the hospital are designed after the hospital my older brother was in when he was a teenager.

MK_Wizard 2024-04-30 17:58:34 UTC #3

For me, it doesn't shy away from the M rating. There is full on swearing, on screen blood, on screen injury and even death. It even calls out dark themes like gaslighting, red flags in an abusive family or relationship as well as the implications of realizing you were in a cult.

A lot of stuff is rated M, but not necessarily dark or mature in a serious way. The extent of the "M" is that there is nudity, fanservice and jokes involving private parts. I don't fault them, but I wanted the M to be taken seriously.

sophialyn 2024-05-01 01:02:24 UTC #4

My setting is “normal” but told from the perspective of a young girl making it warped to her dramatized depiction of whatever she’s going through.
(May or may not be based on my battle with anxiety and how i depicted the world in highschool…)

SumireHime 2024-05-01 02:49:39 UTC #5

The setting for "French Cup" is a suburb of Tokyo. Tokyo is a huge place, but I chose a small neighborhood on the periphery on purpose. It's away from the hustle and bustle of tall buildings and branded shops, and if you keep walking a few more block you're in a neighborhood of modest houses. This small neighborhood has a few streets of locally owned stores, and the story talks about the neighborhood over the span of 90 years. Most of the shops at the present are owned by LGBTQ people, and they've made their own community though the neighborhood has seen better days. Still, the setting is warm and kind and fiercely proud. A new four star hotel pops up and the guests try to destroy this lovely neighborhood. You see just how out of place it is. But really, the setting is about the people more than anything else.

mg_xiii 2024-05-01 13:51:32 UTC #6

In my case, I tried to give to it a setting different from what normal novels on Tapas usually use. My story is a fantasy so there are many places that could be settled anywhere at the end, but the main country where all happens is Italy. I haven't seen many stories settled there, since the authors are either asian oriented or american oriented. I think that it could be something interesting trying to include even European and, specifically in this case, Italian culture in it.
If I cached you attention, you can give my story a read here:

LavenderLeavened 2024-05-01 19:39:17 UTC #7

Most of TGN takes place in an 1800's Irish countryside although some parts of it go back further in the timeline. I get to have a lot of fun designing characters because the humans live in a early Victorian type environment meanwhile the Fae are all over with medieval and renaissance type fashions.

JogVodka 2024-05-01 22:09:03 UTC #8

My setting mostly takes place on an Earth post-Demon invasion, which meant there's a mixture of Earth and Hell magic populating the setting. There's a decent amount of demons on Earth, whether they were exiled from Hell or just there from generations of living on Earth. Still, this is an Earth with mainly humans so demons are discriminated against heavily. In the future, I do want to tackle Hell which is an inverse of Earth.

The story is told from the perspective of a half-demon teenager.

Hybrid: Humanity

Genre: Fantasy / Action

Description: In the 1800s, an unprecedented convergence of demons and humanity altered the course of history, sowing the seeds of conflict and camaraderie. Now, in the world of the 2100s, a half-demon teenager is drawn into a realm teeming with covert battles and concealed truths.

Within this intricate tapestry of magic and mystery, ancient pools of power house unrevealed potentials, ready to ignite. Accompany our enigmatic protagonist as she journeys through a world where allegiances flicker like shadows, and the distinction between friend and foe remains perpetually uncertain.

2DLenzy 2024-05-01 22:45:09 UTC #9

Nothing much, it's the American Heartland. If I can draw more scenery, it would be very lovely to look at.

Now, on the other side of the chicken wire, the chickens' setting is simple, but seen like a little medeival town. It's bare minimum art, I'll admit, but inside the henhouse is like a monastery and there are habitations here and there. Just will take some time for me to flesh the place out further.

Not to mention all the found objects the chickens repurpose, if I can think of anything, that is.

(BTW, LOVE the city you made. That looks really cool)

allisoncandraw 2024-05-04 02:11:31 UTC #10

My setting isn't special at all, just a plain ol slice of life comic

But I think my cast is what makes it special. There aren't a lot of comics with deaf MCs out there, but I'm also proud of how genuine my characters are. I think their relatability makes up for the "normal" setting.

SumireHime 2024-05-04 06:49:10 UTC #11

"Lyra's Magnum Opus" is set in a nameless small town just outside of Yokohama, Japan. It is actually 100% based on a real town (Kamakura), but I don't say what the town is in the book so that it's open to interpretation. I chose to set it there, because I didn't want the main character, Tetsu, to be from a big city. So often in western media, a story about Japan will be placed in Tokyo. I wanted to share what smaller town life can be like, from baseball rivalries to people being in other people's business, to a restaurant owner's family having known you since you were small, etc. It serves as quite an intimate setting also for the basis of the story, which I feel causes the reader to feel like they know these characters all the more and be hit by the emotional impact. You really want them to succeed, because they live such a quaint little life in this town. There's echoes of Tokyo because it is 40 minutes away and they go there often, but the main setting is definitely Kamakura and in particular it is a beach town with a lot of tradition in it (it's home to some very famous shrines, for example). I hope I've provided a good sense of it all.

thepixelizer 2024-05-04 21:27:32 UTC #12

I'd say my backgrounds for my current comic series Shuttle Switcher Ghost Galaxy are super alien and dream like.
Featuring strange patterns in the sky, and a random assortment of objects scattered about over some really peculiar terrain.

Other than that there's the interior of the main character's space ship named The Shuttle-T.
It has all the amenities a person needs and more including bed rooms, a cafeteria, a gym, an arcade, a medical bay, a theater, a lab, a meeting room, the most interesting of the rooms is the room displayed it's called the portal lounge it's a lobby with four portal gates that can transport you to the surface of the planet.

Unfortunately The Shuttle-T ended up being so big that I never got to finish the model because I ran out of ideas and there's still empty spaces left on the top floor of the 3d model.

KennethLopezJr921 2024-05-07 22:58:20 UTC #13

My comic is set in 1940s/1950s filtered world with human and anthro characters living along side each other so visually, its a departure compared to the contemporary/medevil fantasy stories you see nowadays

Onlyspaghetti 2025-04-17 01:23:17 UTC #14

What makes my setting special? Imagine if every myth you knew about a vampire was debunked? I already planned my retirement takes place in a world where humans and vampires openly coexist.

LWriter 2025-04-17 01:29:31 UTC #15

In my case I suppose it’s the fact that the novel is named after its setting, the city of SANTA FAE! I based it on my
home town, and in fact, although I never state it outright, it is a rebuild of it by the Fae into the city in the story once they claim the world from humans.

I wanted that be the case because I feel like no one will ever write anything about where I’m from, and if they ever do, it’ll be negative. So I went a write a story where it was recreated as the central point of a world of fantasy. Not perfect, quite the contrary, but being able to make the city feel almsot like a character is something I always wanted to try. I even had a pretty cool map made for it ^^

siouxcomicstudio 2025-04-17 11:22:51 UTC #16

Very nice topic

My series Maka is about a mystical land inhabited by an ancient people who, in the past, encountered the 'Gods' or supposed deities. These entities left behind artifacts and other objects that, over the course of millennia, infused the land with a mysterious energy that grants some natives superhuman powers.

NGChloe 2025-04-19 14:53:56 UTC #17

The setting in Glassflower is quite special.
The oceans are all dead
the stars vanished years ago
Its effectively the end times, but instead of some grand apocolypse, the universe is just slowly dying off

kyupol 2025-04-19 15:02:51 UTC #18

It's special because it's set in modern day north America in some unnamed city

I'm sure some of you can relate...

(Blurred background is from an actual cityscape. Can you guess? )