my favorite thing to work on when making a story is the worldbuilding so of course ive thought about the worldbuilding for rick riordans series and this is a masterpost of how i would rate his worldbuilding with each individual category and then all together at the end part of my motivation for making this was from @aaaaaliceaaaaalice ’s last post here about worldbuilding
this post is gonna be a lot more in depth compared to most other posts ive seen in general about rick’s worldbuilding, but thats just because im really autistic about this SO.
the first thing i wanna talk about is the inspiration rick had for his stories; and its the most obvious thing about the worldbuilding, that being the gods and mythologies. when you take inspiration from a real life thing (like a culture, food, religon, anything,) and use it for your own worldbuilding, id say the number one rule is that you are respectful when doing this. if you are changing your inspiration up a bit then you have a bit more room to move, but still- do not disrespect what you are borrowing from. in ricks case, hes not changing the gods or mythologies from any pantheon to fit his story in a unique way, hes using them straight up. but he does not follow the #1 rule i mentioned. when he writes his gods its just. bad. its blatanly bad. he had hitler as a son of hades, he has the gods live in america, he changes things in myths for seemingly no reason, and most obvious of all: he disrespects the gods themselves. he makes them one dimensionally cruel or kind, gives them characterizations that he sees fit even if it doesnt match with the myths, he just ignores so much of the actual lore of the mythology to create something suited specifically for his needs, and if this was a mythology he made himself there’d be no issues but its not. these are real gods that real people worship, and he treats them like a tool or a regular character. often in the greek myths themselves you’ll see the gods being treated as narrative tools and have different personalities depending on the myth, but they are always respected because they are still gods! and rick does not do this. he does not treat a mythology that he is taking all his inspiration from with respect. not only that, but with how they interact with the real world too. why the fuck are they in america. they are greek gods, and, again, you should treat them with respect and in this case that means PUT THEM IN GREECE. if you really wanted the story set in america, you could still find workarounds. but he didnt bother to do that, again disrespecting the gods and the pantheon to fit his needs that dont work with his setting and story
this next thing is usually the thing most people focus on when the topic is worldbuilding, but it doesnt always define how good it is and thats details. most people thing that the more details a world has the better, but thats not always the case. we’ll get into this more later, but ricks worldbuilding doesnt have that many details. the way ive started explaining his worldbuilding is he takes some mythologies, and he remixes them with the real world. there is nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as you treat it with respect (going back to my pevious point). ricks worldbuilding is, objectivley, very simple. he takes the real world and he changes thing up about it to make the greek, and other, gods fit into it. the most details he has for the worldbuilding, thats somewhat unique, is the camps, the monsters and the mist. id argue neither of the camps are really detailed, it feels like he took basic inspiration from military camps and summer camps and made it fit into the real world, while with the monsters he created live among humans in desguises they cant see through, both being hidden by the mist. its very simple worldbuilding with a basic explanation, and nothing too original.
now with the actual story being told, thats the most important part of this. aside from the blatan disrespect. but the way i like to decide if worldbuilding is good or not, is how well it fits with the actual story thats being told, and rick does this pretty well! things make sense, theres explanations for a lot of stuff, and we can understand how things work. so even though the worldbuilding isnt that unique or detailed, it still works really well. theres very few things that are underdeveloped or he gets overwhelmed by, but most of those are overshadowded by the simplicity of the general world, which again, works well. rick is usually able to know how much he can bite off and chew and he knows how to work with that, but there is still some stuff thats left underdeveloped and ignored, and its things like this that usually spring up conversations about the worldbuilding. stuff such as ‘how do gods of the same domain from different pantheons work together’ or ‘are there other pantheons that exist- how many?’ ‘are there places for those demigods to go?’ these questions are, for the most part, unanswered. rick used greek mythology in his first series and if he left it off at that then most of these questions wouldnt exist, but with the uinclusion of more mythologies it only makes sense that people would wonder how far this could actually go. but that is, id argue, the main thing rick slacks off on in how well his worldbuilding works and makes sense, and in general id say its pretty good for the story hes trying to tell
but there is still one more thing i wanna talk about, and thats execution, similar to how well it works in the story, but also relating to all the other topics as well. how well do all of these work together? overall, id say they work together pretty well, but when you start doing your own research on the mythologies rick is writing you start to notice a lot of things are extremely different and blatanly incorrect, and that can start to make the story feel half-assed and not well researched. rick doesnt care about the gods or the actual pantheons he writes about, so he does the most bare bones research and even with that he still gets information wrong, and then when you take into consideration with how well it works with the story it all starts to fall apart because why are the gods, who regularly help their children out, ignoring them so much it causes a war? why is there a military camp with adults living in the connected city, thats being run by a bunch of teenagers? the more you actually look into the story and start asking questions the more it falls apart and doesnt make sense. i said that more detail doesnt automatically make it better or worse, but sometimes simplicity doesnt work either, and even though rick doesnt need much else, theres still more details he could and shouldve added to make the world feel more put together and cohesive.
so for the ratings of each individual topic im giving them this: inspiration: 4/10 detail: 2/10 story: 6/10 execution: 4/10
but for the worldbuilding as a whole, im giving it: 4/10. the main thing that pushes this rating down a lot is that theres not enough detail to fill in the plot holes rick left, and just because of how much blatant disrespect there is to the greek gods and all other pantheons he added.
there are ways to make all of these work, like with the camps and how theyre run (along with their locations) specifically, but thats just another one of those things, not really lacking in detail as much, but definitely lacking in having any actual thought being put into it