A guy at a con in Austin told me my map was 'too logical' and it messed me up for a week

I was showing off a map for my pirate story at a small con last month, proud of the trade winds and island chains. This older guy in a faded t-shirt looked at it for a solid minute and said, 'Your ocean currents are perfect. That's the problem. Real coasts are messy. This looks like a textbook, not a place.' He pointed at a too-straight stretch of my southern continent. It threw me off because I'd spent hours getting the geography 'right'. Has anyone else had feedback that made you scrap a whole approach?

3 comments

3 Comments

mark_hernandez121mo ago

Messy coasts are the rule, not the exception. Maybe that guy had a point about too much textbook logic.

skyler_kim158d ago

But what if clean coasts are the real goal?

emerydixon1mo ago

What was the one messy real-world coastline you kept thinking about after that con?