[Dawnstorm]

Originally Posted by nicky.

xrick, what exactly what disclosed about the setting? We saw virtually nothing but the town hub.

Yes, but what we saw made perfect setting sense, and there were "bits and pieces" hidden throughout the episode that you could easily miss. You're not going to get it all, but mostly you'll get enough to get a sense of setting, without having to dive deeply into it or get straightforward pieses of information.

Not just visual aspects either, but the dynamic between the different "islands",

- We know the island has a number ("Island 2X" [I forgot the number; 27 or 29 I think]). Questions: What sort of culture simply numbers their islands? Do they have local names?

- We learn that this particular island is less friendly to "non-furries/scalies/feathers" than others from a short comment after the girl has drawn attention. Maybe it's smaller than the others? Maybe it has a smaller non-animal-like population than others?

what makes them levitate,

True. We know nothing about that (if I haven't missed it).

...or the struggles of life in such a place...

Before we even meet our first character, a pan falls onto the street, and some passerby shouts upwards. The living conditions are very crammed. Streets are narrow, and buildings are high. Space is, likely, scarce. That means that if a pan drops from somewhere that's dangerous. It probably also means a high population density, and we know that places with high population density often means that tempers flare more easily (for example, people tend to be more relaxed in the country than in big cities). When we go along, we see they build up high all the time, which reinforces that aspect. A lot of people on small little ground (which plays into such silly images as when our duo suprises a bathing frogman - it's a joke, but it makes perfect sense in terms of setting characterisation).

During the talk between our male main and his bounty hunter friend we learn that friend of his has become "third food". They're treasure hunters on the surface, and that's dangerous. It's also likely that, if you're human-looking, that's one of your only options to find work in the first place. Maybe people also organise expeditions to the ground (we later learn that there are two major factions: military and merchants; they might do that). So it's possible that they get resources from there, but it's both dangerous and - I suppose - there's a limit to what you can get in one trip.

Basically, the biggest danger to ever-day life on the islands, I'd expect, would come from your fellow citizens in some sort of conflict over scarce resources; certainly in the city.

Later, when the main character arrives at the site for "weapon storage", what you immediately notice is that there's a lot of space and very few people - compared to the city. Our main character is immediately attacked by one of the girls (which is likely not baseless propaganda, since if folks living in crammed conditions could very well be jealous, and intruders (violent or drunk or both) may not be that rare.

It also means that the project is very important. At the same time, the girls are "weapons" (not "soldiers"), which also shows you how much fun living around here must be for people without animal-features. At the same time, they have more space and possibly resources for daily life than people in the city. Though if the intro is anything to go by, they're not expected to live very long.

I'll stop here. All this is speculation. I can be wrong about many of these things, even about all of them. Mostly the episode has alerted me to what sort of questions I'm supposed to ask, and it's likely that I'll change my mind about a few things. But I have a pretty good idea what I'm dealing with, and none of it is intrusive in the sense of an "As-you-know-Bob" dialogue (where people talk about things they have no reason to talk about, only because the reader/viewer is supposed to know it).

It's competent science fiction/fantasy; thought through very well I'd say with regards to design. They keep it in the background, but it's still important. All of that is simply how exploratif SF/F works. There's nothing ingenious about it, but it's very detailled and for people who like that sort of stuff it's perfectly well executed. They've gained my trust; I think they know what they're doing. It's not groundbreaking, but it's also not heavy-handed, and the concept is definitely important (you can't easily set this on regular earth and have the same experience).

You can disagree with me, if you like, but words like "crap" or "bad writing" aren't terribly motivating to reply. Note that I've mostly talked about setting here. The story, I imagine, is going to be pretty sentimental, and I can see myself growing tired of it. At best it's going to be really sad, at worst it's going to be eye-roll inducing melodrama; I can see myself reacting in both ways. But that's a matter of what I like and what I don't. The writing's not bad; they know what they want and go for it. Everything feels very targeted, and nothing feels gratuitious. Even the rather silly are-you-going-to-eat-me jokes have setting function.

This style of writing isn't about telling you what you need to know; it's about guiding you to ask the right questions, make you come up with possible answers some of which you discard, and some of which you keep, and, watching the show like that, the setting will make more and more sense. (For me, personally, there comes a time when I have to discard less and less possible answers, and that's often also the time when I lose interest. Shows that survive that stage are the really good ones [there are also shows that won't give you enough until the very end and keep your interest alive through constant exploration.)

Shows like that demand attention and patience. If you don't like to watch a show with this in mind, that is if that feels like work rather than fun, then a show like this isn't going to be much fun. But that's not the same thing as bad writing; it's just that what you expect doesn't match what the show does.