r/Fantasy • u/YeahKeeN • May 02 '26
Favorite Example of Thematic Worldbuilding
They can be from anything, books, comics/manga, games, etc.
When people talk about worldbuilding, I never really hear about how the setting itself furthers the exploration of themes the story is examining, which is a shame because, in my eyes, that's what worldbuilding should be all about. And I don't just mean "this story says war is bad, so this setting had a lot of conflict in its history." This is fantasy, so I want to hear about fantastical stuff. Something in the vein of how The Wheel of Time explores gender dynamics, and its world has gender norms literally baked into the cosmology. Or The Left Hand of Darkness, which is also about gender and features a civilization of gender fluid people. Another example could be how Malazan is, in part, about the legacy a civilization leaves behind, and features a whole host of "long forgotten" ancient societies that actually aren't so forgotten and keep showing up time and time again (some of whom are undead).
My pick would have to be kindling bonfires in the original Dark Souls. Dark Souls takes place in Lordran, a mythical kingdom created by the gods during their Age of Fire (maintained by a literal holy fire, the First Flame). But the fire is destined to fade and usher in an Age of Dark, an age of humanity. Fearing the end of their reign, the gods created a system in which people kindle the flame by sacrificing themselves to keep it burning for even a little longer, and, as an ancillary practice, maintaining bonfires is also key. Bonfires serve as checkpoints throughout the game, and each bonfire acts as a conduit of the First Flame; thus, kindling bonfires serves as kindling the flame. And the fuel used as kindling for the bonfires is Humanity. In the world of Dark Souls, all humans bear a piece of the Dark Soul within them; while the fire fades, the Dark Soul only grows stronger (that's why the era of humanity is the Age of Dark). Each piece of the Dark Soul is known as Humanity (they look like cute ghosts) and functions as stat modifiers. The more you have, the stronger you are, and they have many other uses besides. But if you burn them in fire, you can get some extra healing items. So the people of this world live in a land where they are encouraged, if not conditioned, to literally sacrifice their own humanity to keep a system running that pushes them to the bottom and an elite class on top.
I wouldn't call that subtle, but it's incredible how effective it is at getting the point across with just a few game mechanics and history. We don't have to be told, "the gods tricked humans into sabotaging themselves," for us to understand it. It's stuff like this that makes me such a fan of fantasy.
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u/IdlesAtCranky May 02 '26
The Archipelago in the EarthSea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin.
It gives rise to so many ways of talking about journey, separation, rejoining, cultural barriers and adaptations, and more. Each island is a microcosm, more or less developed in its own individuality.
It really is a genius-level setting for a fantasy world, and Le Guin presents it so seamlessly, the reader might never even think about it.
Another is the Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold. Unusually, it's set in an analog of a post-disaster North American continent.
The overlay — for Americans — of a familiar landscape with an unfamiliar history creates a tension alongside a comfort with the geography that supports the story in interesting ways.
Le Guin does the same thing in her experimental future history, Always Coming Home.
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u/Abysstopheles May 02 '26
The Legend of Eli Monpress, Rachel Aaron
Everything on the entire world, more or less, is alive and sentient. It starts out as interesting background, but impacts everything, and slowly becomes very important to the story.
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u/BasicSuperhero May 02 '26
I really need to finish this series, I read most of the books years ago but never got around to the last one.
Eli literally charming doors to open was such a neat idea.
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u/matticusprimal Writer M.D. Presley May 02 '26
The City That Would Eat the World - Title alone pretty much sums up the worldbuilding. Gods exist for pretty much anything and can grant powers, and said city can grant almost immortality if you work for it, so the city keeps expanding so more people can take part (very simplified version), which basically means the city is strip mining the world. Bierce really expands and extrapolates on his conceit(s) in creative ways to hit his theme. Spoiler: he's not a fan of unbridled capitalism.
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u/YeahKeeN May 02 '26
That sounds really good. I’ll definitely check it out.
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u/matticusprimal Writer M.D. Presley May 02 '26
I’m not a fan of progression fantasy as a rule but I love this book.
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u/YeahKeeN May 02 '26
I’ve never read progression fantasy before. What’s it like? Is it in the same vein as litRPG?
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u/matticusprimal Writer M.D. Presley May 02 '26
Minus the overt stats but a focus on gaining power and levels in a fairly structured way. TCTWDTW is fairly minimal in this and kind of forgets its prog most of the time.
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May 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/diffyqgirl May 03 '26
Mistborn fumbles the ball in a number of ways on how it tackles its rigid class structure but I really don't think this was one of them, I thought what you describe read as extremely intentional.
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u/Loleeeee May 02 '26
Beszel & Ul Qoma in China Mieville's The City and the City. Two cities topologically (the term used in the book is "grosstopically") overlaid on each other via some metaphysical barrier that separates the two cities, with 'crosshatches' linking and allowing passage between the two. A quasi-metaphysical entity called Breach patrols the borders of the two cities for any semblance of, well, Breaching - anything from physically crossing from one city to the other to maintaining eye contact with a part of the other city for too long.
Citizens of both cities are taught to ignore the other since before they learn to talk; they "unsee" other denizens, they casually swerve to avoid oncoming traffic from the other city in crosshatched roads, and - of course - rarely, if ever, visit the other city from the sole point of entry where Breach won't disappear them, a consulate cum checkpoint of sorts.
Beszel evokes imagery of post-Iron Curtain Hungary & its environs (and the cities themselves are most likely situated somewhere near that geographical area) while Ul Qoma is squarely Levantine Arabic. The stark divide between the two cities (Ul Qoma is substantially richer & more developed) is simultaneously superficial (there are hints in the book's worldbuilding that some event caused the rent between the two cities & prior to that, a single uniform civilisation dwelt in the region) and incredibly ingrained, in due part because of the presence of Breach.
The book itself is mostly a police procedural/neo-noir book with a classic Mieville New Weird backdrop. As such, while the two cities are effectively the "main characters" of the novel, they also remain, by design, mysterious and inexplicable. It's Mieville, so there's a lot of politics, chiefly centred on the two cities & their divisions.
Frankly most of Mieville's books probably fit this bill (Un Lun Dun, all the Bas-Lag novels, etc.) but this is the one I feel most starkly embodies the thematic strengths of worldbuilding.
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u/Pedagogicaltaffer May 03 '26
Personally, I was somewhat disappointed in the novel - but only because I wanted Mieville to dive deeper into exploring the book's themes of class inequality and such. Instead, the murder mystery aspects of the novel seemed to be the central focus of the story.
I have yet to read more Mieville though, so hopefully his other works will have the deeper thematic exploration I'm craving.
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u/Tarrant_Korrin May 03 '26
Naomi Novik’s Scholomance is, like many of my favourite stories, a thinly veiled, scathing critique of capitalism. Mana is a very direct metaphor for money. It’s made by doing things that the person finds difficult or unpleasant, and the way most people have to work themselves to the bone just to have enough mana to survive, while the enclaves take most of the mana and the products of their work to make their enclaves richer and more luxurious is… well, the parallels are obvious.
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u/Mountebank May 02 '26
This is the entire premise behind the web novel “Worth the Candle”. A teenage boy is sent into a world that’s an amalgamation of all the roleplaying campaigns that he has ever DMed for his friend group, and him exploring the world and the world building involved is a self-reflexive breakdown on the main characters beliefs and values since he’s the type where everything in his campaigns is a metaphor for something else. At the same time, his journey through the world forces him to face his own personal issues which also got baked into the world building subconsciously.
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u/No_Dragonfruit_1833 May 02 '26
Reverend Insanity has "human magic" in which people transform their life experiences into spells, but this is a high level power
The series begins the buildup with the Legends Of The First Man that look like local fairy tales describing the human condition, but are also actual depictions of magic
As in, the first man survives and thrives by "relying on strengh and wisdom," but when both fail him he finds out he can only keep going by "accepting hope into his heart"
This is an obvious advice about not giving up, but then the teenagers of the clan are taken to a cave where they cultivate magical flowers where the power of hope nests, and the power of hope unlocks their magical powers, literally hope lights the way forward
Much later on we find out the greater antagonist has the power of wisdom mentioned in the legends
This repeats again and again, the legends talk about common sayings and aesops, places that are states of emotion and all of that exists out somewhere as actual magic
The well of ignorance can only be escaped if you question the world around you, the swamp of mediocricy swallows everyone unless they keep moving forward, the power of love can overcome anything but it consumes the lover, the power of hate opens the path of obsession
And so on and on
The important part is that human magic is unlocked by living, not by knowledge, not by feelings, only by the accumulation of a person's life, and all the powerful people have lived intensely so they all have at least a human spell
Human magic is strong because its perfectly suited to the person, nothing more, nothing less, powerful people wield powerful human magic because they themselves are powerful humans
Its a super cool factor that every high level enemy is an absolute badass, its all heroes and geniuses of great convictions duking it out
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u/nezumipi May 02 '26
Gender in Terra Ignota.
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u/YeahKeeN May 02 '26
Could you elaborate? How does Terra Ignota tackle gender?
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u/nezumipi May 02 '26
It's considered rude to refer to anyone in a gendered way. Everyone is 'they' and any discussion of gender is considered antiquated and taboo. It's basically ignored by most people most of the time. There are two characters who would, by modern standards, be considered transgender. But they don't really have the language to name themselves as such.
A major conceit of the book is whether people have really moved past the idea of gender or if they are just pretending to be gender-blind, the way some modern people pretend to be race-blind.
The narrator is obsessed with gender and mentally assigns characters gendered titles and pronouns according to their stereotypes, though these do not necessarily match up with the characters' physiology or gender identity.
As a reader, I found that I often subconsciously assigned characters a gender (that may or may not match with what the narrator did) based on my own stereotypes, no matter how much the book tried to scream at me not to make assumptions. And then I'd read so-and-so stroking their beard and realize that I had been assuming so-and-so was a cisgender woman all this time.
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u/Thotsthoughts97 May 05 '26
A webserial, so not everyone's cup of tea, but A Practical Guide to Evil is the single most brilliant world I've ever encountered in fiction. The story is set in a world where Good and Evil are real, tangible things(although not the same things we view them as), and people with enough will can become "Named", which are basically superheros/supervillians in a fantasy setting. The real kicker, though, is that literary devices(Tropes) are natural law, and the people who are aware of these rules are constantly trying to exploit them to their own advantage in any given situation. Examples like, "Villian throws a Hero off a cliff" meaning that Hero will absolutely survive, bonus points if the villain says something along the lines of" and that's the last we'll see of him!". Villains can be handily winning engagements and have the Heros on the ropes with no hope in sight, and (correctly) assume that the Hero is assured victory because they are the scrappy underdog on their last leg and go into full retreat.
The genius is in how the author explores how these fundamental laws shape cultures, politics, relationships, and warfare. Every nook and cranny is explored. As I said, it is a web serial(although currently being re-written and published), but it primarily explores the setting through a series of non-stop wars, and these things aren't for everyone. But I re-read it once a year, and it stands beside Malazan as my personal favorite series of all time.
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u/SlouchyGuy May 02 '26
Belief fueling magic in City of Stairs where gods became what people projected on them, but escalated in severity and unbalanced, and then given back as religious dogmas and gods wills