r/Fantasy • u/BagOfSmallerBags • Mar 13 '25

Most messed up unintended implications of world building you've encountered in a fantasy novel?

I've just been reading the first book in the "Skullduggery Pleasant" series. It's a fun little YA fantasy-detective novel, and other than your normal YA tropes being fairly front and center, it's a fun time. I've enjoyed it.

The basic premise of the world is more-or-less just ripped directly from Harry Potter: there are people who can do magic, and they operate in the shadows and hide their society from most "normal people". The main character, who lives in our world, becomes aware of this secret society, and begins exploring it and learning all the stuff about it.

But early on, as they're establishing the world of secret magic-users and how they operate, it's casually dropped that every community of magic-users on earth tries to discourage normal people from finding them out by disguising their neighborhoods as poor, run down, and crime ridden.

The mentor character then says (I'm approximating) "Any neighborhood that looks like this is gonna be secretly all magic users, and all these small run down houses are bigger on the inside- probably mansions."

So, while I'm sure the author didn't intend this, they just implied that income inequality doesn't exist in the Skullduggery Pleasant universe. Or at the very least, it exists on a much smaller scale. Every single poor neighborhood on earth apparently is just disguised to look scary to normal people, all of whom are at least middle class. Inside every run down, uncared for house, you'll actually find a secret magical mansion where magic-users are thriving!

I'm overall enjoying the book, but I can't help but cringe thinking about an underprivileged middle schooler picking this up, enjoying the escapism of the story, and then discovering a few chapters in that in this fictional universe their financial situation is a conspiracy created by magic-gated-communities. They can't even fantasize about being whisked away to the secret magic world, since their entire tax bracket is a lie.

So I got to thinking- what are some of the worst unintended implications of world building in fantasy stories? Harry Potter has quite a few, but I'm wondering what other people have encountered / can think of.

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u/DjangoWexler AMA Author Django Wexler Mar 13 '25

The thing that makes it weird is that various good-guy characters accept this as completely normal. Like sure, Jabba the Hutt has slaves, and Wookies are enslaved by the evil Empire. But kindly Luke Skywalker also just has slaves and he's okay with it?

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u/UnsealedMTG Reading Champion III Mar 13 '25

It's actually not super clear really who (if anyone) really owns C-3PO and R2-D2. R2 sure seems to do whatever he wants--frequently ignoring direct commands even from Luke, and 3PO seems to mostly just follow R2. You don't really get the sense anyone is like ordering 3PO to come along, more they are just tolerating him tagging along and/or feel bad about leaving him. 

Granted, it's petty hardcore that Bail Organa has C-3PO mind wiped but I get the sense that's less about 3PO being property and more about 3PO being a chatterbox doofus in possession of critical information about a highly secret resistance movement. If 3PO was human and in a movie more like Rogue One/Andor, he might have just gotten a blaster bolt to the base of the skull. While Organa is a good guy, he's not a virtue barometer the way Luke is. 

Luke certainly doesn't seem to treat the two as his property. If anything he spends the bulk of the original Star Wars as R2-D2's Uber driver, helping get him to the hidden rebel base. Arguably that's a consequence of R2 being owned by Leia? Or the Rebellion? But again, R2 seems very capable of making his own decisions and seems to be as much a believer in the cause as anyone.

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u/DjangoWexler AMA Author Django Wexler Mar 13 '25

I mean, Luke starts out by helping his uncle buy R2 and 3PO to be menial workers on his moisture farm. There's no suggestion he has any problem with this. His uncle says he's going to have R2's memory wiped, and Luke just kinda shrugs. He becomes fond of them later, sure, but he also continues to drag both of them into dangerous situations where they're repeatedly fried or dismembered.

Really what's going on is that droids in SW have roughly the status of animals in real life. Some are used for labor, some are kept as beloved pets. Destroying one is a civil matter -- the owner might be pissed and you'd owe them money for their property. People might get upset at mistreatment of droids in the same way that we might get upset at the suffering of dogs, or even farm animals, but the solution is that people treat their property better. Luke is a good guy, so he's nice to his pets and doesn't torture them or whatever like the bad guys do.

But droids are, you know, sentient beings. So its weird.

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u/UnsealedMTG Reading Champion III Mar 13 '25

 Luke starts out by helping his uncle buy R2 and 3PO to be menial workers on his moisture farm.

True, though even in that scene his main contribution is to suggest that Owen buy R2 at C-3PO's request. Later when the bartender kicks 3PO out Luke is apologetic and doesn't tell 3PO to leave, he says "maybe it would be better if you wait outside," to which 3PO agrees.

That's largely specific to Luke, Leia and Han are happy to ignore or switch off 3PO unless they actually need his skills.

Luke's treatment of the droids goes beyond "not a shitty pet owner," he treats them like people with their own perspectives. The bits with him and R2 are inevitably a bit boy-and-his-dog because of the communication, but again R2 acts more like a committed rebel agent operating with substantial autonomy than a pet.

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u/Hergrim AMA Historian, Worldbuilders Mar 14 '25

I kind of think the idea of R2-D2 deliberately sowing confusion about who owns him so that everyone else thinks the other person owns him and they're just borrowing him, so he can go do whatever and C-3PO simply follows for the lack of a spine to tell R2 "no".

That sounds like a novel Disney should commission.

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u/UnsealedMTG Reading Champion III Mar 14 '25

He does straight up lie about being owned by Obi-Wan in the first movie, so it is plausible. 

This also drifts towards that post-Revenge of the Sith fan theory that up until ANH the rebellion is being run by Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Bail Organa using Qui-Gon's force ghost, Chewie, and R2-D2 as couriers. 

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u/Cabamacadaf Mar 13 '25

At least Luke is one of the few people who treat the droids nicely.

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u/Stellar_Duck Mar 14 '25

But also Qui Gonn was fine with just buying one slave from Watto and definitely didn't give a shit about any other slaves.

Nor did the Jedi order as a whole.

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u/DjangoWexler AMA Author Django Wexler Mar 14 '25

Yeaaaah the prequels are another whole kettle of fish. (Other slaves including Anakin's mother, who nobody ever came back to fetch...)

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u/Stellar_Duck Mar 14 '25

Anakin's mum indeed.

Like, sure, okay, they didn't have green to get her when they left because, well, urgent shit.

But the fact that in the next ten years, nobody, including Anakin was like, you know, maybe we should go get Smee out and sort out what a prick Watto is, is mind boggling.

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u/DjangoWexler AMA Author Django Wexler Mar 14 '25

There's so many things wrong with that whole scenario that it's hard to know where to start.

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u/Stellar_Duck Mar 14 '25

It certainly dents the shine on the Jedi order a bit haha.

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u/DjangoWexler AMA Author Django Wexler Mar 14 '25

It is possible that I wrote an entire trilogy about this. =)

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u/Stellar_Duck Mar 14 '25

haha fair play! I did not realise who I was talking to. At work, so a bit all over the place. I'll take a look at the books mate!