What is Your Favorite World/Setting and Why?

[Revision]

There is always that one setting that strikes your fancy just a bit more than others, that world you want to learn more about, that you love seeing art of, that dazzles and draws you in. These worlds may be the unbelievable that beg you to suspend disbelief. Alternately, they may be so well done and adhere so well to reality's laws that suspending disbelief isn't an issue, it just happens. They may be larger than life or the size of a pin and they may be lush and gorgeous or cold and metallic. What is your favorite world by someone other than yourself and why?

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[Dawn]

The Final Fantasy X/X-2 world of Spira. It's my absolute favorite but I can't quite pinpoint why. I love some other worlds like Piers Anthony's Xanth or Middle Earth, but the races and lore of Spira just appeals to me in so many ways. I love how thickly developed Spira is, full of the necessities of a true world.

Religious and political struggle, dealing with racism, a troubled history, life lessons around every corner.



But, I think what I love most about Spira are the pyreflies. They're integrated into almost everything.

Gathering on the waters of the Moonflow at dusk.
Giving us Aeons and fiends alike.
Easily influenced by our emotions.
Capable of many wonderful and horrible things.
Their mournful song on The Farplane.

I love The Sending.
It's such a heartbreaking, beautiful funeral dance.

I love the rules of living and dying, the unsent and the Fayth.

Spira is a world that was built on, and thrives on, emotion. Maybe that's what I love most about it. Either way, it's a wonderfully complex world filled with amazing, interesting concepts.

PS: The Al Bhed's machina are awesome <3

 

[Saint Tribs]

This is both easy and hard for me because I've got two.

First up is my long time favorite, the world where the Heralds of Valdemar exist, created by Mercedes Lackey. Velgarth. Inside it is Valdemar and Valdemar is a beautiful city governed by a King or Queen fairly. It's one of those places where you want to live, where magic happens and you'll grow. Oh how you'll grow. I dream about being a Herald, which is hilarious because I hate horses... Not that you could call a Companion a Horse but the idea is still sound. Truth, justice, and magic.
I've met some amazing characters in the city of Haven and outside of Haven and outside of Valdemar there's unforgiving Karse, Jkatha where the Shin'a'in roam, and many many other places. I've met Gryphons and Companions (horse shaped spirit creatures), and the plains dwelling kyree (a strange big cat/wolf that is very very smart). I saw people die horrible deaths, deaths that years and years later still haunts me. I find myself wanting to go to Valdemar and riding the streets. I want to train under Weapons Master Alberich and ride alongside Queen Selenay. I want to visit the forest and the Hawkbrothers.

Velgarth was the first fantasy world that felt like home to me.

Now onwards to my other favorite! Discworld.
Right now Discworld is reigning supreme for me but that's only because I read it constantly. Like over and over and over again. Terry Pratchett is a master, he really is. How can I describe Discworld though?

For starters, it's a flat world carried on the backs of four elephants carried on the back of one giant turtle as it flies through space.

The best part about Discworld isn't the world though, it's the characters and how they interact with this world they are given. You've got places like Ankh Morpork, it's a large bustling city with a 'Patrician' (One man, one vote. His Vote.) who rules the city and watches over it. No Kings in Ankh Morpork (Not on Sam Vime's watch anyway)! It's a dirty horrible city that is sectioned off into several logical bits, the good, the bad, and the really bad. The river is so dirty and polluted you can walk across it and you won't sink, you'd just bounce a bit. There's Gargoyles and they talk. Well, they sorta talk. They've got drain pipes in their mouths so they don't do it well. You've got the Dwarves who've come to the city to make money to send back home. You've got great rocky trolls in the city trying to make a fresh start where it's illegal for Dwarves to try and kill them to get their diamond teeth out.

You've got racism, classism, sexism, and ableism and people who are trying to over come it. You've got the crazy fat wizards at the Unseen University who are mostly ignored because that's the safest way to deal with a wizard and then you've got the Witches out in the rural areas doing everything that needs doing.

You've got all these countries on this 'disc' and most of them are at war with one another. You've got the gods high on the middle of the disc who subsist on the belief of their worshipers. On the disc, gods are a dime a dozen.

Oh. There's also werewolves with flea problems, vampires who wear pink grandma cardigans, and zombies seeking equal rights for their fellow undead.

You see the birth and death of 'music with rocks in it' and moving pictures at 'Holy Wood' and the most important thing is that you see PEOPLE. People who feel, despite their species, almost real. People who you can look up at or laugh wildly at (and accidentally set off the glass break alarm while doing so!) and cry for.

... And I have said too much.

 

[Elflady]

I love the diversity and creativity of the Tales series, these games each have their own world, history, rules, fauna and flora that it's a joy to just play the games and take in the worlds that are so unique and yet familiar in each game, as a player the time taken for the developers to add in even unimportant details adds so much and really shows that even mundane things and information really adds to the charm. The same goes for Studio Ghibli's movies, they are so diverse and unique from each other that it's just as fun to take it all in and see how they built up such intriquate worlds for one movie. These are a true joy to watch an play as I can see new things each time and the more I see the more I want to create something equally interesting and amazing.

There are so many more I could list here but Lord of the Rings' Middle Earth was a large, detailed and captivating world that was perfectly portrayed in the movies and is very inspiring when creating fantasy worlds. Others are Narnia, The Dark Matter trilogy was very inspiring dealing with multiple dimensions, some almost identical to our own and others so different it's like another world entirely, the characters, the worlds, the ideas and the ability to write it down convincingly is something that makes it a joy to return to time and again.

The Legend of Zelda has something familiar in each game and yet they are all unique and interesting whether they take place in Hyrule or abroad, the various animals, items, characters and worlds are inspiring and always makes you want to go back again which is something that a world needs if others would like to play it. Others like Final Fantasy, Dinotopia, the Longest Journey games, they all, to me, share that diversity and fascination that pulls me back and really makes me want to create something like it.

I could go on forever in this subject but they all share similar points that makes me want to explore, go back to and when I create my own world I try my best to learn from the these amazing creators.

 

[Sakura]

^I agree with most of what Elflady has said (especially with the Final Fantasy series).

I'm exceptionally attached to Kingdom Hearts many worlds because they collide with Disney and because they fall together seamlessly when the links between the worlds are broken or recreated.

"There are many worlds, but they share the same sky" - Kairi

Game worlds, however, are easier to create, because they're visual pieces. In terms of literary worlds, I have often read a book where the world just doesn't come to life for me and makes the experience more tiring than enjoyable. I find that of all the worlds I've read in fantasy stories, the Eragon trilogy world stands to me the most. Perhaps it was the language, the names of cities, the united government, though corrupt, the many races and the alliances. Everything had a place and was pre-created, but as the story went on, these lines were blurred and people and races were mixed! I really, really enjoyed every bit of cultural experience the world in Eragon.

 

[Minibit]

The world of Middle Earth Consistently blows me away every time I look at it.

The books have been criticized for being overdescriptive, but personally I like it. When I'm watching the films, I sometimes wish the characters would shut up so I can hear the music, or that the camera would pan away for a better view of the cities, statues, cliffs, forests, mines, villages, swamps, plains, and endless other in-depth terrains the story goes through.

But what blows me away the most is the sheer amount of historical thought put into it! Tolkein created the Elvish language and the entire culture of the Valar and early humans and dwarves before he even started writing Lord of the Rings. Each and every piece of the story, from the mountain of Cadarhas to the ring on Aragorn's finger. From the towers of Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul to Tom Bombadil's home in the forest. Everything has a rich, rich history of how it got to be what it is in the third age, and it gives the world a depth I've never found in another series.


The world of Krynn from the Dragonlance books also blows me away, though it takes longer to do it. Each subseries of the Dragonlance books covers a different section of Krynn's history, you can, if you read all the books, see the history of a world from the cataclysm to the end of days. If you're willing to invest the time into reading more than one subseries, you'll find yourself wanting to reread them, because you'll catch significance that you didn't note before. That world gets richer the more you read, and it's a kind of a neat dynamic.