The Magic of Hindsight Worldbuilding
CONTENT NOTICE: Long post talking about a storytelling and worldbuilding trick that I love. This post will contain mentions of places in the fiction universe of both Dishonored and Star Wars, prior knowledge of these fictional universe or the specific things being talked about is not necessary on the part of the reader. However, do note that this will contain spoilers for the Star Wars TV shows: "Star Wars Rebels, Season 3, Episode 18" as well as "ANDOR, Season 2".
One of my favorite tools in my little bag of storytelling and worldbuilding tricks, is the innocuous name dropping of a place, event or character as simple background lore, only for it to be fully realized in another story taking place in the same universe.
I love seeing it happen and I plan on doing it in my own stories. I adore when a story mentions a location or a figure casually and thoroughly explore it in a future story. I'm not talking about foreshadowing here, no, I'm talking about a secondary character making a casual mention of a distant country, in what could be perceived as just a way to make the world seem larger and like, a sequel or spinoff to the story takes place there.
To me, the best part about this is that, because it's so casually mentioned and not insisted on it, the person engaging with the story probably won't pick up on it. But then, one day, they revisit the original story years later, see this and have that moment of: "Oh wow, it was there the whole time!" which makes the world seem even larger than it made it seem back then and give a feeling that all of this was planned.
It's not something you can really do in all forms of media, I'd say. I think that for movies, notably, it's particularly hard because of time constraint, every line must have some importance but also, you're much more likely to remember it. Whereas in a book, a video game, or a large franchise with various spin offs and so on, it's much easier.
This needs some explanation, because I'm talking about a very specific trick, which require some very specific conditions for it to give the intended effect.
Here's an exemple, in this little video game that I'm totally not obsessed with and currently in total hyperfixation1 on, Dishonored. The games takes place in a fictional empire of isles. The first game takes place in Dunwall, capital of both the Gristol and of the empire itself. Whereas the second game takes place in the city of Karnaca, "the jewel of the south", in the country "Serkonos."
Well, while replaying Dishonored 1, I was not only shocked to hear and read about Serkonos, but also Karnaca! When I saw the city being name dropped in a little note while playing Dishonored 1 yesterday, my eyes lit up and my heart glittered with euphoria. It's what gave me the inspiration for this post.
Because mind you, this was years before the sequel, and the studio behind that game had never made a sequel before. It's name dropped here, mostly in books and notes. The open nature of the game is such that you can totally miss out on these things, and that's what makes it special to me.
See, what gives this trick its little magic, is subtlety. Serkonos is a big country, so it is mentionned frequently, but Karnaca isn't mentioned as frequently. It's not the only city mentioned for Serkonos either. And if you had asked any Dishonored fan before the announcement of the second game where a sequel could take place if not Dunwall, changes are, they would've named the countries of "Tyvia" or perhaps "Morley", which are two countries that are mentioned much more frequently. The first one especially, is mentioned everywhere in the game. Of course, in hindsight, Serkonos makes perfect sense, as it's the country from which where both Dishonored 1's playable protagonist are from2.
If Dishonored 2 was to take place in Tyvia, the effect would be very different. Because of how frequent its mention is, the feeling would be very different, not worse, just different. It's a very distinct form of excitement. Take the planet "Kessel" in the Star Wars universe. When we finally saw it in shows like Star Wars: Rebels or the movie "SOLO: A Star Wars Story", it was exciting, but for a very different. It's a place we know, we've heard about it, it already has some mystic to it because of who talked about it and in what context.
When Han Solo talks about the Millenium Falcon being the ship that "made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs", seeing the place itself is really exciting, but for a very different reason. It's like seeing the "clone wars" in the prequels that Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan talked about in A New Hope. Both talked about it with such mystic, such importance, that it's impossible to forget about. So we already know about it, and instead of getting the "wow, it was there the whole time!" feeling, we get a "ah, finally we get to see what it looks like!", both are very exciting, for very different reasons.
Cool thing is, Star Wars also recently gave me the feeling I'm trying to talk about as well! In ANDOR Season 2, we witness the "Ghorman Massacre." It's shocking and once you've seen it, you won't soon forget about it. But if you rewatch Star Wars: Rebels Season 3, Episode 18, you may find yourself caught of guard by the same event being named dropped, a whole seven years before it was actually turned into a huge plot point in another story in the same universe. When I rewatched that episode, I had to actually stop and rewind, like: "Wait... did I just hear what I think I heard?!" and indeed, I did, so then, immediately after: "Holy shit, it was there the whole time!", aaaa, I love this feeling so much.
The reason why this work here and is different with the "Kessel Run" is because, it's name dropped once, in a large TV show, but most importantly, it's name dropped in passing, it comes off as a simple piece of lore and world building, because that's probably what it was. And in a show where the atrocities of the Empire are talked about constantly, one character in one episode dropping one specific atrocity doesn't stick out at all. So now, if you revisit the show, it's no longer just some lore namedrop, it's this thing you've witnessed in details over multiple episodes in another show and your ears perk up.
When I read about Karnaca, main location of Dishonored 2, in the first game, years before the sequel is even announced to be a thing, all I see is worldbuilding, one city among others in a country among others. Some distant land that I'll forget about soon, but that still did the work needed to make me believe that there is a world outside of these levels.
When I hear about Mon Mothma talks about the Ghorman Massacre, pivotal story arc of ANDOR season 2, in Star Wars Rebels Season 3, years before the show ANDOR season 2, let alone season 1, is even a thing, all I see is this character that I know, talking about another atrocity comitted by an empire who I've witnessed destroy an entire planet to prove a point among a dozen other atrocities. It's about her, not the incident mentioned.
But now?
When I stumble upon a mention of Karnaca, main location of Dishonored 2, in the first game, I see the beautiful port of the city in which I've spent hours in, I think about its wind turbines, about the Dust District, the sound of bloodflies comes to haunt me, all the fights I've had and the memories I've built in this place, it somehow takes me back to a place that I haven't visited yet, it makes me feel like I'm time travelling. And most importantly, it makes me feel like Karnaca was more than lore, it was a real place all along, and I have a strong attachment to it.
When I randomly rewatch Star Wars Rebels and arrive at Season 3, listen to Mon Mothma's speech and hear her mention the "Ghorman Massacre", I get unexpected fucking PTSD flashbacks to all that I've seen of that event.
And in both cases, I'm filled with this deep sense of euphoria. It doesn't just feel like a loop closing itself, it feels like storytelling magic, like two distant dots somehow connecting themselves in such a way that never again I'll be able to unconnect them. It feels like harmony.
The trick is seeing something mentioned in the past that I never had any reason to think more about. It's hiding the depth. Making the voyager to your world wonder if this was in the author's mind all along, or if it's a retroactive addition. It's an excercise in subtlety and in patience, because it's a trick that only work on a second passing of the story. It's not that it hits different now that you know the full story, it's that it now hits you, when before, it simply passed you by. It feels like some hidden knowledge has been revealed to you, like the writer let you in on an in-joke and now, it adds retrospective meaning. Like some kind of reverse prophecy.
Seeing the "Kessel Run" or the "clone wars" in Star Wars, in the end, it's getting a clarification, getting to see more of that thing that I was already fascinated by. Now I know more about it. It's cool. But this is something else. It feels like a hijacking of my dopamine, a retconning of my own emotions, it feels like I'm discovering something new in this thing that I thought I already knew about, and it's making me wonder about what other hidden secrets lies within.
The coolest part is the fact that the person being exposed to the story once again and picking up on such details will now inevitably wonder if this was all planned or not? It adds a second layer of cohesiveness to the world and the story that makes it stronger. It's even cooler because, it could be luck. Dishonored 2 could've been set in Karnaca, Serkonos because the team always intended for this game to exist in take place there, hence the mentions, or, it could've been set there because it was a place they had created only in their mind and in lore, and figured it would be a cool location to set the game in. Maybe the "Ghorman Massacre" in the Star Wars universe was always going to be this dramatic event shown to us, or maybe, it was just originally written as a way to give weight to a scene and everything else was worked on backwards. It works best when it's hard or impossible to know.
Because of course, there's a balancing act. If you as an author, starts doing this knowing that you plan on visiting these places, events or characters, then you have to be careful to not namedrop only things you're actually planning on showing to your reader one day, otherwise, you will not only fail in your intended effect, but it will result in your world feeling considerably smaller and make you predictable. For every place you'll take people to, there needs to be four others you don't. The numbers here are arbitrary, but you get the point, I'm sure.
In my own work of fiction3, I'm taking my reader in a new universe that I've been imagining since 2012. It has grown and changed substantially before being what it is today. It's large, filled with mysteries and hopefully, it's compelling. I can only hope that within the story itself, I'm good at making it seem considerably larger than it actually is in my mind. In it, I purposefully play around with this trick. For exemple, in the first book of a protagonist's story, a place is casually namedropped by a no name character that appears only during this scene, like various other places are at other times in the text, just as a place that exists, it adds on to the mystic of this world I'm building, call it flavor text, it tells the reader of some distant place, far away, to remind them that there is such a thing as "far away" in this world, and then the reader, just like the story, moves on. But the reader is oblivious as to the fact that this will be the main location of the story two books later. Chances are, they won't even remember the fact that they've already heard about this place, the protagonist sure doesn't, it's so foreign, so far from where we've started... but if the reader is to one day revisit the first book, they'll realize that it was there all along.
Some historical figure casually mentioned in one piece of story, will get its own dedicated novel one day. It'll come as a shock to the reader, "Who is this? Why give this character a whole book?" but then, later, when they'll see its name mentioned in a previous story, a place with which they're deeply associated, they won't be able to think of anything else but this story which hopefully, they thoroughly enjoyed, never knowing that they were getting little hints of an enigma they didn't even know existed all along.
So if I do my job well as a storyteller... you will never see it coming. Because you will never realize that something was coming in the first place. Like a storytelling sleeper agent, it's hidden in plain sight, in the wind, until one day, you revisit it all and realize that it was there all along. And you too, amidst all the other memories now catalysed in this mention, will wonder: Did she plan this all along? Maybe I did. Maybe I did something like that in this very blog post. But maybe I didn't. Who can say. Perhaps this past will find deeper meaning through the prism of a yet untold future. That's the magic.
Thank you for reading.
Worldbuilding is amazing.
PAWNOTES:
I would also like to state that coming up with a title for this blog was really difficult and annoying. I came up with the term "Hindsight Worldbuilding" on the spot, looking for a title. I thought of adding it to the text, perhaps at the last line, after all, the words "the magic" are already there, but even if cute, it would a bit too cheesy.
Sarcasm. I very much am in hyperfixation about Dishonored. In fact, so much so that I'm self-concious about it, I talked about that here.↩
It could be argued that by the time of the DLCs, The Knife Of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches, Dishonored 2 was already in the heads of the dev team and so a lot more foreshadowing work was made. But I don't have enough information about the developments of those expansions relative to the second game to confirm this. Dishonored 2 takes a lot of element from these DLCs specifically, so it's a tell but then again, the whole trick is that you can never be sure. Also, did you know that the Brigmore Witches are mentioned in the first game, outside of the DLCs? Again, that trick!↩
This work and this world is something that I may never publish. It's deeply intimate. Maybe one day it'll become something I actually finish and muster the courage to publish, but for now, its bits and pieces are reserved to a very carefully selected few.↩