Why Fantasy Worlds SHOULD Be Stuck in Medieval Times
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- A contrarian video essay in support of the medieval stasis trope commonly found in fantasy fiction.
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● Twitter: / perseusgrim
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● Livestream Highlights: @PerseusGrimLIVE
0:00 - Intro
2:59 - What’s the Point?
8:05 - Ancient Boomers
14:25 - The Story Argument
21:26 - Suppression
29:14 - Conclusion
Video Footage Used: The Elder Scrolls Online, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077, World of Warcraft, Sniper Elite 5, Minecraft, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, League of Legends, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring & Return of the King, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Episode II - Attack of the Clones, and Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pulp Fiction, Game of Thrones, Clash of Titans, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Doctor Strange, Warcraft, Fallout (Show), Arcane, The Simpsons, 1000 Years Time Lapse Map of Europe by Katarina Peter, pexels.com, archive.org, vecteezy.com
Images Used: Gwent, Wikimedia Commons, unsplash.com, coppermind.net
Music Used: League of Legends, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Gwent, The Sims: Medieval, Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, UA-cam Audio Library, Oleanteros Ebinos Coltsfoot - Розваги
"Don't trust the cleric guy. He works for the big magic."
Hey, be careful what you're saying when you're not wearing your tin great helm! Big Magic is always listening!
@@PerseusGrim it don't matter, i'll say what i want, big magic is a scam, i can go across teh border to the dark kingdom and get the same magic potions for half off, they'll even teach you summoning their, they want us to believe that summoning damages the soul but their just trying to disarm us so we can't fight back when they decide to enact their dictatorship on us man, it's tru---dfgndslkgdgfh
You guys sound like orcs
Heretical theories is a propaganda term that doesn't hold any weight.
I think people shouldn't even consider that a category at all.
Blasphemy! How dare you complain about the actions of the big magic!?
Sir, a second flying carpet has hit our mage towers
"Carpet threads can't break solid stone!"
"Twas not a flying carpet that hit our Pentagram, but an enchanted arrow!"
"The flying carpets of Arabia aren't to blame, wizards from his Majesty's Wizard council casted "eruption" upon their arrival! Thoust must wake up! Any fool that goes about this notion is a sheep!"
It reminds me of that tragedy
@@vlc-cosplayer No... but the glyph of warding it was carrying can! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
The irony is that the so called 'medieval era' was one of constant development and change in thought, culture and technology.
It's only backwards due to lacking the administration of earlier empires and the insane tech progress of later eras
Magic would dramatically accelerate Medieval socities!
@@christiandauz3742Well, the medieval era is only "dark" when compared to the modern era (1600s-today). But only the first 300 years were stagnant, and only when compared to previous eras, and only in Western Europe. Medieval times was a time of technology progress not seen ever before, and it was a global phenomen with few exceptions. From Charlemagne to the end, every field in society advanced by leaps and bounds. For example, thanks to the hard plough, twice as much land bacame available for agriculture, forests and marshes with a little effort became prime farmland. Thanks to the horse collar and horseshoe horses could plough fields twice as fast as cows could've, meaning a farmer could handle twice as much land. And the three-field system meant that farmers could get about ~50% more food from any given acre of land. This alongside the stability and productivity of feudalism, the medival warm period, and the ending of viking, magyar, and most arab raids, meant the population of Europe from 1000-1300 doubled or even tripled, with the starting population being the same as during the height of the Pax Romana. Europe wasn't even the only region going through advancement, the Aztec and Inca empires were established, the Arabs were developing just as much, and Tang dynasty China nearly went through an industrial revolution. We only think of them as the dark ages because of late medieval (Renaissance) and enlightenment era propaganda.
Yeah becouse it was 1000 years long.
The main issue is that it was really, really uneven - like some countries were fairly mega-rural and backwards by 1500 becouse they were only christianized and modernized in the second Half of the Millenium, meanwhile the nations that already HAD this Tech and knowlage spent the first 2 centuries after the fall of rome burning one another to the ground over territorial disputes and trade routes.
And every time some moderatly stable state emerged it either collapsed (First Muslim State, Charlmagnes Empire, Kievan Rus) or became so decentralized it was effectivly 10 states instead of one (the HRE, Poland, late France).
@@user-bigchungus1984that is false. The medieval period had more stability than the early modern era did.
@@ynraider Are you high or something? There was no 'resurgence' of Latin. Vulgar latin remained being spoken but in isolation and developed into the Romance languages, whilst latin was kept in literary and scholarly circles and the Catholic church.
So the funny thing is, when you mention going from steam power to nuclear power? Its all actually steam power. Nuclear power works by boiling water to produce steam, using the nuclear reaction as a heat source.
I still remember the immense disappointment I felt as a kid when I learned that nuclear power plants just use waste heat to boil water, instead of blasting apart atoms and shoving their electrons directly into the power grid.
If you think about it, almost all sources of power generation, except a few like solar power, all "boil" down to boiling water or using running water to push turbines.
@@realMoistNugget wind power doesn't use water, but again, it's about spinning a turbine. Spinning a large magnet is the most reliable way we know to make electricity.
@@realMoistNugget We literally live in the steampunk world, but we forgot to get the fashion...
@@novacorponline good, steampunk aesthethic is gauche
Fun fact: battery-powered cars actually slightly predate gas-powered cars.
Funny that you should mention that: I actually came to that realization myself while I was still working on my video, but it was during the later editing stages and I felt that it was still close enough to being true that I just left it in there as is. I'm glad someone pointed it out though!
Yeah, they did, and they were good enough for short city hops back when the fastest thing moving around it on the roads was a horse, but gas engines just overtook them in terms of energy storage density. It's taken 100 years of battery tech advancements and electric vehicles are just _finally_ starting to eke out ahead of ICE vehicles, again. Electric cars are simpler in terms of the number of moving parts/ points of failure, the problem was always, and still is, that 10-20 gallons of gas or diesel can move you significantly further than thousands of pounds of batteries can, and you can add more fuel to a tank a lot faster than you can charge a battery to extend that range. We've just reached a point, finally, where electric cars are "good enough" on range and charging speed that their other benefits have started to make them more desirable than ICE cars for decent chunks of the market.
If I could afford one, I would switch to electric, because I really only drive about 60 miles a week, on average, which is _well_ within the range and recharge rates achievable on any modern electric car. The only real problems with electric cars right now are price and the unstable nature of lithium batteries.
Fun fact: guberment kill you if you make Alt energy!
Basically, the development of cars was horse, steam, electric and gas. At some point, cars running on ethanol, nitrogen and dung were also tried. But only electric and gas cars remained.
But unlike gas cars, electric cars remained a novelty until the 2010’s
One reason you forgot is the apocalyptic reset: Most of the popular fantasy worlds are built on ruins of more advanced previous civilizations that blew themselves up with magic and/or science.
Hard to get a civilization going when a demon lord, a dark mage, or even a crusading heavenly host decides to blow up half the planet every few centuries.
Whether falling apart from within thanks to arrogant mages failing an experiment and or warlocks & clerics pissing off far powers
or falling apart from the outside due to raiders and barbarians conquering or dragons and monsters rampaging
Civilizations. Fall. Apart.
@@Highstar7331 I think that's kind of the thing people miss a lot. Admech in wh40k seems ridiculous until you run into it IRL. What we take for granted now could be forgotten 20 years from now. That is how civilizations fall in the end.
This is actually what I liked about the Frieren manga and anime. When Frieren and the Hero's Party fought the demon hoards, they struggled to keep up with the magic of demons. Thirty years later however, magic advanced to a point, that human mages were mastering spells, that could oneshot a powerful demon from afar.
I'm making a fantasy universe where civilisations with modern technology on an alien world (some have colonies on other planets) make contact with a gigantic smooth but thin magical rectangle, before one side gets cooked by its own light source after the support beam was damaged. The planet gets hit by a giant comet and most nations there collapse. The beings that survived the partial melting of the flat world are then transported by the gods and the demons to the planet. Yes, I know this kind of storyline is unoriginal, overused, very bad and uninteresting.
Science is not opposed to magic, and I am tired of people claiming it is. Science is a study of the natural world. If magic was a part of the natural world, it would be a part of science. If both existed in the same world.
Science is not the use of electricity or medicine, it is the way you investigate the world
See Throne of Magical Arcana, which divides it into Mage status and Arcanist status, in which Mage rank is your ability to cast a certain strength of spell or lower and Arcanist rank is how much you’ve contributed to the understanding of the natural world (science AND magic).
Thank you. I have to explain that pretty often too, but I like the way you said it.
Any sufficiently analysed magic is indistinguishable from science.
@@HSuper_Lee and the analysis would advance the magic to more than a few mages could do on their own. Science observes the world and expands on rules as written as opposed to magic's this is my goal, here is my spell to achieve it.
I like Pratchett's example; in magic kings can cure scrofula and kingdoms are usually older than the current monarch while being defined as a nation ruled by the monarch, so kingship passed from king to heir instantly, these narrative points and not pushed any further
In science you can theoretically take these rules and, through the invasion of a smaller kingdom and the careful torture of the king while running their heir's hands over a rope infected with scrofula, you can sent faster than light messages from one end of the land to the other
@@charimonfanboy Oh yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you. I was just trying to provide a pithy summary of what you said, as well as reference the TV Tropes page which discusses what you're saying. I fully agree with your comments.
the 2nd segment "What's the point?" kinda misses the point of why technological development occurs. humanity never had a "tech tree"; every development occurred because it benefited whomever created it. You don't invent a wheel to sometime down the road have cars, you invent it because it brings you the immediate benefit of transporting stuff easier.
The real question is if magic develops, because when knowledge literally is power, you don't really want to share it with those that might become adversaries. This keeping of knowledge means that likely many developments will be made and then lost because the only guy who knows about it died
In a sense though the "What's the point" is a good question to ask. People say Necessity is the mother of invention for a reason. Technological development would be greatly reduced, or outright halted if there is little need to progress. Star Wars ironically enough is a great example of this. Tech there is largely unchanged across millions of years.
yeah i have to agree here
@adamjenkins7653
Humans are by nature greedy and lazy, thus there is always a necessity for smth. The western world is a perfect example of this. Most people in the US, europe, etc don't need to worry about food, shelter, etc. Yet, the highest rate of development of every field can be seen in exactly these regions of the world.
You mentioned Star Wars, but there is actually development haplening in Star Wars as well. If I remember correctly, in Clone Wars, if you wanted to jump to another system with a fighter, you needed a specific, circular attachment. This could be detached after the jump and then later re-attached. In films after the clone wars, this technology is already incorporated into the space-crafts.
Clone wars was obviousl, added after the movies came out, but that just means, that Lucas specifically added things, which indicate progress.
@@gergelyritter4412 the one big change is the scientific community - as soon as a discovery is made it is usually made public (e.g. in a scientific journal or a patent).
One area where progress isn't that much shared is the defense manufacturing industry, because if given the opportunity your discoveries can and will be used against you. I imagine the arcane arts would follow much the same logic, especially those with high destructive potential
the same can be said for technology. you know how much military tech the US is hiding away? and same with every other world superpower. and yet, humanity has only grown more collaborative as time has went on, with the advent of the internet being the biggest leap forward in that aspect. you think medieval engineers would be sharing their new trebuchet designs with other kingdoms? not a chance
My honest opinion is that the best time era for fantasy is a Bronze Age world. The Bronze Age as we know it lasted for thousands of years for the simple reason that iron, when not treated under specific circumstances, is actually a weaker metal than bronze. That also combines with the fact that we have every reason to believe based on ruins that bronze may have been discovered and lost several times in early Neolithic farming societies as a result of catastrophic disasters breaking the trade networks necessary to allow bronze to exist. In the Americas the native population literally never left the Bronze Age until Europeans showed up, likely because the resources to make bronze are more plentiful and closer together here than in Eurasia, meaning that after the Bronze Age collapse, Europe was incentivized to eventually figure out how to make use of iron sparking invention. This in combination with the fact that meteorite iron has gone through the strengthening process simply by entering our atmosphere means that some powerful iron blades will exist which is a great analogy to adamantine, and aluminum is a lighter material that is about as strong as bronze if properly treated in a way that could be done by expert craftsmen, which is a good comparison to mithril. Combine that with how wild and untamed large parts of the world was with there still being mammoths and other human races such as Neanderthals and genuine halflings, and the fact talker many rulers fashioned themselves as divinely chosen god kings or sorcerer lords and you have a fantastic setting which realistically would remain in stasis for many thousands of years.
Bold opinion, but I respect it. If you have any recommendations for books or shows that depict what you describe, I'd love to hear them, because it sounds interesting!
@@PerseusGrim I’d say some good examples of it done well are the Dark Sun and Theuros settings of DND. As for authors there’s a Bronze Age historian on UA-cam who is also a novelist by Dan Davis History who depicts it well. All of Conan is also a really good example.
slight correction to the native american bit: While there was an extensive copperculture in the UP of michigan due to the copper there being very accessible and more importantly, incredibly pure(thus being very easy to work), this copper culture did not progress into making bronze tools(and nor did any other part of the americas). Infact, the few societies that used proper copper tools actually RETURNED back to using stone tools because the copper was so soft that is would deform at basically any resistance, meaning that it was only really good for art(which is exactly what they used it for).
The theory i've heard for why they didnt develop bronze btw, is that because the copper was pure and not an ore, they didnt have to melt it down to get the impurities out. Thus they also never had the opportunity to introduce new impurities like, for example, Tin(which is how you make bronze).
TLDR: The native americans were not infact bronze age but stone age(in the literal sense. They were otherwise very developed).
@@TheSalamiMan that’s interesting because I’ve read of extensive amounts of bronze tools being unearthed in Mayan, Incan, Aztec, and Great Lakes Region dig sites. That seems to suggest there were some places in an active Bronze Age at least even if a large part of it wasn’t.
Not to mention the fantasy world could have iron rare and copper, tin and zinc really common.
You are missing 1 giant point. A world that is as saturated in magic as you say would look nothing like a medieval fantasy world. Why build giant castles when a dude with a stick can just summon an earthquake and instantly tear down all that hard work? Why wear armor when some dude who just sat inside and read books all day can boil you in that metal with just a word? It's a very similar reasoning as to why castles and armor died out as cannons and guns become more effective. Even if it takes longer to train, one powerful mage is worth over a hundred knights and a thousand regular foot soldiers. The only way to counter this would be for magic to relatively rare, which then just provides incentive for technological progress.
Good point, and part of that I have considered before. For example, what good is a castle when you're up against a dragon? I suppose you could argue that mages might just not wish to do the dirty work themselves, and rather send the grunts to do the work for them, in which case medieval castles would still serve a point. Either way, I mostly agree with what you're saying.
I completely agree!! ALTHOUGH, depending on the setting, high powered mages are often more rare. Not only that but usually wizards or magic practioners are the minority. For those who don’t do magic, or if kingdoms don’t have many or can’t afford wizards in battles, I guess knights and such are still viable. Not only that but there are many technologies that wouldn’t be useful to killing the most powerful wizards. It’s like how steam engines were invented in I believe Roman times but because slaves were easier to use it went extinct for another couple hundred years or so. It’s like how if a wizard can stop a high-speed ball of metal from an over-engineered rifle the same as a bow, why not just keep using the bow? I think there’s a lot of factors that go into it yknow
Also another counter point. If you have a high fantasy society, where magic is common, then it stands to reason that entire structures might have been enchanted to withstand magical attack. Furthermore, castle might be equipped with teleportation circles. Their purpose could as such be to transport entire armies and such.
Although i agree with your sentiment, this concept truly depends on the magic system of the verse. Castle/city busters are almost always rare, legendary existences like dragons and their slayers. Then there's things like wards or enchantments that could be used on castles or city walls to defend against such disaster-class magic and require magic-users to maintain. I could go on for more but as other commenters have said, it truly depends on the verse and how magic and it's users are written within.
This assumes all kinds of magic works the same way. In one setting wizards don't have the power to wave their hands and knock down a wall. Ie game of thrones. In the inheritance cycle all magic works off of the concept of all magic costs as much energy as it would require to do manually. You could in theory knock down a castle but you'd surely die of exhaustion if you did. Eragon also has things like wards and Harry Potter has charms that make the stone/ locations themselves supernaturally resistant to magic and damage.
I think the fundamental issue is that all fantasy stories consist of a single person trying to simulate an entire human society completely different from our own in their mind.
@TristanWintle - Yes. Fantasy worlds are modern inventions that never existed in history. People in general are so sketchy about history that the atavistic, the futuristic, and the outrageous is readily accepted as legit.
Example: Discworld's Medieval aesthetic with the Klax system wedged in with their super-bright lights and the Unseen University creating washing machines (no electricity) and automobiles (no gasoline).
this is why you need to have your fantasy worlds ruined by a historical materialist
Real life lore is pretty big and even with thousands of historians we're barely scrapping it together only for some random complotists to replace the whole thing with their wet fanfictions on twitter.
But I love seeing the ambition to TRY!
@@MossyMozart the outrageous being "accepted as legit" is the point of Discworld
The modern view of "magic" is very influenced by science and technology. Back then people did not think too deeply about magical black holes or magical tesla coils. They were thinking about the magical properties of herbal medicine, scaring away bad spirits, and predicting if there would be some disaster. To say that "if you have magic you don't need science" is a backwards view of the dilemma. More accurately, it is, "if you don't have science, you don't need magic that acts as a substitute for science."
Yeah very true. It makes sense actually that world like Harry Potter have wizards that developed advanced magic that eclipses technology and often incorporates it for the sake of convieniece and blending in. Because wizards were advancing along side muggles. Probably pushed to research the intricacies of magic futher just as muggles developed scientifically, otherwise wizards would be left behind. Wizards in the ancient and medieval eras of harry potter were far weaker than modern wizards, egyptians could just about turn staffs into snakes (Serpensortia), africans breaking locks (alohomora) the discovery of the wand over a simple staff or wandless magic is also testament to my point. In a weird way science empowered that worlds magic. And without the muggle world wizards would be no greater than babbity rabbity. The forbidden curses, and subsequent counter charms such as 'experilarmus' are also evidence of magical progression, a kind of mystic cold war, simply in the end outlawing such overpowered and mutually destructive spells.
Exactly. Besides that, people would still have some sort of problem that they would advance either technology or magic studies to make their loves more convenient.
In our real world, tech advanced mostly because someone had some sort of problem and it needed a practical solution, be it travelling from city to city or telling the time.
@@Tokmurok I remember once seeind somebody wondering how wizard weren't all obese. They can just teleport / apport anything they need right to their hands, they don't even need to stand up!
@@worldcomicsreview354 Not everyone is lazy or has a lazy mindset.
based
I'd make the argument that that magic doesn't replace tech in the fantasy setting, but magic is tech, from that setting's viewpoint. A really good example is the Dying Earth Series.
If anything, it should just add more possible avenues for advancement, not replace it. Even in supposed medieval stasis, it's often used to enhance the existing technology. A magical gate would certainly make building a moon base way easier.
CyberPunk 2077 XD
Or also, magic replaces capital. As a commentary on capitalism, you can equate inherited (genetic, if you will) magical talent with capital. A world where magic is abundant, accessible to all who study it, would inveitably lead to magic-based governments (if we adopt a marxist view of history). This "Medieval" world would look probably nothing like our Medieval world.
"So the alchemists discovered that the amber-force can travel through crystals, so they took those crystals, cleansed them, cut them to pieces and engraved them with runes, so they could speak. But the crystals can't speak this-worldly languages, so the wizards had to learn their tongues instead and normally, it takes months or even years to master those. And this is how we got computers."
Warhammer fantasy does both and even integrates magic with technology in a very cool and realistic way.
"No, I think these great minds would be better off focusing their efforts on studying the Arcane," and thus we have the reasoning that propelled Isaac Newton to pursue Alchemy. He wasn't being stupid, just thorough.
Good point! And it would have been the right move if only he lived in a world where it was possible. Besides, I guess someone had to try to know that it wasn't possible in the first place!
@@PerseusGrimIt was the right move in our world because not knowing it was impossible meant generations of thinkers tried and learned how to think better. Following the failed path showed him how to think better and thus lead to him showing later people how to think better.
@@PerseusGrim Ironically, it is possible (with a nuclear reactor), but just a lot harder and more expensive than it was thought at the time.
@@PerseusGrimIt's not like alchemy and astrology and the other magic "sciences" didn't produce some scientific truths. The pyramids were built more or less with astrology (a high priest named Imhotep used his knowledge of the stars to build them 2000 years before Pythagoras). These faulty sciences merely evolved into the more proper ones. Alchemy and chemistry are not two different things, Alchemy became chemistry, in much the same way quantum physics superceded relativity which superceded Newton.
I think he would pursue photomancy, he started as an optical physicist IRL.
Terry Pratchett's _Discworld_ series reverses this. It includes numerous books (especially those set in Ankh-Morpork) that start with some new technology/organisation being invented or resurrected (police, soccer/football, newpapers, optical telegraphy, steam trains, fractional reserve banking, governmental postal service, etc) and they stick around in later books. Over the series, the city goes from a parody of a pseudo-medieval fantasy city to the beginnings of an industrial revolution in only a few in-world decades.
The funny thing is that this seems to be a decision Terry Pratchett made about halfway through his career. In the early books where some new technology arrives at Ankh-Morpork, like the film and music industries and that weird supermarket thing in Reaper Man, the novel ends with those technologies falling apart in some way and vanishing again.
In the later books, the new things stick around. I think he just felt that it was a bit wasteful to set up so much in one novel, and not be able to use those things in future novels.
You ask, "Why would you research the natural sciences when magic works" and I'd argue, it's just what people do. Sir Isaac Newton studied alchemy, people have suggested that science was a lesser importance to him than "the wisdom of the ancients" but he also discovered gravity? Why, because he wanted to understand how things work, there will always be people who want to understand how things tick. In a world with magic that's going to be the people who study magic, but those same people are going to figure out gravity, just because it's how they're minds work.
I think you got the right of it. Should magic exist then the study of magic is a study of natural science, why would it not be? If it exist, can be studied, observed, replicated and understood how can magic not be part of the natural science?
The entire reason why we have the Periodic Table is because people tried to quantify Alchemy. They asked the question "Why is/isn't this working?" and went about answering it to the best of their abilities.
In the setting for one my web novel I have magic be based on natural laws and the better someone understands the world better they are with magic.
People don't have germ theory, because healing magic is efficient enough without that knowledge that they haven't reached the point of needing it.
They also don't tell everyone about this system, because it doesn't matter to the mass trained soldiers who just need to cast the basic elemental spells.
So you've got your people who do understand the natural world, because it enhances their magic rather than being an alternative science.
@@SearedBooks And where can I check the webnovel?
@@jfricci807 RoyalRoad. It's called Changeling: The Child From the Woods.
In a sense both Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones take place in a post-apocalyptic setting. Westeros is full of architecture and technology that exceeds the current civilizations. Mankind in Lord of the Rings is nowhere near the highs of Numenor.
That's because medieval times themself (especially early medieval times) kinda have post-apocalyptic vibe, as people in Europe lived in shadow and ruins of Roman empire.
The great city of London was a Roman city at first, then the fall of Rome came and people started living in the ruins anyways cause it was way better than whatever they could make
@@FauxReal. And taking apart those Roman ruins to build their own less sophisticated structures. No point in having something that you don't have the technology and/or resources to maintain. It's quite common (for a certain definition of common) to find stones like that used in old cottages, castles, or just walls on farmland.
It's mind-boggling to think how we still to this day continue to discover just what made Roman concrete so crazily durable, essentially just by re-studying the world's most famous monuments. Just imagine how even the brightest minds of the Renaissance walked every day upon Roman-laid concrete, having no idea how to recreate it. It's like Prothean ruins from Mass Effect.
@@yarpen26 I'd put (some small amount of) money on the formula for Roman concrete being held on some documents in the Vatican library vaults for 2000 years. 😉 Along with 14th century (or earlier) mathematical proofs that Earth went round the Sun.
I think another thing we have to consider about the whole "nothing really changed over 5000 years" is that fantasy worlds have the free reign to begin in any way they see fit. For example, in Lord of the Rings the Elves were taught steelworking by Aulë, the smithing god, which means civilisation in Middle Earth entirely skipped the Stone and Bronze Ages due to divine help. Fantasy worlds have so many things that can influence them that our world just doesn't have, so I think its a bit narrow-minded to judge fantasy worlds purely by the standards of our world.
Yeah, one thing is that we often talk about fantasy “technology”, but technology is “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.” And science is “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.”
There’s no reason to believe that people who are simply taught how to work steel would have a philosophy of science. Where their divine knowledge is lost, they’d be back to the Stone Age.
@@deriznohappehquiteThis explanation mostly works best in that elven context, however. Even if the first smiths are granted a perfectly complete set of skills that will leave them with no questions for the rest of their careers, once you're a few degrees separated from that divine inspiration, fallible mortal communication systems will begin to take their toll. Newer smiths are forced to rely more on their accumulated experiences to fill in the gaps in their education. Eventually, this proccess starts to happen on a meta level, figuring out better ways to figure things out, which is how you eventually land on the scientific method
@@justinthompson6364 Yeah, but in Arda specifically this, combined with repeated cataclysms leads to a decline over time. The greatest Noldorin smiths are killed in the wars of Beleriand, but they teach the Edain who found Numenor, then Numenor is destroyed and the refugees found Gondor and Arnor, then Gondor and Arnor are ground down by attrition by Mordor and Angmar.
If the fantasy world inhabitants have the same behaviour as us, then you can't make anx argument for stasis. You have to keep in mind, that almost every scientist until just recently, did science, BECAUSE they believed in a higher power. Newton was a physicist, because he wanted to know more about the world, that his god created. He wanted to understand it more.
Now, most of the western population no longer believes in higher powers. Or if they do, they dont necesarily credit them for creating the world. And despite this, science still happens.
Humans are by nature curious beings. If you create anything human-like in behaviour, that creature will be curious. And curiousity leads to the scientific method with time.
It is also escapism. We do not need to work out all the intricacies to imagine a fantasy world. You don't need to work it all out to enjoy it.
You may work out some intricacies if it suits you, but if your characters aren't going to "touch" those topics then it is a solo project for its own sake.
I am working on my own world-building exercise. It does have a prehistoric human culture that evolved into a culture with a written history. The "second era" (for humans) began when they were gifted technology to sail beyond the horizon and navigate their way back again.
The third era (for humans) began when they had to evolve their feudal system to address problems caused by nobles having unnaturally long lives. At this point, Titles belonged to the family and not the person. The family ruled their region as a council and not as an autocrat. However, if a family could not fulfill their feudal obligation they would lose their Title. So there was tremendous inertia among family members to secure their future with stores of wealth to satisfy their obligations in the future.
This creates its own new social dynamic.
And what? Miss out on spec ops using magic? Imagine British SAS or Delta Force casting spells and shit.
"Tiger 2, cast your Silence spell!"
"Sorry sir."
"Sir, this is Leopard 5."
"Go ahead Leopard 5."
"Can I get help with my nightvision? I've always been bad at it."
"Dammit, Leopard 5, I told you to practice. Leopard 3, you're the enchanter. Help him out."
"Commander, the perimeter ward has been tripped."
"Pack of wolves?"
"Not unless wolves have started wearing leather and carrying around metal."
@@bluesbest1 "Okay, we got hostages in the next room! Sleep and clear!"
"Baseplate, this is Bravo 6, we located the C4, casting blizzard spells, over."
@@AngryGrape1337 "Sleep and Clear". Nice.
As of writing this, theres actually a game-in-development on Steam with a similar idea called: "Tactical Breach Wizards"
@@justarandomcommenter570holy shit I gotta check that out
Just a few corrections, but I would say that muskets, blunderbuss and the like aren’t very early firearms, just early, it small, but if you look at the firsts firearms, they aren’t muskets, they are literally mini cannon on the end if stick, this isn’t an exaggeration, look it up, it quite literally that.
Fun fact, gun didn’t get popular because they were better than bow initially, but because they needed less training (and thus, less maintenance costs) to get to a equivalent level with bows. Look at it with google, shooting a warbow would be the equivalent of lifting 80 to 110 pounds or even 185 pounds for some. England had to make a law that force everyone to own a bow and subsidize tournaments to get their archer and you can recognize them has there very skeletons were deformed because of the muscle they developed shooting bow (yes, realistic archer would be buff, even if it would be only one arm)
So, unless magic is either very cheap to get or VERY powerful, to the point of justifying the expense (and even than) there is still reason that lord and the like would want to develop gun.
Finally, science is like, VERY versatile when it comes to what is part of science. Since it’s the understanding of EVERYTHING, including how people act, and how to us it, it would include magic if it exists.
At the end of the day, technology is how to use, create, transform and dissipate forces in way that can be useful. A fire ball spell in a barrel with the only way for the explosion to escape is pouching a ball give you a gun.
Like, we study how crowd act to make architecture that is make in a way that won’t let people getting crushed and when/where it is necessary (it’s quite interesting actually)
People that think that science and magic would be two separate thing underestimate just how *much* science incapsulate
(Sorry for the monster of a comment that was)
Assassins are very effective against Mages and Dragons. Even more so with Guns and Explosives
@@christiandauz3742 True, unless we speak about VERY powerful wizards.
But on the other hand, you can also have assassins wizards, so…
I disagree with the notion that magic is antithetical to technology. I feel that they're pretty much the same thing if magic exists commonly and is fairly well-understood in a fantasy world.
The big reason why I'm personally against medieval stasis is because even with the magic that already exists in-world, their impacts are often not accounted for.
Spells like Sending, Speak with Dead, Circle of Truth and Unseen Servant would have immense impacts on how the world develops both technologically and culturally.
But instead of thinking about the ramifications of these incredibly impacts magics, they just plop it into a fairly generic medieval setting without accounting for the immense impacts something as seemingly simple as telepathically sending someone a short message would be.
If you truly work these things into the world, it'd be drastically different from a medieval world.
The Grungeon Master is a channel that talks about these things in a really interesting way. I suggest you give that a gander.
All in all, a very well-made video. However, I deeply disagree with the conclusion.
This reminds me of an interesting point I once heard. If magic truly antithetical to technology, it's entirely possible that writing, even language, is never invented. Why spend time creating a system to imperfectly convey emotions, and then teaching it to every generation, when you could put your feelings on a tablet, with anyone who touches it being able to understand? Why invent weapons when you can hurl fireballs or energy at animals?
@@PollyCube-Ruins Exactly! It's those kind of divergent cultural developments that I really like seeing in fictional universes. If you really work things like that out from the very beginning and build the world based on that, it all feels much more immersive and believable.
@@PollyCube-Ruinsaccording to some people "technology" is everything invented after year 1000. While actually even ataching a sharp rock to a stick if technology.
Developing guns in a fantasy settings is not more farfetched than devoloping swords.
@@PollyCube-RuinsReal History actually confirms your idea! The druids, i.e. the spiritual and scientific leaders of the Celts, forbade writing as a means of propagating their teachings. Everything had to be transmitted orally and learnt by heart. (They used the Greek alphabet though, but only for profane communication.) By doing so, they were able to keep their whole knowledge secret until the end of their civilisation, mainly caused by the Romans.
Technically, if magic was real, it would be just another force of nature to utilize. Building a house by magically creating the materials, then using telekinesis to assemble the house may be possible then. But it might be akin to brute forcing a problem, as opposed to using your powers more efficiently by combining them with actual building skill, and existing technology, to be more efficient.
Another point: in a world where mortals have access to universal cheat codes, every sociopolitical shift carries the potential of being a world resetting apocalypse. So, either societies remain in perpetual stagnation, or they get obliterated every time conflicts escalate to the point of magically assured destruction, and they almost certainly do.
I LOVE the MAD theory. Every one is so focused on buffing their Magical Apocalyptic Sorcery Spells that they complety overlook technological advancement, they are MASS Driven :D
This is one of the best comments I've read in a long time
you just gave me so many good ideas...
Well that is true, but this relies on having an incredibly destructive magic system. If mages are only as strong as WW2- era tanks, MAD is not a thing you have to worry about. Even if you have thousands, if not millions of them, they will simply not have the firepower to annihilate entire societies.
@@gergelyritter4412 true, but the question is will mages really be content with just being as powerful as tanks, or will they continuously try to one up each other until demonstrations of their power result in apocalyptic events. On another note, I’d like to posit the idea that the gods of one setting are just the mages who destroyed and rebuilt the previous world, and that the world has undergone multiple cycles of this exact process.
Witch hat atelier actually kind of plays around with that concept - if you like manga i highly recommend checking it out, its a great fantasy world! within their world magic was an ability (drawing) basically everyone could learn and people got so into their head with experimenting with its infinite possibilities that the chaos and wars the world was dealing with as a result got so bad, it lead to the magic users banning magic as a concept entirely from most of the entire population. they rebuilt society by erasing everyones memories of it and gatekept it as a secret art to themselves. basically created a myth of "witches with innate power" that are intrinsically different from normal humans when magic was just craftsmanship. it all resulted in a lot of useful progressive magic like healing being banned because theyre now so against any unethical use of it in fear of repeating past horrors
arcanum of steamworks and magick obscura covered perfectly why people would pursue technology despite magic existing.
So this is rather a long one, my apologies for the text wall, but I had some thoughts in response.
Regarding the "magic does it better" argument, as the video covered, some fantasy worlds, (like game of thrones or lord of the rings) are relatively low-magic settings, at least for your average person, and yet the phenomena of stasis remains in these stories even when magic is not present as the counterbalancing force. And in cases where benevolent magic is either so low-powered, or so uncommon that most people simply would not have the option of approaching a magic user for help with their problem, other solutions will emerge to fill the gap. The second issue with that theory is the uneven distribution of resources in a feudal society, even if magic users are extremely common, the nobility WILL hoard them, or at least the most powerful, and make it much harder for the proletariat to access that help, as such, the struggle to survive remains, and thus still presents a pressure which could drive innovation.
As to the, "very old beings would just double-down on what they know" argument... ehhhh, Curiosity is a pretty defining part of sapient life, if you DO have thousands of years to mess around with an unexplored field, some percentage of people would, there is also a degree of plateauing possible with overspecialization in a single field, that's part of the reason the "elven polyglot" is such an enduring concept, not to mention some people just get bored and decide to explore other interests. More to the point, mortal races without the kind of time to reach the same mastery in magic as an elf, might want to develop something any mortal can use with much less time training to balance the scales of power differential, especially if there is conflict between them. Unless a setting is all elves, it's unlikely the stagnation of a single nation within a fantasy world would be reflected across its entirety. Also the "people become more conservative as they age" adage is... at best poorly substantiated, and at worst actually counter-factual, it's a little complicated, the boomer situation is really more an example of a specific generation with specific causes rather than a broader trend, and even then was the generation just *being* more conservative overall rather than becoming such.
The story, or as I prefer, the Doylist perspective is getting closer to the root of the issue, but you're approaching it from the wrong direction, rather than celebrating the perpetual romanticism of a particular moment in time of some fantasy (and some sci-fi, looking at you star wars) belies a lack of imagination on the part of the writer, and on a broader meta-textual level, the limited imaginations of audiences and multiple writers at large, it is a form of narrative stagnation where we keep recycling the same ideas, long-divorced from their original contexts, to the point that they no longer represent themes and ideas, but instead archetypes and totems of themselves. Which isn't to say that some fantasy can't be fun, but these settings in stasis receive the most criticism when part of large, overarching stories that span thousands of years in-universe, and multiple instalments in the real world, THAT is the reason people are criticising Skyrim in particular for this, it is also an accusation levelled at that writing team in other contexts, like Bethesda's handling of the fallout universe. I can't speak to every universe people raise an eyebrow over, but the meta-textual aspect cuts both ways.
Lastly, with suppression of new ideas, this is the most plausible argument presented, but it's worth acknowledging that such barriers have been present in real world history before, and still been overcome, as well as the fact that technology is still capable of emerging among the powerful and their interests, perhaps there are even political reasons for a kingdom to ostracise magic users in favour of emerging technology. If there truly are no costs or limitations to magic in a given setting that would complicate universal reliance, then that itself is somewhat lazy writing which treats it as a universal panacea. In addition, once an idea has been discovered, even if there is an intent to suppress it from the proletariat, the powerful will attempt to appropriate it for their own use, you simply just don't leave money and power on the table like that. Assuming that mages themselves would be the ones hiding this knowledge ignores other political, economic and governmental actors, assuming a rather Mageocratic society where all decision making is handled by them directly. Also, if the conditions for an idea to emerge are possible once, then they will emerge again, history is full of examples of parallel developments of technologies by unrelated parties, the notion that a controlling organization of mages would be able to keep on top of every single example of groundbreaking new tech before the information dispersed into the broader community is a fragile premise, and that's ignoring entirely those other nations or factions who may see benefit and thus provide enough military aid to counterbalance a smaller number of magic users. it doesn't matter if you can kill a thousand medieval soldiers in six seconds if ten thousand are deployed, likewise for wards and their ability to repel arrows and spears, magic is typically not infinite.
Ah yes, the god question. Gods of science, knowledge or discovery are fairly common in fiction, even in fantasy stories that have gods of magic that would have the most to gain by suppressing tech, they don't tend to be the single most dominant force in the divine hierarchy. Given the polytheistic formation of a lot of fantasy settings, different gods would likely work at cross purposes to each other, some supporting technology and others opposing it. And that isn't even getting into the fantasy gods that have a more hands-off approach.
Lastly, regarding the romanticisation of pastoralism, it's... notable that a lot of these higher-magic settings are explicitly putting a lot of the benefits gained from industrialization back into this framework, to me that speaks less of an attachment to rural living, and more a desire to move past the current destructive and exploitative paradigm, but looking to the past isn't how we do that.
@leviadragon99, I love your text wall, and if I get a chance, I will be putting up one of my own tonight, as I have a ton of thoughts and observations that I just can't write up right now.
Anyways, you have added a lot to an already very solid video, and I think you are dead to rights on your points on this topic.
Kudos, and I wish that I could up vote a thousand times.
i wish id know english good enough to be able to read through all of this
But I liked how you looked at the issue from the point of historical materialism and your remarque about escapism which takes form now in cottagecore and rural living.
this man looked up the Age of Discovery (overlaps with the Enlightenment) and said 'no call to adventure'. WHAT. BROTHER WHAT.
BRB gonna go burn down the Aztec empire and fill my boots with stolen gold. Totally not D&D Adventurer behaviour.
D&D players are naturally conflict-averse and usually run in left-leaning circles, so they don't want to touch that type of adventure with a 10-foot pole.
He also doesn't seem to get that criticized some of the most influential fantasy stories that everyone and their grandma knows are from the 19th and even early 20th centuries. Stories like Alice in Wonderland, Dracula, Travel to the center of the Earth, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and Wendy, etc.
@@tbotalpha8133 The Spanish wanted to keep the Aztec cities intact and their society relatively well ordered for future governance. Disease and their allies made sure that was not the case
The interesting thing about Spanish colonization is that they didn't really have "colonies" as in separate subject states of an empire like, say, Britain had. Instead, lands that were taken over by the Spanish became 'new Spain', an expansion of the country's borders and therefore subject to all the same rights and governance as back home. Missionaries also preached among native populations to save their souls, and because it was also illegal to enslave any Christian man. The primary reason why there was so much death associated is simply that germ theory didn't exist at the time, as well as the fall of the Aztec Empire.
In the anime Frieren, they did something interesting by having the 'current era' have medieval themed architecture while in 1000 year old flashbacks, the architecture is more greco-roman.
I remember another nice little detail. In the present, there's a city using magical public lights, while in the flashback from 80 years ago, they don't exist. I think the streets are also made of stone, while in the past, they were mostly dirt, and you could see grass too.
the passage of time is beautifully point out in the anime (and manga) of Frieren. Even by watching multiple flashback of Frierens life, you could feel a sense of nostalgia of times that has passed since Frieren apprenticeship to the current time (29 years after Himmel died)
@@LordFreya-uz4bothat show is the 1st I have seen that does a good job showing how long lived creatures have a different perspective on time
I really love when they release that ancient mage, only for her to tell it that its magic has already become obsolete and advanced upon
It would be funny and amazing at the same time if Frieren's ending shows her walking or something 1000 years in the future, and their world is basically at the modern age, after the events of the current timeline we're at now.
They've shown that 1000 years ago it's Greco-Roman, current date is medieval. It kind of aligns with our version of history a bit. Just a few centuries after the Common Era started - Roman Empire (not counting the Byzantium) dies, a thousand years ago is midway through the medieval ages, and present day is our era.
I feel like one of the big reasons is just that authors don't understand the lengths of time they're talking about. It seems very frequent for fantasy stories to treat 1000 years like 100 and 100 years like 10 years.
They're in great company then as e.g. Star Wars made it sound like the Jedi were gone for Centuries and it turned out not only were they not all gone (Ahsoka is now canon again) it also was less than one generation since they were "extinct"...
EVERYBODY older than Luke & Leia should still know about them, and a person like Han should not have any respect to authority that tries to suppress the mention and just reminiscence about the old times of his teens...
From a societal acceptance of technology, that time scale kinda does makes sense when long-lived races like elves get involved. Like imagine how your grandparents are about computers, but it's them complaining about the spinning jenny making cloth, or a coke furnace smelting iron... three hundred years after they were introduced... and they've been the ones making the laws the whole time.
In the "Suppression" point, The Dwemer of The Elder Scrolls are a great example. They were highly advanced in all "technological" fields, math, engineering, etc. But due to unknown reasons, one day they all suddenly vanished (possibly magical in nature), killing all their progress and their species as a whole. And thus, suppressing technological progress.
If a setting is very high-magic, of course magical arts would substitute technological development - but I don’t think this would completely stop society from progressing. The magic itself would probably be streamlines and fleshed out over time, to the point where it could replicate our modern technology and many more: the self-driving carriages you mentioned, but also magical screens, enchanted flying ships, assembly lines powered by golems etc. The result would probably be a world that looks drastically different from ours, but at the same time is far from the shacks and castles and knights we are all used to.
And personally, I do find such eclectic magi-tech worlds way more interesting than standard middle ages.
Can't disagree with that. Though I can also see how one might argue that such a world could still be considered an example of medieval stasis, if it has sufficiently medieval aesthetics and maybe a similar feudalistic system, even if the day-to-day lives of people living there would be nothing like the people of the middle ages. After all, our modern concept of medieval times is quite loose and anachronistic anyway, and any introduction of magic of a medieval world would already cause enough ripples for the world to not be truly medieval anymore regardless. So I think it's more a matter of semantics at that point.
@@PerseusGrim Which is just more reason to abandon the whole concept of medieval stasis. It makes absolutely no sense for it to ever happen, and the use you suggest here just renders the term meaningless.
If anything, we need to get people away from this misconception that fantasy = medieval aesthetics. Or that SciFi is future stories.
Science Fantasy > Fantasy or Sci-fi.
Bonus points if it's a medieval-ish fantasy world built entirely on _Clarke-tech._ When you have a class of being that you can't tell whether they're faeries or robots, you've won.
@@Llortnerof I think that medieval stasis makes sense as it had happened in our timeline on several occasions that then led those part of the world into significantly slowed down progress, stagnation or outright reversal of development. And we ourselves went through massive slowdown or to some degree reversal in development, for example our railways in Europe were using steam up until 70's (at least, I would have to find exact years for each country) even thou it seemed before WWI that soon we will be abandoning steam for electricity. It seemed like we will soon have industry powered by sun and water, not by coal, and we are stuck with coal in power generation even today. Even thou the first solar powered pumping station in Egypt went online before WWI and it seemed that many will follow, next significant project appeared maybe in 70's. First large wind power plant with power over 1MW went online in early 40's, but we did not get another up to 80's or 90's due to war altering path of technological development.
Not to mention that it took several extraordinary events to start the industrial revolution, if some of those would happen in bit different time or not at all, we would not have our current timeline, sure there would perhaps be some technological development, but I don't think that those would lead to globalized industrial society. Namely it was reformation and general crisis, if one of those would not happen, we would most likely not have concept of industry and capitalism. Maybe not even enlightenment (well enlightenment is perhaps the less likely as we had basically free market for most of our existence). If there would be no reformation, we would be perhaps still stuck with medieval vision of Christianity and vision of how is proper to live one's life. Without the general crisis feudalism would most likely remain and we would maybe not get to absolutist monarchies which as well played role in formation of modern world. If the England would not be so rainy and would not have problem with mine flooding, we would not get steam engine which had immense impact on our world, maybe greater than anything else, as result of not having steam engines the size of industry in one place would be limited. Had the Constantinople not fell there would not be need for search for new path east. Had there be a natural passage to Red Sea there would as well be no need fo search of new path...
Simply to many things had to happen in right time for our world to industrial age.
@@MrToradragon Your examples are all just progression not going the path people expected at the time. Not examples of stalling or regression. Your supposed extraordinary events leading to the industrial revolution are mostly also just the culmination of far more ordinary events. It's more likely things might have progressed on a somewhat faster or slower timeline, maybe with different key players, but ultimately the same general outcome. The reformation was hardly the first schism of Christianity. Constantinople had repeatedly fought wars as well; had it not fallen then, it would just have happened at another time. England was not the only place to have steam engines, or the first. It was not the only place that had problems with mines flooding, either.
We have seen regressions, but they usually resulted from more advanced civilisations being destroyed by outside factors and rebound typically didn't take as long as the original progress. Many of these claims are also rather dubious. The dark ages were not nearly as dark as common myths would have you believe.
In Ascendance of a Bookworm the protagonist is introducing the printing press to a medieval magical world. When a noble asked what the result are likely to be she talks of the enlightenment brought by mass publication leading to revolutions, the weakening of nobility, and introduction of democracy. However since nobles in this world are the only ones with magic they agree that it won't go that far.
Make sense because ignorant people are easier to control & there are plenty of real life examples of those with power limiting education
yea, though yet again, as in every movement, theres some people who would be for it regardless. like how jean-baptiste doumeng, a rich businessman who also was a communist, supported the russian revolution. im sure some royals would also have accepted it, caring for their people and literacy rates more then their power. ascendance is a good anime btw, good taste you got.
@@christianweibrecht6555 Just look at public schools in the US and UK.
Only the most powerfull of mages could say that, there's nothing a mage can do agains a .50 cal bullet
@@angeldariobahenafarina55 IRL the wealthy and powerful don't need magic to lord over the rest of the population.
Fantasy worlds also have massive cataclysms unlike anything we experience. It’s just Bronze Age Collapse all the way down.
Imagine building a factory only for a dragon or army of demons to burn it down.
Also, none of these settings truly map onto the medieval era.
And speaking of demons and dragons, your common made me think about what does science even LOOK like in a truly magical world. Like science needs to be observable, repeatable, something to be verified. But how do you start those observations when things are perhaps not consistent at all? Because look at quantum as a field, there's a lot of interesting things going on but as far as I know much of it is observation because we cannot nail with the rules of things are because they don't follow the macro realm.
So how do people even get into science if some of you will be seeing things the others can't because you have "the gift", or none of the fires in an area start properly because someone pissed off the local soot sprites and now they won't light? Or if you can control where shadows fall during the day based on where you look because in the spring the shadows get shy, but the gravity is actually 10% lighter today because the ley lines crossed your villege this morning? How do you build a scientific basis on that? Of course this vastly depends on the kind of magic in the world as a lot of magic systems basically work on hard science levels of rules they just have very different results.
One thing I've been thinking about for a long time is how magic functions a lot like technology. A lot of "medieval" fantasy settings are actually quite modern when you get down to the nuts and bolts, but have a medieval veneer over them. They don't have human waste and horse dung clogging the gutters, for example, and the water from rivers is safe to drink without worry of getting sick (I once explained this in one of my settings by introducing a sewer druid treating a large city's water supply with aquaculture.). Light spells and cheap magical items can light up the darkness of night. Communication spells act like cell phones. Teleportation circles work like a mass transit system. Attack spells work like firearms and artillery. Flying carpets and broomsticks replace airplanes.
What's very tricky is figuring out how to develop a world history that incorporates magic. You have to decide when and where particular spells are discovered and how they would affect society. And in a world with magic, the magic is just another natural force like electricity or gravity, and it integrates with those other forces. You really have to be careful to set up the rules of magic such that they don't allow for the creation of perpetual motion or other world-breaking exploits. Otherwise you could, for example, use a magical pitcher that's always full of water to endlessly turn a water wheel, which can then be hooked up to just about any machine.
One thing I realized while playing Pathfinder is that you can use some relatively inexpensive magic items to give your fantasy world a firefighting service as good as or better than modern firefighting. A Decanter of Endless Water can work as a fire hose. Animated wagons can serve as fire trucks. Cheap wooden constructs can be made relatively fire-resistant and able to fly, reducing the need for human firefighters and making upper-floor rescues significantly easier and less risky.
Medieval stasis is much easier to maintain if magic is only available to a privileged few. The more people have access to magic, and the more versatile magic is, the greater the chance that someone will discover a world-changing use for the magic.
The problem with Game of Thrones is that it makes no sense for them to be in a medieval stasis, because while there is magic in the world, it’s usage is extremely limited and it’s usually more of a detriment to humanity.
I’m not a huge fan of the setting, but in its defense, the fall of magic seems to have been more recent and, more importantly, the world it’s on seems to act differently than ours, like the planet orbits its sun more eccentrically than Earth does. That might cause a bit of a functional reset more than once.
@@John-fk2ky Not to mentions theres theories about the long night in Asoiaf ( Possible theres been more than one ) stopping human progress
Not in the books, it's much more prevalent there, it's just the D&D excised those bits for the show to focus on the more human drama.
But yeah, Wizards are super common, all the Stark kids barring Sansa are wargs (Jon and Arya both train as such, not just Bran), Euron is a dark wizard and basically cult leader, etc...
The only reason GoT is vaguely medieval is to justify all that r*pe. Any time someone wants to justify using the abuse of women as entertainment they make it "medieval," so they can hide behind "that was the culture." Dude, you made up dragons, and you can't invent a world where women can have something other than abuse as character development? Nope. They want forced marriage and SA and every other gross and degrading thing they can think up to do to women because they have no imagination at all.
The fall of magic also seems to have been an orchestrated affair by certain, yet-to-be-revealed groups implied to include the Citadel of Maesters, while magic is actively trying to come back.
I would say making the history look like middle ages is accurate. Middle age artist would depict the Roman era and the Egyptian era as looking like the middle ages.
Good point! I guess the people of the middle ages were just as obsessed with medieval aesthetics as we are today (though in their case it's very understandable since they were quite literally living it).
@@PerseusGrim I know this is a joke but truth be told, I think they just had no clue on how people in the ancient world looked like
@@Kai555100 true. They lived in a world completely void of media-representation. We have been seeing depictions of Romans and Egyptians on TV, Films, textbooks and so on for all of our lives, but medieval people had no such experiences.
@@PerseusGrim This is largely because they lacked any and all knowledge that past historical periods were in any way aesthetically different from their own. Archaeology did not exist yet, so they'd typically imagine people from past periods as dressing, acting and thinking in a manner analogous to their own, due to lacking any other point of reference. C.S. Lewis discusses this point in detail (along with many other points of the mediaeval worldview) in his book The Discarded Image.
@@Kai555100 they were not unsophisticated. We have modern-day representations of myth. One day someone might watch Romeo + Juliet and think: “they didn’t know early moderns dressed differently.”
Funny thing the whole, "Stubborn people with combustion engines" is that most people can't afford a new electric vehicle.
You say this like people wouldn't study how magic works with the scientific method. This is built on the presumption that magic in their world would be considered supernatural rather than part of the natural world and that science is a wellspring of knowledge rather than a set of tools for finding knowledge.
Immortal Thales of Miletus would refuse to acknowledge irrational numbers exist
You're probably right, but just imagine how funny it would be to see him debate modern mathematicians. Or maybe he would form a school teaching "alternative math" with Terrence Howard.
You're probably mixing him up with Pythagoras. The pythagoreans were so disgusted with the idea of irrational numbers that (the legend goes) the one among them who proved the irrationality of √2 was put on a boat and sent to die at sea as punishment.
@@kinghenriquevolta Thales (born 626 bc) came before Pythagoras (born 570) so i doubt he would have a modern view of them
So did they figure out the full calculation of pi?
@@brandonlyon730 there is no full calculation of pi, just approximations to arbitrary precision. Archemedies approximated it to be between 223/71 and 22/7 but that was three hundred years after pythagoras. They might have used the egyptian approximation of 256/81≈3.16
Of course, this raises the question of "Why medieval?" but just from the opposite direction. Okay, so you've got perfectly good magic, why would you even get to the Middle Ages as opposed to Ancient Rome or Babylon or the unnamed collection of huts and tents the immortal mages hailed from?
Not going to lie, it's a good question that I had to consider myself. Ultimately I just came to the "conclusion" that the middle ages are the farthest you could go, but there's no real reason with my arguments why you couldn't just stop earlier.
Yes! Or we can go past the middle ages. I don't think the age of enlightenment is the final milestone where everything magical ends. In rural areas survived a lot of interesting practices, rituals, tales and magic formulas, which were documented during the National revival and can be used as a fantastic source of inspiration for fantasy writers.
Either way, good point. I think there is no reason for medieval europe to be the best (and the most overrated) setting. Given the arguments presented in the video any setting could do.
@@PerseusGrim Maybe something to do with reaching an equilibrium in population growth and a certain maturity in farming, which in turn, needs a certain maturity in "civilisation" to main that. Or it's just the gods stepping in.
Rome and the Middle ages were pretty similar in terms of living standards, barring nit-pick apples and oranges/win some, loose some details...
At that point it's an esthetics thing.
@@FrostSpike netheril had something between Stargate Atlantis and Middle Ages going on with their flying cities-and yes, the gods stepped in because one of the Archmagi LITERALLY KILLED ONE OF THEIR NUMBER THEY GOT SO DAMN STRONG.
And the goddess of magic was like "*fuck* these humans grew out of control, now time to *change the laws of reality so their magic stops working*"
One of the interesting things about the stasis in Song of Ice and Fire is the way the season work. Because of how long the winters can be, I can see it causing a lot of stasis.
I would dispute the idea of the powder-faced noble leaving his posh lifestyle for the first time not being as interesting as a medieval knight exploring the unknown - the right writer could turn the former into something truly stunning. Certainly I've played a werewolf character who was far closer to the former than to the latter, and his story ended up being really quite memorable. I still think about that D&D campaign often, because for all his bookish knowledge, and the transformation into a wolf connecting him to ancient and primal wisdoms, though only while he was that wolf, he still confronted a world where reality was stranger than the near-fictions of many of the books covering the topics on the fringes of science as he knew it in his setting.
A world with the kind of widespread, practical magitech you mention won't look like ours, but it won't look like medieval Europe either. That's the problem. Most fantasy worlds have magic and dragons and whatnot, but the ways in which normal people live do not take the historical presence of those things into account. Fortress design should be entirely different than "standard medieval castle" if the world has military use of flying beasts or artillery-style magic.
The D&D example of a world that tries to take widespread practical magic into account is Eberron, which turns off some more traditional D&D fans for the very reason that it moves away from some medieval tropes because of that.
There is a anime called GATE, where a portal appears in Tokyo to another world, in that anime Japan goes to war to the other world that there monsters and there is a empire with roman aesthetic. In that world there are dragons that are used as planes, so the walls have ballistas on the top.
There are two other ways to enforce/explain medieval stasis :
1- elves (and similar species) don't like their forest to be burned down to make coal. Scientific and technological progress would certainly draw the ire of various druids, feys, dragons and so on. No need for Gods to intervene.
2- cyclical history. Every one thousand years, the Enemy come back, destroying most of the world in the process. Hence, we have Neolithic (+magic) -> Antiquity (+magic) -> Middle-Age (+magic) -> Early Renaissance (+magic) -> Apocalypse (+magic) -> Neolithic (+ magic). Rinse, repeat. And we get those ancient dungeons and ruins full of magical/technological treasures and terrors.
Magic can even be a faster and safer way to reach the apocalyptic stage than CO2 emission, grey goo, AI and nuclear wars. Given that we are absolutely unable to manage something as simple as CO2 emission, what about natural world mana depletion, dimensional barrier with hell thinning, or necro-corruption ? No need for conspiracy, just one single asshole with magical power who think it's a good idea to summon demons.
One thing that's always bugged me in books/games is how you can have those millennia old ancient dungeons that have remained untouched for so long and have a lot of their content in almost pristine condition when, in the real world, grave robbers come along very frequently, small earth tremors cause collapse, vegetation growth destroys structures, and bacterial, fungal and chemical processes break down most organic compounds over even just a few hundred years.
@@FrostSpike my favorite version of this is that dungeons are a species of creature that replacte items monsters and animals that have entered them and loot you find is a lure and the monsters the toxins they gather. You killing the monsters is helping them eliminate wast and you receive loot that actually works and the environment is kept clean and healthy
It isn't that they are untouched it's that they restock often and most tomb thieves aren't going in with monsters as something to eliminate solo they never find loot the dungeon gives to adventurers and if nobody clears it after a time it lets the monsters lose to attract adventurers
@@xaivierallen4020 That's how 13th Age handles dungeons. They can consume/envelop buildings too like an earthquake might and then incorporate them in their structure.
Excellent!
I have never seen fantasy contend with being in the malthusian trap and dysgenics.
I don't buy the "no one is incentivised to progress science because magic is available" argument for why fantasy worlds are stuck in medieval stasis for a few reasons.
1) If magic is sufficiently scarce that market forces drive the price out of reach of many people, they will be incentivised to seek alternatives.
2) If magic requires study in order to manipulate the physical world, magical knowledge could be progressed by better understanding of the physical world, ie science.
3) Even if technological progress remains largely magical, I don't buy that a society that has spent hundreds or thousands of years on magical research is going to resemble "medieval stasis" so much "sci-fi with glowy runes".
4) There are better explanations, such as the slow progress of technology for much of human history, the collapse of civilisations setting things back, the fact that most medieval fantasy worlds have endured several apocalypses, which is why there are ancient dungeons everywhere...
For the point of scientists not keeping up with changes in their fields, Albert Einstein is a perfect example. He revolutionized physics and pushed forwards our understanding of the universe immensely. But he was vehemently opposed to quantum mechanics, he could not believe that the universe was fundamentally ruled by random chance and kept trying to find loopholes to make everything perfectly deterministic. The last decades of his life were spent futilely trying disprove a framework which is now the bedrock of our understanding of physics.
Well, one thing people need to bear in mind that for every DaVinci and Tesla, there are Genghis Khans, Napoleons, and Stalins. Lots of those leaders don’t last long because they tend to foster ambitious underlings who kill them, but if Stalin had a 300 year lifespan and magic? The USSR might be a rust monster, but he’s probably still be ruling over it.
That is an interesting point!
Dictator is an extremely dangerous job. If they don't die of aging, they can be killed. Even if they are immortal, most fantasy settings have a way to kill immortal entities. And dictators have a lot of enemies.
Napoleon would have made the world a much better place
I wish he was President instead of Woodrow Wilson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Trump!!!
In that world Stalin would be probably a priest or a wizard what would make him a very dangerous dictator. His purges would make him untouchable and today he would still lead the CCCP.
@@christiandauz3742 da fuck.
Older fantasy stories were set in different times & places; Lord of The Rings was so influential, however, that other authors decided the European Middle Ages were the best setting.
Medieval stasis is just a symptom of lazy authors who are copying Tolkien's formula. Tolkien got rid of modernism simply because he disliked modern times. It is possible to write a good fantasy story outside of Medieval times. Just look at Harry Potter. The Wizarding world exists in parallel with the modern world. Same thing with CS Luis's "The Lion the witch, and the wardrobe." The magic wardrobe existed in the modern world and the magical world inside the wardrobe existed in parallel with the real world.
@@solr313 Korean and Japanese Fantasy are also very good. Japan was living under Feudalism until the 1860s so their culture is more closely tied to the old times than European culture. Think "Final Fantasy" in which magic and technology coexist and complete with each other. Korea is even more closely tried to the old ways as Feudalism was still being practiced until about 1900. Korea didn't have to wait 400 years for the automobile to be invented after the end of Medieval times. It was already invented the day Feudalism was abolished. That rapid change is reflected Korean fantasy literature and games.
@@Novusod Harry potter isn't a great example tbh, it makes no sense that the wizarding and normal world are physically together and that it's never crossed even to harry potter's time. It's purely a kids story contrivance that starts to break down really badly as the characters, audience, and books themselves begin to grow up as the series continues.
@@solr313 Funnier still is that a lot of stories will dip into those other cultures and mythologies but usually it's still centred around the medieval European world.
@@solr313 Perhaps because what you're reading/watching/playing/etc. is made by caucasians. Personally, I wouldn't be able to write a fantasy story derived from west-african folklore because I don't know anything about west-african folklore. I'm Danish and grew up with the old norse tales of the vikings and their gods, of Ragnarok, world serpents and the wolf Fenrir. I could try to learn about it, I've learned a great deal of Japanese and Algerian folklore through friends I've had, but none of of it will ever be as tightly integrated into my artistic vocabulary as the norse legends are. Probably the same for other white authors, and I'm sure if we read novels from Africa, Arabia, Asia or native Americans, there's a good chance they would be quite different. But it's hard to blame authors for writing off what's integral to their own culture. I doubt Stephen King set all his stories in Maine because of some Maine supremacist ideology he holds.
In a fantasy world where magic is understood, that is just technology. Its the practical application of known natural phenomena, so its technology. They wouldnt develop the same tech we have per se, but they would have their own advancements made just by people wanting to live more comfortable lives.
I'm not really a fan of the medieval stasis trope because of its implications, and I'm largely putting that across in my own stories because it provides some opportunities for satire, commentary, alternate history tropes, and so many other things.
Plus, it's fun to imagine what a society with magic would look like across the ages, even though I largely examine how it would work in a military setting. There are a number of magic powers and ideas that would change the face of warfare, but that would spark an arms race.
Ok. So, first, one thing that _kind of_ screws your premis is... The Dwemer. They had robots and airships and all kinds of other magic/ science fusion tech. Yeah, they poofed a long time ago, but there are tons of people who are dedicating their lives to unlocking the secrets of the Dwemer... And they're almost certain to succeed, eventually. Did the Dwemer maybe possibly blow themselves up? ... Maybe. That's actually contended in Morrowind, which has arguments that it was actually the Tribunal Temple, Nerevar, or Dagoth Ur who used the heart of Lorkan to essentially "wish away" the Dwemer. But even if they made themselves disappear, that particular bit of tech is now locked _forever_ and it doesn't negate all the other technological wonders they managed to pull off. For the sake of all the other races in Tamriel, it's probably a good thing that Dwemer society was disunitied into many city states and that they had little to no interest in conquest. It's arguable how powerful they could have been, but most in-game sources seem to agree that it's a good thing they were more interested in conducting research and building mechanical wonders than they were in dominating other races. Even the Snow Elves really only came under the thumb of the Dwemer because they walked up, knocked on their front door and begged to be let in, not because the Dwemer went out looking for them on slaving raids.
I think there is something to the idea that certain fields would be stunted if real magic existed that could solve problems instantly, but I also think that real world magic would _accelerate_ progress in other areas where certain technological barriers got in the way in the real life history of science. I think you're missing the mark by saying that "science can't have the opportunity take off because the barrier is too high before technology can overtake and replace magic." Nah, nah, why not have technology _fueled_ by magic? Why would tech _need_ to replace magic? Just because cars don't make sense in a world where teleportation exists doesn't mean, "therefore science can never win." Look at how Arcane did things (and you know this, you used clips from it :P ). They unlocked teleportation, and almost immediately figured out that this was a total game-changer for trade and commerce, and Piltover used their teleportation "hextech" to take over the world's shipping industry and make themselves into the world's number 1 trade hub.
I think that Avatar The Last Airbender is another fantastic example of this. The reason that the fire nation was able to get such an edge over the other nations was because of technology. They had a limitless source of fire and heat, and they naturally figured out that this meant that they essentially had _bottomless fuel_ for heat engines (mostly steam). So they unlocked steam power and shot ahead up the tech tree _by centuries_ in a very short amount of time. This gave them steam ships that could run laps around other navies still running on sail and oar power, heavy industry, air ships, tanks, etc... But the really interesting thing about their tech is that even though a lot of it is powered by firebenders, we see that their larger machines seem to have transitioned to running off of coal. This means that firebending gave them an innate understanding of how heat and fire works, but they still saw the benefit of figuring out how to make their tech usable by even the people who didn't have access to magical fire powers. They understood that there are benefits to having their industrial might fueled by rocks dug out of the ground while still also using firebenders where it made sense.
I figure in a world like TES, where the magic doesn't seem to be limited to people born with certain abilities, this would allow for even crazier tech. Especially in a world that is so much more violently competitive than what is seen in ATLA. They have direct access to all the classical elements, and all that's required to access this power is training and study. Even people who don't know how to personally use magic are able to benefit via alchemy and enchanted items (especially in morrowinds system, where an enchanted item can essentially cast any spell for you without training). The idea that there's a limited magical class in thia world doesn't really track, because we see ghat magic is actually pretty freely available to anyone who wants it. The only real limiting factor is an individual's desire to study and learn.
I would actually love it if Bethesda dug into a little more progress in the series. You know, maybe not go full industrial revolution, but just tug on that plot thread a little bit. We've seen that for hundreds of years there have been scholars chipping away at the secrets of the Dwemer, how about we start to see how reintroducing small buts of this tech into the widet world could shake things up?
Actually, you know what, I just want to see Bethesda games do _anything_ other than _regress_ progress with each game. That's my biggest problem, is that magic and tech seems to be consistently _regressing_ despite the fact that we see guilds of mages, Telvanni wizards, and other intellectuals pouring themselves into their research, and, yet, we just see magic _regress._ Conjuration is super nerfed, people stopped teleporting, and everyone just willingly gave up the power of _fucking flight_ because it got banned "for reasons, fuck you for asking."
ok
Yea I imagine once they get a good understanding of how it works they'll advanced to at least steampunk technology which I think should be the natural progressive for most fantasy worlds, ancient, Medieval, Renaissaince, Whale/Steampunk, Scifi Fantasy
The thing about the Dwemer is that even if the way their technology worked is understood well, you need the cultural momentum and the _resources_ to implement it. The wealthy populace of Nirn already has everything they could possibly want, magical services get them 95% of the way there, they wouldn't invest in producing tech for everyone. Unless there was a significant shift culturally towards Dwemer-ness, trying to grasp the world by synthesizing it, I don't think it would matter if someone _could_ make a thoughtform projector or whatever. You'd only be making them by hand and you'd never reach a point of industrial revolution.
What I DO think is that logically speaking there's nothing stopping Nirn from having firearms a blacksmith could make, nothing at all. It's crazy that it hasn't happened yet beyond aesthetic hangups.
Also the Dwemer are still out there, somewhere in Oblivion. They're still researching and building and learning and have been for millennia.
The evidence for this btw is a line of dialogue and a staff:
- Falion in Morthal says that he has "met Daedra, Dwemer and everything in between" while travelling through Oblivion
- There is a staff that can summon Dwarven Spiders and Spheres, when you summon something in Elder Scrolls, you aren't magicking it into existence, you're grabbing it from somewhere in Oblivion. If it's not in Oblivion then you can't summon it, meaning there are Dwarven Animunculi being made as we know only the Dwemer themselves and none of their tech was poofed.
@@burghleyimeanberdly6513 *Some Dwemer. It's entirely possible that most of them went poof and the ones hanging around in Oblivion just got left behind like Yagrum.
I think one thing worth considering is that in a world where magic is a reality, magic becomes itself a natural science. You're obviously going to have people learning how to shoot fireballs, but artificers are going to be a whole group of their own. The inherent limitations on the number of magic users mean that there's a huge market for quick, mass-produced magic effects to be distributed to common people. These worlds wouldn't develop the same things for the same reasons, but technology would likely still progress. Muskets might be ignored in favor of anti-magic weapons specialized to kill mages from range, the steam engine might be bypassed for a mana engine. Suppression still holds true, and mages would likely do everything to keep artificers down, but ultimately the enlightenment would transform from nobles vs burghers/intellectuals to mages vs artificers. Even if mages are so powerful in some societies that they can completely prevent development (ie, Chinese Nobility destroying their navy to avoid developing a maritime merchant class that could challenge them), not everyone will sacrifice progress and economic benefit to prevent the rise of some distant threat.
Transitional periods like the early modern period historically are inherently dynamic, and I think the idea of more stories having a conflict between artificers and mages as separate groups could be very interesting.
This only applies if magic is standardized for all users. If magic behaves like, well magic, which is to say in an incomprehensible manner between users, then industrialization of magic becomes impossible. Admittedly, magic as a form of natural law IS the standard in fantasy these days, but this assumption requires magic to act in a strictly logical sense. Ya know, like science and not magic.
@@treverpearman6475 I mean, if you can consistently produce results what does it matter if my process of using fireball is different than anyone else, we're still casting fireball. And if you can produce magic consistently, well, I mean...
And if you cant use it consistently, then you can't even really use it at all. What's even the point in trying? I can risk my life gambling on a fireball, or I could just use a crossbow instead. Or get alchemists on developing an explosive propellant so I can make guns.
What it more sounds like you're suggesting is just shonen though. There's fireballs Jim and he can cast fireball and that's his one unique ability everyone else has their own unique abilities only they can use, which imo isnt "magic acting like magic" that's magic acting like superpowers.
@@Ezekiel_AlliumHis point is that industrialization needs a standard way of functioning for mass producibility. Without a standard functioning It’d be like trying mass produce a bike that could be driven by a human, a deer, and a snake. All can move forward, all can have a thing designed where they can more efficiently convert energy into forward momentum but in no way can a general design be made that works for all. Another analogy would be that each person could be imagined as a computer with their own personal OS and spells are programs. Similar to how a program made for Windows won’t work on Linux without conversion a spell made to work for me won’t necessarily work for you and because of that (depending on how the system is constructed) things like magical technology could be extremely difficult to make or outright impossible.
@@joshs5577 My thing is that standard functioning is less important than the function. When I think about magical industrialization, I'm not imagining a bunch of wizards on a production line.
The wonderful thing about magic industrialization is the plentiful routes to automization. Can people make golems? If yes, then it doesn't really matter if the method used to make the golem differs from individual to individual if the golems can all meet the same standard. I don't think the individual process matters so long as people can create consistent results, and those consistent results can be used for technology.
Also, sidenote, golems are always my favorite thing in fantasy settings because if they aren't locked to a strict humanoid form or a particular material, guess what you can make any mechanical device. Golem engines that power anything, including cars and airplanes, even simpler than that if you can make a golem that rolls under its own power you have self driven wheels. A lot of the same principles can also be applied to necromancy as well. an engine powered by reanimated muscles. Instead of refueling your car, you instead swap out a quick change bracket of biceps in your engine.
@@Ezekiel_Allium But the question wasn’t can non standardized magic be used to make technology but rather can technology be made to do magical effects, ie., make a device that can cast fireball rather than needing to rely on a wizard to cast it. To use an example from OP say in order to combat magic you want to make an anti magic field generator. If magic relies on different fundamentals for each person that anti magic field generator can at most only affect some users instead of all of them. Whether or not magic can make engines is irrelevant when the original ask was making spells available for the common people. In order to do that spells must have a logical framework that is universal.
If instead magic was this thing that was alive and could think and therefore be inconsistent then any device will work differently depending on the day, who’s using it, and why. And this isn’t some crazy thing that hasn’t ever been presented in fantasy stories. If your familiar with anime Fate for example has a very finicky magic system where if you aren’t born with the right traits, grow up with the right training, and develop the correct mentality there are some magic devices you just can’t use like holy sacraments, gem craft, and a number of Mystic Codes. There are general rules but a lot of what works is because we as humans believe it should work that way (at least in lore). In such a world magic can’t be used to industrialize because you can’t replace skill with capital which is the whole point
Sorry, my magitech brain doesnt accept medieval stasis should be a thing.
Interestingly, the "suppression" phenomenon appears in a fantasy-themed EU4 mod called Anbennar. In Anbennar, mages are the natural elites of the world, as being a mage is something that requires the right set of genes (only powerful mages can learn magic. People who are not born magical, despite their knowledge, can never learn to use magic). Eventually, though, Artificery is invented (basically magic engineering). With artificery, everyone can use magic, even non-mages. This ruins the monopoly on power that granted the magical elites of the world their privileges (privileges such as noble families boasting magical bloodlines). As a result, the mages estate demands the player to crack down on artificery, or they lost loyalty. In the currently in-development Victoria mod for Anbennar, the premise given for the start date is that there was a great war not long ago between the mages and artificers.
it should also be mentione that the whole concept for anbennar was based on the idea of the "Blackpowder Revolution" and the idea that as technology develops if allowed many of these mages are overthrown, either by another power that embraced tech instead of magic, or by the peasantry themselves who manage to get their hands on guns.
Suddenly got an image in my mind of a fantasy society that undergoes rapid industrialization due to a rebellion against a corrupt wizard class, drawing not just the common folk but also a number of disgruntled wizards to their ranks 🤔
Arcanum.
I don't get what you're saying. If you have a magic crystal that can allow you to talk to anyone with another crystal, wouldn't you functionally have a phone? Which brings all the effects mass communication had in our world.
And if the magic crystal is hard to get, wouldn't that incentivize merchants and nobles to fund research into alternatives which would still incentivize scientific research anyway?
That logic even already applies within settings. For example, people invented farming, despite presumably being able to magically conjure food, because it makes you less dependent on a handful of druids feeding the town
That's pretty much why elder scrolls is a franchise where there isn't an excuse for "medieval stasis"
Long distance communication exists through memospore, fancy magic.
As well as the entire existence of the dwemer that actively pursued advancements in technology with aid of magic.
Technology, magical, physical or a mix of both is ever prevalent in TES.
So it's kinda easy to chock it up to "medieval themes are cool so the world is stuck in this vague era that existed for thousands of years"
Technically speaking, your phone is controlled by a crystal that is able to interact with other crystals over immense distance.
I think the developpment of technology is not as given as most people think. But you bring one of the best reasons why fantasy should be more likely to develop it. After all if you know that something is possible, you are much more likely to try it than if you have never even heard of that concept.
But then again, communication in an electronical way requires so many steps in between that just thinking of the idea won't be enough to come up with a phone. With simpler technologies this may work though. And that also may allow for an iterative process of improvement. Especially if you have a guild system where individual craftsmen can gather together to get political power.
Guilds were bad for innovation, because they regulated prices.
Medieval stasis is plausible in worlds with magic like Skyrim but it doesn't explain worlds like Game of Thrones where magic is more low key and a good chunk of population doesn't even believe it exists... I call it lazy writing.
A Tesla swerving to hit four people would mean that the trolley problem was set up incorrectly in the AI test suite.
An amazing example of a post-medieval fantasy is 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell' by Susanna Clarke, set in the time of napoleonic wars. Also I'd argue Pirates of the Caribbeans is a cool fantasy setting, and it's in early 18th century
Napoleonic fantasy sounds interesting, so I might have to look into this book! And like I wrote in reply to another comment earlier, pirates absolutely offer another great setting for interesting fantasy stories, though it was something I overlooked a bit when making my video.
@@PerseusGrim Strange and Norrel is a fun book too, because in that universe, magic existed and heavily shaped events previously, but is all but forgotten in 1795, because it's considered ungentlemanly and bad-form.
I know they were more aimed at kids but the Philip Pullman His Dark Martial is an amazing and books are set in Edwardian Era like England.
@@PerseusGrim One great series about Napoleonic fantasy is Temeraire, which premise is basically "napoleonic wars with dragons". It's an alternate history, but it's pretty fun
and One Piece
Okay so the conclusion of this video makes no sense. As if magic wouldn't be part of the "natural" world. Magic would be a Field of scientific research.
depends.. magic as humans view it... or magical attributes of magical creatures... then if its the latter then "magic" wouldn't be magic it would be biology.
@@user-ec6vf7zq9j Something storytellers learn is that your first idea is probably bad. Saying it would be the case for "magical attributes of [redacted word] creatures..." doesn't move it into the realm of biology. In fact if magic existed it would be a sub-field of physics specifically not biology.
I will use this as an example. Ghost are supposed to be magical entities. When you actually attempt to make some kind of sense of that however it makes no sense.
Problems with ghosts:
1) Seeing ghosts means that they interact with light that is being received by the human eye.
2) Ghosts are said to be "non-physical" and yet they are capable of some how interacting with the physical world (moving objects, making noise, etc). How? Because bob said.
3) Ghosts are non-physical. What does this mean? Nothing at all.
4) What are ghosts? Well when someone dies sometimes they respawn but they don't have a body.
5) What are ghosts? Well sometimes when someone dies they respawn in another game and a glitch in the software renders an artifact from the other game.
If ghosts existed and interacted with the world then that interact would be measurable and able to be studied by science. It would be a field of scientific research. If a fictional story is not very careful and it has ghosts or souls, or any of that nonsense I immediately get ripped out of the world and it breaks my brain. Wizards throwing fireballs from their hands, I am here for that, anti-gravity spells sign me up, Dragons hell yes. Ghosts or souls... I'm sorry what?
Science is the study of the natural world. If magic existed it would exist in the natural world, and therefore be able to be studied by science.
The idea that having a way to make absolutelly every scientific advamcement in our world by a spell slot that comes back daily, and yet noone would think "can I replicate those effects? If yes, is there a way to calculate the exact way it will happen based on the inputs?" is nuts.
Specially when Wizards, Druids and Clerics whole thing is "being smart and noticing things most dont".
@alananimus9145 As one might notice, different franchises handle their magics differently. In some franchises, magic is essentially a science, in others, it is unknown and often seems to have a will of its own. So a lot of it is quite literally "because the magic said so."
How is that possible? Well, that's kind of the point of magic in the first place. It often reaches beyond human understanding and capability, and may even be a Black Box of sorts where we know something happens but not sure why.
@@albertonishiyama1980 Exactly. A little known secret is that the Wheel of Time is basically taking D&D seriously. Think about it from the characters perspective. How would you explain spell slots? How do you know how many spell slots you have? This is the problem I have with a LOT of D&D players. They play their character sheet and not the character. We (the gods) decide which spells they have and how often they get to use them. But from their perspective it's just a part of their natural world. Of course they would try to figure out how it works.
I think we should also take note that scientific revolution that took place in Europe beggining with Renaissance, speeding up during 18th century, introducing capitalism and libreral democracy and culminating with industrial revolution - was a result of very special set of circumstances. Before that, most societies were relatively stagnant. China existed for thousands od years very conservatively. Eurpeans pretty much invented linear time back then.
Now if you can determine what were those special circumstances, you can take it into account when writing.
I could totally see a dark lord in the penthouse of a giant skyscraper.
What if electricity is the magic of our world?
Imagine going to a fantasy setting and finding the physics are completely different.
You make a battery and it just doesn’t work. Or the period table isn’t the same & nothing conducts electricity.
I did once read a reddit post about how electricity would get slammed by fans of hard magic systems for seeming all too nonsensical and soft if it only appeared in a fantasy book, so I think you have a point there. Like: "Oh, so you're telling me this little copper wire can transmit some magical force that just somehow makes this magical light source glow? Yeah right, come up with something more realistic!"
I actually encountered a comic that covered this idea once, it was stated that each world had its own form of magic and that ours was electricity. I'll try and find the name of it.
Just found it, it's called Emperor Hunt
Something like minecraft redstone is the electricity of the minecraft world, which did worldbuilding well
@@PerseusGrimbut everyone with school education should understand how lightbulb gloves (unless it's LED), as well as the basic principles of how electricity works. And there are plenty of people with engineering education, who have quite an advanced understanding of the subject. And then there are physicists...
Although, sometimes I believe that humanities majors live in the world of magic: they usually have no clue on how anything works, totally unable to comprehend it, when explained, and moreover they are absolutely fine with it.
@@solarissv777 “But anyone with a magus school education should understand how a evocation rune works (unless it is summoning) as well as the basic principles of how mana veins work.”
It's always possible that things like large-scale industrialization or the invention of firearms isn't feasible in the setting. I read somewhere that if something were to happen to set our technological advancement back to ancient times, we'd probably never get back to this level because there isn't enough easily available resources left for a second industrial revolution.
We also shouldn't think of scientific and technological progress as something that occurs naturally at a steady, constantly accelerating pace: It just sorta looks that way from our perspective. There are cultures that to this day live at a neolithic technology level and others that might still be stuck in the equivalent of medieval times if not for the aggressive growth and spread of western civilization. Japan actually regressed in terms of firarms technology after the Sengoku period because guns became viewed as undesirable in the more peaceful Edo period that followed. They went from having more guns than any European country to barely any at all by the time Commodore Perry showed up. Cultural and political values do matter a whole lot.
For that matter, since we're talking about fantasy, it's always possible that the laws of nature in the setting doesn't allow for certain developments. I once came up with a setting where the chemistry was slightly different resulting in gunpowder burning much slower/producing less energy. So, even though guns could be invented it was practically impossible to make one capable of punching through decent armor, and crossbows were cheaper and more reliable.
By the way, this isn't really an argument for why medieval stasis makes sense, but if you look at medieval art showing stuff from the classical period, often it will depict people the same way as in art of more contemporary events. That is to say, a lot of people back then had no idea what things were like in the "old days" and just assumed everything had always looked the same. (Or, at least, preferred to view history in a style that was familiar to them.) There are paintings of Jesus dressed as a medieval king, Roman soldiers wearing gothic plate mail, etc. So, if nothing else, medieval stasis could be viewed as representative of how most medieval people actually imagined history.
This is old thinking, really it would likely be faster according to newer research, as things that exsist don't go away, the just change chemicall. Their factories would be recycled from our cars and their factories would focus on the things they cared about, food industrialization doesn't require that much resource. Trains could be built out of recycled cars etc. They would be digging in out trash heaps and city ruins for materials not the raw earth.
That also means they could find a decayed car and learn about the combustion engine from it, and their computer scientist could use well preserved silicon chip to learn machibe logic.
Something we need to get away from is the idea that technology is a single path. It isn't. There are chemical ways to make wood nearly as strong as bronze. We don't use them because we had bronze. Copper and tin was everywhere. But we invented them in the past and discarded them. Advancement follows the path of least resistance but it doesn't stop when it get resisted, it just follows the best least resistant path.
@@Huntanor Convergent evolution tends to be pretty common.
I should add that medieval people often had access to ancient statues and the like depicting ancient clothing, they just liked depicting ancient figures in contemporary styles, which were viewed as more prestigious. Think of it like modern artists drawing fantasy characters in modern streetwear to look cool. So more of the second reason you gave.
There’s more than enough resources to get back to today. And looking at history, it probably happened many times over. The idea of scarcity was invented by big oil companies to hike prices. Oil is the second most prolific liquid on the planet. We will never run out of oil or water.
@@VikingMale We'll definitely run out of oil, our ability to consume it will expand along with our ability to extract it, the only way to not run out would be to find a way to reconstitute it using energy derived from another source. Water on the other hand just gets dirtied by use and cleaned again for further use, round and round. We'll never run out of water, or metal, or stone.
I would also argue, that writing about the Middle-ages is just easier. To write a magic story in the present time, the author would have to incorporate science into his world which means that there will be much more possible plot holes, just beacause the author isn't perfect in physics, chemisty, biology and modern production techniques of everything and anything. The system of magic is usually made by the author and he can spew any bull*hit about how it works and cover up the plot holes. In present age it would be nearly impossible.
12:39 weird to attack Boomers for saying that things were better in the past, while in the same breath admitting that the young may be changing society for the worse.
Actually, although The Elder Scrolls has a medieval aesthetic, advanced technology is fairly common in it. And I'm not even talking about the tech advanced race of the Dwemer, who had automatons and assembly lines to mount them. But actual space ships and travels.
The Imperial guild of the Mananauts were space farers who were in a cold war against the High Elves of Alinor to reach Aetherium to "farm" mana. Since dimensions are similar to planets in TES cosmology, the easiest way to reach the original plane of Magicka is to go inside a space ship and travel to it.
Fun fact: the Imperial ships were designed to be biomechanical moths with buildings in it's backs, while Alinor's ships were biomechanical birds that shine as much as the sun due to it's fueling being the sun's mana itself.
Fun fact 2: the Imperial battlemages' magical school was a space station that hovered above the setting's planet of Nirn. There is even a spinoff game set in it called Battlespire.
In my opinion the best magic systems are restricted. In my world mages can manipulate the elements, but they can't create fire or lightning from nowhere. If they want to use fire in battle they need to light a fire. The world is also not stuck in medieval stasis. The history of the world goes back hundreds of thousands of years, maybe even more than a million. In that time thousands of civilizations have risen and fallen. Some of them were more advanced than others.
There are no long-lived races in my world, mainly because I don't want there to be any "superior" races. There are elves and orcs, though. But that's mainly for name recognition. They're very different. Especially the orcs, who are nothing like the brutes they are in other fantasy.
As a big fan of Brandon Sanderson's books, limitation can absolutely be a great asset when it comes to writing magic. And thank you for sharing some of your own world building! It's always intriguing to hear what other people are cooking up.
In the tabletop game i’m creating the orcs aren’t the typical brutes you see in fantasy either, the elves and dwarves get along fairly well with each other and the only bad guys are zombies and evil dolls and clowns, i don’t have a lot of human characters because i wanna focus on other races like animals and the dwarves, elves, orcs, and halflings i mentioned earlier
Depends on how long they live and how quickly they reproduce. Elves typically come off as Superior to humans but the long lifespans and slow birthrates is as most writers realize an understanding crippling flaw as it means any sort of major war will take extremely long to recover from and society can't change all that much which causes they to always, always get overshadowed by races that live shorter lifes with more children. On a converse side extremely short lives will not allow knowledge to be accumulated and passed down so amything living at around 30 years or less (humans in pre-Civilization times typically lived to by 60 its just infant morality dragged down life expectancy) would be unable to form anything above basic tribalism as nothing can be learned and passed down fast enough.
@@xo-1320, i agree
@@xo-1320i disagree that a shortlived species would be unable to develop or pass down knowledge. Even if they matured at the same speed as humans, 30 years is still leaves over a decade of adult life. Why isn't that enough to learn things and teach the next generation? I admit though it would be difficult to build up expertise in high level fields but I certainly believe that civilization could still develop.
But furthermore, one would assume that a shorter-lived species grows and develops faster. If their lifespan is about 30 years, it's likely they are cognitively an "adult" much sooner as well, which leaves more time for learning and teaching
Objectively the boomers are right that things were better when they were young, when minimum wage was enough to support a family, houses were affordable for anyone with a full time job, and the world was a whole lot less polluted.
That doesn't make anyone feel any more sympathetic to their complaints.
It's funny that when talking about Suppression you used Witcher images, because it's canon that despite the Witcher world being full of alchemist, advanced metalurgy and freaking Grenades, all of which seems like the perfect recipe for the invention of Canons and Guns, that the person who tried to create more advanced explosive powder weapons was found murdered at his house and no one tried afterwards, almost like if they were afraid they'll be next.
On the other hand, IIRC humans appeared in the North in the Witcher universe only about 300 years ago, so there's hardly any stasis to speak of (since we know nearly nothing of the pre-arrival dwarven and elven civilisation, aside from elves having beautiful architecture). Also this world is in a way already more advanced than the typical middle ages - I remember an example of a prototypical sewage treatment plant somewhere (exploding... :D), and the magic users are not only well aware of genetics, but also able to manipulate it. Those are just traces, but those are clear indications of scientific thought being practically applied. I'd guess that in less than 200 years someone would invent gunpowder weapons there, likely in Nilfgaard, with more militaristic focus and less mage influence there.
Don't forget about the crossbow started an arm's race in our world.
They should have just stopped then and there. Crossbows are so much fun to shoot!
@@PerseusGrimas someone with a few different black powder weapons, and a recurve bow, there is something more exhilarating about black powder weapons. The smoke, the flames, the sharp crack and recoil. It’s just more fun. But I also have a unhealthy love of fire and cannons, so it might just be me.
@@waterloo32594 same. I just love weapons that do "BOOOM" and send me back
That's why I'm working on fantasy world with gunpowder weapons
@@PerseusGrim "Tis a more elegant weapon from a more civilized age."
@@KaiHung-wv3ul it literally wasn't. they called it the "dastard's weapon" and pope Innocent II pronounced it anathema.
The only problem I have with concept is that both make sense. Growth makes sense, as does stasis. Tolkien was statix because he philosophically beleaved rualism or pastoralism were superior to urbanism and idustrialism, so when he wrote a more perfect world, it matched his beliefs. This works because it allowed him to put his whole heart into it, aligning it with his own passion about rural England. Except it isn't in stasis at all. It only appears to be because its hard for us to concieve that the time of the elves and the highmen was superior to the current era in every aspect, they made better weapons, the castles the built were stronger and more beautiful and the elf homes were marvels to behold. In Tolkien, the past is the utopian rural future he dreamed we would have.
Eldar scrolls is frozen because it's a video game. Eldar scroll online needs to be set in a place where it doesn't interfere with future lore or games, but the esthetic needs to remain the same due to esthetic being king in visual media.
One of the things that has always made me dislike ASoIsF was that it lackss scale it in its vision of the world. Each part of it is finely crafted, but things last way linger than make sense both logically and interanlly. This is specific to the series, not a trend. Martin makes things that would fit his themes better if they were a few generations ago. Starks being the same for 6000 years in a world with so much conflict is actually silly. It either means they are so strong that nothing realistivly should ever unseat them, or their enemies are so weak they dont really constitute a threat at all. A 6000 year old castle requires all the people who want to take it to be incapable of imagining new ways to do so, or a castle so era defining that all those effort fail and the time to its defeat is simply delayed an extended period.
Life grows and changes. Good stories do, too. The best evidence of this is worlds always grow in the action even if the setting somehow freezes. As if people changing and becoming better isn't what makes the world change. Frozen truely worlds like ASoIaF tend to be very cynical which to me is a turn of. Cynical thinking doesn't save people. It freezes them, and the world grows around them until the cynisims become a prison keeping them out of a better world.
While I haven't played Elder Scroll a lot what you say. Admittedly out of maybe a dozen fantasy books I have tried I have find those in medieval time setting slow and boring. Right now I am reading Swan Song by Robert R McCannon which takes place after a nuclear war and it is amazing and I re reading The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker. One of the vary few series I like is a little known series call Dark Tower by this guy Stephen King and the main character is a Gunslinger and it clearly has a Western feel to it.
There are examples in rare cases of castles being nearly unstoppable. Constantinople took thousands of years to fall and the opponents were still a big enough threat to reach and siege it repeatedly.
Yeah, I think that nails why I have little to no intrest in stuff like "House of Dragons" and why I dropped off ASoIsF. When centuries pass and the Plot is still "Feudal Dickheads having petty wars over who has the biggest dick and nothing changes anyway" what is the actual Point of anything? You can't even root for anyone because the setting won't change regardless, so what is the Point of it all?
In fairness to Martin: his world faced a vast shock in the Doom of Valyria, and then Westeros was conquered by dragon-riders. Much ancient history was burned. Before the Conquest, a past was remembered, but remembered professionally by toadies of various noble houses.
People SAY their families were ruling for thousands of years, but in our Middle Ages everyone said their family came from Troy. And Sumerians used to claim their first kings ruled 10,000 years each
In a world i’m making (based off 1895-1935 Europe, USA and Asia though mostly Europe and USA) I found a way out of medieval stasis. In my world magic is rare, you have to be born with it, there is no other way to get magic. And the non magic users tired of being pushed around by the magic users developed technologies such as gunpowder and the steam engine which rapidly outpaced magic and when the main story of my world takes place magic is at one of its worst declines as those born with magic don’t fully realize they have magic because tech is a faster and easier option. Even on the battlefields magic gets outpaced by guns and artillery as proven in the 25 Years War (my stand in for WW1) it was shown that magic using units and soliders got outpaced by snipers l, artillery and machine guns. Even spells life fire got replaced by flamethrowers. Industry for replaced by industrialized factories, railroads, cars, oil, the steam engine
Shouldn't magic prowess continue to advance? Just because they continue to use magic, why would castles look the same in a few thousand years? The conjured building material would move away from looking like natural stone, and you will get novel materials. Besides having strong light-weight materials like we do, they will also lessen the need to work against gravity using brute strength, and have magical architectures that hold their forms. Buildings will have a sleek futuristic appearance like the sci-fi city you showed. As an example, consider the woman's city of Atlantes in the "Off to be the wizard" series: Instead of stone blocks, it was elegant diamond formed into large shapes.
From an author's perspective (as a writer myself) the biggest reason for Medieval Stasis is the author going for simplification of narrative continuity. A stagnant culture is one that is much easier to write about, as opposed to one that develops at a pace analogous to our own. The reason the medieval European era and aesthetic is dominant in high fantasy (flavored with magic systems and fantastical beings) is down to Eurocentric bias.
Yeah, I personally view it as a form of streamlining, so that you don't have to re-establish the entire world building just to give the readers an idea what things looked like before. And of course, European medieval stuff being so common is just because the long tradition of it being the fantasy hegemony, though there is no reason why it has to be Eurocentric in particular.
That sounds a bit lazy.
@@PerseusGrim Another reason why we have so many Eurocentric fantasy novels can maybe attributed to general distribution of literary production. If most of the books would be written in Europe and North America, we can most likely expect most of them being Eurocentric. And maybe even books from South America or Australia can still have those Eurocentric tropes.
@@stephennootens916 Writers only want to tell stories and rarely they are thrilled to spend their time exploring social and culture shifts between the ages, and this can make your fanbases unhappy fast like just see why Legend of Korra worldbuilding is pretty disliked and seen as inferior when compared to Legend of Aang worldbuilding, also making it quite bland because now is a thing we see everyday being used instead of something weird, once again will point to Korra problems like instead of having a fantastical creature to be the way of transport (Appa) the group now have a car...
@@MrToradragon Well South America/Australia were conquested by europeans and like the USA it suppressed their natives every way they could and still do it so it will always be quite eurocentric, even in places that still have a mix of cultures of local and european you will see the more support to express european views/likes, especially after USA spended and still spends a lots of money to be conquer other countries with media to a point you see the majority of younger folks at least in latam countries thinking liking or participating in their own culture as lame or cringe, while upholding American/European culture makes them cooler.
Came across this on a doom scroll, glad I stayed to watch. Good job!
I'm happy to hear that I was able to provide some value in the midst of all the doom scrolling!
The exact same thing just happened to me. I was absolutely stuck until this caught my attention
I also Doom scroll...
I can't believe people are still making some very cool Doom wads to this day.
There's an author that fundamentally is a contrary to your opinion, Brandon Sanderson, and he backs it up with the quality of his work, so all of this debate can be resumed to an expresion: Why I cannot make a high fantasy setting with modern times or even futuristic times? The answer: skill issue
I for one, find it amasing how a lot of fantasies have ancient high tech civilisations being dead and long since gone, or as with the case of skyrim only finding a return of technology, as magic is by now harder to find and practice...
One slight counter argument is at least for me is mages/wizards arguably would be the scientists, engineers and inventors seeing that in IRL many magic practitioners practices was the basis for science such as alchemy for chemistry and some were even priest/holy men so for me society progression would be a byproduct of magic.
The problem with relying on magic is that it forces the population to rely on a few individuals to use powers they do not understand and might have limited uses.
Imagine the wizard who can only heal people several times a day, but the need for healing outstrips their capabilities.
Or if the magic is controlled by beings who can revoke access.
Fossil fuels cause less environmental damage than mining and refining the materials of batteries and solar panels. Combustion engines are simply innately superior to electrical, and there's no contest.
A place where we SHOULD replace fossil fuels is the energy grid. Nuclear is safer and cleaner than literally all other energy options, with hydroelectric a distant second (with the limitation that there are only so many rivers to put water mills in).
The argument could also be made, and would be valid.
That even in the medieval world, one of the main driving forces behind technological advancement. Was war.
Better weapons, armor, tactics. Technology. It was all an advancement.
And medieval war was about two things, land and wealth.
You want more land to generate more wealth, wealth youd put into your army to get more land.
But in no point in our own history up until the advent of nuclear physics. Could one man just snap his fingers and blow up a city.
Imagine a world where someone can just study in a tower 20 years and become a world class menace.
That entirely changes the dynamics of medieval war.
War would become much more destructive. And as such much rarer in a world with magic.
Not only for sheer destructivness. But you cant possibly predict the battlepower of an enemy nation or potential rival.
One guy can wander across a border. And suddenly you have the magical equivalent of a nuclear rogue state looking at you.
Yeah, but it wouldn't even have to go that far. Just WW1 would be enough, a substitute for the machine gun would on its own could stop most warfare.Even just something like a guy who studied throwing a fireball or lighting bolt that kills 10 guys could be enough because it would make the cost of warfare too high, war would become so expensive that even the winner loses.
at "central mage agency" I almost spilled my coffee on my keyboard. Great video, keep them coming! Btw, I love the thumbnail. I thought I was clicking on a 100k subs channel.
Ah, but are you sure that the CMA didn't put something in that coffee? You haven't been inventing any mage killing devices of late, have you? On a more serious note, thank you! When I launched the video I had another, significantly worse thumbnail, and once I changed it to this one, hundreds of views started rolling in within a matter of hours. Really goes to show the power of a clickable thumbnail, and I'm glad to hear that I successfully re-created that "big UA-camr" vibe with it.
@@PerseusGrimI feel like you are discrediting a cool modern fantasy setting.
I think your ideas were funny, but if taken seriously , could be something really interesting.
With your own method of depicting a modernized medieval fantasy.
Also, doesn't "surrealism" fall into modernized fantasies?
@@PerseusGrimactually, ignore what I said.
I just have another question.
Wouldn't the natural sciences be inevitably be connected to magic?
And be researched as a default?
Central Intelligence Magency
The real reason is branding and publishing. Medieval fantasy have done well in the past, so why change your story into something more modern. Doing so might weaker your brand and hurt the profit of your publishers. The suppression idea is not that far off, but it isn't of those with magical power suppressing those with technological power, but rather those with economic power suppressing those with creativity.
In a world without Christianity, limited government, and free markets (all working together) you would likely stagnate with the medieval culture.
Technology and democratic governments are not inevitable. They pop up from time to time but it is very rare in humanity's history.
It is only because a bunch of politically powerless people were able to escape oppression and build a free(ish) country on a "new" continent with free(ish) markets (America) that the developed world exists today.
Values matter and without limited government, a Christian like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you mentality", and free markets you cannot have prosperity.
A few points:
1) We often forget that "technological development" is not inevitable, but a specific response to specific conditions. Gunpowder was used for fireworks long before weapons. Developing device A doesn't mean device B will inevitably follow. Given the right cultural circumstances, device B may never develop. We literally can't imagine the technologies that weren't developed in ohr own history.
2) Technology is ultimately a function of energy per capita. The more energy you have per person, the more tech they can develop and use. This is why you don't see rapid technologization until petroleum becomes a staple of society. It's also why technological "progress" is slowing today, and will likely regress over the coming centuries.
3) The "youth are change-oriented" meme is a modern development. Throughout history, young people are usually in lockstep with their elders. How else do hunter-gatherers or ancient kingdoms persist for hundreds if not thousands of years with minimal change? It isn't until recently, with large populations, that generational cohorts become distinct identities.
I'll add to point 3. Massive population booms creates a surplus of workers. With a small population everyone fulfills their basic needs, goes into the task assigned to them for the need of their society and no one questions it. When there is a surplus there aren’t enough basic 'jobs' to go around so the workers go out and seek something new, or get bored and resentful over their lack of a place and lash out. There’s a reason revolutions occur in the wake of economic instability.
oh there were definitely attempts to turn gunpowder into weapons as soon as it was discovered, but without the right circumstances of idea, available materials and payment it would not succeed and stay a nifty concept, that has no advantage over say an arrow shot with a crossbow (Longbows require decades of serious training to develop the muscle strength to pull them well and require a certain finesse to hit well...a crossbow makes it much less effort to shoot and can be trained in a few months of preparation...) or any form of pre-20th century "Molotov cocktail" (incendiary bombs, both thrown and used with catapults and similar devices)
You also need a lot more understanding of how to make gunpowder to produce safe and reliable gunpowder for weapons... which in fireworks is much less urgent. If the rocket explodes at 50 feet high or 500 feet high, it still works kind of. with a military weapon you want to be sure where it takes effect...
2): then magic would boost most fantasy settings into sci fi territory since magic usually means infinite energy/resources
There are some very big flaws in these arguments:
1) This is just false. Gunpowder was used for weapons almost instantly after its discovery, not for guns because you also need advanced metal working for that, but for grenades and similar explosives. I would also argue that we as a species have discovered some form of nearly all possible technologies that doesn't require an understanding of theoretical physics to develop.
2) This is a nothing but a hypothesis that doesn't even align with reality very well. Rapid technological progress started with the Steam Engine and then Electricity, not petroleum. Petroleum just boosted the development a bit, but to propose it being a necessity is extremely far fetched and incredibly america centric. Driving cars is not THAT important, you know? Energy consumption and technology are certainly proportional, but how exactly have you determined which one is a function of which? Electricity can also replace nearly all applications of petroleum, so don't be pessimistic about the future.
3) The youth has never changed. They always align with their teachers and what certain elites in their society want them to be, what makes you think the modern era is any different? If their teachers teach them communism, most will become communists. If they teach them to be religious zealots, most will become religious zealots.
The difference for the modern era is simply numerical: the intense population growth during the industrial era till the advent of birth control, led to youth dominated societies. And those, in turn, were fertile ground for the propaganda of change-oriented ideologes.
@@laju6398 I don't agree with your critique of point 1. Gunpowder was an alchemical curiosity for centuries before it was weaponized. I also disagree with your view of our development - how can we theorize what technologies might exist in a different technostructure. We can make broad guesses, but absolutes are impossible.
I did simplify point 2 for brevity, but it's clear to me that petroleum (oil - I think you mistakenly equated petroleum with "petrol", slang for car gas) is the defining energy base for our technostructure. Yes, steam began the push, but even it was run on stored carbon in the form of coal. And oil is used in everything today. The extraction of coal, direct power production, refining steel, coating seeds in pellets of fertilizer-enriched polymer, lubricants, forming the base of many products (plastic), and so, so, so much more. Even so-called alternatives are entirely dependent on the stuff for manufacture, installation, and maintenance. Oil is the blood of modern civilization, used for a lot more than driving cars. Remove oil (and coal), and you remove the capacity for industry.
And yes, I think technology must follow energy availability. If the most abundant source of energy you have is animal muscle, one cannot refine steel, power engines, or perform other industrial activities at any appreciable scale. That's why the extraction of coal and oil preceded industrialization - there simply wasn't an energy base to industrialize before those materials became cheap and plentiful. If that energy base didn't exist, life would look very different and not nearly as "advanced" from our perspective.
I do think your analysis of 3 is interesting. The removal of children from typical family environs and placing them in derascinated schools certainly would explain some of the sudden generational divides that form.
A thing about Medieval Stasis is that we have a sample size of 1. People talk about how technological progress is inevitable but we simply don't have enough information to say whether or not that's true.
>we have a sample size of 1
There have been hundreds of societies that have sprung up throughout human history, from Europe to China to the Aztecs and Rome, and they all have developed technologically. They may not have reached the industrial age before Europe, but ever stagnant civilization has either died or never left the tribal hunter gather stages. China developed gunpowder, Rome had an incredibly basic steam engine, they found what they think is an ancient battery from both the Aztecs and ancient Egypt.
Every that has ever existed has developed and grown. Even the medieval times weren't one monolithic period. You can see massive growth from the start to the end.
This! It is also worth noting that while there obviously were technological progressions from antiquity to the medieval period (steel, for example), they were not really progressions that resulted in radical transformations of the world. People still built with stone, used horses for transportation, smithed swords, spears, etc. So it is not so difficult to conceive of a world where we would still be doing similar things in the 21st century. A scenario where the scientific revolution did not happen is perfectly conceivable.
@@thelordz33 When I say a sample of one, i'm referring to earth as a whole. Until we start encountering alien empires i'm not going to consider technological advancement to be inevitable, just likely.
We might not see our technology.
But Advancement IS Inevitable.
This is because:
If their are countries
Their will be wars.
War brings weapons.
More tools for killing
More tools for safeguarding.
More rerouting of trade.
More rerouting of information.
Information used as a resource.
Communication needed to make more resources.
Communication methods and transportation methods advancing to skip natural hinderences.
And all other mortal afflictions being alleviated due to someone, with influence, seeking to rid it or lessen it.
Advancements, in anyway, are inevitable.
@@TheDieselMK3 But the Earth as a whole is not a singular sample. You're just fudging the evidence to fit your preconceived notion there.
What we actually see is that advancement is not inevitable, but _necessary._ Advance or die.
Reguarding section 2, "What's the Point?", in many fantasy worlds, not everybody has the capabilities to harness magic. This leaves the societies often heavily favored toward magic wielders, and disadvantageous at best to those without. A small team of wizards could with ease lay waste to an entire city, and face little to no retribution from the populace. Naturally, then, the populous would seek ways in which they could defend themselves from sorcerers, such as firearms which could cause wizards to believe that an opposing wizard is casting spells toward them for the loud thunder-like booms. Additionally, many technologies pivotal to the advancement in technology, such as gunpowder, came about by accident from trying to create a magical elixir of life, so it's highly reasonable that even in a fantasy world, firearms would still come to be, and history would more or less parody our own. Lastly, reliance on a specific caste of people could be heavily disadvantageous toward a society and it would naturally seek contingencies. Imagine for a miniute, if rich people bought food for everyone, and paid their rents for them. If people became reliant on this support being there, what would happen when the money stopped flowing? Now, with people reliant on a set of people who now no longer are willing or capable of assisting will suffer greatly. In the example you provided, such as with druids creating foods, what if the druids were to say, protest at the expansion of the town into a nearby forest, and refuse to aid in crop yields? Surely then, the populous unprepared for unsupported agriculture, would suffer.
I just think if people could shoot fire and lightning out of their hands that someone would figure out the industrial revolution. Like, even by accident you'd think someone would realize that the steam from your potion cauldron can move stuff
People don't realize that "age progression" doesn't happen linearly and inevitably. Even the concept of an "age" is vaguely defined and breaks down a bit when you consider different communities. Some may live pretty much like their ancestors used to, farming and wrangling animals, but with TVs and indoor plumbing.
From what I gather, the point where a society could be said to transition from one age to another is when something happens that makes their current life unsustainable and have to change. Like having to use iron because they ran out of metals to make bronze from. Or having to streamline their production chains because there's a massive war on and we need ordinance yesterday.
So if a society can just sustain itself and nothing too disruptive happens, they'll just remain as they were in previous generations, barring some superficial changes. There might be some occurrences we'd think of as technological advancement; Ancient Greeks, for example, had gear machines that approximate calculators, and steam engines, but they considered them toys and novelties, and didn't bother to scale them because it wasn't economically viable when there wasn't anything pressing them to not rely on human labor.
This reminds me of a joke where a greek inventor offered a traction crane to a roman governor. The governor's response was what were they going to do with all the excess labour? so the traction crane was rejected.
Saying that societal change is not inevitable relies on two assumptions:
A. No groups of people in a society have any conflicting interests, which would imply at least some of them will inevitably want change.
B. There are no unavoidable societal changes that occur naturally as a result of the society's structure.
This holds only for the pre-agriculture period of hunter-gatherer primitive communism, and yes - that lasted for hundreds of thousands of years. But neither assumption holds for everything after.
For A, socio-economic classes are the counterexample. For B, the consolidation of smaller estates into larger and larger latifundia is the reason for the transition of slave societies like Ancient Rome to feudalism. In modern times under capitalism, a similar process is the growth of monopolies, which is also an inherent and unavoidable consequence of the system.
@@blemmyes I was mainly referring to changes in so-called technology levels, not societal changes in general.
@@theyellowmeteor But societal and technological developments are mutually dependent: as you mentioned, the Ancient Greeks had the steam engine, but they did not care about it. Yet under completely different societal conditions, the re-invention of the steam engine led to the industrial revolution and capitalism, which in turn resulted in a new set of technological developments that brought along further societal changes.
@@blemmyes Sure, but it's not a given that society has the means to make steam engines to the degree that's required to industrialize. If people don't have the resources required to "advance," so to speak, they'll have to stick to current technology. Or even "regress" if they run out of resources.
Much of this video wasnt a reason why settings should stay stuck in medieval times, but why they do stay stuck. In exploring why they do, The only really even halfway compelling arguments in this whole video are the idea of magic users or gods intervening to stop some sort of technological progress.
That said, the idea of a tyranical magical (psudeo) government or gods holding humanity back is just asking for some jrpg protagonist to come beat them up. Which has happened in numerous stories.
I posit that the only real reason why medieval stasis is a thing is because its easier. No, not because medieval settings and fantasy naturally go together, an idea i dont even buy, but because they are so ingrained into our western culture that theyre just easier to write. Much of the originality is gone, either because its been done before or it literally happened. Much of the heavy lifting is done. Readers are less likely to question aspects of a medieval fantasy story because there are just so many that we take their elements for granted. A contemporary fantasy story has to work harder to explain how the fantasy elements fit, and if set in our world, how they stay hidden.
They're not even ingrained in culture. They're ingrained in the genre. To make a setting based on other places and ages you need to research these cultures. To make an evolving setting you need to analyze things you're writing about and think about its impact and consequences. To make a "medieval stasis" setting all you need is to read a few generic fantasy stories and compile a "new" one. It's nothing but laziness, lack of imagination and lack of meticulousness.
I truly hope you go on to make more videos than this as this was a remarkably well put together and presented video on quite an interesting topic. I look forward to whatever you produce next
ngl, a lot of the fantasy genre kinda only focuses on medieval European aesthetics, would be cool to see other styles from outside Europe like from medieval India or Mali.
You're absolutely right, but I think there's constantly more diverse kinds of fantasy hitting the market with every day that goes by (especially books), so you'll have a lot to look forward to if you're tired to the classic ol' Eurocentric medieval fantasy settings.
The problem is, today the European setting isn't even European anymore. It looks like downtown LA.
In my opinion, in addition to the fact that fantasy is based on a certain medieval European setting, it would still be complex to understand what to narrate and how in an Indian context. Trivially, the attributes of the Hindu deities are characteristics that for Europeans sound worthy of fantasy (multiple arms, fangs, fiery eyes, formidable weapons...), and in fact many monsters that can be seen, for example, in DnD, recall that kind of iconography. but if I had to invent a race, or a caste of non-human entities for an Indian fantasy setting, it would be complex to understand how to deviate from factual reality, but at the same time remain close enough to the reference model.
I don't know if I explained myself.
The 2nd most common type is renaissance or pike and shot fantasy with it being 16th to 17th century but it’s not that common compared to medieval
@@Toshiro93as indian you can indian mythical race like varna (monkey )people ,snake (half upper part is human body under (mostly leg part )is tail ),bird people they human body but they wing on back and humanoid bird with beck and there are more mythcal creature as consider race they are like you know like elf ,orc, drawf gobpun it better you need indian literature
Technological progress is by no means guaranteed. Without the discovery of the new world, or the need to access Asia for the spice trade, it is likely that our medieval period would’ve lasted much longer. The only changes likely would’ve need larger and more complex infrastructure.
What I learnt from this: The dwarves were right about the knife ears. Rock and stone, brothers. They can't keep us down forever
Really surprised when I realized you only have 3.7k subscribers and that this was your first upload. Your video has superb quality in production and pretty much no excess words which is hard to find, subbing and looking forward to more!
For real, I'd really like to see a classic fantasy world with elves, dragons and magic but in modernity or especially in early 20th century setting, I'm not dying untill I see wizards and dragons in WW1 trenches 🙏
Mages and military magic in a WW1 setting?
Well.. then let me recommend the anime The Saga of Tanya the Evil.
Sounds like Shadowrun
No dragons but you could try the anime Tanya the Evil. You could also try Gate.
Kaisergate for savage worlds system & the wargame Sludge.
Fun fact: magic and sorcery as we know today developed in the ressaiannce era with hermetic study and alchemy. In the medieval times (specifically in the dark ages) any sort of magic practice would lead you to execution. Ressaiance was more tolerant era
This is completely untrue. The large majority of witch hunts, i.e. executions for magic, occurred after the medieval period. In fact, in some places it was illegal to accuse people of witchcraft during the Middle Ages. This is because they viewed belief in witchcraft as heresy.
It was a thing mentioned in history class. Early medieval magic was "black magic" (speaking with the dead, hexes...) while Renaissance magic was "white magic" (nature magic, alchemy...)
Warhammer fantasy is a great example of how factors such as ever-living elves and vampires, magical evil apocalypses negatively affecting technological development.
One thing that you did not mention, is that trade and travel is way more dangerous in fantasy worlds.
Monsters, Dragons, powerfull criminal guilds or weird magical mishaps would make large scale trade basically impossible.
This means that kingdoms and countries have to either become mostly self sufficient, or spend a large amount of money to maintain save trade routes. And even then, what is a group of even 50 soldiers going to do against a large monster that could wipe out a castle?
The risky and expensive trade would most definetly stifle economic and therefore also technological growth.
I’d like an early modern aesthetic in an elder s rolls style RPG. Basically the middles ages but with really fabulous fashion and lots of gunpowder weapons.
I could see something inspired by the Gunpowder Plot making for a fun Dark Brotherhood quest (although going that loud might not be their style)!
@@PerseusGrim I mean I dunno wasn’t there that one orc member who went to a birthday party and put an axe in a little girls face?
@@TitusCastiglione1503 Haha, touché! I guess you also get a bonus for killing Vittoria Vici during her wedding speech instead of quietly taking her out when nobody is around, so I guess the question is just whether they are the "make-a-spectacle-out-of-executing-someone-at-their-own-party" kind of loud or "blow-up a-government-building" loud.
Well, Witcher 3 is set in a high medieval timeline, around the 1400s, the fashion in Tes IV shivering isels was baroque but the world in the shivering isles ... eh is more a drug trip.
I think you would enjoy Warhammer Fantasy
This stasis only really works with Neolithic settings. The Bronze Age, and to a lesser extent the Iron Age still lasted for 3000 years depending on where you look, but this was because most people expended all available calories on survival, and aside from iterative tool development, only an elite priestly/warrior class did anything like R&D. However, most fictional settings assume that it is natural for a society to steadily advance but reach a plateau and not advance onwards from that level, without external shocks, usually pre-gunpowder/printing press Middle Ages. The reality is that these technologies existed earlier in some form elsewhere, but weren’t capitalised upon. The issue is that in a diverse multi-nation world, once one nation gets a technological advantage, unless they are quickly and decisively wiped out, then you have an arms race that eventually impacts other sectors of society and the rest is history. Once the concept of Progress itself is “discovered” it’s only human to seek it.
This is why I think framing most fantasy settings as a post apocalyptic setting is effective. More specifically, an apocalypse or collapse that happened a long time before the story takes place.
A thousand years ago, magic used to be stronger, but then the archlich Bernanon tried to usurp the gods, and cause magic to collapse on itself. Now, magic items that were once commonplace are rare, and items that were rare are practically one of a kind.
Humans bounced back quicker because they're less magical, and capitalized on the stunted birth rates of more magical creatures like elves, gnomes, and dwarves. Creatures that were once mere nuisance, orcs, goblins and kobolds, were able to take over newly isolated villages, towns, and eventually cities. Empires no longer had the magical infrastructure they took for granted, and couldn't respond in time anymore to all of the threats.
Intelligent and dangerous monsters like dragons and giants die out, being less numerous, but the power difference between a giant and an army is now miles apart.
In a world like this, the small kingdoms that are trying to rebuild even centuries down the line, are competing with each other and with external threats. In a world like this, adventurering is a lucrative field, that is always in demand. And if the world gets too organized, well, odds are some new powerhungry maniac will bite off too much, and restart the cycle.