Submitted 1 month ago by zlatiah@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I’m embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions… So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?
I jave no idea the answer to your question, but I now know like 99% of people on lemmy have shitty reading comprehension.
Seriously. There’s a dozen links to TvTropes and none of them match OP’s description.
The TvTropes links are mostly right though? It matches the third variation of Earth All Along. The linked examples match what OP is describing except not being restricted to Fantasy.
Pity, 'cause it’s a great question, and a great trope. I can think of a few good examples. Maybe it’s time to start a TVTropes account and get editing.
Browsing responses here, you aren’t wrong.
I… agree. Did get a lot of great recommendations tho!
People on here seem to not know what a trope is. Holy hell.
Aladdin (1992). The Genie is the last survivor of the AI wars and has mental damage. The Cave of Wonders is another remnant. “Magic” is low level AI responding to human intent. Iago is an uplift. Agrabah is literally a generic Middle Eastern county because it was assembled from the fragmented records of what remained of the Middle East.
Do you think the genie got it from twitter war brainrot or just did too much of the sensory content back in his skibidi days?
You know, the modern remake of The Time Machine shares some of these elements. Orlando Jones was the broken AI lol
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is my personal favourite of Bruce Campbell’s work. Starts off as any ordinary western, for entire seasons, before getting very, very weird.
Good shit.
I just saw a video on the show on the youtube channel Secret Galaxy, pretty interesting, as I remembered the show, but never knew what happened to it:
Yeah, Adventure Time
Not 100% sure, but these come to mind.
These sound right to me, especially Dying Earth - a podcast I listen to covered Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun trilogy and they described it as such. Wikipedia calls it Science Fantasy. Great books by the way
Dying earth isn’t a genre it’s a specific set of books by jack Vance that popularized this trope and was also a major inspiration for DnD
Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi. (Technically it’s a space opera, it not at all about science or how that science might impact society.)
Just because there’s technology, or it’s post apocalyptic doesn’t make it not fantasy.
Shanara chronicles, too.
I really like the term “Science Fantasy”. It acknowledges the parallels with Science Fiction but respects how they differ as well.
Shanara chronicles, too.
Yep, they visit ruins in one series that is pretty clearly the ruins of Tacoma or some place like it.
Terry Brooks happens to live in that area. Coincidence? :)
Yeah, in my mind, Sci-fi is more than just space ships or aliens or futuristic tech (those are loosely part of it), it’s more about exploring different questions, under the guise of some sort of new technology. “Hey, we invented this thing that can remove racism from people’s brains, but it also makes people love-obsessed and creates dependency issues in people. Should we use this on the population?” It raises moral/ethical questions about what we could or should do given the chance.
Star Wars is straight-up fantasy with high-tech aesthetics, but it has more in common with Lord of the Rings than it does with anything sci-fi. It’s about a hero’s journey and good vs evil.
I wonder if you couldn’t do a reverse Fantasy/Sci-fi story? Basically a sci-fi sort of story with fantasy trappings. Like a fantasy story that looks at some new magic development and what the implications for humanity are of that new magic process. “We perfected an alchemical process to turn poop into gold! Should we flood the market with poo-gold and crash the medieval economy?”
And that’s why silver is better than gold.
(/j)
You mean like Adventure Time?
They are pretty obvious about it being a post nuclear war reality.
You mean like “dwarves and elves are GMO humans” and “magic is actually tech gadgets” ?
As an example
The Mistborn era 1 (books 1-3) are fantasty magic Mistborn era 2 (books 4-7) occur hundreds of years later in that worlds “industrial/steam” age.
So, for example, some allomancers can push or pull on metals. In Era 1 that’s used for combat but also for rapid movement. An allomancer can fall from a wall, throw a coin and “push” off of it causing them to bounce forward and upwards. As they’re starting to reach the azimuth they “pull” the coin, catch it and repeat.
They also “throw” and then “push” coins or metal fragments like shrapnel.
In Era 2. A sheriff (who’s an allomancer) leaps across a gully, aims and shoots a bullet into a wooden crate and then “pushes” on it to cross it.
Another time during a shootout one “pushes” gunfire away so it deflects around him. Not guaranteed to get all of the bullets but useful in situations like that.
There are other uses and other allomantic abilities but the entire shift of the format was just done phenomenally.
Can’t recommend the Mistborn series enough
Yeah, Sanderson earned the cred on the original trilogy. It’s a fantasy series, but the magicians are basically Jedi. Great stuff!
you probably already know this, but for anyone else:
The Cosmere Series (of which the Mistborn Saga is a part of) does heavily feature Sci-Fi as well as post-apocalypse themes alongside (mostly) fantasy (Sci-Fi: the sunlit man, tress of the emerald sea; post-apocalypse: Stormlight Archives, Yumi And The Nightmare Painter), which made me think OP was talking about this series specifically.
In some of the other books it is mentioned that all of the powers originally came from a being called Adonalsium (basically God). what fuels all these manifestations of powers is called Investiture. Each Shard of Adonalsium manifests different Powers, Allomancy is just one of them.
so it’s a unique mix of classic fantasy, sci-fi, and post-apocalypse genres in a single gigantic saga, in which the sci-fi and post-apocalypse themes are intentionally kept vague and in the background.
highly recommend all of the other books!
they are great in their own right, and also give a LOT of extra bits and peaces of the overall lore!
what’s best about the series is, as you’ve already explained, the “hard-fantasy/sci-fi” approach to powers: all power requires some kind of source, everything comes from something.
best to do the Stormlight Archives after Mistborn (either order works), then the rest; order doesn’t really matter, although i recommend Tress of the emerald Sea and The Sunlit Man to be read last, because they contain a lot of sci-fi lore, which is best enjoyed last (imho)
also: Stormlight Archives Book 5 is coming relatively soon, i think it’s december?
Death Gate’s cycle says hello!
That wouldn’t fall under a single trope, but would be a combination of several tropes. After The End would be a requirement, and for technology that is like magic to those who live in the world would be Lost Technology.
Nice, I think yours is the most relevant so far.
NK Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy comes to mind, fantastic series it that’s your thing
I don’t think there’s a trope name for it, since the trope itself would spoil the story since this is often a twist.
Like Etrian Odyssey 3
Do you often go into a book or movie knowing all the tropes that exist within that story? I don’t even understand the logic here.
To clarify, are you asking if there’s a specific genre to Planet of the Apes where there’s a big reveal that this is actually just earth after some society ending disaster? (And similar stuff but that’s the first that came to mind).
What’s the etymology?
It doesn’t have one. I was making a joke.
Hi = High Fanta = Fantasy Po = Post(-apocalypse) Dys = Dystopian Fut = Future
Hifantapodysfut = High-Fantasy-Post-Apocalypse-Dystopian-Future.
It’s in the title.
Post Apocalyptic Fantasy and Post Apocalyptical High Fantasy are two phrases I keep seeing.
Star Trek comes to mind unless you disallow scifi (as high fantasy usually would iirc, though notably “space operas” really do seem to blur the line).
LOTR could be argued as such - there was an earlier age of beings from which only remnants survived, and then we also watch live as a second epochal transition takes place, where the likes of elves disappear. I mean, either way it’s not “our reality” type of age - but then again you couldn’t ask for that from “high fantasy” by definition :-).
And it’s a very common trope in video games - e.g. Chrono Trigger that is arguably the best RPG of all time (shitty graphics, even for it’s time, but hands-down the best story I’ve ever seen, made btw by the creators of Final Fantasy who were given the freedom to do whatever they wanted for it).
And I’ve seen some others where like basically Earth is implied to have been destroyed (or at least it is unclear whether it survived a world-ending event), but the singular human remaining lives on, in space, but in something like a series of interconnected “worlds”, some having higher levels of technology than Earth ever managed to reach while others are set in earlier timeframes. And dealing with noncorporeal beings from like higher dimensions, and entities like a god inside the machine - so definitely once again mixing up heavy elements of “high fantasy” (with the likes of swords and magic) and sci-fi.
If you can dream it, someone has likely written it. Books are freaking awesome! 😎 So too are other mediums, when profits are not the exclusive focus.
Saying Chrono Trigger had shitty graphics for it’s time is the hottest take I’ve ever seen lol.
I loved Chrono Trigger! The very first example of this that I ran into as a kid was Crystalis. You are told at the beginning that it’s Earth after an end of the world event, but it’s a sword and sorcery overhead action RPG (think original Legend of Zelda with slightly more RPG, slightly more action, and slightly more varied combat) and ends with you shooting advanced technology with your magic sword.
Yes I played Crystalis! Not like, whenever it was when it first came out, but I like to study the evolution of gaming so I went back and played a bunch like Dragon Warrior/Quest, even the Japanese versions of Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, etc.
I definitely enjoyed Chrono Trigger more:-). But I was glad to have played Crystalis too, especially with it having been so unique (or at least like rare I guess).
And while I never played it, isn’t Baldur’s Gate also post-apocalyptic, with a high fantasy theme? There are indeed so many that use that trope.:-)
The Elder Scrolls. It’s not explicitly stated, but iirc it’s highly suggested it’s post-apocalyptic. That said, it’s still fantasy, there’s still magic, spellcasting and so forth; it’s just that the lore highly suggests it may be post-apocalyptic.
Where have you seen this? I’ve been looking for some stories like it
The Wheel of Time does this.
Yeah, though clues are few and far between (the
museum in Tanchico with the Mercedes hood ornament
is the biggest clue. From Jordan’s other writings, the
First age was our time, then humans created an AI powerful enough to genetically engineer humans to be able to do magic,
and that led to the Age of Legends.
I’ve got to check these recs out
OG Planet of the Apes
I don’t think there’s supernatural stuff on HZD
OG Planet of the Apes took place on Soror, a planet in the Betelgeuse system.
I’ve never actually seen, just the references. Guess it’s worth a go
The YA book series The Tripods, is medieval dystopian.
Shan ara chronicles has just that and I searched it in tvtropes: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/…/TheShannaraChronicles#:~:te…
The Reveal: Not that the characters particularly care, but Safehold turns out to be the 3000 year old remains of San Francisco
Hmm not sure. I guess I’d call it post-apocoliptic fantasy lol. But I know exaxctly what you mean and I love that genre. The Horizon games and even the Witcher books/games fit into this genre technically.
I wonder who did this first? Didn’t ultima have a storyline like this, or am I misremembering a game from before I was born
If you want you could give the Xenoblade Chronicles series a go. All 3 connected core games are available on Switch
it would be quite interesting to see that trope actually get a name, cause it feels quite overused personally, recently even freaking one piece did it
one of my favorite recent fantasy mangas also had a pretty…detestably quality with it, the ending was basically “how is thing happening? why? HOW??” and than boom…ancient but also post apocalyptic
however, at least they give it a small spin by basically just being modern day, with a bit of cyberpunk tech
Movies like
My Name is Bruce.
The Thirteenth Floor
davidgro@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Assuming it’s a surprise, this is Earth All Along. Genre Shift is similar, but that’s more about tone than plot
Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Specifically the After the End variant
Omniraptor@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/…/TomatoSurprise is the wider trope
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You maniacs, you blew it all up!
somethingsnappy@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Flintsonian/Jetson
zlatiah@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Thanks! I think this is it… because I guess the more important part to this trope is that “hehe this is actually the world that you - dear viewer - lives in”… the high-fantasy part is secondary and depends on the genre I guess.
uid0gid0@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I think the trope From Cataclysm to Myth actually fits better. It even says in the description "Cousin to Earth All Along, but a premise or a plot twist rather than a Twist Ending. "
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
What happens when the story is not set on Earth?