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No Stupid Questions @lemmy.world
zlatiah @lemmy.world

Is there a name for the trope where a story is high fantasy at first glance, except for it's not fantasy and is actually set in a post-apocalypse dystopian future?

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?

103 comments

  • 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 its 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). Edit: another one like that is Lufia - not a ground-breaking game but highly regarded for doing what it did so very well, at its time mind you.

    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.

  • Post Apocalyptic Fantasy and Post Apocalyptical High Fantasy are two phrases I keep seeing.

  • 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 (there's no indication that the magic is the result of lost tech becoming indistinguishable from magic); it's just that the lore highly suggests it may be post-apocalyptic.

    • Sauce? It's not even on TVTropes

      • There is a fan theory that Fallout lead to TES because of radiation. It holds about as much water as a sieve, but its fun.

      • It's been a long-ass time and some of the lore may have been retconned/clarified since then, however it was a conclusion I came to on my own. Basically, iirc, the Towers are hybrid physical/metaphysical structures which essentially keep Mundus (Nirn + other planes) stable and allow for things like magic to occur. When a tower is destroyed, Mundus becomes less stable and magical ability declines. Let's hope we don't destroy any towers then!

        Oh wait. A bunch of the towers (are speculated to be) destroyed. Red Mountain (vvardenfell) was destroyed after the false-god Vivec lost his powers and could no longer keep the Ministry of Truth from smashing into the mountain, Walk-Brass zero-summed itself and the race that created it, the White-Gold tower was destroyed during the Oblivion Crisis, I don't remember what happened to Crystal-Like-Law but I'm pretty sure that's gone too.

        If you wanted to get fancy with it, you could even point to the magic system getting less complex with each mainline game (yes, I know it's probably just laziness, but I like my explanation more). Hell, it seems like all the crazy, cool stuff happened long before the events of any of the games; it seems like all the races peaked before we ever got a glimpse into that universe.

        So while I guess it's a bit premature to call TES post-apocalyptic, it's definitely headed in that direction. It seems to be a series about a world that's slowly collapsing and falling apart.

        Edit: I spent some time trying to brush up on my TES lore (fuck, I'm starting to hear the games' siren song; it's been years), and came across this wonderful paragraph:

        Using his dentition as tonal instruments, Anumaril dismantled his bones and built of them a Mundus-machine that mirrored Nirn and its planets. And when he had used all his substance in fangling this orrery, the Orrery of Elden Root, he placed the segment-sceptre within, hiding it between the Moons.

        You... you did what?

        I wish the games were half as interesting as the lore.

        Edit 2: I remember why I thought it was post-apocalyptic! Space! Iirc all the races have been to space and had spaceships and space battles, except it seems like everyone has forgotten about it by the time the games take place. Combined with the gradual destruction of the Towers, it seems possible that the games could be post-apocalyptic but are being filtered through a lens of ignorance, making the residual advanced tech appear as though it's magic.

      • Oh man, you have no idea how deep the Elder Scrolls lore hole goes.

103 comments