Something a little different...
Added 2025-03-05 05:33:56 +0000 UTCAlso Patreon is being weird so I might have to reupload this
Comments
it's not a regression at all imo. People tend to stick to the extremes and forget that balance/golden mean is the healthiest stance on pretty much everything. I am personally glad that we start mixing conventional and self-aware stuff thanks for a great video as always!! something smart and curious to think about apart from shitty work on shitty Monday
Елена Андрианова-Ушакова
2025-04-21 17:03:17 +0000 UTCMy conception of fantasy might be kind of shallow; I've been looking at it as a collection of motifs like sword fights and dragons that more culturally-relevant stories can be built on rather than an appeal to old morals. What do you think about shows like Avatar The Last Airbender, if you've seen it, where there's lots of meta-humor and anachronistic dialogue and focus on politics/character growth. Is that by nature unfaithful to the genre? Is there a way to keep the archaic fantasy soul without sacrificing character depth? If we're building stories around questions, can we make certain parts black-and-white simply by not calling them into question in the story? Not necessarily looking for answers here, just thinking by asking.
Blueprince
2025-04-12 00:06:48 +0000 UTCOh yeah evil is real, my latest video on levels validates these concepts a little more (I think). Identification of evil is one of the cornerstones of society, so it 100% has a place in storytelling
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-16 20:25:54 +0000 UTCI mean the reason I want “an evil villain for evils sake” is cause I genuinely think there are people out there that are just bad. Sure they have some good in them lost along the way but I legitimately think people have a hard time conceiving of true and pure malevolence. In my own personal life coming from a line of abuse that was more or less broken through the parent that didn’t come from a family that operated that way I’ve watched family members around me either choose willful ignorance or just make bad choices that hurt other people because they do not care. And sometimes there is no rhyme or reason. I don’t need this long and drawn out backstory for why there are the way they are cause sometimes it doesn’t even matter. My favorite stories are the ones that come down to choice. I enjoyed Wicked but it’s one of those stories that makes bad guy good and good guy bad, and obviously there’s more nuance to that movie than that but for a villain origin story I just want to watch a movie like song birds and snakes where the villain chooses time and time again the “wrong” choice and it gets worse every decision he has to make. And I find that more interesting that a character that had a ✨ h a r d l i f e ✨ I just hate when villain origin stories are advertised as a villain origin story and they’re not even bad. They’re just misunderstood.
Olivia Andersen
2025-03-16 19:44:04 +0000 UTCThis is 100% the reason I don't care for modern stories, why game of thrones pisses me off so much. As a thought process and world view, it's fine and accurate to a degree (imo), but it makes for shitty endings. I mean no offense to anyone, but GOT ended like a steaming pile of shit that got run over by a truck. Just nothing. We were promised things because it is based in pre modern thought, the genre anyway, and then it all petered out bc George doesn't believe in good guys and bad guys. But even in modern, conventional thought, there are bad guys. Very bad guys. I see the left reacting to Trump. He may as well be worse than Satan himself, which is silly coming from people who claim this worldview. So even in this pool of thought, it doesn't hold.
Ship
2025-03-11 16:36:22 +0000 UTCYeah I think there are definitely “slots” for all of those ideas, and they don’t take away from each other
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-07 21:50:16 +0000 UTCAhh okay dope! That makes sense. I think I was curious then if the conventional and post-conventional could be synthesized in a way where a psychologically deep character could still fill the same “classical” archetypal roles while still honoring both forms’ full scopes
E FILMS
2025-03-07 21:23:28 +0000 UTCOh yeah theres definitely post-post conventional. But post-post conventional is just the level where you ACKNOWLEDGE the levels, I think. But I’m overhauling parts of this video based on feedback so thank you, I’ll definitely talk about these points
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-07 20:04:57 +0000 UTCAfter becoming a fan of joshfromxboxlive also from his fantasy video, I wonder if you give much credence to his conclusion of fantasy storytelling leaving the age of the post-conventional (or, as he put it: elevated) and entering a new evolution of storytelling, which he called "enlightened fantasy"/storytelling. From the nomenclature alone I found it quite exciting and interesting, but I'm also not sure if it's a thing to look forward to if that makes sense? I also somewhat relate it to some things Vince Gilligan has said recently, saying that he wants himself and other writers to try what they did with evil people and go the opposite direction, to create stories of ultimate redemption and heroism, but idk we'll see if he means to push the form even further or to regress. I hope it's the former (and I trust Vince lol).
E FILMS
2025-03-07 17:35:24 +0000 UTCCool video. I think one of the real advantages Marvel had was that it could do both conventional and post conventional attitudes in films and when it was really good it oscilated between these attitudes in the same film. The first Captain America movie is really a conventional moralistic hero story and Marvel kept using that character as a stand in for the appeal of coventional black-white morality.
Uri Kenan
2025-03-05 15:42:02 +0000 UTCIm right there with you. Very interesting discussion. I have a whole new batch of random history stuff to research which is always fun.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 09:12:55 +0000 UTCThank you, really enjoyed talking with you about this. Apologies if it felt like a 4am brain dump on my part, that is exactly what it was
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 09:11:39 +0000 UTCThat makes me more excited than usual for future content. Looking forward to your future uploads, and seeing how these ideas are communicated.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 09:10:29 +0000 UTCOh yeah the theme thing was dumb, I should have just defined it. I have only thought in this new way for about 6 months, hence the prelude to the supervideo. I've been reading stuff that has definitely rewired me and it's partially exciting and partially disorienting because idk how to connect it all yet
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 09:07:48 +0000 UTCValid. Im actually super down for choosing your own definitions for ease of communication but this does make me think of a new, unrelated question. (Sorry lmao) Why not do this with “Theme”? I was actually thinking about this when you explained your current thoughts on it being something of a catchall phrase, (which I agree with). But if your willing to define High Fantasy differently (which honestly seems like a big leap from its modern definition) why not simply choose a better definition for theme that better fits what you were originally going for in the first place. That “Soul” of the story vibe. Thats actually very similar to a lot of understandings of the word already so it isn’t even much of a leap. Especially compared to the redefinition of High Fantasy you introduce in this video.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 08:56:28 +0000 UTCYeah I'm 100% not using the traditional definition of the term, but I'm trying to communicate very strange concepts and there aren't well-known words for these concepts yet, so I'm working with what I got. That's why I try to define terms whenever possible
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 08:50:22 +0000 UTCI dont think High Fantasy is the best term to use to describe stories like this because no-one else uses the term this way. Does it actually feel right to label Superman as High Fantasy? I feel like it breaks down what the term is commonly used to describe. It does explain my earlier discomfort with the claim you made though. I get your point now. But if you’ve ever read something like Malazan, Book of the Fallen. You would see a series that is certainly High Fantasy that doesn’t boil down to such a simple Good v.s Evil binary. But I guess then we would simply be operating under two different definitions of the term. But since the term High Fantasy isn’t commonly defined the way you are defining it, I think it creates a lot of opportunities for people to misunderstand your point.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 08:43:00 +0000 UTCIn this case I'm using "high fantasy" to describe the stories that involve a good vs. evil dichotomy, noble hero/dark lord type stuff. Which could describe LOTR, or classic Superman. The main underpinning of what I'm saying is that there are layers to picking apart your reality. And people in ancient times were capable of picking apart the first couple layers, but they couldn't get as deep as we are now. They were only able to partially deconstruct their reality. It takes generations to peel those layers back — the most progressive person in ancient Egypt would have questioned slavery in the same way that you question reality when watching a Vsauce video. And then you go "huh. interesting" and you get on with your day. I just like putting it into perspective — we tend to overestimate how deep our questions really go. The inevitable follow-up would be "what about the slaves, wouldn't they have had anti-slavery beliefs?" and the answer to that is no. They would have likely resented slavery, rebelled possibly, but that's not the same has having a conscious concern about the validity of a system.
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 08:27:07 +0000 UTCOk, thats pretty valid. But there were medieval thinkers who were documented consciously picking apart and interrogating the validity of commonly held beliefs. If your just making a claim about the commonly held beliefs that dominated at the time, then sure. I can agree with that. But it gets dicey if you were to make the claim that no one was doing it at all or that they were incapable of it at that point in history. Also, could you define what a fantasy story is? Is a fantasy story simply a narrative that is centered around those ancient beliefs? Because that thing you said about a story not being fantasy if it doesn’t do that kinda surprised me.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 08:15:44 +0000 UTCHmmm maybe the error lies in my original video —I'm not trying to say "people in medieval times never doubted what they were told," only that the social beliefs held at the peak of medieval culture are the basis for the themes we see in high fantasy. But we've since moved on from those beliefs into deconstructive ones. There's a difference between disagreeing with a system and consciously being able to pick it apart and interrogate its validity. A medieval peasant dissatisfied with the balance of power could rebel - sneak out, steal things, attack superiors. But I consider that "needs based" rebellion to be a very different thing from the more intellectual questioning we impose on our societies today. "I'm starving I want bread" is a much more primitive idea than "this system is invalid and oppressive." A medieval peasant would just be like "I want bread, I'll take it if I have to" they wouldn't be capable of actually questioning the bread system. The mental age of an average adult was much lower in medieval times. So if fantasy wants to be authentically "old," the characters have to be way more immature
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 08:07:07 +0000 UTCIm not necessarily saying that they were dreaming about 21st century philosophy or Democracy. All im saying is that it seems likely to me that some of these people heard the ideas preached by their culture and thought “is this true”. It doesnt really even have to go anywhere beyond that. My point isnt that people were trying to figure out a whole new system for civilization. Just that they certainly could question why things are the way they are.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 07:50:57 +0000 UTCThere's a really great concept called the bicameral mind that shows how our thinking COMPLETELY shifted at the end of Bronze Age. The moral structures pre-shift were very different from post-shift. There are levels of societies — some are more advanced than others, it's a vertical scale we've climbed up. To question the rules of society in 3,000 BC would have been to ask "what if there's only one god?" Curious people wouldn't have skipped straight to an idea like "power should be shared equally by the people," there are many steps that come before you can have such an advanced thought. Prerequisite thoughts. And these have to accumulate in society slowly, over generations, each one pushing the needle a little further. Capitalism used to be the most revolutionary idea in the world
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 07:47:10 +0000 UTCYour point about curiosity is exactly why I cant believe people didnt question the moral ideals commonly held in their time. Wouldn’t ancient people living in Greece or Troy be curious about the structure of their society and the morals held by their society? In the same way a child raised in the forest would be curious about the trees?
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 07:41:47 +0000 UTCAh I got way off course, this wasn't about fantasy stories. It was about how our minds are far more advanced than they were in history. here's the point: Since the so-called true spirit of high fantasy corresponds to a way of thinking that peaked in the MEDIEVAL period, I'm basically saying you need to write less advanced ideas into your story, which will, paradoxically, give it the authenticity it needs to capture LOTR vibes
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 07:39:10 +0000 UTCOk, so if your talking about ooga booga cavemen then I can agree. But what fantasy story takes place back then? In most fantasy stories, (around bronze age - medieval) then yes, I am absolutely arguing that by that point in human history, we had the faculties and actual written historical documents to prove that people have been deconstructing moral and cultural ideas for a very long time. Sure, maybe not so far back in human history that we hadnt even developed written language yet, but certainly by the point that humans were building advanced civilizations. Are you saying that human beings who lived during the Sumerian empire werent questioning the moral values touted by their civilization? Sure, a rough relationship with the world around them put them in a situation where they had to trust those systems more than we might today. But I cant imagine people didnt question their society and the moral ideals enforced by them. As a post conventional beta myself, perhaps im just biased. But that seems unrealistic to me.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 07:36:08 +0000 UTCTo more directly address your point about kids, mental age is a documented phenomenon — one mind can be more/less advanced than another, outside of actual age. Psychological development is not guaranteed — if you don't have more developed people to lift you up, you will stay essentially animalistic. We know this from observing the rare cases of humans who've gotten stuck in toddler-like developmental stages, even though they were past sexual maturity, because they were raised completely separate from human contact. That's what happens when you don't fill a human's head with ideas — they do not become like us. To your point about kids questioning ideas, I think that's just curiosity. We see it in many species —it's a dopamine pathway thing that compels us to seek out new information. Kids are curious about the rules and explanations for society because they are surrounded by society. If they were raised in an isolated forest, they would be equally curious about the trees. Curiosity just extends outward into whatever your environment is, it isn't necessarily tied to cultural awareness. But I would agree that curiosity is how we managed to become so intelligent as a species.
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 07:32:09 +0000 UTCWhen I say ancient, I am referring to the ooga booga times. There were no cavemen philosophers - the most they ever did was draw animals and their hands. Yet we were genetically identical to them. What you’re suggesting is that people in, say, the Bronze Age had the same cognitive capacity as us. And let’s just assume you’re right. Let’s go back another 3,000 years to the end of the Stone Age. Do you think we capable of philosophy then? I bring up human evolution because we have been biologically identical for a very long time, yet so many forms of thought are very recent. You could argue that we’ve always been capable of having those thoughts, and we just didn’t express them because of “societal pressures.” But there weren’t even societies for most of human history. And when we eventually figured out how to build them, it was only through the use of more advanced thoughts. If you stranded 100 modern people on an island, they’d probably get to work building little roles and hierarchies. Looking for solutions. At least some of them would. 100 primitive people on an island? We already have that, they think planes are gods. I get that primitive is an ugly word, but primordial is too niche and ancient is too vague. If our primitive ancestors had more nuanced thoughts about society, why do we have no evidence of them? That evidence would be bigger societies, or at least collaborative attempts at bigger societies. There’s no way humans have just privately, quietly held onto 21st century thoughts for the entire time we’ve genetically been this way. That period of time (I draw the line liberally, genetics are tough) spans 100,000+ years, and we have no evidence of anybody acting on any kind of base kit. At some point a few thoughts just snowballed, and our psychology outpaced our biology in ways that allowed us to build a global online society in the blink of an eye, when you compare it to how much time we spent stagnated. Every human in history wasn't just holding all of that in. The way we think right now emerged. Entire generations lived and died without ever imagining democracy, let alone global egalitarianism of the sort we aspire to today. We should give ourselves (modern people) some credit, we pushed the frontiers of consciousness. I’m unusually passionate about this stuff, I don’t mean to come across as strange, I just try to share this perspective because I think it’s a more honest view of what we are
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 07:03:25 +0000 UTCThere are documented cases of ancient philosophers questioning the ideas of morality that were seen as “base kit” at the time. This is such a weird claim. Not to be rude but it genuinely strikes me as strange. When you tell a child they are doing something wrong, 9/10 their first question will be why. You can create social and societal pressures to enforce a shared understanding but the concept of questioning those ideals isn’t just some new thing that just popped up. I don’t mean to derail what the actual video is about, but this feels like a huge flaw in the foundation of your point to me.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 06:39:24 +0000 UTCI must disagree - The are other human states, such as those achieved in meditation, which we have no reason to believe exist in other species, including our prehistoric human ancestors. People who are able to enter meditative states are only able to do so because there is quite a bit of guidance that has been accumulated since the 1960s when western and eastern philosophies began swapping spit. Myself, many people who I know, and more still on a global scale have taken steps to learn the skill of meditating, in my case through mentors. I have made decisions through meditation that have altered the direction of my life. This is an example of a cultural development facilitating alternative thinking. People did not know about this stuff when we were hunter gatherers - ancient humans were overall less intelligent than we are. Our advancement as a species has been an exponential curve that only JUST started to get interesting. Family groups of early humans roved around for HUNDREDS of generations cyclically before anyone was self-aware enough to conceptualize "cultural pressures". But here’s the kicker, they were almost genetically identical to us. You could pluck one out and raise it in 2025 and it would grow up to be a normal 2025 human. The reason nobody built cities like ours back then was a lack of social cohesion like we have now; Social cohesion we’ve only achieved through ideas like gods, then kings, then democracy. If people were having more nuanced thoughts in prehistoric days, they would have created more nuanced civilizations. The rapid spike in human intelligence CANNOT be explained by genetic evolution. I can concede if you meant psychological evolution (psychological evolution being the advancement of thought over time) but then I think you might be agreeing with me. Maybe we're just working with different information here, not ruling that out
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 06:20:26 +0000 UTCYeah, I caught that you were claiming the opposite. But thats the part I would heavily disagree with. Those moral nuances have existed since humanity evolved the ability to understand them. I think modern society has created room for those ideas to be expressed without societal repercussions. But I highly doubt ancient humans weren’t also grappling with these ideas. I can concede if your point is simply that, “post conventional ideals were less common due to cultural pressures” or something like that.
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 06:00:16 +0000 UTCYo thanks for commenting - I think maybe “high fantasy” would be the more precise term. Obviously nothing is stopping a writer from doing down-to-earth, gritty story featuring elves and magic rocks and ancient wizard wars. I’m gesturing more towards an essential “fantasy vibe” if you want to call it that. Comprised of certain archetypes, themes, motifs, conflicts. The idea of “worthiness” for example only works in a conventional-level story, unless the story wants to go “well what IS worthiness?” which would make it post- conventional. Because it’s taking a step back Also I’m not claiming ancient life had the same moral nuances we do now, I’m claiming the exact opposite but perhaps I didn’t word it well enough
LocalScriptMan
2025-03-05 05:53:53 +0000 UTCAt the 4:30 mark, and I know i should watch the whole video first before commenting, but the claim that Fantasy as a genre takes place in the conventional level feels like a really bad take to me. Claiming fantasy only exists on the level with heros to root for and villains to boo at feels so wrong to me because Ive read so much fantasy that does deconstruct ideas like this. The Blade Itself, GOT, and Malazan all feel like they deconstruct these ideas and they are all seen as shining examples of Fantasy in action. Im probably misunderstanding this point but that line has me crashing out. If ancient life had the same moral nuances that we have now, how does expressing that in media make a story not fantasy?
Straps-of-skin
2025-03-05 05:48:12 +0000 UTC
