 So, I am currently reading through the Broken Empire trilogy. I'm only part way done. I finished the first book, Prince of Thorns, and it's pretty good so far. It's a good, dark fantasy series, and for the most part, its setting doesn't really stand out that much. At least, it doesn't seem to do so at first. It seems like, okay, there's this vaguely medieval European-inspired world, there's a bunch of warring small kingdoms, there was an ancient civilization many hundreds or thousands of years ago that had some crazy magic or crazy technology of which there are remnants now. However, this does stand out in one very important way. You see, this world is our world after a giant apocalyptic event, which seems to be implied to be some sort of nuclear war, so technology has regressed a lot, and there's also magic out there, for some reason. Now this isn't a twist, both the audience and the characters find out about this relatively early on. I think we're maybe two or three chapters in before the main character starts mentioning that he's reading a book written by Plutarch, who was a real-life historian, and he's writing about the Spartans and Leonidas and stuff. And then, as time goes on, they mention, okay, there was an old civilization here, and then you see artifacts from it, and you realize, okay, this was just our world. For example, there is this place called the Tall Castle, which is the remnant of some old builder ruin, like they call our civilization now, they call them the builders, and as they describe it, for a while you realize, oh, okay, that's just a parking garage, which actually, yeah, that would be pretty defensible if you've turned it into a castle and your opponents only had medieval technology, that would work pretty well. And then you also, at one point, meet an artificial intelligence inside a computer, and the characters don't know what it is, they refer to it as a spirit trapped within a machine, but we know what it is, and there's also chemical weapons left over from our civilization that they find, and things like that, it's made really, really clear, okay, this is our world about a thousand years in the future. And while I do think all this is kind of cool, it would be a lot cooler if I hadn't seen basically this exact thing done a hundred times already. See, a fantasy story, specifically an epic fantasy or heroic fantasy story, taking place on Earth, sometimes in the distant past, especially in the distant future after some sort of apocalyptic event, like, that pops up a lot, but every time it pops up, people treat it like it's some big twist, some big original twist that they've never seen before, and every time that happens, I'm just confused and a little gaslit, to be honest, because I'm thinking, I've seen this a lot, it has happened a lot. The first series that was an epic fantasy as we think of it today, and even if you could compare old myths and legends to epic fantasy and say, that was the original and all the stuff today is derived from that, yes, obviously, but the first one that is the way we think of it today was Lord of the Rings, and that was supposed to take place on our world in the very distant past. I believe Tolkien said it was about 6,000 years ago that all this was supposed to take place, and yes, so that's Earth, that's Earth in the past, but then there were no real big epic fantasy franchises coming out until several decades later with the Shinara Chronicles, and that was like the next one which really helped it start growing and eventually enter the mainstream. And in the Shinara Chronicles, that one takes place on the Earth in the future, and it's after some big apocalyptic event, and all the radiation and chemicals and stuff have mutated humans into various other groups, like elves and gnomes and trolls and stuff. Now in Shinara Chronicles, it's treated as a big twist, which is revealed much later, except in the television show where it's just kind of there, and the characters just know about it from the beginning, but the point is, it is our world in the distant future, and these two books, or rather these two book series or franchises, whatever you want to call them, are basically the foundation for epic fantasy as we think of it today, and they both did some variation on this trope, so why do people still treat it like it's some new original thing? I should point out that this trope or variations of it are also done in science fiction a lot, but that's not what we're here to talk about, you know, like there's stuff like Battlestar Galactica where it's revealed, oh, okay, all of this took place many thousands of years ago, and then they just show up on Earth and then that's the end, they populate the Earth and then became our world. You know, stuff like that, it's actually fairly common, but that's not what I'm here to talk about, I'm really just talking about this from a fantasy perspective, specifically fantasy that's on our world sometime in the future, but again, there are some variations of that. Basically, if I had to summarize the entire point of this video, like as quickly and as succinctly as I could, I would basically just say that this trope is super overdone, and it's just not that good in the first place, and it should be retired, you know, we should just stop doing it as a society, or at least wait a while before we start doing it again, you know, let it cool off in our memories, and then when it comes back, it'll be like, oh, hey, it's almost a nice surprise, like, I generally am against blanket bands on tropes or cliches, I'm generally against just saying like, oh, this is always bad, because it's always going to be the execution of it, you know, that's always 150% of the time going to be more important than just the basic idea. Any idiot can come up with an idea, it's how you do it that's important. But the thing is, when it's played straight, like when it is just, hey, characters and or the audience at some point, figure out that this world is just our world in the distant future, except now there's magic and stuff, like when it's played straight like that, it is so overdone, and it never adds anything to the story. Like if you want proof that it's overdone, here are some more examples. Now, in addition to, again, just it happening a lot, the main reason that so many of these are so terrible is because a lot of times it's a twist that comes in near the end, and it's a twist that's kind of just there for the sake of having a twist. You know, I've mentioned before that for a twist to really work, it has to fit into three criteria. Number one, it has to be surprising, you know, the audience can't really see it coming too easily, and that's the main one people always focus on. But then number two, it also has to make sense, you know, if it opens plot holes or it doesn't really make sense with character motivations or anything like that, that's also a problem. And less people understand that one, but it's still something they think about. But number three is the big one, and that's that it has to actually change the way you look at the story, or at least change the way it moves going forward. You know, it has to make you look at a character differently and look at their actions in a new light, or look at the events of the story differently, or hammer home some sort of theme that it's been trying to hammer home, or make you look at this world differently, or something. You know, if it doesn't do that, then sure, it'll catch you off guard and it might even make sense, but what was the point of having it? And most of the time when this trope of it being Earth all along is invoked, it's not done well. A good example of this would be in Lightning Return's Final Fantasy XIII, which is a confusing title, even if you have played the game, and even if you haven't, it's probably very, very confusing. But basically, at the end of the game, all the people on this dying world go to a new world, and then when you see it, it's very strongly implied to be Earth, but we don't really see that much of it. Like, maybe they all just went to Earth and it was already here, maybe they created the Earth, but if they created it, then why would they only be arriving here, like, in the modern day instead of thousands of years ago? Like, it's kind of confusing, and honestly, the creators of the game don't seem to know what was going on there either, because they just said it's up to interpretation, which, I mean, maybe they know it and they just don't want to come right out and say it, but I kind of doubt that. I kind of feel like they were just confused too, and they're like, I don't know, you figure it out. I don't know, I just, I feel like this isn't adding anything, because it comes in right at the end, and because it's so confusing and muddled that I don't see any real message there, and it very easily could have just been them, hey, we created a new world, and it's just some, you know, generic landscape of, like, rolling green fields and forests and such, and they just go, wow, we have a new home, and then that's, that's it. They, they're, they're good now, that this new world is their new home, like, that would have been fine, and it would have been less confusing. There's an old anime called Utawari Rumono, which does something kind of similar. Like, there's a big twist near the end where, like, the main character of this whole series has been amnesiac, like, he doesn't know who he is or where he comes from or any of his past, and this whole time, near the end, he finds out he's been a god this whole time, except that, like, in the modern day, he was discovered by archaeologists, and then he came back much later after some sort of apocalypse, and there were some humans left, and then he, like, killed all of them because they killed his wife and his children, and he was upset, and then he, like, erased his own memory, and then just decided to live as, like, a normal person, and it's... Look, it's confusing when I'm describing it, but it's even more confusing watching, trust me. And once I figured out what was going on at the very end of the show, I remember thinking, well, what does that add? Why couldn't he just be a god who lost his loved ones and then lost his memory? Like, what does adding the fact that this is all Earth in the very distant future add? It adds nothing. That's the trick of it. It adds nothing but confusion, I should say. So, like, why would you want it in there? Why would you put it in there? And it's one of those things that's just a twist for the sake of having a twist, which is the same problem that a lot of M. Night Shyamalan's movies have faced, because, you know, after the sixth sense, he became known as, like, the guy who puts massive twists at the end of his movies, and now he just kind of puts them in there for the sake of having it, even if it doesn't always really work. Like, Split is a good example. Like, I know that led into, like, the sequel and everything, but still Split, I think, would have just been a better movie had there not been that big twist at the end, and it had just been, hey, this crazy dude with powers is keeping this girl hostage. Like, it would have been a lot better. Now, I will say that the revelation of Earth all along, or something along those lines, is generally a lot better if it's not a twist that comes in at the last second. Earlier this year, I read a series called The Dinosaur Lords, which you can check out my thoughts on, if you feel like it, and that series was, unfortunately, never finished. The author died halfway through writing it, but it's not on Earth, right? It's this world where, you know, there's medieval-level technology and characters see magic at a few points, and there's dinosaurs on and around, obviously, as well. But all the technology we, the audience, realize pretty quick is just very advanced technology. And it's also very heavily implied that this world that they're on is actually the planet Venus, sometime way in the future after it's been terraformed. And obviously, this raises the question of, well, okay, if all these humans came here and colonized it, why do they not know that? And why is their technology level so low? And what exactly is going on with them? And what's going on with the gray angels? And, you know, things like that, it brings up a lot of questions. And so, if this had just been a twist right at the end, then we wouldn't have time to really think about all this and to wonder and to theorize, which is fun on its own, but also, it would, how do I put this? It would feel almost like it was purposely hiding information from us in order to make the twist, which is not always a good idea. Basically, it makes us view the setting a lot differently, and it makes us wonder what's truly going on, which is half the fun of these sorts of stories, rather than just being, aha, I tricked you, audience, like, trying to outsmart your audience, or for that matter, trying to outsmart whatever piece of media you're interacting with, is not really the point, and I'm not sure why people keep trying to do it, but they do. And this brings me back to Prince of Thorns again. Like, this is just a setting, which in most ways seems like a regular fantasy setting, and you could probably substitute it for a lot of other things, and it wouldn't change that much, but by putting it in our world, it's just kind of a unique setting. You know, that's all. It's just a unique world that similar adventures happen in, and so far, at least, it doesn't really seem to be that big a deal. They aren't making a huge thing out of it. If I had to sum this up, I would just say it doesn't dominate everything the way it often does when it's a big twist at the end, because then you have to look at everything through that lens. Whereas in Prince of Thorns, it's just, hey, medieval world, our technology occasionally pops up, there you go. It's like how a substantial portion of modern fantasy takes place in European-inspired worlds, specifically medieval European-inspired worlds, but if it takes place in a world inspired by, say, feudal Japan or ancient Greece or something, then that makes it look a lot different, and as long as they don't make a huge deal out of that, it's just a different setting, which can be fun to explore and can be fun to experience all these stories and all these characters in. And another series that does this decently well, I think, is Wheel of Time, because in that it is implied to be our world in the way, way distant future, like many thousands of years from now after there have already been several apocalyptic-scale events, but it's also eventually going to come back and become our world again, because this whole thing is just a commentary on the cyclical nature of history and the cyclical nature of time, and it's also kind of a meta-commentary on the fantasy genre as a whole, how it's basically the same things happening over and over again, but it's slightly different every time, but again, I did a video on that quite a while ago. You can check it out if you want. Look, I'm just going to end this by saying, yes, obviously this trope can be done okay. This idea of, oh, it was actually Earth the whole time in the very distant past or the very distant future, specifically in the distant future after some sort of apocalyptic event which wiped out our current civilization, and like that can be fine, but just not when it's played straight, and especially not when it's played straight, and there's a big twist because it's a big twist, especially near the end, because that's just been done so many times and it raises questions and it doesn't really add anything at this stage. So I don't know, I guess if you're an aspiring writer and you're planning on trying something like that, maybe just don't, and if you are, then maybe try doing it at least in a different way, like again, Wheel of Time or Dinosaur Lords, and if you're not going to do it in a different way, at least don't make a huge deal out of it like Prince of Thorns does. You know, like that works out pretty well, at least so far. Again, I haven't finished by the time you see this video I may have finished, but you know, it may be it'll fall apart by the end. Maybe the Dinosaur Lords would have fallen apart by the end. I don't know, but at least at the beginning it was better. And yeah, that's about all. That was just kind of a ranty video that I wanted to make because I've seen this so many times and so many people still treat it like it's this great new idea and it isn't. It hasn't been new for so many decades now. And that's all. Goodbye. Subscribe, check out social media stuff, all that. Goodbye. Hello for everyone who watched this far, all these names. 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