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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?

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[-] davidgro@lemmy.world 74 points 1 week ago

Assuming it's a surprise, this is Earth All Along. Genre Shift is similar, but that's more about tone than plot

[-] Silentiea 24 points 1 week ago

Specifically the After the End variant

[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago

You maniacs, you blew it all up!

[-] somethingsnappy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Flintsonian/Jetson

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[-] Hobo@lemmy.world 48 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I have no idea the answer to your question, but I now know like 99% of people on lemmy have shitty reading comprehension.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Seriously. There's a dozen links to TvTropes and almost none of them match OP's description, but they're all upvoted to high heaven. Not to mention the unrelated replies talking about their favorite stories which don't actually match the trope either.

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[-] naught101@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] zlatiah@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I... agree. Did get a lot of great recommendations tho!

[-] I_Clean_Here@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

People on here seem to not know what a trope is. Holy hell.

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 40 points 1 week ago
[-] lupec@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago

I knew a tvtropes link was going to be here as soon as I saw the question lol, here goes my next three hours I guess

[-] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 week ago

How was your trip?

Oh you're still going? Nice. Enjoy your stay!

[-] Archer@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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 country because it was assembled from the fragmented records of what remained of the Middle East.

[-] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago

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?

[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago

Yeah, Adventure Time

[-] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago

You mean like Adventure Time?

[-] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

They are pretty obvious about it being a post nuclear war reality.

[-] Boozilla@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago

Not 100% sure, but these come to mind.

  • Science Fantasy
  • Dying Earth
  • Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
[-] cordlessmodem@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

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

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[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted 19 points 1 week ago

I really like the term "Science Fantasy". It acknowledges the parallels with Science Fiction but respects how they differ as well.

[-] CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

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? :)

[-] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 week ago

You mean like “dwarves and elves are GMO humans” and “magic is actually tech gadgets” ?

[-] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

For a pure magic 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. Still, with magic.

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 in combat 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

[-] Mbourgon@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Yeah, Sanderson earned the cred on the original trilogy. It’s a fantasy series, but the magicians are basically Jedi. Great stuff!

[-] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And the powers, as in all the Cosmere, has limits which balances it out.

No endless pushes, flying, etc. every world has some resources or constraint so you’re not left with a “Superman” kind of scenario.

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[-] binary45@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago

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).

NK Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy comes to mind, fantastic series it that's your thing

[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

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.

Tap for spoilerLike 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.

[-] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted 8 points 1 week ago

Hifantapodysfut.

Pronounced [haiːfæntʌpoʊdɪsfuːt].

(Transcribed according to IPA/English.)

[-] Silentiea 5 points 1 week ago
[-] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] Silentiea 13 points 1 week ago
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[-] WolvenSpectre@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

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

[-] OpenStars@discuss.online 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Saying Chrono Trigger had shitty graphics for it's time is the hottest take I've ever seen lol.

[-] benignintervention@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Where have you seen this? I've been looking for some stories like it

[-] pech@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

The Wheel of Time does this.

[-] dexa_scantron@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, though clues are few and far between; the

spoilermuseum in Tanchico with the Mercedes hood ornament
is the biggest clue. From Jordan's other writings, the
spoilerFirst 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.

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[-] Rigal@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Shan ara chronicles has just that and I searched it in tvtropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheShannaraChronicles#:~:text=The%20Shannara%20Chronicles%20is%20an%20American%20post-apocalyptic%20fantasy%20drama%20television

The Reveal: Not that the characters particularly care, but Safehold turns out to be the 3000 year old remains of San Francisco

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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
169 points (100.0% liked)

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