I massively simplified the evolution of why we walk upright. Of course there is way more to it than just our glute muscles, but the opportunity to ask "Where is your ass?" was too good to pass up.
I disagree with the idea of Lucas simply being lazy in the world building/storytelling with the droids in the pod. No one would think that droids put THEMSELVES in an escape pod. No one would think that droids would try to save their lives or do anything of the sort when no one knew that Princess Leia had droids with her. Most droids are only mildly independent in Star Wars, and that is consistent throughout the first 6 movies. C-3PO and R2-D2 are exceptions to the rule and not the norm. That and the people looking for escapees are only expecting living beings to try to escape. Also, remember that if you have highly competent soldiers, they will shoot at all the lifepods, and stop your story from progressing. It can still bother you, but I disagree with your point here. That, and springing for shields on a dinky lifepod sounds like a waste of resources for a ship builder. These people are far from magnanimous. How many small shield generators do you need to cover ALL of the lifepods? 30? 50? 100? 200? This creates an inconsistency in the world by now enforcing this financial burden to be put onto every ship built. It doesn’t make sense when the pod doesn’t need it to re-enter an atmosphere.
One important question regarding genetic magic is, if magic is accessible through evolution, do animals have it? And if so, how would that have influenced their evolution?
Insectivores would have large clusters of long feelers for locating insects that have evolved runes of invisibility on their bodies (except during mating season, when a pigment change nullifies the runes). The fluffy front limbs of birds that evolved to keep their chicks warm, for example, would serve the additional function of feather-dusting tree branches to find invisible insects. These limbs would not be wings since birds fly using levitation.
Wonderful video! Your discussion on invasive fantasy species made me think of a funny discussion on tumblr I saw awhile ago discussing George RR Martin's worldbuilding regarding the Kingswood. According to the books, the land (temperate rainforest twice the size of Scotland with winter occurring every 10 years or so) was originally for keeping the dragon's fed on venison and boar meat. Which on paper, sounds neat! And it adds a bit of worldbuilding flair which is what i'm guessing was what George was going for. It makes a lot of sense to have a huge deer reserve for them to feed on rather then trying to raise additional livestock, it takes less manpower and from a writers perspective it's easy to add in to explain how they were able to feed the dragons without having a huge industry designated just for raising dragons. The problem people noticed with this though was: 1) nobody is allowed to hunt in this massive forest except for the royal family or people the royal family gives permission to 2) It is mentioned a few times that wolves were killed off and treated as pests so no large natural predators besides "maybe" a bear or two 3) Large gaps between winters and going back to temperate rain forest, the weather isn't extreme enough to kill animals. What people noticed was that the Targaryen's had created a massive man made ecosystem with no natural predators besides dragons and the odd person every so often. So once the dragons were gone the Kingswood would have had a massive, uncontrolled Deer overpopulation! Deermageddon! The post was funny because somebody sat down and did the math based off IRL deer overpopulation and the area coverage and estimated that in order to fix the deer overpopulation in the Kingswood they would have to kill something in the ballpark of at "LEAST" FIVE THOUSAND deer a MONTH*. 5000 deer alone would have been enough to solve the food crisis in king's landing. Thats not even touching the boar overpopulation For those who don't know why this is a problem you can look up Canada's yellowstone park and the impact reintroducing wolves has had on the environment (esp on the health of the elk population). Not only are all those deer stripping all the bark off the young trees, any new plant life is getting demolished by overgrazing. Not to mention the spread of disease since sickly deer are not being culled. Based on the information we have from the book this means that there is potentially a 50 year gap between the oldest trees and the younger trees. This is really "really" bad news for any society that relies on wood for literally anything. This means that any tree they harvest from the Kingswood isn't going to have a replacement of a similar size for at least 50 years. Basically, King's landing is one good forest fire/tree disease away from a really catastrophic wood shortage. George is a really good writer, but this is definitely a prime example of adding a fantasy creature into the environment that wasn't fully thought out.
Bless the gods of the algorithm for recommending me this video! I haven't been educated in such an informative, yet sympathetic and competent way in years (and that is saying something because I'm studying in MedSchool and getting educated makes up about 80% of my life right now)
When you mentioned transportation in Harry Potter that made me think of a magical Courier Service that would have a protective status light the Marshalls
"Mages in Cages" that's a great band name! As a former biology major I really appreciated you bring it up how natural selection would favor or go against magic as a genetic trait. Honestly, many advantageous traits in various species come in small numbers because of a feedback balance system. Take cheaters. In one species of burrow birds, the males construct nests to show off to advertise for females. Most males build nests. Very few are cheaters who steal nests and sneak in while the builder is out collecting unique parts. The cheater ends up making and running away while the builder raises young that don't belong to him. Now why doesn't everyone become a cheater? Well anytime the population of cheaters goes over a certain number, less burrow birds are born and it adds pressure for some to just build their nests. This feedback loop could persist with magic. Mages are cheaters after all. They should be caged. Mages in cages. Lol
When you mentioned the curtains let me think of like glass being expensive serve the lower class and you happen to have glass maybe that's a way of singling you're in the mafia
You are right. Also I think IRL commoners would flex different ways. They would buy long shoes and hats, and bags. :-) Also in a fantasy world there can be a good reason to get a glass window instead...
I'm not really of the intro, to be honest. It reinforces the idea that a "medieval" world in a fantasy universe has to resemble any medieval era on earth. In this example also nothing indicates that the setting has to be "medieval", or there is no automatic spinning and sewing or any magic producing cheaper made products. If anything it just reinforces that idea fantasy setting = (european) medieval setting with little changes.
Nice curtains are probably not feasible, but scrap fabric that is stained and tattered and not good for anything else might as well be used to shade a window
@@JustInTimeWorlds Thankfully building an ecosystem has been one of my priorities with my project. I also don't imagine my world as being single-biome. I just haven't really worked on any part of my world yet. Bit by bit
Fun fact, owls have the magical ability to locate anybody in the world. That's why the wizards use them. But you're right. They should have owls in teleportation post offices
Indeed,@@JustInTimeWorlds . On the other hand, is hard to imagine how the story could be more successful. Maybe consistency holes in the worldbuilding can be a good thing, depending on the story we are telling. Perhaps every story demands a different "consistency level" in the setting. And for Harry Potter the consistency level of its setting is the perfect one. That's why so many people loves those books. Perhaps not. I just got that idea right now.
@@thiagom8478 Harry Potter worked well for its audience, but I think that’s more because we were very attached to the characters. The world was whimsical and fun, and especially in the first books, the holes weren’t apparent. By the time they started appearing, we were invested in Harry so it didn’t matter as much. It’s an easy story to use as illustration though because so many people have read it, so the examples are clearer.
The reason apparition is not used more often in Harry Potter is because it's incredibly dangerous, more so at long distances, and takes a lot of magic power and concentration. It's also sometimes inaccurate. The reasons why floo powder isn't used for this purpose are that sometimes the messages could burn up or be magically sensitive in other ways. Floo powder is also more expensive than owl feed
I think this video is great because not only are you ranting, but you’re backing it up with how to prevent these problems in the first place from popping up in our stories! What is the ass?
A teleporting wizard/witch would still have to walk onto Hogwarts' grounds due to the barriers/limitation. Also, Harry's owl got to the Leaking Cauldron before Harry in POA, so owls used by wizardkind might be faster than the ones Muggles know of.
I'm not a fantasy writer but I'm trying to write a story that only works in a fantasy setting and I struggled to create a hard magic system that wasn't based on religious concepts or woo. A week or so ago I decided that magic appeared when predation appeared in bacteria because magic is will at a distance (paraphrasing Aleister Crowley) but it's creating a few problems as much as it's fixing others.
Hey, you might want to check out my magic made easy video :) ruclips.net/video/LtWG5j-jFk4/видео.html It should help you structure your magic system in such a way that it serves your story, which is the point of magic in fantasy.
While it's never stated in the text owls in the HP are clearly magically enhanced in some way (they can *always* find the recipient and seem to be able to fly long distances uncommonly fast), in some of the additional writings of the series it mentions some animals are more/less magical than others. Of course this is all post hoc justification...Owl Post is cool and you'll never take it away from me.
I think the single biome planet is pretty reasonable in certain situations. An "all rainforest" world could be maintained by an atmosphere rich in water and a topography that forms millions of ponds and lakes, but no seas, meaning there are marshier parts of the planet and less marshy parts. a relatively flat planet would excel as an all rainforest world, especially if its close enough to it's star to maintain heat at the poles This would cause the poles to be the only seasonal parts of the planet in effect too, having very boggy, dead winters during their 1-6 months of eternal night.
I want to thank you very much for your videos, THANK YOU!! I've actually been able to find inconsistencies in my own ideas and even in series I've read or watched (by no means I'm saying that you ruined them for me, I'm just saying that you made me much better at worldbuilding). Now that you mentioned Star Wars, it seems weird to me that ships have astronomical amounts of energy to travel faster than light, but laser weapons don't even have a fraction of that power, which is why I like Warhammer 40k's space travel because opening The portals are not primarily about the amount of energy but the type of energy, which is psychic energy, but they still need "ordinary" energy to travel, so they use nuclear batteries. However, Warhammer 40k has single-theme planets, such as forged worlds or farming worlds, and I haven't read enough of the lore or books to tell whether they have a level of trade that supports single-theme planets. At least I think they should. About the impact of large fantasy creatures, you have also taught me that it is important to think about their impact (I have heard an analysis that dragons should have large animals to feed on and dune sandworms could exist if they had a way of eating like whale sharks in an ecosystem that manages to survive beneath the desert sand), so even when I do soft world building to practice, like an island in the sky, for example, I think about how they get their resources in the environment I have devised (water, food, tools, clothing, homes, culture, beliefs, and if the environment seems advanced, then I have to think about trade, currency, transportation, economics, etc.) seriously , after taking your lessons I say: "Now I can see everything." !" Thanks again. Since you mentioned books again, and I know you made a video about books and I should and want to watch it again, but have you thought about expanding the topic to libraries? I'm referring to their history and how they could be used in a fantasy setting without falling into inconsistencies.
Related to this---I wanted the main character in my current story to eat potatoes at a couple of points (partially because I can't imagine a maritime culture without fish and chips). The problem is that the archipelago he's from is supposed to be pseudo-medieval fantasy Sweden, more or less. Which... Swedish Vikings didn't have potatoes. So I had to come up with a legend describing a time, hundreds of years before the main story, when a fleet of ships sailed to another land and came back with a bunch of crops and crafts and fantastical things that the dragon-bound elves had never seen before, including potatoes.
I support this legend. Lief Eriksson did in fact sail to America, but they failed to establish a presence on the continent. Potatoes could have made their way back.
Single biome planets can be used for resources. Dune being an obvious one, but a dead planet with oil or gemstone deposits. Endless Sky has some of the best explanations for their planets. One planet having ceased it's tectonic movement, no longer has mountains and is terraformed into essentially a grain planet.
It's actually in good proportion to the views. The problem is the views are low, and that ties back to my thumbnail game and RUclips's algorithm. It's an ongoing learning curve for me, though it has dramatically picked up this year so maybe I've finally learned to construct reasonable thumbnails :) Thank you for your kind words!
So I've actually just shot a video on elite soldiers where I spoke about the Sardaukar and another about AI where I also spoke about Dune and the impact of forbidding AI. About Arrakis itself, I know it's a single biome world and I just ranted out it, but Arrakis works because it was engineered through the introduction of the sandworm, so essentially, bringing a piece of fauna to a place it had no business being. There's a reason for the biome to be a desert. Almost everything I gripe about here is very fixable, case in point for single biomes, Arrakis :D
I don't know why genetic magic is so important. I mean I do, because it's an easy answer as to why some people have super powers. But I like magic as a craft that needs to be studied, and mastered, then you get to delve into how wizards approach their craft
It depends on the story you want to tell. I used a genetic type magic system because I had a specific type of theme I wanted to explore about power and it's movement between classes and magic became a great vehicle for that.
Well, I will not make the case that Harry Potter is perfectly consistent all the time (I am not that good in the art of argumentation) but I do think we can save the owl letters. Is a lot faster and safer to send things from one continent to another by plane, still, despite of that, almost no cargo actually travel that way. We still use that ancient method of sending stuff on floating devices on the top of water. Despite how slow it is, and despite the risk of Somalian pirates, storms, Islamic freedom fighters, icebergs, etc. There is tradition, in favour of that old method. Ships are charming too. But mostly I believe we do use cargo ships because they are less expensive. Sure, we have wizards who can teleport. However, they are a small percentage of magical world population, and the ones on top in terms of status. Presumably their time costs more than the time of your average owl. Same way the transport of a kilogram by airplane costs more than the transport of the same kilogram by ship. Maybe that's cruel with the birds but no one needs to necessarily be a Marxist to believe that there is not inconsistent for Economic Rationality to be cruel. Is very much in character for that this lady, that sort of cruelty.
The cheaper argument is pretty good, we do use ships because it's cheaper, but it's cheaper because ships can carry more than planes. I'd argue that a human with a sack can carry more than an owl, so I could probably make it cheaper for a human, especially given that magic in Harry Potter universe is essentially limitless. I mean, I've never seen them run out of energy or out of spells or anything like that :D But I'm willing to be persuaded to keep owl post!
Well, magic is not limited by fuel,@@JustInTimeWorlds . I believe it is a scarce resource still, but the limiting factor is wizards. You only get a spell if you have someone to perform it. And there are something like 5 schools delivering wizards to society around the entire world. Hogwarts is among the largest and it can fit all this students inside one single hall for dinner. Wizards must be extremely rare in that world. We just don't notice that, because our window for this world opens to the lives of characters who happen to be wizardlings. Well, that's my head canon for that subject. For the moment.
Divergent is a pleasant example to me, because I loved the setting until almost the end, when they present the reason for all that, and "solve" the "problem" by making that society copy ours. Sure, their caste system is over-simplistic, but they do have a peasant caste: most daily items could presumably came from them. Or you could have specialized industry inside every single caste (Warriors making their own weapons, for instance). My personal solution for the setting would be to have a couple hundred castes, give or take, instead, but I think they could make it work as it is. If the author intended to make it work. That's NOT the plan. This setting was designed to NOT work at all! Because the "message" is that caste systems do not work. Well, is a well know fact that those systems do work. They allow very, very, very stable and long lasting civilizations. Those civilizations are just not identical to ours in terms of individual rights, expectations, and morality. But the more I read fiction designed to "prove" the point that everything that is not us (or US, mostly) is Evil and unviable, the less I see NOT being like the society that needs to insist in that point as a bad thing. In the end this setting made me like the idea of caste systems a little more than I used to. By being unfair and dishonest with that idea.
What really bugged me is how the non-divergent were treated. Those people outside of the the caste systems just seemed to sit around and do literally nothing. If they had been making shoes and clothes and what not, I could have gotten behind that plan. Instead, they were just literally stuck in these hovels doing .... nothing. It drove me bananas. Even in India with the untouchables or in Japan with the eta, those people still had jobs to do in the society even when they were considered unclean and outcast. Ahem. I might be able to rant a LOT about Divergent :D
Yes, I see your point@@JustInTimeWorlds. One way to make it less absurd is to remember that's supposed to be post-apocalyptic. A world ended some generations before, and presumably they had a lot of resources in their hands left behind by a much larger civilization that isn't using those things anymore. Until their guns brake beyond repair they only need to repair what they have, they don't need to build new things. But I don't think that's the reason why things are that way in that society. Mostly. In my opinion its not laziness either, in that particular case. The setting was build to "feel" dysfunctional. With that chance to choose you caste at the beginning of adult life, if they had a reasonable variety of castes and some organic relation between them, the result would be more likeable than what the author wanted it to be. Is a case of torturing the worldbuilding, not for the sake of the story but for the sake of the message. That message being: caste systems are bad. To find fiction designed to prove that point suggest to me that one of the largest political parties in the author's country must have the introduction of a caste system listed among their core goals. Only excuse to make political propaganda anti-caste systems like that is to have the caste systems as a plausible possibility for your society, inside your Historical Horizon. Without that, it is too disproportional. One nice thing about caste systems in History (all of them) compared to that caste system, is that not one of them was designed having in mind the purpose of deliver the impression that it: "feel" dysfunctional.
Owls wouldnt be able to read the maybe secret/private messages, maybe owls are slow but the most reliable and cooperative ones, also u can always take them with you to send messages to someone when u are not near any post station whatsoever, magic is about fantasy and not about ohh what makes the most sense and logic every single second every single day
I'm so glad it's not just me that wants to bang their head on the wall at some fantasy worlds. The amount of "well it's in the south so there needs to be a desert there" maps that then stick a rain forest right next door at the same (or higher) latitudes drives me crazy. And then they'll stick some grassland next to the rainforest and then polar ice fields.. Or the small island of all the biomes where you go from baking subtropical desert to polar tundra in a place smaller than Great Britain. Fantasy video games tend to do this a lot (looking at you Elder Scrolls). NB: i love Elder Scrolls but the layout of Tamriel makes no ecological sense. Say what you will about Tolkien's world lacking diversity but at least he picked the region he wanted Middle Earth to reflect and stuck with it. On another Elder Scrolls mini-rant, the Nords supposedly sailed aouth to Skyrim from their ancestral continent. Skyrim is already a sub-polar climate with regular auroras so what kind of frozen tundra hellscape had they been living in up to that point!? And how did they feed themselves there? It must have made Svalbard seem cosy and hospitable.
Hahahahahaha, I swear world builders who do the arctic justice are so few and far between. It's one of my pet peeves too. *Stares at George R.R. Martin who calls Scotland the North*. As someone who lives up here, I feel there's a lot of disrespect for far northern weather conditions.
I agree but do have to ask: not every system we use makes sense in our world either, not because smarter ideas arent out there, but because too often politicians, govt, and religion get in the way of solving problems, as well as purposely creating nonsensical problems. So couldnt plenty of this happen in fantasy worlds too?
Oh absolutely. Everything I said here can be made to work :) The world builder, or writer, can always break the rules. Just don't be inconsistent by accident or as a mistake. If it's on purpose, go for it. It's your world :)
My setting has an inherited magic system, but it doesn't follow the rules of genetics. Why would it? It's not physical, it's more... spiritual. This way, I can justify dynasties of sorcerer-kings without everyone having some sorcery.
Sure, but then it's not a genetic system, it's the magic has chosen the family, like a curse or a blessing. Like oh, shape changers are a good example. In many legends, a family is cursed (or blessed depending on your perspective) with shape changing and the children inherit it.
Absolutely, but then just use owls for the last stretch. All of these things are fixable with just a little bit of attention to detail. That's why I bring them up, so world builders can put in that little bit of attention to detail and make their worlds work that little bit smoother.
Yes, but that is specifically designed to be that way for the sake of protecting the children (and protecting the world from those children, perhaps). You don't want every body to be able to walk in and out schools anytime, unless your world is really very safe. To block teleportation is the practical equivalent to have a wall around the place, I believe. Aside that I suspect (and I am not a hardcore fan of that particular setting, must admit) most people cannot teleport to Hogwarts, because most people cannot teleport at all. We get this notion that "everybody" can teleport in that universe because that's a story like Bram Stocker's Dracula: every main character is from the same social class/caste. The top of society. Some are at the top of that top, some are in the middle, and some are at the bottom of that top, but it is the elite of society. There are the barbarians outside, who not even know this civilization exists. But between them and the golden young lords and ladies who get to be students of Hogwarts there is a entire universe of people (many of them non-humans) who are not wizards but belong in wizard society. This people who could not afford the expensed of travel the world to hunt Dracula. And may have difficulty in get permission to move through national borders even. Hogwarts is one among a very small number (something like 5, I think) schools that teach magic. In the entire world. If you don't enter those schools, or if you enter them but fail in reach the standards, you will not learn magic. If you do learn some, you cannot legally use it. I don't know how small the number of wizards is, compared to the total of people who know magic exist. But I imagine it must be very small. Of course, we have on the side some non-humans who have innate magical powers (looks like) and the physiological need to live as slaves. Those are magic users, who are not high elite in wizard society. Perhaps they could carry the letters, instead of birds. Unless they are too few, and to own one of them happens to be a rare symbol of status.
¿Sabes que me saca de quicio en una trama? La malinterpretación de la naturaleza, he aquí algunos ejemplos y porque son malinterpretaciones: 1) Los depredadores son monstruos: Los depredadores no son monstruos, no matan por matar, matan para comer. 2) La naturaleza es sabia: Cerdo Babirusa ¿Tengo que decir más? 3) Las presas son inofensivas: ¿Tienes alguna idea de cuantas personas matan los hipopótamos y ciervos al año? Y lo hacen por diversión. 4) En la naturaleza solo sobreviven los fuertes: Esto claramente ignora el hecho de que el humano se expandió por el planeta gracias a su inteligencia, ignora que las hormigas y pulpos pueden acabar con cangrejos gracias a (en el caso de las hormigas) el trabajo en equipo o al ataque sorpresa (en el caso del pulpo), ignora el hecho de que existe un tipo de simbiosis llamada "mutualismo" e ignora cómo funciona la evolución.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
I massively simplified the evolution of why we walk upright. Of course there is way more to it than just our glute muscles, but the opportunity to ask "Where is your ass?" was too good to pass up.
I disagree with the idea of Lucas simply being lazy in the world building/storytelling with the droids in the pod. No one would think that droids put THEMSELVES in an escape pod. No one would think that droids would try to save their lives or do anything of the sort when no one knew that Princess Leia had droids with her. Most droids are only mildly independent in Star Wars, and that is consistent throughout the first 6 movies.
C-3PO and R2-D2 are exceptions to the rule and not the norm. That and the people looking for escapees are only expecting living beings to try to escape. Also, remember that if you have highly competent soldiers, they will shoot at all the lifepods, and stop your story from progressing. It can still bother you, but I disagree with your point here. That, and springing for shields on a dinky lifepod sounds like a waste of resources for a ship builder. These people are far from magnanimous. How many small shield generators do you need to cover ALL of the lifepods? 30? 50? 100? 200?
This creates an inconsistency in the world by now enforcing this financial burden to be put onto every ship built. It doesn’t make sense when the pod doesn’t need it to re-enter an atmosphere.
"You're just throwing glitter at the page and calling it magic." 🤣
One important question regarding genetic magic is, if magic is accessible through evolution, do animals have it? And if so, how would that have influenced their evolution?
Insectivores would have large clusters of long feelers for locating insects that have evolved runes of invisibility on their bodies (except during mating season, when a pigment change nullifies the runes). The fluffy front limbs of birds that evolved to keep their chicks warm, for example, would serve the additional function of feather-dusting tree branches to find invisible insects. These limbs would not be wings since birds fly using levitation.
Wonderful video! Your discussion on invasive fantasy species made me think of a funny discussion on tumblr I saw awhile ago discussing George RR Martin's worldbuilding regarding the Kingswood. According to the books, the land (temperate rainforest twice the size of Scotland with winter occurring every 10 years or so) was originally for keeping the dragon's fed on venison and boar meat. Which on paper, sounds neat! And it adds a bit of worldbuilding flair which is what i'm guessing was what George was going for. It makes a lot of sense to have a huge deer reserve for them to feed on rather then trying to raise additional livestock, it takes less manpower and from a writers perspective it's easy to add in to explain how they were able to feed the dragons without having a huge industry designated just for raising dragons. The problem people noticed with this though was:
1) nobody is allowed to hunt in this massive forest except for the royal family or people the royal family gives permission to 2) It is mentioned a few times that wolves were killed off and treated as pests so no large natural predators besides "maybe" a bear or two 3) Large gaps between winters and going back to temperate rain forest, the weather isn't extreme enough to kill animals.
What people noticed was that the Targaryen's had created a massive man made ecosystem with no natural predators besides dragons and the odd person every so often. So once the dragons were gone the Kingswood would have had a massive, uncontrolled Deer overpopulation! Deermageddon! The post was funny because somebody sat down and did the math based off IRL deer overpopulation and the area coverage and estimated that in order to fix the deer overpopulation in the Kingswood they would have to kill something in the ballpark of at "LEAST" FIVE THOUSAND deer a MONTH*. 5000 deer alone would have been enough to solve the food crisis in king's landing. Thats not even touching the boar overpopulation
For those who don't know why this is a problem you can look up Canada's yellowstone park and the impact reintroducing wolves has had on the environment (esp on the health of the elk population). Not only are all those deer stripping all the bark off the young trees, any new plant life is getting demolished by overgrazing. Not to mention the spread of disease since sickly deer are not being culled. Based on the information we have from the book this means that there is potentially a 50 year gap between the oldest trees and the younger trees. This is really "really" bad news for any society that relies on wood for literally anything. This means that any tree they harvest from the Kingswood isn't going to have a replacement of a similar size for at least 50 years. Basically, King's landing is one good forest fire/tree disease away from a really catastrophic wood shortage.
George is a really good writer, but this is definitely a prime example of adding a fantasy creature into the environment that wasn't fully thought out.
Deermageddon! Hahahahaha, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing I really enjoyed that.
@@JustInTimeWorlds wh- how did u read all that?
My will broke the moment I clicked on 'Show more'
Imagine if magic evolved before the last step in the evolutionary tree and there were magic chimpanzees...
That would be terrifying.
Well, that would have upset the apple cart as my mother liked to say!
That's how I imagine goblins
I always love your videos, you make such good points about why things do or don’t work
Thank you :) I was a little nervous about this one because there is always a way to make these things work, so I'm glad my community still enjoyed it!
the first example made me fear your wrath, now the rest of the video eased me up with your enterteining fury
I'm glad you enjoyed the rant :D
Bless the gods of the algorithm for recommending me this video!
I haven't been educated in such an informative, yet sympathetic and competent way in years (and that is saying something because I'm studying in MedSchool and getting educated makes up about 80% of my life right now)
You made a lot of great points but even better, you made me laugh a lot. Thank you ❤
When you mentioned transportation in Harry Potter that made me think of a magical Courier Service that would have a protective status light the Marshalls
"Mages in Cages" that's a great band name!
As a former biology major I really appreciated you bring it up how natural selection would favor or go against magic as a genetic trait. Honestly, many advantageous traits in various species come in small numbers because of a feedback balance system. Take cheaters. In one species of burrow birds, the males construct nests to show off to advertise for females. Most males build nests. Very few are cheaters who steal nests and sneak in while the builder is out collecting unique parts. The cheater ends up making and running away while the builder raises young that don't belong to him.
Now why doesn't everyone become a cheater? Well anytime the population of cheaters goes over a certain number, less burrow birds are born and it adds pressure for some to just build their nests. This feedback loop could persist with magic.
Mages are cheaters after all. They should be caged. Mages in cages. Lol
That’s an awesome example! Thanks for that
You're so insightful and entertaining!
Liked and subbed for sure.
Thank you for the kind words and welcome to my small corner of RUclips.
When you mentioned the curtains let me think of like glass being expensive serve the lower class and you happen to have glass maybe that's a way of singling you're in the mafia
Using glass back in the day was definitely a huge wealth flex.
You are right. Also I think IRL commoners would flex different ways. They would buy long shoes and hats, and bags. :-)
Also in a fantasy world there can be a good reason to get a glass window instead...
I'm not really of the intro, to be honest. It reinforces the idea that a "medieval" world in a fantasy universe has to resemble any medieval era on earth.
In this example also nothing indicates that the setting has to be "medieval", or there is no automatic spinning and sewing or any magic producing cheaper made products.
If anything it just reinforces that idea fantasy setting = (european) medieval setting with little changes.
You know what always makes my teeth itch?
Teeth worms.
:D Hah! Yes. Them too
Nice curtains are probably not feasible, but scrap fabric that is stained and tattered and not good for anything else might as well be used to shade a window
Or grass woven curtains. I could go for that.
@@JustInTimeWorlds I love that idea!
I’m trying to stay consistent in world building is what I’m working on.
I want to make sure nothing contradicts anything
It’s a constant battle for us all 😄 but worth it in reader engagement IMO
@@JustInTimeWorlds Thankfully building an ecosystem has been one of my priorities with my project. I also don't imagine my world as being single-biome. I just haven't really worked on any part of my world yet. Bit by bit
Can’t believe the RUclips algorithm blessed me with this hidden gem! Binging your videos right now - thank you for your work!
Very welcome!
Fun fact, owls have the magical ability to locate anybody in the world. That's why the wizards use them. But you're right. They should have owls in teleportation post offices
100% All these things are very fixable, they just need a little bit of attention to detail.
I just realized they cannot have criminals escaping justice in this world. Not by hiding from police.
@@thiagom8478 so many holes 😂😆
Indeed,@@JustInTimeWorlds . On the other hand, is hard to imagine how the story could be more successful. Maybe consistency holes in the worldbuilding can be a good thing, depending on the story we are telling.
Perhaps every story demands a different "consistency level" in the setting. And for Harry Potter the consistency level of its setting is the perfect one. That's why so many people loves those books.
Perhaps not. I just got that idea right now.
@@thiagom8478 Harry Potter worked well for its audience, but I think that’s more because we were very attached to the characters. The world was whimsical and fun, and especially in the first books, the holes weren’t apparent. By the time they started appearing, we were invested in Harry so it didn’t matter as much.
It’s an easy story to use as illustration though because so many people have read it, so the examples are clearer.
Great vid and excellent points. I'm glad your vid popped up in my feed. =)
I'm cackling!! 😂😂 i love these and wonderful tips! I'm discovering your channel for the first time this and I love the tips and humor! Great work!!
I feel like I've stumbled onto a treasure trove of content. I will be watching as many videos as I can.
Welcome to my small corner of RUclips :)
Your channel is very enriching, thank you!
The reason apparition is not used more often in Harry Potter is because it's incredibly dangerous, more so at long distances, and takes a lot of magic power and concentration. It's also sometimes inaccurate.
The reasons why floo powder isn't used for this purpose are that sometimes the messages could burn up or be magically sensitive in other ways. Floo powder is also more expensive than owl feed
Looking forward to the full "world building mistakes" series, rants and all 😂
Be careful what you wish for! :D
@@JustInTimeWorldsCareful? Nope, all the rants! This one already covered a bunch of stuff I worry over in my world building lol
I think this video is great because not only are you ranting, but you’re backing it up with how to prevent these problems in the first place from popping up in our stories!
What is the ass?
A teleporting wizard/witch would still have to walk onto Hogwarts' grounds due to the barriers/limitation.
Also, Harry's owl got to the Leaking Cauldron before Harry in POA, so owls used by wizardkind might be faster than the ones Muggles know of.
I'm not a fantasy writer but I'm trying to write a story that only works in a fantasy setting and I struggled to create a hard magic system that wasn't based on religious concepts or woo. A week or so ago I decided that magic appeared when predation appeared in bacteria because magic is will at a distance (paraphrasing Aleister Crowley) but it's creating a few problems as much as it's fixing others.
Hey, you might want to check out my magic made easy video :) ruclips.net/video/LtWG5j-jFk4/видео.html It should help you structure your magic system in such a way that it serves your story, which is the point of magic in fantasy.
While it's never stated in the text owls in the HP are clearly magically enhanced in some way (they can *always* find the recipient and seem to be able to fly long distances uncommonly fast), in some of the additional writings of the series it mentions some animals are more/less magical than others. Of course this is all post hoc justification...Owl Post is cool and you'll never take it away from me.
Heh. It is cool :) But I had to pick on something for the teleportation inconsistency and my criticism isn’t going to hurt HPs popularity 😂
I think the single biome planet is pretty reasonable in certain situations.
An "all rainforest" world could be maintained by an atmosphere rich in water and a topography that forms millions of ponds and lakes, but no seas, meaning there are marshier parts of the planet and less marshy parts. a relatively flat planet would excel as an all rainforest world, especially if its close enough to it's star to maintain heat at the poles
This would cause the poles to be the only seasonal parts of the planet in effect too, having very boggy, dead winters during their 1-6 months of eternal night.
I want to thank you very much for your videos, THANK YOU!! I've actually been able to find inconsistencies in my own ideas and even in series I've read or watched (by no means I'm saying that you ruined them for me, I'm just saying that you made me much better at worldbuilding). Now that you mentioned Star Wars, it seems weird to me that ships have astronomical amounts of energy to travel faster than light, but laser weapons don't even have a fraction of that power, which is why I like Warhammer 40k's space travel because opening The portals are not primarily about the amount of energy but the type of energy, which is psychic energy, but they still need "ordinary" energy to travel, so they use nuclear batteries. However, Warhammer 40k has single-theme planets, such as forged worlds or farming worlds, and I haven't read enough of the lore or books to tell whether they have a level of trade that supports single-theme planets. At least I think they should.
About the impact of large fantasy creatures, you have also taught me that it is important to think about their impact (I have heard an analysis that dragons should have large animals to feed on and dune sandworms could exist if they had a way of eating like whale sharks in an ecosystem that manages to survive beneath the desert sand),
so even when I do soft world building to practice, like an island in the sky, for example, I think about how they get their resources in the environment I have devised (water, food, tools, clothing, homes, culture, beliefs, and if the environment seems advanced, then I have to think about trade, currency, transportation, economics, etc.) seriously , after taking your lessons I say: "Now I can see everything." !" Thanks again.
Since you mentioned books again, and I know you made a video about books and I should and want to watch it again, but have you thought about expanding the topic to libraries? I'm referring to their history and how they could be used in a fantasy setting without falling into inconsistencies.
That's a good idea :) I'll add it to my list.
Related to this---I wanted the main character in my current story to eat potatoes at a couple of points (partially because I can't imagine a maritime culture without fish and chips). The problem is that the archipelago he's from is supposed to be pseudo-medieval fantasy Sweden, more or less. Which... Swedish Vikings didn't have potatoes. So I had to come up with a legend describing a time, hundreds of years before the main story, when a fleet of ships sailed to another land and came back with a bunch of crops and crafts and fantastical things that the dragon-bound elves had never seen before, including potatoes.
I support this legend. Lief Eriksson did in fact sail to America, but they failed to establish a presence on the continent. Potatoes could have made their way back.
Single biome planets can be used for resources. Dune being an obvious one, but a dead planet with oil or gemstone deposits.
Endless Sky has some of the best explanations for their planets. One planet having ceased it's tectonic movement, no longer has mountains and is terraformed into essentially a grain planet.
Your videos are so great, I often get frustrated by how few likes they get. I just dont understand
It's actually in good proportion to the views. The problem is the views are low, and that ties back to my thumbnail game and RUclips's algorithm. It's an ongoing learning curve for me, though it has dramatically picked up this year so maybe I've finally learned to construct reasonable thumbnails :) Thank you for your kind words!
If you've read enough of Dune, I'd love to listen to your take on the planet Arrakis and societies in that universe.
So I've actually just shot a video on elite soldiers where I spoke about the Sardaukar and another about AI where I also spoke about Dune and the impact of forbidding AI. About Arrakis itself, I know it's a single biome world and I just ranted out it, but Arrakis works because it was engineered through the introduction of the sandworm, so essentially, bringing a piece of fauna to a place it had no business being. There's a reason for the biome to be a desert.
Almost everything I gripe about here is very fixable, case in point for single biomes, Arrakis :D
I don't know why genetic magic is so important. I mean I do, because it's an easy answer as to why some people have super powers. But I like magic as a craft that needs to be studied, and mastered, then you get to delve into how wizards approach their craft
It depends on the story you want to tell. I used a genetic type magic system because I had a specific type of theme I wanted to explore about power and it's movement between classes and magic became a great vehicle for that.
Giving a hard limit on who can use magic gives you an inherent source of conflict.
Well, I will not make the case that Harry Potter is perfectly consistent all the time (I am not that good in the art of argumentation) but I do think we can save the owl letters. Is a lot faster and safer to send things from one continent to another by plane, still, despite of that, almost no cargo actually travel that way. We still use that ancient method of sending stuff on floating devices on the top of water. Despite how slow it is, and despite the risk of Somalian pirates, storms, Islamic freedom fighters, icebergs, etc.
There is tradition, in favour of that old method. Ships are charming too. But mostly I believe we do use cargo ships because they are less expensive.
Sure, we have wizards who can teleport. However, they are a small percentage of magical world population, and the ones on top in terms of status. Presumably their time costs more than the time of your average owl. Same way the transport of a kilogram by airplane costs more than the transport of the same kilogram by ship.
Maybe that's cruel with the birds but no one needs to necessarily be a Marxist to believe that there is not inconsistent for Economic Rationality to be cruel. Is very much in character for that this lady, that sort of cruelty.
The cheaper argument is pretty good, we do use ships because it's cheaper, but it's cheaper because ships can carry more than planes. I'd argue that a human with a sack can carry more than an owl, so I could probably make it cheaper for a human, especially given that magic in Harry Potter universe is essentially limitless. I mean, I've never seen them run out of energy or out of spells or anything like that :D
But I'm willing to be persuaded to keep owl post!
Well, magic is not limited by fuel,@@JustInTimeWorlds . I believe it is a scarce resource still, but the limiting factor is wizards. You only get a spell if you have someone to perform it. And there are something like 5 schools delivering wizards to society around the entire world. Hogwarts is among the largest and it can fit all this students inside one single hall for dinner.
Wizards must be extremely rare in that world. We just don't notice that, because our window for this world opens to the lives of characters who happen to be wizardlings.
Well, that's my head canon for that subject. For the moment.
Was the reference about having the ability to "call down a nuclear strike" about Empress Theresa? I am crying if so LOL
😏
Divergent is a pleasant example to me, because I loved the setting until almost the end, when they present the reason for all that, and "solve" the "problem" by making that society copy ours. Sure, their caste system is over-simplistic, but they do have a peasant caste: most daily items could presumably came from them. Or you could have specialized industry inside every single caste (Warriors making their own weapons, for instance). My personal solution for the setting would be to have a couple hundred castes, give or take, instead, but I think they could make it work as it is. If the author intended to make it work.
That's NOT the plan. This setting was designed to NOT work at all! Because the "message" is that caste systems do not work. Well, is a well know fact that those systems do work. They allow very, very, very stable and long lasting civilizations. Those civilizations are just not identical to ours in terms of individual rights, expectations, and morality.
But the more I read fiction designed to "prove" the point that everything that is not us (or US, mostly) is Evil and unviable, the less I see NOT being like the society that needs to insist in that point as a bad thing.
In the end this setting made me like the idea of caste systems a little more than I used to. By being unfair and dishonest with that idea.
What really bugged me is how the non-divergent were treated. Those people outside of the the caste systems just seemed to sit around and do literally nothing. If they had been making shoes and clothes and what not, I could have gotten behind that plan. Instead, they were just literally stuck in these hovels doing .... nothing.
It drove me bananas.
Even in India with the untouchables or in Japan with the eta, those people still had jobs to do in the society even when they were considered unclean and outcast.
Ahem.
I might be able to rant a LOT about Divergent :D
Yes, I see your point@@JustInTimeWorlds. One way to make it less absurd is to remember that's supposed to be post-apocalyptic. A world ended some generations before, and presumably they had a lot of resources in their hands left behind by a much larger civilization that isn't using those things anymore. Until their guns brake beyond repair they only need to repair what they have, they don't need to build new things.
But I don't think that's the reason why things are that way in that society. Mostly. In my opinion its not laziness either, in that particular case. The setting was build to "feel" dysfunctional. With that chance to choose you caste at the beginning of adult life, if they had a reasonable variety of castes and some organic relation between them, the result would be more likeable than what the author wanted it to be.
Is a case of torturing the worldbuilding, not for the sake of the story but for the sake of the message. That message being: caste systems are bad.
To find fiction designed to prove that point suggest to me that one of the largest political parties in the author's country must have the introduction of a caste system listed among their core goals. Only excuse to make political propaganda anti-caste systems like that is to have the caste systems as a plausible possibility for your society, inside your Historical Horizon.
Without that, it is too disproportional.
One nice thing about caste systems in History (all of them) compared to that caste system, is that not one of them was designed having in mind the purpose of deliver the impression that it: "feel" dysfunctional.
Owls wouldnt be able to read the maybe secret/private messages, maybe owls are slow but the most reliable and cooperative ones, also u can always take them with you to send messages to someone when u are not near any post station whatsoever, magic is about fantasy and not about ohh what makes the most sense and logic every single second every single day
They didn't shoot the escape pod because of the paperwork. lol
I knew about the lionfish news.
What the hell are "life signs" anyway?
7:28 "Deus ex machina" is Latin not greek hehe
*face palm* I mean, I know that. Tongue trip of note!
@@JustInTimeWorlds Yeah it was a little funny mistake, no issues.
I'm so glad it's not just me that wants to bang their head on the wall at some fantasy worlds.
The amount of "well it's in the south so there needs to be a desert there" maps that then stick a rain forest right next door at the same (or higher) latitudes drives me crazy. And then they'll stick some grassland next to the rainforest and then polar ice fields..
Or the small island of all the biomes where you go from baking subtropical desert to polar tundra in a place smaller than Great Britain.
Fantasy video games tend to do this a lot (looking at you Elder Scrolls). NB: i love Elder Scrolls but the layout of Tamriel makes no ecological sense.
Say what you will about Tolkien's world lacking diversity but at least he picked the region he wanted Middle Earth to reflect and stuck with it.
On another Elder Scrolls mini-rant, the Nords supposedly sailed aouth to Skyrim from their ancestral continent. Skyrim is already a sub-polar climate with regular auroras so what kind of frozen tundra hellscape had they been living in up to that point!? And how did they feed themselves there? It must have made Svalbard seem cosy and hospitable.
Hahahahahaha, I swear world builders who do the arctic justice are so few and far between. It's one of my pet peeves too. *Stares at George R.R. Martin who calls Scotland the North*.
As someone who lives up here, I feel there's a lot of disrespect for far northern weather conditions.
I agree but do have to ask: not every system we use makes sense in our world either, not because smarter ideas arent out there, but because too often politicians, govt, and religion get in the way of solving problems, as well as purposely creating nonsensical problems. So couldnt plenty of this happen in fantasy worlds too?
Oh absolutely. Everything I said here can be made to work :) The world builder, or writer, can always break the rules. Just don't be inconsistent by accident or as a mistake. If it's on purpose, go for it. It's your world :)
My setting has an inherited magic system, but it doesn't follow the rules of genetics. Why would it? It's not physical, it's more... spiritual. This way, I can justify dynasties of sorcerer-kings without everyone having some sorcery.
Sure, but then it's not a genetic system, it's the magic has chosen the family, like a curse or a blessing. Like oh, shape changers are a good example. In many legends, a family is cursed (or blessed depending on your perspective) with shape changing and the children inherit it.
"Hussein bolt"
Where are all the Klingon accountants? Because they had to have them.
In Harry Potter Most of the people cannot teleport to Hogwarts
Absolutely, but then just use owls for the last stretch. All of these things are fixable with just a little bit of attention to detail. That's why I bring them up, so world builders can put in that little bit of attention to detail and make their worlds work that little bit smoother.
Yes, but that is specifically designed to be that way for the sake of protecting the children (and protecting the world from those children, perhaps). You don't want every body to be able to walk in and out schools anytime, unless your world is really very safe. To block teleportation is the practical equivalent to have a wall around the place, I believe.
Aside that I suspect (and I am not a hardcore fan of that particular setting, must admit) most people cannot teleport to Hogwarts, because most people cannot teleport at all. We get this notion that "everybody" can teleport in that universe because that's a story like Bram Stocker's Dracula: every main character is from the same social class/caste. The top of society.
Some are at the top of that top, some are in the middle, and some are at the bottom of that top, but it is the elite of society. There are the barbarians outside, who not even know this civilization exists. But between them and the golden young lords and ladies who get to be students of Hogwarts there is a entire universe of people (many of them non-humans) who are not wizards but belong in wizard society.
This people who could not afford the expensed of travel the world to hunt Dracula. And may have difficulty in get permission to move through national borders even.
Hogwarts is one among a very small number (something like 5, I think) schools that teach magic. In the entire world. If you don't enter those schools, or if you enter them but fail in reach the standards, you will not learn magic. If you do learn some, you cannot legally use it.
I don't know how small the number of wizards is, compared to the total of people who know magic exist. But I imagine it must be very small.
Of course, we have on the side some non-humans who have innate magical powers (looks like) and the physiological need to live as slaves. Those are magic users, who are not high elite in wizard society. Perhaps they could carry the letters, instead of birds. Unless they are too few, and to own one of them happens to be a rare symbol of status.
¿Sabes que me saca de quicio en una trama? La malinterpretación de la naturaleza, he aquí algunos ejemplos y porque son malinterpretaciones:
1) Los depredadores son monstruos: Los depredadores no son monstruos, no matan por matar, matan para comer.
2) La naturaleza es sabia: Cerdo Babirusa ¿Tengo que decir más?
3) Las presas son inofensivas: ¿Tienes alguna idea de cuantas personas matan los hipopótamos y ciervos al año? Y lo hacen por diversión.
4) En la naturaleza solo sobreviven los fuertes: Esto claramente ignora el hecho de que el humano se expandió por el planeta gracias a su inteligencia, ignora que las hormigas y pulpos pueden acabar con cangrejos gracias a (en el caso de las hormigas) el trabajo en equipo o al ataque sorpresa (en el caso del pulpo), ignora el hecho de que existe un tipo de simbiosis llamada "mutualismo" e ignora cómo funciona la evolución.
Absolutely. It's not the strong who survive, it's those who best fit their environment to pass on their genes who survive. Strong my .... :D
@@JustInTimeWorlds Sí, a esa gente no le vendría mal ver algunos programas de la naturaleza.