Friday Forum Philosophy - Week 3

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=beejazz]Couldn't the minerals available in a given world prevent certain metallurgical advances? Couldn't fossil fuels (outside of coal) have never happened?

Medieval stasis can happen if we don't assume earth as a baseline.[/blockquote] There are plenty of justifications for medieval stasis out there, and their presence mitigates the logic problem, but it still feels like lazy world-building to me.  I'd much rather see a world that grows and changes than one that doesn't, even if the stasis makes sense.

And props for making Urbis resist stasis.

[Ghostman]

One of my problems with medieval stasis is that it seems lazy as well as unrealistic: it's much easier for a creator to just keep everything the same and stick their fingers in their ears when developing a history than it is to map out actual technological progress.

This, though, raises a question: to what degree is it actually necessary to map out progress? Goes hand in hand with the question of how much of the history of a setting should be detailed.

If history is left vague, then it may be easy and tempting to just assume that progress happened at a natural pace. Where history is actually covered in some detail, it should be necessary to account for at least some effects of progress. But what exactly are the relevant changes and events that ought to be mentioned? Should a setting designer bother to define the differences in art and fashion between eras, evolution of natural languages, and the invention of fairly mundane things such as umbrellas, hourglasses and lighting matches?

Some things are just obviously significant, such as revolutions, exploration, guns (not just gunpowder), steam engines, mass migrations and major religions. Even then it's questionable if one really needs to know when exactly these happened. For most stories, you only need to know how things are at the moment, not how they were X number of years ago.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that settings should be given the benefit of doubt. Lack of evidence of progress shouldn't be taken as evidence for stasis; it could simply be lack of information regarding past times.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Ghostman]I guess the point I'm trying to make is that settings should be given the benefit of doubt. Lack of evidence of progress shouldn't be taken as evidence for stasis; it could simply be lack of information regarding past times.[/blockquote]Absolutely agreed.  I think a vague past is sometimes very useful.  What botehrs me is an explicitly static past.

I think my contempt for medieval stasis is partly linked to a distaste for the medieval more generally.  It's occasionally done right, but often as not medieval settings feel not only anachronistic but generally overdone.  Fortunately we seem to be moving away from the medieval standard significantly at the CBG.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I wanted to hold off getting involved myself until this developed a bit.

"Tropes becomes tropes because they work, right?"
No. A trope is defined after it happens, not before and then used.

In literature we've still got Christopher Paolinis cranking out derivative, watered down quest narratives...<snip>[/quote]You can change all the characteristcis of a race and still call them elves or dwarves, I suppose, which is one way of playing with the tropes.[/quote]I'm not going to write you a straight-up fantasy world that plays to all the standard fantasy tropes, because there are hundreds of those out there already. If I write you a world that feels exactly like Middle-Earth (the prototypical straight-up fantasy genre conworld) but with a changed-around map and a different set of gobbledygook names, no one could blame you for finding my "new" world exceptionally boring.[/quote]In A New Hope, a young boy is drawn into an epic struggle between a really clearly-defined Good and a really clearly-defined Evil. He is guided by destiny, he must come to terms with his inherited supernatural power with the aid of his wizard mentor, he inherits his father's magic sword. He rescues the innocent princess from the evil fortress; he saves the world with the help of his mystic powers and his ghost-mentor from beyond the grave. This is all classic fantasy material.[/quote]D&D pulls high fantasy set dressing but is built with a sword and sorcery mindset at its core.[/quote]I have no desire to craft anything of generic "purity" because this essentially equates to simply emulating those seminal works that defined the genre boundaries in the first place (masterpieces in their own right, and rarely imitated well) and contributes to genre rigidity and stagnation.[/quote]
I disagree. I can read a piece of historical fiction without thinking it a pale imitation of something that has gone before. I can same the same for most genres in terms of genre "purity," should such a thing exist.

Tropes within the genre, as well as tropes of plot, however, can be exploited or subverted, within reason, without diluting the genre.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

[blockquote=Ghostman]I guess the point I'm trying to make is that settings should be given the benefit of doubt. Lack of evidence of progress shouldn't be taken as evidence for stasis; it could simply be lack of information regarding past times.[/blockquote]Absolutely agreed.  I think a vague past is sometimes very useful.  What botehrs me is an explicitly static past.

I think my contempt for medieval stasis is partly linked to a distaste for the medieval more generally.  It's occasionally done right, but often as not medieval settings feel not only anachronistic but generally overdone.  Fortunately we seem to be moving away from the medieval standard significantly at the CBG.

I can't say the Middle Ages are my favorite. Antiquity just interests me more. The Renaissance, too, but I kind of needed to focus on one area, so it was the Classical period I studied the most. Dark Ages are kind of cool too.

Hence why Eschaton is 1st century BCE, not 1100 CE.

I think a lot of times we may assume Medieval Stasis unfairly, too. If I say a great evil was bound a thousand years ago, and the world is presently Middle Ages, can you assume that it wasn't earlier Iron Age a thousand years ago? Just because I don't describe the world back then?

Also, let us not dismiss the importance of the cyclical history or descent of ages tropes. They come straight from mythology.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

"Tropes becomes tropes because they work, right?"
No. A trope is defined after it happens, not before and then used.

I may be forced to agree with you: I'm trying to do a fantasy setting, and there are tropes I just can't stop following because the world wouldn't feel right otherwise.

[Polycarp]

I must say that I don't find medieval stasis to be a particularly onerous trope.  With modern historical techniques, we can look back and laugh at the idea of static technology and culture.  In those periods themselves, however, this kind of perspective did not exist.  There was often very little sense that things had been measurably different in past eras - or, if they were different, they could well have been more technologically advanced, or simply more enlightened (the idea of a "golden age" before).

In a medieval setting, stasis is completely believable, at least from the perspective of the people living in that setting (and that, in the end, is what matters - not what the "objective truth" is that nobody in the setting actually knows).

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Descent of ages is not stasis.

[Steerpike]

Yeah, if anything medieval people had the notion that progress went backwards, that we'd just continue in a downward spiral until Armageddon/Rapture/coming of the Kingdom.

[LordVreeg]

I must say that I don't find medieval stasis to be a particularly onerous trope.  With modern historical techniques, we can look back and laugh at the idea of static technology and culture.  In those periods themselves, however, this kind of perspective did not exist.  There was often very little sense that things had been measurably different in past eras - or, if they were different, they could well have been more technologically advanced, or simply more enlightened (the idea of a "golden age" before).

In a medieval setting, stasis is completely believable, at least from the perspective of the people living in that setting (and that, in the end, is what matters - not what the "objective truth" is that nobody in the setting actually knows).

we are having a perspective issue.
No, they did not understand the big picture of progress the way we do now.  But Historical Stasis is normally not brought into question by the misunderstandings of the denizens of a book or setting, rather, when the overview is looked at by a reader.  

In other words, the trope or issue is never borught into question based on the limited perspective of an NPC or character in a book, but only when the "objective truth" (or as much of it is known) is looked at.  The trope is not determined by the cog but by the creator.

[Polycarp]

In other words, the trope or issue is never borught into question based on the limited perspective of an NPC or character in a book, but only when the "objective truth" (or as much of it is known) is looked at.  The trope is not determined by the cog but by the creator.

consistently[/i] (and colorfully) false.  To put it simply, if we can have fireballs and dragons, why can't we have an extended medieval age?  What is it that compels us to accept one but reject the other?

This may just be a matter of personal taste - I have no trouble suspending my disbelief for this, while it might just irk other people.  In that case, we should probably just agree to disagree, for as we've discovered in this thread alone, tastes in genres vary quite widely.

[Lmns Crn]

Regarding "Medieval Stasis" (or stasis in general, prolonged cultural/intellectual stagnation regardless of time period):

It doesn't bother me that stuff doesn't match our real-world historical timeline. Cause that's not the point.

In instances where it does bother me, it bothers me because innovation stops without a clear reason why. The tendency of people is to create and learn and invent over time, and sometimes that tendency is thwarted by events (which is fine). But poorly-handled medieval stasis doesn't so much thwart that tendency as ignore it, which makes the people and their societies ring false.

My favorite example of "medieval" stasis is in Roger Zelazny's novel, Lord of Light, which is excellent. Seriously, you should read it. Preferably, you should read it before you read this spoiler I'm going to type right now.

[spoiler="Lord of Light" spoiler]This whole book is dealing with a world under conditions of enforced medieval stasis. It's a non-Earth world ruled by settlers from a futuristic Earth, who have used their superior technology to set themselves up as Hindu-style gods. (This is way more awesome than I am making it sound.) They're destroying technological inventions that the common folk produce in order to keep their own power secure-- at one point it is mentioned that the printing press has been invented by innovative mortals and subsequently destroyed by the gods in at least three separate occasions.

The main conflict of the book is between the gods who wish to protect the status quo by continuing to deprive the common folk of technological advances, and "Accelerationists" among the gods who want to share their knowledge with the mortals to increase their quality of life. Essentially, the world is deliberately kept in an enforced state of medieval stasis, and ending this condition is the protagonist's main goal.

It's medieval stasis with an actual purpose, and it works.[/spoiler]

[Steerpike]

Ooh, I can hear the old verismiliutde, suspension of disbelief, and logical consistency arguments brewing again.

My opinion is that there's a difference between violations of realism that insert fantastic elements into a world, and violations of realism that are simply the result of a lack of logical, internal consistency.

Imagine a desert world, for example.  Okay, fine.  Let's populate it with, say, intelligent jackal-humanoids.  Great.  Those are both violations of the former type.

Now say that the jackal-people's culture is full of grandiose libraries full of (paper) books, despite the complete absence of forests from the world.  That's a violation of the latter type.

Now, we could insert an explanation - maybe the reason the world is a desert is because it's been deforested for book-making; maybe the books use hide instead of paper; maybe the books are antediluvian artefacts from a time when the planet was green, that have been well-preserved to prevent their decay.  All of those are ways of addressing the logical flaw (lots of paper+desert = does not compute); but without any of those reasons, my disbelief strains and snaps - or at least my enjoyment of the world is diminished.

Basically, the first type of violation changes the rules of the world.  The second type ignores them altogether.  I can deal with changes to the rules of a universe, but not a complete lack of rules - unless the setting is an anarchic dreamscape, or something similar.  Silvercat and I had one of our brouhahas over this, I seem to recall.

Now this discussion is definitely a digression...

[LordVreeg]

digressing onto the digression...
LC, Lord of Light had a lot to do with solidifying my ideas...

[LordVreeg]

In other words, the trope or issue is never borught into question based on the limited perspective of an NPC or character in a book, but only when the "objective truth" (or as much of it is known) is looked at.  The trope is not determined by the cog but by the creator.

consistently[/i] (and colorfully) false.  To put it simply, if we can have fireballs and dragons, why can't we have an extended medieval age?  What is it that compels us to accept one but reject the other?

This may just be a matter of personal taste - I have no trouble suspending my disbelief for this, while it might just irk other people.  In that case, we should probably just agree to disagree, for as we've discovered in this thread alone, tastes in genres vary quite widely.

It's all based on ground rules.  Suspension of disbelief is fine if it is what the author intends by breaking the ground rules.  That's the point of much of our work.

Medieval Stasis, as a flawed trope, can only happen if the author or creator is unaware of it or has not accounted for it.
Fireballs and dragons are a consiously created choice, i.e., the author/creator has consiously decided that the world has magic, so we as readers go along with it.  Normally, most of us agree that this is done properly by making the magic (or rule breaking) intrinsically logical and internally consistent within the laws of physics the author has not changed and consistent within the ones that are changed.  Medieval Stasis directly infers a breakdown of internal logic as the lack of progress is NOT explained.  If it is carefully and logically explained, even with magic, distance, lack of elements or other religion or other poppycock, it is no longer Medieval Stasis.

That is what compels us to accept one and not the other.  A suspension of disbelief is not a suspension of logic or discernment.  A carefully explained and crafted design triumph is different from a poorly thought out or ignored logical dissonance.

Noow, to backtrack on myself, I have freinds of mine who can watch moveies or read books and enjoy them for the fun ride they are, while other friends of mine can't enjoy them because of the brken logic.  Personal taste precludes everything else.