What's a crucial event in the history of your world? HISTORY IS COMPLICATED, but you know what isn't? World Anvil! >>> www.worldanvil.com/ > imgur.com/a/CQeNyq8 and theeeeeeen come follow me on instatwitter. Stay nerdy! twitter.com/TimHickson1 instagram.com/tim_hickson_hfm/ ~ Tim
I'm not even sure what I'd use this world for - either a book or a campaign setting if I get to accomplish my dream of DMing a DnD game with a lot of Slavic mythology thrown in - but part of the world's history is this seafaring empire of elves which collapsed a century and a half before the actual story. The results included the Leyensmen Confederacy (started out as a mostly human mercenary class in the empire, now they're basically really multi-ethnic Vikings), a lot of dragons, various corrupt city-states, the "Warlord Wastes" coming about between said city states and tribal kingdoms past the old borders of the empire, and even shook up divine politics a bit when the pantheons tried to figure out who gets which part of the former empire now
The major world power that was recently experiencing a “pax ###” is infamous for having a new social revolution followed by civil war every few centuries or so.
My current story is a science fiction. The importance of the event is in that it sets up the climate the story happens in. Trying to dodge a treaty, a country decides to let one of its incorporated territories use very large guns and very useful technology to wage a war on their behalf. It backfired a bit because now that territory is wanting to be free because they've got a liberty high and it's causing some tension. The conflict was called the Sunspot Wars because it was a series of extremely small wars fought between planets that had never heard of one another before the fight started.
A fantastic example could be the Trojan War. According to the source material, the Minoan king was one of the main kings on the Greek side and, if you pay close attention to their backstories, the other major kings were the sons or grandsons of usurpers who overthrew the hereditary kings of their cities with Minoan assistance. And following the war, many of those kings were overthrown themselves by descendants of the original dynasty. It wouldn’t be hard to reimagine the Trojan War as a cataclysmic ‘World War’ between the Minoan and the Trojan kingdoms for domination of the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean, with the Greek kingdoms drawn in as vassal states of the Minoans. In this context, it’s far easier to see the conflict dragging on for a decade or more, as the Minoans and their allies slowly tighten their grip on the Trojans until they are finally in front of the walls of the city itself. As the Minoans had no city walls themselves, they had no cultural need for any type of siege weapons, and they ultimately resorted to breaking taboo by booby-trapping an offering to the Trojan’s sea god (one of the symbols of Poseidon was the horse) to breach the walls. Then, perhaps before the Minoans can return to Crete, Thera decides to self-immolate, and the resultant calamities ravage the island. The Greeks take this as a sign of divine disapproval, and overthrow many of the Minoan client-kings. Some of the survivors of the cataclysmic series of events roam the eastern Mediterranean as essentially pirates (Odysseus, Aeneas, the Sea Peoples) and create kingdoms-in-exile on Crete, Cypress, Egypt, Northern Africa, etc. Following this line of thought, Homer was originally a firsthand account of the Bronze Age Collapse before it slowly morphed into a disjointed tale of independent Greek city-states defeating an Asian empire and what that victory cost them.
Or, at least, realize that if it happened a long time ago - and/or especially if it happened without certain characters actually present for it - whatever they think happened doesn't necessarily have to be what actually happened perfectly exactly.
Hehe, well yeah, Tolkien in a letter wrote that he is historically minded. Tolkien's world history is complex on it's own, take Second Age for instance: "Thus, as the Second Age draws on, we have a great Kingdom and evil theocracy (for Sauron is also the god of his slaves) growing up in Middle-earth. In the West lie the precarious refuges of the Elves, while Men in those parts remain more or less uncorrupted if ignorant... Meanwhile Númenor has grown in wealth, wisdom, and glory, under its line of great kings of long life, directly descended from Elros, Earendil's son, brother of Elrond... In the first stage, being men of peace, their courage is devoted to sea-voyages....Mostly they come to the west-shores of Middle-earth, where they aid the Elves and Men against Sauron, and incur his undying hatred. In those days they would come amongst Wild Men as almost divine benefactors, bringing gifts and knowledge, and passing away again - leaving many legends behind of kings and gods out of the sunset. In the second stage, the days of Pride and Glory and grudging of the Ban, they begin to seek wealth rather than bliss. The desire to escape death produced a cult of the dead, and they lavished wealth on tombs and memorials.They now made settlements on the west-shores, but these became rather strongholds and 'factories' of lords seeking wealth, and the Númenóreans became tax-gatherers carrying off over the sea evermore and more goods in their great ships. The Númenóreans began the forging of arms and engines... A new religion, and worship of the Dark, with its temple under Sauron arises. The Faithful are persecuted and sacrificed. The Númenóreans carry their evil also to Middle-earth and there become cruel and wicked lords of necromancy, slaying and tormenting men; and the old legends are overlaid with dark tales of horror. This does not happen, however, in the North West; for thither, because of the Elves, only the Faithful who remain Elf-friends will come... The Second Age ends with the Last Alliance (of Elves and Men), and the great siege of Mordor. It ends with the overthrow of Sauron and destruction of the second visible incarnation of evil" So while some events are caused by something specific, or some are 'guided' to specific course by design of some immortal entity manipulating events, it also is due to change and normal cause and effect chain, it is multilayered.
You forgot Shakespear fanfiction. Tolkien loved to poke fun at The Bard's plot points. For instance, the whole Witch King being killed by Erowyn and Pippin was poking fun at Macbeth.
Thank you for this nice vid! Quick note: Egyptian Hieroglyphs should *not* be taken as pictoral history, but written history. I am an Egyptologist and can tell you that hieroglyphs, while pictographic signs, do indeed form words, sentences and texts. There are various language groups written in (variations of) these signs, all with a full set of grammar, syntax and language rules. They form a written language, not pictoral evidence, and are therefore subject to the same advantages and problems that come with the written word.
@@nuckingfuts3204 Upper and Lower Egypt came together around 3100 BCE, though arguably Egyptian "civilisation" pre-dates this. Minoan civilisation's exact dates are hard to pin down, but various dates have been proposed from about 3000 BCE to 2600 BCE, with the Palatial Period starting significantly later. So no, Minoan civilization is not older than Egyptian.
@@MrMuel1205 Wrong, The "Old Kingdom" lasted from 2575 BC to 2150 BC. This is what is commonly understood, you can google it. Minoans flourished 2700 BC to 1450 BC, and started declining from there onward, ending at 1100 BC after being conquered by the Mycenaeans. The Cycladic civilisation was also older than Egypt, dating back to 3200 BC. Get your facts straight little twat. There are even older civilizations, but these were Neolithic, so don't count.
One reason why Tolkien’s events that happened thousands of years ago still have relevance is related to the Elves having seen history. Those ancient events have relevance because there are still those around who were there, and were personally affected by them, and those Elves run major cultural centers that most of the Free Peoples look up to. Eärendil was Elrond’s dad. So of course his story stayed relevant, because Elrond was an important Elf who would correct the record as needed, and his being there kept Eärendil relevant in a way that kept it from the problems with recalling legends. If Achilles son was around today and was the leader of Greece, we’d probably have a much better recollection of the Illiad. If your races in your fantasy world live different lengths of time, they are going to have different recollections of events, which are going to vary depending on how much they trust each other. Breath of the Wild did this really well. Without telling you that the Zora lived longer than the humans, who lived longer than the Rito, they showed this by having the old folks of the Zora remember you specifically from 100 years ago, and showing that the young man of a prince of that race was a child then. The humans think you are young for being 100 and something, and only the extremely old remember you and the calamity. The Rito seem so comparatively short lived that the idea that you are the same champion of legend from 100 years back is inconceivable, and they always figure you are a defendant of the champion.
Yeah. Also, his comment about the grudge between elves and dwarves feeling unrealistic also falls under this in my opinion. The grudge is ongoing because both races live a lot longer than humans (although dwarves live a lot less time than elves) and therefore remember all the various slights. Thranduil remembers the dwarves attacking doriath and possibly had family members die there. Thorin remembers Thranduil turning away when Smaug attacked and knew people who, in his view might have been saved had Thranduil helped. And these grudges last because they all remember these things and because they live longer, they have more time to retaliate and thus continue to perpetuate the grudge.
@@taliavanbeelen6162 in a similar vein theirs a Schoolastic series from the Early 2000’s called Animorphs that has a deceptively simple origin for why two races are fighting, what they’re fighting for and why they act the way they do. The basic story is a race of Sentient Parasites live on their home planet they walk the surface of their planet by brain jacking hosts. Their primary host is so evolved to them that they’re practically brain dead, have poor vision, and weak arms. Then a highly advanced race discovers them shambling around on their home planet and decides to educate them on the wonders past their planet, show them technology they never thought possible and teach them science that can rapidly advance their species. The leader of this was named Seerow and what would follow was a sizable group of the Parasites would infiltrate Seerows ranks, kill many and steal their ships with the goal to get better bodies, and build a utopian society for themselves because as body stealing slugs they’re weak and pathetic and seeing a universe full of things that can give them a better standard decided they needed it at all costs. This singular moment would be mockingly immortalized as Seerows Kindness and created a culture of Xenophobia in Seerows race as they were hesitant to share any information with other races in fear of creating another Galactic Incident. It would also create an existential hatred between two races as Parasite can only live Parasitically and them denying their way of living makes them the evil ones in the Parasites eyes, meanwhile the other Race sees it as their duty to essentially reduce them back to the Stone Age and confine them to their planet.
@@lettherebedragons8885 never watched Stargate. From a quick Google search they do sound similar. The Yeerks (the parasites) were always the most fascinating race to me because of how they operate and what their culture was. The Yeerks survived in the soupy waters of their planet and absorbed radiation from their sun they called “Kandrona Rays” the catalyst for them successfully getting off planet was the Andalites (Seerows Race) figuring out how to create a machine that could mimic the radiation of their home star. When they take over a body you’re still completely aware of what’s happening, you’re just unable to talk or move. They can also read the thoughts and memories of their host, giving them the ability to perfectly mimic their host and become a master of whatever you know. As such the Yeerks after leaving their planet rapidly became more intelligent as the collective knowledge of every host was absorbed. They even have a ranking of different races. Their Golden a goose is a Class 5. A Class 5 race are large in numbers and able to breed quickly, and can't resist the Yeerks. Humanity is a Class 5 and it’s the only Clas 5 they’ve found. Their culture is also based around Hosts and they’re ran by The Council of 13. Only 1 of the 13 is the actual leader and the others carry a lesser degree of power and often act as advisors to the true Leader of the Yeerks. The interesting part is only the Council Knows who is who. The Citizens and even Soldiers and Commanders don’t know which is the Yeerk Emperor and which are lesser leaders, given that people only see the Host Bodies this makes it even easier to hide their identity.
@@Broomer52 yep totally the Goa'uld. Before they found humans as hosts they used a more primitive reptilian species the Unas as hosts. And they constantly looking for ways to evolve humans into more efficiant and powerful hosts.
"and way too many stories of Zeus having affairs as animals". Haha I lost it. I also love your pictures of Supreme Leader Mishka in the corner! May memory of his reign forever live in our hearts!
Zeus had affairs as more than just animals... Do you know how Hercules was contrived, well you see Zeus had an affair with a woman caged for being the mother of a boy who would kill the man who caged her. But in order to get to the mother Zeus took the form... Of a rain drop
I used to obsess over all of my histories in my fantasy world connecting and making fluid sense, but then I realized (probably because of Hello Future Me) that History is complicated and details can be wrong... so I started allowing contradictions to exist, and even wrote the history of Elves and history of Dwarves independently. A lot of things conflict, there are multiple creation stories... but that's exactly the way it is on Earth, and it adds a lot of weight to the entire experience. Readers/characters have things to discuss and disagree with.
I think realism in world building is pretty hyped up these days. To me it's much more important that a world is interesting. It's fantasy, not historical fiction, who cares if the tiny details don't always make sense?
This. I believe thats what it boils down to, your world needs to allow for conflict so that your story can have tension. Otherwise the characters and story would be bland, or the world would just be a backdrop unrelated to the drama. In the latter case, congratulations: all the time worldbuilding was wasted.
@@Enzaio Well, it sorta does matter if it makes sense... that is if you are trying to build a cohesive and fully fleshed out world. If you are just writing something in the same vain as Alice In Wonderland, then it doesn't matter. Go nuts. But when creating cultures, religions, races, etc... you have to pay more attention to detail. Some of the best science fiction and fantasy, the ones that people remember even nearly a century after their introduction, are the ones which we can most easily relate to and immerse ourselves in.. because that world feels real to us, it feels like a place that could possibly exist. Think of Dune, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Warhammer, The Expanse, Lord of The Rings, Conan The Barbarian, A Song of Ice And Fire, Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender, etc... I could go on for a while... all of those worlds are vast, encompassing, and detailed. Which allows the fans to become more immersive in the story, setting, and characters. Because they feel real and consistent. But again it depends on what you are going for.
@@wiseguy01 I didn't mean to say that realism has no worth at all. Of course it's important. It just don't think it's THE single most important aspect. All the worlds you list are also very interesting. If they were incredibly realistic and incredibly boring, you probably wouldn't have listed them.
And why was Zeus always getting it on? Because a lot of those supposed half-god progeny were the supposed founders of various Greek city-states, allowing both the cities and their kings who were supposedly their descendants to buff their rhetorical reputations. Might have played a role in European traditions of the crossover between royalty and divinity too.
Yeah, that makes sense but I can’t help but laugh at that because can you imagine? “So, why do you deserve to be king?”, “Oh, my mother was raped by the king of the gods and then turned into a cow!”, “ Sounds legit!!”
There is evidence that the idea of crossover between divinity and royalty is older than Greece. A few stories like that pop up in Egypt and Mesopotamia long before the Hellenistic period, or even Mycenae. And legends like this also independently pop up in different parts of the world, such as India, the Norse tribes, and I think also Mesoamerica. It seems to be a common trope of leaders across the world to legitimize their rule. Though it's not always because of politics. The myth of the birth of Apollo, for example, is basically an embellished description of how the cult of Apollo spread across Greece. And here Hera represents the resistance of the old forms of worship.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
For your "Six Different Lenses" step, I'd think you'd want to also include Environment as a lens. It comes up all the time when discussing historical causality, such as the little ice age being correlated with an increase in wars in Europe in the mid-second millennium, the dust bowl effect in the American midwest being a contributor to the great depression, ancient Mesopotamian irrigation leading to salt buildup in the fields leading to agricultural and economic effects, and the whole "what caused the Bronze Age collapse?" debate, which features a lot of environment-related reasons. I suppose you could lump it in with geography, but the way you talk about geography in the video seems to emphasize distance and topography a lot more than environment, and I don't think the examples I've outlined really fit into the same category. Plus it means we get seven lenses, which I think fits the tropes of worldbuilding-heavy writing way better than six. Edit: paragraphing
That's very true. The Viking raids, for example, were indirectly caused by the Early Medieval Warm Period. The warmer climate brought more food to Scandinavia. More food meant more kids survived and grew up, which meant a lot more people needing a way to earn a living and finding one by going on raids. The warmer climate also potentially led to them being able to get all the way to Newfoundland via a Northern route along Iceland and Greenland.
@@natalie106436 "Geography" is a really broad term. Depending on how you define it, you could roll the categories of religion, culture, and some of politics under it ("human geography"). We don't want to overload any one category, though, as it makes it less useful as a tool for planning your worldbuilding. The video's examples of geography focus on distance between societies (1800s US vs Britain and such) rather than things like climate, ecology, pollution, and global warming. Plus, I wouldn't call the collapse of the Atlantic salmon fishing industry, for instance, a geographical event. So two categories would be better -- geography would just focus more on topography, political geography, and perhaps some of the strategic components of geography (the geo- in geopolitics); environment more on climate, ecology, natural resource management, pollution, and such.
@@phaneros But isn't geography in the sense of distance and topography... static? Certainly not something that would change over a few millennia, so I don't really see how making a _timeline_ of geography is useful...
@@nagirabbit Good point. Ultimately, the choice of lens is arbitrary, so you could use whatever lenses you want. Personally, though, I'd still hold on to it because of two effects not really discussed in the video: conjunctive causes and the power of invariants. In history, we often see cause→effect relationships that only work with two causes (cause ∧ cause → effect); the "∧" is a conjunctive, or an "and". So Augustus Caesar putting political restrictions on Egypt (political) makes Egypt more stable (political) and profitable for Rome (economics), but only because Egypt is the entrypoint into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean (static geography). Stability ∧ geography → growth. We can say two things "caused" the third, even if one didn't change. So putting conservative / security restrictions on a society without the geography doesn't have the same effect. If a fantasy god appeared and cut off the monsoon winds to Egypt, then those political restrictions could backfire as the Egyptians aren't happy and the government doesn't have the funds to suppress them. Of course, by the time anyone is diving this deep into worldbuilding, they're really just in this because they enjoy the worldbuilding (like me), so we may be straying away from the point of the video. Invariants are just things that don't change. They're useful in math when solving difficult problems, and they're useful in worldbuilding when we want to identify constant pressures on a society. So static geography affects culture over time -- you wouldn't expect desert kingdoms and steppe horsewarriors to have the same culture, even if the desert was originally inhabited by nomads from the steppe. There's also examples like Russia's eternal quest for a warm-water port (economic ∧ political geography → political). So invariants are useful for highlighting a nation's grand strategy, cultural / demographic shifts, and passive pressures. The flip side of invariants is that nothing else really affects the shape of the land (which why geopolitics is a subject that exists), so your geography timeline won't have any lines going in. If I were using this technique, I wouldn't mind; invariants often lead to nice, simple logic. If anyone considers it wasted space, though, then I don't see anything wrong with lumping environment and geography together. In general, you could add any timelines you deem useful. If you've got "the three great macguffins" with world-altering power, then I'd say they might deserve their own timeline. My goal in this thread is mostly to highlight an easy modification anyone could make to the six lenses model to tune it to their story, if they deem it useful. As someone who enjoys worldbuilding more than actual writing, I often find choosing rigid divisions of worldbuilding can make it easier to speed through it, but runs the risk of cutting out all the interesting interactions that fell between the gaps of your categories.
Imagine how much more complicated it gets when those psychics write about actual psychics. When historical perspectives are partially based on famous prophecies based on multiple detailed future timelines shaped by oracles and seers reacting to yet more distant events in variants of those timelines, all of which is biased by individual perspectives, interpretation, deception, propaganda and grows more "outdated" the more time passes since each original glimpse into the future.
@@danielhall271 well, 'the fire nation attacked' is recent history in the way that the war is still ongoing. And therefore, as explained here, prominent in the view of the people. The start of the war looked a lot different from the perpective of the fire people, which is given later in the story.
He should mention Final Fantasy XIV more, tbh; like how Eorzea and Garlemald have such strikingly different views of the world and history as recent as 55 years ago due to the rise of a new technology and growing empire
To be fair regarding dwarves and elves, they are also commonly depicted as long lived and/or immortal. Grudges and such are bound to last longer when those involved endure as well.
I'm a worldbuilder first and writer second, but honestly, I don't really get to writing most of the time, because I get stuck detailing what my fictional civilizations eat and what materials they use for building or making clothes, what pigments they use for their make-up, how their languages and writing systems evolved, who they trade with, etc.
You can explore that with one (or even far more) in your story. Maybe have a pigment maker going through town to collect what they need and have them have a student so they can talk about it... Or something like that.
I am a worldbuilder that has a thought of one day possibly writing a story in the world I've been building for a couple years now and will continue to build for several more years at this rate
While watching this video something hit me. I am sitting through the best college course I ever had, and I am actually enjoying it. And it is free. Your awsome.
13:46 haha, tell that to the Egyptians. It was pretty common practice for Pharaohs to remove images of their ancestors and retroactively insert themselves.
For the elf and dwarfs grudge and hate thing. Here it is worth to remember that since both races (especially elfs) live a long time the primary sources are longer. I often like to act out that rivalry more one sided with the Elfs holding on to it, due to age. Often the elven people keeping the grudge for 1 life time but in that time the dwarven race moves on or separates to new groups. When they then meet the elfs the elfs have a grudge the dwarfs know nothing of BUT this creates a new conflict and if any new elfs are brought into the conflict then the conflict keeps going again due to the long scale of individual time
A good version of dwarf and elf hatred is in warhammer fantasy, the dwarfs and elves were freinds because they spent a long time killing deamons together, and there people were the closest any 2 races are in the entire setting, but then the elves split into high elves and dark elves and make a false flag attack on the dwarfs, the dwarfs try to get to the bottom of the attack and high elf King is arrogant, and denys elf involvement while also not telling the dwarfs of there splitting, so the dwarfs try in vain to get this solved paid for the injustice, until the elf king orders the shaving of there beard of there diplomats, and returned them to the dwarfs, who now had no choice but to declare war as that's the dwarf equivalent of castration, all those shaved took an oathe to become slayers, who seek death via combat primarily with monsters, and the war is so long and terrible that entire libraries of books of grudges were filled with atrocities, until finally the dwarf king killed the elf king and the dwarfs kicked them off the mainland and they returned to there island outside of a few elves that stuck around and became woodelves, the war is known by the elves as the war of the beard, and by dwarfs as the war of vengeance, though throughout dwarf history there's probably a thousand wars that can accurately be called either name
About oral history, the way it works is highly dependent on how it is implemented in a culture. For example oral history in medieval europe played a pretty laid back role, since 'the big history' was recorded by the Church. Thus ut was mainly about popular stories and very susceptible to change. Meanwhile in primarily oral societies the storykeeper was often a very important person, tasked with keeping history as accurate as possible. In northern america oral histories of droughts and catastrophies were found to match with archeological evidence. In the end oral hides can be accurate but it also can not. Oral history is also very susceptible to wipeouts when revolution or genocide strike.
"Geography is everything!" and "History is complicated!" are my two favorite phrases started by TH-camrs and both fit in whatever story your trying to write. Edit: "One Piece" is in my opinion and amazing story in the building of both history and geography. Although it is aided by the fact it is 960 chapters long and is still going on.
16:50, "want to see a story where people can't even think of trusting history due to being unable to trust their own memory..." that would be 1984 my dude.
One of my favorite parts of Sanderson's Mistborn books is how the story subverts the reliability of certain types of history. Types of historical records we typically assume are trustworthy (written/visual/etc.) become untrustworthy, for story-critical reasons. And types of historical record we tend to see as less authoritative (oral history, stored by Sazed) become the only type of history that the characters (and thus the readers) can trust. I loved that.
I remember the time when I bought a book on Sindarin. I decided that creating a language didn't seem that hard. Two days later, I found myself sitting at my desk, copying the dictionary into my journal. I realized that I had made a HUGE mistake.
As far as the Stormlight Archives goes, while I do think your criticism is fair, I feel one aspect you ignore is the religious nature of it. For example, the life of Jesus was 2000 years ago, yet the effect of that life on the modern world, through the many Christian religions, is still huge.
Though it could be argued that said event is merely a catalyst being used by those in current positions of power in order to maintain control and continue to shape further social and historical narratives based on its dogmatic principles rather than any real effect said ancient event might realistically have if it did not have this contemporary political support
*Oathbringer spoilers* The effects of the last desolation on the world of Roshar are pretty complicated. There are also other things to keep in mind about that world's history such as how there was quite a bit of continuity our world doesn't have such as the Knights Radiant who were in power for a long time, up until about 1500 years before the books, if I remember right. Those guys could enforce their rule with their powers and had the backing of a god, only losing political power when that god died and they became disillusioned, giving up said powers and rule.
I don’t know about you guys, but I personally love the little inserts of Sabaton’s The Last Stand thrown in during some of the bits throughout this video. Truly one of my favorite bands, combined into the videos of one of my favorite TH-cam channels. Absolutely brilliant
First off, man, you have some beautiful tutorials Secondly, I see that you got that remember me wallpaper Thirdly, thank you for your tutorials, without it I wouldn’t be be at the point where I am in my writing, Thank you
This is without a doubt an absolute banger of a video, and great things have been accomplished today with your help. Many thanks for your contribution to writing with this incredible On Worldbuilding/On Writing series. Hopefully, one day I can throw in a thank you from the preface of my finished books.
I’m mostly here on your channel for when you talk about writing, since I would like to be a fiction writer, but this video had me nodding along and remembering that yeah, THIS is why I’m a history major.
To defend Brandon Sanderson, I would point out that our knowledge of time and progress is shaped by our universal constants, i.e. lack of magic. In Sanderson's Way of Kings, there is magic and the enslavement of Parshmen. Power leads to power, and slavery leads to polarization of classes and reliance upon the slave class as opposed to technological innovation. Given the presence of both, I find it believable that it progress as we know it might plateau, and that stories might be captured by a religious hierarchy, as it was with the hierocracy. Perhaps Sanderson might have made fewer years pass, but the timeline as established is not enough to draw me out of the story personally
Plus the repeated desolations weren't like some kind of local flood, but more like a global catastrophe that had wiped away most civilizations - like a nuclear winter.
@@faultier1158 , another great point. Especially given that each desolation is effectively an apocalypse, think about how discouraging that must have been for any survivors? I would imagine that most knowledge was lost, and that everything for a time reverted to a Hobbesian state of nature. Regardless, the time does not really get in the way too much of the story.
The strangest thing about the Stormlight archives is how stable the entire world feels up until the books start, we have a huge war driven civilization, a grassy plains civilization, a civilization that's based around a lake, a different one that is centered on these giant turtles that cities are built upon, but there is very little evidence that the warlike civilization has affected ANY of the other ones, they mostly focus on beating the crap out of each other, and have apparently been doing this for centuries. I don't know if its mostly because he hasn't explored anywhere else yet, on any detail, but it feels really strange that the civilization that overly glorifies war, and is constantly vying for power within itself to have that not spill out and affect nearby groups to a large extent. you get this long static feeling history, with basically every important event only having ties to something that happened 4k years ago, and events that are directly shown in the material, or at least caused by people we directly know. That's fine in something like mistborn, with its god king that controls the religion, and basically all knowledge that gets passed down in any form, but even it has myths and stories, and contradictions to events more recently than the events leading to the Lord Ruler taking power.
@@Arcon1ous Part of that is the fact that The Thrill (the thing that drives the Warlike civilization and creates a euphoria in battle) was started by the Voidspren Nergaoul. Its presence mainly effected Alethkhar at the time of the story, which is why it was so warlike. It's stated that Nergaoul has begun to move west, so Jah Keved has become more effected by it and its grip over Alelkhar is beginning to weaken.
I'm not quite sure that the Stormlight example really works. The Last Desolation isn't very well remembered, and it's definitely not the most important event in Rosharan history. Stuff that people do remember about it is very warped over the millennia through religious lenses
history is one of my favorite school topics, and watching your video's help with worldbuilding problems I've been having, and giving me history lessons all at the same time
I have been watching your videos non-stop this week. What a great info you have brought to my world! Also your vids are no boring as other channels.. really entertaining .Thank you for help me and others out on creating a better fantasy world with realist perspective.
Sometimes, history is full of outright lies crafted to have a certain purpose that the common man isn't privy to. Even if they're true, they may be true through the lens of your enemy and not you. For example, your sworn enemy could call something a sign of impending doom that will destroy all around it, but their destruction is your salvation. As such, that sign is one of serendipity as far as you're concerned. It's all a matter of perspective.
@@GoranXII: There's that, too, but I'm talking about instances where the details don't change; only the interpretation does. Imagine a society that is superstitious and a great tragedy befalls them that is centered around a person with a unique and curious yet very uncommon trait. It's not unreasonable to conclude that they will call that trait a sign of doom. Now, imagine they represent everything you despise. You would rejoice at their tragic downfall and suffering while embracing that trait wherever you saw it manifest. It's the same trait with the same concerning details, but the point of view differs with the perspective. It's like the Bible verse Matthew 10:35. "Set against" changes interpretation based on whether you look at God as an Arbiter or as an Adversary, but it's the same two words. Consequently, some idiots are starting to rewrite the verse so that "set" is replaced with "turn" when another definition of "set" makes it synonymous with "place." I think you can see what I'm getting at. Perspective is a very funny and surreal thing.
poisonsquid37 not all Muslims are horrible people you know. And I do know them that well; even if Islam does call for that stuff (and i don’t know I haven’t studied the religion), my friends would be considered not devout Muslims.
One thing i like to note about the elder scrolls is that they have events called a dragon break, where time becomes fluent and multiple timelines play out at once colliding into eachother at the end making it possible that contradictionary events happened at the same time.
Talk about timing. A friend and I are making a story together as fun and we’ve just started trying to figure out what the history is lol! This will be very helpful, Thank You.
In my story, the hero of the world was the last giant, the man that united the world and overthrew an evil empire, a man whose actions brought prosperity to the world for the next hundred years. At least, that's their recorded history in 3 specific regions. The Mountain Kingdom was largely unaware of most of these events and saw little or no impact from them, the only thing that changed for them was who they were "ruled" by via some distant power that had no measurable impact on any aspect of their lives. Heck, there's an entire empire adjacent to the fallen empire that perfectly predicted these events before they happened, so, for them, it's disjointed enough that it's not history, it's just entertainment, a play, that they could see happen on an interregional scale, one in which they already know all the spoilers for. As for what actually happened, is that some guy, the sole survivor of an attempted genocide, who doesn't even care that it happened, got pissed about a bunch of unrelated matters and decided to direct all of his anger at The Emperor, and set about on a quest to kill the emperor. The "world" that was united was really a civil uprising that had been brewing for decades prior to these events. And the fall of this economically powerful empire nearly brought most of the known world into economic ruin, but was mostly saved by the successor of that "hero," who ruled the world for the next hundred years, but was overshadowed by her father's legend, and part of the world fell to economic AND ecological ruin anyways, but still considered itself prosperous due to its saturation with propaganda and a ridiculously strong sense of nationalism, given that it's where the aforementioned "hero" was supposedly born, rose to power, and started the revolution. Then there's additional parts of the world that The Empire and The New Empire considered uninhabitable, but has inhabitants that have been negatively affected by this supposed boon in world prosperity, with one of them having their hunting grounds cut in half by the addition of new trade routes through a desert, angering their goddess who unleashes her sandstorm wrath upon those traveling the trade routes, with a lot of help from priest-led raiding parties. And all this isn't even getting into the rise of a demi-god-like figure warping ogre religious views to suit his own political gains in another one of the "uninhabitable" zones and spreading his cult into The New Empire to ease a planned invasion, which he's been planning since before the regime change, but is ultimately rendered less effective since they changed capitals to one that's coincidentally further away from the spread of the cult. History is complicated.
I remember it! Mostly because of its art style though. It was a very beautiful game. Gameplay-wise... well, it worked ok. I was too distracted by the visuals to notice any pros or cons.
Yesterday I spent a good portion of my day searching videos, articles, blogs, and other resources for tips and tricks on how to make a world history. Then the very next day Hello Future Me uploads this! Oh boi, Destiny has arrived!
I clicked on this video with no expectations, but the second you said to make 6 timelines I immediately realized this is advice from the heavens. I knew what needed to be done, but not how to do it, and you my good sir, have saved me quite a lot of time
As the darkness falls and Arabia calls One man spreads his wings, as the battle begins May the land lay claim on to Lawrence name Seven pillars of wisdom lights the flame
@@jynexe3056 A revolt to gain independence Hide and seek, hunters hot on their trail Joined their ranks, obtained their acceptance Side by side raid the Ottoman rail
This is just what I need right now. I've been chucking around a legendary backstory for ages now, and have finally sketched out an actual plot of a story. Cheers!
In my D&D world there's a world wide event called 'The 6 Plagues of Estar" (typical religious style plagues/flood ect) which occured 3,000 years ago and has little affect on the present day world, but served as a kind of reset (the world had existed for 30,000 years till that point, so advanced technologies were lost). The only direct affect it had was creating certain monsters though most the players will meet are descendents of those monsters. It has no affect on the country/story my players will travel, but it's there. Anyway, amazing vid as always!!
In Tolkien's case I think a major driver of the effect of past events was that many of his participants are immortal, like Elrond Half-Elven. If there were still living among us those who could remember the decline of Greece and the rise of Rome, or the conflict between the Franks and the Muslims, those events would have much greater influence today. Oral records shouldn't be considered a game of Chinese Whispers. Passing down traditions meant you'd tell the account to a group, the group would talk about it among themselves, and then come back to you to see if what they remember is the same as what you told them. Chinese Whispers is a game where you want to garble things up for fun. For a long time the living word was regarded as more trustworthy than the written word because you could always cross examine a living witness while a word, once written, was impenetrable to such inquiry.
You're underselling how faithfully and accurately oral tradition was/is. It worked nothing like a game of telephone (or Chinese whispers, apparently?). That's how it would work with one person telling the story to one person. But great video overall!
This video is freaking stellar. I have been working on world building for months, and you have answered more questions than I found in any Ted talk or class Discussion. thank you!!
One example of "history is complicated", especially emphasizing the difference between what happens and what is remembered that I find especially funny is that while the song played under the "Deus Vult Infidel" meme has become widely associated with the Crusades, it has exactly zero things to do with the Crusades, and describes an event in 1527, centuries after the major Crusades. It was basically the subject of ultra-small scale historical revisionism, it glorifies Christians involved in a battle and invokes God, so it becomes associated as a meme with the Crusades
I love your videos, I am a DM and I especially love your on worldbuilding series, and just letting you know you should make a playlist of them so I (and others) can binge easier while I build the world my players get to play in!
Just got my copy of On Writing and Worldbuilding the other day! I haven't finished it yet, but I do love the way you break down and explain details that I've heard before, but sometimes couldn't grasp as easily even when in classes dedicated to writing. Not to mention you've not only shown me tips and important things to consider in writing, but go in depth and use easy to understand examples to back it up. Your hard and soft magic systems videos were a big help for my own writing and going it over in the book will add to it. I'm also seeing my lack of political influence, historical points, and my serious adversity to showing religion. I know my story doesn't hinge off of those subjects, but integrating enough of it certainly would being a sense of realism and that there's far more going on outside the eyes of the protagonist's perspective.
My favorite example of real vs manufactured history in fiction is from Final Fantasy Tactics. The entire story is told by a scholar who uncovers that the great "hero" from centuries prior was not what he seemed, and the little known "heretic" that the Church tried to erase from history was the true hero.
I'm DEFINITELY worldbuilding first, story second. I have made multiple fantasy/sci-fi worlds but a few stand out to me The Soots: my oldest project by far. I forgot about the word "soot" when coming up with them. Started out when I was 6 as an attempt to make my own Pokemon. It's a sci-fi setting, but the timeline for it goes back over 3,000 years so one of the only complete "stories" is actually the history of the Gótt'a war and the war of Scendian independence, right at the beginning of the timeline. Most of my work here has actually been fleshing out the biology of the Soots, and I have come up with an evolutionary history for them and everything. And a solar system with too many planets. My 2nd was Fëamar. The name itself takes inspiration from Tolkien, but nothing else does; it's set in a modded Minecraft server. Then there's Kyanus, another Sci-fi thing. No humanoids whatsoever; it's purely a speculative biology project, and is the most complete of all of them Finally is Atharin, a Fantasy world based off things like LOTR and Skyrim; however, the map itself takes inspiration from the Soots thing I mentioned earlier, and it was originally just a story set during the Gótt'a war.
This is just to say that World Anvil absolutely is a freakin incredible toolset. I have nothing incentivizing me to write this other than my love of the site.
Thank you for this very in-depth and helpful video. If anyone out there is like me, though, it's important to remember not to get so caught up in making your story's world that you never end up actually making the story.
Wheel of time in back of thumbnail. I love how there is a old voice in Rand’s head. I have not finished the wheel of time ( only on book 7) but I feel that loial the ogier wrote it and a bard is now telling it
Btw, the New Testament was not translated from Greek to Latin to English (except for possibly the King James translation; I'm not sure on that one.) Most English versions were translated directly from the Greek
@@dw1419 There KJV bible literally endorses homophobia in a way not present in the original because King James wanted to appease the church due to the allegations about the relationship between him and the Duke of Buckingham. There's also the famous instance of the various Greek words for the Christian afterlife all being translated as "hell." Find me a translation of anything that doesn't alter the original meaning in some way.
@@CharlotteSWeb-oh7ou Please show your work. We also STILL HAVE the original language versions, which allows for small corrections or updating language to get across the original meaning (ex. thou/thee/thy now sounding antiquated).
First up I'm so happy you and WA are "partnered" or at least knowledgeable. I often have youre channel playing while I draft on WA. you both have helped a high school idea become much more streamlined.
As a huge fantasy and history nerd, this speaks to me on a personal and spiritual level. previously, my favourite of these writing videos was your one on fantasy races because that's my favourite fantasy convention/trope, but I think this one almost tops it. There's an episode of Doctor Who in which aliens who look like monks change everyone's memories to make the whole world think that they've been watching over humanity since before they existed as Homo Sapiens and they rule the planet with an iron fist. Your bit on memories being changed reminded me of it.
Noah never existed. Nor any other person in the old testament and a lot of people in the New testament didn't exist either, except for that dumb pope who wrote himself into it and the Corinthians letters. The rest is fake.
@@adamkaris actually, You can. Not only on the ways of religión/moral codes, we have to aboid the rage of good. Our entire culture it's shaped on the ways we look at water And how we fear it. Hollywood films like the day after tomorrow And 2012, use the same analogy they just switch "the good" for "climate change" And "global warming" And it's all our fault for all those Sins agaits Nature.
The Major actually David was proven to exist along with several other Kong’s, as well as Jesus, Paul, the 12, most likely Sergius Paulus, Caesar, Pilate, Herod, don’t be that fool who listens to fringe scholars when virtually every serious scholar (except Richard Carrier, Robert M. Price, and a few others, who are ignored by the vast vast vast majority of the rest) acknowledges these people existed.
Oh, yeah! I was hoping that this theme will come up in the videos. I am personally obsessed with trying to construct a grounding history of my world which would connect the beginning and the end of my timeline. However, I always fail at the last 7 centuries :( Thanks for the video!
In LOTR, the orcs *may* have been immortal, like the elves; there certainly are records of very long sliced orc chiefs. The reason I say this is because the Orcs were made from corrupted elves. This would also explain the size of the orc armies: if they are prevented from killing eachother, their numbers will grow unchecked. However, the orcs are so violent they they probably don't last very long most of the time.
Looks like I might not be done with worldbuilding. Or maybe I should just accept being less than perfect and try to get away with a 3rd person limited isolationist cultural filter. Could undefined grey area have intrigue of its own?
I love Every time you use the "Deus Vult" meme, because it always gives me a nudge to go back and listen to The Last Stand again, which is always nice lol
I'm so glad you uploaded this. It's been a kind of a rough couple weeks and I really needed something to make my brain think about cool fun things and not dumb sad things.
I'm not a writer and don't have a strong desire to become one. Yet I still watch your videos because I found you when you were making videos about how to train your dragon and I enjoy your voice and presentation style, despite having little interest in what you say (I'm like an armless person watching how-to videos on juggling)
I think you are my spirit animal lol, I just started watching all your videos and I have never seen so many helpful videos and about the shows, movies & books I love! Thanks.
I think the girl with the dragon tattoo tales the history of the case in a way where each family member has a different version of the story because none of them like each other.
I just finished season 1 of Handmaid's Tale and the worldbuilding was incredibly well done. From the first episode, I was invested and utterly intrigued by it's unforgiving world.
I just wanna listen to the rain for an hour or 5. And I had to listen through 25 minutes of mind-bending, thought-provoking complications just to get to the simplicity. Do it again!
Dude, you should read one piece manga. Pretty much every video you make has reminds me of it. It has a pretty unique magic system, amazing world building, and the overall story revolves around history deleted by the world govt.
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What's a crucial event in the history of your world? HISTORY IS COMPLICATED, but you know what isn't? World Anvil! >>> www.worldanvil.com/ > imgur.com/a/CQeNyq8 and theeeeeeen come follow me on instatwitter. Stay nerdy!
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~ Tim
DEUS VULT, INFIDEL
Thank you for a Doctor who reference
I'm not even sure what I'd use this world for - either a book or a campaign setting if I get to accomplish my dream of DMing a DnD game with a lot of Slavic mythology thrown in - but part of the world's history is this seafaring empire of elves which collapsed a century and a half before the actual story. The results included the Leyensmen Confederacy (started out as a mostly human mercenary class in the empire, now they're basically really multi-ethnic Vikings), a lot of dragons, various corrupt city-states, the "Warlord Wastes" coming about between said city states and tribal kingdoms past the old borders of the empire, and even shook up divine politics a bit when the pantheons tried to figure out who gets which part of the former empire now
The major world power that was recently experiencing a “pax ###” is infamous for having a new social revolution followed by civil war every few centuries or so.
My current story is a science fiction. The importance of the event is in that it sets up the climate the story happens in.
Trying to dodge a treaty, a country decides to let one of its incorporated territories use very large guns and very useful technology to wage a war on their behalf. It backfired a bit because now that territory is wanting to be free because they've got a liberty high and it's causing some tension. The conflict was called the Sunspot Wars because it was a series of extremely small wars fought between planets that had never heard of one another before the fight started.
"Once you work out what happened... you've got to figure out what people THINK happened." That's glorious right there.
A fantastic example could be the Trojan War.
According to the source material, the Minoan king was one of the main kings on the Greek side and, if you pay close attention to their backstories, the other major kings were the sons or grandsons of usurpers who overthrew the hereditary kings of their cities with Minoan assistance. And following the war, many of those kings were overthrown themselves by descendants of the original dynasty.
It wouldn’t be hard to reimagine the Trojan War as a cataclysmic ‘World War’ between the Minoan and the Trojan kingdoms for domination of the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean, with the Greek kingdoms drawn in as vassal states of the Minoans. In this context, it’s far easier to see the conflict dragging on for a decade or more, as the Minoans and their allies slowly tighten their grip on the Trojans until they are finally in front of the walls of the city itself.
As the Minoans had no city walls themselves, they had no cultural need for any type of siege weapons, and they ultimately resorted to breaking taboo by booby-trapping an offering to the Trojan’s sea god (one of the symbols of Poseidon was the horse) to breach the walls. Then, perhaps before the Minoans can return to Crete, Thera decides to self-immolate, and the resultant calamities ravage the island. The Greeks take this as a sign of divine disapproval, and overthrow many of the Minoan client-kings. Some of the survivors of the cataclysmic series of events roam the eastern Mediterranean as essentially pirates (Odysseus, Aeneas, the Sea Peoples) and create kingdoms-in-exile on Crete, Cypress, Egypt, Northern Africa, etc.
Following this line of thought, Homer was originally a firsthand account of the Bronze Age Collapse before it slowly morphed into a disjointed tale of independent Greek city-states defeating an Asian empire and what that victory cost them.
A bit late, but I just have to point out just how well Dragon Age did exactly that.
Or, at least, realize that if it happened a long time ago - and/or especially if it happened without certain characters actually present for it - whatever they think happened doesn't necessarily have to be what actually happened perfectly exactly.
If the past is sunlight, then History is moonlight
You know history is cool when a thought experiment in linguistics gives us modern fantasy.
Tolkien was like: "Eärendil... I need to make a mythology out of it."
Hehe, well yeah, Tolkien in a letter wrote that he is historically minded. Tolkien's world history is complex on it's own, take Second Age for instance:
"Thus, as the Second Age draws on, we have a great Kingdom and evil theocracy (for Sauron is also the god of his slaves) growing up in Middle-earth. In the West lie the precarious refuges of the Elves, while Men in those parts remain more or less uncorrupted if ignorant...
Meanwhile Númenor has grown in wealth, wisdom, and glory, under its line of great kings of long life, directly descended from Elros, Earendil's son, brother of Elrond... In the first stage, being men of peace, their courage is devoted to sea-voyages....Mostly they come to the west-shores of Middle-earth, where they aid the Elves and Men against Sauron, and incur his undying hatred. In those days they would come amongst Wild Men as almost divine benefactors, bringing gifts and knowledge, and passing away again - leaving many legends behind of kings and gods out of the sunset.
In the second stage, the days of Pride and Glory and grudging of the Ban, they begin to seek wealth rather than bliss. The desire to escape death produced a cult of the dead, and they lavished wealth on tombs and memorials.They now made settlements on the west-shores, but these became rather strongholds and 'factories' of lords seeking wealth, and the Númenóreans became tax-gatherers carrying off over the sea evermore and more goods in their great ships. The Númenóreans began the forging of arms and engines...
A new religion, and worship of the Dark, with its temple under Sauron arises. The Faithful are persecuted and sacrificed. The Númenóreans carry their evil also to Middle-earth and there become cruel and wicked lords of necromancy, slaying and tormenting men; and the old legends are overlaid with dark tales of horror. This does not happen, however, in the North West; for thither, because of the Elves, only the Faithful who remain Elf-friends will come...
The Second Age ends with the Last Alliance (of Elves and Men), and the great siege of Mordor. It ends with the overthrow of Sauron and destruction of the second visible incarnation of evil"
So while some events are caused by something specific, or some are 'guided' to specific course by design of some immortal entity manipulating events, it also is due to change and normal cause and effect chain, it is multilayered.
You forgot Shakespear fanfiction. Tolkien loved to poke fun at The Bard's plot points. For instance, the whole Witch King being killed by Erowyn and Pippin was poking fun at Macbeth.
nottheguru As well as the Ents attacking Isengard.
@@nottheguru correction: Eowyn and Merry
Thank you for this nice vid! Quick note: Egyptian Hieroglyphs should *not* be taken as pictoral history, but written history. I am an Egyptologist and can tell you that hieroglyphs, while pictographic signs, do indeed form words, sentences and texts. There are various language groups written in (variations of) these signs, all with a full set of grammar, syntax and language rules. They form a written language, not pictoral evidence, and are therefore subject to the same advantages and problems that come with the written word.
Demotic is done and dead.
Nobody cares, Minoans were older and are the ancestors of Europeans.
@@nuckingfuts3204 Upper and Lower Egypt came together around 3100 BCE, though arguably Egyptian "civilisation" pre-dates this. Minoan civilisation's exact dates are hard to pin down, but various dates have been proposed from about 3000 BCE to 2600 BCE, with the Palatial Period starting significantly later. So no, Minoan civilization is not older than Egyptian.
@@nuckingfuts3204 too get riggty riggty rekt son!
@@MrMuel1205 Wrong, The "Old Kingdom" lasted from 2575 BC to 2150 BC. This is what is commonly understood, you can google it. Minoans flourished 2700 BC to 1450 BC, and started declining from there onward, ending at 1100 BC after being conquered by the Mycenaeans.
The Cycladic civilisation was also older than Egypt, dating back to 3200 BC. Get your facts straight little twat. There are even older civilizations, but these were Neolithic, so don't count.
One reason why Tolkien’s events that happened thousands of years ago still have relevance is related to the Elves having seen history. Those ancient events have relevance because there are still those around who were there, and were personally affected by them, and those Elves run major cultural centers that most of the Free Peoples look up to. Eärendil was Elrond’s dad. So of course his story stayed relevant, because Elrond was an important Elf who would correct the record as needed, and his being there kept Eärendil relevant in a way that kept it from the problems with recalling legends. If Achilles son was around today and was the leader of Greece, we’d probably have a much better recollection of the Illiad.
If your races in your fantasy world live different lengths of time, they are going to have different recollections of events, which are going to vary depending on how much they trust each other.
Breath of the Wild did this really well. Without telling you that the Zora lived longer than the humans, who lived longer than the Rito, they showed this by having the old folks of the Zora remember you specifically from 100 years ago, and showing that the young man of a prince of that race was a child then. The humans think you are young for being 100 and something, and only the extremely old remember you and the calamity. The Rito seem so comparatively short lived that the idea that you are the same champion of legend from 100 years back is inconceivable, and they always figure you are a defendant of the champion.
Yeah. Also, his comment about the grudge between elves and dwarves feeling unrealistic also falls under this in my opinion. The grudge is ongoing because both races live a lot longer than humans (although dwarves live a lot less time than elves) and therefore remember all the various slights. Thranduil remembers the dwarves attacking doriath and possibly had family members die there. Thorin remembers Thranduil turning away when Smaug attacked and knew people who, in his view might have been saved had Thranduil helped. And these grudges last because they all remember these things and because they live longer, they have more time to retaliate and thus continue to perpetuate the grudge.
@@taliavanbeelen6162 in a similar vein theirs a Schoolastic series from the Early 2000’s called Animorphs that has a deceptively simple origin for why two races are fighting, what they’re fighting for and why they act the way they do.
The basic story is a race of Sentient Parasites live on their home planet they walk the surface of their planet by brain jacking hosts. Their primary host is so evolved to them that they’re practically brain dead, have poor vision, and weak arms. Then a highly advanced race discovers them shambling around on their home planet and decides to educate them on the wonders past their planet, show them technology they never thought possible and teach them science that can rapidly advance their species. The leader of this was named Seerow and what would follow was a sizable group of the Parasites would infiltrate Seerows ranks, kill many and steal their ships with the goal to get better bodies, and build a utopian society for themselves because as body stealing slugs they’re weak and pathetic and seeing a universe full of things that can give them a better standard decided they needed it at all costs. This singular moment would be mockingly immortalized as Seerows Kindness and created a culture of Xenophobia in Seerows race as they were hesitant to share any information with other races in fear of creating another Galactic Incident.
It would also create an existential hatred between two races as Parasite can only live Parasitically and them denying their way of living makes them the evil ones in the Parasites eyes, meanwhile the other Race sees it as their duty to essentially reduce them back to the Stone Age and confine them to their planet.
@@Broomer52 sounds like the Goa'uld.
@@lettherebedragons8885 never watched Stargate. From a quick Google search they do sound similar. The Yeerks (the parasites) were always the most fascinating race to me because of how they operate and what their culture was. The Yeerks survived in the soupy waters of their planet and absorbed radiation from their sun they called “Kandrona Rays” the catalyst for them successfully getting off planet was the Andalites (Seerows Race) figuring out how to create a machine that could mimic the radiation of their home star. When they take over a body you’re still completely aware of what’s happening, you’re just unable to talk or move. They can also read the thoughts and memories of their host, giving them the ability to perfectly mimic their host and become a master of whatever you know. As such the Yeerks after leaving their planet rapidly became more intelligent as the collective knowledge of every host was absorbed. They even have a ranking of different races. Their Golden a goose is a Class 5. A Class 5 race are large in numbers and able to breed quickly, and can't resist the Yeerks. Humanity is a Class 5 and it’s the only Clas 5 they’ve found.
Their culture is also based around Hosts and they’re ran by The Council of 13. Only 1 of the 13 is the actual leader and the others carry a lesser degree of power and often act as advisors to the true Leader of the Yeerks. The interesting part is only the Council Knows who is who. The Citizens and even Soldiers and Commanders don’t know which is the Yeerk Emperor and which are lesser leaders, given that people only see the Host Bodies this makes it even easier to hide their identity.
@@Broomer52 yep totally the Goa'uld. Before they found humans as hosts they used a more primitive reptilian species the Unas as hosts. And they constantly looking for ways to evolve humans into more efficiant and powerful hosts.
"and way too many stories of Zeus having affairs as animals". Haha I lost it.
I also love your pictures of Supreme Leader Mishka in the corner! May memory of his reign forever live in our hearts!
For some reason I thought he said Suess...
Zeus had affairs as more than just animals... Do you know how Hercules was contrived, well you see Zeus had an affair with a woman caged for being the mother of a boy who would kill the man who caged her. But in order to get to the mother Zeus took the form... Of a rain drop
there are not enough stories of Zeus having affairs as animals.
Hey, that guy just likes it dressing up for lust and love ... some kind of fetish XP
@@zealousdoggo in the version I read, he came as sunlight through the window.
I used to obsess over all of my histories in my fantasy world connecting and making fluid sense, but then I realized (probably because of Hello Future Me) that History is complicated and details can be wrong... so I started allowing contradictions to exist, and even wrote the history of Elves and history of Dwarves independently. A lot of things conflict, there are multiple creation stories... but that's exactly the way it is on Earth, and it adds a lot of weight to the entire experience. Readers/characters have things to discuss and disagree with.
I think realism in world building is pretty hyped up these days. To me it's much more important that a world is interesting. It's fantasy, not historical fiction, who cares if the tiny details don't always make sense?
This. I believe thats what it boils down to, your world needs to allow for conflict so that your story can have tension. Otherwise the characters and story would be bland, or the world would just be a backdrop unrelated to the drama. In the latter case, congratulations: all the time worldbuilding was wasted.
@@thedarkmasterthedarkmaster of course!
@@Enzaio Well, it sorta does matter if it makes sense... that is if you are trying to build a cohesive and fully fleshed out world. If you are just writing something in the same vain as Alice In Wonderland, then it doesn't matter. Go nuts. But when creating cultures, religions, races, etc... you have to pay more attention to detail. Some of the best science fiction and fantasy, the ones that people remember even nearly a century after their introduction, are the ones which we can most easily relate to and immerse ourselves in.. because that world feels real to us, it feels like a place that could possibly exist. Think of Dune, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Warhammer, The Expanse, Lord of The Rings, Conan The Barbarian, A Song of Ice And Fire, Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender, etc... I could go on for a while... all of those worlds are vast, encompassing, and detailed. Which allows the fans to become more immersive in the story, setting, and characters. Because they feel real and consistent. But again it depends on what you are going for.
@@wiseguy01 I didn't mean to say that realism has no worth at all. Of course it's important. It just don't think it's THE single most important aspect. All the worlds you list are also very interesting. If they were incredibly realistic and incredibly boring, you probably wouldn't have listed them.
And why was Zeus always getting it on? Because a lot of those supposed half-god progeny were the supposed founders of various Greek city-states, allowing both the cities and their kings who were supposedly their descendants to buff their rhetorical reputations. Might have played a role in European traditions of the crossover between royalty and divinity too.
Who better to be a king than the son the son of the king god.
Yeah, that makes sense but I can’t help but laugh at that because can you imagine? “So, why do you deserve to be king?”, “Oh, my mother was raped by the king of the gods and then turned into a cow!”, “ Sounds legit!!”
It no wonder his wife was always mad. I be mad too if my husband was bed hopping with every other girl on the planet.
There is evidence that the idea of crossover between divinity and royalty is older than Greece. A few stories like that pop up in Egypt and Mesopotamia long before the Hellenistic period, or even Mycenae. And legends like this also independently pop up in different parts of the world, such as India, the Norse tribes, and I think also Mesoamerica.
It seems to be a common trope of leaders across the world to legitimize their rule.
Though it's not always because of politics. The myth of the birth of Apollo, for example, is basically an embellished description of how the cult of Apollo spread across Greece. And here Hera represents the resistance of the old forms of worship.
Japanese emperors also claimed to be of the queen god.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
Gotta love the wheel of time
Just started reading this series
For your "Six Different Lenses" step, I'd think you'd want to also include Environment as a lens. It comes up all the time when discussing historical causality, such as the little ice age being correlated with an increase in wars in Europe in the mid-second millennium, the dust bowl effect in the American midwest being a contributor to the great depression, ancient Mesopotamian irrigation leading to salt buildup in the fields leading to agricultural and economic effects, and the whole "what caused the Bronze Age collapse?" debate, which features a lot of environment-related reasons.
I suppose you could lump it in with geography, but the way you talk about geography in the video seems to emphasize distance and topography a lot more than environment, and I don't think the examples I've outlined really fit into the same category.
Plus it means we get seven lenses, which I think fits the tropes of worldbuilding-heavy writing way better than six.
Edit: paragraphing
That's very true. The Viking raids, for example, were indirectly caused by the Early Medieval Warm Period. The warmer climate brought more food to Scandinavia. More food meant more kids survived and grew up, which meant a lot more people needing a way to earn a living and finding one by going on raids. The warmer climate also potentially led to them being able to get all the way to Newfoundland via a Northern route along Iceland and Greenland.
Wouldn't that be geography?
@@natalie106436 "Geography" is a really broad term. Depending on how you define it, you could roll the categories of religion, culture, and some of politics under it ("human geography"). We don't want to overload any one category, though, as it makes it less useful as a tool for planning your worldbuilding. The video's examples of geography focus on distance between societies (1800s US vs Britain and such) rather than things like climate, ecology, pollution, and global warming. Plus, I wouldn't call the collapse of the Atlantic salmon fishing industry, for instance, a geographical event.
So two categories would be better -- geography would just focus more on topography, political geography, and perhaps some of the strategic components of geography (the geo- in geopolitics); environment more on climate, ecology, natural resource management, pollution, and such.
@@phaneros But isn't geography in the sense of distance and topography... static? Certainly not something that would change over a few millennia, so I don't really see how making a _timeline_ of geography is useful...
@@nagirabbit Good point. Ultimately, the choice of lens is arbitrary, so you could use whatever lenses you want. Personally, though, I'd still hold on to it because of two effects not really discussed in the video: conjunctive causes and the power of invariants.
In history, we often see cause→effect relationships that only work with two causes (cause ∧ cause → effect); the "∧" is a conjunctive, or an "and". So Augustus Caesar putting political restrictions on Egypt (political) makes Egypt more stable (political) and profitable for Rome (economics), but only because Egypt is the entrypoint into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean (static geography). Stability ∧ geography → growth. We can say two things "caused" the third, even if one didn't change. So putting conservative / security restrictions on a society without the geography doesn't have the same effect. If a fantasy god appeared and cut off the monsoon winds to Egypt, then those political restrictions could backfire as the Egyptians aren't happy and the government doesn't have the funds to suppress them. Of course, by the time anyone is diving this deep into worldbuilding, they're really just in this because they enjoy the worldbuilding (like me), so we may be straying away from the point of the video.
Invariants are just things that don't change. They're useful in math when solving difficult problems, and they're useful in worldbuilding when we want to identify constant pressures on a society. So static geography affects culture over time -- you wouldn't expect desert kingdoms and steppe horsewarriors to have the same culture, even if the desert was originally inhabited by nomads from the steppe. There's also examples like Russia's eternal quest for a warm-water port (economic ∧ political geography → political). So invariants are useful for highlighting a nation's grand strategy, cultural / demographic shifts, and passive pressures.
The flip side of invariants is that nothing else really affects the shape of the land (which why geopolitics is a subject that exists), so your geography timeline won't have any lines going in. If I were using this technique, I wouldn't mind; invariants often lead to nice, simple logic. If anyone considers it wasted space, though, then I don't see anything wrong with lumping environment and geography together.
In general, you could add any timelines you deem useful. If you've got "the three great macguffins" with world-altering power, then I'd say they might deserve their own timeline. My goal in this thread is mostly to highlight an easy modification anyone could make to the six lenses model to tune it to their story, if they deem it useful. As someone who enjoys worldbuilding more than actual writing, I often find choosing rigid divisions of worldbuilding can make it easier to speed through it, but runs the risk of cutting out all the interesting interactions that fell between the gaps of your categories.
I swear the creators of this kind of content are psychic
Imagine how much more complicated it gets when those psychics write about actual psychics.
When historical perspectives are partially based on famous prophecies based on multiple detailed future timelines shaped by oracles and seers reacting to yet more distant events in variants of those timelines, all of which is biased by individual perspectives, interpretation, deception, propaganda and grows more "outdated" the more time passes since each original glimpse into the future.
For reaaallllll
I write it and I agree
Wow. You only mentioned Avatar: The Last Air Bender once. And it's at the near end of the video
😮
Avatar is mono-causal "Everything changed when the fire nation attacked."
@@danielhall271 well, 'the fire nation attacked' is recent history in the way that the war is still ongoing. And therefore, as explained here, prominent in the view of the people. The start of the war looked a lot different from the perpective of the fire people, which is given later in the story.
He should mention Final Fantasy XIV more, tbh; like how Eorzea and Garlemald have such strikingly different views of the world and history as recent as 55 years ago due to the rise of a new technology and growing empire
To be fair regarding dwarves and elves, they are also commonly depicted as long lived and/or immortal. Grudges and such are bound to last longer when those involved endure as well.
I'm a worldbuilder first and writer second, but honestly, I don't really get to writing most of the time, because I get stuck detailing what my fictional civilizations eat and what materials they use for building or making clothes, what pigments they use for their make-up, how their languages and writing systems evolved, who they trade with, etc.
You can explore that with one (or even far more) in your story. Maybe have a pigment maker going through town to collect what they need and have them have a student so they can talk about it...
Or something like that.
I am a worldbuilder that has a thought of one day possibly writing a story in the world I've been building for a couple years now and will continue to build for several more years at this rate
@@nyalan8385
Literally me
Lets work together
I'm sad because I'm a writer but I love worldbuilding and I know that most of my worldbuilding history will never never be talked about
5:15 there was. It is called “the bronze age collapse”. Most people today don’t even know it happened
th-cam.com/video/3HaqpSPVhW8/w-d-xo.html
Step One 3:59
Step Two 7:21
Step Three 8:52
Step Four 11:10
Step Five 16:54
Step SIx 17:57
Step Seven 19:18
🫂
While watching this video something hit me. I am sitting through the best college course I ever had, and I am actually enjoying it. And it is free. Your awsome.
Deus Vult AND Dr Who reference followed by excellent advice?! I love this channel so much!
And Sabaton dont forget sabaton
@@sohei_tengu The Last Stand is basically part of the Deus Vult meme by now.
The last stand isn’t even about Crusading 😭😭😭
SliceNDice that’s the best part! Even deeper references. That’s why I LOVE this guy! He even put a little David Tennant ‘Doctor’ in the background!
THANK YOU! I'M GLAD I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE HERE!
13:46 haha, tell that to the Egyptians. It was pretty common practice for Pharaohs to remove images of their ancestors and retroactively insert themselves.
I think Rameses II was one who did that. Yeah, because of all that revisionism, Egyptian history can be pretty chaotic at times
So...what your saying, is that they were making self insert fan fictions of themselves, before any of us.
Stalin approves
For the elf and dwarfs grudge and hate thing.
Here it is worth to remember that since both races (especially elfs) live a long time the primary sources are longer.
I often like to act out that rivalry more one sided with the Elfs holding on to it, due to age.
Often the elven people keeping the grudge for 1 life time but in that time the dwarven race moves on or separates to new groups. When they then meet the elfs the elfs have a grudge the dwarfs know nothing of BUT this creates a new conflict and if any new elfs are brought into the conflict then the conflict keeps going again due to the long scale of individual time
Elves
VERY good point, 5 stars.
A good version of dwarf and elf hatred is in warhammer fantasy, the dwarfs and elves were freinds because they spent a long time killing deamons together, and there people were the closest any 2 races are in the entire setting, but then the elves split into high elves and dark elves and make a false flag attack on the dwarfs, the dwarfs try to get to the bottom of the attack and high elf King is arrogant, and denys elf involvement while also not telling the dwarfs of there splitting, so the dwarfs try in vain to get this solved paid for the injustice, until the elf king orders the shaving of there beard of there diplomats, and returned them to the dwarfs, who now had no choice but to declare war as that's the dwarf equivalent of castration, all those shaved took an oathe to become slayers, who seek death via combat primarily with monsters, and the war is so long and terrible that entire libraries of books of grudges were filled with atrocities, until finally the dwarf king killed the elf king and the dwarfs kicked them off the mainland and they returned to there island outside of a few elves that stuck around and became woodelves, the war is known by the elves as the war of the beard, and by dwarfs as the war of vengeance, though throughout dwarf history there's probably a thousand wars that can accurately be called either name
About oral history, the way it works is highly dependent on how it is implemented in a culture.
For example oral history in medieval europe played a pretty laid back role, since 'the big history' was recorded by the Church. Thus ut was mainly about popular stories and very susceptible to change.
Meanwhile in primarily oral societies the storykeeper was often a very important person, tasked with keeping history as accurate as possible. In northern america oral histories of droughts and catastrophies were found to match with archeological evidence. In the end oral hides can be accurate but it also can not.
Oral history is also very susceptible to wipeouts when revolution or genocide strike.
Good take, thought I’ll also note written events are not much less vunrable to genocide , what with book burning
"Geography is everything!" and "History is complicated!" are my two favorite phrases started by TH-camrs and both fit in whatever story your trying to write.
Edit: "One Piece" is in my opinion and amazing story in the building of both history and geography. Although it is aided by the fact it is 960 chapters long and is still going on.
16:50, "want to see a story where people can't even think of trusting history due to being unable to trust their own memory..." that would be 1984 my dude.
One of my favorite parts of Sanderson's Mistborn books is how the story subverts the reliability of certain types of history. Types of historical records we typically assume are trustworthy (written/visual/etc.) become untrustworthy, for story-critical reasons. And types of historical record we tend to see as less authoritative (oral history, stored by Sazed) become the only type of history that the characters (and thus the readers) can trust. I loved that.
I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted.
That line was such brilliant foreshadowing
I remember the time when I bought a book on Sindarin. I decided that creating a language didn't seem that hard.
Two days later, I found myself sitting at my desk, copying the dictionary into my journal. I realized that I had made a HUGE mistake.
'History is a set of lies agreed upon' - Napoleon Bonaparte
As far as the Stormlight Archives goes, while I do think your criticism is fair, I feel one aspect you ignore is the religious nature of it. For example, the life of Jesus was 2000 years ago, yet the effect of that life on the modern world, through the many Christian religions, is still huge.
Fair point! You're totally right.
~ Tim
Though it could be argued that said event is merely a catalyst being used by those in current positions of power in order to maintain control and continue to shape further social and historical narratives based on its dogmatic principles rather than any real effect said ancient event might realistically have if it did not have this contemporary political support
*Oathbringer spoilers* The effects of the last desolation on the world of Roshar are pretty complicated. There are also other things to keep in mind about that world's history such as how there was quite a bit of continuity our world doesn't have such as the Knights Radiant who were in power for a long time, up until about 1500 years before the books, if I remember right. Those guys could enforce their rule with their powers and had the backing of a god, only losing political power when that god died and they became disillusioned, giving up said powers and rule.
@@kitty.miracle lmaooo, this take is 2 years old but it's still shit
@@kitty.miraclethis take is now 3 years old, and its still shit
I don’t know about you guys, but I personally love the little inserts of Sabaton’s The Last Stand thrown in during some of the bits throughout this video. Truly one of my favorite bands, combined into the videos of one of my favorite TH-cam channels. Absolutely brilliant
*Look at the Legend of Zelda's timeline* I'm listening to your teachings, Mentor HFM.
First off, man, you have some beautiful tutorials
Secondly, I see that you got that remember me wallpaper
Thirdly, thank you for your tutorials, without it I wouldn’t be be at the point where I am in my writing, Thank you
This is without a doubt an absolute banger of a video, and great things have been accomplished today with your help. Many thanks for your contribution to writing with this incredible On Worldbuilding/On Writing series. Hopefully, one day I can throw in a thank you from the preface of my finished books.
Quite possibly one of my favorite channels on the internet. Incredible detail, wit and charm, and I always learn something I can use in my writing!
I’m mostly here on your channel for when you talk about writing, since I would like to be a fiction writer, but this video had me nodding along and remembering that yeah, THIS is why I’m a history major.
To defend Brandon Sanderson, I would point out that our knowledge of time and progress is shaped by our universal constants, i.e. lack of magic. In Sanderson's Way of Kings, there is magic and the enslavement of Parshmen. Power leads to power, and slavery leads to polarization of classes and reliance upon the slave class as opposed to technological innovation. Given the presence of both, I find it believable that it progress as we know it might plateau, and that stories might be captured by a religious hierarchy, as it was with the hierocracy. Perhaps Sanderson might have made fewer years pass, but the timeline as established is not enough to draw me out of the story personally
Plus the repeated desolations weren't like some kind of local flood, but more like a global catastrophe that had wiped away most civilizations - like a nuclear winter.
The series is also nowhere near finished, so its possible more complex histories will be revealed later on.
@@faultier1158 , another great point. Especially given that each desolation is effectively an apocalypse, think about how discouraging that must have been for any survivors? I would imagine that most knowledge was lost, and that everything for a time reverted to a Hobbesian state of nature. Regardless, the time does not really get in the way too much of the story.
The strangest thing about the Stormlight archives is how stable the entire world feels up until the books start, we have a huge war driven civilization, a grassy plains civilization, a civilization that's based around a lake, a different one that is centered on these giant turtles that cities are built upon, but there is very little evidence that the warlike civilization has affected ANY of the other ones, they mostly focus on beating the crap out of each other, and have apparently been doing this for centuries. I don't know if its mostly because he hasn't explored anywhere else yet, on any detail, but it feels really strange that the civilization that overly glorifies war, and is constantly vying for power within itself to have that not spill out and affect nearby groups to a large extent. you get this long static feeling history, with basically every important event only having ties to something that happened 4k years ago, and events that are directly shown in the material, or at least caused by people we directly know.
That's fine in something like mistborn, with its god king that controls the religion, and basically all knowledge that gets passed down in any form, but even it has myths and stories, and contradictions to events more recently than the events leading to the Lord Ruler taking power.
@@Arcon1ous Part of that is the fact that The Thrill (the thing that drives the Warlike civilization and creates a euphoria in battle) was started by the Voidspren Nergaoul. Its presence mainly effected Alethkhar at the time of the story, which is why it was so warlike. It's stated that Nergaoul has begun to move west, so Jah Keved has become more effected by it and its grip over Alelkhar is beginning to weaken.
I'm not quite sure that the Stormlight example really works. The Last Desolation isn't very well remembered, and it's definitely not the most important event in Rosharan history. Stuff that people do remember about it is very warped over the millennia through religious lenses
Buried Giant is such a good, thought-provoking piece of literature on the effects of history and memory on conflict
history is one of my favorite school topics, and watching your video's help with worldbuilding problems I've been having, and giving me history lessons all at the same time
Tim: mentions primary history
21st century: laughs in deepfake
I have been watching your videos non-stop this week. What a great info you have brought to my world! Also your vids are no boring as other channels.. really entertaining .Thank you for help me and others out on creating a better fantasy world with realist perspective.
Sometimes, history is full of outright lies crafted to have a certain purpose that the common man isn't privy to. Even if they're true, they may be true through the lens of your enemy and not you. For example, your sworn enemy could call something a sign of impending doom that will destroy all around it, but their destruction is your salvation. As such, that sign is one of serendipity as far as you're concerned. It's all a matter of perspective.
Indeed. One popular one is to deliberately twist events to make you look good and the other guys look bad.
@@GoranXII: There's that, too, but I'm talking about instances where the details don't change; only the interpretation does. Imagine a society that is superstitious and a great tragedy befalls them that is centered around a person with a unique and curious yet very uncommon trait. It's not unreasonable to conclude that they will call that trait a sign of doom. Now, imagine they represent everything you despise. You would rejoice at their tragic downfall and suffering while embracing that trait wherever you saw it manifest. It's the same trait with the same concerning details, but the point of view differs with the perspective. It's like the Bible verse Matthew 10:35. "Set against" changes interpretation based on whether you look at God as an Arbiter or as an Adversary, but it's the same two words. Consequently, some idiots are starting to rewrite the verse so that "set" is replaced with "turn" when another definition of "set" makes it synonymous with "place." I think you can see what I'm getting at. Perspective is a very funny and surreal thing.
@@DarkPegasus87 Okay, that makes sense. A bit like leprosy.
The Major I will say that there are many Muslims I know who are the opposite of what you describe them as.
poisonsquid37 not all Muslims are horrible people you know. And I do know them that well; even if Islam does call for that stuff (and i don’t know I haven’t studied the religion), my friends would be considered not devout Muslims.
One thing i like to note about the elder scrolls is that they have events called a dragon break, where time becomes fluent and multiple timelines play out at once colliding into eachother at the end making it possible that contradictionary events happened at the same time.
Breaking timelines into the six pillars is positively brilliant! You can bet I'll be using this in my writing from now on!
Talk about timing. A friend and I are making a story together as fun and we’ve just started trying to figure out what the history is lol! This will be very helpful, Thank You.
I look forward to the obligatory ATLA reference in every video
In my story, the hero of the world was the last giant, the man that united the world and overthrew an evil empire, a man whose actions brought prosperity to the world for the next hundred years. At least, that's their recorded history in 3 specific regions. The Mountain Kingdom was largely unaware of most of these events and saw little or no impact from them, the only thing that changed for them was who they were "ruled" by via some distant power that had no measurable impact on any aspect of their lives. Heck, there's an entire empire adjacent to the fallen empire that perfectly predicted these events before they happened, so, for them, it's disjointed enough that it's not history, it's just entertainment, a play, that they could see happen on an interregional scale, one in which they already know all the spoilers for. As for what actually happened, is that some guy, the sole survivor of an attempted genocide, who doesn't even care that it happened, got pissed about a bunch of unrelated matters and decided to direct all of his anger at The Emperor, and set about on a quest to kill the emperor. The "world" that was united was really a civil uprising that had been brewing for decades prior to these events. And the fall of this economically powerful empire nearly brought most of the known world into economic ruin, but was mostly saved by the successor of that "hero," who ruled the world for the next hundred years, but was overshadowed by her father's legend, and part of the world fell to economic AND ecological ruin anyways, but still considered itself prosperous due to its saturation with propaganda and a ridiculously strong sense of nationalism, given that it's where the aforementioned "hero" was supposedly born, rose to power, and started the revolution. Then there's additional parts of the world that The Empire and The New Empire considered uninhabitable, but has inhabitants that have been negatively affected by this supposed boon in world prosperity, with one of them having their hunting grounds cut in half by the addition of new trade routes through a desert, angering their goddess who unleashes her sandstorm wrath upon those traveling the trade routes, with a lot of help from priest-led raiding parties. And all this isn't even getting into the rise of a demi-god-like figure warping ogre religious views to suit his own political gains in another one of the "uninhabitable" zones and spreading his cult into The New Empire to ease a planned invasion, which he's been planning since before the regime change, but is ultimately rendered less effective since they changed capitals to one that's coincidentally further away from the spread of the cult.
History is complicated.
'No single thing or person or event dominoed the rest of history'
Leto II would like a word with you
"remember me" is ironically a game nobody remembers.
Damn fun bit of cyberpunk though. And its most engaging minigame ended up becoming the core mechanic of their next game, which everyone remembers.
I remember it! Mostly because of its art style though. It was a very beautiful game. Gameplay-wise... well, it worked ok. I was too distracted by the visuals to notice any pros or cons.
A nice looking yet shitty game, that's why.
To quote Zero Punctuation “Remember Me: Kinda forgettable “
I remember it. Quite a fun game.
Allthough it was plagued with QTE boss fights. And I have developed a pathological hatred for QTEs...
I was really just thinking about this topic about an hour ago.
Yesterday I spent a good portion of my day searching videos, articles, blogs, and other resources for tips and tricks on how to make a world history. Then the very next day Hello Future Me uploads this! Oh boi, Destiny has arrived!
I clicked on this video with no expectations, but the second you said to make 6 timelines I immediately realized this is advice from the heavens. I knew what needed to be done, but not how to do it, and you my good sir, have saved me quite a lot of time
It's like something a teacher once told me. What you hear you forget, what you see you remember
I loved this video, being a fan of history in both real life and literary works.
Six pillars of history? I wanted Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
As the darkness falls and Arabia calls
One man spreads his wings, as the battle begins
May the land lay claim on to Lawrence name
Seven pillars of wisdom lights the flame
go Pillars of Nosgoth
or go home
@@jynexe3056 A revolt to gain independence
Hide and seek, hunters hot on their trail
Joined their ranks, obtained their acceptance
Side by side raid the Ottoman rail
One dude said do environment as well and I think that a valuable pillar as well.
True
This video really helped me re-think the simplistic backstory I was contemplating for a book I want to write! thanks!
This is just what I need right now. I've been chucking around a legendary backstory for ages now, and have finally sketched out an actual plot of a story. Cheers!
Leaving the Flow Chart in the description is god-tier. You the real MVP.
This video was unbelievably helpful thank you
In my D&D world there's a world wide event called 'The 6 Plagues of Estar" (typical religious style plagues/flood ect) which occured 3,000 years ago and has little affect on the present day world, but served as a kind of reset (the world had existed for 30,000 years till that point, so advanced technologies were lost). The only direct affect it had was creating certain monsters though most the players will meet are descendents of those monsters. It has no affect on the country/story my players will travel, but it's there.
Anyway, amazing vid as always!!
In Tolkien's case I think a major driver of the effect of past events was that many of his participants are immortal, like Elrond Half-Elven. If there were still living among us those who could remember the decline of Greece and the rise of Rome, or the conflict between the Franks and the Muslims, those events would have much greater influence today.
Oral records shouldn't be considered a game of Chinese Whispers. Passing down traditions meant you'd tell the account to a group, the group would talk about it among themselves, and then come back to you to see if what they remember is the same as what you told them. Chinese Whispers is a game where you want to garble things up for fun.
For a long time the living word was regarded as more trustworthy than the written word because you could always cross examine a living witness while a word, once written, was impenetrable to such inquiry.
You're underselling how faithfully and accurately oral tradition was/is. It worked nothing like a game of telephone (or Chinese whispers, apparently?). That's how it would work with one person telling the story to one person.
But great video overall!
This video is freaking stellar. I have been working on world building for months, and you have answered more questions than I found in any Ted talk or class Discussion. thank you!!
One example of "history is complicated", especially emphasizing the difference between what happens and what is remembered that I find especially funny is that while the song played under the "Deus Vult Infidel" meme has become widely associated with the Crusades, it has exactly zero things to do with the Crusades, and describes an event in 1527, centuries after the major Crusades. It was basically the subject of ultra-small scale historical revisionism, it glorifies Christians involved in a battle and invokes God, so it becomes associated as a meme with the Crusades
“History is complicated” that needs to be on a t-shirt
I love your videos, I am a DM and I especially love your on worldbuilding series, and just letting you know you should make a playlist of them so I (and others) can binge easier while I build the world my players get to play in!
when i am having a hard time getting motivated writing i watch your channel. i was having trouble with this very thing. so i just wanted to say thanks
Just got my copy of On Writing and Worldbuilding the other day! I haven't finished it yet, but I do love the way you break down and explain details that I've heard before, but sometimes couldn't grasp as easily even when in classes dedicated to writing. Not to mention you've not only shown me tips and important things to consider in writing, but go in depth and use easy to understand examples to back it up. Your hard and soft magic systems videos were a big help for my own writing and going it over in the book will add to it. I'm also seeing my lack of political influence, historical points, and my serious adversity to showing religion. I know my story doesn't hinge off of those subjects, but integrating enough of it certainly would being a sense of realism and that there's far more going on outside the eyes of the protagonist's perspective.
My favorite example of real vs manufactured history in fiction is from Final Fantasy Tactics.
The entire story is told by a scholar who uncovers that the great "hero" from centuries prior was not what he seemed, and the little known "heretic" that the Church tried to erase from history was the true hero.
I'm DEFINITELY worldbuilding first, story second.
I have made multiple fantasy/sci-fi worlds but a few stand out to me
The Soots: my oldest project by far. I forgot about the word "soot" when coming up with them. Started out when I was 6 as an attempt to make my own Pokemon. It's a sci-fi setting, but the timeline for it goes back over 3,000 years so one of the only complete "stories" is actually the history of the Gótt'a war and the war of Scendian independence, right at the beginning of the timeline.
Most of my work here has actually been fleshing out the biology of the Soots, and I have come up with an evolutionary history for them and everything. And a solar system with too many planets.
My 2nd was Fëamar. The name itself takes inspiration from Tolkien, but nothing else does; it's set in a modded Minecraft server.
Then there's Kyanus, another Sci-fi thing. No humanoids whatsoever; it's purely a speculative biology project, and is the most complete of all of them
Finally is Atharin, a Fantasy world based off things like LOTR and Skyrim; however, the map itself takes inspiration from the Soots thing I mentioned earlier, and it was originally just a story set during the Gótt'a war.
This is just to say that World Anvil absolutely is a freakin incredible toolset. I have nothing incentivizing me to write this other than my love of the site.
Thank you for this very in-depth and helpful video. If anyone out there is like me, though, it's important to remember not to get so caught up in making your story's world that you never end up actually making the story.
Wheel of time in back of thumbnail. I love how there is a old voice in Rand’s head. I have not finished the wheel of time ( only on book 7) but I feel that loial the ogier wrote it and a bard is now telling it
it's videos just like this that make me so excited for a Vol. 2 of your world building book!
Btw, the New Testament was not translated from Greek to Latin to English (except for possibly the King James translation; I'm not sure on that one.) Most English versions were translated directly from the Greek
And so many people are still convinced of this, it's impossible to have a constructive conversation with them about it.
Yep, some people like to say "oh the texts and meaning changed in the translation process" but conveniently fail to provide any examples of this.
@@dw1419 There KJV bible literally endorses homophobia in a way not present in the original because King James wanted to appease the church due to the allegations about the relationship between him and the Duke of Buckingham.
There's also the famous instance of the various Greek words for the Christian afterlife all being translated as "hell."
Find me a translation of anything that doesn't alter the original meaning in some way.
@@CharlotteSWeb-oh7ou Please show your work. We also STILL HAVE the original language versions, which allows for small corrections or updating language to get across the original meaning (ex. thou/thee/thy now sounding antiquated).
First up I'm so happy you and WA are "partnered" or at least knowledgeable. I often have youre channel playing while I draft on WA. you both have helped a high school idea become much more streamlined.
I immediately "like" these videos cause of the hard work and you put into this series 💯
As a huge fantasy and history nerd, this speaks to me on a personal and spiritual level.
previously, my favourite of these writing videos was your one on fantasy races because that's my favourite fantasy convention/trope, but I think this one almost tops it.
There's an episode of Doctor Who in which aliens who look like monks change everyone's memories to make the whole world think that they've been watching over humanity since before they existed as Homo Sapiens and they rule the planet with an iron fist.
Your bit on memories being changed reminded me of it.
“If something catastrophic happened 4500 years ago..”
You know, a guy named Noah might have something to say about such an event at that time...
His point (like less than a minute after that quote) is it is difficult to see how that event would effect our day to day life today.
Noah never existed. Nor any other person in the old testament and a lot of people in the New testament didn't exist either, except for that dumb pope who wrote himself into it and the Corinthians letters. The rest is fake.
@@adamkaris actually, You can. Not only on the ways of religión/moral codes, we have to aboid the rage of good. Our entire culture it's shaped on the ways we look at water And how we fear it. Hollywood films like the day after tomorrow And 2012, use the same analogy they just switch "the good" for "climate change" And "global warming" And it's all our fault for all those Sins agaits Nature.
The Major actually David was proven to exist along with several other Kong’s, as well as Jesus, Paul, the 12, most likely Sergius Paulus, Caesar, Pilate, Herod, don’t be that fool who listens to fringe scholars when virtually every serious scholar (except Richard Carrier, Robert M. Price, and a few others, who are ignored by the vast vast vast majority of the rest) acknowledges these people existed.
The Major also, before you call me some religious nut, I’m not religious whatsoever
Aah...after all this information, that rain at the end was so relaxing 😌
Your videos are GOLD man. Thank you for what you do
I love how you always incorporate varied kinds of case studies!
Oh, yeah! I was hoping that this theme will come up in the videos. I am personally obsessed with trying to construct a grounding history of my world which would connect the beginning and the end of my timeline. However, I always fail at the last 7 centuries :( Thanks for the video!
I really love the endings of your videos with the rain soundtrack
In LOTR, the orcs *may* have been immortal, like the elves; there certainly are records of very long sliced orc chiefs. The reason I say this is because the Orcs were made from corrupted elves. This would also explain the size of the orc armies: if they are prevented from killing eachother, their numbers will grow unchecked.
However, the orcs are so violent they they probably don't last very long most of the time.
Echiro Oda's use of the void century and the world goverment is a masterstroke of this trope
Looks like I might not be done with worldbuilding.
Or maybe I should just accept being less than perfect and try to get away with a 3rd person limited isolationist cultural filter.
Could undefined grey area have intrigue of its own?
In just 12 minutes i feel like i learnt a days worth of information.
If only other teachers put in as much effort as you did
Basically every video you do about story telling involves Avatar the last air Bender.
I like this.
I love Every time you use the "Deus Vult" meme, because it always gives me a nudge to go back and listen to The Last Stand again, which is always nice lol
Woah! What a great video! I was thinking of worldbuilding histories not too long ago.
I'm so glad you uploaded this. It's been a kind of a rough couple weeks and I really needed something to make my brain think about cool fun things and not dumb sad things.
I'm not a writer and don't have a strong desire to become one. Yet I still watch your videos because I found you when you were making videos about how to train your dragon and I enjoy your voice and presentation style, despite having little interest in what you say (I'm like an armless person watching how-to videos on juggling)
I think you are my spirit animal lol, I just started watching all your videos and I have never seen so many helpful videos and about the shows, movies & books I love! Thanks.
That's the first time I've heard a Dr Who reference from you.
As priceless and thorough we could expect. And yet, still in awe by your erudition. Thanks a lot!
I think the girl with the dragon tattoo tales the history of the case in a way where each family member has a different version of the story because none of them like each other.
I just finished season 1 of Handmaid's Tale and the worldbuilding was incredibly well done. From the first episode, I was invested and utterly intrigued by it's unforgiving world.
Tolkien is justified in having a long history with defining events becuase elves are immortal.
I just wanna listen to the rain for an hour or 5. And I had to listen through 25 minutes of mind-bending, thought-provoking complications just to get to the simplicity. Do it again!
Dude, you should read one piece manga.
Pretty much every video you make has reminds me of it.
It has a pretty unique magic system, amazing world building, and the overall story revolves around history deleted by the world govt.
Appreciating your repetition that history is complicated. Thanks for your great work.
I want to have a 7th pillar of history so there are "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", and it can be Sabaton & Même potential