I’m embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions… So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?

  • Archer@lemmy.world
    1·
    17 minutes ago

    Aladdin (1992). The Genie is the last survivor of the AI wars and has mental damage. The Cave of Wonders is another remnant. “Magic” is low level AI responding to human intent. Iago is an uplift. Agrabah is literally a generic Middle Eastern county because it was assembled from the fragmented records of what remained of the Middle East.

  • Hobo@lemmy.world
    13·
    5 hours ago

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

    • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      4 minutes ago

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

  • Nikls94@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 hours ago

    I don’t quite think that there’s a name for this genre (yet?) but I’ll take this opportunity to blast out my favorite story-focused game serieses

    Xenoblade is a nice fantasy RPG if you really like Storytelling! And all 3 core games are available on Switch!

    Generally speaking, Xenogears and Xenosaga have amazing stories too, but Xenoblade got translated and dubbed waaaay better

    Edit: just thought of this the last couple of minutes, and, if there was a name for this genre, it would spoil the whole game/movie/book for you! Imagine watching Planet of the Apes for the first time (it’s old by now and I hope there’s no one here who didn’t watch it already) and exactly knowing what planet it is

    • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      2 minutes ago

      if there was a name for this genre, it would spoil the whole game/movie/book for you

      Not really. A work doesn’t have to be marketed as a specific trope, that doesn’t mean it isn’t categorised as such. There are entire categories on TvTropes that carry mass spoilers - looking at any of the examples will spoil that work for you. This is just one more such category.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    8 hours ago

    Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi. (Technically it’s a space opera, it not at all about science or how that science might impact society.)

    Just because there’s technology, or it’s post apocalyptic doesn’t make it not fantasy.

    Shanara chronicles, too.

    • EveryMuffinIsNowEncryptedEnglish
      11·
      6 hours ago

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

    • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      7 hours ago

      Shanara chronicles, too.

      Yep, they visit ruins in one series that is pretty clearly the ruins of Tacoma or some place like it.

      Terry Brooks happens to live in that area. Coincidence? :)

    • Lupec@lemm.ee
      11·
      9 hours ago

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

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    9 hours ago

    Not 100% sure, but these come to mind.

    • Science Fantasy
    • Dying Earth
    • Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
    • Omniraptor@lemm.ee
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Dying earth isn’t really a genre, it’s series of books by Jack Vance that popularized this trope and was also a major inspiration for DnD

    • cordlessmodem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      9 hours ago

      These sound right to me, especially Dying Earth - a podcast I listen to covered Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun trilogy and they described it as such. Wikipedia calls it Science Fantasy. Great books by the way

  • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
    9·
    9 hours ago

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

    • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world
      4·
      9 hours ago

      For a pure magic example

      The Mistborn era 1 (books 1-3) are fantasty magic.

      Mistborn era 2 (books 4-7) occur hundreds of years later in that worlds “industrial/steam” age. Still, with magic.

      So, for example, some allomancers can push or pull on metals. In Era 1 that’s used for combat but also for rapid movement. An allomancer can fall from a wall, throw a coin and “push” off of it causing them to bounce forward and upwards. As they’re starting to reach the azimuth they “pull” the coin, catch it and repeat.

      They also in combat throw and then “push” coins or metal fragments like shrapnel.

      In Era 2. A sheriff (who’s an allomancer) leaps across a gully, aims and shoots a bullet into a wooden crate and then “pushes” on it to cross it.

      Another time during a shootout one “pushes” gunfire away so it deflects around him. Not guaranteed to get all of the bullets but useful in situations like that.

      There are other uses and other allomantic abilities but the entire shift of the format was just done phenomenally.

      Can’t recommend the Mistborn series enough

        • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world
          4·
          8 hours ago

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

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

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
    9·
    9 hours ago

    To clarify, are you asking if there’s a specific genre to Planet of the Apes where there’s a big reveal that this is actually just earth after some society ending disaster? (And similar stuff but that’s the first that came to mind).

    • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Honestly, “America broke down and now it’s Medieval Europe over there” sounds more like the dream of some European patriots.

  • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
    4·
    8 hours ago

    The Elder Scrolls. It’s not explicitly stated, but iirc it’s highly suggested it’s post-apocalyptic. That said, it’s still fantasy, there’s still magic, spellcasting and so forth (there’s no indication that the magic is the result of lost tech becoming indistinguishable from magic); it’s just that the lore highly suggests it may be post-apocalyptic.

      • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
        1·
        18 minutes ago

        It’s been a long-ass time and some of the lore may have been retconned/clarified since then, however it was a conclusion I came to on my own. Basically, iirc, the Towers are hybrid physical/metaphysical structures which essentially keep Mundus (Nirn + other planes) stable and allow for things like magic to occur. When a tower is destroyed, Mundus becomes less stable and magical ability declines. Let’s hope we don’t destroy any towers then!

        Oh wait. A bunch of the towers (are speculated to be) destroyed. Red Mountain (vvardenfell) was destroyed after the false-god Vivec lost his powers and could no longer keep the Ministry of Truth from smashing into the mountain, Walk-Brass zero-summed itself and the race that created it, the White-Gold tower was destroyed during the Oblivion Crisis, I don’t remember what happened to Crystal-Like-Law but I’m pretty sure that’s gone too.

        If you wanted to get fancy with it, you could even point to the magic system getting less complex with each mainline game (yes, I know it’s probably just laziness, but I like my explanation more). Hell, it seems like all the crazy, cool stuff happened long before the events of any of the games; it seems like all the races peaked before we ever got a glimpse into that universe.

        So while I guess it’s a bit premature to call TES post-apocalyptic, it’s definitely headed in that direction. It seems to be a series about a world that’s slowly collapsing and falling apart.

        Edit: I spent some time trying to brush up on my TES lore (fuck, I’m starting to hear the games’ siren song; it’s been years), and came across this wonderful paragraph:

        Using his dentition as tonal instruments, Anumaril dismantled his bones and built of them a Mundus-machine that mirrored Nirn and its planets. And when he had used all his substance in fangling this orrery, the Orrery of Elden Root, he placed the segment-sceptre within, hiding it between the Moons.

        You… you did what?

        I wish the games were half as interesting as the lore.

        Edit 2: I remember why I thought it was post-apocalyptic! Space! Iirc all the races have been to space and had spaceships and space battles, except it seems like everyone has forgotten about it by the time the games take place. Combined with the gradual destruction of the Towers, it seems possible that the games could be post-apocalyptic but are being filtered through a lens of ignorance, making the residual advanced tech appear as though it’s magic.

      • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
        7·
        7 hours ago

        There is a fan theory that Fallout lead to TES because of radiation. It holds about as much water as a sieve, but its fun.

        • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
          2·
          19 minutes ago

          It actually doesn’t have anything to do with that theory, but I won’t lie, I do like that one.

          I wrote a bit about it in response to their question, and I think I misspoke (miswrote?) and kinda jumped the gun. It’s not really post- apocalyptic, however the series does seem to document a world in decline.

          I’m not sure if you’d consider that apocalyptic (a slow apocalypse), heading towards the apocalypse (what happens if all the Towers are destroyed?), or post-apocalyptic (it seems like the races peaked before any of the games) though.

          Edit: I remember why I thought it was post-apocalyptic! Space! Iirc all the races have been to space and had spaceships and space battles, except it seems like everyone has forgotten about it by the time the games take place. Combine that with the destruction of the Towers, and yeah. Seems possible that the Elder Scrolls could be post-apocalypse and is being interpreted as fantasy because the characters of the series don’t know how any of the tech works anymore.