July 2025 Ramble!
Added 2025-07-15 01:08:06 +0000 UTCHey all! Here's this month's ramble, in which I go into the things that bug me in modern media and also talk about some of the world's most annoying tropes!
Comments
It bothers me when a character exists solely to be murdered, so the main character can have development. How am I supposed to feel upset about this woman dying, when she has only existed for three chapters, and done literally nothing but be a 'perfect girlfriend'?
SandwichShenanigans
2025-07-16 15:26:26 +0000 UTCI would like to point out that yes slavery did exist in the Middle Ages, and even lasted up to the American Civil War, but slavery wouldn't exist in a fantasy setting, and here is why. First you have to understand the nature of slavery. Slavery exists as a means to extract energy from human labor, when the only form of energy available to humans, is human labor. This is why slavery disappeared around the Industrial Revolution. As the Industrial Revolution gave us machine energy, which was way more efficient than human energy. Yes, in some cases slavery did laugh a little bit longer, then expected but in the end, it ended for all nations. In addition, in order to run these machines, you required a highly literate workforce, as it is necessary to read the instructions of the machines are operating. This is why literacy starts to become a required skill in the education system and important measurement of the health of the nation. It should be noted that a highly literate workforce is very hard to keep as "slaves", as they can read about ideas of getting rid of the slavery. That's how we get the abolitionist movement. In all of these fantasy settings there is an element called magic. It may take different forms it may have different names but at the end it all functions as magic. Magic just like technology functions as an alternative and more efficient form of energy when compared to human labor as energy. This means that magic would in a sense produce the same social results as an industrial revolution. We can see that in the fact that all mages have to "study", i.e. read books in order to become more powerful. Though this is based off the setting of the actual fantasy story. In some they just have to practice over and over again. But for most cases it is studying books. This would mean that the strength of a nation that uses magic would also be linked to literacy. And literacy would result in an anti-slavery movement eventually. And given the fact that most of the stories have magic not as a recent thing, in other words not within the last hundred years, but something that is lasted for centuries. It would mean that it would create a world that could not have slavery.
Andrew Nelson
2025-07-15 20:19:43 +0000 UTC
