#Sponsor me Ubisoft lmao

[galaxyofhair]

Late Medieval Fantasy Is Kinda Boring...

...After a while, please don’t come after me lol I didn’t want to choose violence today I just wanted to rant about something on my soapbox for a minute.

So before I get into the meat of this argument let’s get one of the common responses out of the way: But it’s all fantasy, just let people do whatever pleases them and don’t critic them so hard!

Ok yes, it’s fantasy and at the end of the day it’s not real and doesn’t actually matter etc etc. However, I generally treat realism and fantasy not as divorcees but rather as more of a sibling rivalry situation: They’re different, but share a deep relationship and are secretly completely dependent on one another---IDFK

I had a longer argument for this but it essentially boils down to: Realism pleases me. Yes it’s completely possible to make fun fantasy that is 100% devoid of pesky realism and very casual and free, but if all fantasy was like that it’d be boring.

The thing I actually came here to say is this: The more I learn about history the more I’ve realized that almost all high fantasy (with a few notable exceptions) occurs in a universe that is roughly analogous to the Late Medieval Period: Plate armor, bastard and long swords, A wide range of weapons and armor types, early firearms or canons, rapiers, etc etc---Basically every D&D game, Game of Thrones, Witcher, and even the LOTR all range from the Late Medieval to the very early Renaissance. For me, plate armor is the big one---the moment you introduce full plate armor that’s clearly evocative of the “knights in shining armor” aesthetic it immediately jumps the technological development level of that fictional society up to the 1300s in my mind. To a lesser extent, claymores as well---Longswords and claymores were big popular in the Late Medieval, and Zweihanders got popular in the Early Ren---honestly I’m pretty sure it just had more to do with the quality of metals that could be produced than anything.

And again, there’s nothing particularly wrong with this approach: The LM/ER area of history is a veritable gold mine of fun, goofy, downright alien, and interesting af cultures/traditions/warfare/religion/politics---BUT, it gets boring after a while when this is the ONLY era fantasy takes place in, and it does get much better when the only option for something older than the LM is literally Classical Greece.

There’s SO MUCH COOL HISTORY---I want more fantasy that takes after some of these under-loved periods of history: I want more fantasy set in the Bronze Age, more fantasy set in the late antiquity and early medieval age---and OMG do I want more early medieval and high medieval fantasy. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla woke something up in me Dean Pelton style and I NEED more.

Give me more of the Islamic Golden Age, more of Byzantines, more Japan and China in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Personally I would love to see more from around the fall of Rome and the very beginnings of the Early Medieval period---the Dark Ages are truly a fascinating period.

At first one of the big disadvantages of writing in a non-standard fantasy setting is that there are limitations: You can’t just slap on plate armor anymore and call it a day, you gotta research and find out more about different kinds of mail, or how the Romans wore segmented plates, or how some cultures cut out metal entirely. You can’t always give your characters that bigass sword because older periods hadn’t invented that huge melting pot of weapons and armor later peoples had.

But at the same time, those limitations can be liberating and they can really help create a truly unique setting that stands out.

Of course, the other thing I would encourage when creating a fantasy setting is to mess around with weird shit that has no good analogy to history: Are the trees made of iron? Is everyone still using obsidian shards, or maybe they have weird crystals they can grow into the right shapes?

I definitely also occasionally get caught into the mood of doing the Standard Fantasy Setting, so like---I’m not here to shame. I say all of this because the right technology level paired with the right setting can be an incredible foundation for a unique world and more folks should be doing that.

[ilikedetectives]

Hey, again thank you for validating my feelings and frustrations. I never blame the Devs, it's not fair to them especially since these people are basically calling all of them lazy for making Eivor "a male skin" etc while sweet talking directly to them. And they can't always openly pick a side. I stopped doing any 1-on-1 days ago when Kulpreet and others suddenly publicly started ganging up on me, but I should start being more direct to the movement when addressing facts on my TL. I just wish I had a bigger base, because they've managed to get most the entire movement in on it and have completely drowned me out, so much so supporters of mine are starting to also get harassed. They've successfully demonized all of us, saying I've abusively harassed them, and they're still invalidating queer GNC women while simultaneously blocking any person who disagrees. I want to fight, but they've made sure no one will listen. I'm sorry to rant, I just want people to know the truth and to understand how ugly they really are.

It’s your words against their curated screenshots of what they got you to say being blocking you, so you couldn’t show the entire thing. It’s simple as that. I have seen what they did in public so I’m not surprised if this is what they did in DMs. I answer to their tweet publicly shitting on me for using mods because they limit the response, but they call that harassment? I wonder what’s sliding into people DMs to ‘explain’ then later plaster maliciously curated DMs is called then.

See, I have an anon box open. They can easily come in and explain and give specific examples of what they claim I don’t understand or misunderstood, no fear of harassment, no fear of malicious cropped DMs. But noooooo, they use anon box to shit on me, so yea, I can tell. What I find ironic is now they have to have a disclaimer about how founders and supporters of this movements aren’t the face of this movement, lmao. Last I recalled, they are so happy with their names and faces all over the place for credits when Ubisoft openly supports them with official AC Twitter page AND an in-game tattoo. But now suddenly, ‘my personal opinions don’t reflect what the movement stands for’??? Don’t be cowards, take your credits, you work hard on it, it’s due. Their movement doesn’t have “members and supporters”, but they established it with a private discord, have an official Twitter page, while having a sponsored company that supports your cause (which recently got exposed for having more than a decade of sexual harassment, racism, and abuse), while said company giving them free game keys (conflict of interest much?), sure it’s just a fan movement or an idea, like the disclaimer, not a pyramid shape organization at all. They may as well have a phone number, an email address, and a website while they’re at it. Did Ubisoft Marketing pulled them aside I wonder lol?

Anyway, I’m being as transparent as I can in all of this with publishing my asks in the open.