The scale of time in fantasy stories

[RepresentingPride]

I thought this thread was about "the scale of time in fantasy stories," and not about lineages only. Am I misunderstanding something?

I might be the one, but when I reread it, he/she didn't talk about the progression of the civilization, but the line of lineage and how a country could last that long without it be broken or the country disapearing.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

10k years is symbolically just for a very long time. It is not meant to be taken literally.

In fact, the term myriad means literally 10 000 in ancient Greek, yet today only its indirect meaning for a very large number remained. We often read in Greek epics about 10 000 warriors. What the authors want to say is just that there are a lot, not actually 10 000.

Chinese does the same as their numerical system is 10 000 based.

In various East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, the phrase "Wànsuì", "Banzai", "Manse", and "Vạn tuế", respectively, literally meaning "myriad years" is used to wish long life, and is typically translated as "Long live" in English. The phrase originated in ancient China as an expression used to wish long life to the emperor. Due to the historical political and cultural influence of Chinese culture on the East Asian cultural sphere, in the area, and in particular of the Classical Chinese language, cognates with similar meanings and usage patterns have appeared in many East Asian languages and Vietnamese. In some countries, this phrase is mundanely used when expressing feeling of triumph, typically shouted by crowds.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

10k years is symbolically just for a very long time. It is not meant to be taken literally.

In fact, the term myriad means literally 10 000 in ancient Greek, yet today only its indirect meaning for a very large number remained. We often read in Greek epics about 10 000 warriors. What the authors want to say is just that there are a lot, not actually 10 000.

Chinese does the same as their numerical system is 10 000 based.

In various East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, the phrase "Wànsuì", "Banzai", "Manse", and "Vạn tuế", respectively, literally meaning "myriad years" is used to wish long life, and is typically translated as "Long live" in English. The phrase originated in ancient China as an expression used to wish long life to the emperor. Due to the historical political and cultural influence of Chinese culture on the East Asian cultural sphere, in the area, and in particular of the Classical Chinese language, cognates with similar meanings and usage patterns have appeared in many East Asian languages and Vietnamese. In some countries, this phrase is mundanely used when expressing feeling of triumph, typically shouted by crowds.

Bruh.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Bruh.

Wut?

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Wut?

Go eat a cookie.

 

[Tyranomaster]

IF the fantasy country has humans that are supposed to be analogous to Earth humans, then 10k years is a long time.

Hypothetical races that aren't human with different natural dispositions and lifetimes could reasonably be made that could sustain a country for that long, however, they wouldn't be run like a human country.

A hypothetical civilization that behaves similar to ants or mole rats could easily last much longer, where the queen also can live for like 2000 years would obviously be able to easily sustain itself as a country for that long. Individuals have low self drive, and high group focus, so unlike humans, where there are competing individual interests, there would be a drive for sustaining the country over the individual. It would likely be a stable form of communism, where the majority of the populace are content slaves, working forever on minimal sustenance, and an opulent tyrant who only expends resources as necessary, but is beloved by the population with no room for convincing otherwise.

Cultivation novels try to get around this because they basically argue that the power scales are so different and the ages of humans can grow super high, but humans are still greedy and do dumb things, so the all powerful tyrant would ultimately just end up the ruler of a patch of dirt (not exactly a country).

 

[BouncyCactus]

Sometime, the time scales ARE little strange, but depending on what you wanna write, and the tone of your story, I can see it fit.
I mean, 500 years of trench warfare? That's a little too much, but that fit within the universe, and I love my Kriegmen, so I'll allowed it.

What irk me more is the stagnation of a nation/country/culture over time. Sure, Chinese civilization is 4000 years old, but they aren't all the same throughout that entire time. You got the Han ruler, the Yuan/Mongol, you got the Manchu rulers, each are different from one another. You got the northern china, and the southern region, all with wildly different culture and practices, some of which are unfortunately being erase under the early communist era. Monarchy Rome is not the same as Republic Rome or Imperial Rome or Eastern Rome, or Gallic Rome or African Rome. I want some changes, evolution, or something that show a passage of time, and not just a line on a page that state "the kingdom was found 1000years ago".

 

[Daitengu]

It comes down to humans having monkey brains.

One coin in the original nes Mario bros. Got you 100 points for score. Infact you never see the single or double digits move. Same in pinball, or late game in mmos. BIG number is more impressive. Once you notice what's going on, you can't unsee it.

It's the same with arbitrary large numbers in stories. Warhammer 40k is the same. Why 40k years with huge gaps of nothing happening? Cause beeg number.

 

[BouncyCactus]

It comes down to humans having monkey brains.

One coin in the original nes Mario bros. Got you 100 points for score. Infact you never see the single or double digits move. Same in pinball, or late game in mmos. BIG number is more impressive. Once you notice what's going on, you can't unsee it.

It's the same with arbitrary large numbers in stories. Warhammer 40k is the same. Why 40k years with huge gaps of nothing happening? Cause beeg number.

Or having a large and dense city with no farmland, river way or an apparent source of food and water to support the population. Or having an army too large without the logistics. People are bad at numbers and math, I realized.

For wh40k, the whole theme of that universe is regression, stagnation, wars, collapses, and nothing is getting done, so I think that timescale work for the universe, imo

 

[LilRora]

Whether some huge changes happen to the world of a story within ten thousand years or not, I think it's a lot more complicated than many people believe and it's not possible to rationalize many similarities. Just like random error, it might be small, but if it accumulates, it can lead to drastically different outcomes.

Even putting aside some bullshit "it's magic" kind of explanations, there's many ways to explain little change in such a long period of time, all the way from supernatural forces (those with a grain of salt), like fate, destiny, or controlling things by extradimensional entities, to much simpler things like societies centered around preservation (likely long-lived) and small drive for change. As many as there are though, none of them except for the wilder explanations in the supernatural realm are good enough to keep a world or a place virtually unchanged, and if we limit ourselves to humans in a world close to ours, then we're not left with much options in the way of stopping the change.

Going the other way around though is like going downhill with the boulder as opposed to trying to stop a boulder from rolling down. Even in the most extreme cases, history can be reliably preserved for at most a few thousands of years without advanced technology, but most civilizations, countries and empires even more so, last much less than that. Add to that magic or advanced technology, and frankly? The obvious answer seems to be that with more power at your and the world's disposal, it's all only gonna go to shit faster.

That's not true though, it can go either way. Just as magic can destroy the world much more easily than a bunch of idiots in tin cans, it can also prevail for much longer than a bunch of idiots in their fancy mansions. It depends on the balance of the world, sort of, and it depends on worldbuilding. And when I say it depends, I mean it gets so wildly unpredictable in some cases that you could justify both without issue, either remaining virtually unchanged and getting constantly destroyed and rebuilt unrecognizable for tens of thousands of years.

One interesting example I've from an otherwise subpar story was that a character went to a world far in the future (I think 66666 years) in his dreams. That world was far more advanced technologically and cultivation-wise, but it had been completely destroyed by outside invaders. I think it's obvious that here it's entirely justified.

 

[em_sin]

While I agree with the original sentiment of OP and first post. I also like to mention that part of this doesn't take away any point from original post. But a portion of this might be contributed to nationalism and belonging. To give an example, and yes its exaggerated as I can't speak for these people and is purely my opinion. If you ask someone from china and someone from ancient china that might of had a different name for it like Central Plains. Sentiment of both are roughly the same. It wouldn't surprise me if there are people that actually believe china has a history of close to five or even ten thousand years.

While its true that this doesn't take away from the original intent of OP. In a sense there are likely people that would consider the first chinese settlement or nomadic camp to the present day to be the same china. In the end what I want to put up for debate is not to forget about the people's sentiment of what they believe to be the same.

 

[Sergeandgreen]

Geography isn’t a country. A country is defined by its government, which is more often than not a monarchy in these stories. A thousand or two thousand years isn’t a crazy scale for a fantasy civilization. I’m talking about tens of thousands of years of scope a lot of these stories have. Even completely removed from history it’s insane to expect a world‘s power structure to not experience any major upheaval, to expect that culture will remain unchanged. If someone wants to do something like that then they better have plausible explanation, but more often than not it is rarely explained.

I think it depends on how they legitimate their power. Lets go with cultivator stories for example (as i think those are the ones that treat time like dirt most of the time.) The foundation for their reign is their individual power. The poor people, even if united, wouldn't be able to rebel against them. Pair that with an increadibly long lifespan, and you get monarchies that are tens of thousands of years old. I think most long lived races also have longer-lasting empires because the people in them change less often and the likelihood of a great, unsatisfied mass forming is less high. I can also imagine that if you have civilisations with a low birthrate, you would have less wars. And wars are probably the only way countries in these scenarios change their ruling goverment.
Also, I would disagree that a change of governing system would change the country. I live in Germany, so I will take it as an example. A united Germany exists since 1871. Since then, we had four types of governments: (monarchy, democracy, Führerstaat/Dictatorship, and then democracy again.) But no one would say that we became a different country each time. It's somewhat of a conscious choice by the new government body to acknowledge the past as their own history. On a side note, the DDR didn't acknowledge this continuity and became completely independent until the reunion 1990, while the BRD (today's government) acted like the successor of Germany.
I honestly don't know what role the other allies played in forcingthe BRD to acknowledge the past (Someone needs to pay the reparations for WW2)
Rome is another example. They had a kingdom, republic, and principate (emperor), but no one questions the continuity of the country and its history. Even after the split up the eastern part still thought of itself as the Roman Empire.


What I find stranger than the existence of ten thousand-year-old empire is the unchanged culture you mentioned. Even in cultivation stories, the time is to long to say nothing changed.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

I feel a lot of authors underestimate the scale of time. A lot of times you'll read a story that has stuff dealing with ancient civilizations from tens of thousands of years ago. Or a story where a character is reincarnated 10k years later.

I feel like these authors don't understand history, and how time affects nations. The stories will have a kingdom exist for thousands of years with an unbroken line of lineage. Countries do not last that long. Even countries we think of today as being especially old are only aged a few hundred years at most in their current form.

The 20th century saw the rise and fall of the USSR one of the largest empires in history, all within less than a hundred years.

What do you think? Have you seen good excuses for stuff like this? Seen anything particularly offensive? I saw one story where a character came back 90 million years later and all the countries were still the same lmao.

Maybe you don't actually think it's a problem. It just always ruins any immersion I might have in a world.

This is what is commonly wrong in most isekai fantasies: the 'non-existent' growth and progress of technologies and its effect on the population. However, I also believe this would depend on the race that populates a certain kingdom or place. See, while the 'near constant and stable' Elvish politics may be governed by their 'near immortality'; in human terms it is different, since humans are short-lived species (or unless the author defies what has been established and subvert the trope).

As for the 90 million year example, that's kind of weird. Even the planets change for that duration, unless the author gave a reasonable alibi for that thing to happen (or not happen).

 

[CubicleHermit]

I feel like these authors don't understand history, and how time affects nations. The stories will have a kingdom exist for thousands of years with an unbroken line of lineage. Countries do not last that long. Even countries we think of today as being especially old are only aged a few hundred years at most in their current form.

Governments/constitutions rarely last that long, but there are exceptions.

Also, given the influence of Japanese media, the fact that Japan has had the same dynasty nominal heads of state for ~2600 years (according to tradition) or ~1500 years (verifiable history) is probably influential.

Most of the countries in Europe are many centuries old. es?

A lot of that depends on how you define them, as you noted.

Rome is another example. They had a kingdom, republic, and principate (emperor), but no one questions the continuity of the country and its history. Even after the split up the eastern part still thought of itself as the Roman Empire.

Cities get interesting, because some of the earliest cities are really old. Rome, at ~2700 years, is a very new one compared to some of the cities which have had at least some occupation since the Neolithic.

This is what is commonly wrong in most isekai fantasies: the 'non-existent' growth and progress of technologies and its effect on the population.

I like the example from the GURPS Yrth/Banestorm - in a fantasy world, there are likely forces that are aware of the possibility of technological advancement, and have their reasons to suppress them. Wizards (and possibly Churches, and possibly certain sorts of political elites/nobility) like their monopoly on power, and technology - firearms especially - can be a great equalizer. Doubly so if people keep getting Isekaied there who know technology, as the sudden introduction of tech is even more destabilizing than its natural evolution.

I stole the basic ideas there (and some of their other ideas, like level of magical power varying geographically) for my WIP, by way of a TTRPG campaign some friends of mine and I ran back in Jr High ~35 years ago.

There's a whole separate subgenre of "dude (or group) goes back in time and is massively OP because of knowing tech" which is mostly Western - the Cross Time Engineer series by Leo Frankowski probably being the best example of taking that to its logical extreme. There are a few crossovers with that in Japanese media.

Like Isekai stuff, it's pretty easy to just play it as a power fantasy, but better authors do find a way to challenge the characters and not just have adoption of modern tech be a cake-walk.

 

[Jemini]

If you expand on what you mean by country, it is more understandable. Sure the USSR only existed for a short while, but Russia has existed for far longer. A government regime is only a small part of what it means to be a country. England has existed for over a thousand years.

But there are definitely some stories that do not treat the passage of time properly. So, you are not wrong in that respect.

Indeed. On this subject, here on this Earth, I believe China is likely the nation that has existed in name and rough location for the longest of any nation in our history. If you define it as the nation that originated around the Yellow River valley, writes and speaks the Chinese language, and calls themselves China, then it has existed for 3,250 years that we can trace via archeological evidence for certain, and was likely founded well before that although we lack verification for exactly when.

In that time, the boarders of China have expanded and contracted several times, it has gone through a great many shifts in political structure and ruling parties, in some cases a complete replacement of government structure to such an extreme degree that you could say it was conquered and completely overtaken, and every few hundred years these shifts were so dramatic that it could even be said it was effectively a different country from the one it was a couple hundred years earlier. However, it still centered around the Yellow River valley, still calls itself China, and for the most part still speaks the Chinese language (although that last one has also changed a number of times.)

I'd have to say it's actually quite impressive how the people of that region have stubbornly held onto that name and identity for their nation despite how many seismic shifts there've been to the area. The current CCP that is the ruling party of China has it's obvious problems, but even the evil that the current ruling party brings to this world does not exceed the level of what the national identity has survived through to this day.

So, from this perspective, China actually does prove it's possible for a single nation to exist for thousands of years. My only complaint is that the structure of the government in some of these stories doesn't seem to change enough. A serious writer should take China's example more and have the government structure completely overhauled every couple hundred years or so, only managing to preserve the national identity.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

Make a story where you describe every 5 minutes. Get the reader to really feel every major moment. Let their life be consumed by the life of another

 

[John_Owl]

I feel a lot of authors underestimate the scale of time. A lot of times you'll read a story that has stuff dealing with ancient civilizations from tens of thousands of years ago. Or a story where a character is reincarnated 10k years later.

I feel like these authors don't understand history, and how time affects nations. The stories will have a kingdom exist for thousands of years with an unbroken line of lineage. Countries do not last that long. Even countries we think of today as being especially old are only aged a few hundred years at most in their current form.

The 20th century saw the rise and fall of the USSR one of the largest empires in history, all within less than a hundred years.

What do you think? Have you seen good excuses for stuff like this? Seen anything particularly offensive? I saw one story where a character came back 90 million years later and all the countries were still the same lmao.

Maybe you don't actually think it's a problem. It just always ruins any immersion I might have in a world.

I do actually have a good excuse - My current running novel has an empire that has indeed existed in it's current form for around 10k years. why? They're a nation of dragon slayers. dragons fetch a pretty price. the nation is overall, fairly wealthy so people are content. Until they kidnap a pair of humanoid dragons (mother and son), for questioning. after he escapes, son rescues mom then decides to dismantle and destroy the capitol and take his place as the new ruler. after hunting and killing any nobles and military that don't back him - can't have a revolution now, can we?

To explain, he's the reincarnation of the empire's founder, who was indeed a dragon. but over a few generations, his wishes of "taking care" of dragons changed from the literal "keep them safe" definition to the mafia "kill them" definition. because dragons don't feel they need to be taken care of. yes, it's kind of a dumb premise, but I needed a reason for a nation founded by a dragon to change to killing dragons.

also, and this is problably FAR more important... I write fantasy (erotic, but that's not relevant to the current discussion). As such, I'd expect all my readers to have some level of suspension of disbelief, simply because while you're entirely correct about how thing work here on earth, it's COMPLETELY different in different fantasy worlds. maybe human's aren't naturally so greedy. or maybe nobles aren't naturally so stupid. or maybe... (insert any number of things that can contribute to a countries downfall) is different, because again, it's fantasy.

 

[laccoff_mawning]

Yea, time is bonkers in fantasy fiction stories, beefed up with no real purpose except to make things sound impressive. You could easily chop a zero of the end of most of the numbers they throw out and it would still be on the large side.

 

[J_Chemist]

I've learned that I'm pretty good with time, generally.

But distance though...

 

[QuercusMalus]

It is not just in fantasy novels: I remember when I was in Scotland once, I went on a tour, and at one point, on reference to an event in the 1200's went 'and that's why we hate the English.' Also, finding out that Edinburghs 'new town' is still over two centuries old. It was started before America declared Independence. Different countries have different scales of time when you are talking about their history and culture. For America, two hundred years ago is ancient but to France, that is modern times.

No country is truly Monolithic, they are all preyed upon and influenced by outside factors be it other nations, technology, disease, famine, birth rate decrease/increase, migration,ect. These all impact how a country and a culture develop.

The issue with old countries is if they get too caught up in the myth of the good old days. If you give me a story where the kingdom has remained unchanged for a thousand years, hell, 500 years, unless they are exceptionally long lived, I am going to assume two things off the bat: First, they are oppressive as he'll, and Secondly, that their society is stagnant and dying, only kept going by inertia.