I've been world building for a story and the primary focus is around a big empire. The center of it is the imperial royal family whose bloodline is said to be directly empowered by the gods, and the acting ruling is the physical representation of the divine in the world. The empress, in theory, has unlimited and unrestricted power but they don't do very much in the way of direct ruling. The functioning government is tiers of councils and bureaucracy. Different provinces are functionally self governing democracies with elected governors and imperial council representatives. Slightly above these are provincial ministries who are the priesthood of the god of law, Thanor, and enforce imperial law and adherence to divine will. Imperial wide governance falls mostly onto the imperial council who hold representatives from the various provinces. The council meetings are lead by the highest ranked Oracle to Thanor and or by the highest ranked priest to Lumara, the empire's goddess. Both these priests have power over the council, equal to each other, and are both beneath the emperor or empress. The oracles devoted to Thanor do not directly have roles in government, but have authority to commandeer the government of a whole province or a large chunk of the empire when it is deemed necessary.

I like the way a story I read a long while ago did the issue of immortals and their interaction with history. Two immortal reunite after millennia and one helps the other catch up to what he has missed. One was guarding a relic of some sort, something really dangerous and very insidious that had fallen from the sky and an entire legion of soldiers perished to seal it away. This centurion and the other immortal were the only ones to survive and found themselves with the curse of immortality. He would occasionally be approached by the odd group seeking the mythical thing he guarded but he either would turn them away by convincing them or threatening them or if they persisted he would end them. The other immortal went on to partake on civilization avoided what one would call flashpoints, but was still informed of some historical significant happenings, but overall had little interaction with major figures. Very cautious fella but nevertheless was present in the world, got dragged into the odd war and had hell avoiding persecution by Christian fanatics during the middle ages. He comes with a solution to end the threat they sealed and a small team to help do it. Once that is done the worldly immortal takes the hermit one to finally enjoy life and see the wonders made by their descendants. Needless to say the recluse is like a kid in candy land while the other dotes on his old friend as if he was an older brother. This particular story of the two immortals interacting is covered the beginning and the end chapters, and the rest are essentially tales involved a period of time the worldly immortal lived through, not necessarily from his POV or even involvement. It was sort of a recounting of history, though it did involve fantastical events or creatures and these events never made it to history books, only legends and folktales. Some of the chapters were about the first immortal and the occasional visits he received throughout the 25ish centuries he lived through. I really wish I could find this, it was in Spanish, though I think the original was in Italian? I don't remembered the title and the author, but alas that was a long time ago and the library that had a copy of the book is gone, taken by a weather related disaster.

CS Lewis had plans to write Susan’s redemption but he died before he could do that.

You can tell the video is about writing when the comments are biblically long 😊. Loved your video.

In addition to illnesses, disabilities might be something to consider (which came to mind because healthcare isn't just about curing illness, it's also about alleviating and accommodating for disabilities), and the interaction in the other direction where it's not just magic doing things to/about illness and disability, but how illnesses and disabilities might affect magic. And I should note, I'm using the word "disability" here in the broader sense that follows that one quote about how being flightless is a disability if you construct a society on the assumption that people can fly. So, if everyone can do magic except you and that hampers your everyday life, that's a disability. Stormlight Archive is an example, where people who have mental illnesses or have undergone trauma are more susceptible to bonding a spren. Similarly in Mistborn, if you're mistborn or a misting, you're born with that, but the powers are usually unlocked by Snapping in a traumatic moment (I'm pretty sure there's even a character who says his misting dad traumatized him to see if he'd be a misting too, and he wasn't - and I got the impression that this was a relatively common practice among nobility). And becoming more attuned with a type of magic with extended use is a thing with many magics in the cosmere, I think most dramatically with soulcasting, where constantly turning things into a specific material can make you slowly take those features and you might end up literally going up in smoke. And then there's disabilities that hamper your use of magic, like the condition in The Elder Scrolls known as stunted magicka. It's where your magicka (mana, basically) doesn't regenerate on its own. Normally, anyone can become a wizard, but if you have this condition, you need a constant supply of other means to get magicka back in order to continue practicing magic. In most cases, this condition is a result of your starsign and comes with spell absorption, which is another condition where spells that land on you have a chance to be absorbed to feed your magicka reserves. Usually, spell absorption serves as an accommodation for stunted magicka, but it can be an issue on its own if you need magical healing. Magicka potions and welkynd stones, if provided in a constant enough stream, could be an accommodation for mages with stunted magicka. And in Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward's prosthetic limbs are made of metal, so they're heavier than flesh limbs and interact differently with temperature variation, but besides that they mostly give back the functionality of the limbs he lost. But because they're not living material, he can transmute those limbs into other shapes without having to worry about further human transmutation costs. Any magic system that interacts differently with living material and non-living material will have some similar consequence to prosthetics. With some magic systems (like FMA's alchemy) the difference is that a prosthetic allows you to do some magic things the original limb didn't, but it might also go the other way, it might require living material for some reason and thus it would be a functionality a prosthetic can't restore. In other examples, there might be two mutually exclusive magic systems and one is a societal expectation. Or maybe there's an illness that takes away your magic while you're sick, or it might take it away permanently the way a respiratory infection can permanently damage the lungs. Perhaps there's a magic system that's easier to pick up with certain neurotypes that cause difficulties in other avenues of life (the fact that some neurodivergencies are disabling in some ways but have their upsides is a pretty common topic of discussion in those online spaces - with a magic system it might be built into the magic, or it might just be a consequence of different ways of thinking about the magic). Maybe the magic requires eating something and you're deathly allergic to that thing. Maybe someone's just straight-up allergic to magic and they can learn to cast spells just as anyone else, but they get hives when they do it (or some other symptom).

I'm considering using a trinary narrative for my stories. Light and Dark are two sides of the same coin. The true heroes are the ones caught in the middle. This is the lesson I've taken from the culture war. No, I'm not a centrist. Centrists tend to be right-wing apologists. My view of Balance is similar to Star Wars. Balance isn't Light and Dark in equal measures. A character can't truly be good if they have antagonistic characteristics. A perfect example of that is Daemon Targaryen.

With chosen ones I prefer them with a little bit of built-in uncertainty. I don't mean the uncertainty of losing a battle every now and then despite being destined to win anyway. I mean proper uncertainty, like with multiple chosen ones chosen by a power that affected multiple people, like the Ruidusborn in Critical Role. Or multiple choosing powers choosing different people who might even come to conflict about it, like the Godwoken in Divinity 2. Or cases where it's up to interpretation whether there even is a chosen one, and if there is, whether it works the way the people in-world think it does, like the Nerevarine in Morrowind. This one kinda ties into prophecies because the qualities embodied by the Nerevarine are laid out by a prophecy. Or multiple known chosen ones but there's uncertainty about what they were even chosen for and it's rendered kind of mundane by its ubiquity, like the Returned in Warbreaker (something notable about these is that many of them die within a week of their Return without achieving anything, and I would need way more than a parenthetical to properly lay out what I think that means about their "chosen one"-ness but long story short I think they still kinda count).

In my world there are no chosen ones. The problem with having a chosen one, in my opinion, is that life is unpredictable. What if, say, the chosen one dies in an accident as a child? You could argue that maybe the gods protect them. But if so, why don't they protect them through their journey and makes sure they survive and beat the villain? And if that happens, where's the stakes? Instead my four mains become special after a lot of struggle. One idea I have at the moment (I'm still planning) is that each of them magically bonds with an animal. Rikter bonds with a large wolf (it's not a dire wolf, but it's the size of one) that leads a super pack. His boyfriend Elkar (the main main) bonds with a phoenix, which is his family's family crest. He can see through its eyes, Assassin's Creed-style. Emisia, Elkar's oldest friend, bonds with a golden dragon. Zak bonds with a gryphon. I do have my own subvertion of the Dark Lord trope: a Bright Lord. Bright Lords are similar to Dark Lords in a lot of ways, but also the opposite in many ways. Most of their followers are religious fundementalists. They are also better at pretending to be good.

It has to be stressed that these are strengths of binary narratives ONLY when telling a story of epic scale, where you want to paint a whole group of characters as evil, to dehumanize them so that the audience wouldn't empathize with them and wouldn't feel sorrow or regret for their suffering. Be super careful not to even subconsciously add any identifiers of real-world races, nationalities or religions. Propaganda is the most destructive activity that an author can engage in. In a story of personal rather than epic scale, simplifying conflicts to a single dimension only weakens our belief about a character's feelings and values being real and weakens both the emotional impact and the universal themes that the writer is trying to evoke in us. Also, I argue that stories of individuals are the only stories that can garner a reader's empathy and emotional impact. That's why even the most epic stories are still told mainly through the actions of individuals.

lord of the rings, gandalf does whatever the hell he wants

I'm so happy to have found your channel. This is really amazing stuff!

I've just discovered your channel and have already ploughed through about half a dozen videos! your channel should be so much bigger for how much content you've produced & how brilliant your world-building advice is - as someone who's working on a fantasy series myself I've found loads of your insight incredibly helpful already. thank you for running such a great channel so brilliantly!

there is a really good book series by my favourite author which has a really good magic system, i really enjoyed it. the author uses a lot of pseudonyms, but i think he has called himself Richard Schwartz for that one. If i translate the name of the series, it should be something like"The secret of Askir". I'm not sure wether it has been published in english, though.

Excellent outline for building factions. Super helpful

Its power creep not crawl

Im just plain bored with post modernist moral ambiguity , it was cool at first but got tiresome, I've stated to read older books

I have several factions in my world and they address the issue of crime and punishment in different ways. One of these ways, which you left out, is restitution - in which the criminal is required to make restitution to the clan (and/or to the impacted extended family within that clan), to the village, and/or to the guild, depending upon the nature of the crime. The appropriate council of peers hears the case and determines the punishment. Failure to make restitution signifies a lack of sincere repentance and that is punishable by death, banishment etc. For repeat offenders or for severe crimes for which restitution is not possible, death or banishment is the punishment. A convicted criminal can appeal to the council to have the sentence altered if new evidence or corruption comes to light. The offended party can also petition the council if they have new evidence that suggests that the sentence was too liens or that there was corruption. This form of justice works very well as it allows repentant offenders to correct their mistakes and rejoin society, it encourages sincere repentance and punishes the unrepentant and insincerely repentant and it avoids the high cost, ineffectiveness and counterproductivity of incarceration. If execution is the remedy, then the means of execution should reflect the nature of the unrepentant crime. For example: An arson who burned down a house killing its occupants will be placed in a “house” that they cannot escape from and the house will be lit on fire, thus killing the arsonist by the exact same means as they killed others and allowing them to feel exactly what their victims felt when they died. In this way the punishment truly fits the crime.

I feel like a good measurement system would use natural units and pair them with something the audience will easily understand. There is a reason body parts have been used throughout history all over the world. Most of them went out of fashion, but there is a reason things like feet, span, ell, yard, oxgang, etc were used in the first place. You always had them at hand. But most people nowadays won't have any idea of how much that is. The unit would also need to be scaled up and down and still be understandable. Most will be familiar with a decimal system. So units that are 10, 100, 1000 times as much as the next smallest unit. Not 3 or 12 or 14 or 72 or 240 or 1728.

Thank you for showing up in my feed. I'm writing a fantasy story for my teenager, and you have so much great advice. I've subscribed and look forward to watching even more advice so I don't end up like a S. J. Maas or Alex Aster 😅

I agree with everything you said about Highlander 2. But I actually loved it for being so bad and muddled, classic B movie.

The immortal character might be immortal, but they are the only one. Nobody around them is. The big thing about an "immortal" character, is to give them proper weaknesses and the tragic of outliving anyone you know while also having to change place and name to keep it hidden. Like having them not age and heal super fast, but let them still be able to die from combat and injury. Have people recognize that the person looks exactly the same as 10 years ago and as their "father". That was sort of the backdrop in Highlander. He lost his wife to age. He has to constantly (relative to his existence) move and replace his identity. If the immortal can be "killed" but comes back to life shortly after. Sure, they can't die for good, but they still remember every death. They still feel pain. And who says the immortal has to be old. They could be new to the situation. An immortal might be undying, but that doesn't mean they are superior in a fight. A mortal, but vastly overpowering antagonist might even play with the fact that they can beat up the immortal again and again. If I use immortals, relative immortals or nearly immortals, I tend to have them either as secondary characters or as antagonists. For my biggest setting I just made most of the main characters very long lived. That way I have the time to let them experience lots of things and put them into different time periods, but they still will age and die eventually. They can still be killed. They still have all the things any other mortal has. They might be more powerful than a regular human, but not all conflicts can be solved by sheer force. The immortals are usually halfway to being gods who don't meddle in the day-to-day troubles of mortals. Some of them are overpowered and see it as something beneath them, others are simply unable to do it.

Loved the video! There is something about good versus evil stories that gives this comfort we cannot find in other narratives, and this is why I believe we still want them to exist. However, I feel they do base themselves on the inevitability of the good winning over evil, and I think it brings a false sense of comfort. Maybe ideological comfort? I don't know if that, in the long run, contributes to us humans getting used to avoiding uncertainty and the complexity present in those universal values we think should be universal, and makes us lazy in accepting other interpretations of said values. I also think uniting against a common enemy could be problematic, as it's hard to say what that enemy looks like most of the time. What is good, and what is evil? Can good and evil be set in stone with no option for nuance? Either way, I still understand why these narratives exist and I do understand that we also need some relief when we're confronted with a tough reality as is ours :) This is just food for thought!

This is good stuff! The first trilogy in my fantasy epic (Little Red Wolf by Paul William Schumacher) has alludes to the politics but I'm beginning a new series in that world called "Meddling Witches." There's a politics-dense Queendom full of guilds & houses that I'll be getting into. This channel will make a good guide.

if everything that you are made of, can and has been replaced...is that immortality?

you're only immortal until something/someone kills you... how long do you need to be live before you're immortal?500?...5,000?..superman isn't even 100..would a werewolf be an immortal?

Just got to know your channel... Loving the content, you're very articulate and I found myself agreeing with issues I've seen in titles and my own work. Definitely subscribing to your channel 🙂‍↕️

I have an “unseen guild” in my world. They adhere to a set of universal laws that govern the universe. They intervene anonymously to tip or nudge things in the “proper” direction. The organization is organized into cells. Each member can only be a member of two cells and no members of a given cell can be in another cell together. I have a way to guarantee this. Because of that and many other checks, the organization is extremely difficult to infiltrate.

DEATH from the Terry Pratchett discworld series is an immortal character done well.

Well..... Its not real so

The idea that time is slower for immortals in LotR is stupid. Even if you are lazy, if you have all the time in the world, you have to do some thing. He doesn't have TV Internet, PS there is nothing to do there. You can forget a good friend for year even 2 but 20y. No! The only reason if you don't visit is you don't want to see or talk with that person. That is it. In the move it wasn't like that. If immortals is OP is not so much of a problem. You can make it stupid or with other funny thing about it to make it funny. Or just make stupid villains.

The only thing i disagree with is GoT Dany. I didn't trust her "white savior" routine from the get go. I wasn't surprised by her ending.

also important to remember: you don't just lose sunlight. 8 meter deep and red light from the sun is gone. this also means that 8 meters away from an under water light source and the red light from that source is gone. to add even more to that: not just the red object needs to be within 8 meters but also the observer. so the distance from light source to red object + the distance from red object to observer needs to be less then 8 meters for the observer to see the object is red.

For a related topic in the realm of science fiction, I’d like to recommend the RPG 2300AD, primarily for its exceptional worldbuilding. What makes this setting stand out is how it was developed through a unique hybrid game, part RPG and part strategy board game in the style of Axis & Allies, simply called The Game. In The Game, the creators at GDW traced the development of the surviving nations after a third world war, projecting their history from the year 2000 all the way to 2300 AD, incorporating technological advancements and interstellar expansion. It’s interesting to note that while The Game was based on the RPG Twilight: 2000, that game itself was born from another GDW game, World War III. What I find most compelling about the 2300AD universe, despite its flaws (with some shortcuts and errors), is how its history feels like it evolved in an organic, natural way. That, along with its strong "hard sci-fi" approach, makes this universe one I highly recommend. (Text Translated and corrected via ChatGPT)

I think my favourite part about the Doctor often limiting his involvement is not just to prevent messing with the timeline (because he usually can), but because he's afraid of himself. He KNOWS he's arguably the most powerful and dangerous being to walk this Earth. And rather than some dumb superhero no-kill rule where 'we must be better than them', the Doctor KNOWS full well what it's like when he doesn't hold back. In the Time War, he went all out. The exact deeds are left to audience imagination but the impression we get is that the Doctor became more devastating than anything in the Daleks wildest dreams. He went too far and he knows it. And it must never happen again. He refuses to pick up a gun not because he's afraid of crossing THAT line, but because there's a billion lines all more dangerous than the last that he knows he'll cross if he lets himself cross the first one.

Elrond accidentally neglecting his friendship with Durin due to a different perception of time for his species was actually a one of the very few great ideas in Rings of Power. Not saying execution was anything special, but great idea.

F Tier - Harry Potter. Like everything about the series it's an inconsistent ripoff of Dianne Duane. D Tier - Belgariad. Sorcerers pretty much just exert their will on the world and no criteria for how someone becomes a sorcerer. C Tier - 80's American Isekai Fantasy. Rhymed Couplets are magic spells. A Tier - Wheel of Time. Magic has limits, it's outright stated that people know a lot of the rules of magic but nothing has been fully researched.

Good versus evil is the starting point. Without evil there is no conflict, there are only several characters sitting around a table and agreeing they should all go home because there's nothing to do. Nice T-shirts.

I keep magic fairly rare in my setting, as I'm afraid it would just become "electricity but different" if it was commonplace. Still, it would invariably alter the way civilization progresses and discovers new technologies, so it's great to come across a detailed discussion of that topic. With the way my magic system works, I think it would lead to technology developing more quickly (since magic users would be able to mentally sense the underlying mechanisms of combustion, wind/water currents, etc.) I'll elaborate on how this would likely play out, both to clarify my thoughts for myself and to satisfy the curiosity of anyone still reading (wall of text ahead). Early humans with access to magic would become social and religious leaders on account of their ability to create favorable conditions (starting fires, sheltering from storms, etc.) In the process of doing these things, some of them would realize alternate ways these things could be done. By examining the underlying process of combustion, some fire mage (I still haven't settled on a name for my magic system, so for now I'll just default to _mage)_ would realize that fires could also be started by applying friction to fuel. Water mages would gain insight into conventional means of sanitizing/purifying drinking water and cleaning wounds. These groups of early humans would take one of two paths: 1) Magic-wielding leaders would prioritize the study of nature (along with physics, chemistry, all the sciences) and would share this knowledge with their tribe, which would lead to the tribe progressing in much the same way homo sapiens did on Earth, albeit at an accelerated rate. They would progress very quickly through the stone, bronze, and iron ages, and establish large city-states and kingdoms. 2) The magical leaders keep this knowledge to themselves in order to preserve their own position. If everyone knew how to make tools, grow crops, and manipulate nature, the value of magic users would be somewhat diminished as they would no longer be the sole source of these things. These people would likely remain nomadic or semi-nomadic and would worship their magical leaders as gods or prophets. Even after scientific knowledge became more widespread and eventually reached the Nomads, many would still retain faith and adhere to their own ways. This would result in a world where scientifically-advanced medieval/renaissance era societies are contemporary with stone-age tribes that are more reliant upon magic (and probably more adept with it). Thanks for reading, if indeed you still are.

Love the binary plot nuanced characters. Makes sense in reality too. Years ago, I had a debate with myself as to whether in fact, the creator was good or evil, and is good greater than evil? Because of beauty in nature, which is massively powerful., love between and among people, human ability to experience connection with other humans and joy, and finally the existence of Hope I do believe that good is more powerful, ultimately, and finally than evil. As for the nature of the creator, my thought at this point is if you are all powerful and can make and do anything, what is the one thing you do not have? For now, my answer is freely given love.

What are you talking about? There are no sequels to Highlander! There are not! Nope. Never existed. 😊

❤

Even though I usually enjoy you channel, and despite thematic narratives being absolutely being my jam. I find I have to disagree with basically everything said. Sorry, I could only watch 15 minutes, so if anything gets better later in the video then that happened too late for me, since I was so thoroughly annoyed by then that I simply could not go on. What are my issues? Well, I think dualism (binary story) is mostly boring, but the feature prized here is what I think makes them actually bad. I talk about morality, the moment when you have one side framed as good and the other as bad, then you no longer have anything of value to say, it is then just othering, propaganda, the conquest mentality that is too prevalent in western storytelling that I wish we could abandon or the colonialist BS that it is! Courage and other virtues actually become stronger when it is not clear that they are actually a supposedly good side. That is why samurai drama, that has not this nonsense of good and evil backed in, is so much stronger at exploring these virtues. By having a moral answer and the removal of any ambiguity, there is nothing left to explore,it becomes just preaching, and sadly only of the pastoral patriarchal kind that we really don't need more of. If you want to truly explore a binary, then make sure not to assign moral values to only one side, but treat both sides as equal, otherwise there will be no dilemma, and thus no depth for the characters.

Immortality 🤷 means no risk for the protagonist. That's not LOWERING the stakes, its eliminating it.

Targeting loved ones is good for raising the stakes for the Immortal, but physical danger can still work. I'm talking about imprisonment. Trapping them for a long time and possibly in a state of suffering. X-Men the Days of Future Past has a great moment where Wolverine is tied up in rebar and cast into the sea where he is forced to drown to death over and over for an unknown amount of time until he is rescued. The movie, The Old Guard, does something similar, but with an iron coffin. In it, the immortal woman drowns over and over for centuries until the coffin rusts away and she is freed. In some ways, physical harm can create even higher stakes for an immortal than it can for a mortal.

This only works within particular genre conventions. As Nietzsche says; all philosophy is ultimately autobiographical, revealing the life experiences of a philosophical movement that makes them arrive at particular conclusions. Good versus evil stories resonate with us, because we're drenched in a culture where the concept of spiritual warfare is, well, spiritually powerful to us. Our fiction echoes this underlying, borderline apocalyptic hope for stories about good against evil. I think that argument #2 is particularly weak here, because these are not universal concepts or themes. Not all stories are about hope. Not all stories are about the triumph of the human spirit. The example of Star Wars is particularly weak exactly because, as the trilogy progresses, the refusal of the call defies the dualism at the heart of the story. Narnia is an explicitly Christian story and exceptional in this regard. Just to be clear, I think the argumentation is weak. Personal preferences are, well, a matter of taste, but I think that presenting these ideas as "universal", the scope of fiction is dramatically narrowed to a retreading of the monomyth.

Question: @12:15 - who's the fourth son? Also, what if Clovis knew way in advance that his death would cause a chaotic power struggle? How about the "Clovis' curse" or the "whatever-name-that creature was" curse? there you go, you wanted consequences for power? every pack made with these creature will cause the curse to be activated upon the death of the signatory. Ofc those gems also extend life by a few decades.

Every Highlander movie broke every rule each previous movie established. The tv show continued doing that too.

Someone made an important point in an earlier comment: immortal and invicible are not the same thing.

If there wasn’t any crime then there would be no need for law enforcement (or for most laws in general). Crime provides illegal goods and services that some people want at a price that are willing to pay. Thus, some would argue, crime is beneficial. Too much crime and too much law enforcement is bad. Thus the goal is to have the “optimal” amount to crime and law enforcement. This is how things work in the real world and it is also how it works in my stories. The story revolves around the tension between crime and law enforcement and what happens when the optimal balance that exists between them is disrupted? A build up of crime leads to a build up of law enforcement which leads to too little crime which leads to an increase in demand for crime which leads to to a build up in crime - a phenomena known as crime waves.