Nobody says the author must. But every fictional world needs an internal reality. That reality is often--not always--going to mean a specific technology level. I assume that you would indeed have an issue with Frodo using a Playstation, right? That means that you do have some sensitivity to technology clashes.
No, now you're completely misrepresenting what I said. I said, EXPLICITLY, that actual places and people cannot exist in fantasy unless you explain it because they have actual histories that have actual meaning. So no it would not be Chicago, however, your snarking aside...it WOULD be similar. Very similar. They say terms and use concepts like "cool" and "dude" and such, they have technology not that different and in fact MORE ADVANCED than our own yet live in a world of swords and sorcery, so not actual Chicago would not exist obviously since that infers America exists, and therefore the British Empire exists since we broke off from them and all of the history and such that goes with that. But at the same time except for his magical powers, mainly gained form magic gems he has which even the COMMON MAN has in their world, Cloud would not be out of place in the modern world. He'd be dressed different, not even that different honestly, and his giant sword would be scary to some but his language, concepts, ideologies, even some of their religion would be largely the same...and in fact he'd probably wonder where our laser rifles and space ships went since his world has them. So we would look weird to him.
So you're saying that one fictional world has a set of technologies and expectations that were created by an author or authors. How, exactly, does that contradict anything that I've said?
What's with this "Frodo playing the PS2" thing? For the record, yes, if they show electricity exists and they didn't use an ACTUAL console from our world, then I would have no issue with that. In fact I can imagine ways it would work with the magic and cosmology they establish, since alternate realities and stuff exist in their world so I can see a kind of LITERAL virtual reality being a thing, like Virtual Boy but for reals. Also again, if you had the ACTUAL Playstation and then had some revelation at the end it was Earth in the far future after a nuclear holocaust or something, I would have no issue since it would handily explain it, maybe not a very good ending but it would work.
Because you put forth the idea this would "change" the world, and make it some kind of anachronism. I put forth ONE example out of dozens of similar examples I could mention, that shows it isn't an "anachronism" nor would it change everything forever, because in a fantasy world it could be handwaved away. But ok, forget Final Fantasy, what about Avatar? Again, giant robots, lasers, steam power, cyborgs, trains, tanks...also psychic powers, magic and flying bison. Or how about the comic Battle Chasers--cyborgs, lightsabers, magic, zombies, giant robots, assault rifles, jet packs, all as one setting. Or how about the Skies of Arcadia games? Gunpowder, antigravity, but otherwise flintlock sailing ship stuff. I could go on and on but Gunpowder Fantasy is kind of a fetish of mine, I have literally hundreds of other examples, some falling into the Earth All Along trope as well. The fact is this concept that ALL fantasy MUST adhere to specific, pre-industrial time periods is rubbish.
I guess I get the feeling that a lot of people (not from this forum - just a general feeling I have) expect authors to choose a particular century's tech and stick to it, and when they don't, readers get annoyed. Sure, in-world coherence is important. Frodo and PlayStations do not mix, that can be agreed! It's just some people complain you've got 18th century tech and 14th century tech co-existing and saying, "But which century is your book based on? Be consistent!" What they want isn't overarching story consistency so much as just consistency within the technology itself.
@ChickenFreak Then what are you saying? Because what I am saying is that fantasy doesn't have a defined timeline, so as long as ACTUAL people and products don't fall in then no dialogue is an 'anachronism'. Same with technology, medicine, etc. BUT if you did put actual stuff in there from the real world, you need to explain it, and even then there are a plethora of ways to make that work (an "Adam And Eve Plot" presupposes the series is set BEFORE mankind and therefore stuff we have now evolved from stuff we had then, and was forgotten and went back). So no, you can't realistically call anything an "anachronism" in fantasy, as long as their is no mention of real world products and concepts, and even if it DOES you can explain it due to the nature of fiction itself.
Well, any period is going to have a mix of technologies--if I use a wooden spoon, I'm using technology thousands of years old. If I use to eat from a ceramic bowl, I'm using technology a bit less old. If I use it to scramble an egg in a nonstick pan, I'm using technology only a few decades old. But if a story seems to have established a "ceiling" for the technology, and then something suddenly appears that exceeds that ceiling without any explanation, some people are going to be jolted. For example, I know that zippers were invented in the late 1800s. Someone who doesn't know that might not be a bit bothered if King Arthur uses a zipper. And if a zipper appears on a garment owned by an ordinary person in a "serious" (as opposed to cartoonishly whimisical) fantasy world that otherwise appears to be, oh, 16th century technology, is that an issue? It would be for me, because while the mechanical concepts are probably plausible, I think a zipper would require a jeweler or clockmaker a year or more to make--zippers depend on manufacturing. In a largely agrarian world without factories, I will be jolted by zippers.
What I'm saying is that every fictional world has a structure of reality--a DIFFERENT structure for each world--and that the story should be consistent with that structure. You seem to be alternately agreeing with that and denying it.
@ChickenFreak This idea of a "ceiling" though is what I don't get, because that ceiling is irrelevant and artificial and can be broken by the author at will. When Gurren Lagann starts they're basically in this quasi-fantasy world with giant robots, by the end they're fighting Cthulhu's cousin in space with an interdimensional war machine. So yeah if a giant robot shows up in a series ostensibly set in an era where steam power is still just getting off the ground, that would be "jolting" to me, but honestly if it isn't ACTUALLY Earth then I can just shrug and go "meh, magic I guess". And really the mere existence of magic means a LOT of these settings have technology far, far less advanced than they should. I actually wrote--SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION--a series of novella length serials in times long past where it postulates what the D&D world would like if they used magic in a way that made sense: "giant robot" golems, lightning rifle-wands, regenerating magical "shields" (wards), "powered armor" fueled by magic, alchemy used to make drugs including steroids made out of dragon blood that lets the user control fire, etc. It's basically Gears of War with magic. This "ceiling" is artificial, if it breaks then it does, but unless you have blatant REAL WORLD stuff in the setting it's irrelevant and can be handwaved away with just a sentence or two about magic. The skyscraper-sized robots in Avatar are explained by "they can control metal so they make the robots walk with their minds". The laser cannon is a "spirit energy" gun...which functions in every respect like a laser. The "structure" of the world is pure escapism, what happens need only be plausible not possible, while sci-fi requires SOME level of possibility or else the science part is a misnomer. That is the primary difference. It's why superheroes are fantasy and Star Wars is sci-fi, because at heart Star Wars can kinda happen, sorta, but Superman is just escapist fantasy with only a modicum of grounding in reality.
An author can do anything he wants. He can create a subplot in which a bunch of fantasy cavemen cross the continent in search of fire, and in the next scene have one of those cavement cooking on a gas stove. The question is whether he can make that work for the reader. And whether you believe it or not, I'm fairly confident that the authors put some effort into making that work. Suspension of disbelief doesn't come without work. If it breaks, and the resulting work is successful, then the author put some thought and effort into making that break and into maintaining the illusion for the reader. So you admit that it needs to be plausible. You seem to be reversing your position again. I just watched Weird Science again. The process by which the two geeky teens create a woman is of course impossible, but the movie worked hard to skate past the viewer's disbelief. First, of course, the movie was clearly cartoonish in the first place. But even with that, they didn't decide that one of the teens was a genius who could create a woman out of thin air--instead, their premise was that the teen could hack into some immensely powerful government computer that could create a woman out of thin air. And then there was noise and lights and flying papers and exciting visual action to drag the viewer out of "...wait a minute..." though of course the viewer had to be willing to be dragged out. It still wasn't plausible. But it was enough to get the viewer through that point of maximum implausibility, and allow them to enjoy the movie. The "rules" vary. Weird Science got away with wild implausibility. Brittannia gets away with modern language and idioms. Some fantasy fails to get away with characters who have clean faces in what's clearly a sanitation-limited world. Any piece of fiction sets the rules of the game, and then it needs to follow its own rules. This thread, as I see it, is about choosing, and following, those rules.
@ChickenFreak You're missing the point. The ORIGINAL question was, does a "modern" colloquialism have a "place" in a fantasy setting. MY answer was that yes it does, since the setting is pure fantasy and therefore the history of that world is yours to do with as you please, as long as you retain continuity. YOU argued that it was possible to have "anachronisms" in fantasy, and it should be set within specific period, pre-established, and never go beyond. So your entire argument is based on the idea that a writer must have a pre-set condition beyond which they never cross, in FANTASY, a genre where conditions are often directly affected by sorcery and where rules usually are at best flexible if not non-existent. And again, even IF we assumed you were right (and I love how you dodged entire chunks of the argument where I pointed out entire genres, the very existence of which disprove your position) there are ways within the setting to explain this, at least FOUR different tropes and half-a-dozen subtropes apiece that do literally that, to the point that entire franchises were built on the idea of having modern, real world stuff appear in pure, escapist fantasy and thus explaining it away with some apocalyptic revelation or "they're really Adam and Eve" twist ending. And again, I love how you dodged this, as it DEMOLISHES the very idea of some kind of "set conditions" or "ceilings" (which weren't even in your original argument, which was purely that it "wouldn't fit" and be an anachronism).
From the original post: (Emphasis mine) I did. I didn't. No, it's not. I point out, again: They disprove your inaccurate strawman of my position. I point out, again:
I'm presenting your strawman (above) and then my actual position (below): Fantasy can be any time, place, time period, technology, person, situation. Anything. Anything at all. But the author generally needs to make some choices. Now, the author could make choices that free him from making choices--for example, if he "wraps" the whole idea that the world is inside a video game or a dream, then his choices will restrict almost nothing--but they still have to restrict something, or you will have no plot; see below. Most books have some restrictions. Most readers crave some restrictions, because with zero restrictions, it's hard to have a plot. If any character can solve any problem with infinite magic...why bother to write a book? If the plot is about cavemen whose campfire has died down, and they need to acquire fire before winter comes and they all die of cold, that plot needs to NOT have easily available fire. The caveman can't go home after the terrified meeting about winter and say, "Oh. Hey. Look, I've got some matches from when I used to smoke." The fantasy world's structure needs to support the plot. If a plot is about an assassination of a hard-to-reach evil queen, then you can't have magic that allows absolutely anyone to kill absolutely anyone with a thought. Because there would be no plot. A setting needs to support a plot. And it also needs to support character development, etc.--characters who never encounter the tiniest restriction to what they want are going to be pretty boring. The setting not only needs to support the main plot, it needs to support subplots. If a famine is an important issue for character development and to drive subplots, then your setting needs something that causes that famine to happen, and it can't afford something that will instantly make the famine go away, or instantly produce infinite food, without tearing that subplot apart. Fiction needs conflict. Conflict needs limits. Limits need...limits. One of a fiction writer's most important tasks is choosing those limits. Whether they're conscious of that or not. One of the most important functions of a setting is creating those limits.
Uh huh, look, he said MEDIEVAL TYPE, not actually Medieval Times, so I take that to mean "like Dungeons and Dragons" and since this world is FANTASY then I can also realistically take from that he meant magic exists. Now if the original poster wants to correct me on this fine, but so far I think that's an accurate take-away from "medieval style fantasy". As I said, if you REALISTICALLY apply magic to ANY world then it would look closer to Star Wars than Game of Thrones. Like for example if magic can shield people, then use it as regenerative shielding, and bang you get the Power Armor from Halo. YOU seem to think that "medieval type" means it must conform to actual Medieval Times, and therefore have some specific kind of technology and if that is the case, then huge chunks of any fantasy story stop making any sense as the very EXISTENCE of magic makes that impossible and implausible. At least in some steampunk fantasy western with cyborgs and talking dogs they could explain it away...and yes that exists by the way--its a series in fact, called Wild Guns.
Or ok, let me ask this then: do you believe that Westeros is supposed to be set in a medieval style world? Just a yes or no question.
Many people classify Star Wars as fantasy. I agree with them. This leads us to a question of mood versus technical elements of the genre. Star Wars is fantasy with the mood of science fiction. I assumed that by "medieval type" the original poster wanted the mood of...medieval fantasy. If he doesn't, that's fine. No, it doesn't. The fact that a few people have magic doesn't mean that everybody else isn't using some normal human technology. A large percentage of medieval fantasy books operate just that way--magic is very rare, and everybody else is using some level of historical technology. Maybe you don't like or read those books--maybe you boycott Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, Narnia, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Pern, all the King Arthur stories, etc., etc. But they still exist. Explain what away?
It seems clear that the normal residents of Westeros live with a technology substantially earlier than real world 20th century technology. I'd have to do some heavy research to pick a number. My vibe is that it's later than real world medieval but I don't think it's as modern as 1800. However, George Martin himself seems to be approximating it on the middle ages. A quote: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Science_and_technology "I've made a deliberate decision when the books began to have the maesters, and have Westeros in general, have better medical knowledge than the real-life Middle Ages. Mostly because I didn't want everybody dying at twenty-six. So it is generally improved, the maesters have improved the standard of hygiene, and they understand certain practices, and they can do things better" The fact that he made a conscious exception from the Middle Ages tells me that he is intending to use the Middle Ages as a starting point, a point from which he is making considered exceptions. It also tells me that he does care about technology levels.
@ChickenFreak "Explain what away?" Glad you asked! It takes place in a world which involves humans who have developed space travel, giant robots, cybernetics and genetic engineering but at the same time it is explicitly a fantasy title, steampunk specifically. So these cybernetics and giant robots are steam-driven, and spaceships be damned they basically are stuck with horse and buggies and the genetic engineering and advanced AIs are mainly just getting off the ground. This is explained in THROWAWAY DIALOGUE and shown, not told, in background images and basic concepts in the setting. So yes, it is set in what we would call the 19th century, but a 19th century where apparently the Space Race and bio-engineering got off the ground a couple centuries earlier than it did here. This isn't some massive leap, it doesn't take tomes worth of continuity and backstory to just show it and say "it's steampunk what did you expect". Another situation which, again, demolishes the whole "magic is rare" thing is that there are again several ENTIRE SERIES built on the idea that worlds set in Medieval Type fantasy settings have gunpowder, magical shielding, mass-produced tanks and giant fighting robots: google Warhammer Fantasy or the Warcraft Series. "Medieval Type" doesn't mean "set in Medieval Times" it means they kinda look like the days of yore. All it takes is literally a sentence and you can insert this into a story wholesale. And yes, many people consider Star Wars to be fantasy...SCIENCE-fantasy, a genre which is in itself entirely separate from High/Low Fantasy, Gunpowder Fantasy and Steampunk Fantasy and btw there are other "punks" like Sandalpunk, Stonepunk (see Flintstones) and even Atompunk. The idea that stuff that shouldn't be there is there isn't an anachronism because you can't have an anachronism in a world that doesn't really exist, as long as ACTUAL stuff doesn't creep in, with ACTUAL histories that need to be explained, and even then there are ways to do so. So yes, Star Wars is fantasy, but in ten seconds you could retell the story as some kind of preamble to Adam and Eve or a future set beyond the 3000's and it would still make perfect sense. And yes it would be "jolting" to see Bilbo chugging down a Red Bull but if you came up with an explanation (i.e., Earth All Along, Really Our Homeworld, Adam and Eve Plot, and a dozen other tropes) then it would fit within canon and while bizarre it would totally work--and frankly some may even view it as a unique twist ending. Hell there are some who speculate based on some elements of the story that Mad Max is set in the PAST not the future and explains how mankind ended up in the stone age, with interpretations of Max as the angel of death...does it "fit"? No but frankly it'd be an interesting twist. As for "mood"...eh, I have no idea. I never delved into the more philosophical stuff, but honestly fantasy is escapism, the mood is what it is. Again I could go down a laundry list of Medieval Style fantasy series, including Battle Chasers, Warcraft and Avatar, which have slang, concepts and technology from our world. All of this writhing around because you really, REALLY love Tolkien or something is fine, I liked the books too, but fantasy is just that--A FANTASY--it doesn't need to have set periods or ideas beyond the worldbuilding itself.
@ChickenFreak Oookay...so yes, Westeros is Medieval, ok so then why do the women shave their legs and underarms? Because from what I have read, doing some research, that didn't really start to become the norm until around WWI and then became a matter of course. So if it is "medieval style" and women really never shaved their bodies until the 1900s (1903-1915 from what I read) then Daenerys and Cersei should have patches on their underarms as thick as Jon Snow's beard. "But it's the mood!" No, it's because it's what people do NOW, and while its an "anachronism" it's just how that world works.
That's not technology, that's society. OK, I'm still finding this discussion somewhat interesting, but we are fifteen miles away from the original topic, and if we get into society, we'll double that. If you create a new thread--not sure if it belongs in setting or in Debate Room; I feel that it's still juuuust barely setting--I'll follow you there. But I need to try my best to stop responding on this subthread of this thread.
@ChickenFreak And colloquialisms are societal too, so if shaving your armpits isn't an anachronism something far less out of place, like saying "Oh God damn it!" or "Are you fucking real?" or "You're the man!" is just as reasonable. And according to articles I read, yes shaving was largely technological since it was harder to shave with so-called "throat slitting razors" than with the smaller kind we use now, so again if that makes sense then so does something that requires no actual technological development and precisely zero explanation for the entire audience to immediately get it. Ironically people would be MORE weirded out seeing a chick with a forest on her legs than a guy from MiddleEarth saying "Dude, seriously?" because the latter simply requires that at some point over millennia of existence the people of MiddleEarth invented the word "dude" to mean "a male friend or acquaintance" and coupled that with a question to see if the person they're talking to is being sarcastic or not, while the unshaven Mo'Nique-esque cavegirl would look so wildly out of place people would ask it be edited from the movie version of the book.
Shaving body hair isn't a purely modern custom. It goes back to Ancient Egypt, falling in and out of style over time. https://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/g8155/history-of-hair-removal/ A secondary world where a custom like this happens to be in style doesn't set off alarm bells for me, since there's precedent in our own premodern world. To tie this back around to something close to the topic, I think writers and readers of fantasy (and historical fiction) need to be aware of the so called "Tiffany Problem". It's so named because Tiffany is a name with origins in the Middle Ages, but it doesn't sound like something you'd consider a medieval name, so creators just get around the cries of "that's unrealistic" by not even touching it. Connecting this to the colloquialism front, some modern ones aren't going to stick out that much. Some that have their roots in the Middle Ages or eras close to that time might brush readers the wrong way even if they're accurate. So I'd personally do what you want in a first draft, then run it past readers.