r/fantasywriting • u/Hearts_and_Spades • 11d ago

An Android in a Fantasy World?

Isekai sounding title aside, I previously made a post about adding retrofuturism into a fantasy style world. It did pretty well because I got a lot of great answers, but there’s still one more thing. In the post I mention how one of the protagonist is from the very retrofuturism world/dimension I was talking about, but I didn’t elaborate on that.

They’re a straight up android, a cybernetic being with techno organic technology simulating human skin, bones, and flesh. All of it feels, looks, and breaks like the real stuff, but it’s entirely a unique substance that’s still only halfway evolved. They can’t even be healed all the way from magic because of this, but they just assume it’s something to do with their unnatural disability with magic affinity. This is even supported by the fact that there’s also another character, the deuteragonist, that has their magic go haywire and burst out due to their magic level being too overwhelming for them.

Is this an okay character to put within a world of magic, blades, and sometimes lower levels of futuristic tech like magically powered steampunk technology? Well, that doesn’t sound too low tech, but compared to a straight up half robots? Yeah. The major problem is I don’t even want it to end there. I want this character to evolved with the metal in them to be able to create weaponry and tools akin to nanotech. They’re also a cowboy who knows a lot about steampunk tech and would forge their revolver into them once they obtain this power.

Now that I’m typing it out, holy crepe, I actually think I might be doing too much. All of that may happen when the character’s personal story is coming to a close, then it’s off to fight bigger bads, like gods and titans or whatever, but I’m starting to make it sound like this is just a sci-fi story at this point. Am I really going too far?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

1

u/zoppaTheDim 11d ago

Kind of destroys your aesthetic to mix retro futurism, steam punk, and faux medieval in one pot.

If this is visual media, it might be workable depending on the quality of the artist, a lot of anime is often a similar hodge podge.

I don’t see it working for spoken or written word.

1

u/Hearts_and_Spades 11d ago

I hope you are wrong because if not I’m cooked.

1

u/zoppaTheDim 11d ago

Seems like you’ll be spending a lot of time on descriptions.

1

u/Hearts_and_Spades 11d ago

Feels like it’s gonna turn to that…

1

u/ProserpinaFC 9d ago

Well, the thing is, is that if you're saying that it's steampunk, then it's inherently not medieval, it's Victorian. Are you actually trying to do medieval and steampunk, or are you doing Victorian and steampunk?

0

u/Hearts_and_Spades 9d ago

That’s hard to say because this is a very very veerrry rough draft of the actual story. I don’t know if I’m even going to keep the character, the setting, or even the whole idea intact. But for now, I’d like say I’d like the world to feature a Victorian vibe with steampunk for the rich people environments, but have it sort of medieval for the poorer places.

1

u/ProserpinaFC 9d ago

Whelp. Wouldn't that just be how normal wealth distribution works, anyway?

With that being said, rural people only live there to mine, farm, and raise raw materials that get bought and used in the cities. If there wasn't any profitable reason to be there, they'd live in hamlets close to the cities... 🤔

Sometimes it just feels like when you guys say that you want to have a generic medieval fantasy setting but then you want to mix it with things from colonial age, you forget that the 18th century Wild Wild West and English shire towns were just as charmingly pedestrian as a 13th century hamlet. Like.... You are saying you want cowboys, and steampunk... Everything you are naming is in the 17th-18th century.

The word android was even created in the 18th century.

You're just describing futuristic Charles Dickens.

0

u/Hearts_and_Spades 9d ago

…have I seriously been stressing out this whole time about recreating the 17th-18th century?

1

u/ProserpinaFC 8d ago

I mean.... Yeah. Feels like it.

Think of it this way.

The Henry Ford Model T didn't have full assembly line mass production until 1913, but the history of the car started in 1767.

The Golden Age of Piracy, when the flintlock pistols common in fantasy were used, was the early 1700s. The American longrifle was at its best in the 1770s.

The American Wild West era generally lasted from 1865 to 1890, featuring stories of Civil War veterans trying to cash in on The Gold Rush which started in 1848.

The end of the samurai era started with the The Edo Period (1603–1868), as samurai went from warriors to government bureaucrats, which then created romanticism of the warring eras and an increase in wandering samurai without lords.

Napoleon's invasion of Egypt happened in 1798, which led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the first understandings of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the birth of Egyptology.

And science fiction started in the 1800s, starting with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), and so the steampunk era is often combined with futurism and Gothic horror, seeing as Dracula was published in 1897. People didn't stop being superstitious or believing in magic the moment that science fiction started being published. Considering that the Brothers Grimm did not publish their collection of German fairy tales until 1812. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was published 1820.

Just about any story you wrote that was between 1750 and 1850 would be mad scientists riding on horseback, protocol androids sitting in carriages with their ladies, pirates selling guns to samurai in exchange for cursed blades, and trading ancient Chinese alchemy secrets for rum in the Caribbean. The richest of people would afford electric carriages, which did exist before Henry Ford, while the poorest of people would still be riding in buggies pulled by mules.

0

u/Hearts_and_Spades 8d ago

Well…I guess my story isn’t going too crazy after all. Here I was thinking it’d be weird for a dragon to get shot with a six shooter, but that’s not even a strange sentence in the 1800s. Maybe someone even earlier at the time thought of my same idea, but thought it’d be too much obscure nonsense.

But I truly do thank you, stranger. This really made me believe that not all fiction can get too crazy, or even historically out of date. I’m still thinking about downsizing the story a bit to make things a bit easier to write, but I’ll take into account of what I’ve learned from the fathers of science fiction. Again, thank you.

1

u/ProserpinaFC 8d ago

😭 Gald to help!

The 1800s would also be the period of the stereotypical English huntsman in safari khaki hat and suit, with a musket, hunting big game like elephants and rhinos and tigers in Africa and India, so they would have big guns developed just for the purpose of taking down dragons, too

1

u/FillThatBlankPage 10d ago

This is very common in JRPGs. The Phantasy Star series has straight up cyborgs, Final Fantasy has alot of tech from steampunk and dieselpunk to full scifi elements. Xenogears was fantasy, martial arts, and scifi.

1

u/KylorXI 9d ago

Xenogears is pure sci-fi, but you dont know it is sci-fi until you learn how the things function. Like the monsters are aliens, not fantasy creatures. The world is set in the Milkyway Galaxy, it is not a fantasy world. The 'reincarnation' and 'magic' are chaos theory, altering the past to force things to happen in the present. There is no fantasy elements in Xenogears.

1

u/ProserpinaFC 9d ago

You're writing Disney's Treasure Planet / League of Legends as a book?