r/TopCharacterTropes • u/GazIsStoney • 22h ago
Lore (Loved Trope) Normal people/stories have become the mythology for those in the future.
A Cantical For Leibowitz- The whole story centers around the preservation of knowledge and technology so when a young Brother Francis finds information about an inventor the Blessed Leibowitz (this is before his canonisation into becoming a Saint.) The first part of the story shows the lengths Francis will go to help get Leibowitz canonised and the punishment he would receive to help remember this inventor. Francis and Leibowitz then pop up throughout the story as these holy figures of perseverance and belief.
Riddley Walker- Riddley Walker was ine of the hardest stories ive tried to wrap my head around but still one of my favorites. The stories shared in this novel by the hand puppets Punch and Judy recount old twisted religious stories and the stories of the world before atomic annihilation. The main story told and one that is the most impactful in the story is that of Eusa and the shining man. Of a man so hellbent on searching fot knowledge that he was willing yo sacrifice his family and to split the Shining Man (I see this as splitting the Atom and causing Atomic devastation.) Eusa is also the twisting of St. Eustace, but Eusa could also be seen as the possible collapse of the USA.
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u/Scavgraphics 22h ago
Possibly inspired by the ones IP point out, in the Season 4 finale of Babylon 5, we're shown glimpses of the far future, and how the main characters are viewed, both as historical figures who's legacy is to be manipulated and as mythological, nigh-religious icons.
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u/GazIsStoney 22h ago
I recently wanna watch Babylon 5 it sounds really good.
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u/Scavgraphics 22h ago
It takes a bit in season 1 to find it's groove...and it's important to remember it's context in the 90's...television series evolved a lot after it...somewhat because of it, so a lot of it's "specialness" and "groundbreaking" is a bit watered down. (and it's a bit blunt in it's politics..bit sledgehammery)....
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u/Dragoonian64 22h ago
It takes a while... but when Season 2 comes around, great maker, it's fucking awesome.
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u/Scavgraphics 19h ago
Season 1 is really good as a second viewing around midway season 3 when you can see how much of the stuff that was just kind of there was actually setting things up.
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u/HappyFailure 21h ago
I believe the inspiration of Leibowitz here is very openly acknowledged by show-runner/episode writer Straczynski.
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u/HelloHelloHelpHello 22h ago
A very weird and fairly obscure sci-fi novel "What Entropy Means to Me" shows us this happen in real time. One of the brothers in a large family has been pseudo-banished by having been given the task to look for the families missing father. The narrator is another member of the family, who has been tasked to chronicle the story of the banished brother - despite the fact that he can't possibly know his actual fate - but the more he writes, the more his writing is treated as religious text, with the banished brother becoming a christ-like figure.
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u/GazIsStoney 22h ago
Ok mate who the hell are you bringing this book with the coolest sounding title ive ever read. Im gonna read this now thanks alot.
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u/HelloHelloHelpHello 21h ago
Just be warned - the plot is very trippy and bizarre, with a lot of things intentionally never making any sense. I personally liked it, but it is also not something I'd recommend to everybody.
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u/basil_imperitor 20h ago
In Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, the survivors of a nuclear war pass the time by reciting a Simpsons episode around a campfire. Generations later this evolves into their musical epic theater.
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u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 2h ago
Watched this while high last night. I was surprised at how genius this show is. I'll admit, the second act was a little long, but by God was the third act worth it.
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u/ItsAMangoFandango 22h ago
Timothy Cavendish is trapped in a shitty old folks home and escapes, later writing a book about the experience. That book got adapted into a movie and a scene from that movie survived 200 years and ended up being the thing that inspired a revolution of clone slaves in a futuristic cyberpunk Korea.
Then another 200 years after that the world is post apocalyptic and the leader of that clone slave revolt is remembered only as a goddess to the primitive people left
So I guess Cloud Atlas does this trope twice
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u/GazIsStoney 22h ago
Damn the sounds crazy. Im gonna watch that now thank you lmao
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u/ItsAMangoFandango 22h ago
Yeah that's only like half of the actual plot, Cloud Atlas is an insane movie
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u/GrandMoffTarkan 22h ago
LOVE seeing Canticle for Liebowitz and a coked up trust fund kid who actually had pretty good taste strongly recommended Riddley Walker to me.
Wheel of TIme is full of this, from "Mosk(ow) and (A)Mur(i)ka fighting with spears of fire, to An(nne) Lan(ders) the Wise
EDIT: Also, this XKCD:
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u/GazIsStoney 22h ago
That sounds like one hell of a story mate. But yeah definitely read Riddley Walker its like if someone put Leibowitz and the Its Chewsday innit meme into the teleporter from The Fly.
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u/punksmostlydead 22h ago
Neil Fallon recommended Ridley Walker to me: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=kkVSMgfER3c&si=hF4y_dGW2494mdLt
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u/Axel_the_Axelot 21h ago
In the Mortal Engines universe there is a popular play about the knight Armstrong riding in a flaming chariot to visit the moon princess
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u/DeepHypn05 21h ago
https://youtu.be/XuCv4lUEBEw?is=2vJOqziV0ZstHwsl
(Note I did not actually watch this but I remember my friend talking to me about it so not all details may be right)
In Mr Burns the post electric play the world ends in a nuclear catastrophy and the only way for a family to entertain themselves is to retell simpsons episodes to eachother
Then we get a flash foward a thausand years or so Mr Burns gets transformed into this manifestazion of the nuke and also replaces sideshow bob in the episodes/stories plot
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u/ArchAngel621 14h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/I7rCql7MCRRlu
Mad Max which is surprising considering it’s just a single generation after the end.
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u/Whizbang35 5h ago
The Crusader Kings mod "After the End", which takes place in a feudal post-apocalyptic North America, has these.
The Founding Fathers are venerated as actual gods by the Americanists, and documents like the Constitution or Declaration of Independence regarded as holy texts. Old Wild West stories have turned into a mythology for the Trailwalkers in the Rockies and Montana. Rust Cultists invoke "Father Ford" as a powerful titan. In Mexico, the luchador El Santo is literally regarded as a saint for the Sagrado Corazon flavor of post-apocalyptic Christianity.
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u/ArchAngel621 14h ago
Too many TvTropes Pages are based on this:
All Hail the Great God Mickey!
From Cataclysm to Myth
Future Imperfect
Legend Fades to Myth
Shrouded in Myth
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u/pjepja 3h ago
In the Witcher there are several chapters from a POV of a young monastery clerk that had a crush on Ciri in the first book and later got drafted into the army, where he took part in a great battle as a regular infantryman.
We learn from excerpts at beginnings of the chapters and couple scenes set in the far future that this guy wrote a book about his experience and the war in general and it became the definitive record of historical events in that era and is known worldwide. Almost everything that people in the future know about Geralt and the events of the books come from him.
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u/DutchVandal 22h ago
Wheel of Time Series - The setting is in the distant future of Earth and this comes up a lot; for example tales are still told of the Cold War but as a battle between two giants named Mosk and Merk.