Hello, friends. Four-and-a-half years after this video was released it got copyright claimed and I was forced to cut out a few short clips. If anything sounds weird, that's why. Sorry.
@@chapteronefrog You're making the mistake of thinking that the hunger games was good beyond the setting. Dialogue, motivation and story all go in a bad direction quite fast. World-building seems promising until a certain event just destroys the entire world for dumb surprise.
1984 is kind of a mess, honestly. I feel like it gets overlooked in terms of how rough and muddled it actually is in terms of writing, characterization especially. Also, if you have to put an entire chapter of an in-universe book in YOUR book just to explain the worldbuilding, it ain't that great.
the absolute funniest thing about the hunger games to me is that Mexico is just still there. I like to imagine only the US and canada went to hell, and the rest of the world is just doing alright. There's people killing each other in the streets, and the rest of the world is just staring at them I'm confusion.
It’s like in The Handmaid’s Tale, when there are a couple of Asian (I believe? It’s been a while) tourists visiting Gilead early on in the book and showing you that uh. Yeah no the outside world didn’t develop in the same way. All that shit really just went down in the US 💀💀💀 The difference between THT and most dystopian YA being that it was clearly an intentional move on Atwood’s part, whereas a lot of US-American YA authors tend to forget that there even is a world outside the USA.
@@riley8385 At least one "NYT Best Seller" made the list while selling less than 5,000 copies, and most are apparently in the 10,000 to 100,000 range. "Best Seller" is an intentionally misleading label; the list isn't based on sales figures but is rather populated with the titles the creators of the list decide to spotlight or recommend to readers. Higher sales figures just make it more likely that list creators will notice your book exists. You can apparently "buy" your way onto list just by buying around 10,000-20,000 copies of your own book, or paying organizations to do it for you. If you aren't on good terms with the list creators, or appear to push an agenda counter to that of the list creators, you might find your book fails to appear on their list, or to stay on the list, even if your sales are spectacular. If you are on good terms with the list creators, or are employed by them, or just back any agendas they favor pushing, then you may see a longer than normal run on their best sellers list.
@@eugenideddis There was such a case, but from various accounts it was far from the only such incident of someone buying their way onto a best seller list. There are even consultant or "promotional" groups you can hire that will buy thousands of copies of your book across various states, to make it less obvious.
Biggest problem with that book is that the author never pointed out the geography other than Denver being the Capitol and District 12 being in Appalachia. Though from reading it, I got the impression that the Districts were more glorified city states, not huge regions like people make maps of.
As someone who's not read the books or seen the movies I'm assuming it became "The Wilds" after the Direwolves had enough and toppled the Canadian Government.
Based on the population, district 12 couldn't have been more than a city state. I figured they mined out a coal vein and moved. The wilds were just the undeveloped area of 12
I remember reading this when I was younger. She was named that because her father was kind of a political radical who secretly opposed the monarchy.... Like, dude. Way to out yourself AND your daughter
So you're saying my setting doesn't have to be plausible to be popular? Sweet, time to abandon my economic, political, geographic, and social research to focus on the angsty love triangle instead.
My main complaint about most dystopian worldbuilding is that it's so shallow. What you see is exactly what you get. The authoritarian government is never evil for a reason uncovered in the book. Nope, it's just evil. The arbitrary laws never have logical reasons behind them. That's just the way things are. The caste systems or bizarre gimmicks have no purpose beyond making the world seem different. The rebels are unquestionably the good guys. There's never complexity that makes you wonder what the best path is. It's laid out for you. It's like a kid's show where the villain is called Professor Evil, and he twirls his moustache while cackling over how he's going to destroy those annoying Heroes with his sinister plan. No surprises, no depth.
Even though it's not logical, I think The Maze Runner does actually try to introduce reasons beyond "they're just evil" to the oppressive government's actions. It's to find the cure. They fully realize their cruelty but have convinced themselves it's a necessary evil to save humanity. It's an interesting question, the lengths decent people would go to in order to prevent the end of humanity/the world. Obviously as James said the logic of brain scanning to find immunity is questionable, but there was an attempt to make the villains more layered.
mm, i would argue that the hunger games at least tangentially confronts whether or not the rebels are "good guys", what with president coin and all that (though it does fall into pretty much other flaw you've pointed out here to be fair)
Try Skyward, it's scifi, not a dystopia. It's pretty good imo, but I can't go into details without spoiling it, so *spoilers* : the reason humanity is trapped in a desolated world is because we were dicks in an intergalactic war and tried to take over the galaxy. It's not so much a prison planet but an echological santuary to preserve the human species, because aliens don't think it's ethical to drive other species extint.
@@imygurl08 The Maze Runner makes more sense if you think that the scientist that organized the whole experiment were already affected by the Flare and couldn't reason properly.
I love Maze runner but seriously, they could just plug the kids into an advanced virtual reality & gauge the reaction from that. Even 10% of the maze's funding may have been enough to develop this reality.
@@feritperliare2890 im not really too sure, i just know that it's real-life kids who put on vr headsets and started playing the game between other kids in a competition
@@thesunwillneverset In the novel aren't the English still acts like East India Company? No wonder they are hated. But if you mean in real life I don't think anyone actually hating Britain aside from Irish?
@@asianjackass237 I haven't read any of the mentioned YA dystopia books other than Hunger Games, so I can't speak for the book, but IRL while it's not a vehement hatred most of the time, a lot of countries and peoples (understandably) at least harbor a grudge towards the English for what we did.
Dystopia as a whole has a lot of potential, arguably more than most genres, but it's held back by refusing to experiment. The genre tends to work better when it's aimed at adults instead of teenagers
@@evilnet1 It can even appear utopic on the surface with distopic undertones. In this case, it is genuinely a very high standard of living even for the lower class, but with a sacrifice to privacy and freedom. Heck, right now I can just ask for my lights to turn on and they do, but it's accomplished by having a microphone connected directly to Google. Is this in the direction of utopia because of the lack of effort to accomplish tasks, or towards a distopia because Big Brother is always listening?
It has suffered from commercial genre stagnation, much like cyberpunk... Plus, it's a much more difficult genre to work with, because, just like cyberpunk (which more often than not also tends to be dystopian), it requires some level of specialized knowledge to make it believable... Knowledge that requires research... And research that requires time you better spend writing! But there are many ways to make it work, and I don't get why authors are so damn lazy to do any of that, if it makes it easier and helps explore the genre much further: - If they can't be arsed to learn about real world geopolitics, they can invent their own: You can make your dystopian fiction take place in a completely made-up planet with completely made-up nations: Did you know the Principality of Belka invaded the Republic of Ustio after the Federal Law review of 1988? - They should focus more on setting and less on character. Make it an anthology of short stories set in your dystopia instead of the generic "epic" tale. That way we can explore more themes and points of view! This is the life of a rich corrupt politician here, and the life of a resistance member there, and the life of a poor starving kid over there... Or just make a chronicle about the rise and fall of this dystopian setting... - They should focus only on ONE or two aspects of the dystopia, and try to deconstruct them as much as they can to make it as realistic as possible. Explore all the implications of an aspect before leaping to the next one... A horrible war happened in the past? Cool! Your dystopia is all about people's efforts to survive in a ravaged post-war world! Corporations have taken over the government? Cool! Your dystopia is all about brutal violence in the name of profit, and the lives of the people stuck in the middle of the war between corporations! The same for, IDK, deadly viruses, police states, crime, technology, a corrupt society... You don't have to do ALL that at the same time! - They should make it more morally ambiguous: Maybe following the life of an average worker who gets involved with the resistance, and has to choose whether to help the evil tyrannical system and keep his family safe or help the resistance (even just by hiding one of their members in his house) to help change things... Not all protagonists have to default to fight to overthrow the evil government... Hell, I don't remember seeing a sympathetic protagonist who is defending the dystopia and the status quo. - I don't know... They should invent some wacky political system and go along with all its flaws, not with the intent to "fix" them, but for seeing how a crazy government system would make people miscerable in the real world... - Just make a parody: "This world is truly MISCERABLE. The government gets people killed and maimed because it's just tradition at this point and would be awkward not to do it! The alternative is going to the neighboring nation, currently enslaved by extradimensional eldritch gods! But at least using a toilet there is not punished as high treason against the country!" I don't know... The genre is full of potential, but it's sometimes wasted to make room for those juicy Hollywood contracts and royalties, so they gotta keep it dumbed down...
Guys I’ve got an original book idea. So basically, there’s a dystopian society. It’s bad. Everyone’s the same, except for they aren’t because they are in a group. It all sucks until one lone individual rises up and begins a rebellion and it turns out every single damn person in the country hates the dystopia except for the supreme leader or emperor or president or some shit. Then, the war continues for 2 or so books and then in book 3 it ends, and the entire government is dissolved in about an hour and everything is great from then on.
Yassss 🎉🎉🎉 don’t forget the dark clothing, the technological advancements,,, the love triangle and the girl whose gonna lead that rebellion who’s “oh so quirky 🛥🛥”
Funny how America is the only place that apparently "makes sense" when talking about divisions and diversity in these books, and then we have: "aSiA" "aFrIcA" "sOuTh aMeRiCa" "eUroPe"
@@riley8385 I don't know. Although it's more likely to happen than an entire Africa or Europe country, the countries are still pretty different from each other. Argentina, Colombia, Paraguai, Chile etc. technically could have made part of the same country, but the divisions made by Spain were enough to difficult their integration
To this day, the only YA novel I remember was one where it started off cliche as hell, but then the protagonist rebel girl realized that overthrowing the government meant she was now in control, and the rest of the book is just her hunting down her rebel friends and realize that being a tyrannical dictator is awesome
Dystopian fiction really only works if it's written by people with strong political views. Orwell was an ardent anti-stalinist, the Strugatsky brothers lived under the later era Soviet government. It's hard to make a dystopia work if you don't feel horribly strongly about anything.
Yeah i agree, he was very skeptical of authoritarianism like fascism stalinism and capitalism, only really showing support for Catalans anarchists and being a self described democratic socialist.
Owlblocks David capitalism can be -and often is- incredibly authoritarian. When your ability to obtain food, housing, medical care etc. is controlled entirely by one person/entity (i.e. your boss), you are not free.
@@owlblocksdavid4955 yes having all of the resources needed to live coming from an unelected group of capital shareholders and board of directors that profit from your labor is authoritarian, choosing your master doesnt make it less authoritarian. Read a book man its not that hard.
"New Asia is a dumb name that will never exist" lol so true It would be "Neo Japan", "Neo China", "Neo Vietnam " etc... and we all fight each other with giant robots
Too many readers don't realize that the character's actions and the author's message can be two separate things, so I'm not sure if a book like that would do well
By definition, that book can't exist. A dystopia is a place of chaos and suffering. Unless the protagonist is a villain you root for to fail, I don't think that can happen.
"Hey we found a meteorite in District 8 with a bunch of precious metals with a net worth of over $8 trillion" "Sorry you live in the T-shirt district no can do, better toss it into a volcano"
@@renard6012 na ,the Imperium would just take the Meteorite, and if there are local resistance they would just send some Bois to 'Rough' them up a bit, or destroy the planet at worst case scenario.
Are there any post-dystopian settings? A society that recovers from a dystopian regime etc. It would be very interesting to see a post-1984 world of sorts, since the society of 1984 changed so much in regards to culture and language.
I guess technically the epilogue to the handmaids tail is that? Also Aldous Huxley’s Island COULD be seen as that since it’s his utopian answer to the dystopia he created in Brave New World
First story that comes to mind for me would be the game Fallout: New Vegas, set 200 years after a nuclear war between America and China where people have recovered from the war and new powers are nation building in the west coast with two factions; the New Republic of California, a democratic republic fashioning itself off the old world democracies with all the faults and corruption with it and Cesar's Legion, a gang of slavers from Arizona who model themselves after the Roman Empire. Both factions are fighting over the Hover Dam as a strategic location amidst various tribes and factions of Las Vegas who want to remain independent of both powers
A section in Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need quips, “Europe is made up of multiple countries that have learned, over the years, to hate each other.” I’ve thought that joke also applies to places like Asia and the Middle East.
the selection was insane. the government banned premarital sex and beat starving children for stealing food and instead of like overthrowing it or changing anything, the author just like... decided that was all okay???
moreover, all she did was give maxon a 35-girl harem in which, inevitably, the oh-so-pretty america cringer would win his love (but throw in a love triangle to further the plot). ??? how do the _real_ problems actually end up resolved? please.
That actually isn't that egregious the simple fact is the imagery of the downtrodden masses overthrowing the dictatorship and winning their freedom isn't real because starving peasants aren't organized or strong enough to do anything if a dictatorship starts losing power it means the dictator has lost control of enough of his oligarchy for them to decide to replace him which is why the revolutionary is often times worse then the original dictator
I disagree that in Panem everyone was equally opressed, the books always pointed out that some districts were richer than others/Capital's favorites. Also there's an underlying race theme that got lost in by the movie casting, Peeta is a white boy with better conditions than other people is district 12 while katniss and gale are both described as having "olive skin" and have to work harder to survive, the producers of the movie just decided hmmm let's tan jennifer lawrence and thor's brother. Also there are districts that are clearly predominantly black.
Some districts were willingly sending their childs for hunger games (i guess military one). So yeah. And I think in book was metioned that military district and technology one were treated better, so Capital HAD technology and military. And I guess they maked some adjutmens after DESTROYING ONE WHOLE DISTRICT FOR REBELION
jeonghan supremacist idk about that fully. I definitely remember the district about food production had a lot of black people, but I don’t remember the capital having a specific ethnicity. I think the demographies largely didn’t interact between districts due to the serf like system. So there were traits shared largely within districts. Although there probably was a race analogy there somewhere. It’s been a while since I got into it.
Me too. For some incomprehensible reason I used to adore most of these books and revered them as great literature. Especially The Selection… unfortunately.
To be fair, I remember reading a pretty good thesis on these mass-produced novels being popular *because* they don't say much. It was literally titled "Dystopian Fiction For Young Adults" and I can't remember the author so good luck finding it. Basically, the thesis claimed that these were popular because they presented an oppressive world in a way that the target audience could understand. They present a world where issues like the environment, corporations replacing governments, and uncontrolled/unethical science are evident, and a teenager much like the target audience can be part of the process of fixing them. I thought a lot of it was hot air but I honestly can't disagree with the core tenants. I think where most of these books fail isn't the worldbuilding if that thesis is true, since the simplistic worldbuilding would be a key part of the genre. They'd be bad because they don't present an actual solution to the problems beyond "So the protagonist and their friends destroy the bad guys, proving that righteous violence really does solve everything". Then the people who just write this stuff to make money make this whole thing irrelevant.
This is true, items should be judged (criticized) for what they’re trying to accomplish. If reaching their target audience with a story that can easily identify with was the true goal and not necessarily introducing an entirely original story, than it did a good job.
I think the point of this video is that these are examples of bad worldbuilding because the systems are not sustainable, not because they are simplistic. But thesis still sounds interesting
The real problem is you can't give real solutions to teenagers. Teenagers wouldn't recognize real solutions if they kicked them in the face. These dystopias are popular with young adults because 1) the world sucks when you're a young adult and all these older adults have so much power over you, and 2) young adults haven't lived long enough to actually know how the world works. So throw together a sucky world with people who have too much power over you, a nonsensical gimmick, and rebellious teenagers, and bam! You have instant relatability.
I think the later YA dystopias fell into this more than the Hunger Games did too. The Hunger Games was pretty much the trendsetter and was thus allowed to explore its ideas and themes more freely, but the other Hunger Games rip offs weren’t as interested in themes or ideas and instead were more focused on capturing that lightning in a bottle.
@@sundancetitan5675 Kinda, canada wasn't a thing back then, it was a network of British colonies which we wanted to incorporate into the USA, but the attack went miserably and almost led to the British reconquring the US.
*making a pitch in a publishing office* author: ok, i’ve got the most unique idea for a story! publisher: okay...what’s the setting? author: oh, you’ll never guess! it’s set it in a post-apocalyptic america! publisher: .... author: guess what the conflict is! publisher: .... author: come on, guess! publisher: an authoritarian government forces its citizens into arbitrary categories based on a singular characteristic? author: wrong! an authoritarian government forces its citizens into arbitrary categories based on a singular characteristic! publisher: ...what about the protagonist? author: oh, this is the most forward-thinking idea yet! i bet you’ve never heard anything like it! publisher: .... author: she’s a thin, well-built, heterosexual white female in her late teens! publisher: what about her personality? author: .... publisher: well? author: .... publisher: i think i’ve heard enough. author: so? publisher: ma’am, i’m afraid all we can offer you is... A SEVEN-FIGURE BOOK DEAL!!! author: :D
This is funny, but more often than not it's the publishers pressuring the authors into making changes that fit into trends. And then you have Divergent, in which the author just wrote a Hunger Games rip off in a month lol.
@@lennysmileyface Oh that's interesting...Adding an entirely new country into your world and mixing it with real countries sounds very unique ! (Bc as we all know, Australia doesn't exist)
@@lennysmileyface Mine is set in northern Japan with a Russian protagonist. It's not necessarily post-apocalypse nor a dystopia, just your typical war and exploration story
it could be argued that One Piece has some of the most interesting dystopian world building I've read, mainly because it takes you over 400 chapters for you to realize that the setting is actually a dystopia.
"What exactly destroyed the world?" "Why did some people survive. But not everyone?" "How did the survivor's react to the apocalypse?" "What kind of society emerged in the wake of the apocalypse?" "Why did such a society emerge?" Also, apocalypses and Dystopias are not mutually exclusive. 1984 and Brave New World both take place after world-destroying wars.
"In a monarchy marriages are arranged for political purposes, they form alliances between dynasties" That's not always the case, especially if the kingdom or empire is so large and hegemonic that marrying into noble families may actually do more harm to the ruling dynasty than good. For instance the Ottoman Sultans mostly had slave girls as concubines in their harems, late Han dynasty China emperors would marry women of common birth over aristocrats because having no ties to established noble clans means they are less likely to create networks of power for themselves to essentially become more powerful than the emperor himself (which happened quite a few times in Han China). In fact the second last emperor of the Han dynasty made the daughter of a butcher his empress.
And even then, it’s still the uncommon case in history that monarchic marriages can be made from ‘love’. Like the recent Edward, who abdicated to marry his wife.
He Jin wasn't actually a butcher any more than the owner of a McDonalds is. Him and his sister were both from a wealthy land-owning family that just so happened to make a lot of money rearing animals and selling their meat on that land. 'Butcher' is a title a lot of people who didn't like him used because it made him sound more like a peasant.
“Everyone is equally oppressed except the ruling class” except in Hunger Games, they’re actually not? First of all, the twelve districts have varying levels of government oppression and poverty, with 12 being the poorest but also the least regulated. Second, even within the districts there’s a distinct hierarchy, though we only really get the details in district Twelve. In Twelve, most residents come from the Seam, where all the coal miners come from. Katniss’s dad is from the Seam, and she inherits his olive skin and dark hair, which are traits more common in the mining class. There’s also an “upper class”, which is marginally better off than the miners, and work trade jobs like running the bakery or apothecary. Katniss’s mom is from there, as well as Peeta and his family, and they all have fair hair and skin. Katniss is very aware of these class divides and her distrust plays a big role in the story.
I mean, ya there is a class system within the districts, but weather you are a merchant from district one, or a miner from district 12, the capitol is still gonna murder you equally as violently if you say something against them
@@coltonmason4623 that goes for citizens of the capitol as well, doesn't mean they don't benefit from the system by being born in the capital as they would by being from the first few districts as well.
@@nickelakon5369 The citizens of the capital grow up exempt from the Hunger Games though (which is this story's ULTIMATE form of oppression). They are allowed lives of luxury where they essentially never grow up having to want or work for anything because all their wants and needs are handled by each of the 12 Districts. The citizens of the Capital are the ruling class, and while they do indeed suffer their own form of oppression, they aren't *EQUALLY* oppressed (as is the point of the comment taken from this video). Not even the first few districts are exempt from the Hunger Games. And, as proven by Katniss and Haymitch before her, the first few districts aren't guaranteed victories either despite being better off than the other districts. In the general sense, each district equally suffers the oppression of the Hunger Games. In a subgeneral sense, each district suffers the oppression of being equally responsible for supplying the Capital with vital resources (District 12 coal, District 11 crops, District 10 meats, etc). Whether a district benefits from what they supply has nothing to do with the oppression being objectively equal, but how they react to supplying it and the nature of their resource's importance can affect to what extent the oppression occurs.
Also the rich districts are the low-numbered ones that produce all the military equipment and soldiers, and in-universe the people from those districts usually win the Hunger Games because they literally get trained from birth
Something I always find kind of funny in bad dystopias is when the series acknowledges nothing in the world outside of America. Like, look at that Hunger Games map. America has devolved into this crazy district system and then Mexico is literally just there
@@markrobbins7529 Sure, but you could be a lot more creative considering how diverse cultures and ideologies are around the world and how a dystopian setting could be different in those
To be fair, The Hunger Games is at least decently built, written, and themed. Suzanne Collins may have codified the “YA Heroine breaks free of a dystopia” thing but I feel it’s a mistake to lump her in with the mountain of imitators trying to capitalize on her success by doing what she did. Collins’ world is well constructed if one knows where to look (for example, the division of districts according to what resource they afford the capital is actually quite an effective way of curtailing any potential secessions, as none has the infrastructure to produce for themselves the resources any of the others do), and the focus in the book about how the media tries to play up Katniss and Peeta’s romance in the middle of the Death Game Where Children Die is, shall we say, relevant (especially since the movie adaptation did exactly that). I’d also point to the allusion made by the nation’s name - Panem is latin, taken from the phrase “Panem et circenses,” or “Bread and circuses,” famous words of the poet Juvenal meant to represent the core of how citizens are best controlled. It’s stated pretty firmly in the book that the lower-numbered districts - 1, 2, and 4 especially if memory serves, are treated much better than many of the others, presumably due to joining the empire sooner and/or more amicably. Likely the reason district 2 never staged a coup is that they’re treated relatively well, and don’t want to take the risk of falling out of favor with the capitol should such an effort fail. The book never makes mention of any elections, so presumably the capitol are the sole voting population or the “President” is more akin to a king and the capitol citizens their landed aristocracy. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it wouldn’t seem like the capitol would be all that keen on letting any of the districts have its own diverse economy since that keeps the, dependent on each other’s resources - and thus, the capitol, who collects and distributes them - to subsist. Besides, it’s pretty clear that the dystopian empire isn’t really meant to be set up all that well since, surprise surprise, it collapses really quickly. I didn’t really... enjoy... the hunger games that much, the books are surprisingly heavy stuff when you pay attention to subtext, but I’d balk at the idea of them being called poorly written
The series as a whole is decent and serves it's purpose but it's apparent things are being simplified for a younger audience, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. That said the pacing of it is weird in my opinion and changes in tone and theme quite drastically. It still keeps it's core principles which is what makes it a decent series but the sudden shift makes the latter half of the series a bit dense and seems to lose what made it decent in the first place. I honestly was bored with Mockingjay because it focused do heavily on the political commentary, which isn't necessarily bad, I just think it could have been handled better.
Katniss is an awful, unlikeable character, and the love triangle is beyond tedious and contrived. The author never spends more than 2 seconds on Gale's characterization but milks that hottie revolutionary for all the drama he's worth. And I'll never forgive Collins for blatantly killing off Katniss' sister in order to force her to make a decision on which man to bone. YECH.
1984 doesn't even have that much world-building, if you think about it. You know what life is like for one guy right at that moment, the history leading up to that point is basically just "there was a war, then Big Brother". Even what Winston reads about the other three countries could be party propaganda, for all he knows. Maybe "less is more" when it comes to things like this. The more the author explains about the world, the more holes can be poked in it, unless they have PHD's, or very good advice in, sociology, politics and economics.
@@michaelmartin9022 adding to that, the reason there isn't that much world building is that even *Winston* doesn't know the history, and he lived through it. There are no records, no history books except that which Big Brother allows.
5:00 "Since all the kids eat is meat, fish, and mushrooms, it make sense they'd be malnourished" Malnourished is one thing, but... wouldn't they all get scurvy? Although according to Google, you can apparently get vitamin C by eating beef spleen, so there's that I guess. But how would they get beef if they don't have any crops for livestock feed? Do they just catch wild animals, who can live on the surface without being attacked because...? I have so many questions.
Also growth issues. Not to bring anime into everything, but in Attack on Titan, there is a scenario like this were it's done properly because bone growth issues are rampant due to the lack vitamin D (no sunlight) to help the calcium they get merge into their bones. There's also a brief mention of failing eyesight due to the darkness, but yeah.
Many mushrooms have vitamin c and citric acid, so it's not impossible that they have a combination of mushrooms and meat that allows them to survive, depending on how many different species of mushrooms they produce.
Aaron Rotenberg pre agrarian humans ate meat and fish almost exclusively and they were in far better physical shape on average than humans at any other point in history including today
“New Asia”? The author knows Asia is made up of multiple vastly different cultures and politics, so which Asian culture forms New Asia? North Korea? South Korea? China? Maybe East Asian (like India)?
Looked at the author for that story. Middle-aged white Karen, so I'm not shocked that she thinks that you can just lump all the Asian countries together and not have the most disjointed thing ever seen
My biggest problem with Dystopias in fiction is that they very rarely talk about the politics of the authoritarian nation, all they ever do is talk about how the people above are mean and let’s unite people, and all is happy go lucky in the end They barely show the moral disgusts of the nation, and the factions inside the ruling class, they don’t ever show how when the ruling are deposed how those remaining will become warlords and the violence that’s insues Edit: Another thing I hate is the “unspecified thing happend now all is shit”, aswell as America being the only topic in these books with the rest of the world being irrelevant to these authors Edit 2: I guess this is why Orwell’s 1984 was so good, he had the experience from fighting in the Spanish Civil War, he knows from experience what a rebellion is, and witnessed fascists in person and lived through WW2 to understand how this stuff works
1984 is more of a critique on authoritarian socialism rather than fascism. Orwell himself was very much a libertarian socialist and feared what an overbearing government could do to a revolution. That, and the terminology used by "The Party" is very leftist in nature, you don't see fascists call each other "comrade" very often, nor do they use terms such as "proletariat" very often (proles). When they do use such terms, it's more or less to create a feeling of unity, not to incite any other emotion. That, and I can't imagine any fascist nation *not* wanting their party members to breed or experience intimacy, unlike The Party.
And they always assume Dystopian world could end by spontaneously “uniting the people”. A true Dystopian world is meant to deliver a sense of desperation and dread to the readers. It’s a world where the majority of the population is institutionalized by the regime. The Brave New World and 1984 grasped this. Most people would be too coward to fight, or too brainwashed to revolt. In 1984 people support the party despite being constantly monitored and oppressed. The control of the party is so rooted that there’s no moral obligation to fight against the system, since doing so would drag millions of people into chaos and would bring more suffering to the world. The concept of democracy or freedom is completely meaningless in such worlds. More people will live in peace ignorantly and would be happier if there’s no revolution. To fight against a Dystopian regime would mean to fight the majority of the population. It would requires more brutal killings of the innocent and acts of terrorism. If there are rebels popping up everywhere supporting the protagonists and every common folks just straight up hate their government, then it’s not dystopian, it’s just a shitty dictatorship that can be easily overthrown.
I really like the unwind series for that reason, it actually explains how the world came to be the way that it is. It’s also not totally unrealistic; the government isn’t obviously controlling everything anyone does at anytime, most people live normal lives and instead everyone being completely polarized on the issue, most regular citizens are moderate and are swayed by government propaganda (not exactly subtle but unlike some other novels where the government says “do what we tell you or else” the government instead makes excuses about the economy and good of the people and plays moral high ground.
The handmade tale does that. We see that there are other groups, what exactly the government believes in and even how the rest of the world reacts -both during and after.
There was one monarchy that used a beauty contest ( called a Bride-Show) to pick the monarch a wife, the Byzantine Empire. The last time they did that a woman named Irene of Athens won. She later got rid of her husband, and still later she blinded and/or killed all the heirs including her own sons. Then she did something unforgivable, Irene wanted to marry a super rich handsome foreigner to fill up the empire's coffers, and incidentally her bed. The guy ( Charlemagne) was a tall muscular athletic type and a blue eyed blonde, he was also gifted in music and keenly interested in literature, and did I mention crazy rich. This so appalled the Byzantines, that their empress would marry a barbarian, and incidentally refill the imperial treasury, they kicked her off the throne. They also never used beauty contests to choose a bride for the emperor again.
That's fair, but consider the dark horse that is Canada: we got fascists creeping around along the margins, the government instituted a colonial tool of control in the form of a committee that tells it that Aboriginal people approve of whatever it wanted to do anyway and it's now surprised that real natives don't want their sacred lands to have oil pipelines rammed through them, the guy who was Prime Minister most of my life was so obnoxious that the new guy has a history of wearing blackface _and is still more respectable,_ and whenever we think of improving we just look south instead and then pat ourselves on the back for not being Americans.
@@blarg2429 Literally. 'At least we're not as bad as America.' We are just as much as a semi-dictatorship as they are. The majority said 'we don't want the pipeline,' so they asked the Indigenous folks, who also said they didn't want it, so they did it anyway. Democracy, who?
The dumbest apart Legend wasn't the fact that the oceans would flood that much or whatever. It's the fact that the author thinks Africa and the Middle East would just unite like that xD
With the power of PLOT TAPE, I united China and India/All of the American continent/All of the Middle East/All of Africa/All of Europe/All of Asia into A SINGLE STATE!!
this is bizarre to me. unification is incredibly, and I mean INCREDIBLY, popular in the Arab world and Africa. Practically every founding father and every post-colonial theorist all advocated it and made attempts to make it work. Every comment section on the latest western political fuckery around here is like, damn it we should've united decades ago. I'm Tunisian and working on unifying with the rest of North Africa is literally in our constitution, just as an example. Or take the seminal work of Kwame nkrumah literally named "Africa must unite", the work of Frantz Fanon, Samir Amin, the list is looong.
@@tesso.6193 But how would that work in the _real_ world? The middle east alone currently possesses greatly different cultures and political systems, is only barely united thanks to religion and some history, and even then, there is a HUGE religious divide between Shiites and Sunni, and I'm sure most regimes distrust their neighbors more than they distrust, say, the Western powers. And Africa is HUGE. It has an enormous number of regions, ethnicities, cultures, economies and interests, and many of those interests oppose others. I highly doubt any regional power is going to forfeit their sovereignty if it means handling over decisions to a federal government, especially when it also integrates a neighboring nation they do not trust, and given that only a few decades ago they gained their own sovereignty by fighting the colonial powers, I don't see any reason they could have to join a single state. I mean, the African union and the Arab league exist, but I don't find any desire on any member to become a single state, and I doubt any of us would see a united Africa or Arab world in our lifetimes, and it may not even be the best for its member states.
I want a series about a publisher who's trying to restart literacy in a post apocalyptic America, and is flooded with unending novels of sassy and beautiful young women leading rebellions against various arbitrary and oppressive caste systems. The novels will all include love triangles with various bad boys, while the publisher tries to avoid quid pro quo "relationships" with all the authors.
I know this is a joke, but if you want a serious take on a story of someone trying to introduce literacy in a largely-illiterate society, watch "Ascendance of a Bookworm." It's a very cute anime about a girl who wants to read and write books in a world where books are expensive and only for nobility.
I would disagree that The Hunger Games is just a "look, that's bad" book. While it definitely didn't answer all the political questions (could it have, though, without too much exposition?) I think it had a pretty powerful message about how the media can twist horrific things and how people can grow desensitized if they don't watch for it. That said, it's easy to make a plain dystopia, and this was another great video! :)
I totally agree with your "too much exposition" point, and I think it's an important point a lot of people miss. To add to it: I've seen some comments on this video that complain about books not explaining what caused society to fall, or what led to the dystopia and their politics...Let's be honest, are we reading the book to learn every little thing about the author's world? Or are we trying to read about great characters in a great story?
@@plemcam We don’t need to learn too much about that, what I don’t like is how the people could put up with a government that constantly takes children every year to kill each other. If anything, I think it would last for about 15 years at most, not 75 years. This is mainly because they attempted to rebel earlier.
@@captainmarvelwilson508 I'll preface my response by saying I know the Hunger Games is flawed, but I think this part is where it did really well. It's a lot easier to control people than one might think. Even basic business marketing is a method of controlling, but more importantly manipulating, people. Let's look at oppressive regimes all throughout history. What did they use to maintain control? Violence, yes. But, more importantly, the threat of violence (as well as making it seem like a better deal to stay IN the nation than to leave it, etc.). Propaganda is a powerful tool that totalitarians wield, that's why I think the scene of the bombed-out District 13 is a really important one to include in the story. Another powerful tool is pitting the people against each other. If they hate each other, they'll direct that hate toward each other moreso than at the government. It's a lot easier to hate the winner of the Hunger Games that killed your kid, than it is to direct it at the government. It doesn't take long for people to forget who is actually working the strings, maybe one generation, two max. A great example of this concept in action is the Red Rising series, I highly recommend it.
@@plemcam I get what you mean. I can see how propaganda can manipulate people, as that has been done in history and is still something poisoning people's minds nowadays. I just don't know how a control like that could just last for 75 years, because eventually, it would be very abundantly clear who is pulling the strings. The Red Rising series though sound pretty interesting, I would like to check it out at some point. Just hope that if they make an adaptation, that they don't screw it up.
"Second, this painful commentary on American debt to foreign countries doesn't add up because at this point most of the creditors have made more money of the interest than they would of the principle."
Some worldbuilding advice: -Take an old convention from one genre and put it in another (eg. Dragons in a post-apocalyptic teen dystopia) -Take a trope that hasn't been seen in decades and bring it back to the genre (eg. psychic Dragons that play mind games and can wipe peoples' memories, last seen in _The Silmarillion_ - Tolkien was a master of the genre, he did many things that imitators _never_ did). -Do your own spin on a trope (eg. have the young adult dystopia getting overthrown be the inciting incident of book one rather than the climax of book three, and at the hands... er, claws... of a Dragon attracted by all the shiny stuff). -BUT WHAT ABOUT DRAGONS?
Ok but I like the idea of the government being overthrown in book 1. Then the rest of the series is the main character leading an army to stop other countries from capitalising on the chaos.
@@user-rl4tg2mr9n bro just change it into an alt history book and we're golden. Imagine a scenario where some rebellion succeed, maybe something like the American civil war... Wait, they made that already.
I felt attacked when he showed the Enders game cover lol. I never thought of it as a dystopia since I was more focused on the overall “xenophobia/genocide is bad” message, but after giving it a little thought yeah it totally makes sense.
A common argument is that these books are directed towards kids/teens. Are people saying we shouldn't take kids seriously and give them quality reading material? This is one reason why Rick Riordan is so beloved. While there are multiple issues across his universe (mostly because of the complicated world he built), he still manages to make characters who do things that make sense and his plots are logical. It's not perfect, but it doesn't treat kids like idiots.
I think the concept of a queen being picked through a game show could be really interesting, if done as a commentary on reality TV and the obsession with celebrity.
DapperCuttlefish in a certain sense i believe the books did that but because of the romance element it was overshadowed and made less important thematically. i think his critiques on this series in particular weren’t as on the nose because the whole marrying a commoner thing was not only the point of the book (it was supposed to be aspiration and a way to appease the masses- and a critique on exceptionalism and the way the american dream is false) it also has some historical context
not saying the book is unflawed and i admittedly have a soft spot for it given i read it when i was younger but that’s just how i interpreted his analysis
I think the “issues” mentioned with the Hinger Games were kinda nitpickey or not getting the point. District 2 has the most military power, but continues to support the Capitol and Panem because they’re still very well off in this system. The Capitol maintains power by pitting the districts against each other, more metaphorically with some districts being more well-off than others and resenting each other for it, and literally represented by the actual Hunger Games. And each district supplies something to the Capitol while the Capitol does nothing because it represents imperialism. The Capitol probably claims to give the districts protection or money/resources, but of course that’s incomparable to the resources given to the Capitol. However, if each district made all the resources, they wouldn’t depend on the Capitol to give them small amounts of resources from other districts. (If Distict 4 had grain, they wouldn’t need the Capitol to send it from District 11 for them.) Thus that’s another method of control.
if district 11 was fucked, all the food supply would be fucked, because the capitol wont make money off of letting everyone make food. just like our current system where we couldn't profit off of stockpiling medical supplies so now we are fucked
I also think Effie and the stylists also help create a theme that the violence and destruction isn’t caused out of malice by the citizens of the Capitol, but ignorance. Throughout the series, Effie and the stylists start off as a typical Capitol citizen, totally uncaring of the plight of the districts, but as they grow closer to Katniss and Peeta, they begin to understand the horrors. I think one of the clearest moments of this evolution is in the second book/movie where Effie tells Peeta and Katniss they deserved better, communicating she understands the horrors, but is powerless.
WerewolfofEpicness it’s shown in the second book that katniss’ stylists frequently complained about minor shortages of products which is how katniss keeps track on which districts are rioting. She also finds out that district 11 especially is VERY heavy on public executions because the capitol can’t afford to lose them. District 12 was previously a bit abandoned because they always made their coal quota and had a small population
They designed it so not one district could survive without the others. We see it with 13, they struggled to survive, even when we see them they have only just gotten on their feet. I'm still not sure though how the capitol became so powerful though in the first place
In Canada, we have our own dystopian YA book called "The Marrow Hunters," that is meant to explore the exploitation of Indigenous Canadians in contemporary Dystopian fashion. I appreciate there being a dystopian book from my home country, as well as it trying to explore the themes of Indigenous exploitation for a younger generation. That being said, the world building is a mess. It supposedly takes place 40 years in the future, in a world that is basically the Children of Men, except that instead of global sterility, everyone cannot dream. Lack of dreams eventually makes you insane, which is a real phenomenon. However, to cure the lack of dreams, the government has to hunt Indigenous people (who can still dream), to extract their bone marrow, which is "where the dreams are." Every time you think they'll explain this, it just becomes weirder and more unrealistic. There are so many questions that come from this like: - "Why does the Canadian government feel the need to hunt the Indigenous like animals when they could just build Nazi concentration camp or some other shit?" - "Why doesn't the government try to work with the Indigenous to synthesize the marrow juice, instead of going through the pain of manually hunting and extracting Indigenous? You know there will be no more Indigenous soon, right?" - "How does the government expect to keep the world running once they killed every last Indigenous?" - "What happened to countries that don't have native populations? Did they just died?" - "What do the Indigenous expect to do once the Canadians are gone? There's like 100 of them left." - "How did everyone lose the ability to dream (I'm willing to excuse this one because Children of Men did the same thing) - "Why are Indigenous the only ones to have Dream Marrow Juice?" That's not even going into the bad characters, the plot that tries painfully hard to be topical, the Gainax ending, or the fact that the book does not give us a single glance at the life of allogenous Canadians to give us a motive as to why they would do this. Despite this, the book was praised to high heavens because of the whole Indigenous stuff. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this executed correctly, and see more contemporary Indigenous writing, but this was just too bad to be worth praise.
I hold the belief that some writers do not really want to tell a story. They want to preach to the people under the gimmick of "writing fiction". They should drop the gimmick and write their political rants in a straightforward manner, because they're not making their message any better, they're making the practice of storytelling WORSE. The worst part is that blatantly political (or religious or whatever) stories can work, but they need to be _a good story first_ before slapping a message on them. The book you mention sounds like a setting with great potential, but the many plot holes not only can undermine the story, they can undermine the (very transparent) message it contains, which is a shame.
@@DonVigaDeFierro That's exactly what that stupid book is. It's a weird masochistic fetish story meant to vilify a group of people (presumably white Canadians). Handmaid's Tale is another crappy story like this.
Actually the Grand Dukes of Moscow and early Tsars of Russia would have glorified fashion shows to determine their wife, so the Selection sort of makes sense.
I remember I tried to read the selection in middle school, I had to stop after the mc described making out with her boyfriend for like, five paragraphs
i read this book and the mc writes fanfiction of her favourite character in a vampire franchise or something, 11 year old me had to read the steamy make out sessions she wrote while everyone was reading harry potter or wimpy kid 😀🔫 what a good first experience
I feel kind of embarrassed looking back now, because I loved the selection so much as a kid/preteen. I liked a lot of these YA dystopian novels because of the caste systems for some reason. I actually want to get back into reading, so I thought to look for books like the selection. But, I started watching these videos and they brought back the memories I had forgotten after years of not reading the book. What the hell was I thinking as a kid?!
What’s much more frightening than a story starting out in a dystopia is showing a society *sliding into* a dystopia from a world that doesn’t look too different from our own.
Yeah, imagine a book about your average joe who is completely disillusioned with society. He continues to grow more and more resentful and less hopeful. That is, until, he encounters a political rally. They preach to the common man about how unfair it is that they have to work long hours all just so they can barely scrape by- or are unable to get a job at all. But instead of blaming those in power, and proposing reforms, they blame the immigrants for taking jobs, the disabled for leeching off of society, they blame literally everyone they hate for all the real problems in society. He eats it all up enthusiastically, and introduces his friends, family and coworkers to it, some are hesitant, but others fall into it just as easily as he did. More and more people are radicalised, and the party rises to power. Instead of helping the people who helped them get there, they turn their backs on them, and focus on consolidating their own power. It becomes increasingly obvious that the party doesn't care about the people, but their supporters remain blind to the truth. No matter how bad things become, their supporters follow them unquestioningly, completely wrapped up in all the propaganda they've been fed.
@@haydenlee8332 Star Wars is heroic, not frightening. It’s the kind of battle we would like to fight, with clear good and evil sides. By “frightening dystopias“, we mean 1984 & Co. I didn’t talk about what’s exciting or entertaining 😉.
dystopia Ai: we control you now Human: oh no, you are evil we must fight back Ai: but we're helping your kind Human: evil robots! Ai: wait no... Human: E V I L
I’m currently re-reading the Hunger Games, and although it’s never stated, it isn’t a stretch to say that the Capitol provides all media/entertainment/beauty industry. The Games are cut together and broadcasted from the Capitol, it’s where all the stylists/makeup artists/designers/tattoo artists/game makers etc etc live.
As someone that lives in Venezuela, an impoverished country under an authoritarian regime, I have to say that I was impressed with the accuracy of the description of what is like to live like this that is offered in The Hunger Games.
I love the maze runner series for its characters and storytelling, but your take on the world building are 100% accurate lol. Always bugged me how a damn maze is supposed to find a cure to a virus
I think they explained it in the stories as the virus taking place in the brain so if they figure out how the kids brains are different than they can stop the virus from being able to take over the brain Still murder maze is an overreaction
For the first book or so I thought the twist was going to be that the maze was supposed to protect them, something went wrong, and now they're stuck there alone with this automated system and monsters that in some twisted way is trying to protect them from the outside
@@kartoonfanatic At this point I feel we're having generation where the fantasy world-building is seen as the core part rather than a good back drop that drives actual story ideas.
and to think, it's so easy to just make a dictatorship that makes sense. "I mean, clearly President Liveton is popular, he's gotten 90% of the vote the last 20 elections, for doubting basic numbers, we'll have to send you to an education camp." Makes a hell of a lot more sense than.... "Emperor Evil lives in ultra luxury, flaunting it like there's no tomorrow, while you live in super-slums. Please don't rebel, thanks." But these books always seem to go for the second.
About that The Selection book: I haven’t read it, but as you started to talk about how in monarchies the marriage serves to make alliances and peace, I thought that finding a princess (possibly prince, in a parellel universe, ofc) from the commoners is a way of making an alliance with the subjects, especially looking at it from the perspective of the distorted, reality-shows-obsessed society we live in 😅
This motive does make sense, but in real life, there would be more to it. They would probably pick only one girl and give her a very thorough background check. She would have the appearance of being a commoner, but in reality, she's nowhere near common. She's gorgeous, accomplished, volunteers heavily in her community, and maybe comes from a (slightly) rich family with a successful business that the government wants to invest in (so it's a financial move as well as a public relations move) They would then show the prince photos and video footage of her so he can decide if she's pretty enough to date. If he gives the okay, then they would bring the girl in and stage a meeting between the girl and the prince. Their courtship would be advertised with more fervor than the superbowl. Then, the royal wedding that has the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster would temporarily give the economy a huge boost. I know that the whole point of The Selection is Keeping Up With The Kardashians + Princess And the Pea, or whatever, but that method is needlessly complicated. The only reason that this needless complication would make sense is if it is a tradition that has been passed down for hundreds of years, a tradition whose purpose has long since faded and it exists only for itself. (For example: Thailand used to have a set of strict laws that dictated how commoners were supposed to interact with royals. One of these laws said that if a royal is drowning and a commoner tries to save their life but fails, then the commoner is to be executed. These laws were done away with after a Thai princess drowned in full view of her entourage. No one wanted to risk death by trying to save her.)
I wonder, could it have anything to do with the national identity planets, the barely holding up International Fleet at the end of the Third Formic War, the geopolitical nightmare that is the return of everyone *but* Ender Wiggin, Locke and Demosthenes as an arc, or whatever the mysterious planet at the end of Children was
@@insertcolorherehawk3761 None of that is dystopic. The IF holds little power as a military institution over the world and is kept on a pretty tight leash by Strategos. Almost all of their resources are out in interstellar space, with the book making it abundantly clear humanity was sending everything it had to quell the "threat" of the Formics. Also, the book gave a solid reason as to why Ender was never sent home by the government; all the different countries wanted him, and whoever got him would be a big threat to planetary security (plus Ender never truly wanted to go home anyway). All that stopped mattering when Peter became Hegemon. The end of Ender's Game really touches on this quite a lot and gives more examples as to why Ender couldn't go home than I can remember off the top of my head. But to the point, it's not a dystopia. The Earth is not governed entirely by one totalitarian thought-controlling giga-government. Strategos made some ethically questionable choices in their position of global power but these issues ultimately end in acquittal for the people responsible, and somewhat rightfully so. As far as the book states, all the world's contemporary countries at the time the book was written kept their sovereignty. I can't comment on the context given by the later books in the series because I haven't read them and truthfully don't plan to, despite how their favorable reviews. I simply just don't have the time and interest in reading as I did when I was younger, so I concede that you are more knowledgeable than me in that regard.
@@trashman9948 In general Oz is a dystopia, Ender's Earth is not, I was noting why it could be, but Ender's Game should have been replaced by the Wizard of Oz The Shadow Series is not a dystopia, the main series *might be*, but I need a good look at Exile to figure that out As to Main Series: Pretty much every planet is culturally and ethnically based, with little interaction personally(this might be more dystopia on a case by case basis, not in general), the United Planets might be there, but I'm not sure As to Shadow: The return of Ender was not happening because of that, the geopolitical nightmare comes from when his *subordinates* came back Peter became Hegemon yes, but all of Ender's subordinates went to into a mess anyways because of the fracturing of the IF into various factions, it was *this* that caused Earth to unite before they expanded the colonies The prequels suggest a planetary setup like this, though the Oort Cloud/Kuiper Belt regions are a bit messy
The best explanation for the economic system in Panem is that it makes all the districts dependent on each other. That way, if any district tries to secede or rebel, they’ll be cut off from access to important resources and can’t be self sufficient. Wether this was intentional, I’m not sure, but it provides a decent explanation.
This is how the British empire worked in real life. And why its colony Ireland was forced to grow only potatoes. When a disease caused all the potatoes to fail, Ireland starved while Britain had food from its other colonies. This system was called Mercantilism, and it's weird when Econ bros act like it's 'economically impossible' when it was dominant across humanity for centuries.
@LowestofheDead that's not what caused the famine at all. Most of the best land was owned by rich land-owners, who had people grow food to export for a profit. Poor people were left with small patches of poor quality land to grow food for themselves, and mostly grew potatoes because that's all that would grow there in sufficient quantities. When the disease killed the potatoes, the poor starved, while the rich continued to grow and export food.
@@All-ze9cl I haven't read these books since middle school, so correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't district 5 one of the very loyal districts? Although I agree that energy production is probably the worst one to outsource.
I expected you to talk about Brave New World, 1984, and Handmaid's Tale instead of just ripping into these YA dystopias. Hope you do a video about Brave New World sometime because I think it's interesting that their society uses drugs, consumerism, and sexual pleasure as a method of control, so they don't need barbed wire or guns. It's also interesting that they use a combination of biological manipulation and subconscious conditioning to create humans for specific tasks. The lower caste people are born loving their jobs. But I think some ideas in it fall apart, and some of them show the book's age, like needing an Epsilon to manually operate an elevator, or having to condition people to want to not mend their own old clothes, when no one really does that now because it became prohibitively expensive and inconvenient, while buying new clothes became cheap and convenient.
The thing in Brave New World is that at many points their society isn't just an evil dystopia but has you going "yeah, that's actually something that would be nice". Which makes it good and more believable.
@@akrybion Yeah, I think a major thing a lot of dystopian novels do wrong is not realizing that even totalitarian governments have both carrots and sticks, that is, they have to offer something, you can't keep a country together on hopelessness and fear alone, otherwise you just have a bunch of people with nothing to do but brood about their poverty and lack of power. It's something 1984 did with the 2 minutes hate and the news reels, the fake outrage at a fake enemy gave people something to feel united and inspired by. In Handmaid's Tale, similarly, there is this offer of a Biblical society appealing to traditionalists and anti-feminists. Even some women want that. But The Hunger Games and the failed YA dystopia genre it inspired rarely answers the question: what do citizens get out of loyalty to the state? Other than simply not being killed?
@@robertgronewold3326 But the title of the video and the fact that he shows the book covers of 1984 and other well known good dystopian books in the beginning of the video leads the viewer to expect to hear him talk about those books. So it feels like a bait and switch when you realize he is only talking about poorly written YA examples.
Island is a great counterpoint to BNW. Huxley talks about how, for example, drug use can provide new experiences/encounters with reality. They aren’t just soma pills meant to keep people numb and sated.
IMO, the Scythe trilogy does the “dystopian society” really well. For one thing, it doesn’t just take place in America. Second, it shows the authoritarian government slowly become corrupt because of one man with a big influence. Lastly, it deals with the the morality of death and what the Scythes have to deal with mentally. It also has two main characters, and side characters are given an insight on how the world functions in a post- death world (world building). I really think you should read this trilogy. It’s really good.
My biggest problem with the dystopian genre is that nine times out of ten the entire thesis statement is essentially "Wouldn't it suck if the government was actively malicious?"
Theory about Panem and The Hunger Games: Mexico is actually a massive powerhouse and its territory extends all the way to Brazil. Most importantly, they control Venezuelan oil. Early on, long before the hunger games, the capital only controlled Colorado, the rest was thoroughly Balkanized. The capitol itself was made up of the remnants of the old US government, corporate magnates, as well as its military staff. Mexico desires to expand northward and conquer the former United States. A massive war ensues, and the capitol manages to unite the rest of America either diplomatically or by force. The Mexican Empire is beaten back, but just barely. The continued threat of another invasion by the Mexican Empire is what keeps the new nation of Panem together. The districts stay with the capitol for protection, as being under the boot of the Mexicans would be even worse. Over time, Panem creeps toward authoritarianism. Hardships lead to radical parties being elected, Panem is reorganized into the district system. Furious over the centralization, the districts rebel, and are crushed. The next year, the first hunger games are held. 75 years on, and the capitol still hasn’t learned. Propaganda keeps people afraid of potential Mexican aggression (which at this point, is an empire in decline), keeping at least the upper strata of the districts loyal. But it’s clear that the capitol has only become more corrupt, more decadent, more degenerate, and brutally totalitarian. It is only a matter of time before it all collapses.
Pladimir Vutin Already better than what was actually written. With a little more refinement and an increased focus on the political intrigue of such a nation it would actually be a really good novel.
You showed a picture of Unwind and I was sure you were going to eviscerate it and I was preparing myself emotionally for that, but then it ended up escaping your wrath
My view on most dystopian settings is that they just exist to give the protagonists a victim complex and an easy plot (if there's such an obvious evil then it's equally obvious it must be fought against, objectively, as opposed to just a cause the character(s) in question happen to believe in) there's very little thought beyond that. It's part of why I think a lot of those types of novels need cheap character drama to make things more interesting and keep people's attention (*cough* love triangles *cough*), otherwise it'd be increasingly obvious there isn't much substance.
Dystopian or post-apocalyptic settings are fine. They add plenty of obstacles, which add conflict, and add drama... But you still need _a good story to tell_ and that's where most authors fail, because they are always telling the exact same story: Rebels vs. The system... And it always devolves into a cartoonish fight between a mouthpiece and a straw man... But with a different story, the setting works wonders: For instance, a treasure hunt story like Treasure Island, but set on a dystopian future. The main character doesn't just want to get rich or have an adventure: The hidden treasure is their only chance for a better life, and it may not even be there, but they better give it a shot, so they must travel through a crapsack world searching for the treasure... Plus, they're being chased by the government, who sends anyone trying to leave their territory to prison camps... or something... See? Obstacles! Drama! The setting only needs a good, solid story to tell and the thing basically writes itself. Why are authors so damn lazy is one thing that puzzles me, but I guess they are interested only in replicating the success of other works by copying their superficial aspects... And hopefully landing one of them juicy Hollywood deals... Not really giving a shit about the more nuanced aspects of storytelling... Like finding a good story to tell...
9:58: “there’s no situation in which a sovereign nation is a colony” I mean, it wasn’t exactly that, but the lines got really blurred when the Portuguese Royal family fled to Brazil in the 1800s.
I'm Brazilian and I'll tell you what happened, in 1810 still prince regent João elevated Brazil to a kingdom but united with Portugal (like the UK and Austria-Hungary) with him and his mother being the only kings/queens of Brazil until Prince Pedro elevated Brazil to an sovereign empire.
I forget the name but there was a good series of short stories on the internet surrounding a Dystopia set in south america. the back story was that a global nuclear war kicked off and america won. because it's anti nuke systems managed to block 97% of the nukes. And so being the only country that wasn't a post apocalyptic wasteland they decided they should restore order through out the globe. and make the world safe for democracy pretty sure it was a critique of american interventionism in Latin america but it's a backstory that makes sense and works well for the story.
@@riotgrrl453 I was feeling that in first couple of chapters. This book one of the reasons why I started hating some YA tropes. Back in middle school, I really started to hate those trash YA tropes.
I read the whole trilogy over a time period. I may have even read it twice. I can remember absolutely nothing about the series outside of what James mentioned in the video.
Can I just have one dystopia story where instead of a teenage girl uprooting an empire, it's a harden war veteran? Or someone like Napoleon? Seriously napoleonic wars are so much cooler than anything I think a YA dystopia could come up with
*In a deep announcer voice * Introducing: Badass Grandma! She has decades of experience tending a family, house, and farm, knows what the Old World was like, and can blow a man's head off with a shotgun. She likes to knit sweaters for her extended family, but all her life trained in killing pests and predators that would invade her farm or chase off thieves. After the government took her weapons, she learned how well knitting needles can double as daggers! She and her trusty side-kick, an old mule she'd helped bring into the world, are forced to leave their home. To protect her flock, she must join the rebellion and put those government wolves down. How about that?
Then don't read YA. Because you're never gonna get anything but a YA protagonist in.... YA fiction. That is literally what makes it YA. It's not YA anymore if it doesn't have a YA protag. Don't read a genre, then complain that it conforms to the necessary elements of that genre. That's like complaining that horror has monsters in it.
@LordofFullmetal Ironically, more publishers are pushing toward YA because it's popular. Adult has the stigma about being full of sex, while YA doesn't. So it's either a.) A stupid teen MC, or b.) 30 pages of sex. Of course, not all adult genre books have gratuitous amounts of pork, but enough do that it's a bit boffins a turn off from that category. I'm saying this as someone who writes in the adult category (one MC being 18, in another book one being in his late 30s, and in another a kid being 12) without having ever written sex. I have not gotten published yet, but most of my stories not even having a romantic subplot might not help in my publishing attempts.
closest to that imo is metal gear series especially mgs2 (except if you consider raiden as YA) and mgs4. a good game series tho. but this video talk about books tho. not sure if this is something you want
@@Emma.Lou1 it was ok but the worldbuilding wasn’t great(there wasn’t really much in the first book but in the second and third it made no sense as he explained) the 2,3,4 books are pretty horrible worldbuilding but plot is eh
@@TheSorrel Yeah but if the current government could also be described as "The Republic of America", it's a terrible descriptor. What delineates this republic from the real one?
@@aaronbrown8377 its a nuanced question that should have been obvious enough, because US is a canonical name, Nazi Germany official name is just German Reich same as its 1870 name, its just a variant of the name
Changing the title from "United States" to "Republic" probably indicates a shift in attitude. The Republic, for whatever reason, might not want to continue the legacy of the US, and/or might be a unitary government in which such heavy focus on the "States" seems odd.
If you want to avoid spoilers: 00:01 Introduction 01:30 Hunger Games 04:19 Razorland 06:26 The Maze Runner 08:01 Legend 12:26 The Selection 14:51 Article 5 16:42 Matched 18:55 Conclusion
I think a lot of these books looked at dystopia in a pretty poor manner not just in how they work, but how they arose. They tend to go in the direction of a dictatorial state rising off the back of some massive disaster with little popular support because reasons, ignoring the fact that most authoritarian states were established with popular support because even the most oppressive regimes need some sort of backing, whether it's because the current dictatorship lost favor or a change in society as a whole. I find that the best dystopias are the ones who focus on how the greater society that the story takes place in allowed the current system to arise, doesn't even have to be a dictatorial state, just something that perpetuates these bad ideas. This is the reason I love Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, they both look at how the people contributed, whether it was allowing the degradation in quality and meaning in their media, choosing to ignore reality for the sake of 'happiness', or hyper-consumerism. At the same time, because of this, I don't like 1984 as a dystopia, while it is fascinating in how it explores the topics of how nationalism, media, language, ignorance, and paranoia can be used to perpetuate the system and I still think it is a great book, it doesn't establish itself to be as believable as other dystopia novels of its time.
While I do agree that they have good themes, I don’t understand why something like Fahrenheit 451 is considered good worldbuilding while the Hunger Games isn’t. Fahrenheit 451 is built on a society that doesn’t read and spends most of its time consuming mindless entertainment. People criticize the Hunger Games for not being economically feasible, but how is a society that doesn’t read, meaning they can’t record transactions or records, economically feasible? Or that the Hunger Games has had a vague rebellion in the past, but Fahrenheit 451 has a vague war going on throughout the story. I feel like dystopia’s tend to lean more on ideas and concepts rather than a realistic world. I just criticized Fahrenheit 451’s world, but I would not change it. Its world serves the story’s themes. Trying to develop an economy/society that uses modern technology without reading wouldn’t actually add anything to Fahrenheit 451’s actual story or theme. Likewise, who cares about the economic details and politics of Panem? This is a story about the glamorization of violence and the horrors of war. Details like Panem’s past or the war in 451 aren’t included because they would actively detract from the story’s pacing and plot.
Banana Hat That’s a really good criticism of this video’s thesis. I agree especially that Hunger Games does not need to focus on the mechanics of its world itself to speak on how media is used to glamorize or trivialize violence if the pacing or prose is thrown off by it. Though I do think that novels with less depth/more interest in portraying dystopian society (like Divergent) should have more to show for it in world building
Moral of the story: YA authors seriously need to retake(or just take at all) an economics course. A basic grasp of economics would tell you most of these worlds would not be able to sustain themselves
"...there's no attempt to turn different ethnicities or religious groups against each other to prevent them from uniting." Can't believe I never noticed that before, but that's so true. There's a shocking lack of -ism's and inter-oppressed-group hatred against each other in dystopian YA novels, when that's historically been one of the main tactics of authoritarian groups/regimes. Absolute oversight by YA writers while worldbuilding (though of course we're not surprised.) Side note, as a geography nerd, what the hell is that map of water level rise? Has the author never seen a topographical map before? I am stunned.
13:20 That’s mostly right when you deal with Europe. In other parts of the World, like the Ottoman Caliphate, the Moroccan Sultanate or the Safavid Dynasty or China, « queens » are often just the favorite concubine of the ruler. Obviously, a lot of these concubines can be daughters of rich merchants or chiefs searching to strengthen their bond, but they can also be just very beautiful girls the monarch or someone who is in his circle is enamored with. The queen status is granted by being the mother of a ruler, not his wife. In this kind of world, it’s plausible that in modern day, winner of beauty prizes like Miss X get added to the Harem, so while the idea is silly in the Selection, it’s not entirely stupid.
unification is incredibly, and I mean INCREDIBLY, popular in the Arab world and Africa. Practically every founding father and every post-colonial intellectual advocated it and made attempts to make it work. Every comment section on the latest western political fuckery around here is like, damn it we should've united decades ago. I'm Tunisian and working on unifying with the rest of North Africa is literally in our constitution, just as an example. Or take the seminal work of Kwame nkrumah literally named "Africa must unite", the work of Frantz Fanon, Samir Amin, the list is looong.
Is anyone going to talk about how Ender’s Game is actually really well written? The story might be a little hard to understand, but the message is really powerful if you understand it well
@@heathen616i mean i havent read them all but he didnt say they were bad books, he said they were bad dystopias. Like most people would agree the hunger games is not a bad book
@@alpha_9997yea this, he’s specifically talking about the world building. he even acknowledges that hunger games is good, but just because something is good doesn’t mean it cant fail or be underwhelming in other regards. it just all depends on what the author focuses on, world building obviously isnt a strong thing these authors build on. it’s something to help move the plot along
Hunger Games is an allegory- the world building isn’t _meant_ to be particularly strong because that’s not the important part of the story. As you pointed out in the video it’s chiefly a book about the injustices of income inequality and the exploitative nature of contemporary society and the world building isn’t meant to be nit-picked. Katniss is at the center of the rebellion against her will as she is manipulated into being there, and really only plays a symbolic role which is different than most of these copycat books. The copycats didn’t pick up on what made Hunger Games an actually worthwhile book- the message behind it- and therefore we got a ton of “brown haired heroine changes the world through the power of being different” books with bad world building in an attempt to bottle what made HG a success. Also, why did you put books like Handmaid’s Tale and Ender’s Game up in your graphics while describing this type of book? They are completely different from the kinds of books you are critiquing.
Hello, friends. Four-and-a-half years after this video was released it got copyright claimed and I was forced to cut out a few short clips. If anything sounds weird, that's why. Sorry.
Unforgivable.
Every teen dystopia:
1. Hunter girl
2. Classes
3. Impossibly engineered monsters
4. Love triangle
MOST of them
maze runner is the only one that is different, and only because it is a boy protagonist
It’s actually a love segment. Since the 2 guys aren’t dating
@@akiraeatsguitarpicks491 except...
And it honestly only happened because people completely missed the point of the Hunger Games and wanted to capitalise on the craze
@@chapteronefrog You're making the mistake of thinking that the hunger games was good beyond the setting. Dialogue, motivation and story all go in a bad direction quite fast. World-building seems promising until a certain event just destroys the entire world for dumb surprise.
"the Romans conquered all of Italy"
They uh
They conquered a bit more than that
😁😂
They conquered France, England, parts of Spain, Balkans, Turkey, North Africa, etc. Yes, a bit more than just Italy. ;)
the roman name for the Mediterranian Sea was "Mare Nostrum", meaning "our sea"
@@tunami52 That's fucking badass I can't lie
It's like how the Mongol Empire conquered all of Mongolia.
And a little bit more.
"Plenty of dystopias are classics"
Shows all the covers of 1984
Edit: it's been 3 years and there's still people fighting here, wow
gabriel wladmir he only likes one dystopia.
@@elijahfordsidioticvarietys8770 I'm disappointed that it's not Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, or the Giver instead.
N e u r o m a n c e r
1984 is kind of a mess, honestly. I feel like it gets overlooked in terms of how rough and muddled it actually is in terms of writing, characterization especially.
Also, if you have to put an entire chapter of an in-universe book in YOUR book just to explain the worldbuilding, it ain't that great.
@@sol_ARG I find 1984 to be overrated and boring as well tbh
the absolute funniest thing about the hunger games to me is that Mexico is just still there.
I like to imagine only the US and canada went to hell, and the rest of the world is just doing alright. There's people killing each other in the streets, and the rest of the world is just staring at them I'm confusion.
I mean, the rest of the world HATES the US, so we would probably just say "Well, they had it coming"
@@rfsantosc bit of a hyperbole but ok if guess
It’s like in The Handmaid’s Tale, when there are a couple of Asian (I believe? It’s been a while) tourists visiting Gilead early on in the book and showing you that uh. Yeah no the outside world didn’t develop in the same way. All that shit really just went down in the US 💀💀💀
The difference between THT and most dystopian YA being that it was clearly an intentional move on Atwood’s part, whereas a lot of US-American YA authors tend to forget that there even is a world outside the USA.
Lmao!!!
Isn’t this the real world USA? (Don’t get offended please, it’s just a joke.)
“Don’t get me wrong, some dystopian books are classics”
The screen: 1984, 1984, 1984, 1984 and 1984
Don't forget animal farm
@@shadowofhawk55 Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale, The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, The Running Man, The Long Walk.
@@vgmaster9 Those too
@@vgmaster9 Man, that's a weird way of spelling 1984, 1984, 1984, 1984, 1984, and 1984.
@@vgmaster9 the giver
Why's literally everything #1 New York Times Bestseller?
Maybe The New York Times runs a lot of sales-contests with three books competing in each?
Because you only need 1 million copies sold, and the US has a lot of people.
@@riley8385 At least one "NYT Best Seller" made the list while selling less than 5,000 copies, and most are apparently in the 10,000 to 100,000 range. "Best Seller" is an intentionally misleading label; the list isn't based on sales figures but is rather populated with the titles the creators of the list decide to spotlight or recommend to readers. Higher sales figures just make it more likely that list creators will notice your book exists. You can apparently "buy" your way onto list just by buying around 10,000-20,000 copies of your own book, or paying organizations to do it for you. If you aren't on good terms with the list creators, or appear to push an agenda counter to that of the list creators, you might find your book fails to appear on their list, or to stay on the list, even if your sales are spectacular. If you are on good terms with the list creators, or are employed by them, or just back any agendas they favor pushing, then you may see a longer than normal run on their best sellers list.
BainesMkII I’m pretty sure that the writer who bought her own books to get on the list was removed after they learned of it.
@@eugenideddis There was such a case, but from various accounts it was far from the only such incident of someone buying their way onto a best seller list. There are even consultant or "promotional" groups you can hire that will buy thousands of copies of your book across various states, to make it less obvious.
It's funny in Panem's map that Mexico is still Mexico but Canada is simply "The wilds"
Biggest problem with that book is that the author never pointed out the geography other than Denver being the Capitol and District 12 being in Appalachia. Though from reading it, I got the impression that the Districts were more glorified city states, not huge regions like people make maps of.
@@robertgronewold3326 I have the same impression. In fact I was kinda surprised when I saw this map.
As someone who's not read the books or seen the movies I'm assuming it became "The Wilds" after the Direwolves had enough and toppled the Canadian Government.
Based on the population, district 12 couldn't have been more than a city state. I figured they mined out a coal vein and moved. The wilds were just the undeveloped area of 12
Yeah! I was like "What? Why?"
"The main character is called America" I physically cringed
getting fallout the frontier ptsd
I remember reading this when I was younger. She was named that because her father was kind of a political radical who secretly opposed the monarchy.... Like, dude. Way to out yourself AND your daughter
What ticked me off was when a character named Tuesday showed up
Someone wanted America to get fucked. Literally.
i wonder what the author was on when they came up with the name 'America Singer' :/
"on the plus side, everyone in scotland got to watch the english drown"
Did we English at least get to watch the Welsh drown first?😢
*laughs in highlander *
Spencer Cornish nah all the English taught that the Welsh were just talking
"It's over ya English twats, we have the high ground!"
@@mayayamato7351 "There can only be one!"
So you're saying my setting doesn't have to be plausible to be popular? Sweet, time to abandon my economic, political, geographic, and social research to focus on the angsty love triangle instead.
You are on the right path to success
What? No! You can be giving people ideas like that! That's just Terrible Writing Advice!
Lugbzurg
yes it is Terrible Writing Advice 😉
YES!
Put a teenage beautiful girl or boy and you have a movie granted too
My main complaint about most dystopian worldbuilding is that it's so shallow. What you see is exactly what you get. The authoritarian government is never evil for a reason uncovered in the book. Nope, it's just evil. The arbitrary laws never have logical reasons behind them. That's just the way things are. The caste systems or bizarre gimmicks have no purpose beyond making the world seem different. The rebels are unquestionably the good guys. There's never complexity that makes you wonder what the best path is. It's laid out for you.
It's like a kid's show where the villain is called Professor Evil, and he twirls his moustache while cackling over how he's going to destroy those annoying Heroes with his sinister plan. No surprises, no depth.
Discitus read the insignia series. It’s a different type of dystopian novel where the world building actually makes sense.
Even though it's not logical, I think The Maze Runner does actually try to introduce reasons beyond "they're just evil" to the oppressive government's actions. It's to find the cure. They fully realize their cruelty but have convinced themselves it's a necessary evil to save humanity. It's an interesting question, the lengths decent people would go to in order to prevent the end of humanity/the world.
Obviously as James said the logic of brain scanning to find immunity is questionable, but there was an attempt to make the villains more layered.
mm, i would argue that the hunger games at least tangentially confronts whether or not the rebels are "good guys", what with president coin and all that (though it does fall into pretty much other flaw you've pointed out here to be fair)
Try Skyward, it's scifi, not a dystopia.
It's pretty good imo, but I can't go into details without spoiling it, so *spoilers* : the reason humanity is trapped in a desolated world is because we were dicks in an intergalactic war and tried to take over the galaxy. It's not so much a prison planet but an echological santuary to preserve the human species, because aliens don't think it's ethical to drive other species extint.
@@imygurl08 The Maze Runner makes more sense if you think that the scientist that organized the whole experiment were already affected by the Flare and couldn't reason properly.
I love Maze runner but seriously, they could just plug the kids into an advanced virtual reality & gauge the reaction from that. Even 10% of the maze's funding may have been enough to develop this reality.
SAO?
@@thepinkwither138 ...no?
@@peanutbutter4741 isn’t hollow a mix between a game and creating a sort of matrix or something?
@@feritperliare2890 uhhhhhhh wha
@@feritperliare2890 im not really too sure, i just know that it's real-life kids who put on vr headsets and started playing the game between other kids in a competition
"On the plus side, everyone in Scotland got to watch the English drown." Well, there you go, the entire book's redeemed!
Only Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Indians, Kenyans and Palestinians relate.
@@DonVigaDeFierro think you mean half the planet
@@DonVigaDeFierro Come one, as an Englishman I take offense at that. Way more people hate us! (Including ourselves, please help)
@@thesunwillneverset In the novel aren't the English still acts like East India Company? No wonder they are hated. But if you mean in real life I don't think anyone actually hating Britain aside from Irish?
@@asianjackass237 I haven't read any of the mentioned YA dystopia books other than Hunger Games, so I can't speak for the book, but IRL while it's not a vehement hatred most of the time, a lot of countries and peoples (understandably) at least harbor a grudge towards the English for what we did.
The Selection just sounds like a worse version of Barbie: Princess Charm School
I-
it pretty much is, damn how did i never think of that xDDD
Jesus goddamn fucking Christ
PRINCESS CHARM SCHOOL?'?'*+*×*÷*#*($*#*#,$
Hey hey hey don't you dare disrespect Barbie like that-
/j
Dystopia as a whole has a lot of potential, arguably more than most genres, but it's held back by refusing to experiment. The genre tends to work better when it's aimed at adults instead of teenagers
I think good dystopias also require a lot of knowledge about issues like economics, politics, geography... So it can be really difficult to do.
Dystopias disquised as supposedly functional societies are a treat to the mind. A story that exposes dystopic nature very gradually and slowly.
@@evilnet1 It can even appear utopic on the surface with distopic undertones. In this case, it is genuinely a very high standard of living even for the lower class, but with a sacrifice to privacy and freedom.
Heck, right now I can just ask for my lights to turn on and they do, but it's accomplished by having a microphone connected directly to Google. Is this in the direction of utopia because of the lack of effort to accomplish tasks, or towards a distopia because Big Brother is always listening?
It has suffered from commercial genre stagnation, much like cyberpunk...
Plus, it's a much more difficult genre to work with, because, just like cyberpunk (which more often than not also tends to be dystopian), it requires some level of specialized knowledge to make it believable... Knowledge that requires research... And research that requires time you better spend writing! But there are many ways to make it work, and I don't get why authors are so damn lazy to do any of that, if it makes it easier and helps explore the genre much further:
- If they can't be arsed to learn about real world geopolitics, they can invent their own: You can make your dystopian fiction take place in a completely made-up planet with completely made-up nations: Did you know the Principality of Belka invaded the Republic of Ustio after the Federal Law review of 1988?
- They should focus more on setting and less on character. Make it an anthology of short stories set in your dystopia instead of the generic "epic" tale. That way we can explore more themes and points of view! This is the life of a rich corrupt politician here, and the life of a resistance member there, and the life of a poor starving kid over there... Or just make a chronicle about the rise and fall of this dystopian setting...
- They should focus only on ONE or two aspects of the dystopia, and try to deconstruct them as much as they can to make it as realistic as possible. Explore all the implications of an aspect before leaping to the next one... A horrible war happened in the past? Cool! Your dystopia is all about people's efforts to survive in a ravaged post-war world! Corporations have taken over the government? Cool! Your dystopia is all about brutal violence in the name of profit, and the lives of the people stuck in the middle of the war between corporations! The same for, IDK, deadly viruses, police states, crime, technology, a corrupt society... You don't have to do ALL that at the same time!
- They should make it more morally ambiguous: Maybe following the life of an average worker who gets involved with the resistance, and has to choose whether to help the evil tyrannical system and keep his family safe or help the resistance (even just by hiding one of their members in his house) to help change things... Not all protagonists have to default to fight to overthrow the evil government... Hell, I don't remember seeing a sympathetic protagonist who is defending the dystopia and the status quo.
- I don't know... They should invent some wacky political system and go along with all its flaws, not with the intent to "fix" them, but for seeing how a crazy government system would make people miscerable in the real world...
- Just make a parody: "This world is truly MISCERABLE. The government gets people killed and maimed because it's just tradition at this point and would be awkward not to do it! The alternative is going to the neighboring nation, currently enslaved by extradimensional eldritch gods! But at least using a toilet there is not punished as high treason against the country!"
I don't know... The genre is full of potential, but it's sometimes wasted to make room for those juicy Hollywood contracts and royalties, so they gotta keep it dumbed down...
Guys I’ve got an original book idea. So basically, there’s a dystopian society. It’s bad. Everyone’s the same, except for they aren’t because they are in a group. It all sucks until one lone individual rises up and begins a rebellion and it turns out every single damn person in the country hates the dystopia except for the supreme leader or emperor or president or some shit. Then, the war continues for 2 or so books and then in book 3 it ends, and the entire government is dissolved in about an hour and everything is great from then on.
Brilliant
I've never seen anything similar. More points to this new creation to be made!
yer a NYT bestseller now
Yassss 🎉🎉🎉 don’t forget the dark clothing, the technological advancements,,, the love triangle and the girl whose gonna lead that rebellion who’s “oh so quirky 🛥🛥”
This some bestseller stuff
"the Illean empire is set in the ruins of the United States. The main character is named America."
I just felt my soul leave my body.
What do you think her name was? United? States? Of?
Everyone names their kid "Rome". You don't?
@@ewptyewpewp sw1
Uhh, i have a classmate called thaT. I feel sorfy for her😐
Funny how America is the only place that apparently "makes sense" when talking about divisions and diversity in these books, and then we have: "aSiA" "aFrIcA" "sOuTh aMeRiCa" "eUroPe"
Europe never had conflicts this is true if you say Europe just exist for 29 years (fall of the eastern block)
@@Unemerix mmm balkans
Asia is already a dystopia. no need for fiction when we're living in it.
@@riley8385 I don't know. Although it's more likely to happen than an entire Africa or Europe country, the countries are still pretty different from each other. Argentina, Colombia, Paraguai, Chile etc. technically could have made part of the same country, but the divisions made by Spain
were enough to difficult their integration
@@khoiduongminh5111 F for Tito
"Denver's shield"
Oh god, you can tell just by the name that it's going to be stupid
And yet it somehow managed to be slightly stupider than I'd expected. I think it was the "retractable roof" part...
I mean, why wouldn’t the author just make it a force field? That sounds waaaaay more plausible than the Denver Superdome
@@radioactiveman3381 Dougesdale Dever Superdome!
@@Yorkington Are you Doug dimmadome the owner of Dougesdale Denver superdome ?!
Even something as simple and generic as the "Shield of Denver, Denver Dome, and Dome of Denver" is better.
To this day, the only YA novel I remember was one where it started off cliche as hell, but then the protagonist rebel girl realized that overthrowing the government meant she was now in control, and the rest of the book is just her hunting down her rebel friends and realize that being a tyrannical dictator is awesome
That sounds awesome what's the name?
young elites
@@grandinquisitor8335 thank you for this
o.o
damn that’s based
Dystopian fiction really only works if it's written by people with strong political views.
Orwell was an ardent anti-stalinist, the Strugatsky brothers lived under the later era Soviet government.
It's hard to make a dystopia work if you don't feel horribly strongly about anything.
Or you're writing a book for teenagers. I think every book in this video is for teens. Not the greatest authors you can find.
Yeah i agree, he was very skeptical of authoritarianism like fascism stalinism and capitalism, only really showing support for Catalans anarchists and being a self described democratic socialist.
@@syndoodlefs4791 "authoritarianism" "capitalism" hmmmmm
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Owlblocks David capitalism can be -and often is- incredibly authoritarian. When your ability to obtain food, housing, medical care etc. is controlled entirely by one person/entity (i.e. your boss), you are not free.
@@owlblocksdavid4955 yes having all of the resources needed to live coming from an unelected group of capital shareholders and board of directors that profit from your labor is authoritarian, choosing your master doesnt make it less authoritarian.
Read a book man its not that hard.
"New Asia is a dumb name that will never exist"
lol so true
It would be "Neo Japan", "Neo China", "Neo Vietnam " etc...
and we all fight each other with giant robots
Then we'll have a 20 year old angsty martial artist look for his brother all over the world
This guy gets it ☝
"Neo Tokyo 3" is the most stupid thing out of Evangelion.
Hahahahahhaha 😂😂😂😂
"East Asian Coprosperity Sphere"
Something I wondered: is there a dystopian novel where the characters are DEFENDING the regime?
I want to read that book if it ever exists one day.
Too many readers don't realize that the character's actions and the author's message can be two separate things, so I'm not sure if a book like that would do well
By definition, that book can't exist. A dystopia is a place of chaos and suffering. Unless the protagonist is a villain you root for to fail, I don't think that can happen.
Starship troopers? Although that one isn't supposed to be dystopia.
Didnt Legend start out that way?
"Hey we found a meteorite in District 8 with a bunch of precious metals with a net worth of over $8 trillion"
"Sorry you live in the T-shirt district no can do, better toss it into a volcano"
Kilian?
That sounds more like the Imperium of man.
That's how society works
@@turtleboy1188 is this sarcasm?
@@renard6012 na ,the Imperium would just take the Meteorite, and if there are local resistance they would just send some Bois to 'Rough' them up a bit, or destroy the planet at worst case scenario.
"Stanley Tucci has blue hair." That alone qualifies it as a dystopia.
“Why fantasy books made for middle schoolers don’t make sense politically”
good question, magic can like you no spy on you or something
MetaParalysis I had a seizure reading that
MetaParalysis waht
@@boazchapman2353 it's called having a MetaParalysis
Churns our random combinations of letters and vowels as names and slaps in religion and magic. Also more love triangles
Are there any post-dystopian settings? A society that recovers from a dystopian regime etc. It would be very interesting to see a post-1984 world of sorts, since the society of 1984 changed so much in regards to culture and language.
The sequel trilogy to Red Rising is like that, things get worse.
I guess technically the epilogue to the handmaids tail is that?
Also Aldous Huxley’s Island COULD be seen as that since it’s his utopian answer to the dystopia he created in Brave New World
First story that comes to mind for me would be the game Fallout: New Vegas, set 200 years after a nuclear war between America and China where people have recovered from the war and new powers are nation building in the west coast with two factions; the New Republic of California, a democratic republic fashioning itself off the old world democracies with all the faults and corruption with it and Cesar's Legion, a gang of slavers from Arizona who model themselves after the Roman Empire. Both factions are fighting over the Hover Dam as a strategic location amidst various tribes and factions of Las Vegas who want to remain independent of both powers
Brandon Welsh though in this game, the people aren’t recovering from the dystopian society. Rather, they are recovering from the nuclear apocalypse
@@gavinsmith9871 Bro Dark Age is so fucking BRUTAL
"All of Africa has merged into a single confederation, which is not impossible, but... pretty fucking unlikely" I almost spat my coffee out ❤
in reality africa is like the balkans so that should not be possible.
A section in Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need quips, “Europe is made up of multiple countries that have learned, over the years, to hate each other.” I’ve thought that joke also applies to places like Asia and the Middle East.
Here is what would happen if they merged
Africa merges
Africa enters total chaos in 2 days
Even in Star Trek, Africa is not united. There is an African Confederacy, but Uhurah said it was only part of Africa not the whole continent.
@@flamestoyershadowkill6400 but 10 times bigger
the selection was insane. the government banned premarital sex and beat starving children for stealing food and instead of like overthrowing it or changing anything, the author just like... decided that was all okay???
moreover, all she did was give maxon a 35-girl harem in which, inevitably, the oh-so-pretty america cringer would win his love (but throw in a love triangle to further the plot). ??? how do the _real_ problems actually end up resolved? please.
You just described Sparta.
That book is trash
That actually isn't that egregious the simple fact is the imagery of the downtrodden masses overthrowing the dictatorship and winning their freedom isn't real because starving peasants aren't organized or strong enough to do anything if a dictatorship starts losing power it means the dictator has lost control of enough of his oligarchy for them to decide to replace him which is why the revolutionary is often times worse then the original dictator
So the Middle Ages?
"What if the government was evil and it also made you fight vampires with nunchucks." - Holy shit, that sounds friggin awesome!
so real government but with vampire fighting.
What if the US government suppressed the lower class and happen to be vampires that build giant organic monsters.
@@Daddy-Saxon so the real US but with vampires and giants.
I disagree that in Panem everyone was equally opressed, the books always pointed out that some districts were richer than others/Capital's favorites. Also there's an underlying race theme that got lost in by the movie casting, Peeta is a white boy with better conditions than other people is district 12 while katniss and gale are both described as having "olive skin" and have to work harder to survive, the producers of the movie just decided hmmm let's tan jennifer lawrence and thor's brother. Also there are districts that are clearly predominantly black.
Some districts were willingly sending their childs for hunger games (i guess military one). So yeah. And I think in book was metioned that military district and technology one were treated better, so Capital HAD technology and military.
And I guess they maked some adjutmens after DESTROYING ONE WHOLE DISTRICT FOR REBELION
District 1, 2 and 4 were all fairly wealthy. 2 was where they conscripted all the peace keepers from.
What districts were clearly black? I only read the first book so i dont know much.
nihil est enim pretty sure the the southern one that provided a lot of the crops.
jeonghan supremacist idk about that fully. I definitely remember the district about food production had a lot of black people, but I don’t remember the capital having a specific ethnicity. I think the demographies largely didn’t interact between districts due to the serf like system. So there were traits shared largely within districts. Although there probably was a race analogy there somewhere. It’s been a while since I got into it.
I can tell 12-year-old me would be getting ready to throw hands rn
SAME. If I watched this when I was into the selection i would be so mad
Glad to finally admit this (also legend)
Me too. For some incomprehensible reason I used to adore most of these books and revered them as great literature. Especially The Selection… unfortunately.
To be fair, I remember reading a pretty good thesis on these mass-produced novels being popular *because* they don't say much. It was literally titled "Dystopian Fiction For Young Adults" and I can't remember the author so good luck finding it.
Basically, the thesis claimed that these were popular because they presented an oppressive world in a way that the target audience could understand. They present a world where issues like the environment, corporations replacing governments, and uncontrolled/unethical science are evident, and a teenager much like the target audience can be part of the process of fixing them. I thought a lot of it was hot air but I honestly can't disagree with the core tenants.
I think where most of these books fail isn't the worldbuilding if that thesis is true, since the simplistic worldbuilding would be a key part of the genre. They'd be bad because they don't present an actual solution to the problems beyond "So the protagonist and their friends destroy the bad guys, proving that righteous violence really does solve everything".
Then the people who just write this stuff to make money make this whole thing irrelevant.
Sweet! Sounds like decent material to expand upon.
This is true, items should be judged (criticized) for what they’re trying to accomplish. If reaching their target audience with a story that can easily identify with was the true goal and not necessarily introducing an entirely original story, than it did a good job.
I think the point of this video is that these are examples of bad worldbuilding because the systems are not sustainable, not because they are simplistic. But thesis still sounds interesting
The real problem is you can't give real solutions to teenagers. Teenagers wouldn't recognize real solutions if they kicked them in the face.
These dystopias are popular with young adults because 1) the world sucks when you're a young adult and all these older adults have so much power over you, and 2) young adults haven't lived long enough to actually know how the world works. So throw together a sucky world with people who have too much power over you, a nonsensical gimmick, and rebellious teenagers, and bam! You have instant relatability.
I think the later YA dystopias fell into this more than the Hunger Games did too. The Hunger Games was pretty much the trendsetter and was thus allowed to explore its ideas and themes more freely, but the other Hunger Games rip offs weren’t as interested in themes or ideas and instead were more focused on capturing that lightning in a bottle.
I love how in Legend neither American successor states attempt to violate Canadian borders because they both comply with the treaty of Paris 1783
Why would they do that whichever one attacked Canada would lose the war
Didn’t América attack Canadá in 1812
@@sundancetitan5675 Kinda, canada wasn't a thing back then, it was a network of British colonies which we wanted to incorporate into the USA, but the attack went miserably and almost led to the British reconquring the US.
*making a pitch in a publishing office*
author: ok, i’ve got the most unique idea for a story!
publisher: okay...what’s the setting?
author: oh, you’ll never guess! it’s set it in a post-apocalyptic america!
publisher: ....
author: guess what the conflict is!
publisher: ....
author: come on, guess!
publisher: an authoritarian government forces its citizens into arbitrary categories based on a singular characteristic?
author: wrong! an authoritarian government forces its citizens into arbitrary categories based on a singular characteristic!
publisher: ...what about the protagonist?
author: oh, this is the most forward-thinking idea yet! i bet you’ve never heard anything like it!
publisher: ....
author: she’s a thin, well-built, heterosexual white female in her late teens!
publisher: what about her personality?
author: ....
publisher: well?
author: ....
publisher: i think i’ve heard enough.
author: so?
publisher: ma’am, i’m afraid all we can offer you is... A SEVEN-FIGURE BOOK DEAL!!!
author: :D
This is funny, but more often than not it's the publishers pressuring the authors into making changes that fit into trends.
And then you have Divergent, in which the author just wrote a Hunger Games rip off in a month lol.
Good thing publishers are getting less and less necessary. I am making a post-apocalypse game/book set in New Zealand and Australia.
@@lennysmileyface Oh that's interesting...Adding an entirely new country into your world and mixing it with real countries sounds very unique ! (Bc as we all know, Australia doesn't exist)
@@lennysmileyface Mine is set in northern Japan with a Russian protagonist. It's not necessarily post-apocalypse nor a dystopia, just your typical war and exploration story
Riley Whoa whoa whoa whoa, slow your roll!
Divergent doesn’t deserve such high praise.
it could be argued that One Piece has some of the most interesting dystopian world building I've read, mainly because it takes you over 400 chapters for you to realize that the setting is actually a dystopia.
The marines seem pretty cool until you realizes there just as bad as the pirates and ever major power in the world is just as bad as the others
I did not expect to see a One Piece comment under this video. Touché, man of culture.
@@jackmakila3776 Yup, that's true. What I like about One Piece is that each sides have their own good and bad people.
Dystopian and
*spoiler*
post apocalyptic
guess you could say the dystopian worldbuilding in one piece is real
That's why apocalypses are better. There's no world building.
Just world destroying
@@nionashborn7626
The Virgin Worldbuilding Vs. The Chad Worlddestroying
"What exactly destroyed the world?" "Why did some people survive. But not everyone?" "How did the survivor's react to the apocalypse?" "What kind of society emerged in the wake of the apocalypse?" "Why did such a society emerge?" Also, apocalypses and Dystopias are not mutually exclusive. 1984 and Brave New World both take place after world-destroying wars.
Kamikaze Jump badum tss
@@ThePreciseClimber That's one of the details I like from Underrail.
Every settlement has a mushroom farm or a Cave Hopper breeding place for meat.
"In a monarchy marriages are arranged for political purposes, they form alliances between dynasties"
That's not always the case, especially if the kingdom or empire is so large and hegemonic that marrying into noble families may actually do more harm to the ruling dynasty than good. For instance the Ottoman Sultans mostly had slave girls as concubines in their harems, late Han dynasty China emperors would marry women of common birth over aristocrats because having no ties to established noble clans means they are less likely to create networks of power for themselves to essentially become more powerful than the emperor himself (which happened quite a few times in Han China). In fact the second last emperor of the Han dynasty made the daughter of a butcher his empress.
pretty cool.
That’s pretty cool! Makes sense but I never hear about it, thanks for sharing!
barbiquearea well I guess that's still political
And even then, it’s still the uncommon case in history that monarchic marriages can be made from ‘love’. Like the recent Edward, who abdicated to marry his wife.
He Jin wasn't actually a butcher any more than the owner of a McDonalds is. Him and his sister were both from a wealthy land-owning family that just so happened to make a lot of money rearing animals and selling their meat on that land. 'Butcher' is a title a lot of people who didn't like him used because it made him sound more like a peasant.
“Everyone is equally oppressed except the ruling class” except in Hunger Games, they’re actually not? First of all, the twelve districts have varying levels of government oppression and poverty, with 12 being the poorest but also the least regulated. Second, even within the districts there’s a distinct hierarchy, though we only really get the details in district Twelve. In Twelve, most residents come from the Seam, where all the coal miners come from. Katniss’s dad is from the Seam, and she inherits his olive skin and dark hair, which are traits more common in the mining class. There’s also an “upper class”, which is marginally better off than the miners, and work trade jobs like running the bakery or apothecary. Katniss’s mom is from there, as well as Peeta and his family, and they all have fair hair and skin. Katniss is very aware of these class divides and her distrust plays a big role in the story.
I mean, ya there is a class system within the districts, but weather you are a merchant from district one, or a miner from district 12, the capitol is still gonna murder you equally as violently if you say something against them
@@coltonmason4623 that goes for citizens of the capitol as well, doesn't mean they don't benefit from the system by being born in the capital as they would by being from the first few districts as well.
@@nickelakon5369 The citizens of the capital grow up exempt from the Hunger Games though (which is this story's ULTIMATE form of oppression). They are allowed lives of luxury where they essentially never grow up having to want or work for anything because all their wants and needs are handled by each of the 12 Districts. The citizens of the Capital are the ruling class, and while they do indeed suffer their own form of oppression, they aren't *EQUALLY* oppressed (as is the point of the comment taken from this video). Not even the first few districts are exempt from the Hunger Games. And, as proven by Katniss and Haymitch before her, the first few districts aren't guaranteed victories either despite being better off than the other districts.
In the general sense, each district equally suffers the oppression of the Hunger Games. In a subgeneral sense, each district suffers the oppression of being equally responsible for supplying the Capital with vital resources (District 12 coal, District 11 crops, District 10 meats, etc). Whether a district benefits from what they supply has nothing to do with the oppression being objectively equal, but how they react to supplying it and the nature of their resource's importance can affect to what extent the oppression occurs.
Also the rich districts are the low-numbered ones that produce all the military equipment and soldiers, and in-universe the people from those districts usually win the Hunger Games because they literally get trained from birth
Not exactly the same thing nick.
Something I always find kind of funny in bad dystopias is when the series acknowledges nothing in the world outside of America. Like, look at that Hunger Games map. America has devolved into this crazy district system and then Mexico is literally just there
Omg I totally didn't even think of that that's actually hilarious, haha. Though I don't believe it's an official map. I don't think there is one
You look at Panem and all you can imagine are the screams and sounds of war and then look at Mexico and it's just sounds of El Jarabe Tapatío
It makes sense as most of the writers are western influenced and some American. Authors write about and develop stories from what they know.
@@markrobbins7529 Sure, but you could be a lot more creative considering how diverse cultures and ideologies are around the world and how a dystopian setting could be different in those
@sewer~rat Mexico: “Canada, are you seeing this mierda ?”
To be fair, The Hunger Games is at least decently built, written, and themed. Suzanne Collins may have codified the “YA Heroine breaks free of a dystopia” thing but I feel it’s a mistake to lump her in with the mountain of imitators trying to capitalize on her success by doing what she did.
Collins’ world is well constructed if one knows where to look (for example, the division of districts according to what resource they afford the capital is actually quite an effective way of curtailing any potential secessions, as none has the infrastructure to produce for themselves the resources any of the others do), and the focus in the book about how the media tries to play up Katniss and Peeta’s romance in the middle of the Death Game Where Children Die is, shall we say, relevant (especially since the movie adaptation did exactly that).
I’d also point to the allusion made by the nation’s name - Panem is latin, taken from the phrase “Panem et circenses,” or “Bread and circuses,” famous words of the poet Juvenal meant to represent the core of how citizens are best controlled. It’s stated pretty firmly in the book that the lower-numbered districts - 1, 2, and 4 especially if memory serves, are treated much better than many of the others, presumably due to joining the empire sooner and/or more amicably. Likely the reason district 2 never staged a coup is that they’re treated relatively well, and don’t want to take the risk of falling out of favor with the capitol should such an effort fail. The book never makes mention of any elections, so presumably the capitol are the sole voting population or the “President” is more akin to a king and the capitol citizens their landed aristocracy. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it wouldn’t seem like the capitol would be all that keen on letting any of the districts have its own diverse economy since that keeps the, dependent on each other’s resources - and thus, the capitol, who collects and distributes them - to subsist.
Besides, it’s pretty clear that the dystopian empire isn’t really meant to be set up all that well since, surprise surprise, it collapses really quickly. I didn’t really... enjoy... the hunger games that much, the books are surprisingly heavy stuff when you pay attention to subtext, but I’d balk at the idea of them being called poorly written
YES 👏🏼
The series as a whole is decent and serves it's purpose but it's apparent things are being simplified for a younger audience, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
That said the pacing of it is weird in my opinion and changes in tone and theme quite drastically. It still keeps it's core principles which is what makes it a decent series but the sudden shift makes the latter half of the series a bit dense and seems to lose what made it decent in the first place.
I honestly was bored with Mockingjay because it focused do heavily on the political commentary, which isn't necessarily bad, I just think it could have been handled better.
Seriously, Hunger Games is amazing, it’s main problem isn’t in the books, it’s problem is it suffers from “Sienfield is unfunny” trope.
@@yf3703 The concept, yeah, but HG itself popularized YA dystopian fiction within the the last decade
Katniss is an awful, unlikeable character, and the love triangle is beyond tedious and contrived. The author never spends more than 2 seconds on Gale's characterization but milks that hottie revolutionary for all the drama he's worth.
And I'll never forgive Collins for blatantly killing off Katniss' sister in order to force her to make a decision on which man to bone. YECH.
"Plenty of dystopias are classics"
Shows *ONLY* covers of 1984.
1984 is probably the most recognizable dystopia ever written. As well, it is very solidly built, so he used it as an example
You're missing the "plenty" and "shows only" one example irony.
1984 doesn't even have that much world-building, if you think about it. You know what life is like for one guy right at that moment, the history leading up to that point is basically just "there was a war, then Big Brother". Even what Winston reads about the other three countries could be party propaganda, for all he knows.
Maybe "less is more" when it comes to things like this. The more the author explains about the world, the more holes can be poked in it, unless they have PHD's, or very good advice in, sociology, politics and economics.
@@michaelmartin9022 adding to that, the reason there isn't that much world building is that even *Winston* doesn't know the history, and he lived through it. There are no records, no history books except that which Big Brother allows.
There’s also Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale, (can’t think of any more)
5:00 "Since all the kids eat is meat, fish, and mushrooms, it make sense they'd be malnourished"
Malnourished is one thing, but... wouldn't they all get scurvy? Although according to Google, you can apparently get vitamin C by eating beef spleen, so there's that I guess. But how would they get beef if they don't have any crops for livestock feed? Do they just catch wild animals, who can live on the surface without being attacked because...? I have so many questions.
Also growth issues. Not to bring anime into everything, but in Attack on Titan, there is a scenario like this were it's done properly because bone growth issues are rampant due to the lack vitamin D (no sunlight) to help the calcium they get merge into their bones. There's also a brief mention of failing eyesight due to the darkness, but yeah.
Many mushrooms have vitamin c and citric acid, so it's not impossible that they have a combination of mushrooms and meat that allows them to survive, depending on how many different species of mushrooms they produce.
@@Eukleides89 That's basically the reason as to why Levi is a midget.
Fish basically has everything you need.
Aaron Rotenberg pre agrarian humans ate meat and fish almost exclusively and they were in far better physical shape on average than humans at any other point in history including today
To be honest, "What if the government was evil and made you fight vampires with nunchucks" seems like a good idea for a movie
Okay, but who has the nunchucks? You, or the vampires?
@@iapetusmccoolgive the vampire nunchuck. Make the vampire easier to fight because nunchuck are awful weapon
Heck, make the movie title be just that.
Sometimes things aren't deep but they are stupidly fun hahaha
I like that sometimes
“New Asia”? The author knows Asia is made up of multiple vastly different cultures and politics, so which Asian culture forms New Asia? North Korea? South Korea? China? Maybe East Asian (like India)?
Cora Swan yeah the biggest area I would possibly consider conceivable is the Middle East which is still a big stretch
Looked at the author for that story. Middle-aged white Karen, so I'm not shocked that she thinks that you can just lump all the Asian countries together and not have the most disjointed thing ever seen
Do you mean South Asian? Bcs India is in South asia
Nun Sarah I meant South Asia I just get my directions mixed up lol
I would suggest Japan-led (like ww2) or China-led (they have the resources for that)
My biggest problem with Dystopias in fiction is that they very rarely talk about the politics of the authoritarian nation, all they ever do is talk about how the people above are mean and let’s unite people, and all is happy go lucky in the end
They barely show the moral disgusts of the nation, and the factions inside the ruling class, they don’t ever show how when the ruling are deposed how those remaining will become warlords and the violence that’s insues
Edit: Another thing I hate is the “unspecified thing happend now all is shit”, aswell as America being the only topic in these books with the rest of the world being irrelevant to these authors
Edit 2: I guess this is why Orwell’s 1984 was so good, he had the experience from fighting in the Spanish Civil War, he knows from experience what a rebellion is, and witnessed fascists in person and lived through WW2 to understand how this stuff works
1984 is more of a critique on authoritarian socialism rather than fascism. Orwell himself was very much a libertarian socialist and feared what an overbearing government could do to a revolution. That, and the terminology used by "The Party" is very leftist in nature, you don't see fascists call each other "comrade" very often, nor do they use terms such as "proletariat" very often (proles). When they do use such terms, it's more or less to create a feeling of unity, not to incite any other emotion. That, and I can't imagine any fascist nation *not* wanting their party members to breed or experience intimacy, unlike The Party.
And they always assume Dystopian world could end by spontaneously “uniting the people”. A true Dystopian world is meant to deliver a sense of desperation and dread to the readers. It’s a world where the majority of the population is institutionalized by the regime. The Brave New World and 1984 grasped this. Most people would be too coward to fight, or too brainwashed to revolt. In 1984 people support the party despite being constantly monitored and oppressed. The control of the party is so rooted that there’s no moral obligation to fight against the system, since doing so would drag millions of people into chaos and would bring more suffering to the world. The concept of democracy or freedom is completely meaningless in such worlds. More people will live in peace ignorantly and would be happier if there’s no revolution. To fight against a Dystopian regime would mean to fight the majority of the population. It would requires more brutal killings of the innocent and acts of terrorism. If there are rebels popping up everywhere supporting the protagonists and every common folks just straight up hate their government, then it’s not dystopian, it’s just a shitty dictatorship that can be easily overthrown.
And major publishers keep promoting it as top sellers as a means to brainwash young people to promote bullshit ideology.
I really like the unwind series for that reason, it actually explains how the world came to be the way that it is. It’s also not totally unrealistic; the government isn’t obviously controlling everything anyone does at anytime, most people live normal lives and instead everyone being completely polarized on the issue, most regular citizens are moderate and are swayed by government propaganda (not exactly subtle but unlike some other novels where the government says “do what we tell you or else” the government instead makes excuses about the economy and good of the people and plays moral high ground.
The handmade tale does that. We see that there are other groups, what exactly the government believes in and even how the rest of the world reacts -both during and after.
why am i watching this when i havent voluntarily read a book in 4 years
Jr Beans ok
Bitch fucking same 😂😂😂😂😭😭😭
@@MeatCatCheesyBlaster reading books doesn't make you smarter.
Kedamono school ruined reading anyways so it does make sense that most would rather not once they don't have to anymore, keyword have
@@MeatCatCheesyBlaster reading doesn't make you smarter kid, grow up
There was one monarchy that used a beauty contest ( called a Bride-Show) to pick the monarch a wife, the Byzantine Empire. The last time they did that a woman named Irene of Athens won. She later got rid of her husband, and still later she blinded and/or killed all the heirs including her own sons. Then she did something unforgivable, Irene wanted to marry a super rich handsome foreigner to fill up the empire's coffers, and incidentally her bed. The guy ( Charlemagne) was a tall muscular athletic type and a blue eyed blonde, he was also gifted in music and keenly interested in literature, and did I mention crazy rich. This so appalled the Byzantines, that their empress would marry a barbarian, and incidentally refill the imperial treasury, they kicked her off the throne. They also never used beauty contests to choose a bride for the emperor again.
The United States is my favourite fictional dystopia
That's fair, but consider the dark horse that is Canada: we got fascists creeping around along the margins, the government instituted a colonial tool of control in the form of a committee that tells it that Aboriginal people approve of whatever it wanted to do anyway and it's now surprised that real natives don't want their sacred lands to have oil pipelines rammed through them, the guy who was Prime Minister most of my life was so obnoxious that the new guy has a history of wearing blackface _and is still more respectable,_ and whenever we think of improving we just look south instead and then pat ourselves on the back for not being Americans.
@@blarg2429 Literally. 'At least we're not as bad as America.' We are just as much as a semi-dictatorship as they are. The majority said 'we don't want the pipeline,' so they asked the Indigenous folks, who also said they didn't want it, so they did it anyway. Democracy, who?
blarg2429 weed is legal dude, you good
@White-Van Helsing You're not wrong.
@@epicremarc Yeah, it's not all bad. But it's still shittier than it has any right to be at just about every turn.
The dumbest apart Legend wasn't the fact that the oceans would flood that much or whatever. It's the fact that the author thinks Africa and the Middle East would just unite like that xD
With the power of PLOT TAPE, I united China and India/All of the American continent/All of the Middle East/All of Africa/All of Europe/All of Asia into A SINGLE STATE!!
this is bizarre to me. unification is incredibly, and I mean INCREDIBLY, popular in the Arab world and Africa. Practically every founding father and every post-colonial theorist all advocated it and made attempts to make it work. Every comment section on the latest western political fuckery around here is like, damn it we should've united decades ago.
I'm Tunisian and working on unifying with the rest of North Africa is literally in our constitution, just as an example. Or take the seminal work of Kwame nkrumah literally named "Africa must unite", the work of Frantz Fanon, Samir Amin, the list is looong.
@@tesso.6193 But how would that work in the _real_ world? The middle east alone currently possesses greatly different cultures and political systems, is only barely united thanks to religion and some history, and even then, there is a HUGE religious divide between Shiites and Sunni, and I'm sure most regimes distrust their neighbors more than they distrust, say, the Western powers.
And Africa is HUGE. It has an enormous number of regions, ethnicities, cultures, economies and interests, and many of those interests oppose others. I highly doubt any regional power is going to forfeit their sovereignty if it means handling over decisions to a federal government, especially when it also integrates a neighboring nation they do not trust, and given that only a few decades ago they gained their own sovereignty by fighting the colonial powers, I don't see any reason they could have to join a single state.
I mean, the African union and the Arab league exist, but I don't find any desire on any member to become a single state, and I doubt any of us would see a united Africa or Arab world in our lifetimes, and it may not even be the best for its member states.
@@tesso.6193 I feel like North Africa could unite and Subsaharan Africa could possibly unite, but they would need to have a lot of regional autonomy
I want a series about a publisher who's trying to restart literacy in a post apocalyptic America, and is flooded with unending novels of sassy and beautiful young women leading rebellions against various arbitrary and oppressive caste systems. The novels will all include love triangles with various bad boys, while the publisher tries to avoid quid pro quo "relationships" with all the authors.
I know this is a joke, but if you want a serious take on a story of someone trying to introduce literacy in a largely-illiterate society, watch "Ascendance of a Bookworm." It's a very cute anime about a girl who wants to read and write books in a world where books are expensive and only for nobility.
Your comment is making me think of The Lunar Chronicles because its what it is (kinda)
James actually talk about that xeno.
I would disagree that The Hunger Games is just a "look, that's bad" book. While it definitely didn't answer all the political questions (could it have, though, without too much exposition?) I think it had a pretty powerful message about how the media can twist horrific things and how people can grow desensitized if they don't watch for it. That said, it's easy to make a plain dystopia, and this was another great video! :)
I totally agree with your "too much exposition" point, and I think it's an important point a lot of people miss. To add to it: I've seen some comments on this video that complain about books not explaining what caused society to fall, or what led to the dystopia and their politics...Let's be honest, are we reading the book to learn every little thing about the author's world? Or are we trying to read about great characters in a great story?
@@plemcam We don’t need to learn too much about that, what I don’t like is how the people could put up with a government that constantly takes children every year to kill each other. If anything, I think it would last for about 15 years at most, not 75 years. This is mainly because they attempted to rebel earlier.
@@captainmarvelwilson508 I'll preface my response by saying I know the Hunger Games is flawed, but I think this part is where it did really well. It's a lot easier to control people than one might think. Even basic business marketing is a method of controlling, but more importantly manipulating, people. Let's look at oppressive regimes all throughout history. What did they use to maintain control? Violence, yes. But, more importantly, the threat of violence (as well as making it seem like a better deal to stay IN the nation than to leave it, etc.). Propaganda is a powerful tool that totalitarians wield, that's why I think the scene of the bombed-out District 13 is a really important one to include in the story. Another powerful tool is pitting the people against each other. If they hate each other, they'll direct that hate toward each other moreso than at the government. It's a lot easier to hate the winner of the Hunger Games that killed your kid, than it is to direct it at the government. It doesn't take long for people to forget who is actually working the strings, maybe one generation, two max. A great example of this concept in action is the Red Rising series, I highly recommend it.
@@plemcam I get what you mean. I can see how propaganda can manipulate people, as that has been done in history and is still something poisoning people's minds nowadays. I just don't know how a control like that could just last for 75 years, because eventually, it would be very abundantly clear who is pulling the strings. The Red Rising series though sound pretty interesting, I would like to check it out at some point. Just hope that if they make an adaptation, that they don't screw it up.
Hunger games copied battle royale but I will admit battle royale has it’s problems too
"Second, this painful commentary on American debt to foreign countries doesn't add up because at this point most of the creditors have made more money of the interest than they would of the principle."
That's the whole point of foreign debt.
Isn't this how loans work hence rendering the critique of the national debt valid?
@@matiskrawiec I didn't try to start any discussion on the national debt. It's just that he said this sentence twice in a row in this video.
@@pawerejman9451 Oh l, didn't even notice the repetition lol. I was a bit too confused by the claim.
@@matiskrawiec Y E E T
Some worldbuilding advice:
-Take an old convention from one genre and put it in another (eg. Dragons in a post-apocalyptic teen dystopia)
-Take a trope that hasn't been seen in decades and bring it back to the genre (eg. psychic Dragons that play mind games and can wipe peoples' memories, last seen in _The Silmarillion_ - Tolkien was a master of the genre, he did many things that imitators _never_ did).
-Do your own spin on a trope (eg. have the young adult dystopia getting overthrown be the inciting incident of book one rather than the climax of book three, and at the hands... er, claws... of a Dragon attracted by all the shiny stuff).
-BUT WHAT ABOUT DRAGONS?
You just want a cool book about dragons
@@thatguy5391 can you blame him
Ok but I like the idea of the government being overthrown in book 1. Then the rest of the series is the main character leading an army to stop other countries from capitalising on the chaos.
@@user-rl4tg2mr9n bro just change it into an alt history book and we're golden. Imagine a scenario where some rebellion succeed, maybe something like the American civil war... Wait, they made that already.
My man just made a discount District 9
I felt attacked when he showed the Enders game cover lol. I never thought of it as a dystopia since I was more focused on the overall “xenophobia/genocide is bad” message, but after giving it a little thought yeah it totally makes sense.
same for me when I saw the unwind cover
Same i was expecting a criticism of the whole ender's series and was like where is it?
I'm glad that crit didn't come
Kona 6966 ‘Racism bad, acceptance good’
Funny, cause the author is a known homophobe who uses a bunch of his money to fuck over minorities
A common argument is that these books are directed towards kids/teens. Are people saying we shouldn't take kids seriously and give them quality reading material? This is one reason why Rick Riordan is so beloved. While there are multiple issues across his universe (mostly because of the complicated world he built), he still manages to make characters who do things that make sense and his plots are logical. It's not perfect, but it doesn't treat kids like idiots.
Thank you. Just because its a “kids book” doesnt mean it should lack in quality
1:13 "...and a teenage girl plays a big role in thos for some reason."
...Terrible Writing Advice fans know what that reason is...
It's for the LOVE TRIANGLE!!!!
@@goldegreen a necessary element in *every* story! Within every genre! ...even ones that romance has little to no place in otherwise...
Chaotic Silver l
That was the Starving Games, wasn’t it?
Well, how else am I supposed to construct my love-dodecahedron?
I think the concept of a queen being picked through a game show could be really interesting, if done as a commentary on reality TV and the obsession with celebrity.
DapperCuttlefish in a certain sense i believe the books did that but because of the romance element it was overshadowed and made less important thematically. i think his critiques on this series in particular weren’t as on the nose because the whole marrying a commoner thing was not only the point of the book (it was supposed to be aspiration and a way to appease the masses- and a critique on exceptionalism and the way the american dream is false) it also has some historical context
not saying the book is unflawed and i admittedly have a soft spot for it given i read it when i was younger but that’s just how i interpreted his analysis
that was literally a theme of the book, just got overshadowed by the romance. i still love those books though, fight me
I think the “issues” mentioned with the Hinger Games were kinda nitpickey or not getting the point. District 2 has the most military power, but continues to support the Capitol and Panem because they’re still very well off in this system. The Capitol maintains power by pitting the districts against each other, more metaphorically with some districts being more well-off than others and resenting each other for it, and literally represented by the actual Hunger Games. And each district supplies something to the Capitol while the Capitol does nothing because it represents imperialism. The Capitol probably claims to give the districts protection or money/resources, but of course that’s incomparable to the resources given to the Capitol. However, if each district made all the resources, they wouldn’t depend on the Capitol to give them small amounts of resources from other districts. (If Distict 4 had grain, they wouldn’t need the Capitol to send it from District 11 for them.) Thus that’s another method of control.
if district 11 was fucked, all the food supply would be fucked, because the capitol wont make money off of letting everyone make food. just like our current system where we couldn't profit off of stockpiling medical supplies so now we are fucked
I also think Effie and the stylists also help create a theme that the violence and destruction isn’t caused out of malice by the citizens of the Capitol, but ignorance. Throughout the series, Effie and the stylists start off as a typical Capitol citizen, totally uncaring of the plight of the districts, but as they grow closer to Katniss and Peeta, they begin to understand the horrors. I think one of the clearest moments of this evolution is in the second book/movie where Effie tells Peeta and Katniss they deserved better, communicating she understands the horrors, but is powerless.
@Exalt Chrom - iirc District 2 is rich af because of the Capitol.
WerewolfofEpicness it’s shown in the second book that katniss’ stylists frequently complained about minor shortages of products which is how katniss keeps track on which districts are rioting.
She also finds out that district 11 especially is VERY heavy on public executions because the capitol can’t afford to lose them. District 12 was previously a bit abandoned because they always made their coal quota and had a small population
They designed it so not one district could survive without the others. We see it with 13, they struggled to survive, even when we see them they have only just gotten on their feet. I'm still not sure though how the capitol became so powerful though in the first place
In Canada, we have our own dystopian YA book called "The Marrow Hunters," that is meant to explore the exploitation of Indigenous Canadians in contemporary Dystopian fashion. I appreciate there being a dystopian book from my home country, as well as it trying to explore the themes of Indigenous exploitation for a younger generation. That being said, the world building is a mess. It supposedly takes place 40 years in the future, in a world that is basically the Children of Men, except that instead of global sterility, everyone cannot dream. Lack of dreams eventually makes you insane, which is a real phenomenon. However, to cure the lack of dreams, the government has to hunt Indigenous people (who can still dream), to extract their bone marrow, which is "where the dreams are." Every time you think they'll explain this, it just becomes weirder and more unrealistic. There are so many questions that come from this like:
- "Why does the Canadian government feel the need to hunt the Indigenous like animals when they could just build Nazi concentration camp or some other shit?"
- "Why doesn't the government try to work with the Indigenous to synthesize the marrow juice, instead of going through the pain of manually hunting and extracting Indigenous? You know there will be no more Indigenous soon, right?"
- "How does the government expect to keep the world running once they killed every last Indigenous?"
- "What happened to countries that don't have native populations? Did they just died?"
- "What do the Indigenous expect to do once the Canadians are gone? There's like 100 of them left."
- "How did everyone lose the ability to dream (I'm willing to excuse this one because Children of Men did the same thing)
- "Why are Indigenous the only ones to have Dream Marrow Juice?"
That's not even going into the bad characters, the plot that tries painfully hard to be topical, the Gainax ending, or the fact that the book does not give us a single glance at the life of allogenous Canadians to give us a motive as to why they would do this. Despite this, the book was praised to high heavens because of the whole Indigenous stuff. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this executed correctly, and see more contemporary Indigenous writing, but this was just too bad to be worth praise.
I hold the belief that some writers do not really want to tell a story. They want to preach to the people under the gimmick of "writing fiction".
They should drop the gimmick and write their political rants in a straightforward manner, because they're not making their message any better, they're making the practice of storytelling WORSE.
The worst part is that blatantly political (or religious or whatever) stories can work, but they need to be _a good story first_ before slapping a message on them.
The book you mention sounds like a setting with great potential, but the many plot holes not only can undermine the story, they can undermine the (very transparent) message it contains, which is a shame.
its such a shame. If it was executed right it probably would be an amazing story but unfortunately its not :/
oh shit dude I'm gonna have to read this book for english class pretty soon
@@Liam_The_Great I read it last year lmao it was so weirdly bad.
@@DonVigaDeFierro That's exactly what that stupid book is. It's a weird masochistic fetish story meant to vilify a group of people (presumably white Canadians). Handmaid's Tale is another crappy story like this.
Actually the Grand Dukes of Moscow and early Tsars of Russia would have glorified fashion shows to determine their wife, so the Selection sort of makes sense.
The selection part of it had potential. Everything else was off.
16:47 The "Λ" and "Я" on the cover of this book are mildly infuriating. Those titles say "MLTCHED" and "CYAOSSED".
ßruh
@@prikoker SSruh
@White-Van Helsing Ι д딘гзε
@@cosmopoiesecriandomundos7446 ddingze
@White-Van Helsing crucifixleftarrowspilcrowmng
I remember I tried to read the selection in middle school, I had to stop after the mc described making out with her boyfriend for like, five paragraphs
Oh God you're lucky you didn't read rest of it it's just getting worse. Anyway making fun of it with my friends was still worth reading it lmao.
Only 5? Weak. I’ve read entire chapters which consist mostly of making out. Adds a lot to the story, obviously
i read this book and the mc writes fanfiction of her favourite character in a vampire franchise or something, 11 year old me had to read the steamy make out sessions she wrote while everyone was reading harry potter or wimpy kid 😀🔫 what a good first experience
keirryn deadass? 👀
I feel kind of embarrassed looking back now, because I loved the selection so much as a kid/preteen. I liked a lot of these YA dystopian novels because of the caste systems for some reason. I actually want to get back into reading, so I thought to look for books like the selection. But, I started watching these videos and they brought back the memories I had forgotten after years of not reading the book. What the hell was I thinking as a kid?!
What’s much more frightening than a story starting out in a dystopia is showing a society *sliding into* a dystopia from a world that doesn’t look too different from our own.
Yeah, imagine a book about your average joe who is completely disillusioned with society. He continues to grow more and more resentful and less hopeful. That is, until, he encounters a political rally. They preach to the common man about how unfair it is that they have to work long hours all just so they can barely scrape by- or are unable to get a job at all. But instead of blaming those in power, and proposing reforms, they blame the immigrants for taking jobs, the disabled for leeching off of society, they blame literally everyone they hate for all the real problems in society. He eats it all up enthusiastically, and introduces his friends, family and coworkers to it, some are hesitant, but others fall into it just as easily as he did.
More and more people are radicalised, and the party rises to power. Instead of helping the people who helped them get there, they turn their backs on them, and focus on consolidating their own power. It becomes increasingly obvious that the party doesn't care about the people, but their supporters remain blind to the truth. No matter how bad things become, their supporters follow them unquestioningly, completely wrapped up in all the propaganda they've been fed.
That’s just the US rn
@@thebuilder5271 true. I'd say it's a lot of places right now.
lol Star Wars…?
@@haydenlee8332 Star Wars is heroic, not frightening. It’s the kind of battle we would like to fight, with clear good and evil sides. By “frightening dystopias“, we mean 1984 & Co. I didn’t talk about what’s exciting or entertaining 😉.
dystopia
Ai: we control you now
Human: oh no, you are evil we must fight back
Ai: but we're helping your kind
Human: evil robots!
Ai: wait no...
Human: E V I L
I’m currently re-reading the Hunger Games, and although it’s never stated, it isn’t a stretch to say that the Capitol provides all media/entertainment/beauty industry. The Games are cut together and broadcasted from the Capitol, it’s where all the stylists/makeup artists/designers/tattoo artists/game makers etc etc live.
Plus the capitol is literally the embodiment of controlling the means of production, not the labor.
Imagine ea in the capitol
@@emilylewis5373 labor is one of the means of production........
@@tanya5561 Labour won’t do squat if there’s no factory to use the labour on.
As someone that lives in Venezuela, an impoverished country under an authoritarian regime, I have to say that I was impressed with the accuracy of the description of what is like to live like this that is offered in The Hunger Games.
3 months and not a single commie has stopped by to claim that your country isn't real socialism lmao
@@cockjohnson7692 no shit
@@cockjohnson7692 You know that social-democracy, socialism and communism are three distinct terms with very different meanings.
@@Zwijger And you know that 2 of those 3 have a track record of 0% successes.
Yeah, I feel like Hunger Games is the only book to actually have decent world-building
I love the maze runner series for its characters and storytelling, but your take on the world building are 100% accurate lol. Always bugged me how a damn maze is supposed to find a cure to a virus
I think the idea of kids in a death maze is cool, but yeah. Zombie Virus does not equal death maze, no matter how you look at it.
I think they explained it in the stories as the virus taking place in the brain so if they figure out how the kids brains are different than they can stop the virus from being able to take over the brain
Still murder maze is an overreaction
I think the most unrealistic part was WICKED treating immune people as disposable.
For the first book or so I thought the twist was going to be that the maze was supposed to protect them, something went wrong, and now they're stuck there alone with this automated system and monsters that in some twisted way is trying to protect them from the outside
I think the problem with Maze Runner is that they had this cool idea of this maze but then wanted to force an entire world and franchise out of it.
Underrated comment. The idea of Lord of the Flies but there's a maze involved is what drew me in.
@@kartoonfanatic
At this point I feel we're having generation where the fantasy world-building is seen as the core part rather than a good back drop that drives actual story ideas.
"If you hear heavy breathing, that's just Crown Prince Salman, ignore him." 😂😂😂
and to think, it's so easy to just make a dictatorship that makes sense.
"I mean, clearly President Liveton is popular, he's gotten 90% of the vote the last 20 elections, for doubting basic numbers, we'll have to send you to an education camp."
Makes a hell of a lot more sense than....
"Emperor Evil lives in ultra luxury, flaunting it like there's no tomorrow, while you live in super-slums. Please don't rebel, thanks."
But these books always seem to go for the second.
It's so that the inevitable film adaptations have cool evil fortresses to show you.
Just use some lines from Empress Theresa (just leave Krimsom Rouge Mental Institute... I need more help lol)
Hahaha so funny
You should write a dystopia parody
zombielizard218 I love how “Liveton” backwards is “Not evil”
About that The Selection book: I haven’t read it, but as you started to talk about how in monarchies the marriage serves to make alliances and peace, I thought that finding a princess (possibly prince, in a parellel universe, ofc) from the commoners is a way of making an alliance with the subjects, especially looking at it from the perspective of the distorted, reality-shows-obsessed society we live in 😅
If I remember correctly that was the reason!
Yup, that's exactly the reason they gave in the books!
This motive does make sense, but in real life, there would be more to it. They would probably pick only one girl and give her a very thorough background check. She would have the appearance of being a commoner, but in reality, she's nowhere near common. She's gorgeous, accomplished, volunteers heavily in her community, and maybe comes from a (slightly) rich family with a successful business that the government wants to invest in (so it's a financial move as well as a public relations move) They would then show the prince photos and video footage of her so he can decide if she's pretty enough to date. If he gives the okay, then they would bring the girl in and stage a meeting between the girl and the prince. Their courtship would be advertised with more fervor than the superbowl. Then, the royal wedding that has the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster would temporarily give the economy a huge boost.
I know that the whole point of The Selection is Keeping Up With The Kardashians + Princess And the Pea, or whatever, but that method is needlessly complicated. The only reason that this needless complication would make sense is if it is a tradition that has been passed down for hundreds of years, a tradition whose purpose has long since faded and it exists only for itself. (For example: Thailand used to have a set of strict laws that dictated how commoners were supposed to interact with royals. One of these laws said that if a royal is drowning and a commoner tries to save their life but fails, then the commoner is to be executed. These laws were done away with after a Thai princess drowned in full view of her entourage. No one wanted to risk death by trying to save her.)
"Ender's Game"
I can't imagine how that book cover ended up in the video
I wonder, could it have anything to do with the national identity planets, the barely holding up International Fleet at the end of the Third Formic War, the geopolitical nightmare that is the return of everyone *but* Ender Wiggin, Locke and Demosthenes as an arc, or whatever the mysterious planet at the end of Children was
@@insertcolorherehawk3761 None of that is dystopic. The IF holds little power as a military institution over the world and is kept on a pretty tight leash by Strategos. Almost all of their resources are out in interstellar space, with the book making it abundantly clear humanity was sending everything it had to quell the "threat" of the Formics. Also, the book gave a solid reason as to why Ender was never sent home by the government; all the different countries wanted him, and whoever got him would be a big threat to planetary security (plus Ender never truly wanted to go home anyway). All that stopped mattering when Peter became Hegemon. The end of Ender's Game really touches on this quite a lot and gives more examples as to why Ender couldn't go home than I can remember off the top of my head.
But to the point, it's not a dystopia. The Earth is not governed entirely by one totalitarian thought-controlling giga-government. Strategos made some ethically questionable choices in their position of global power but these issues ultimately end in acquittal for the people responsible, and somewhat rightfully so. As far as the book states, all the world's contemporary countries at the time the book was written kept their sovereignty.
I can't comment on the context given by the later books in the series because I haven't read them and truthfully don't plan to, despite how their favorable reviews. I simply just don't have the time and interest in reading as I did when I was younger, so I concede that you are more knowledgeable than me in that regard.
@@trashman9948
In general
Oz is a dystopia, Ender's Earth is not, I was noting why it could be, but Ender's Game should have been replaced by the Wizard of Oz
The Shadow Series is not a dystopia, the main series *might be*, but I need a good look at Exile to figure that out
As to Main Series:
Pretty much every planet is culturally and ethnically based, with little interaction personally(this might be more dystopia on a case by case basis, not in general), the United Planets might be there, but I'm not sure
As to Shadow:
The return of Ender was not happening because of that, the geopolitical nightmare comes from when his *subordinates* came back
Peter became Hegemon yes, but all of Ender's subordinates went to into a mess anyways because of the fracturing of the IF into various factions, it was *this* that caused Earth to unite before they expanded the colonies
The prequels suggest a planetary setup like this, though the Oort Cloud/Kuiper Belt regions are a bit messy
True I was scare to see bad writing when I found theses book amazing.
"Plenty of Dystopias are classic." *shows 10 different covers of 1984.*
Also uh
You sure about My Immortal, good sir? ARE YOU REALLY, REALLY WILLING to subject yourself to the ultimate shitpost?
lol wut a prep and posr
@@patrickkelmer6290 Fangs for the laugh!
lets mosh to celebrate
guys i hard good charlie is prefoming in hogsmeed, u comin?
@@synflwr YEAH LIK I´M TOTALLY CUMIN
The best explanation for the economic system in Panem is that it makes all the districts dependent on each other. That way, if any district tries to secede or rebel, they’ll be cut off from access to important resources and can’t be self sufficient. Wether this was intentional, I’m not sure, but it provides a decent explanation.
This is how the British empire worked in real life. And why its colony Ireland was forced to grow only potatoes. When a disease caused all the potatoes to fail, Ireland starved while Britain had food from its other colonies.
This system was called Mercantilism, and it's weird when Econ bros act like it's 'economically impossible' when it was dominant across humanity for centuries.
Agreed.
@LowestofheDead that's not what caused the famine at all.
Most of the best land was owned by rich land-owners, who had people grow food to export for a profit.
Poor people were left with small patches of poor quality land to grow food for themselves, and mostly grew potatoes because that's all that would grow there in sufficient quantities.
When the disease killed the potatoes, the poor starved, while the rich continued to grow and export food.
it kind of screws up the capitol and the district though, like when district fives energy sources were destroyed, the capitol lost power.
@@All-ze9cl I haven't read these books since middle school, so correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't district 5 one of the very loyal districts? Although I agree that energy production is probably the worst one to outsource.
I expected you to talk about Brave New World, 1984, and Handmaid's Tale instead of just ripping into these YA dystopias. Hope you do a video about Brave New World sometime because I think it's interesting that their society uses drugs, consumerism, and sexual pleasure as a method of control, so they don't need barbed wire or guns. It's also interesting that they use a combination of biological manipulation and subconscious conditioning to create humans for specific tasks. The lower caste people are born loving their jobs. But I think some ideas in it fall apart, and some of them show the book's age, like needing an Epsilon to manually operate an elevator, or having to condition people to want to not mend their own old clothes, when no one really does that now because it became prohibitively expensive and inconvenient, while buying new clothes became cheap and convenient.
The thing in Brave New World is that at many points their society isn't just an evil dystopia but has you going "yeah, that's actually something that would be nice". Which makes it good and more believable.
@@akrybion Yeah, I think a major thing a lot of dystopian novels do wrong is not realizing that even totalitarian governments have both carrots and sticks, that is, they have to offer something, you can't keep a country together on hopelessness and fear alone, otherwise you just have a bunch of people with nothing to do but brood about their poverty and lack of power. It's something 1984 did with the 2 minutes hate and the news reels, the fake outrage at a fake enemy gave people something to feel united and inspired by. In Handmaid's Tale, similarly, there is this offer of a Biblical society appealing to traditionalists and anti-feminists. Even some women want that. But The Hunger Games and the failed YA dystopia genre it inspired rarely answers the question: what do citizens get out of loyalty to the state? Other than simply not being killed?
Noemi Starlight I think Feed does a good job explaining why some people like living in the society.
@@robertgronewold3326 But the title of the video and the fact that he shows the book covers of 1984 and other well known good dystopian books in the beginning of the video leads the viewer to expect to hear him talk about those books. So it feels like a bait and switch when you realize he is only talking about poorly written YA examples.
Island is a great counterpoint to BNW. Huxley talks about how, for example, drug use can provide new experiences/encounters with reality. They aren’t just soma pills meant to keep people numb and sated.
10:04 also, NONE OF THE ORIGINAL AMERICAN COLONIES ARE EVEN IN THE “COLONIES OF AMERICA”??????
@sluttyMapleSyrup are you blind
Yeah I also noticed that those colonies were erased on the map lmao
just the french ones
IMO, the Scythe trilogy does the “dystopian society” really well. For one thing, it doesn’t just take place in America. Second, it shows the authoritarian government slowly become corrupt because of one man with a big influence. Lastly, it deals with the the morality of death and what the Scythes have to deal with mentally. It also has two main characters, and side characters are given an insight on how the world functions in a post- death world (world building).
I really think you should read this trilogy. It’s really good.
I've heard kinda bad things about that trilogy, like how it falls into a lot of YA tropes.
I will put it in my tbr list
Got the first book teenage romance is a yup.
@PowerSkiff12 Yee but like they’re super hormonal an shit so I think it gets a pass
Riley I promise you it does not
My biggest problem with the dystopian genre is that nine times out of ten the entire thesis statement is essentially "Wouldn't it suck if the government was actively malicious?"
The whole death game thing started with "What if your parents wanted to see you dead and the government helped them?"
Imagine the horrors!
Haha imagine that. Good thing our government cares about our well being and values us above anything, including money!
Haha.
Ha.
Wait a second
Theory about Panem and The Hunger Games:
Mexico is actually a massive powerhouse and its territory extends all the way to Brazil. Most importantly, they control Venezuelan oil.
Early on, long before the hunger games, the capital only controlled Colorado, the rest was thoroughly Balkanized. The capitol itself was made up of the remnants of the old US government, corporate magnates, as well as its military staff.
Mexico desires to expand northward and conquer the former United States. A massive war ensues, and the capitol manages to unite the rest of America either diplomatically or by force. The Mexican Empire is beaten back, but just barely.
The continued threat of another invasion by the Mexican Empire is what keeps the new nation of Panem together. The districts stay with the capitol for protection, as being under the boot of the Mexicans would be even worse.
Over time, Panem creeps toward authoritarianism. Hardships lead to radical parties being elected, Panem is reorganized into the district system. Furious over the centralization, the districts rebel, and are crushed. The next year, the first hunger games are held.
75 years on, and the capitol still hasn’t learned. Propaganda keeps people afraid of potential Mexican aggression (which at this point, is an empire in decline), keeping at least the upper strata of the districts loyal. But it’s clear that the capitol has only become more corrupt, more decadent, more degenerate, and brutally totalitarian. It is only a matter of time before it all collapses.
Pladimir Vutin
Already better than what was actually written. With a little more refinement and an increased focus on the political intrigue of such a nation it would actually be a really good novel.
Would make sense, but Collins never mentioned any of this so this theory wouldn't be able to be applicable
Tell me more of this mexican empire ma boy, that sounds like a kick ass nation, no bias from me clearly
ruclips.net/video/0PiAFal5kyE/видео.html
LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
You showed a picture of Unwind and I was sure you were going to eviscerate it and I was preparing myself emotionally for that, but then it ended up escaping your wrath
God bless 🙏
IKR I was waiting for it and kinda sad i didn't know what he thought about it
Me too, I liked the book and I really wanted to hear what he thought :(!!!
Same here. I love Unwind and Ender's game so I was preparing for the massacre, but then nothing. I want to believe he kinda like them :)
My view on most dystopian settings is that they just exist to give the protagonists a victim complex and an easy plot (if there's such an obvious evil then it's equally obvious it must be fought against, objectively, as opposed to just a cause the character(s) in question happen to believe in) there's very little thought beyond that. It's part of why I think a lot of those types of novels need cheap character drama to make things more interesting and keep people's attention (*cough* love triangles *cough*), otherwise it'd be increasingly obvious there isn't much substance.
Dystopian or post-apocalyptic settings are fine. They add plenty of obstacles, which add conflict, and add drama... But you still need _a good story to tell_ and that's where most authors fail, because they are always telling the exact same story: Rebels vs. The system... And it always devolves into a cartoonish fight between a mouthpiece and a straw man... But with a different story, the setting works wonders:
For instance, a treasure hunt story like Treasure Island, but set on a dystopian future. The main character doesn't just want to get rich or have an adventure: The hidden treasure is their only chance for a better life, and it may not even be there, but they better give it a shot, so they must travel through a crapsack world searching for the treasure... Plus, they're being chased by the government, who sends anyone trying to leave their territory to prison camps... or something...
See? Obstacles! Drama! The setting only needs a good, solid story to tell and the thing basically writes itself.
Why are authors so damn lazy is one thing that puzzles me, but I guess they are interested only in replicating the success of other works by copying their superficial aspects... And hopefully landing one of them juicy Hollywood deals... Not really giving a shit about the more nuanced aspects of storytelling... Like finding a good story to tell...
9:58: “there’s no situation in which a sovereign nation is a colony”
I mean, it wasn’t exactly that, but the lines got really blurred when the Portuguese Royal family fled to Brazil in the 1800s.
I'm Brazilian and I'll tell you what happened, in 1810 still prince regent João elevated Brazil to a kingdom but united with Portugal (like the UK and Austria-Hungary) with him and his mother being the only kings/queens of Brazil until Prince Pedro elevated Brazil to an sovereign empire.
I forget the name but there was a good series of short stories on the internet surrounding a Dystopia set in south america. the back story was that a global nuclear war kicked off and america won. because it's anti nuke systems managed to block 97% of the nukes. And so being the only country that wasn't a post apocalyptic wasteland they decided they should restore order through out the globe. and make the world safe for democracy
pretty sure it was a critique of american interventionism in Latin america but it's a backstory that makes sense and works well for the story.
Mike Rueffer That would be hilarious to see play out irl because of all the military juntas that would backstab the shit out of each other lmao
@@Luipaard005 It would be the holy roman empire 2.0
@White-Van Helsing yeah sorry about that.
Do you remember at least where you found it? It sounds pretty interesting tbh
@@JohnSmith-kv3eo Wattpad i'm 90% sure that's where i read it.
I remember I started to read "Matched" beacuse I really liked the cover and stopped reading because I got bored.
I read all three books in a couple of days, worst shit ever. It was so obviously trying to piggy back off of ideas in thg and the giver
@@riotgrrl453 I was feeling that in first couple of chapters. This book one of the reasons why I started hating some YA tropes. Back in middle school, I really started to hate those trash YA tropes.
I actually did the exact same thing lol
that say a lot lmao
I read the whole trilogy over a time period. I may have even read it twice.
I can remember absolutely nothing about the series outside of what James mentioned in the video.
Can I just have one dystopia story where instead of a teenage girl uprooting an empire, it's a harden war veteran? Or someone like Napoleon? Seriously napoleonic wars are so much cooler than anything I think a YA dystopia could come up with
Make it a grandma, or a grandpa, or a grandperson, or insert-anything-that-isn't-remotely-an-adolescent who has seen the last of the Old World.
*In a deep announcer voice * Introducing: Badass Grandma! She has decades of experience tending a family, house, and farm, knows what the Old World was like, and can blow a man's head off with a shotgun. She likes to knit sweaters for her extended family, but all her life trained in killing pests and predators that would invade her farm or chase off thieves. After the government took her weapons, she learned how well knitting needles can double as daggers! She and her trusty side-kick, an old mule she'd helped bring into the world, are forced to leave their home. To protect her flock, she must join the rebellion and put those government wolves down.
How about that?
Then don't read YA. Because you're never gonna get anything but a YA protagonist in.... YA fiction. That is literally what makes it YA. It's not YA anymore if it doesn't have a YA protag.
Don't read a genre, then complain that it conforms to the necessary elements of that genre. That's like complaining that horror has monsters in it.
@LordofFullmetal Ironically, more publishers are pushing toward YA because it's popular. Adult has the stigma about being full of sex, while YA doesn't. So it's either a.) A stupid teen MC, or b.) 30 pages of sex.
Of course, not all adult genre books have gratuitous amounts of pork, but enough do that it's a bit boffins a turn off from that category. I'm saying this as someone who writes in the adult category (one MC being 18, in another book one being in his late 30s, and in another a kid being 12) without having ever written sex. I have not gotten published yet, but most of my stories not even having a romantic subplot might not help in my publishing attempts.
closest to that imo is metal gear series especially mgs2 (except if you consider raiden as YA) and mgs4. a good game series tho. but this video talk about books tho. not sure if this is something you want
“The scottish watched the english drown” ok legend is actually the best book ever written
Legend actually was pretty good.
@@Emma.Lou1 it was ok but the worldbuilding wasn’t great(there wasn’t really much in the first book but in the second and third it made no sense as he explained) the 2,3,4 books are pretty horrible worldbuilding but plot is eh
"The Republic of America"
Isn't that a little meaningless? The real United States is already a republic, a constitutional republic.
A republic is not neccerily a "united states". France for example is a republic with a centralized government.
@@TheSorrel Yeah but if the current government could also be described as "The Republic of America", it's a terrible descriptor. What delineates this republic from the real one?
@@aaronbrown8377 its a nuanced question that should have been obvious enough, because US is a canonical name, Nazi Germany official name is just German Reich same as its 1870 name, its just a variant of the name
@Carvittora Libraia No it's not. It's a battle royal dude.
Changing the title from "United States" to "Republic" probably indicates a shift in attitude. The Republic, for whatever reason, might not want to continue the legacy of the US, and/or might be a unitary government in which such heavy focus on the "States" seems odd.
If you want to avoid spoilers:
00:01 Introduction
01:30 Hunger Games
04:19 Razorland
06:26 The Maze Runner
08:01 Legend
12:26 The Selection
14:51 Article 5
16:42 Matched
18:55 Conclusion
I think a lot of these books looked at dystopia in a pretty poor manner not just in how they work, but how they arose. They tend to go in the direction of a dictatorial state rising off the back of some massive disaster with little popular support because reasons, ignoring the fact that most authoritarian states were established with popular support because even the most oppressive regimes need some sort of backing, whether it's because the current dictatorship lost favor or a change in society as a whole. I find that the best dystopias are the ones who focus on how the greater society that the story takes place in allowed the current system to arise, doesn't even have to be a dictatorial state, just something that perpetuates these bad ideas. This is the reason I love Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, they both look at how the people contributed, whether it was allowing the degradation in quality and meaning in their media, choosing to ignore reality for the sake of 'happiness', or hyper-consumerism. At the same time, because of this, I don't like 1984 as a dystopia, while it is fascinating in how it explores the topics of how nationalism, media, language, ignorance, and paranoia can be used to perpetuate the system and I still think it is a great book, it doesn't establish itself to be as believable as other dystopia novels of its time.
You hit the bullseye. Definately agree with you.
While I do agree that they have good themes, I don’t understand why something like Fahrenheit 451 is considered good worldbuilding while the Hunger Games isn’t. Fahrenheit 451 is built on a society that doesn’t read and spends most of its time consuming mindless entertainment. People criticize the Hunger Games for not being economically feasible, but how is a society that doesn’t read, meaning they can’t record transactions or records, economically feasible? Or that the Hunger Games has had a vague rebellion in the past, but Fahrenheit 451 has a vague war going on throughout the story.
I feel like dystopia’s tend to lean more on ideas and concepts rather than a realistic world. I just criticized Fahrenheit 451’s world, but I would not change it. Its world serves the story’s themes. Trying to develop an economy/society that uses modern technology without reading wouldn’t actually add anything to Fahrenheit 451’s actual story or theme. Likewise, who cares about the economic details and politics of Panem? This is a story about the glamorization of violence and the horrors of war. Details like Panem’s past or the war in 451 aren’t included because they would actively detract from the story’s pacing and plot.
Banana Hat That’s a really good criticism of this video’s thesis. I agree especially that Hunger Games does not need to focus on the mechanics of its world itself to speak on how media is used to glamorize or trivialize violence if the pacing or prose is thrown off by it. Though I do think that novels with less depth/more interest in portraying dystopian society (like Divergent) should have more to show for it in world building
Moral of the story: YA authors seriously need to retake(or just take at all) an economics course. A basic grasp of economics would tell you most of these worlds would not be able to sustain themselves
"...there's no attempt to turn different ethnicities or religious groups against each other to prevent them from uniting." Can't believe I never noticed that before, but that's so true. There's a shocking lack of -ism's and inter-oppressed-group hatred against each other in dystopian YA novels, when that's historically been one of the main tactics of authoritarian groups/regimes. Absolute oversight by YA writers while worldbuilding (though of course we're not surprised.)
Side note, as a geography nerd, what the hell is that map of water level rise? Has the author never seen a topographical map before? I am stunned.
13:20 That’s mostly right when you deal with Europe. In other parts of the World, like the Ottoman Caliphate, the Moroccan Sultanate or the Safavid Dynasty or China, « queens » are often just the favorite concubine of the ruler. Obviously, a lot of these concubines can be daughters of rich merchants or chiefs searching to strengthen their bond, but they can also be just very beautiful girls the monarch or someone who is in his circle is enamored with. The queen status is granted by being the mother of a ruler, not his wife. In this kind of world, it’s plausible that in modern day, winner of beauty prizes like Miss X get added to the Harem, so while the idea is silly in the Selection, it’s not entirely stupid.
Hey, you may find this interesting.
ruclips.net/video/XrhrXTDeue0/видео.html&ab_channel=LindsayEllis
"I doubt the Middle East or Africa would unite"
"What makes you say that?"
[Shuts newspaper] "Just a hunch"
unification is incredibly, and I mean INCREDIBLY, popular in the Arab world and Africa.
Practically every founding father and every post-colonial intellectual advocated it and made attempts to make it work.
Every comment section on the latest western political fuckery around here is like, damn it we should've united decades ago.
I'm Tunisian and working on unifying with the rest of North Africa is literally in our constitution, just as an example. Or take the seminal work of Kwame nkrumah literally named "Africa must unite", the work of Frantz Fanon, Samir Amin, the list is looong.
Is anyone going to talk about how Ender’s Game is actually really well written? The story might be a little hard to understand, but the message is really powerful if you understand it well
yes
Haha, laser beam turns planet into dirt.
yea i was confused why it was on the list of bad dystopian books??
@@heathen616i mean i havent read them all but he didnt say they were bad books, he said they were bad dystopias. Like most people would agree the hunger games is not a bad book
@@alpha_9997yea this, he’s specifically talking about the world building. he even acknowledges that hunger games is good, but just because something is good doesn’t mean it cant fail or be underwhelming in other regards. it just all depends on what the author focuses on, world building obviously isnt a strong thing these authors build on. it’s something to help move the plot along
2:24 I love how *Mexico (mostly high terrains beside the borders) is submerged*
Yet Florida is just vibin
Mexico is nit submerged for the most part. Florida is completely gone though
“And a teenage girl plays a big role in this for some reason.”
Lmao killed me 😂
Hunger Games is an allegory- the world building isn’t _meant_ to be particularly strong because that’s not the important part of the story. As you pointed out in the video it’s chiefly a book about the injustices of income inequality and the exploitative nature of contemporary society and the world building isn’t meant to be nit-picked. Katniss is at the center of the rebellion against her will as she is manipulated into being there, and really only plays a symbolic role which is different than most of these copycat books. The copycats didn’t pick up on what made Hunger Games an actually worthwhile book- the message behind it- and therefore we got a ton of “brown haired heroine changes the world through the power of being different” books with bad world building in an attempt to bottle what made HG a success. Also, why did you put books like Handmaid’s Tale and Ender’s Game up in your graphics while describing this type of book? They are completely different from the kinds of books you are critiquing.
Hunger Games is a success because it provides obvious, staid cliche to an audience of dimwitted young-women who have no comprehension of literature.
@@hendrickcavvendish6634 okay-
Hendrick Cavvendish have you... read... the books? maybe try that instead of auto-hating on anything teen girls find fun
Hendrick Cavvendish it’s literally just a book. If you don’t like it that’s fine but says a lot about you if you insult people for enjoying it
@@hendrickcavvendish6634 "I like to use flowery language to humiliate teenage girls on the internet to prove what a smart boy I am."