Also somewhat similar to the specters in Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials. the affected adults don't become dangerous there, just empty shells, but the kids are immune, and we get the idea of a world run by wild kids.
Brandon's "zombie apocalypse where kids are the only survivors" is *almost* the premise of the Star Trek TOS episode, "Miri." (When kids hit puberty, they contract a degenerative disease that leaves them disfigured and feral, but they quickly die out as the disease overtakes them rather than sticking around as zombies in perpetuity.) Definitely deals with the social dynamics Brandon described, where kids live in fear of growing up, and live in a city that is unsettlingly empty.
Food robbery happens more often that one might think. My family got robbed once (2004, Tahiti for Dave's collection) and the robbers did drink some beers and ate my mom's cake. These "nice guys" took the time to do the dishes before leaving. Police said that it wasn't uncomon for thieves to eat and drink on the job, but it was their first encouter with such clean robbers.
Those food related crime stories got me imagining a burglar with a dirt phobia who would rob someone's home and gets annoyed by the dirty dishes in the kitchen and the stains on the floor. He winds up leaving a trail of spotlessly cleaned kitchens throughout the city.
20:50 I have to defend Dan's point a bit. The difference between Jane Austin's characters and superheroes is that the latter have the means to change the world and use those means. Their conflict usually affects a large part of society instead of just playing a part in it. So I think Dan's argument that superheroes uphold the status quo has more merit to it than Brandon thinks.
Pro Tip: if you're ever at home and someone breaks in... just have several sandwiches prepared and sitting on the kitchen counter. They'll be distracted and you can escape!!
@@groofay that's a false comparison. You're watching a Sanderson podcast and can't recognize a magic system when you see one? For shame! Clearly, you have to be Tim Allen to kill Santa. Because Tim Allen killed Santa in that first movie. And no one cared. Santa is impervious to all modern weaponry and wizard spells. He has the highest resistance stats and defense buffs known to man. His only weakness is the star of the 90s sitcom Home Improvement. Because that star... killed him. And no one cared. Why isn't this weird to anyone BTW? The MC killed a dude and we gloss over it? He just steals his clothes and becomes him? In summation, that's the story of how Rudolph saved the Easter Bunny.
@@loganm7771 actually, this is already well known inside baseball here. Probably shouldn't be revealing the secrets like this but I'm using a VPN so... yeah. Anyway, why do you think police are known for liking donuts. Think it's a love of sugary carbs? Nay!! It's a discus of robber catcher. They toss them at dastardly deviants and the criminal is immediately subdued. No ne'er-do-well can resist the power of a donut. (Edit: Attack on Typo: Season 4)
Daybreak on netlix does the whole "all adults are zombies now" thing, but it uses it more fore social commentary (a lot of moralizing at the audience).
Really glad Brandon also likes Unwind!!! I love Neil Shusterman's books and Scythe is one of my favorite books ever. I love how he uses everything the YA advantages and twist some thing so we can have the themed in the books properly explored and with interesting thoughts. Maybe they are not philosophical works of the higher category but I do think they do what they do very very well.
"If you're not dealing with systemic issues then you're defending the status quo" is a classic rhetorical trick, particularly for the politics of our time, good on Brandon to point that out
Iron Man's a particularly bad example, since he's drastically changing the direction of his formerly weapons company, breaking up terrorist groups, and reintroducing his world to superheroes. He's one of the most anti-status quo supers out there.
I feel like the Reckoners series would be the easiest one to adapt for a show of all of the Sanderson series that I have read. I would love a well done Mistborn series as well, but that might be difficult. Maybe Legion would be a good one too, I could see that as a fun show to watch as well.
@@metumortis6323 I feel like The Boyz might have taken that corner though and not sure how many people would support Reckoners over that, even though it would still be cool to see
@@dylangillespie8378fair point but the Boyz was still made even though the Watchman was adapted. I still feel like it's different enough to work. Kind of like Invincable did as an adaptations
Michael Grant's "Gone" was a really interesting "all the adults are gone" series. I thought I recognized the writing and then realized he's KA Applegate's husband and the often co author. I looooved Animorphs when I was younger.
I hope all my disagreements happen like Brandon and Dan here. They kept it cordial and light where it needed to be, and discussed their position on each series. Very good.
25:20 The Cosmere reduced: He finds out he is a magic zombie She finds out she is a magic assasin He is a magic law man He/she finds a magic pixie She finds a stash of magic she doesnt want He has a bunch of magic birds He finds a different way to use magic sand She has a magic ghost She can make magic stamps aaand I think that covers it,
Adam/Brandon- You very well know the reason that Epic Fantasy didn't go the way of Dystopians! The reason is Journey Before Destination! The McGuffin isn't the point of an epic fantasy novel, it's about the adventure. You can write an epic fantasy with literally any themes, lessons, character archetypes, plots, etc that you could possibly imagine-- and indeed you do! However, in most dystopian fantasy that I've read, the ending is more integral to the themes and messages of the story than in epic fantasy. The McGuffin in dystopians teaches us lessons, leads to the world becoming better, and adds hope to the story. But a story like SLA would be just as meaningful with a tragic ending as a happy one, and it wouldn't compromise the message of previous books if everyone dies at the end. You have a lot more freedom to express yourself as an author in epic fantasy.
Brandon's bad story idea reminds me of the episode "Miri" of Star Trek: The Original Series. I haven't seen it in ages and don't remember the details, but I know it involves a disease that turns adults into mindless monsters, and the teenagers are turning into them, too, as they get older.
YES! I think the kids kept referring to the monsters as "Rents" and eventually the crew figured out it was shortened from "parents," and it was this huge lightbulb moment.
Yes, and in the early 2000s the Sci-Fi channel had a post-apoc series called "Jeremiah" where a disease or bio weapon killed off the entire population, except for pre-puberty children. The story began when the children had grown up and tried to pick up the peices of the old world.
When y’all were talking about the ‘adults are zombies, kids aren’t’ it reminded me of a show called The Sparticle Mystery where anyone above the age of fifteen has disappeared over night and kids are left to run the world. From what I remember, a group of kids is traveling and trying to figure out what happened and along the way they meet other children who are making their own colonies and things. It’s basically kids creating their own society with the fear that when they turn fifteen they might disappear
19:57 "Iron Man is about maintaining the status quo; the world sucks but I'm going to keep it the way it is" Sorry, what? The whole point of Tony's arc in Iron Man 1 (and the rest of the MCU) is that he's realised he's made the world a worse place through his arms deals and is now going to use his technology for good instead of facilitating wars.
Brandon’s children being immune to the zombie virus idea is also the plot of Charlie Higson’s The Enemy series. I remember really enjoying them as a kid, especially if you like zombie stories without easy access to guns.
I think discussing whether a work seeks to maintain or change the status quo is a fine comparison. Maintaining the status quo is not bad, but it’s certainly not just YA dystopians that seek change. Most of Sando’s books involve some change or transition of status quo, from overthrowing fixing the Dor to Uniting Roshar, and that creates a neat lens through which to compare stuff like Mistborn Era 1’s Ska revolution to Era 2’s Wax trying to keep society together.
yeah, I found Brandon a bit too dismissive of that argument - Pointing out that a story where a character could upset the status quo but mostly doesn't isn't so much a criticism as a point of fact - and it's definitely something some superhero media adresses, notably that's a major theme in immmortal hulk, where the legitimate use of anger, and the extremism of those who want to maintain the satus quo is a recurring theme. Brandon himself does struiggle with this in his own work, so I can see why he might be uneasy with this lense of analysis: as you said it's a major theme in mistborn, but as you recall the characters end up being the guardians of the satus quo in book 2 already as they take power and attempt to solidify and stabilize it - and in stormlight archive, Dalinar solidifies power from book 2 onwards 2, and Kaladin ends up being more or less an enforcer of the status quo as a result - and Dalinar does end up with accelerating an ongoing genocide as the solution to try to prevent a magical cataclysm - but it's also a way for him to solidify political power. I'm not saying Brandon is wrong to tell the stories he tells, I'm a fan, but it's clear that he has an ambiguous relationship to politics and power in his writings - being critical of power imbalances, but not having fully shed some tropes about legitimate bloodlines and benevolent monarchs - And, having maybe not fully matured this theme, I think he has yet to write a truly great political storyline in one of his books.
I actually agree with Dan here. Superheroes, by their nature, want to "protect" and "save," which inherently involve maintaining the status quo. Batman isn't trying to revitalize the Gotham police department or lift people out of poverty, Superman isn't interfering in international matters of state, Spiderman isn't fighting gentrification in Queens, etc.
I think part of the struggle that heroes face is the fact that they have too much power, and so in trying to be responsible with it, they back away from making huge changes. How do they stop themselves from becoming corrupt overlords? Can they truly speak for the people when they weren't chosen to do so? Even if they were elected to a position, you can't ignore how their power impacts perception. They could easily, unintentionally even, coerce and intimate other politicians, which is really problematic.
@@elyseherrick37 yes but you can put the shoe on the other foot and say that given they power, they have a duty to use it against the corrupt system - why would it be okay to beat a bank robber, but not a politician, if both's action deprive regular folks? - not saying it's an easy theme to tackle, it's incredibly complicated, but there is an argument to be made that superheroes being accountable to institutions is all well and good, until those institution no longer serve the interests of the people.
@@maximeteppe7627 True! And that's pretty much what happens in Mistborn era 1, with the flip side of that addressed in Reckoners. I do think that if a Superman figure started toppling governments, it would be rather terrifying, unless done with extreme caution and as a last resort. Even then, it's tricky.
Me and my kids loooooved the Zero G books!!! It has been the one time I have gotten them off their screens in the car and just listening to a book. Great stories and great choice of voice actors.
Oh man, Sam Wellers is my childhood! I have so many memories of just finding a good book there, then finding a nice little knook to read it in for the day.
This discussion reminded of a show called "Between" that I think ran on Netflix. Wikipedia reminded me that "...the series stars Jennette McCurdy as Wiley Day, a pregnant teenage daughter of a minister living in the small town of Pretty Lake, which is coping with a mysterious disease that has killed everybody over the age of 21."
So it's not a zombie story and they don't have to fight off adults but screw it, this is close enough that I'm going to just throw this out there anyway. Gone by Michael Grant is a fantastic book series, it's like Lord of the Flies but with superpowers, it's fantastic. I highly recommend it
6:30. There's actually a book I read years ago that is literally that premise where adults were infected with some zombie disease and kids were immune up until a certain point I think. So there was an aspect of yea we want the older kids cuz they're more capable of protecting us but they're also a ticking timebomb. I dont know the title of this book but there was a father who drove a bus or something trying to help kids but he was infected and kept his zombie side satiated but munching on some human jerky meat. If anyone knows the title please comment below
Something similar, to Brandon's age idea, happens in His Dark Materials. The Spectres only target adults. I also agree, the first Mistborn trilogy has the best resolution to any fantasy series
there is also a Tabletop RPG called bliss stage with a somewhat similar premise - but it's a riff on evangelion rather than zombie media. All adults are into a coma, and kids are the only one who stay awake and can fight the invasion. The idea that kids would fall into a coma when they reach a certain age causes a very similar type of dread as Brandon's Idea though.
I know you won’t see this, but eff that Reddit thread. I’m not an epic fantasy person myself, I’d like to be, but the world building and longevity of the books usually bores me within the first 100 pages. I just can’t get through the world building! Stormlight Archives though… *Chef’s Kiss* IT’S SO GOOD! There’s just enough world building to give you a clear picture of what’s going on, but you don’t go on to the point where my brain feels like mush, and I can’t actually keep up with what anything looks like anymore. You give juuust enough to give a clear picture, but also leave me wanting more. That is my first experience wanting more world building from any book, tv series, or movie haha! You’ve done a fantastical job on Stormlight archives so don’t let some stupid Reddit feed get ya down ♥️
As you spoke of Percy Jackson, can we just stop and admire the absolute brilliance with which Rick Riordan translated the charakters of the greek mythological figures into modern times?
It wasn't quite 10 years, but we Megan Whalen Turner diehards waited a LONG time for the last two books in the YA Queen's Thief series. It is essentially an epic fantasy story, even though the individual books don't necessarily fit the formula.
Brandon's idea is actually very simillar to what happens with the spectres in the second book of the His Dark Materials series. They kill every adult that shows up, but kids are immune
The chicken nugget thought process is definitely, "I'm screwed, I'm going to jail... the food sucks there, I'm gonna go get my favorite nuggies before they get me"
I agree, but I gave it more thought, the super heroes are "gods", there would be issues with them doing/making the societal changes rather than the "mortals". I think this dynamic is looked at in many super hero properties. I get what Dan is saying though.
@@tony6795 I disagree. Superheroes are people to look up to. Batman is like Odysseus, human ingenuity and education scaled to the extreme; Superman is the same, but with moral ideals. Spider-Man teaches responsible use of talents. They're role models, and the moral encoded in our role models is, "Good guys keep things the way they are," and that's... Not great.
@@MrSilvUr meanwhile magneto is automatically the villain - so is killmonger - and while their are good reasons within each story as to why they should be seen as villainous, the fact that the revolutionaries always are chosen by the authors to be put in the role of the villain is a trend worth examining critically.
@@Ray_D_Tutto To be fair to Brandon, Iron Man the 2008 movie *is* more about Tony becoming a better person. Like, while it's true that the trend of the genre as a whole has the issue Dan described, it's maybe not fair to say that *that* story is about maintaining the status quo in the specific -- especially because the first Iron Man involves the promise that Tony is going to revolutionize the world's technology by shifting his focus away from weapons. (Obviously, they didn't really do much with this after the movie, but I remember having the impression of, "Oh! Tony's gonna build arc reactors everywhere and give the world cheap, clean energy! That's awesome!")
I normally listen exclusively to the podcast instead of watching the videos but I had to hop over here to say that "The Enemy" by Charlie Higson is exactly that YA adults-are-zombies story! Read it back in middle school :)
Mistborn fits that cover description (white girl in pretty dress / tight pants). I'm thinking of the 2nd edition Mass-Market Paperback (Tor), since that was the first one I saw.
Chicken nuggets lady most likely had been to jail before. It wasn't being mentally unstable. It was her remembering how awful prison food is and deciding to surrender but making a last ditch effort for some McDonald's before she lost her freedom.
Megan Whalen Turner's fan are life-long though! Start with The Thief and you'll see what enchants us. MWT took her time to craft each and every book and we waited patiently, and now the series is complete.
So a food heist (theft) that fits this narrative, my family owned a bar in which we alse sold sandwiches for a while, and a thief broke in one night, stole the money, or tried to, got drunk, eat very well, and had fallen a sleep in the middle of the bar. My dad "caught" him in the morning and called the police.
I support being able to personally edit out content one finds objectionable. Some of these directors and studios kick and scream when a service like Vidangel does it but then they allow editing to be done for tv and airplanes, which seems a bit hypocritical. I have used Vidangel for years and it's given me a chance to see so many wonderful movies and shows I wouldn't have otherwise watched. And while it's easy for some to say "just don't watch it if it's objectionable to you," that isn't really much of an option when there's not a ton of content that is in that acceptable range and is also good. At the end of the day, being able to personally edit something means the maker and studio still get paid since you consumed their content, you didn't pressure or force them to make something toned down for you, and you still get to edit it to match your needs. Seems like a win for everybody.
A good way to get rid of the adults in a fantasy thing is to make it so that it is actually in the villains interest to have their weak point that, because writing, has to be beatable only accessible to children as they are the least likely to actually be able to defeat it. Basically just Neon Genesis Evangelion’s justification.
Dan is correct that broadly superhero stories maintain the status quo, it's not a knock of people who enjoy them--and he didn't imply that--it's just the reality of many of those stories. They are about defending the status quo against attacks from things that are worse. It doesn't have the revolutionary quality of that brand of dystopian fiction, and it isn't interested in changing systemic issues.
Re: Editing films for content. My family ADORED Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing" when it aired on The Disney Channel way back when. It wasn't until some years later that we rented a copy of the film and discovered (there was a lot of screaming and scrambling for the remote) that Disney had edited out a bunch of nudity. Honestly, I never would have known that an edit had been made. That's how unnecessary the nudity was. Without Disney being willing to make some judicious edits (ironic, considering the company's attitude toward filtering NOW), I never would have seen that otherwise lovely film. I think there's a place for "respecting an artist's vision" and there's a place for "those butts add nothing to the story, get them off of my screen." 😱
@@watcherofwatchers That's beside the point, but OK, you can watch the original version on YOUR screen, and I'll enjoy the butt-free version on mine. Cool? ;)
There's a good one of the Kid Specific Apocalypse: The Girl Who Owned a City. All the adults all turn into dust spontaneously, and the kids start building their own feudal civilization in Chicago.
The Zombie idea Brandon is describing is basically the loose idea behind "Daybreak" which is a comic that later got a Netflix adaptation I've only seen the Netflix one. It was good, sadly it only ran for one season due to it no being that popular. There's also a in-universe podcast on Spotify. It also has a very different tone from what Brandon is describing.
30:50 I wonder if fanfictions play into this. If the author waits "too long" with their sequel, half the fandom will have written their ultimate continuation fic and maybe dont want their "perfect ending" "destroyed" by canon. And there are so many more young/teen FF writers than in older generations
I think part of the... fluctuation with Novels sold and the boon of adaptations of lesser known works is exactly that. Less people know about the books, the see the adaptation and then want to check out the books. Like for ASoIaF and WoT the books sold presumably is a lot lower in the wake of the show, because it was already relatively well known to the general public. With Shadow and Bone it was more of a... niche (for a lack of a better term) that now gets "exposed" by the people that watched the show and want to know more about the world.
TBH I've had this weird random idea in the back of my head in a similar vein to this zombie idea about oh kids are the ones who can survive/win but with a kind of dumb twist of "it also saves kids at heart". Primarily I've though oh have "imagination" be the weapon that can kill the bad monsters or whatever and it seems like "Oh kids will be the saviors" but then an author, an engineer, and an office worker notorious for daydreams show up with mechs and dragons and tanks because they also have that kind of specially strong imagination.
I find it so interesting that Brandon considered himself outside the female protagonist YA dystopia trend when I always considered Mistborn to be a perfection of the genre
Shade's Children by Garth Nix is basically that premise. One day alp the adults above 14 disappear, kids all taken to work camps, get taken away at age 14 (their Sad Birthday)
I just realised Edgedancer is basically a food heist
Lift will never be a zombie.
You just opened my eyes
“I can’t think of people who have been waiting 10 years for a sequel in YA…”
*cough*rithmatist*cough*
😂😂😂
Hahaha, too true.
🤣
I literally just wrote that and scrolled down and saw this. :)
Brandon's zombie idea should be called " "quaran-teen" 🤣
It’s also an AMAZING idea!
The "kids are fine and adults are zombies" was done as a tv series on Netflix called Daybreak. Pretty much the *exact* premise Brandon described.
In French-Belgian Comics:
Kidz
With the adults not zombies but missing we also have in French-Belgian comics "Seuls!"
And adapted as a film "Seuls".
Also "The Tribe" a 1999 TV series (teen drama) where all adults got killed by an unknown virus.
Charlie Higson did that exact same plot in ‘The Enemy’ as well. It’s a series
Also somewhat similar to the specters in Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials. the affected adults don't become dangerous there, just empty shells, but the kids are immune, and we get the idea of a world run by wild kids.
Brandon's "zombie apocalypse where kids are the only survivors" is *almost* the premise of the Star Trek TOS episode, "Miri." (When kids hit puberty, they contract a degenerative disease that leaves them disfigured and feral, but they quickly die out as the disease overtakes them rather than sticking around as zombies in perpetuity.) Definitely deals with the social dynamics Brandon described, where kids live in fear of growing up, and live in a city that is unsettlingly empty.
Great reference! The quickening from DS:9 came to mind for me =)
Remove the zombies and use a deadly plague and you essentially have JMS's tv show Jeremiah
Best not to think about how society might persist
there is already a netflix show.anyone above 16 is a zombie and only kids survive
I was literally think of this and about reply this glad someone else did the work🤙
Food robbery happens more often that one might think. My family got robbed once (2004, Tahiti for Dave's collection) and the robbers did drink some beers and ate my mom's cake. These "nice guys" took the time to do the dishes before leaving. Police said that it wasn't uncomon for thieves to eat and drink on the job, but it was their first encouter with such clean robbers.
Stormlight:
Fairies give you power armor and giant swords
Lmfao 😂😂😂🤣
Those food related crime stories got me imagining a burglar with a dirt phobia who would rob someone's home and gets annoyed by the dirty dishes in the kitchen and the stains on the floor. He winds up leaving a trail of spotlessly cleaned kitchens throughout the city.
20:50 I have to defend Dan's point a bit. The difference between Jane Austin's characters and superheroes is that the latter have the means to change the world and use those means. Their conflict usually affects a large part of society instead of just playing a part in it. So I think Dan's argument that superheroes uphold the status quo has more merit to it than Brandon thinks.
There actually are a few superhero stories where they do use their powers to change the world. This usually results in a dystopia.
@@Duiker36 It's the a better world is not possible. A continuation of the same theme.
Brando’s bad story idea is actually an amazing story idea that was done really well by Charlie Higson in “The Enemy” series
30:20. Coughs in The Rithmatist. I read that 8 ish years ago? And I'll still be waiting for it in a few years.
Considering it was published in May of 2013, we're approaching 9 years this year. 🥺
These are the highlight of my Wednesday!
Edit: Thefts interrupted by food is my new favorite segment.
Pro Tip: if you're ever at home and someone breaks in... just have several sandwiches prepared and sitting on the kitchen counter. They'll be distracted and you can escape!!
@@citizensguard3433 I hope the police are taking notes. This is groundbreaking stuff.
@@citizensguard3433 If it's never worked against Santa Claus, how do you suppose it's going to work for any other break-in?
@@groofay that's a false comparison. You're watching a Sanderson podcast and can't recognize a magic system when you see one? For shame! Clearly, you have to be Tim Allen to kill Santa. Because Tim Allen killed Santa in that first movie. And no one cared. Santa is impervious to all modern weaponry and wizard spells. He has the highest resistance stats and defense buffs known to man. His only weakness is the star of the 90s sitcom Home Improvement. Because that star... killed him. And no one cared. Why isn't this weird to anyone BTW? The MC killed a dude and we gloss over it? He just steals his clothes and becomes him?
In summation, that's the story of how Rudolph saved the Easter Bunny.
@@loganm7771 actually, this is already well known inside baseball here. Probably shouldn't be revealing the secrets like this but I'm using a VPN so... yeah. Anyway, why do you think police are known for liking donuts. Think it's a love of sugary carbs? Nay!! It's a discus of robber catcher. They toss them at dastardly deviants and the criminal is immediately subdued. No ne'er-do-well can resist the power of a donut. (Edit: Attack on Typo: Season 4)
Daybreak on netlix does the whole "all adults are zombies now" thing, but it uses it more fore social commentary (a lot of moralizing at the audience).
Was looking for this comment.
reminds me of warm bodies. the zombies tended to be adults, but could be largely healed through loving touch and company with the living
Really glad Brandon also likes Unwind!!! I love Neil Shusterman's books and Scythe is one of my favorite books ever. I love how he uses everything the YA advantages and twist some thing so we can have the themed in the books properly explored and with interesting thoughts. Maybe they are not philosophical works of the higher category but I do think they do what they do very very well.
I really love listening to these podcasts. Fascinating stuff about genres, audiences, influences, other writers, etc.
"If you're not dealing with systemic issues then you're defending the status quo" is a classic rhetorical trick, particularly for the politics of our time, good on Brandon to point that out
Iron Man's a particularly bad example, since he's drastically changing the direction of his formerly weapons company, breaking up terrorist groups, and reintroducing his world to superheroes. He's one of the most anti-status quo supers out there.
I feel like the Reckoners series would be the easiest one to adapt for a show of all of the Sanderson series that I have read. I would love a well done Mistborn series as well, but that might be difficult. Maybe Legion would be a good one too, I could see that as a fun show to watch as well.
I am actually shocked that reckoners has not been adapted since we have been in a super hero craze for 12ish years in hollywood
@@metumortis6323 I feel like The Boyz might have taken that corner though and not sure how many people would support Reckoners over that, even though it would still be cool to see
@@dylangillespie8378fair point but the Boyz was still made even though the Watchman was adapted. I still feel like it's different enough to work. Kind of like Invincable did as an adaptations
Problem with The Reckongners is people will say it's the YA version of The Boys
Michael Grant's "Gone" was a really interesting "all the adults are gone" series. I thought I recognized the writing and then realized he's KA Applegate's husband and the often co author. I looooved Animorphs when I was younger.
A great discussion as always! I love hearing an insider perspective on book trends. Keep the food heists and all their adjacents coming!
In this book, human emotions are independent beings and people learn to coexist with them :D
I hope all my disagreements happen like Brandon and Dan here. They kept it cordial and light where it needed to be, and discussed their position on each series. Very good.
25:20 The Cosmere reduced:
He finds out he is a magic zombie
She finds out she is a magic assasin
He is a magic law man
He/she finds a magic pixie
She finds a stash of magic she doesnt want
He has a bunch of magic birds
He finds a different way to use magic sand
She has a magic ghost
She can make magic stamps
aaand I think that covers it,
Cough. Rithmatist. Cough.
Lots of people are waiting for Rithmatist. And oh yeah cough Bastille.
Adam/Brandon- You very well know the reason that Epic Fantasy didn't go the way of Dystopians! The reason is Journey Before Destination! The McGuffin isn't the point of an epic fantasy novel, it's about the adventure. You can write an epic fantasy with literally any themes, lessons, character archetypes, plots, etc that you could possibly imagine-- and indeed you do! However, in most dystopian fantasy that I've read, the ending is more integral to the themes and messages of the story than in epic fantasy. The McGuffin in dystopians teaches us lessons, leads to the world becoming better, and adds hope to the story. But a story like SLA would be just as meaningful with a tragic ending as a happy one, and it wouldn't compromise the message of previous books if everyone dies at the end. You have a lot more freedom to express yourself as an author in epic fantasy.
Brandon's bad story idea reminds me of the episode "Miri" of Star Trek: The Original Series. I haven't seen it in ages and don't remember the details, but I know it involves a disease that turns adults into mindless monsters, and the teenagers are turning into them, too, as they get older.
THAT’S the one I was thinking of!
YES! I think the kids kept referring to the monsters as "Rents" and eventually the crew figured out it was shortened from "parents," and it was this huge lightbulb moment.
Yes, and in the early 2000s the Sci-Fi channel had a post-apoc series called "Jeremiah" where a disease or bio weapon killed off the entire population, except for pre-puberty children. The story began when the children had grown up and tried to pick up the peices of the old world.
O wow, more than one person thought of Miri. nice, I’m in the right space
When y’all were talking about the ‘adults are zombies, kids aren’t’ it reminded me of a show called The Sparticle Mystery where anyone above the age of fifteen has disappeared over night and kids are left to run the world. From what I remember, a group of kids is traveling and trying to figure out what happened and along the way they meet other children who are making their own colonies and things. It’s basically kids creating their own society with the fear that when they turn fifteen they might disappear
19:57 "Iron Man is about maintaining the status quo; the world sucks but I'm going to keep it the way it is" Sorry, what? The whole point of Tony's arc in Iron Man 1 (and the rest of the MCU) is that he's realised he's made the world a worse place through his arms deals and is now going to use his technology for good instead of facilitating wars.
When you age and become and adult you turn into a “Zombie” is actually Subtle Knife plot !
The story idea immediately reminded me of Cittàgazze from His Dark Materials.
Exactly what I was thinking!
i miss Pantalaimon. cant wait for s3 :)))
"The enemy " series is exactly that story but set in London
came to the comments for this. The emptiness of that city has always made it feel like home to me.
What I love about this series is how we get to see the thoughts and processes (and rabbit trails) these authors go through. Keep it up!
Uglies was a great series! I always felt that it was wrongfully overshadowed by The Hunger Games.
My husband and I loved both series, but we have definitely gone back to the Uglies more.
Brandon’s children being immune to the zombie virus idea is also the plot of Charlie Higson’s The Enemy series. I remember really enjoying them as a kid, especially if you like zombie stories without easy access to guns.
nothing better than a sander cast on my bday!! much thanks!
I think discussing whether a work seeks to maintain or change the status quo is a fine comparison. Maintaining the status quo is not bad, but it’s certainly not just YA dystopians that seek change. Most of Sando’s books involve some change or transition of status quo, from overthrowing fixing the Dor to Uniting Roshar, and that creates a neat lens through which to compare stuff like Mistborn Era 1’s Ska revolution to Era 2’s Wax trying to keep society together.
yeah, I found Brandon a bit too dismissive of that argument - Pointing out that a story where a character could upset the status quo but mostly doesn't isn't so much a criticism as a point of fact - and it's definitely something some superhero media adresses, notably that's a major theme in immmortal hulk, where the legitimate use of anger, and the extremism of those who want to maintain the satus quo is a recurring theme.
Brandon himself does struiggle with this in his own work, so I can see why he might be uneasy with this lense of analysis: as you said it's a major theme in mistborn, but as you recall the characters end up being the guardians of the satus quo in book 2 already as they take power and attempt to solidify and stabilize it - and in stormlight archive, Dalinar solidifies power from book 2 onwards 2, and Kaladin ends up being more or less an enforcer of the status quo as a result - and Dalinar does end up with accelerating an ongoing genocide as the solution to try to prevent a magical cataclysm - but it's also a way for him to solidify political power.
I'm not saying Brandon is wrong to tell the stories he tells, I'm a fan, but it's clear that he has an ambiguous relationship to politics and power in his writings - being critical of power imbalances, but not having fully shed some tropes about legitimate bloodlines and benevolent monarchs - And, having maybe not fully matured this theme, I think he has yet to write a truly great political storyline in one of his books.
Found your podcast last week and listened to all the episodes since then, love the conversations!
I've definitely read a number of different YA books with a similar premise to "all the adults are turned into monsters, kids survive the apocalypse"
Loving these food-heist openings so far.
I actually agree with Dan here. Superheroes, by their nature, want to "protect" and "save," which inherently involve maintaining the status quo. Batman isn't trying to revitalize the Gotham police department or lift people out of poverty, Superman isn't interfering in international matters of state, Spiderman isn't fighting gentrification in Queens, etc.
I think part of the struggle that heroes face is the fact that they have too much power, and so in trying to be responsible with it, they back away from making huge changes. How do they stop themselves from becoming corrupt overlords? Can they truly speak for the people when they weren't chosen to do so? Even if they were elected to a position, you can't ignore how their power impacts perception. They could easily, unintentionally even, coerce and intimate other politicians, which is really problematic.
@@elyseherrick37 yes but you can put the shoe on the other foot and say that given they power, they have a duty to use it against the corrupt system - why would it be okay to beat a bank robber, but not a politician, if both's action deprive regular folks? - not saying it's an easy theme to tackle, it's incredibly complicated, but there is an argument to be made that superheroes being accountable to institutions is all well and good, until those institution no longer serve the interests of the people.
@@maximeteppe7627 True! And that's pretty much what happens in Mistborn era 1, with the flip side of that addressed in Reckoners. I do think that if a Superman figure started toppling governments, it would be rather terrifying, unless done with extreme caution and as a last resort. Even then, it's tricky.
For anyone curious Brandon basically described Charlie Higson's The Enemy series. Its pretty fun.
Me and my kids loooooved the Zero G books!!! It has been the one time I have gotten them off their screens in the car and just listening to a book. Great stories and great choice of voice actors.
Oh man, Sam Wellers is my childhood! I have so many memories of just finding a good book there, then finding a nice little knook to read it in for the day.
This discussion reminded of a show called "Between" that I think ran on Netflix.
Wikipedia reminded me that "...the series stars Jennette McCurdy as Wiley Day, a pregnant teenage daughter of a minister living in the small town of Pretty Lake, which is coping with a mysterious disease that has killed everybody over the age of 21."
So it's not a zombie story and they don't have to fight off adults but screw it, this is close enough that I'm going to just throw this out there anyway. Gone by Michael Grant is a fantastic book series, it's like Lord of the Flies but with superpowers, it's fantastic. I highly recommend it
6:30. There's actually a book I read years ago that is literally that premise where adults were infected with some zombie disease and kids were immune up until a certain point I think. So there was an aspect of yea we want the older kids cuz they're more capable of protecting us but they're also a ticking timebomb. I dont know the title of this book but there was a father who drove a bus or something trying to help kids but he was infected and kept his zombie side satiated but munching on some human jerky meat. If anyone knows the title please comment below
The Girl With All The Gifts?
The book you’re talking about is The Enemy, by Charlie Higson. It’s a great read!
@@Zaffron77 I came here to say this!
@@Zaffron77 Yup I googled "zombie book where only adults are infected, bus driver" right after and that appeared first
love the podcast, always looking forward to it every week!
They talked about waiting for books and I immediately thought about the sequel to Cytonic, Defiant. Definitely can’t wait for that
Something similar, to Brandon's age idea, happens in His Dark Materials. The Spectres only target adults.
I also agree, the first Mistborn trilogy has the best resolution to any fantasy series
there is also a Tabletop RPG called bliss stage with a somewhat similar premise - but it's a riff on evangelion rather than zombie media. All adults are into a coma, and kids are the only one who stay awake and can fight the invasion. The idea that kids would fall into a coma when they reach a certain age causes a very similar type of dread as Brandon's Idea though.
I know you won’t see this, but eff that Reddit thread. I’m not an epic fantasy person myself, I’d like to be, but the world building and longevity of the books usually bores me within the first 100 pages. I just can’t get through the world building! Stormlight Archives though… *Chef’s Kiss* IT’S SO GOOD! There’s just enough world building to give you a clear picture of what’s going on, but you don’t go on to the point where my brain feels like mush, and I can’t actually keep up with what anything looks like anymore. You give juuust enough to give a clear picture, but also leave me wanting more. That is my first experience wanting more world building from any book, tv series, or movie haha! You’ve done a fantastical job on Stormlight archives so don’t let some stupid Reddit feed get ya down ♥️
Brandon: "I did a call with him."
Me: "Henry Cavill! as Dalinar!
That would be cool! Though in ny head, he looks more like Liam Cunningham (played Ser Davos in GoT).
Dalinar is in his 50s and it shows in his character... that would be super weird 🤣
Happily chiming in 1 year later to day "Netflix Did It" cool series of.pods for someone whos just finished WoT 😊 thanks 👍
You guys talking Witcher was spot on!
re: system-challenging YA, Dan's right.
As you spoke of Percy Jackson, can we just stop and admire the absolute brilliance with which Rick Riordan translated the charakters of the greek mythological figures into modern times?
It wasn't quite 10 years, but we Megan Whalen Turner diehards waited a LONG time for the last two books in the YA Queen's Thief series. It is essentially an epic fantasy story, even though the individual books don't necessarily fit the formula.
Brandon's idea is actually very simillar to what happens with the spectres in the second book of the His Dark Materials series. They kill every adult that shows up, but kids are immune
7:10 I have the perfect name for that book idea: 'Neverland'
The chicken nugget thought process is definitely, "I'm screwed, I'm going to jail... the food sucks there, I'm gonna go get my favorite nuggies before they get me"
Phillip Pullman essentially did that zombies story with the specters in HDM, and it didn't suck.
In the subtle knife, this is what I immediately thought of too!
Dan's right about superheroes' "heroism" conveniently never changing their world for the better.
I agree, but I gave it more thought, the super heroes are "gods", there would be issues with them doing/making the societal changes rather than the "mortals". I think this dynamic is looked at in many super hero properties. I get what Dan is saying though.
@@tony6795 I disagree. Superheroes are people to look up to. Batman is like Odysseus, human ingenuity and education scaled to the extreme; Superman is the same, but with moral ideals. Spider-Man teaches responsible use of talents. They're role models, and the moral encoded in our role models is, "Good guys keep things the way they are," and that's... Not great.
@@MrSilvUr meanwhile magneto is automatically the villain - so is killmonger - and while their are good reasons within each story as to why they should be seen as villainous, the fact that the revolutionaries always are chosen by the authors to be put in the role of the villain is a trend worth examining critically.
Brandon was way too dismissive and i think sometimes he flexes his status/ author cred on Dan.
@@Ray_D_Tutto To be fair to Brandon, Iron Man the 2008 movie *is* more about Tony becoming a better person. Like, while it's true that the trend of the genre as a whole has the issue Dan described, it's maybe not fair to say that *that* story is about maintaining the status quo in the specific -- especially because the first Iron Man involves the promise that Tony is going to revolutionize the world's technology by shifting his focus away from weapons. (Obviously, they didn't really do much with this after the movie, but I remember having the impression of, "Oh! Tony's gonna build arc reactors everywhere and give the world cheap, clean energy! That's awesome!")
Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom have my heart and soul ❤️
I normally listen exclusively to the podcast instead of watching the videos but I had to hop over here to say that "The Enemy" by Charlie Higson is exactly that YA adults-are-zombies story! Read it back in middle school :)
Mistborn fits that cover description (white girl in pretty dress / tight pants). I'm thinking of the 2nd edition Mass-Market Paperback (Tor), since that was the first one I saw.
That intro bad story idea is very similar to Maze Runner
About the adult zombies: "Daybreak" is a 2019 netflix series based on a comic by Brian Ralph.
Chicken nuggets lady most likely had been to jail before. It wasn't being mentally unstable. It was her remembering how awful prison food is and deciding to surrender but making a last ditch effort for some McDonald's before she lost her freedom.
Megan Whalen Turner's fan are life-long though! Start with The Thief and you'll see what enchants us. MWT took her time to craft each and every book and we waited patiently, and now the series is complete.
So a food heist (theft) that fits this narrative, my family owned a bar in which we alse sold sandwiches for a while, and a thief broke in one night, stole the money, or tried to, got drunk, eat very well, and had fallen a sleep in the middle of the bar. My dad "caught" him in the morning and called the police.
Every bar owner I know has a version of this story, which is slightly creepy.
Jeremiah was a TV show where a plague wiped out all the adults.
I support being able to personally edit out content one finds objectionable. Some of these directors and studios kick and scream when a service like Vidangel does it but then they allow editing to be done for tv and airplanes, which seems a bit hypocritical. I have used Vidangel for years and it's given me a chance to see so many wonderful movies and shows I wouldn't have otherwise watched. And while it's easy for some to say "just don't watch it if it's objectionable to you," that isn't really much of an option when there's not a ton of content that is in that acceptable range and is also good. At the end of the day, being able to personally edit something means the maker and studio still get paid since you consumed their content, you didn't pressure or force them to make something toned down for you, and you still get to edit it to match your needs. Seems like a win for everybody.
Every time the theme music starts I hear echoes of the Halloween version from Ep. 21. Even this many months later.
Me too lol 🤣
Same!
A good way to get rid of the adults in a fantasy thing is to make it so that it is actually in the villains interest to have their weak point that, because writing, has to be beatable only accessible to children as they are the least likely to actually be able to defeat it. Basically just Neon Genesis Evangelion’s justification.
Dan is correct that broadly superhero stories maintain the status quo, it's not a knock of people who enjoy them--and he didn't imply that--it's just the reality of many of those stories. They are about defending the status quo against attacks from things that are worse. It doesn't have the revolutionary quality of that brand of dystopian fiction, and it isn't interested in changing systemic issues.
It’s not 10 years quite yet, but I read the Rithmatist in Middle School and I’m still waiting 😂
Percy jackson was huge for me as a kid. Its probably the reason why I read fantasy today.
Pretty sure the kids survive zombie apocalypse idea is The Last Kids on Earth, by Max Brailler, and there was a netflix animated series
Still waiting and eager for the Rithmatist book 2
The kids turning into zombies at adulthood sounds like a fun role-playing game
Re: Editing films for content. My family ADORED Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing" when it aired on The Disney Channel way back when. It wasn't until some years later that we rented a copy of the film and discovered (there was a lot of screaming and scrambling for the remote) that Disney had edited out a bunch of nudity. Honestly, I never would have known that an edit had been made. That's how unnecessary the nudity was. Without Disney being willing to make some judicious edits (ironic, considering the company's attitude toward filtering NOW), I never would have seen that otherwise lovely film. I think there's a place for "respecting an artist's vision" and there's a place for "those butts add nothing to the story, get them off of my screen." 😱
It's just skin. *shrug*
@@watcherofwatchers That's beside the point, but OK, you can watch the original version on YOUR screen, and I'll enjoy the butt-free version on mine. Cool? ;)
There's a good one of the Kid Specific Apocalypse: The Girl Who Owned a City. All the adults all turn into dust spontaneously, and the kids start building their own feudal civilization in Chicago.
6:10 that's Charlie Higson's The Enemy series
Your kids vs evil reminds me of John Marsden’s YA series Tomorrow. It was written in the late 90s.
The Zombie idea Brandon is describing is basically the loose idea behind "Daybreak" which is a comic that later got a Netflix adaptation I've only seen the Netflix one. It was good, sadly it only ran for one season due to it no being that popular. There's also a in-universe podcast on Spotify. It also has a very different tone from what Brandon is describing.
30:50 I wonder if fanfictions play into this. If the author waits "too long" with their sequel, half the fandom will have written their ultimate continuation fic and maybe dont want their "perfect ending" "destroyed" by canon. And there are so many more young/teen FF writers than in older generations
I think part of the... fluctuation with Novels sold and the boon of adaptations of lesser known works is exactly that. Less people know about the books, the see the adaptation and then want to check out the books. Like for ASoIaF and WoT the books sold presumably is a lot lower in the wake of the show, because it was already relatively well known to the general public. With Shadow and Bone it was more of a... niche (for a lack of a better term) that now gets "exposed" by the people that watched the show and want to know more about the world.
"But neither is Jane Austen." 😆
Brandon's bad story idea is literally the plot of the Enemy Series by Charlie Higson. The series is excellent too.
Sereph of the End is an anime that started with all adults getting a virus and dying. The show then goes in a completely different direction though
TBH I've had this weird random idea in the back of my head in a similar vein to this zombie idea about oh kids are the ones who can survive/win but with a kind of dumb twist of "it also saves kids at heart". Primarily I've though oh have "imagination" be the weapon that can kill the bad monsters or whatever and it seems like "Oh kids will be the saviors" but then an author, an engineer, and an office worker notorious for daydreams show up with mechs and dragons and tanks because they also have that kind of specially strong imagination.
I find it so interesting that Brandon considered himself outside the female protagonist YA dystopia trend when I always considered Mistborn to be a perfection of the genre
You might be surprised how often people get away in a high speed chase. Super risky, and probably not worth trying, but definitely a chance.
The Enemy by Charlie higson is about a zombie plague that kids are immune to! I read it as a kid and it was pretty good
Shade's Children by Garth Nix is basically that premise. One day alp the adults above 14 disappear, kids all taken to work camps, get taken away at age 14 (their Sad Birthday)
Kids are fine, adults aren't, was an episode of Star Trek: TOS. It was filmed on the Andy Griffith Show set.
GONE was a book that did the “everyone over age 18 disappears” thing
The story idea made me think of "Between". No Zombies, but everyone died at 22.
I can totally respect a difference of sensibility, but it’s always strange to me when people are okay with violence but uncomfortable with sex.
I think you guys would enjoy a certain story that came out of Florida a few years ago. Man robs Wendy’s with ALLIGATOR!!!!!
I've heard a stand-up comedian talk about that, and it was hilarious!
@@loganm7771 I heard it from a comedian as well. I think it was Dry Bar Comedy.
@@bryantbodnar That's the one.
@@loganm7771 did he rob a Wendy's with an alligator or did he rob a Wendy's *with* an alligator?!
@@myrojyn It was "with" an alligator. For sure. Probably.
Please cast Henry Cavil in your series Brandon!! Seems like a match made in heaven!!!
8:22 the Girl who Owned a City!
This was the setting of the final futuristic earth in HG Wells book