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Replace “logic” with commentary then I would agree with you. The whole point of dystopia is to highlight and exaggerate societal issues, critiquing them throughout the story. A lot of YA dystopia after The Hunger Games just adopted the aesthetic and none of the commentary.
Whats worse is its a trend that will go on forever as long as Harry Potter and Percy Jackson make money (Not saying its their fault thats just how it goes)
I don't understand... there are so many beautiful black gemstones... onyx, obsidian, tourmaline, neptunite... how the actual fuck did this get past an editor
What I'm super sick of is a setting where it's meant to be post-apocalyptic but there's either plenty of a normally scarce resource like gasoline, or there's plenty of resources to still have a decadent aristocratic society at the top. Never mind that in real life, decadent aristocracies were only ever enabled by vast trade networks or empires, and times of relative world peace providing them with stability. "The world is an irradiated desert, but it's also still Versailles somehow" is the lazy starting point for dozens of cheap, bad YA dystopias.
The whole point is that the aristocracy has enough loyal military manpower that they can just strip the wasteland clean of all the good loot and resources, or fight other warlords and take their treasures, and hoard it all for themselves and their closest supporters. Meanwhile the plebs have to scrabble in the dirt, being driven either by soldiers loyal to the warlord, or by more fortunate plebs who have agreed to stomp on their fellows in return for a slightly better social standing.
You know what i hate about many dystopian novels is that protagonists are almost always teens or very young PPL . I want more dystopian novels where protagonists are old veterans or just generally middle aged washed up dad . It be fun
Or old men and women that have to be crafty and could use being underestimated. Russian grandmas help people flee, it could be a very refreshing take to have an ild crafty bastard, even if its a grandma surviving. Or middleaged men. Yeah. Or just people above 20 or 25 i guess.
yeah, outside ya dystopia protagonists usually are middle-aged men. i do like post apocalyptic fiction more than straight up dystopias so if my memories are skewed thats why lol
For people who don't get the scale between Mexico and Ecuador, is about the same between Seatle and Houston. Putting Aztec people in the Ecuatorian Amazon Forest is incredibly ignorant.
To be fair, here in Mexico there is a psychic calling himself the "Amazonian Cacique" "Cacique"is a precolumbian world for governors, _that existed only in Mexico,_ there are no Caciques in other countries, yet some mexican psychic gets away with calling himself that, and the mexican audience buys it
@@triccele And is also pretty much impossible to drive/walk across the border between Panama and Colombia, and the rainforest is on the other side of mountains that block the coast so the fact that they manage to get there in the first place is a much more interesting story than the book itself. Its like Nymeria and the ten thousand ships holy molly. Also what the hell happened to the thousands of natives from Brasil? Are they Astecs now? Also there´s like a million people living right next to where the "Astecs" are in the book, did the brasilians living in Acre just...Vanish?
@@joaogabrielalves8781i mean, you can walk across it, because people live there, it's that the Darien Gap is impossible for any mass logistics. Easier to just boat around it
I know, it sounds like the antagonists of the story don't care the future of their society and are just using the test to kill kids for shits and giggles.
7:48 Black people and dark South Asians actually suffer a higher rate of melanoma related fatalities because it's just literally harder to see the cancer on them and doctors aren't taught to properly inspect darker skin. I think they also tend to actually experience more skin cancers in general because not burning as easily means they're less likely to wear sunscreen as religiously as say, very white people
ngl this series is singlehandedly making me confident in being a writer because i get to be like "you know, my worldbuilding may be flawed, but at least i'm not the one making racist hunger games"
At the very least, I know that if the government is so preoccupied with other issues that they can't send in anything more than airdrops, that the riots alone would cause the country to fall apart. (You could AT LEAST bring in air support if you can send airdrops... It'd be cool if the story took place over 3/4 days though because the storms prevented aircraft from getting to the area and roadwork/debris removal companies had to set everything up for police/army to evacuate everyone, of which would take so long because said companies are also busy elsewhere in the USA. Since, you know, disasters)
Aztecs living on Ecuador. If they're Inca/Quechua I could let that pass, because the Inca Empire reached Ecuador during their expansion era. The capital of Ecuador, Quito was built during that era, being the oldest capital on the Americas.
I was gonna comment the same thing, crazy how some authors don't know things that were taught in 7th grade and accessible in a ten second google search
The best part about the coal thing is that jet exists. You know, the stone the color "jet black" is named after? It even is a type of coal, if you want to stick to that theme so badly (why), *except it is an actual gem.* The things you can learn with 5 minutes of Google.
Fucking coal and pearl, ugh. It should have been jet and chalk - a gemstone combined with one of the most common and low-value sedimentary stones. I mean come on! "Chalkies!" The slur is *right there!*
I have science issues with the first book. 1: skin cancer is already very curable with modern day medicine and in a lot of the world, skin cancer is not a death sentence but more of an inconvenience. 2: idk when this book was written but the ozone layer is not being depleted at the moment, it's healing
Mfw the Montreal Protocol is put into effect in 1989 to reduce Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) and save the rapidly-depleting ozone layer, standing as one of the single greatest moments of global collaboration in human history until the ISS began construction in 1998.
Science question about that first book: if Earth suddenly lost all protection from the sun's radiation, would being black REALLY be enough to save you from getting cancer?
The problem with the Testing is that if the goal is to create more-and more talented-doctors, engineers, etc., limiting it to a select number of students who get top grades _and_ can survive this insane test is the worst possible way to go about it. The more barriers there are to becoming an engineer, the fewer engineers you're going to get, and the less talent is going to end up in the field. And flat out killing a massive portion of your brightest students just takes even more potentially skilled workers out of play.
That was my problem with the Maze Runner series. Like, I know the people in that world were literally insane, but they were actively killing the people most likely to save their world with the most nonsensical “tests” that seemed to have nothing to do with finding a cure.
I've always found illnesses/supernatural events that conveniently kill adults and spare the book's target demographic to be contrived. Not that those stories aren't enjoyable; it's just not a worldbuilding choice I would make.
One of the best stories like that I remember was basically about a massive group of street kids whose parents had all either been drafted, arrested, or killed and the kids had to try and survive together while also staying far enough apart to avoid the government which wanted to send them to prison farms or something.
@@andrewdiaz3529the fact that I thought of both The Sky So Heavy by Claire Zorn and Tomorrow, When the War Began by James Marsden speaks volumes about how often this happens. Not just two novels, two specifically *Australian* novels.
It's kinda like those stories in a boarding school, sleepaway camp, or where all the adults are idiots or evil: To isolate the kids and force them to rely on each other and themselves. I mean, I might make it as a worldbuilding choice... but that would be more "An evil faerie/sorcerer/alien has decided to try to take over the world and has turned the adults into creatures... and wants to bring the kids up into the fold for whatever reason". It's not a desire to remove the adults - it's more because I would want to have the story ask questions like "Will I turn into a monster at 18?", "Is it okay to kill these creatures that are trying to kill us because they might be someone's parent and we know they can be changed back into a human?", "What'll happen if we do reverse this?".
Dystopia is the atonym of utopia. To my mind, that suggests that to qualify as a dystopian society, a setting needs to not be based on someone else's utopian idea and serve as a critique of that idea by showing how bad things would turn out if it were put into practice. 1984 critiqued the notion that society would be perfect if the "right" people were given absolute power, Brave New World attacked crude materialism as a measure of human wellbeing, The Handmaid's Tale exposed the faults of right wing Christian moralism etc. If you just have a generic "evil government" for the heroes to oppose with no real social commentary, you're writing adventure, not dystopia
Handmaid's tale was based on Muslim absolute theocracy iirc, just as a note. V for Vendetta is more Christian-critical media comparatively, at least the movie is.
1984 was a critique of both Nazi fascism and Stalinist communism. It wasn't about "what if we tried to put the right people into power", because IngSoc seized power, regardless of what the masses wanted. And if Emmanuel Goldstein's in-universe book is trustworthy, then the ideology of IngSoc is a complete sham, intended only to waste society's bounty and keep the proles miserable and downtrodden. 1984 is about the experience of living in a totalitarian dictatorship, what kind of mechanisms such a state might employ to maintain control, and the effect they would have on a person caught in such a system. Dystopia does not have to critique utopia. It just has to present a very dark, oppressive setting, with a major element of the story's conflict being the protagonist(s) being obstructed by the social, economic and/or political forces in their society.
Can we talk about how weird the Battlefield Earth cover is? Like the guy is just standing there with a blank expression on his face firing lasers in random directions. No indication who he's fighting if at all. And what the hell is the gun in his right hand doing? His arm is pointed down and facing us but the gun is firing completely to the side? When I look at this, I don't think "Action packed dystopia", I think "Get that high tech weaponry away from that crackhead before he hurts someone".
Yeah, _A jacked-up crackhead (and yeah-seriously,LOOK AT HIM! He's fucking cut-six pack and everything bruh! Shiiiettt,dawg..!)_ And to think,he was _considered essentially a futuristic primitive man here them,jeez.._
It's actually a pretty traditional cover layout for golden age competent man sci-fi literature. Buff dude in the middle of the cover with abs out, guns akimbo. Similar, to Conan-era heroic fantasy. It's not just dumb-looking, it's also derivative.
It’s great but also terrible. I have shelves of books like that, mostly purchased for a quarter at yard sales. Also most of them are terrible. A few are good, and a few more are “good” in that they are cheesy schlock.
OK but how do the starlings keep their reproduction at a sustainable replacement level? Making sure each woman has 2 kids before 25 would be hard. And who is raising all these kids if their parents all die mid twenties?
My three guesses? _Incest (because,really. You'd think that there would be a genetic thing to it if they're all literally isolated to one whole ass island w/out the possibility of genetic diversity and all that,son.),Teen Pregnancy (because DUH. Hellooooooo..The Handmaid's Tale/the Giver Quartet's calling,son!) and/or prostitution (Especially with the Males,females-mentioned above-and/or any possible castaway that their island folk captures and subjects them to that then,honestly..again,which could be an iffy here since again,throwing the above Incest mention here regarding lack of genetic diversity here,mind you so,unfortunately...) and or a combo of the three here,so to speak so.._ And also- _On that note of on the fact of who cares for these kids/people is...To tell you the truth here to be honest,I suggest the idea of that they have their own little orphanage/orphan colony sorta-situation here so,also....but that's just putting it here gently here then though here,honestly._
@@Candlemancer Yeah, and the kids could be raised to the age of 6-8 before the parents died, which is enough time for smart parents to get their kids in order and make plans. My question? Who's working all of the complex jobs needed for society? With the amount of education needed, they'd only be able to work for three years MAX, and they probably would just go for an easier job anyways considering the fact there's no reason to study for a hard job if neither you nor society can effectively reap what you sow.
To be fair to "racist hunger games" I'm decently sure the author intended it to be anti racist by reversing the situation, but ended up completely failing.
Ah yes seems like it happens all the time. In the effort to not be racist they somehow REALLY get racist. I played Sinking City in which the KKK hates the fish people Innsmouthers, ok obvious message. BUT the fish people are also violent Dagon worshipping nutjobs....not a great comparison to make! Some of them are ok but then some no they are super violent!
I want a novel where the protagonist is an old grizzled veteran and they're trying to protect the person who's the classic young dystopian protag (like The Last of Us but not necessarily zombie apocalypse)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy might be what you’re looking for. You might also like Between Two Fires by Christopher Beuhlman and the Dark Tower by Stephen King.
I feel acknowledged by the fact you mentioned people use your videos as background noise while playing games, because that’s exactly what I was doing while watching this.
Young "adult" novel worldbuilding guide: -Must take place in a post apocalyptic world (mandatory) -Generic dystopian government with no real motives other than acting as the story's villain -The dystopian government should have little to no grasp of modern day sciences, despite being several hundreds of years more advanced than us -Some kind of death game or whacky experiment as the main focus -Rebellion, led entirely by high school freshmen, the rebellion also must win at the end of the story, no exceptions -Adults in the rebellion should be slightly less evil than the dystopian government or have ties to the dystopian government (optional) -Zombies, but change what you'd call the zombies and name them something vague and unexciting like "Chargers" or "Squealers"
Also writing a pseudo-dystopian novel. The villain is just some guy, the army is similar to most countries’ armies today, there are no experiments but there are *dragons*, I’d say I’m doing pretty good!
My sisters darker than me and she still had her skin peeling off just from being in the sun for a few hours too long. I don't think the author's ever been to a beach XD. And fyi scientology comes after literally anyone who says "I think theyre weird" they have a website for it and I might be on it someday too.
Infecting the rest of the world with a deadly dicease and saying "is Ok we have a cure now" sounds like something the American Pie guys would do if they ended up in a post-apocalyptic dystopia
I wanna make a Dystopian story that's "Dystopic comedy" were it's supposed to poke fun at how society is comedically dystopic. The problem is, it'd end up bein too realistic....
I think cyberpunk dystopias are better. Their settings are related to our world and they can be crazy without ruining character development. Well, sometimes they can be bad too.
If you want a funny dystopia that deals with algorithms and machines (but without actually being cyberpunk), go read or listen to "QualityLand" by Marc-Uwe Kling. It's very significant in today's time.
I know you're not making the point in full seriousness, but the mental image of a Psyclo being the weight of a medium size horse just sent my brain on a magical journey. Horses eat so much by volume/weight because they're grazers and browsers. If Psyclos ate like horses, they'd also poop like horses, have bellies like horses (you need to put all that fermentative gut mileage somewhere after all), probably have some fantastic rose gardens, and physical aspects aside, they'd lose 75% of their perceived threat level because they'd prefer to be constantly nibbling on sillage or gorse or whatever, to keep their tummy happy. Furthermore, if Psyclos had an equine-ish digestive system, their entire food infrastructure would be very different from ours. We humans get a lot of mileage out of our digestive capacity. Not only can we eat pretty much anything that's not extra dedicated to poisoning us, our simple and short GI system makes pre-digestive technology i.e. cooking a great deal, allowing us to meet our caloric and nutritional requirements with smaller volumes of food, making for better efficiency in food production and storage. A human can pack a light load with a travel kettle and dehydrated foodstuffs, and go for a week. A horse-gut Psyclo can carry grains of concentrate pellets to supplement the energy expenditure, but they'll still require about half of their calories from roughage. So they'll need to carry poor density food like hay briquets, to alleviate situations where locally available plants aren't suitable for bulk feed, and avoid sudden changes in the quality when crossing steep environmental gradients. And that's assuming the environment has plenty of plant material so they can keep munching as they march... A bovid-gutted Psyclo would do just fine on poorer roughage than an equid-gutted one, thanks to the protein alchemy that goes on in the rumen. They'd also not need to eat all day long, since a bovine system is built to facilitate inhaling the food quick and being able to retreat to a secure spot to finish eating it.
YA dystopia's tend to fall into this trap of ''i'm special because i'm outside the pre established system'' but instead of using that as jumping off point to deconstruct the whole system its kept in place to make the main character(s) have a baseline of being special you can tell us how ''great but persecuted'' our protagonist is but if they're not doing anything to show everyone that the overall system is dumb and only exists to exploit people it kind of makes them look just as bad as those on top of it
I want to read the more-realistic deconstruction of that archetype: the "special" protagonist who overthrows the big mean ol' government buys into his or her own hype and establishes a new regime even worse than the prior one.
To me the problem of dystopia is that it's becoming a naturalized narrative. Instead of being a direct criticism and a warning, it become an inevitable end, since never is presented an alternative to what is the engine of most of these problems. Consequently plaguing the creative capacity of think a new worlds even in fiction.
Honestly I don’t mind everything taking place in North America, I’m also guilty of that just because I don’t trust myself to successfully write a different culture and geography without ridiculous amounts of research. There’s a good reason to set the story in the general geographical and cultural area you know best
I don't think you should be too insecure about it. Japanese writers, especially in manga, set stories in locations utterly foreign to Japan literally all of the time.
@@nadiaromantini8836 hmmm. Yeah but. I think that's done best when it's still technically fantasy. Berserk isn't set in France or Germany but Midland or something. It's clearly inspired by medieval Europe but doesn't pretend to be exactly that.
I still think one of the more hilarious things about Lightlark is how unbalanced the curses are. They’re meant to be ironic like that’s why the Starlings die at 25, because previously they lived for hundreds of years. Sunlings can’t go out during the day, Night people can’t go out during the Night. Meanwhile the funniest one is the Air people, whose power was that they can fly, and whose curse is that they can’t fly. Everyone else gets insanely debilitating curses that can kill them with one wrong move, while Air people just live normal lives lol
k you say "bad world-building is NOT the kiss of death" but I find it really hard to get into a story with it, and many flops like the Divergent trilogy would not be such big failures if they had better world-building.
@@090giver090 Unlike in lightlark where lightlark's island is described as small enough that you could explore the entire island in a day. In addition, the island is said to be surrounded by strong storms that block entry and exit from the island. But they still have access to the food that I just mentioned earlier, if it's said that only the upper classes have access then that's fine. The problem is said that ordinary people can also have the food I mentioned earlier without any problems.
@@Pancasilaist8752 Yep. I meant that even if there may be societies that haven't been contacted for ages, they aren't as advanced and well to do as Lightark. And this is what nags me a lot in a modern fiction. Instead of taking a whole concept authors single out one thing "in a vacuum" and run with it.
Wait. Your description of Lightlark and what it’s lacking would make for such a good story. Imagine living on an island you can never leave and knowing of the outside world only from stories passed down to you and the knowledge that there’s some sort of upcoming event where the outer world descends upon you for a period of time to do some sort of ritual. And maybe you’re dreaming of how this can shake up your boring life or whatever only to have the participants come and be nothing by like what you expected. Meanwhile the whole faction thing still exists in the outer world and they show up all at odds to find this place where people are living in harmony (or at least close it it. Depending on how the lore is established, it is possible for there to still be some racism even if it’s far downplayed). Obviously a story like this would need to be carefully written to depict its fantasy racism respectfully, but with sensitivity readers and research, it could be a really interesting exploration of it. And having a pov character who’s one of the islanders could be such an interesting way to learn about the world and explore its history and break down all of the conventions while still getting to play them straight.
It sounds to me like the book "Struck" was ghost written by the author of JoJo's bizarre adventure. The only thing that's missing is punching ghosts, but then again I haven't read it so maybe it also has punching ghosts.
I hadn't heard of "Save the Pearls", but your synopsis reminded me of something. From what I can gather: > The Sun is turbo-deadly > Deserted Earth > Society moved underground > Members of the higher social hierarchy levels are less susceptible to the Turbo Sun > Becoming a non-human (i.e.: some mythological figure) makes you less susceptible to the Turbo Sun That book is just Digital Devil Saga 2 with racism. In that game: > The Sun turns you to stone (this is lethal) > The Earth is completely deserted (the Sun killed most of the flora) > Society moved underground to not be exposed to the Sun > Members of the Karma Society have a big dome over them that stops the Sun from turning the people in it to stone > Becoming infected with a virus that turns you into a demon based on a mythological figure also happens to make you immune to the Sun However, the DDS duology is actually good, so there's that.
"corona was still a beer, i'd never been tear-gassed by police, and my channel was half the size it is now!" hey uhh...james you wanna run that middle part by us again?? i'm sure there's some context but like...all i'm thinking is some cop didn't like one of your reviews of his favourite book and tossing a gas grenade through your bedroom window
To be fair to the LightLark author, there was a time at her highschool where some classmates dropped dead every year for random reasons. Not sure if that was her inspiration, just wanted to share.
We really need more main characters like Will Graham, a mentally ill, neurodivergent adult that stumbles through life with his seven dogs. We're tired of barely legal teens being sexually harassed or sold off as currency.
I want a dystopian film about somebody who's anywhere between his 30s or even as far as 70s and hasn't accomplished anything in spite of his dreams of becoming famous person. But i also want the actions that said person takes to lead up to a Solar punk future Utopia. Going from a dystopia to utopia and having people understand that said utopia can very easily revert to the same dystopia if people let it. I'm nearing 30 now and i feel unbelievable debilitating depression from not having done much of anything in spite of my desires, but i found out the reason is due to mental/neurological illness due to a combination of ADHD, Autism and severe abuse i faced as a child and teen. Starting to fix the problems by asking for help, trying medication and trying everything i can do in spite of everything holding me back has been incredibly worth it and i would like to see a dystopian/utopian movie or novel that reflects that.
I'd love to start seeing Utopian novels again. Like, maybe the adventure is about trying to iron out the challenges of building a better world, the moral ambiguity of realistic compromises you'd have to make... maybe even bad guys who want to stop it!
Making a Utopia requires author to genuinely believe in the ideals on which said Utopia is built. And that's quite rare in our post-modernistic day and age.
@090giver090 I think people really over-inflate what influence Postmodernism has actually had on current art and academia. My experience has been that a lot of people don't seem to really know what postmodernism actually is. That said, there is a lot of cynicism and pessimism, such that it seems people's default attitude is that trying to make the world a better place somehow invariably leads to dystopia. This is absolutely a product of propaganda and historical distortion. However, we have a better understanding now of how complicated these projects can be and the nature of the compromises that have to be made in specific circumstances. I think a novel about attempting to build a Utopia while navigating the compromises of class collaboration and the need for defense, as well as lingering reactionary attitudes among the people, would make for a remarkably interesting read (albeit one that would open itself up to a lot of thoughtless criticism and the typical clichés).
@@090giver090 Problem is that utopian fiction is that it can easily turn into soapboxing, because if authors utopia is an idealized version of communism it's really easy for the book to seem as comie propaganda.
@@johannageisel5390 then there's also a posthumous 4th book in the series but the editor didn't really understand the first 3 books or the prequel super great so it's not the best presented and it might be better to look for the rough manuscripts from the anthology.
Well it’s not really a profound insight. A employee works for a employer who can be a person, institution or government in return for a salary, that’s fairly basic.
Well it’s not really a profound insight. A employee works for a employer who can be a person, institution or government in return for a salary, that’s fairly basic.
In my own dystopia WIP, which happens in Europe, I made it canon that every other YA distopia actually happened and so North America has just been wiped out from the earth while everyone else was chilling.
It's my 16th sun cycle day of the Georgian calendar and the government is administering oxygen! (I never do explain why I don't just leave the country). Oh no. I have to take my special test! I say as I wave my blonde hair in my messy bun and my dark eyes brighten.
I love the fantasy series Wheel of Time, still haven't finished it, but as the story progresses you learn you're reading a dystopia. The world is our own and this is either the distant past or future depending on how you look at because seasons turn and ages come to pass and once was will come again, paraphrasing the intro of like every book in the series that I've read. It's kinda cool and makes for a well thought out fantasy and dystopia and the TV series sucks balls.
I want a story about a "dystopian post-collapse resurgence" or "post-post-apocalyptic": The evil regime eventually got destroyed along with society in an apocalyptic event, but people survived and slowly started to rebuild civilization. Fast forward a couple hundred years, and there's the setting.
I always knew I disliked Dystopian Novels, but I think now I can finally put my finger on the reasons why, O was getting pretty close already, starting to notice that I can't ever seem to care about the world or the characters, because I knew every story was going to kill characters left and right without giving them much use other than shock value, or that the protagonists would always be teenagers and so on
@@Shrek_es_mi_pastor Exactly. Most adult dystopian fiction doesn’t suffer from any of the issues in this video. YA just makes most genres look bad lol.
Dude, it would be REALLY interesting to explore the basic premise of Young World from the PoV of the Western Hemisphere people who suddenly don’t have a country to go back to. Like, if you’re a military member stationed overseas, but your country and most of your government suddenly dissolve, what do you do? Do you follow your command chain or seek refuge in the country they’re stationed in? It would be a great way to talk about the challenges that real-world refugees struggle with but with a more familiar context-removing the sense of “That only happens in other places to people who aren’t like me” that first-world audiences (especially American audiences, let’s be real) tend to approach these topics with.
I really want a teen dystopian book where the twist is that the plucky rebels are actually just terrorist and the dystopian world is actually a utopia.
Thereis a significant flaw in the first part of your video, that being referring to Nationalities/ethnicities as races. It must be understrood that the book's conception of race is largely an american invention with a bit of Nazi stuff on the side, and it shows. The example of the Rwandan genocide was therefore wrong on a techicality, because it wasn't a racial difference that was defining, it was the ethnic one. Same with European nationalism, Germans and French people didn't like each other for most of industrial history, but only the Nazis drew a racial difference, and they were in power for only 12 of those 200 years. A Northern Frenchman and a German are indistinguishable just by looking at facial structure or skin coloration, the difference between them that coused nationalistic conflict was once again, not a racial one, but an Ethnic one, if you took a german baby and raised it in France it would most likely grow up to hate Germans and vice versa, because the difference that caused hostility was linguistic and cultural, not racial.
Latino as a race is very American and make no real sense. I have a friend that has slanted green eyes and red hair, because BRAZIL. Well, the whole concept of race doesn't survive much scientific scrutiny anyway, and is mostly a relatively recent social construction. It changed a lot along the centuries and places.
Though hearing about Save the Pearls made me somewhat concerned over a sci-fi universe I myself was building where the people had jet black skin (as in far blacker than normal, even their flesh and whites of their eyes are black) as a result of nanomachines and genetic engineering as protection for radiation alongside some other adaptations to better survive in space.
@@Aurelian369_ Well in an early version of the story they were basically a stand-in for the capitalist ruling class who had used technology that could have saved everyone solely for themselves. That version of the story was basically centered on the idea of two classes of people having drifted so far apart that they were alien to each other. The second version of the story meanwhile it was more that they were the last remnants of humanity living on a terraformed Mars after a horrible war spiraled way out of control and are now rediscovering humanities past and what their ancestors were trying to do, eventually leading these survivors into the interstellar age. Though this idea of the story has two versions I am pursuing, but I am unsure which I should do. In one version of the story they didn't start with the jet black skin, but rather they had adaptive skin that changed color depending on background radiation and it only became permanent after some events, whereas the second version they started with it. Still a lot to iron out and think about.
@@yurifairy2969 Well, being strictly technical, they kinda already ARE cyborgs, just it is on the cellular level. Apart from that radiation protection they also have extended lifespans, ability to interface with machines, improved healing, immunity to diseases and even some more extreme defense mechanisms against external threats.
@@roadrunner8608 That was the idea. To use natural resistance cranked to the extreme plus the aforementioned nanomachines to provide that full protection.
Since I have no intention of reading Save the Pearls, I want to ask a dumb worldbuilding question: Would clowns be considered a symbol of hatred against white people like how minstrel shows are in the real world, since clowns tend to have totally white skin, overly red lips and brightly colored hair? If not, I thought of that idea in less than five minutes after I first learned about this series, and even though it’s silly, if it were a background element it would give a clue as to how this society views white people. But I don’t think this series can be saved with more details like these.
I would enjoy seeing more videos like this one. It's really interesting, both from its entertainment value and from what I can learn for my own writing.
How about a video over the different zombie settings not sure what you could talk about different zombie types, maybe the different group dynamics of the people, how the military always tends to suck 😆 just an idea, awesome video!
Every YA dystopian I read I always wondered two things: what’s going on in the rest of the world and since America is treated as a myth in those books despite taking place in America, how would these characters react to a time traveler from the past? It would be cool to read a book that combines them
That "dieing on the 25th birthday" reminds me of Tales of Berseria. Tales of Berseria features the twleve year sickness, which consists of fevers that appear every twelve days which get gradually worse until they die on their twelfth birthday. One character even comments it sounds more like a curse. Of course it's better explained and is rather rare so it works better.
also about the height thing, iirc stronger gravity means its harder and takes more energy to grow upwards and i say that as someone with alien characters over 10ft (about 3m) tall i think it just boils down to the idea that the harder you try to justify your worldbuilding, the harder suspension of disbelief is "these aliens are huge because im the author and i say so" okay cool "these aliens are huge because of real life gravity" um akshually-
"im like that kid in your highschool english class that was very clearly autistic but he was unaware of it and talked about niche interests for way too long" he is just like me
Tbh I really liked that instead of another “happy fun times ending” it actually acknowledged that some random people couldn’t overthrow a hyper authoritarian regime.
I want the chosen one to be a grandparent. Their life honing a skill led up to this. They already have a family to carry on their name. No love triangle, just decades old spite and favors to cash in on. Granny goes with her knitting needles to do some grand thing. I'm tired of 15 year old protags.
the disease one reminded me of a book i read once called "gone." it was a single town that got trapped in a barrier and anyone over i believe 17 or 18 magically vanishes.the kids left over get superpowers too and now theres power struggles between teen gangs etc
As a South African I don't think the comment about Chinese/Japanese people at 5:30 is actually accurate. Seems like a corruption of the fact that nationalities(?) like the Taiwanese (not necessarily a distinct nation yet by this point) were treated as 'honorary white' for political purposes
To be fair, after the corona pandemic it doesn't seem that unrealistic that children are still forced to go to school despite nothing else functioning anymore
What was the big dystopia novel that set this off? Was it Hunger Games? Also yes yay I have Campfire and recently updated it with a ton of world building notes!
Dystopian fiction *should* start with the world building, story comes later. Like any grand storyline that isn't set in our universe, world building should always comes first.
"if the US debt defaulted, banks would go out of business" in a world where all adults pretty much die immediately, I'm going to assume there's bigger issues on Banks' plates than debt defaulting lol
Hey James, considering this is about Dystopias and their world building, have you considered reading “Arc of a Scythe” trilogy by Neal Shusterman? Its worldbuilding is actually decent!
Sorry to nitpick but at 5:00 you're making the common mistake of conflating race and ethnicity, which are not the same thing. I don't know how other cultures view race since most don't think of it nearly as much as Americans do, but the given examples of Hutus and Tutsis or Japanese and Chinese were different ethnicities, not races, with them not even considering the concept of race in the distinction.
Ok, There is more relevant example: Third Reich. They believed that Germanic "Aryans" are different race from people like "mediterranians" and Slavs that usually also being categorized as "Whites".
Race isn't a precisely defined concept, and there isn't a canonical list of groups that are (or are not) "races". There's no objective way to declare that a particular group of people is a "race" while a different group is merely an "ethnicity".
@@iapetusmccool you're right but nobody actually considers the given examples to be separate races. Race is almost universally a broader category than ethnicity, covering multiple ethnic groups.
![[ TEASER ] เงาะป่า - วงL.กฮ. | TMG RECORD](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/M4ObdFfcPww/mqdefault.jpg)
Standing on my head without using my hands hurt my neck, don't try it at home. Try Campfire instead!
Campfire's mobile app is 100% free, try it out here: www.campfirewriting.com/write/book-writing-app?TH-cam&JT_Q1_23
Gorb
Campfire has an app?! I need to test it.
Thanks for the heads up James, will try it at someone else's home instead👍
You should build your neck till it's huge and muscular. That way you could film every video upside down to assert alpha status.
Is he actually autistic?
The problem is dystopian fiction is nowadays focused on aesthetics instead of logic because of trend chasing.
Replace “logic” with commentary then I would agree with you. The whole point of dystopia is to highlight and exaggerate societal issues, critiquing them throughout the story. A lot of YA dystopia after The Hunger Games just adopted the aesthetic and none of the commentary.
Whats worse is its a trend that will go on forever as long as Harry Potter and Percy Jackson make money
(Not saying its their fault thats just how it goes)
@@CollegeDroputPowerpoints Percy Jackson still makes money?
@@ashikjaman1940 it's getting a show on disney. also he still writing books for it
That was an issue from the start though? Like the most recognisable elements from stuff like 1984 is the aesthetics of the government in the book.
the famous gemstone "coal"
Don't forget "cotton!"
@@Cat-cb9ep but I want to
Just gotta press it hard enough.
I don't understand... there are so many beautiful black gemstones... onyx, obsidian, tourmaline, neptunite... how the actual fuck did this get past an editor
@@flyingwind66 the editor was the whitest pearl that ever pearled.
What I'm super sick of is a setting where it's meant to be post-apocalyptic but there's either plenty of a normally scarce resource like gasoline, or there's plenty of resources to still have a decadent aristocratic society at the top. Never mind that in real life, decadent aristocracies were only ever enabled by vast trade networks or empires, and times of relative world peace providing them with stability. "The world is an irradiated desert, but it's also still Versailles somehow" is the lazy starting point for dozens of cheap, bad YA dystopias.
It makes sense, if the existence of Versailles in predicated on the wasteland remaining a wasteland.
*glances to Mad Max*
@@Terestrasz Let's admit it, road warriors on bicycles aren't the most badass aesthetic.
@@Terestrasz This also happens in Fist of the North Star.
The whole point is that the aristocracy has enough loyal military manpower that they can just strip the wasteland clean of all the good loot and resources, or fight other warlords and take their treasures, and hoard it all for themselves and their closest supporters. Meanwhile the plebs have to scrabble in the dirt, being driven either by soldiers loyal to the warlord, or by more fortunate plebs who have agreed to stomp on their fellows in return for a slightly better social standing.
My dream is to write a book and have James Tullos rip it to shreds
He should take stories and critiquing them. Whynot.
Mine is to have him read it, say he likes it, but never make a video on it because it wont give him views XD
@@CollegeDroputPowerpoints another good one XD
For real
My greatest fear
You know what i hate about many dystopian novels is that protagonists are almost always teens or very young PPL . I want more dystopian novels where protagonists are old veterans or just generally middle aged washed up dad . It be fun
Or old men and women that have to be crafty and could use being underestimated. Russian grandmas help people flee, it could be a very refreshing take to have an ild crafty bastard, even if its a grandma surviving.
Or middleaged men. Yeah. Or just people above 20 or 25 i guess.
Sounds like you read too many dystopia novels for the YA audience
@@SaulGoodman3D2049 That's because that's what most dystopia books are these days...
yeah, outside ya dystopia protagonists usually are middle-aged men. i do like post apocalyptic fiction more than straight up dystopias so if my memories are skewed thats why lol
Red Rising gets like that in the later books. Literally almost.
For people who don't get the scale between Mexico and Ecuador, is about the same between Seatle and Houston. Putting Aztec people in the Ecuatorian Amazon Forest is incredibly ignorant.
Isn't there also a big mountain range and a thick rain forest between the two as well.
To be fair, here in Mexico there is a psychic calling himself the "Amazonian Cacique"
"Cacique"is a precolumbian world for governors, _that existed only in Mexico,_ there are no Caciques in other countries, yet some mexican psychic gets away with calling himself that, and the mexican audience buys it
@@brandonawesome8589 there's actually two mountain ranges, the Mexican South Sierra Madre and the South American Andes.
@@triccele And is also pretty much impossible to drive/walk across the border between Panama and Colombia, and the rainforest is on the other side of mountains that block the coast so the fact that they manage to get there in the first place is a much more interesting story than the book itself. Its like Nymeria and the ten thousand ships holy molly. Also what the hell happened to the thousands of natives from Brasil? Are they Astecs now? Also there´s like a million people living right next to where the "Astecs" are in the book, did the brasilians living in Acre just...Vanish?
@@joaogabrielalves8781i mean, you can walk across it, because people live there, it's that the Darien Gap is impossible for any mass logistics. Easier to just boat around it
It's funny how the testing tried to parody a real thing but ended up falling into the same pitfalls as the thing it was trying to mock
You were supposed to destroy the tropes not become them.
I know, it sounds like the antagonists of the story don't care the future of their society and are just using the test to kill kids for shits and giggles.
7:48 Black people and dark South Asians actually suffer a higher rate of melanoma related fatalities because it's just literally harder to see the cancer on them and doctors aren't taught to properly inspect darker skin. I think they also tend to actually experience more skin cancers in general because not burning as easily means they're less likely to wear sunscreen as religiously as say, very white people
I am guilty of not wearing sunskin thinking my dark skin is enough to protect myself... then again, im a cheapskate and rather use a parasol
Interesting
@@2006HondaCivicDhey, so long as you're not in direct sunlight, you aren't a cheepskate, you're thrifty.
As a brown guy, I never heard of this but good thing I do wear sunscreen.
@@user-3550As a brown girl, I never wear sunscreen. I just avoid sun.
ngl this series is singlehandedly making me confident in being a writer because i get to be like "you know, my worldbuilding may be flawed, but at least i'm not the one making racist hunger games"
Or a book about a disease that somehow knows exactly when you turn 18
@@plumjet09Or apparently a book about a girl who's addicted to being struck by lightening
At the very least, I know that if the government is so preoccupied with other issues that they can't send in anything more than airdrops, that the riots alone would cause the country to fall apart. (You could AT LEAST bring in air support if you can send airdrops... It'd be cool if the story took place over 3/4 days though because the storms prevented aircraft from getting to the area and roadwork/debris removal companies had to set everything up for police/army to evacuate everyone, of which would take so long because said companies are also busy elsewhere in the USA. Since, you know, disasters)
This series is a huge confidence booster. If Racist Hunger Games can get published, so can I
LOL
Do you think books are published by magic or something@dihvocfoscocudvyvdd8101
REAL
Aztecs living on Ecuador.
If they're Inca/Quechua I could let that pass, because the Inca Empire reached Ecuador during their expansion era. The capital of Ecuador, Quito was built during that era, being the oldest capital on the Americas.
Your comment just gave me an epiphany: The author doesn't know that Aztecs and Inca were different groups of people.
@@JamesTullos Thats why its called "Mayincatec," just lump all precolumbian non-murican societies and blend them
@@JamesTullos DUDE WHAT. The obvious lack of research!!! One google search could have fixed that issue!!!
@GinHindew110 that's like having the austroiranian empire I hate it so much
I was gonna comment the same thing, crazy how some authors don't know things that were taught in 7th grade and accessible in a ten second google search
The best part about the coal thing is that jet exists. You know, the stone the color "jet black" is named after? It even is a type of coal, if you want to stick to that theme so badly (why), *except it is an actual gem.*
The things you can learn with 5 minutes of Google.
There's also morion (very dark/black gem quality quartz), if "jets" makes your brain auto-play whistle codes and intimidating finger-snapping.
I like "Onyx". It sounds cool and mysterious. Badass, even.
@@peccantis so that what the Morion Blade is named after.
@@johannageisel5390 Onxy is such a great name
Fucking coal and pearl, ugh. It should have been jet and chalk - a gemstone combined with one of the most common and low-value sedimentary stones.
I mean come on! "Chalkies!" The slur is *right there!*
I have science issues with the first book. 1: skin cancer is already very curable with modern day medicine and in a lot of the world, skin cancer is not a death sentence but more of an inconvenience. 2: idk when this book was written but the ozone layer is not being depleted at the moment, it's healing
The ozon layer is proof that it is possible, if not plausible, for humans to get our shit together
Mfw the Montreal Protocol is put into effect in 1989 to reduce Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) and save the rapidly-depleting ozone layer, standing as one of the single greatest moments of global collaboration in human history until the ISS began construction in 1998.
@@raxusveritas HUMANITY'S WILL MADE MANIFEST
It was written in 2012. The ozone layer first began noticeably recovering around 2000, from what I can find.
Science question about that first book: if Earth suddenly lost all protection from the sun's radiation, would being black REALLY be enough to save you from getting cancer?
The problem with the Testing is that if the goal is to create more-and more talented-doctors, engineers, etc., limiting it to a select number of students who get top grades _and_ can survive this insane test is the worst possible way to go about it. The more barriers there are to becoming an engineer, the fewer engineers you're going to get, and the less talent is going to end up in the field. And flat out killing a massive portion of your brightest students just takes even more potentially skilled workers out of play.
That was my problem with the Maze Runner series. Like, I know the people in that world were literally insane, but they were actively killing the people most likely to save their world with the most nonsensical “tests” that seemed to have nothing to do with finding a cure.
There could have been some interesting commentary there, if the authors had thought about it
“I had never been tear-gassed by the police.”
Care to share with the class?
Nice try FBI
@@cam4636 FBI? You mean, uh… “Fun Bucks Incorporated?” Leading distributor of Fun Bucks? Because if so, you’re spot on.
Now tell me the story.
@@lazydroidproductions1087 Not today Mr. CIA.
But more seriously it probably has something to do with being on the right side of the protests which occurred in the spring and summer of 2020.
@@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot or the wrong side depending on what you do.
I've always found illnesses/supernatural events that conveniently kill adults and spare the book's target demographic to be contrived. Not that those stories aren't enjoyable; it's just not a worldbuilding choice I would make.
One of the best stories like that I remember was basically about a massive group of street kids whose parents had all either been drafted, arrested, or killed and the kids had to try and survive together while also staying far enough apart to avoid the government which wanted to send them to prison farms or something.
That's because the authors of these works care less about worldbuilding and more about writing a story that appeals to their target demographic.
@@andrewdiaz3529the fact that I thought of both The Sky So Heavy by Claire Zorn and Tomorrow, When the War Began by James Marsden speaks volumes about how often this happens. Not just two novels, two specifically *Australian* novels.
@@egg_2705 I think the specific one I remembered was a game
It's kinda like those stories in a boarding school, sleepaway camp, or where all the adults are idiots or evil: To isolate the kids and force them to rely on each other and themselves.
I mean, I might make it as a worldbuilding choice... but that would be more "An evil faerie/sorcerer/alien has decided to try to take over the world and has turned the adults into creatures... and wants to bring the kids up into the fold for whatever reason".
It's not a desire to remove the adults - it's more because I would want to have the story ask questions like "Will I turn into a monster at 18?", "Is it okay to kill these creatures that are trying to kill us because they might be someone's parent and we know they can be changed back into a human?", "What'll happen if we do reverse this?".
Dystopia is the atonym of utopia. To my mind, that suggests that to qualify as a dystopian society, a setting needs to not be based on someone else's utopian idea and serve as a critique of that idea by showing how bad things would turn out if it were put into practice. 1984 critiqued the notion that society would be perfect if the "right" people were given absolute power, Brave New World attacked crude materialism as a measure of human wellbeing, The Handmaid's Tale exposed the faults of right wing Christian moralism etc. If you just have a generic "evil government" for the heroes to oppose with no real social commentary, you're writing adventure, not dystopia
Good point
Handmaid's tale was based on Muslim absolute theocracy iirc, just as a note. V for Vendetta is more Christian-critical media comparatively, at least the movie is.
@@smoochiemcgoo2218 author herself literally points to Christianity and far right radicalism as inspiration lol
@@wiseguy01 As well as the revolution in Iran around the same time she references, so I guess we're both right here.
1984 was a critique of both Nazi fascism and Stalinist communism. It wasn't about "what if we tried to put the right people into power", because IngSoc seized power, regardless of what the masses wanted. And if Emmanuel Goldstein's in-universe book is trustworthy, then the ideology of IngSoc is a complete sham, intended only to waste society's bounty and keep the proles miserable and downtrodden.
1984 is about the experience of living in a totalitarian dictatorship, what kind of mechanisms such a state might employ to maintain control, and the effect they would have on a person caught in such a system. Dystopia does not have to critique utopia. It just has to present a very dark, oppressive setting, with a major element of the story's conflict being the protagonist(s) being obstructed by the social, economic and/or political forces in their society.
Can we talk about how weird the Battlefield Earth cover is? Like the guy is just standing there with a blank expression on his face firing lasers in random directions. No indication who he's fighting if at all. And what the hell is the gun in his right hand doing? His arm is pointed down and facing us but the gun is firing completely to the side? When I look at this, I don't think "Action packed dystopia", I think "Get that high tech weaponry away from that crackhead before he hurts someone".
Yeah, _A jacked-up crackhead (and yeah-seriously,LOOK AT HIM! He's fucking cut-six pack and everything bruh! Shiiiettt,dawg..!)_
And to think,he was _considered essentially a futuristic primitive man here them,jeez.._
it's so guys can put their faces in the buff spaceman cardboard cutout
It's actually a pretty traditional cover layout for golden age competent man sci-fi literature. Buff dude in the middle of the cover with abs out, guns akimbo.
Similar, to Conan-era heroic fantasy.
It's not just dumb-looking, it's also derivative.
It’s great but also terrible. I have shelves of books like that, mostly purchased for a quarter at yard sales. Also most of them are terrible. A few are good, and a few more are “good” in that they are cheesy schlock.
I kind of like it because it's silly-looking
OK but how do the starlings keep their reproduction at a sustainable replacement level? Making sure each woman has 2 kids before 25 would be hard. And who is raising all these kids if their parents all die mid twenties?
My three guesses?
_Incest (because,really. You'd think that there would be a genetic thing to it if they're all literally isolated to one whole ass island w/out the possibility of genetic diversity and all that,son.),Teen Pregnancy (because DUH. Hellooooooo..The Handmaid's Tale/the Giver Quartet's calling,son!) and/or prostitution (Especially with the Males,females-mentioned above-and/or any possible castaway that their island folk captures and subjects them to that then,honestly..again,which could be an iffy here since again,throwing the above Incest mention here regarding lack of genetic diversity here,mind you so,unfortunately...) and or a combo of the three here,so to speak so.._
And also- _On that note of on the fact of who cares for these kids/people is...To tell you the truth here to be honest,I suggest the idea of that they have their own little orphanage/orphan colony sorta-situation here so,also....but that's just putting it here gently here then though here,honestly._
Well starting reproduction early would be the first necessity. Easy to have more than 2 kids by 25 when you have the first at 16.
@@Candlemancer Yeah, and the kids could be raised to the age of 6-8 before the parents died, which is enough time for smart parents to get their kids in order and make plans.
My question? Who's working all of the complex jobs needed for society? With the amount of education needed, they'd only be able to work for three years MAX, and they probably would just go for an easier job anyways considering the fact there's no reason to study for a hard job if neither you nor society can effectively reap what you sow.
To be fair to "racist hunger games" I'm decently sure the author intended it to be anti racist by reversing the situation, but ended up completely failing.
Woah, anti-racist work turns to be extremely racist! That basically never happens!
Shocker/s
Ah yes seems like it happens all the time. In the effort to not be racist they somehow REALLY get racist. I played Sinking City in which the KKK hates the fish people Innsmouthers, ok obvious message. BUT the fish people are also violent Dagon worshipping nutjobs....not a great comparison to make! Some of them are ok but then some no they are super violent!
_surprised Pikachu face_
A story that shows a lot of racism can still be anti racist as long as the racism is portrayed as something bad
I want a novel where the protagonist is an old grizzled veteran and they're trying to protect the person who's the classic young dystopian protag (like The Last of Us but not necessarily zombie apocalypse)
US veterans protecting people is more unrealistic than most dystopian novels lol
@@antipsychotic451 😂😂😂😂😂
@@antipsychotic451 So you'd think
The Road by Cormac McCarthy might be what you’re looking for. You might also like Between Two Fires by Christopher Beuhlman and the Dark Tower by Stephen King.
Well I have got some very good news for you...I'll have to come back here and tell you when my novel comes out. :) Do you like cyberpunk?
I feel acknowledged by the fact you mentioned people use your videos as background noise while playing games, because that’s exactly what I was doing while watching this.
Have you accepted The Jesus into your life?:Kim:
Young "adult" novel worldbuilding guide:
-Must take place in a post apocalyptic world (mandatory)
-Generic dystopian government with no real motives other than acting as the story's villain
-The dystopian government should have little to no grasp of modern day sciences, despite being several hundreds of years more advanced than us
-Some kind of death game or whacky experiment as the main focus
-Rebellion, led entirely by high school freshmen, the rebellion also must win at the end of the story, no exceptions
-Adults in the rebellion should be slightly less evil than the dystopian government or have ties to the dystopian government (optional)
-Zombies, but change what you'd call the zombies and name them something vague and unexciting like "Chargers" or "Squealers"
I’m writing a dystopian novel, and I’m proud to say I have none of these cliches!
Also writing a pseudo-dystopian novel. The villain is just some guy, the army is similar to most countries’ armies today, there are no experiments but there are *dragons*, I’d say I’m doing pretty good!
im sorry but "squealers" made me giggle 💀
My sisters darker than me and she still had her skin peeling off just from being in the sun for a few hours too long.
I don't think the author's ever been to a beach XD.
And fyi scientology comes after literally anyone who says "I think theyre weird" they have a website for it and I might be on it someday too.
Infecting the rest of the world with a deadly dicease and saying "is Ok we have a cure now" sounds like something the American Pie guys would do if they ended up in a post-apocalyptic dystopia
I wanna make a Dystopian story that's "Dystopic comedy" were it's supposed to poke fun at how society is comedically dystopic.
The problem is, it'd end up bein too realistic....
Like how Jarhead was a jab at war movies but still got people to enlist in the end
Is this not the plot of Catch 22?
I’m doing that right now with my comic book series.
m.th-cam.com/video/7DPBkAdBw6k/w-d-xo.html
Idiocracy
it's truly amazing how easy it is to get a blurb from a new york times bestselling author apparently
Just as easy as becoming a NYT Bestseller
I think cyberpunk dystopias are better. Their settings are related to our world and they can be crazy without ruining character development. Well, sometimes they can be bad too.
If you want a funny dystopia that deals with algorithms and machines (but without actually being cyberpunk), go read or listen to "QualityLand" by Marc-Uwe Kling.
It's very significant in today's time.
I like them, but you read Neuromancer and you have read 100% of every cyberpunk story ever written. The genre is stagnant.
They are all the same
@@Shrek_es_mi_pastor spoken by someone with very little knowledge of cyberpunk
Boring settings
I know you're not making the point in full seriousness, but the mental image of a Psyclo being the weight of a medium size horse just sent my brain on a magical journey.
Horses eat so much by volume/weight because they're grazers and browsers. If Psyclos ate like horses, they'd also poop like horses, have bellies like horses (you need to put all that fermentative gut mileage somewhere after all), probably have some fantastic rose gardens, and physical aspects aside, they'd lose 75% of their perceived threat level because they'd prefer to be constantly nibbling on sillage or gorse or whatever, to keep their tummy happy.
Furthermore, if Psyclos had an equine-ish digestive system, their entire food infrastructure would be very different from ours. We humans get a lot of mileage out of our digestive capacity. Not only can we eat pretty much anything that's not extra dedicated to poisoning us, our simple and short GI system makes pre-digestive technology i.e. cooking a great deal, allowing us to meet our caloric and nutritional requirements with smaller volumes of food, making for better efficiency in food production and storage. A human can pack a light load with a travel kettle and dehydrated foodstuffs, and go for a week. A horse-gut Psyclo can carry grains of concentrate pellets to supplement the energy expenditure, but they'll still require about half of their calories from roughage. So they'll need to carry poor density food like hay briquets, to alleviate situations where locally available plants aren't suitable for bulk feed, and avoid sudden changes in the quality when crossing steep environmental gradients. And that's assuming the environment has plenty of plant material so they can keep munching as they march...
A bovid-gutted Psyclo would do just fine on poorer roughage than an equid-gutted one, thanks to the protein alchemy that goes on in the rumen. They'd also not need to eat all day long, since a bovine system is built to facilitate inhaling the food quick and being able to retreat to a secure spot to finish eating it.
YA dystopia's tend to fall into this trap of ''i'm special because i'm outside the pre established system'' but instead of using that as jumping off point to deconstruct the whole system its kept in place to make the main character(s) have a baseline of being special
you can tell us how ''great but persecuted'' our protagonist is but if they're not doing anything to show everyone that the overall system is dumb and only exists to exploit people it kind of makes them look just as bad as those on top of it
I want to read the more-realistic deconstruction of that archetype: the "special" protagonist who overthrows the big mean ol' government buys into his or her own hype and establishes a new regime even worse than the prior one.
That sounds like fun
To me the problem of dystopia is that it's becoming a naturalized narrative. Instead of being a direct criticism and a warning, it become an inevitable end, since never is presented an alternative to what is the engine of most of these problems. Consequently plaguing the creative capacity of think a new worlds even in fiction.
having to go to school even after society has collapsed truly is dystopian
Honestly I don’t mind everything taking place in North America, I’m also guilty of that just because I don’t trust myself to successfully write a different culture and geography without ridiculous amounts of research. There’s a good reason to set the story in the general geographical and cultural area you know best
I don't think you should be too insecure about it. Japanese writers, especially in manga, set stories in locations utterly foreign to Japan literally all of the time.
@@nadiaromantini8836 hmmm. Yeah but. I think that's done best when it's still technically fantasy. Berserk isn't set in France or Germany but Midland or something. It's clearly inspired by medieval Europe but doesn't pretend to be exactly that.
No Its just cringe??
@@aturchomicz821????
Always loved how Half-Life 2 takes place in Eastern Europe, that place gets basically 0 recognition. (Before the Ukrainian war of course lmao)
I still think one of the more hilarious things about Lightlark is how unbalanced the curses are. They’re meant to be ironic like that’s why the Starlings die at 25, because previously they lived for hundreds of years. Sunlings can’t go out during the day, Night people can’t go out during the Night. Meanwhile the funniest one is the Air people, whose power was that they can fly, and whose curse is that they can’t fly.
Everyone else gets insanely debilitating curses that can kill them with one wrong move, while Air people just live normal lives lol
k you say "bad world-building is NOT the kiss of death" but I find it really hard to get into a story with it, and many flops like the Divergent trilogy would not be such big failures if they had better world-building.
"... something to listen to while playing Dark Souls."
Me, playing Ds3 atm: "WTF JAMES"
Just put down Ds2 to play GoW before watching this video, feeling really called out NGL
assimilation and acculturation: *exists*
Logistics: *also exists*
Alex aster: I'll pretend I didn't see that
Well, there is this tribe on the North Sentinel Island IRL, but it's no way as numerous or advanced as Lightarck
@@090giver090 tribes on North sentinel island have no access to chocolate, cotton candy, or ice cream.
@@090giver090 Unlike in lightlark where lightlark's island is described as small enough that you could explore the entire island in a day. In addition, the island is said to be surrounded by strong storms that block entry and exit from the island. But they still have access to the food that I just mentioned earlier, if it's said that only the upper classes have access then that's fine. The problem is said that ordinary people can also have the food I mentioned earlier without any problems.
@@Pancasilaist8752 Yep. I meant that even if there may be societies that haven't been contacted for ages, they aren't as advanced and well to do as Lightark.
And this is what nags me a lot in a modern fiction. Instead of taking a whole concept authors single out one thing "in a vacuum" and run with it.
The issue with a lot of these writers is they don't appreciate where the things they use and eat come from.
Wait. Your description of Lightlark and what it’s lacking would make for such a good story. Imagine living on an island you can never leave and knowing of the outside world only from stories passed down to you and the knowledge that there’s some sort of upcoming event where the outer world descends upon you for a period of time to do some sort of ritual. And maybe you’re dreaming of how this can shake up your boring life or whatever only to have the participants come and be nothing by like what you expected.
Meanwhile the whole faction thing still exists in the outer world and they show up all at odds to find this place where people are living in harmony (or at least close it it. Depending on how the lore is established, it is possible for there to still be some racism even if it’s far downplayed).
Obviously a story like this would need to be carefully written to depict its fantasy racism respectfully, but with sensitivity readers and research, it could be a really interesting exploration of it. And having a pov character who’s one of the islanders could be such an interesting way to learn about the world and explore its history and break down all of the conventions while still getting to play them straight.
Honestly, this just sounds like the plot of Attack on Titan. It accomplishes many of the things you’ve described extremely well.
Soooo Attack on Titan? Lmao that's literally the plot.
It sounds to me like the book "Struck" was ghost written by the author of JoJo's bizarre adventure. The only thing that's missing is punching ghosts, but then again I haven't read it so maybe it also has punching ghosts.
I hadn't heard of "Save the Pearls", but your synopsis reminded me of something. From what I can gather:
> The Sun is turbo-deadly
> Deserted Earth
> Society moved underground
> Members of the higher social hierarchy levels are less susceptible to the Turbo Sun
> Becoming a non-human (i.e.: some mythological figure) makes you less susceptible to the Turbo Sun
That book is just Digital Devil Saga 2 with racism. In that game:
> The Sun turns you to stone (this is lethal)
> The Earth is completely deserted (the Sun killed most of the flora)
> Society moved underground to not be exposed to the Sun
> Members of the Karma Society have a big dome over them that stops the Sun from turning the people in it to stone
> Becoming infected with a virus that turns you into a demon based on a mythological figure also happens to make you immune to the Sun
However, the DDS duology is actually good, so there's that.
Only there isn't a VR simulation made up of half-remembered facimilies of real people a girl met once.
"corona was still a beer, i'd never been tear-gassed by police, and my channel was half the size it is now!"
hey uhh...james you wanna run that middle part by us again?? i'm sure there's some context but like...all i'm thinking is some cop didn't like one of your reviews of his favourite book and tossing a gas grenade through your bedroom window
distant “ALLEGIANT WAS GREAT!” *tear gas*
I will always care about crop yields.
First rule of worldbuilding: People gotta eat.
To be fair to the LightLark author, there was a time at her highschool where some classmates dropped dead every year for random reasons. Not sure if that was her inspiration, just wanted to share.
Tear gas by police?! 😰
We really need more main characters like Will Graham, a mentally ill, neurodivergent adult that stumbles through life with his seven dogs. We're tired of barely legal teens being sexually harassed or sold off as currency.
I want a dystopian film about somebody who's anywhere between his 30s or even as far as 70s and hasn't accomplished anything in spite of his dreams of becoming famous person.
But i also want the actions that said person takes to lead up to a Solar punk future Utopia.
Going from a dystopia to utopia and having people understand that said utopia can very easily revert to the same dystopia if people let it.
I'm nearing 30 now and i feel unbelievable debilitating depression from not having done much of anything in spite of my desires, but i found out the reason is due to mental/neurological illness due to a combination of ADHD, Autism and severe abuse i faced as a child and teen.
Starting to fix the problems by asking for help, trying medication and trying everything i can do in spite of everything holding me back has been incredibly worth it and i would like to see a dystopian/utopian movie or novel that reflects that.
I'd love to start seeing Utopian novels again. Like, maybe the adventure is about trying to iron out the challenges of building a better world, the moral ambiguity of realistic compromises you'd have to make... maybe even bad guys who want to stop it!
Making a Utopia requires author to genuinely believe in the ideals on which said Utopia is built. And that's quite rare in our post-modernistic day and age.
@090giver090 I think people really over-inflate what influence Postmodernism has actually had on current art and academia. My experience has been that a lot of people don't seem to really know what postmodernism actually is.
That said, there is a lot of cynicism and pessimism, such that it seems people's default attitude is that trying to make the world a better place somehow invariably leads to dystopia. This is absolutely a product of propaganda and historical distortion. However, we have a better understanding now of how complicated these projects can be and the nature of the compromises that have to be made in specific circumstances. I think a novel about attempting to build a Utopia while navigating the compromises of class collaboration and the need for defense, as well as lingering reactionary attitudes among the people, would make for a remarkably interesting read (albeit one that would open itself up to a lot of thoughtless criticism and the typical clichés).
@@connorscanlan2167 Yes, I should have taken "Post modernism" in a parenthesis. It's just its cynicism. Out of context usually.
@@090giver090 Problem is that utopian fiction is that it can easily turn into soapboxing, because if authors utopia is an idealized version of communism it's really easy for the book to seem as comie propaganda.
"And a bigger slice to our employer... But that's another discussion"
Loved that bit, would be excatic to hear the discussion!!!
It's just the fact that the employer pockets the surplus value. Some dudes named Marx and Engels wrote a trilogy about it. It's also a dystopia, btw.
@@johannageisel5390 then there's also a posthumous 4th book in the series but the editor didn't really understand the first 3 books or the prequel super great so it's not the best presented and it might be better to look for the rough manuscripts from the anthology.
@@johannageisel5390 Yeah, I figured that much))) just would love to hear James talking on this issues some time)
Well it’s not really a profound insight. A employee works for a employer who can be a person, institution or government in return for a salary, that’s fairly basic.
Well it’s not really a profound insight. A employee works for a employer who can be a person, institution or government in return for a salary, that’s fairly basic.
So... Lightlark is an Chile shaped island?
In my own dystopia WIP, which happens in Europe, I made it canon that every other YA distopia actually happened and so North America has just been wiped out from the earth while everyone else was chilling.
Have you played Disco Elysium? I would love to see you tackle the world building of my favorite game to read
The Pale is one of the scariest things in any game I've played
@@aniketbedade6997 like an even more lovecraftian the nothing from the never-ending story. But at least it's disco
Refreshing to see someone who actually, genuinely understands how subjective and arbitrary "races" are as a concept
It's my 16th sun cycle day of the Georgian calendar and the government is administering oxygen! (I never do explain why I don't just leave the country). Oh no. I have to take my special test! I say as I wave my blonde hair in my messy bun and my dark eyes brighten.
I love the fantasy series Wheel of Time, still haven't finished it, but as the story progresses you learn you're reading a dystopia. The world is our own and this is either the distant past or future depending on how you look at because seasons turn and ages come to pass and once was will come again, paraphrasing the intro of like every book in the series that I've read. It's kinda cool and makes for a well thought out fantasy and dystopia and the TV series sucks balls.
James when he got teargassed by police: "Bad worldbuilding."
I want a story about a "dystopian post-collapse resurgence" or "post-post-apocalyptic": The evil regime eventually got destroyed along with society in an apocalyptic event, but people survived and slowly started to rebuild civilization. Fast forward a couple hundred years, and there's the setting.
Middle ages
I actually had a similar idea about writing a “post-post-apocalyptic” story.
Fallout
@@lonle6506 Only in Europe.
I think you might like Nausicaa: Valley of the wind.
I always knew I disliked Dystopian Novels, but I think now I can finally put my finger on the reasons why, O was getting pretty close already, starting to notice that I can't ever seem to care about the world or the characters, because I knew every story was going to kill characters left and right without giving them much use other than shock value, or that the protagonists would always be teenagers and so on
YOUNG NOVEL dystopian novels, this are problems of bad dystopias, not the good ones like Brave New World or such
@@Shrek_es_mi_pastor Exactly. Most adult dystopian fiction doesn’t suffer from any of the issues in this video. YA just makes most genres look bad lol.
What’s this story about James getting tear gassed?
Dude, it would be REALLY interesting to explore the basic premise of Young World from the PoV of the Western Hemisphere people who suddenly don’t have a country to go back to. Like, if you’re a military member stationed overseas, but your country and most of your government suddenly dissolve, what do you do? Do you follow your command chain or seek refuge in the country they’re stationed in? It would be a great way to talk about the challenges that real-world refugees struggle with but with a more familiar context-removing the sense of “That only happens in other places to people who aren’t like me” that first-world audiences (especially American audiences, let’s be real) tend to approach these topics with.
I really want a teen dystopian book where the twist is that the plucky rebels are actually just terrorist and the dystopian world is actually a utopia.
So basically a prequel to a dystopian novel? Isn't that how extremist groups sell their ideas anyway?
Thereis a significant flaw in the first part of your video, that being referring to Nationalities/ethnicities as races. It must be understrood that the book's conception of race is largely an american invention with a bit of Nazi stuff on the side, and it shows. The example of the Rwandan genocide was therefore wrong on a techicality, because it wasn't a racial difference that was defining, it was the ethnic one. Same with European nationalism, Germans and French people didn't like each other for most of industrial history, but only the Nazis drew a racial difference, and they were in power for only 12 of those 200 years. A Northern Frenchman and a German are indistinguishable just by looking at facial structure or skin coloration, the difference between them that coused nationalistic conflict was once again, not a racial one, but an Ethnic one, if you took a german baby and raised it in France it would most likely grow up to hate Germans and vice versa, because the difference that caused hostility was linguistic and cultural, not racial.
Jokes on you I'm not playing Dark Souls, I'm playing The Long Dark
Pokemon Renegade Platinum here lol
I was playing Ashes Afterglow.
I was solving an online jigsaw puzzle.
I was drawing lmao
Latino as a race is very American and make no real sense. I have a friend that has slanted green eyes and red hair, because BRAZIL. Well, the whole concept of race doesn't survive much scientific scrutiny anyway, and is mostly a relatively recent social construction. It changed a lot along the centuries and places.
Though hearing about Save the Pearls made me somewhat concerned over a sci-fi universe I myself was building where the people had jet black skin (as in far blacker than normal, even their flesh and whites of their eyes are black) as a result of nanomachines and genetic engineering as protection for radiation alongside some other adaptations to better survive in space.
I think as long as your characters aren’t weird anti-black stereotypes, you’d be fine
@@Aurelian369_ Well in an early version of the story they were basically a stand-in for the capitalist ruling class who had used technology that could have saved everyone solely for themselves. That version of the story was basically centered on the idea of two classes of people having drifted so far apart that they were alien to each other.
The second version of the story meanwhile it was more that they were the last remnants of humanity living on a terraformed Mars after a horrible war spiraled way out of control and are now rediscovering humanities past and what their ancestors were trying to do, eventually leading these survivors into the interstellar age.
Though this idea of the story has two versions I am pursuing, but I am unsure which I should do. In one version of the story they didn't start with the jet black skin, but rather they had adaptive skin that changed color depending on background radiation and it only became permanent after some events, whereas the second version they started with it.
Still a lot to iron out and think about.
at that point, you might as well make them cyborgs with metal flesh or something
@@yurifairy2969 Well, being strictly technical, they kinda already ARE cyborgs, just it is on the cellular level. Apart from that radiation protection they also have extended lifespans, ability to interface with machines, improved healing, immunity to diseases and even some more extreme defense mechanisms against external threats.
@@roadrunner8608 That was the idea. To use natural resistance cranked to the extreme plus the aforementioned nanomachines to provide that full protection.
Since I have no intention of reading Save the Pearls, I want to ask a dumb worldbuilding question: Would clowns be considered a symbol of hatred against white people like how minstrel shows are in the real world, since clowns tend to have totally white skin, overly red lips and brightly colored hair?
If not, I thought of that idea in less than five minutes after I first learned about this series, and even though it’s silly, if it were a background element it would give a clue as to how this society views white people. But I don’t think this series can be saved with more details like these.
To be fair to Lightlark, it could be the island is in the eye of the storm.
this is making me feel better about my worldbuilding lol
I would enjoy seeing more videos like this one. It's really interesting, both from its entertainment value and from what I can learn for my own writing.
How about a video over the different zombie settings not sure what you could talk about different zombie types, maybe the different group dynamics of the people, how the military always tends to suck 😆 just an idea, awesome video!
Every YA dystopian I read I always wondered two things: what’s going on in the rest of the world and since America is treated as a myth in those books despite taking place in America, how would these characters react to a time traveler from the past? It would be cool to read a book that combines them
Falun Gong keeps leaving their little messages in the bathroom where I work.
why is it always the ruins of chicago and not detroit or sumn 😭
That "dieing on the 25th birthday" reminds me of Tales of Berseria. Tales of Berseria features the twleve year sickness, which consists of fevers that appear every twelve days which get gradually worse until they die on their twelfth birthday. One character even comments it sounds more like a curse. Of course it's better explained and is rather rare so it works better.
"Dying at 25" Isn't that the plot of Logan's Run?
ayo bro finally got a bookshelf and doesn't have to stack his books in his closet anymore W
also about the height thing, iirc stronger gravity means its harder and takes more energy to grow upwards
and i say that as someone with alien characters over 10ft (about 3m) tall
i think it just boils down to the idea that the harder you try to justify your worldbuilding, the harder suspension of disbelief is
"these aliens are huge because im the author and i say so" okay cool
"these aliens are huge because of real life gravity" um akshually-
“last time i released one… i had never been teargassed” bro WHAT DID U DOOOOO
the "and giving you something to listen to in the background while you play dark souls" got me because I was actually playing Dark Souls
7:58 It seems that according to the author, the sun is simply a deadly lazer.
Pfffft
Bill Wurtz reference
not anymore there’s a blan- oh fuck it’s just blackface
25:10 is the ultimate dystopian nightmare: the world ending but that does not excuse you from first period algebra
"im like that kid in your highschool english class that was very clearly autistic but he was unaware of it and talked about niche interests for way too long" he is just like me
This guy when authors in America set their books in the country they’re familiar with: 😮🤯
1984 is still the best dystopian novel. It will make you shivering
isnt half of that book george orwell venting out his hate boner for women
Tbh I really liked that instead of another “happy fun times ending” it actually acknowledged that some random people couldn’t overthrow a hyper authoritarian regime.
1984 is good but unwind is peak fiction
I want the chosen one to be a grandparent. Their life honing a skill led up to this. They already have a family to carry on their name. No love triangle, just decades old spite and favors to cash in on. Granny goes with her knitting needles to do some grand thing.
I'm tired of 15 year old protags.
the disease one reminded me of a book i read once called "gone." it was a single town that got trapped in a barrier and anyone over i believe 17 or 18 magically vanishes.the kids left over get superpowers too and now theres power struggles between teen gangs etc
Over 15. Every kid who turns 15 is tempted by an entity who resembles a close family member. The ones who refuse the entity stay in the bubble.
I loved those books. They were batshit.
I read those and enjoyed them, but looking back I think they seem pretty bad
As a South African I don't think the comment about Chinese/Japanese people at 5:30 is actually accurate. Seems like a corruption of the fact that nationalities(?) like the Taiwanese (not necessarily a distinct nation yet by this point) were treated as 'honorary white' for political purposes
_The Testing_ wants to be the _Hunger Games_ so badly 😂 That cover omg…
Gorb
true
Excellent point.
Grog
Ah yes, the Great Mind
we must ascend
To be fair, after the corona pandemic it doesn't seem that unrealistic that children are still forced to go to school despite nothing else functioning anymore
They use the internet to attend school
When the central component of your world-building falls apart when meeting a simple "But why?", it is probably not very good world-building.
What was the big dystopia novel that set this off? Was it Hunger Games? Also yes yay I have Campfire and recently updated it with a ton of world building notes!
Dystopian fiction *should* start with the world building, story comes later. Like any grand storyline that isn't set in our universe, world building should always comes first.
"if the US debt defaulted, banks would go out of business"
in a world where all adults pretty much die immediately, I'm going to assume there's bigger issues on Banks' plates than debt defaulting lol
So the Young World ripped off the plot of the Original Star Trek episode Miri? Oh yeah, what happened to the Intro Song that wasn't too long?
If I had a nickel for every time James mentioned Ecuador in this video I'd have two nickels
Hey James, considering this is about Dystopias and their world building, have you considered reading “Arc of a Scythe” trilogy by Neal Shusterman? Its worldbuilding is actually decent!
Sorry to nitpick but at 5:00 you're making the common mistake of conflating race and ethnicity, which are not the same thing. I don't know how other cultures view race since most don't think of it nearly as much as Americans do, but the given examples of Hutus and Tutsis or Japanese and Chinese were different ethnicities, not races, with them not even considering the concept of race in the distinction.
This. Only americans have that obsession with race, and I hate that it's being exported everywhere else.
Ok, There is more relevant example: Third Reich. They believed that Germanic "Aryans" are different race from people like "mediterranians" and Slavs that usually also being categorized as "Whites".
Race isn't a precisely defined concept, and there isn't a canonical list of groups that are (or are not) "races".
There's no objective way to declare that a particular group of people is a "race" while a different group is merely an "ethnicity".
@@iapetusmccool you're right but nobody actually considers the given examples to be separate races. Race is almost universally a broader category than ethnicity, covering multiple ethnic groups.
15:33 It's pronounced Eye-la. At least, it is when people on Earth have that name.
What
@@Terranallias18 Isla
@@Mecharnie_Dobbs people on Earth?
@@Terranallias18 You've never heard of people living on Earth? They do.
'Lightlark' isn't set on Earth.
@@Mecharnie_Dobbs Oh, I'm sorry that I misread your phrasing
26:45 I'm not playing Dark Souls! ...I'm drawing a comically oversized lollipop