 So, there are a lot of books out there with strange dystopias as the setting. Most of them have a repressive totalitarian government, beyond that though they often just have one gimmick apiece. And that gimmick is usually stupid. Don't get me wrong, plenty of dystopias are classics, often for good reason. They can convey some powerful messages about the world we live in if done properly. 1984 is still talked about today for good reason, it's a commentary on authoritarianism which is a problem that'll probably never go away. It takes a part of society and offers some very real commentary on it. The problem comes when someone makes a dystopia that doesn't say anything in particular. The dystopias that just show us an evil government and say, look, that's bad. The dystopian setting took over the young adult genre for a few years, meaning we got plenty of examples of this. We all know the type of setting I'm talking about. There's some sort of evil totalitarian government, probably in the remnants of the United States. The government controls people by splitting them into arbitrary groups that each has a specific role in society. Everyone is equally oppressed except for the ruling classes, there's no attempt to turn different ethnicities or religious groups against one another to prevent them from uniting. There's a rebellion that takes advantage of this by uniting them and then overthrowing the regime in a violent uprising. And a teenage girl plays a big role in this for some reason. You've probably seen something like this more than once, they all have bad role building that I want to complain about. One of them are long enough to make an entire video about though, so I've decided to compile them together. There will be some spoilers ahead, so beware. The Hunger Games Let's start with the one that began the craze. The Hunger Games takes place in a nation called Penem after some unspecified apocalypse. Penem is made up of 12 districts and a capital. The capital citizens rule everything and live in luxury while those who live in the districts toil away as little more than slaves to provide the resources needed for the capital's lavish lifestyle. Also there's a deathmatch every year and Stanley Tucci has blue hair. Truly an awful future. It's a pretty good story, and it manages to get the messages of income inequality and American obsession with violence across effectively. That said, there's plenty about this world that doesn't make much sense. First off, what do the citizens of the capital contribute? I don't mean economically, they're presumably the ones who consume all the products produced by the districts while they live in a sort of service-based post-industrial economy. I mean politically. How do they serve as a power base for President Snow? There's never any info given about how Penem was founded, but based on the districts being downtrodden provinces populated by borderline slaves, I think it's safe to predict that the capital was the heartland that conquered all the other areas after the apocalypse, much like any other empire. But how did they do it and how do they keep it under control? In old empires, the heartland was able to conquer other areas almost always through military might. Rome was a city that had such great military organization that it took over all of Italy, though it needed some help from allies. The Mongols were a relatively small tribe that took over basically everything the same way. In both cases, the citizens of the heartland served as a power base for the rulers because they could kill anyone who resisted them, but the capital citizens seemed to have little way of keeping control of the districts. District 2 provides most of the peacekeepers, read soldiers, so the capital isn't providing its own muscle, and it isn't in control of the advanced technology either because District 3 makes all of that. I can't think of anything that would give them any sort of way to maintain control. It's a miracle rebellion didn't come sooner. It's even more of a miracle that District 2 didn't overthrow them in a coup. Then there's the matter of the economy. Every district provides exactly one thing to the economy. District 12 does coal mining, District 4 does fishing, District 11 grows food, etc. The problem with that setup is pretty obvious. An economy that has no diversity is horribly unstable. Say there was an outbreak of some sort of disease in District 11 which killed off most of their crops. Then Penem would have no food and everyone would starve. But if every district made some food and 11 was just the main hub, they wouldn't be in so much trouble. This is a very simplified example, but that's the general idea. An economy with more than one industry is more resilient. Others have talked about this before so I won't go into too much detail. The bottom line is that the Hunger Games gets its message across at the cost of world building. Razorland Technically, this one is post-apocalyptic, but this is my video and I'll put whatever I want in it. This one takes place in a world that has been overrun by creatures called freaks. They're like humans except with claws and they like to eat humans and they're totally not zombies, okay? The main character girl lives in the tunnels under New York City, in a settlement full of people who never see the surface. The oldest person there is in his 20s, but he already has white hair and wrinkled skin because people age faster for some reason. I think it's supposed to be due to lack of nutrition, which is not how that works. If you're malnourished then you have health problems and grow shorter than other people and sometimes die if it's severe enough. You don't age like you got stuck outside the time machine. Since all the kids eat is meat, fish and mushrooms, it makes sense they'd be malnourished though. Anyways, the society is made up of three classes, builders, breeders and hunters. The protagonist is a girl named Deuce who becomes a hunter at age 15, teams up with a bad boy partner and you can figure out the rest of the story from that. It's not weird that there would be builders and hunters, especially since their food supply relies on catching meat. What's weird is that they aren't allowed to have children. Only the breeders make children and raise them. For one, how do they expect to keep a bunch of horny teenagers from having sex? For another, why would you only want a small part of your population reproducing? That's just a good way to kickstart inbreeding and calling certain traits from your population since all the smartest kids and best fighters can't pass on their genes. Then there's the fact that the kids only get assigned a job when they're 15, even though they die at 20. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to give kids jobs earlier so they do something productive with their time or make them apprentices so they have more time to train? I get that this was all set up by a bunch of shell-shocked children in the wake of an apocalypse, so it's fine that it's weird, I just feel like this would collapse pretty quickly rather than go on for generations like it did in the books. The only reason it eventually fell apart is because the Freaks started getting smarter and were able to overrun them. At least the societies above ground make more sense. They're still kind of dystopic, but they wouldn't fall apart under a stiff breeze. The Maze Runner. If you haven't seen slash read this series, the main characters all wake up in a maze with no memory of how they got there and they have to figure out what's going on. Turns out, a virus got released in the world called the Flair. The Flair slowly drives people insane before rotting their flesh and eventually killing them. There are some people who are immune, so they put them in dangerous situations to monitor their brain activity and develop a cure. Uh... What? It's a virus, guys, not a mental disorder. Scanning brains isn't going to tell you how they're immune. I don't know how wicked convinced the governments of the world that it was a good idea to spend time building giant mazes and developing snot robots to kill teenagers, but it's not going to help anyone. I imagine there are a lot of annoyed virologists that want to make a vaccine and can't get the funding. Then there's the matter of the solar flares. Around the time the Flair virus was released, solar flares from the sun hit the earth and burned up everything between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, turning it into a giant desert. Think about what that would do to the climate. Most of the rainforests would be gone, so all that water would get sucked into the atmosphere and create severe weather patterns. Flooding, hurricanes, snowstorms, and more would hit the earth. Then the changing patterns and wind would completely alter the temperature for the rest of the planet. Not to mention the negative ecological effects of having so many animals and plants wiped out along with the increase in ocean temperature and the damage to the ozone layer. Then there's all the agricultural land we'd lose, and while the books do touch on that, they treat it like a minor nuisance rather than the massive famine it would really be. Whatever. Time to move on. Legend. Legend takes place in the Republic of America, which is a totalitarian state on the remnants of the U.S. West Coast. You already know what life is like there. No participation in the political process for average people, no civil rights, poverty, corruption. You get the picture. I'm just going to put up a map of what the world would look like if all the ice caps melted here. Now here's a map of the books world. And apparently the oceans are still rising somehow, that's why people are fighting over territory. Oh god, is the Tibetan Plateau underwater? Are you serious? Also, most of Africa would be uninhabitable in this scenario, it's too damn hot, and Antarctica would still be a cold desert. But whatever, let's focus on the geopolitical aspect of this map. All of Africa has merged into a single confederation, which is not impossible, but pretty fucking unlikely. A lot of modern African nations have difficulty keeping themselves together due to not only ethnic and tribal divisions, but undeveloped economies and outside exploitation as well. If they could get themselves together in the wake of this apocalypse, I don't doubt that they could become a major power and I don't doubt borders could be redrawn. That said, most nations would probably either break up into smaller ones or merge into regional powers based on things like religion or ethnicity. Ditto for the Middle East, which unified under the name, the Middle East. If you hear heavy breathing, that's just Crown Prince Solomon, ignore him. On the plus side, everyone in Scotland got to watch the English drown. But let's get back to the Republic of America. Their main rival is called the Colonies of America, which is a stupid name. A colony is a place that's controlled by an outside country, sometimes with a degree of autonomy, but often not. Colonies, historically speaking, were seen as little more than resources to enrich the mother country. This was a major contributing factor to the American Revolution, embodied in the phrase, taxation without representation. There's no situation in which a sovereign nation is a colony. If it was, then it wouldn't be a sovereign nation. So why the hell would a country's official name have the word colonies in it? There are a million other names that would make more sense. The American Federation, the Free States of America, the American Commonwealth. Those are all off the top of my head and they're all better. As for the economy and government of the colonies, that's weird too. It's portrayed as a dystopic libertarian wet dream, worse than the Republic in some ways. We see that the police and emergency services won't help anybody if they can't afford to pay, leaving the working classes to fend for themselves and often cannibalize each other's wealth. As awful as this is for people, it would also be bad for the economy as a whole. If workers are unsafe and are unable to defend themselves, they're less able to perform the labor that the corpse need and they're less able to consume their products. Crime depresses the economy. That's the only reason the government cares about it. From what we see, the colonies are run by a couple of mega-corporations. But in the sense that they bought out the government, they ARE the government. They wage war, despite the crippling expense of doing so, negotiate with foreign countries and do other things that would never generate a profit. It would make far more sense for the mega-corps to just play puppet master and let the taxpayers cover expenses for unprofitable activities. You know, the way they've always done IRL. Say what you will about the Republic's dictatorship. At least the government would, you know, function as a government. And this isn't done in a cyberpunk way where society has fallen into a chaotic, shapeless mess. That sort of thing isn't supposed to make sense, and it's more about how technology affects us than anything else. This is done in an effort to show how horrible unrestrained capitalism, which is true, but it also shows the colonies winning against the Republic militarily and politically, which suggests that their way of running things is more effective. Kind of shoots your message in the foot. Then there's Denver's Shield. God Almighty, I hate this thing. Apparently, the best way to defend a capital city from attack is not to set up anti-aircraft guns or missile defense silos or have your own aircraft on standby. No, the best way to protect it is to build a giant wall around the city that has a retractable roof. I've been to Denver many times. It's a big city. You would need hundreds of square miles of building materials to cover everything like that, and it wouldn't even work very well. Castles and walls worked great as defenses before we had missiles that could blow them up. A shield like Denver's would protect them from a few attacks before it collapsed and killed everyone in the city. Time to keep going. The selection. Man, this takes me back. I complained plenty about this one in my review two years ago, and I'll go over what I said there real quick. The story takes place in the ruins of Canada. No, of course not. It's in the remains of the United States. Now it's called Ilea, and it is run by a monarchy. The main character is named America, and when the Ilea and royal family host a contest to find their son a wife, she becomes one of the candidates. So first off, we have the new queen being chosen through a game show. Guys, even if you're trying to make a point about commodifying the fantasy of the ruling class lifestyle the way reality shows like keeping up what the Kardashians do, and to be clear, this book is glorifying that sort of fantasy, not criticizing it, this just doesn't make sense. In a monarchy, marriages are arranged for political purposes. They form alliances between dynasties, bring wealth into faltering countries, and offer control of strategic resources or locations. If we assume this is kind of like modern monarchies where that's less important and power comes from controlling certain resources, e.g. the Saudi royal family's monopoly on oil, sure, okay. But then why not just let the prince pick a wife in his own way? Wouldn't inviting strangers into the palace leave you vulnerable to spies? Isn't security an issue? Hello? Anyone? Then there's the United States becoming a monarchy. Apparently a third world war started because a country called New Asia didn't like that the U.S. wasn't paying off its debt so they invaded. First, New Asia is a dumb fucking name that would never exist. Second, this painful commentary on the American government's debt to foreign countries doesn't add up because at this point most of the creditors have made more money off the interest than they would have after the principal. Second, this painful commentary on the American government's debt to foreign countries doesn't add up because at this point most of the creditors have made more money off the interest than they would off the principal. Not to mention that an invasion would cost far more than it would make and the country is too big to ever occupy. The caste system seems reasonable enough. Elans are divided into eight different groups based on their birth, sure, whatever. But how did they convince people to eradicate the previous government? A modern dictatorship that pretends to be democratic would make sense. This just feels like there was a radical shift in thinking for no reason. If you wanted to tell this sort of story, just put it in an alternate reality. At least that way you could maybe get away with this sort of thing. Article five, you'll never guess where this one takes place. No, really, you'll never guess. Did you guess the United States after it's been turned into a dictatorial hellhole? Well, this isn't a game show. There's no prize. The evil government here is basically the same as all the others except it's also run by religious extremists. All right, that's reasonable enough. We certainly have enough evangelical pricks here to pull something like that off. The US is at war with basically the whole world and most of the major cities and coasts have been abandoned or destroyed. So main character girl was born out of wedlock and so her and her mom are taken in by the evil government and sent to separate reeducation camps. Main character girl escapes and thus the story unfolds. Pretty simple. The one thing that struck me the most was the scene where MC girl goes to a store and sees chocolate for sale. It's far more expensive than it used to be but it's still there. That sounds like a country that's having some issues, not one that's on the verge of collapse. How the hell is the economy functioning at all? If the US is that cut off from the world, chocolate shouldn't be available at all. The ingredients don't grow here and if that many cities have been abandoned then they aren't producing any goods or services. With all the infrastructure destroyed or overwhelmed by refugees, things should have fallen into chaos long ago. During the American Civil War, destruction of agricultural land and a blockade by the Loyalist Navy led to a massive food shortage in the rebellious states. It got so bad that there were riots in some cities and an unknown number of people died from starvation related causes. That's what the US should look like here. The government must be third right levels of committed if they're still fighting and considering that there are armed rebels against their regime, they don't seem to have the support necessary to be that committed. I guess this one isn't as bad as some of the others since the evil government at least makes some sense. Still, it deserves mention, matched. Okay, before I start, I'll admit that I only read part of the first book in this series, so if I miss anything, I apologize. Match takes place in a society with, get this, an authoritarian government. This one arranges all marriages for the citizens along with restricting art, free speech, killing their elderly citizens, et cetera. Apparently the arranged marriages make everyone happy and healthier than other places. There are only 100 of each type of art, 100 songs, 100 stories, et cetera. Anyways, this main character girl gets matched with her best friend, but another guy flashes on the screen for a second and then she meets him and her heart is torn and it's dramatic and stuff. Cool. If kids are matched at 17 and have a courtship period before they get married, but they also have to get married by law, why bother with the courtship period at all? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to just get married as soon as they're matched? Well, if they did that, then I guess the protagonist couldn't spend the trilogy angsting over whose dick she wanted. If this is supposed to produce healthy children, shouldn't there be some people who don't get a match at all? If someone has genetic defects, do they just get pulled out of the matching pool? There are people called aberrations who don't get matched and are somewhat outcast from society, but that's based on their behavior, not genetics. It's more of a punishment than a system to keep people healthy. I get why they'd suppress art and expression. They wouldn't want people questioning the regime. It's a classic authoritarian tactic. I'm not sure why they would limit everything to 100 of every type of art though. People would get bored of that eventually and the art wouldn't be able to change to match the times. It would make more sense to allow people to make more but restrict what they can put in it or even pay people to make disguised propaganda. That's what real governments have done for literally thousands of years. This whole thing feels like it was put together just as an excuse to show how forcing people to marry other people they don't love is wrong and yeah, you're not going to find many people that disagree with that. This might have had some relevance or impact in a culture where arranged marriages are still a thing and American audience isn't going to feel much. This isn't a dystopia. It's just a weird fantasy of the authors shoved into a dystopian box. Conclusion. The most common theme throughout all of these is simply a lack of focus. Like I said, a dystopia is supposed to make some sort of point about real life. Otherwise it's not going to land with its audience. All most of these say is that authoritarianism is bad and most people already understand that. There's a lot of reasons the dystopian YA genre is so roundly mocked and faded away years ago. The biggest one is that they were all rehashing the same plot over and over and only slightly altering the setting and characters. The thing is, just saying, what if the government was evil and also made you fight vampires with nunchucks isn't all that intriguing. Some people liked getting the same story every time but the audience was only going to shrink over time. And to be honest, I feel bad for some of the authors that were trying to break into the market when these were dominance. I imagine a bunch of them turned in manuscripts to publishers only to get told that they should make it more like The Hunger Games. The worst part is that if publishers had changed things up, they could have created something just as successful and well-received as what they were copying. But you can never tell what will be a hit and what won't. Maybe changing things up would have just missed what the cultural zeitgeist was demanding at the time. In the end, art is subjective and oftentimes people don't know exactly what it is they want out of it. All right, this is getting too pretentious now. Time to end it. 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