 What's the worst society you can imagine? One ruled by corrupt megacorporations? One where the government gets to decide who you get to marry? One where everyone has to take drugs in order to suppress their emotions, leaving them as soulless drones? Whatever it is, it would fall under the umbrella of dystopia. The idea of a dystopia mainly exists as a cautionary tale. Works like 1984 and Animal Farm are some of the most famous dystopian stories in the world. They're all about totalitarian governments. Not just what they're like, but where they come from and how they maintain control over their population. Then there's other works that deal with things like religious fanaticism, extreme communist or capitalist ideologies, and basically everything that somebody thinks is bad. Most of us know about dystopias from the glut of young adult ones that came out after the Hunger Games became a hit. Most of us also have a very low opinion of them for this same reason. I'd argue that the primary reason that so many young adult dystopias that came out after the Hunger Games were so awful is because they didn't have a clear message that they wanted to send. In most cases they just took place in a world with a totalitarian government and the main character spot against it. See, I tied this into nostalgia somehow. It's not that the message totalitarianism sucks is a bad one. It's just that, one, it's a message that most of us know and so if you want it to have an impact then you have to tackle it from a different angle. And two, for dystopias to be effective, they have to focus on something specific. Animal Farm was all about Stalinism and how revolutionary fervor can wind up creating a society just like the one it replaced. The Hunger Games has a strong message about wealth inequality and how a high standard of living is only possible through the exploitation of others. The Handmaid's Tale deals with how religious extremism and the mistreatment of women go hand in hand. With all that out of the way, let's get to building a dystopian setting. Like with all world-building, the first question to ask is why you're doing this. If it's just for fun, do whatever the hell you want. But if it's for an RPG setting or a book or a movie, then you'll have to make sure all the details line up in a semi-realistic manner. By default dystopias are an extremely political genre since you're giving an example of what the world shouldn't be like. So ideally you'll be making an argument against whatever the world you create is. And in order to do that successfully, you want to avoid making a strawman version of an ideology you don't like, or on the flip side, accidentally making it look desirable. In this case, we're going to make a world that shows off the dangers of nationalism. This isn't to say that a setting can only focus on one thing at a time, but for the sake of simplicity, we'll just focus on that. To fit with the nostalgia theme, our setting will be something similar to all the YA dystopias, but less shitty. We'll put it in the remains of the United States after some sort of apocalypse. The exact nature of the apocalypse isn't important unless it ties into whatever message you're trying to send. For example, if the world ended in nuclear war, then that would lend itself well to a nuclear disarmament message. A world that ended in conflict over depleted resources lends itself well to anti-consumerist messages, etc. But to fit in with the YA trend, we'll keep it vague. The country where the action takes place will be called Tamantha. It'll be at constant war with its neighbors, which puts a strain on its populace. They have to put up with shortages of basic goods, high taxes, constriction, all that fun stuff. So how does the government convince the people to put up with this? Simple. They just make them feel like their destiny is tied to their country, then they'll be willing to make a few sacrifices for it. The easiest way to show that the government is propagandizing is to have some of that propaganda be displayed front and center. Things like posters, dramatic speeches, state-funded movies and television programs, you get the idea. Just having them in the background can give your audience the impression that this is going on. It makes it clear to modern minds that information is being controlled by the government, which is a clear sign of a dictatorship. Posters that say workers create the arms that keep us secure, or when you're hungry a soldier eats well tells the people that they aren't suffering for no reason. They're doing it to survive and that this is also temporary. It also ties them together by saying that there's some sort of external enemy that's out to get them. Feeling threatened is probably the best way to get people to work together, and working together builds a common identity. The problem is that just showing propaganda doesn't really make the audience understand how a normal person would buy into this. Especially since the super smart main characters that we're supposed to project ourselves onto always make it clear that they don't believe in that nonsense anyways, and instead they choose to believe in freedom or whatever. Because we have to project onto them, and obviously we would never fall for lies from those in power. An even better way to get people to believe what you want them to is to just repeat it over and over again, ideally starting as soon as possible. You might see where I'm going with this. School. Universal schooling is good for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't mean it can't be abused. While you're teaching kids history and economics and social studies, it's really easy to make them buy into whatever you want. If you're convincing enough, you can make them believe that your nation has been around forever, or that God is on their side, or that their geopolitical opponents are pure evil. Maybe you won't convince all of them, but you'll get most of them. If you think that you wouldn't fall for something like that, ask yourself. If someone came up and told you that most of the world's governments were run behind the scenes by lizard people, you'd probably think they were insane. If somebody told you that all the votes in the United States were thrown out upon being received and the winners of elections were decided beforehand by the powers that be, that would still be crazy, but a lot less so. And if someone told you that there were backroom deals going on in order to influence elections, well, that's just common sense. But what if this wasn't the case? What if elections really were fair and that the claims to the contrary were being spread by people who had something to gain by destabilizing the current order? Either internal rebels or external geopolitical foes might do this. How would you tell what was real and what wasn't? Propaganda works best when the targets don't realize what it is, and the average person won't think that school is feeding kids propaganda. Especially when they learn normal stuff like math and language at the same time. When you control someone's education, you control the way they look at the world. Or just simply reciting a pledge to the government slash nation every morning. That could work too. The people living under authoritarian regimes often don't know how authoritarian things really are. And since this is supposed to be aimed at young people, having a few scenes or even the whole story take place in schools makes sense. And I honestly haven't seen an example of this anywhere before. Obviously with all this propaganda around, the state isn't going to tolerate messages to the contrary. If somebody or a group of somebodies decides to voice opposition to it, whether by protesting taxes or advocating peace or anything else, then it'll crack down. Because obviously anyone who voices opposition to the government is working with the enemy. This crackdown can take many forms. It can mean arresting slash executing those responsible, sure, but it can also involve simply intimidating them, getting them fired from their job, or blocking them from getting their message out. All of those are effective ways to keep information controlled because even if it doesn't stop all of it from getting out, it discourages citizens from speaking out. It's about managing opposition, not stopping it. How to bring this up to your audience? Just use the teenage girl protagonist that's destined to lead the rebellion. The cliched route would be to have one of her friends or family members be taken away for subversive speech and that fuels her opposition to the government. A more interesting way would be for her to create something, maybe a painting or other creative project, possibly for school, and have it taken away. Whoever does it could even be gentle about it, but explain how it affects social harmony or some shit. That way the audience can understand how a normal person could put up with or support that sort of thing. Otherwise it just feels like everyone who goes along with it is a brainwashed idiot. But that's more of a story question than a world building one. Now how about the Tamanthan government? Personally, I find dictatorships fascinating because no two are exactly alike. They're all terrible in their own unique way, and the methods they use to stay in power are just one dimension of that. Tamantha will be a democratic republic on paper, but in reality it'll be ruled by a small elite. This is something a lot of real life countries do. They still hold elections and such, but they use political shenanigans to make sure that they maintain control. This can take many forms, gerrymandering, unofficial intimidation of political opponents, Byzantine election rules, voter suppression, only allowing people approved by the current rulers to run for office. There are literally hundreds of examples of this sort of thing from real life. This is one of those areas that you don't have to go into extreme detail on. There are some who will nerd out about it, most people will be bored though. I'd recommend just sprinkling in a little bit of info here and there for the audience to pick up on. Maybe have a character go out to vote and remark about how all the candidates belong to the ruling party or something. That usually gets the message across. Don't forget that this is all about the issues with nationalism, so maybe have someone mention that it's done differently in other places, but their way of doing it is bad because reasons. Or maybe our system isn't perfect, but it's still the best one. Basically, any info about this would be better than most YA dystopias who seem to stop at this man is in charge and he's evil. Alternatively, you could try to make it as opaque as possible a la 1984, but that was done to make the government seem more like an ungodly powerful and monstrous force rather than a flawed institution run by humans. Go with what you think works best for the type of atmosphere you want to convey. The thing to remember about dictatorships is that they're inherently unstable. Paranoia, backstabbing, and nepotism are the name of the game. Even when things are relatively stable, this is all still going on. It might be in the background, but the common folk are still going to know about it to an extent. Wherever you live, there's corruption, and the average person understands this. But just like with voting, if they think that it's worse somewhere else, they'll usually put up with it. And I'm just going to explain everything else about Tamantha with nationalism. Why are the average citizens okay with war crimes? Because it's okay when we do it. When we bond to that hospital, there was no other choice. When they do it, they're evil. Why is Tamantha at war in the first place? Clearly not because the country needs resources or some other real politic reason. It's because we were attacked and we're just defending ourselves. This is a setting focused on nationalism, so the idea is to point out all of the issues that it causes or contributes to. You can also try and show off some of the more positive aspects of whatever you're talking about, assuming there are any positive aspects. Just make sure you don't accidentally make it seem like a good thing. There are a ton of issues you could focus on to make a more interesting setting, and likely a more interesting story to go along with it than just dictators bad. And just to clarify, yes they are, but we already know that. At the same time, you want to be careful not to throw too many subjects in there to talk about. If you do, you'll lose focus and the message will be diluted. Of course, if you're just looking for an excuse to have a teenage girl rebel against society, then well that doesn't really matter. The thing to remember when making a dystopia is that your dystopia is someone else's utopia, and vice versa. Someone out there would love to live in Tamantha, just like someone would love to live in real life places like North Korea and Nazi Germany. You'll never make something that everyone will agree with, and attempting to do so only results in something too milquetoast to leave an impact at all. So just go nuts and try to convince everybody that they should hate the same things you do. Thanks to my patrons, especially thanks to my $10 up guys, Appo Savalainen, Christopher Hawkins, Joseph Pendergraft, and Melanie Austin. If you want to do stuff like vote on videos and get early access to my content, then consider checking out my page and donating, you know, that helps. If you can't do that, then just liking and sharing this to help it show up in the algorithm is great too, and maybe subscribe if you want to see my twilight video in a few weeks. Bye.