 A space opera is a genre where there's a lot of, like, space stuff. Similar to epic fantasy, it's difficult to pin down a specific definition for what it consists of since much of its criteria are vague. That said, it's also extremely easy to write one. Anything with big space battles, travel between planets, aliens, and interstellar empires is probably a space opera. They tend to take place far in the future and be about large-scale conflicts involving space warfare. Unlike military sci-fi, though, space opera focuses much more on things like societal advancement, conflicts between different ideologies and philosophies, ways to solve problems without things that go pew pew and having sex with aliens. Basically, this is what most people think of when they think of science fiction. It's basically just epic fantasy with lasers, and it has nothing to do with musical theater. Things like Mass Effect, Star Wars, The Expanse, Jupiter Ascending, and My Sister, My Writer are all great examples to look at if you want to know what space opera is. If you want to create one, though, you have to figure out what makes them work and how. Which is what I'm here for. Stick with me and I'll show you about how to make the greatest space opera of all time. All you have to do is follow these seven rules. Number one, explaining the technology is more important than the story. Want to know how the faster than light travel works? Or artificial gravity? Or cybernetic enhancements? Then it's time for a long-winded explanation with semi-plausible scientific concepts and terminology. You see, we can create artificial gravity by running an electromagnetic current through the ship's hull to mimic having the mass of a planet, so we're all pulled towards the floor. All you have to do is throw in the word electromagnetic, or quantum, and no one will question it because while both of those have real definitions and are used in real life physics, no one knows what they mean. When you don't know what words mean, you can throw them wherever you photosynthesis to sound smarter. The important part is that you spend enough time going over all of this for your audience. Specifically, you have to spend 24.7% of the runtime slash word count doing so. If you're unwilling or unable to give pseudo-scientific explanations for how all of this works, don't worry, just invent some miracle substance that allows people to do all of this miraculous bending of the physical laws that make up our universe. Dilithium, Element Zero, Bitcoin, whatever imaginary useless thing you have, you can dream up, suddenly becomes the most important substance in the universe. You still need to spend time going over all the minutiae, only now you have an excuse. I know you're probably thinking that your audience is here for whatever hook or mystery box you use to grab their attention in the prologue, but you're wrong. They don't want to know where those mysterious ruins came from, or what's causing all the stars to die. They want to know about how Captain Ricardo's ship has been able to go faster than light, while also carrying hundreds of passengers and tons of cargo. Look, I told you I'm no good at this, okay? You want to bring the last guy in? This sort of thing is in no way better reserved for supplementary materials or short footnotes. It's something that you should put all of your energy into, otherwise people might forget what space opera is all about. And no, none of this can be used to explore the ways in which human society would change if given access to things like cloning, longer life expectancies, or endless resources from other planets. Number two, make sure there's some magic. I know I just said that you have to explain all the science behind all the technology at all times, but there is an exception. There needs to be some aspect of the setting where rule number one doesn't apply. It can be psychic powers, mysterious alien technology, ghosts, or just some good old-fashioned magic. The important part is it goes against all laws of physics, and no one gets how it works. This magic might be common in the setting, or it might be so rare as to be unheard of for most of the cast, but it has to be there somewhere to add in a mysterious force that doesn't follow the laws of reality so that you don't have to explain everything. Whether they're summoning energy and matter from nowhere or reading thoughts with quantum electromagnetism, it's not allowed to make any sense. At one point the heroes have to use this magic to save the day or get out of trouble. Whether they use their telekinesis to pull a ship out of the sky, see the future to avoid trouble, or even summon an army from thin air, the important part is they can only do it once and never think to try it again. That goes for all the villains, too. They should never try to use everything in their arsenal to achieve victory. After all, since when have villains ever done something morally dubious to gain power and wealth? Wait, wait, wait, no. After all, since when have villains ever done something morally dubious to gain power and wealth? Yeah, I like that. Let's go with the second take. Star Wars is a gigantic franchise that has made approximately $18 billion over the past several decades, and that has everything to do with the strength of its writing. The movies have never used impressive CGI battle scenes to cover up a simplistic good versus evil plot, or a schizophrenic magic system, nor have they ever reversed course after the fans harassed them for daring to do something different. This magic isn't used to expand the setting or provide a source of eldritch horror. It's just there as part of the background dressing. In fact, don't have the characters comment on how unusual it is to have ghosts haunting derelict spaceships when they're normally stuck in old castles and photoshopped images on TV. It's probably due to the local electromagnetic gas cloud. Number 3. Characters Don't Matter. Nobody reads sci-fi to hear about Joe and Bill's personal problems. They read it to hear about the big galaxy-wide problems that Joe and Bill have to solve. Who cares about watching someone yearn for adventure before getting caught up in a large conflict? Just skip to the good parts. Sci-fi has traditionally been about big ideas and questions about human nature rather than specific conflicts between people or organizations, which means you should cast aside petty things like charisma and interpersonal relationships. It's impossible to have deeper themes when your audience is focused on that pussy shit so you should always go with the big brain option. Subtext? What's that? Normally I would give a list of all the archetypes that the cast should fall into, but that's completely unimportant in this case. Just throw in a charming starship captain and surround him by some other warm bodies. Bad guys can be anything from an evil empire, to government bureaucrats, to a swarm of alien locusts. Do the bigger conflicts of the setting tie into the characters' personal problems? Are they representatives of a mindset or ideology? Perhaps they should simply be likable so that the audiences can connect with them. And if you ask any of these questions, feel free to eat my entire asshole. Should I put a bigger space there? Number four, everyone is white and speaks English. Oh yeah, we're going there. In the future, as communication and transport make the world more connected than ever and things like the internet bring us all to the same place for human interaction, it's inevitable that American cultural hegemony will reach every soul in the universe. Everyone will shop at the same store, speak the same language, watch the same television shows and wear similar clothes. And all of the races of the world have been so thoroughly mixed over the generations that everyone will look alike too. You may think that since the two largest countries in the world are the Indians and the Chinese, that humanity would largely be a combination of those two. And you'd be wrong. White people are the default in American media, therefore that's what the future will be like. And it's not like the future white people will be split in two of a variety of different cultures and ethnicities the way we are today, nor will there be any sort of conflict between them. White people have always just gotten along with other white people, just ask anyone from the Balkans. There should still be a group that's discriminated against in society, maybe they shun technology or they follow a religion that tells them not to be violent and so the government regularly murders them. The important part is that even the oppressed minority is also made up of white English speakers. Man, I'm really playing with fire on this one. Number five, the fate of humanity must be at stake. But what will the space opera be about? You're probably wondering. Wonder no more, it's about saving all of humanity. Yes, having a bigger population spread out over dozens or hundreds of planets might give the human race a stronger foundation for survival that would make it almost impossible to completely wipe us out, but that's what the new technology is for. Maybe the bad guys are aliens that are willing to go to each planet individually to kill everyone there, or maybe there is a mysterious force that will turn off every star in the galaxy. It doesn't matter what threatens humanity, only that the heroes work to stop it. Even if the villains are also humans, they also have to wipe out humanity for some reason. At the very least, they have to subscribe to an ideology that the author doesn't like, then if they get their way they'll change society somewhat and that's basically the same thing as killing everyone. Those damn anarcho-fascist, monarchist, primitivist, egoist, centrist, Bolshevik moderate to ruin everything. When this threat comes along it will have to be something that all the governments and militaries of the universe aren't able to deal with, whether their leaders are just incompetent and refuse to listen to those who know how to end things quickly, or the threat is just too overwhelming. They have to fail in their attempts to contain it. The only thing that can save today is one single ship, ideally one that is very old and on the verge of falling apart, but has an inexplicably amazing pilot and captain. The rest of the crew also need to be a bunch of outcasts and weirdos who are at the top of their respective fields. Then they get to be the ones who bring in the virus or bomb or toxin or assassinate the alien queen to shut down the hive mind, just like how World War II ended because a scrappy crew of nobodies killed Adolf Hitler. Number six, no girls allowed. It's a little known fact that women's bodies are fragile. If they move faster than 50 miles an hour, their uteruses will fly out of them. They can't exist on spaceships, sorry. Number seven, humans should do all the labor. No machines allowed. You might think, based on the last few hundred years of technological advancement, that the future will be a place where the vast majority of labor is performed by machines or AIs. This sort of revolutionary change could lead to a utopia where humans just chill out and do whatever they want, or to be a grim dystopia where the few who own the means of creating value hoard it all while others eke out a living in their shadow. But no, that won't happen, because obviously history ended with the Cold War. Our economy will stay exactly as it is now. The only difference is how minors will all work to extract some futuristic resource that runs everything while being mistreated by their bosses. Very different from the real world. This also applies to things like piloting ships, aiming weapons, and performing medical examinations. Humans will always be the only ones who can perform repetitive tasks with perfect accuracy 100% of the time. Number eight, space battles must happen. Space is an odd place. Since it's a vacuum with no gravity, there's nothing to slow down or stop fast-moving objects. If you fire a projectile, it's going to keep going until it hits something big enough to stop it. And due to inertia, it's extremely difficult to turn or stop when you're out there. This might make any sort of pitch battles between moving ships a near impossibility since they would likely just be shooting at each other during a brief window where they rocket past one another. But who gives a shit? The best use of government resources would be to create gigantic fleets of space battleships that fire lasers, despite kinetic weapons having far more range and destructive power while requiring less energy. And not just regarding strategic chill points and resources, these massive fleets will regularly fly all over the place to engage with other massive fleets without that it's not a real space opera electromagnetism. No real tactics are needed though. As long as we have flashy explosions, the audience will never question why both fleets are just holding still and firing at each other, nor will they wonder why no one ever uses the Z-axis. Just throw in some smaller ships zipping around in the midst of everything. That automatically equals excitement. Should you give a pseudo-scientific explanation for why inertia doesn't seem to apply? Should you hammer home how expensive these ships are to make the audience understand what a big deal it is to lose any and why the leaders might be hesitant to commit them to battle? Should you spend time developing the technology and tactics of the setting to make it stand out among a sea of very similar properties? Nope. And that's all you need to know. Follow these seven simple steps to create your own commercially and critically successful space opera. Some of you might be thinking that this framework I've given out is too rigid, that it chokes out creativity and doesn't allow for anything new to ever be made. If you disagree, you're objectively wrong. Why would I ever want to experience anything new when I can instead whine and send death threats while demanding that creators remake media to suit my personal preferences? That's exactly what a well-adjusted person does. Thanks for watching this far, guys. This is actually my first video I'm recording since recovering from my jaw surgery. So if my voice sounds weird and I mispronounce certain words and things, sorry, that's why the whole inside of my mouth feels completely different now. So I'm going to basically have to relearn how to talk. But hopefully, hopefully I should be back to normal soon. And stuff. Let's do that. 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