 Okay, and oh, we were already recording. So it's no secret that I love science fiction and fantasy, in fact that's the bulk of what I cover on this channel, but both of those genres have some pretty serious issues, and I think that's the main reason why they're still seen as a niche, at least in terms of books. Like in terms of comics and video games and movies and such, you will see more science fiction and more fantasy stuff, but it doesn't, I don't think it's quite reach the mainstream in terms of reading. Even though people know about stuff like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, it still hasn't quite broken into the mainstream yet, and that's because both genres have pretty serious issues with originality. And without originality, people are gonna think, okay, that's just Lord of the Rings, but worse, so why would I bother reading it? And so that's a very big barrier to getting new people in here. So today I'm just here to talk about the biggest issues that science fiction and fantasy have and how to fix them, and again, it's all originality. This is the introduction song, it's not very good, but it's not too long. So let's start with fantasy. The thing about that is that it has huge variety in terms of setting. Like the stereotype is something that's based on medieval Europe but has like dragons and elves and shit, but there's a lot more than that. There is that medieval setting, but then there's also like ancient setting. There's stuff with floating islands, there's places where they live where ash blocks out the sun and they're ruled by an immortal demigod. Like there's a lot of interesting settings in fantasy, even if they aren't all necessarily big known fantasy. But there is a lot of that. It's crazy the amount of variety they have, and that's the wonderful thing about settings in world building is that you can change it up a lot and be really weird and out there, and you can still have a pretty normal story and characters that people can follow along with pretty easily. Fantasy also has a lot of variation in terms of what kinds of characters they have. Like even the stereotypical ones like the old mentor wizard or the wise king or the farm boy who is reluctant to be a hero but is forced to be a hero or the evil overlord. You know all those cliches that we all know and love, or at least cliches that we all know, even those are very well defined. Like when you see one of those you know, okay, yeah, this is what this guy is like. You know at least something about his personality and his motivation and all that. So they're very well defined even if they aren't necessarily original or likable. But then there's plenty of fantasy, both in the past and in the modern day, that breaks away from those molds and we have tons of unique original characters all over the place. Someone like Richard Rawl from The Sword of Truth is really annoying and stupid and in a lot of ways he's just a mouthpiece for the author's political and economic views, but he is an actual person. You know I understand him and what makes him tick even though I read that book like over ten years ago. I still remember what Richard Rawl was like. And for those of us who like fantasy, all this variation in terms of setting and character can help us look past the fact that the plot is kinda the same every time. Like obviously there are exceptions, especially in the modern day, but be honest with yourself. Pretty much every fantasy series ever written or at least every epic fantasy series ever written has been about people trying to save the world from some sort of dark overlord. Maybe he's an evil god, maybe he's an evil wizard or an evil king, the point is that he's gonna conquer slash destroy everything and the heroes have to stop him. And possibly the hero who winds up defeating him for good is the chosen one or some sort of farm boy or both. Ever since Lord of the Rings did it other people are just copying it and well they might put some slight variation on it but even more modern stuff a lot of times falls into that same trope of let's save the world. They never have anything that's on a smaller scale. Even Game of Thrones wound up falling into this trap near the end cause you know the white walkers were coming in and they were gonna destroy everything so the heroes had to sort of wrap up their political differences which had been the bulk of the show up until that point and then that's how they were able to save things. And so basically everything just falls into this exact same mold and that's literally what Wheel of Time is about guys. Like Robert Jordan saw that the same story was being told over and over again so he created a world where all of those exist in the same world it's just happening slightly differently every time each if you haven't read Wheel of Time then everything like Lord of the Rings, Shinar Chronicles, all that is just a different turning of the Wheel of Time where there's an evil overlord who's trying to destroy things and a chosen one who saves it and again it's a little bit different every time but it's always the same events. There's epic fantasy, other fantasy sub-genres have you know different storylines but the thing is each sub-genre also each has only one plot each like young adult fantasy is just a girl who saves her homeland perhaps the world and she usually does it by being some sort of badass with crazy powers like I know I've praised an Ember in the ashes a little bit in the past and I am excited for the last book by the way but the thing is that's not a very original story it's just one that does this exact same plot pretty well and and again it does have pretty good characters which allows me to look past that and then you have middle grade fantasy which is stuff like Harry Potter and that's just a kid discovers some sort of hidden magical world and then usually he has to save it he becomes a part of it and in urban fantasy the story is almost always let's keep magic a secret because if normal people find out about it mass hysteria cats and dogs living together I don't know it usually doesn't make that much sense but that is the plot line and sometimes they'll be dealing with stuff like oh there's a werewolf murdering people and we have to catch them because the police don't know how to do it you know stuff like that but the point is that each sub-genre only has one storyline that they can use and when there's no variety newcomers don't see the point they just see it as okay it's exactly like that other thing I read once so why would I want to redo that but despite that fantasy is still much more popular than science fiction at least on YouTube and I think the main reason for that is that science fiction while it does have a lot more story variety you know you you will see tons of different stuff you know there's like tons of save the world stuff obviously and there's tons of like save the country stuff but then there's like political thrillers and there's small scale like high stories that there's a lot of different science fiction things because science fiction is generally seen as more of a setting whereas fantasy is seen as both a setting and a storyline but fantasy blows science fiction out of the water in terms of variation in setting and variation in characters stuff like space opera military science fiction alternate history cyberpunk those all feel different from one another and they all have their own variety within each subgenre but think about various science fiction that you've read over the years like not just more modern stuff but classics as well now think about the characters from them like we're very many of them really that memorable I mean most memorable science fiction characters even in classic ones come from stuff with fantasy elements like dune is a good example dune has some really memorable really unique neat characters but there's a lot of fantasy elements to that story you know like there's essentially magic and I don't know dune is just dune is kind of its own thing it's weird even when you look at classics like foundation like how many characters do you really remember about that like do you remember much about them at all or do you remember more the world that it took place in and the ideas that it brought forth and that's the thing like if you have like big ideas and neat themes and this fascinating setting then you can make people look past that the same way that good characters can make people look past a shitty storyline and fantasy but it still gets really obvious and old after a while like military science fiction is probably the worst in this regard like I know I just made a video making fun of that genre not that long ago but essentially there are three maybe four archetypes that that that that entire genre follows and it works out okay because most of the time they're just manly men who are blowing shit up and trying to kill each other and if you do it well it works out but sci-fi works out that way because even if they're the same characters every time they're kind of doing different things every time but that usually works out in all sorts of science fiction subgenres because even if it's the same characters every time or even if they're like bland not really memorable characters every time you at least remember what they're doing because they're doing different things every time and pretty much the only science fiction that has come out in modern times that I've read and I've really connected with has been the expanse and that's mostly because the expanse character cast is fucking amazing I remember James Holden I remember Josephus Miller I remember Christian of Osirala Bobby Draper Amos Burton Winston Duarte Marcos Inaros like I remember these guys I know them I understand what they're like as people basically you know each of them is not only like a well-defined person with their own personality and hopes and dreams and all that but most of them are at least somewhat likable you know even if people like Holden can get annoying sometimes and even if people like Inaros are just horrible villains you know or well I don't mean horrible villains as in their badly written or anything I mean like they're horrible people which makes them work well as villains I still know them and I still sympathize with them on some level because that's one of the things the expanse has done best is like even evil people are still people they're still human but pretty much every other science fiction I've ever read has well they've completely failed in this regard at the same time a lot of the best fantasy that I've ever read has been stuff that hasn't focused on saving the world like the first couple of powder mage books were like that and they were the best ones and like the last one really fell more into saving the world territory but and that was what made it the weakest but you know it's still a good book or Elantris that's a phenomenal story and it's more more of a mystery about trying to save magical zombies from themselves than it is about saving the world like it trust me that makes sense if you read it or some of the D&D campaigns I've done over the years some of them have been at their best when it's just hey let's kill this one evil wizard not because he's trying to destroy the world but because he's evil he's a dick he's hurt us personally and I mean granted part of that is just because like when it's a D&D campaign you're in it it's not you reading about someone else's exploits but you know the point is that there's a variety in terms of the storyline there like it's something different if nothing else even if it's not amazing it's at least different and I'm not saying that being original automatically makes it good like there's plenty of stuff that is unique and original but it still falls flat on its face but I have to always give credit for originality at least a little bit and so the point I'm getting at here is that in order to save both science fiction and fantasy from themselves you have to sort of combine them you know science fiction authors should read more fantasy and fantasy authors should read more science fiction because in both cases they each have a lot to learn and I'm not just talking about like the big broad strokes about like oh make better characters make better settings all that like that's pretty obvious but I mean even the tiny minutiae about stuff like how to structure your story or how to actually write prose and everything both genres seem to be kind of separate in that regard and I don't really know how to explain it I spent a while thinking about how I could explain it and I just I just can't but they are a little bit different and I think mixing them together they could learn from each other and if they can learn from each other and improve their quality and actually be somewhat different every time then I think they really could break into the mainstream and once they break into the mainstream I mean that comes with its own host of issues because then you're gonna have it's basically what happened with the young adult boom from like 15 years ago where everyone in their grandmother just floods the genre with a bunch of just just shit just a bunch of shit and it drags the quality down makes it harder to find good stuff in there and then after a couple of years of it people start to look down on it and then people leave it again like that's its own issue though basically what I'm saying is don't be afraid to read outside your preferred genre and don't be afraid to combine stuff anyways that was a little more rancy than I anticipated it being but you know it that those are my thoughts and if you disagree with me then feel free to put it down below somewhere but that really is how I feel you know fantasy is more popular than science fiction on YouTube at least because it blows it out of the water completely in terms of character and science fiction is more popular among people that well I guess pretentious assholes would be one way of putting it but like people who look down on fantasy because oh it's just the same thing every time it's just wish fulfillment fantasy and so they read science fiction that that seems to be the case at least to me I don't know but I think this this is something that we genuinely could fix if we really put our hearts to it huge huge huge thanks to everybody who watched this far and especially to my patrons whose names are here and my $10 up guys are Aposavalanan Ava Tumor brother Santotis Christopher Quinten Deanna Dayhem Mbis Emily Miller Evan Stigal Joel Carcat Kitsune Madison Lewis Bennett Nature Boy NB star Rhys e-Rowla sad Mardigan Tobacco Crow Tom Beanie vacuous Silas and Vaivictus you are all really great because without you well quite frankly I wouldn't be able to do this and if you want your name up here and if you want stuff like early access to my videos then consider becoming a patron you know it's all it takes a dollar a month and if you can't do that then just sharing this video around 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