 I don't know why I did this. I just… I'm not sure, but it happened. Here we are. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So, I have spent a lot of time discussing the dystopian young adult novel, Boom, that happened around 10 years ago. Really, I just find the pattern of it fascinating, you know? Like, it just took off, became so big for a relatively short period of time, and then completely died off. Like, it's just… it's really… it's neat to me, you know? Like, there were so many ripoffs that were all desperate to pretend that they were original, and they started ripping off each other, and it just became this one amorphous mass, to the point where most people can't name more than like two or three of these things, even though there were dozens, if not hundreds of them. And that's kind of why this genre fell apart, you know? You did have a bunch that just didn't even try to be original, you know? That would be stuff like Divergent or The Testing, where it's just like, yep, here's The Hunger Games again. Let's just… let's just do that. Look, you enjoy that, right? It's fun. You're into it. And, you know, these may have been okay, because at least they had some action and stuff like that going on, which, I mean, none of them were really all that great, but they were at least serviceable in some cases. And then there were others that tried a bit harder to be original, at least in terms of the world they took place in, in terms of like character archetypes and the actual stories that happened, much less original. But, you know, they tried to have more original settings and they just got really stupid after a while, you know? Like, you had Breathe, which is where there's no more air in the world than everyone has to live in domes and pay for their air. You had that one where food was illegal and people just ate pills. You had the one with the Spore Wars, like just… they got… they got dumb. And then there were some that were also completely unoriginal and also just trying to copy what The Hunger Games did, but also left out a lot of the stuff that made The Hunger Games fun, like, you know, the action and the rebellion and, you know, the exciting bits that a lot of people were there for. Matched is one of those. Matched was actually one of the more popular Hunger Games ripoffs. I don't really know why. I think it was just because it came out at the right time to capitalize on that, because if it had come out, like, a little bit earlier or a little bit later, I don't see it taking off the way it did. But, yeah, this is one about a horrible dystopian world where everything seems all right, but love is illegal. There were actually several things in this genre that had basically that same setup. Like, love being illegal was just a popular idea. I don't know why. And this one is about a girl named Kasia Reyes who gets matched with a boy named Xander. And basically in this society, when you're matched with someone that's like the government just looking at you saying, okay, you'd be good together and then pairing them up and they're just essentially they're married for the rest of their lives and they don't have a say in it. She gets matched with a boy named Xander, which doesn't surprise her because she already knows him. But then on the screen when it's showing that another boy's face, a boy named Kai, his face flashes on the screen for just a moment and she starts wondering, well, what's going on with that? And then she meets Kai, gets to know him a little better and starts falling in love with him. And then stuff happens. Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, there's not a lot of story here. Or for that matter, there's also not a lot of development in the characters or a lot of action or anything else that might be kind of interesting. But you know, like mostly just there's not really a story here. Like, there are three books and without cutting out all that much important stuff, you could probably cram it into one. And it wouldn't even be a particularly long one. Like the first book is entirely just about Kasha and Kai falling in love, like entirely. There is almost nothing else there up until the very end when we see like the true evil nature of this government. And when I first got there, I was like, okay, things are gonna pick up a little. And they kind of do. Like the second and third books are more about the rebellion where, you know, teenagers leave the charge to overthrow the evil regime. Kind of. Like, if you've read it, you know what I'm talking about. But it largely does not focus on the actual rebellion itself. The characters are largely on the periphery of it. Almost all of the major events happen offscreen. You know, even though by the third book we're seeing this from three different people's perspectives, Kasha, Kai, and Xander, none of them play a major role in any of the events, except until the very end when they do contribute and they do help save the day. And they certainly aren't leaders of this. And I mean, that's not a bad thing. Like, if you were to come up to me and tell me that this is a story about people who are swept up in history and they might be part of a movement, but they don't start it and they're not leaders of it and they're not even really a major part of it, then I'd be fine with that. You know, that would be a little closer to classic dystopias like 1984 and Brave New World and stuff. Like, if you've read those, then you know the characters don't start a rebellion or anything. They're oftentimes just trying to survive. And in this case, even if it had a happier ending, even if there was a rebellion where the evil government got overthrown, the characters could still just be like a small part of that. And that would be a little more interesting to me. You know, at the very least, it would be different. They're just part of a movement. They're not the movement themselves. However, things still need to happen. You know, the characters might not be leading a battle. They might not be in the middle of it, but they could be witnessing it from afar, like, or they could be fleeing a city while it's getting blown up by artillery and bombers and stuff. Like, just as a brief example, you know, they can be on the periphery of events, but we, the audience, still have to witness those events through their eyes. Otherwise, what's even the point? You know, why are we reading this? Like, in this, all the major events just sort of pass by. And granted, the rebellion isn't really violent. It's kind of weird. But again, it happens almost entirely off screen. So there just isn't much to go off of there. Like, it's not interesting. It's not exciting. We don't really learn anything about the characters or follow them doing anything particularly hard. It's just, it's there. Now, the lack of a thrilling story can still work for a book if, like, the characters are interesting or if the world is cool. But you obviously know I wouldn't be making the video with this tone if that were the case. Like, they straight up don't make up for it. The characters, they exist. I have nothing else to say about them. You know, Kasia is the main character girl. Like, she doesn't have any strong personality traits at all. She questions the regime she lives under at the beginning, and by the end she is vehemently against it. Not even vehemently, really. Like, she's just, she's against it. She doesn't have any strong personality traits at all. Like, not a desire for revenge or a desire to make the world better. She just kind of wants to make the world better. You know, she kind of wants to do things. She kind of wants to be with Kai. You know, like, there's just not much to say about her. And same with Kai. You know, he's kind of the bad boy in their relationship, not because he really does anything bad himself or because he has an attitude or anything like that, but just because he's the one that society says she shouldn't be with. And then there's Xander, who is, I guess, the nice guy in the Love Triangle because, you know, he takes Kasia essentially breaking up with him and going with this other guy pretty well. You know, he could have taken that badly. You know, that's one thing I will say about these characters. They don't actively annoy me. They're not terrible people. They don't do anything bad. But, I mean, even that would be something, you know, like Xander could have taken it really badly and thought like, no, Kasia is mine and decided to try and force the issue or something, which at least then I would remember something about him, but there's nothing there, like, and all the other characters as well. Like, they just, they exist. That's all there is to say about them. They exist. The world here is really dumb, too. You know, we have an evil government that is just kind of evil just because, you know, we have them banning art or banning most art just because. Like, I don't see how there's benefit to it for them. They just, they just do it, you know, and the way they do it is kind of weird, too. Like, they have 100 of everything, 100 songs, 100 poems, 100 paintings, you know, that sort of thing, which limiting yourself like that is just, it just feels weird. Like, censoring it, yeah, sure, that's something governments have done a lot, but wouldn't it make more sense to just have controls on it and let people put out whatever that fits within those controls? I don't know. Like, again, it's just weird things like that, where people think, oh, okay, this would be a terrible thing to live under. And I mean, yeah, I agree. Like, that would be terrible to live under. The matching system would kind of suck to live under, but like, why does it exist? You know, does it really make sense for it to exist? And even if it doesn't make 100% sense for it to exist, you could get away with that if you were using it to make some sort of point, but it doesn't seem to be doing that either. And we'll get more to that later, don't worry. Honestly, one part of world building that often gets overlooked is names. And how, if a name just doesn't fit with something or it seems stupid, then that can take you out of something, even if it does make sense and it is kind of neat. Like, and all of the names other than character names in this series are just stupid. Like, I will say the character names are normal. You know, like we have Kasha Reyes, like Kasha's a little unusual, but nothing crazy. And Reyes is a perfectly normal last name. And we have Kai Markham, Kai is a little unusual as a first name, but Markham's a totally normal last name, you know, and most of the other characters are like that as well. They don't go super crazy with it. Which, I mean, maybe if they did it would at least be kind of funny, but, you know, they don't. But the names for everything in the world are just dumb. Like, the country that the characters live in, it doesn't even get like a name that you would expect a country to have. It's just called The Society, which I know this was written before the meme became a thing, but I can't pretend I didn't laugh really hard at that a couple of times. Like, there is one specific moment in the second book where the characters are near the border of the society, and they see a sign, and the narration just says, we saw a sign, it said society. Below that was some smaller text, and I laughed unreasonably hard at that. And then there's another country that they're at war with, they just call them The Enemy, and I don't think they ever get an actual name. Which, I mean, I get it, like it's a dictatorship you're trying to make whoever you're fighting seem mysterious and scary so that your people will want to help you against them. But you still need to identify them somehow. You know, even if they don't know a lot about them, you still need to give them a name so you can point to them and say, look, those people, like North Korea is a good example of this, you know, it's super isolated, so a lot of outside information doesn't get in, and they view The Enemy as like the Americans and South Koreans, primarily, but they have others on the list, and they specifically say the Americans, if you don't do your work for Glorious Leader, then the Americans are gonna come in here, burn down your house, kill your family, and eat your babies. Like, you know, whereas The Enemy in this series is always just described as, yes, they're people we're at war with, let's fight them. Like, you know, you could do something with that, but it's not there. And then the rebellion that the characters join is just called The Rising, you know, like, one of these days, I'm gonna come across something where the name of a rebellion actually makes sense. Like, it'll be called the Liberation Army of Blank, or the People's Army of Insert Country Name Here, like, something like that, and it'll actually make sense, and I will genuinely, genuinely be taken aback by it. At so many points while reading this, or, I guess, listening to it, because it was not a real book, but at so many points while listening, I just found myself wondering, like, how does this benefit the people in charge? You know, even if it's not, like, the best way to set up a society to be productive and successful, like, you can always wonder, okay, how does this benefit the people who are in charge of it, at least? And there's so many points in this where that just doesn't make sense, you know, it's not efficient, and I don't see a way that it helps out the people who are already in charge, either. A good example of this is in the second book, there's a character who gets sent to what is essentially a mobile concentration camp, you know, that's where they send political dissidents when they want to get rid of them, and it moves to, like, near the front lines of the war, and they just move all these prisoners around from place to place, so it seems like these towns are occupied, and yeah, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, like, logistically, it would just make sense to have, like, a stationary camp that you keep them all in, but okay, whatever, like, at the very least, this does show off the government as being, you know, evil, because they didn't do anything truly heinous in the first book, or at least they didn't do all that much that was truly heinous in the first book, but I don't know, just stuff like that, you know, and then you start wondering, like, well, how did the rising even get started? Like, how does it manage to function at all? Like, does it get funding from other countries or something? Like, it just sort of is there, and it has infiltrated the government, and it is rebellion. I'm titling this video, Why Did I Read Matched, or at least something along the lines of Why Did I Father Reading Matched, and yeah, I'm still wondering that question, like, why did I do that? But I think a better question might be, what is matched about? Why does it exist? You know, like, what story is it here to tell? And there isn't one, you know? Matched at the end of the day isn't really about anything, you know? It could be an allegory for, like, gay marriage, or interracial marriage, or something like that, because, you know, you do have Kai and Kasia who are in love with each other, and society is telling them they can't be together. Like, you can do something with that, and have it be maybe not profound necessarily, but at least it's, you know, saying something, it's about something. It could be about the rebellion, but it's really not. You know, that's just such a small part of the story when you get down to it. It could be about the love story between Kasia and Kai, but it's not really about that either. Not even in the first book where it's mostly focused on them falling in love. And it's not really about all these changes in the world, because weirdly, the world doesn't feel like it changed all that much by the end, even though it has kind of a happy ending, and things are apparently fixed. It doesn't really feel like it has changed over the course of the story. Like, so it's not about anything. That's why I'm surprised that this series got as popular as it wound up getting, because it's not about anything, you know? Like, there isn't a story here beyond the initial setup. And because of that, the spoiler section, yes, there will be spoilers in it, but I'm also going to go into, like, how we could possibly fix this series to make it, well, better, quite frankly. And, yeah, before I get to that, in the non-spoiler section, I'll just briefly say, matched, well, it's not the worst thing I've ever read, you know, like, things like the testing are still worse, because the testing is just far stupider and far more nonsensical. But at least I could say what it was about. It had something of an identity, and I could at least point to some aspects of the world and some aspects of the story and say, that's dumb, here's how we could improve upon it. But with matched, you can't really do that. At the end of the day, I just don't recommend this to anybody, because no matter what you're looking for, it falls short. It falls short in the love story. It falls short as a dystopia. It falls short as a rebellion and as an action story. It just falls short in every possible way. But who knows, this series was really popular and a lot of people read it, so maybe I'm just the weird one. I don't know. Whatever the case is, the spoilers and the how to fix section are coming up, so if you don't want that, goodbye. Is this camera on me? Yes. That's stupid! Use your common sense. Okay, so brief summary of the series. Like I said at the beginning, Kashi and Kai fall in love, they spend the whole book falling in love, and then at the end of the first book, Kai gets like taken away because, I don't know, the evil government has dumb reasons for wanting to take away dissidents and prisoners and stuff. And then they have a bunch of people eat one of these pills that they have on hand at all times, these tablets, and it erases their memories. And Kashi doesn't take it and she realizes, oh, okay, they probably do this shit all the time, and I just don't know about it and no one else knows about it because they erase our memories or they get our story erase our own memories while doing it. Oh, shit, this is bad. And then you realize like, okay, I guess this is where the story really gets going and not really. But then in the second book, Kai, like I said, is in that mobile concentration camp for a while and then he escapes and Kashi also runs off from the society they meet up and pretty much the entire rest of the book is just them trying to get to the rising, you know, to the rebellion and then they reach it at the end of the book and then Kashi goes undercover in the third book and we're also seeing things from Kai's perspective and Xander's perspective. And like there's kind of a rebellion going on in the background but mostly it is focused on a plague that has shown up and they're looking for a cure for the plague and then near the end, the three of them actually do manage to find one and they send it to the right people and it gets spread out so a lot of people don't die from the plague. And at the end, like the rising and the society have infiltrated each other so much that you can't really tell where one starts and the other begins or one stops and the other begins and then like there's an election coming up so I guess the government is fixed now. Like I'm really not leaving out much here. Like there just is not a lot of story in this series. So my way of fixing this and I'm aware ahead of time that I'm basically writing a completely different series so yes I know maybe that's not great criticism but fuck it I'm doing it anyway so my way of fixing this would be just cut out pretty much all of this. You know have the original idea where Kasia gets matched with Xander but she meets up with Kai and for whatever reason she just decides that she's in love with him and he's in love with her and even though society is telling them they can't be together they want to be together and just have the story be about that. You know leave out the rebellion leave out the plague maybe leave the war in I don't know but like just leave out most of the stuff from books two and three and honestly just again make it one book like I said there's just not a lot here to turn into an entire series. An important detail I would change would be that people can get married and can be in relationships with people that they are not matched with but it is very strongly discouraged. Like it's not illegal but they will probably get harassed for it and maybe ostracized from their families and people just generally will not like them for it and at that point it can like I mentioned earlier be sort of a metaphor or an allegory for gay marriage or for interracial relationships or for anything like that because there are a lot of places or really all over the world there are a lot of places that just don't approve of people from one arbitrary group being in a relationship with people from another arbitrary group so Kasia and Kai fall in love under these difficult circumstances and after a while they decide okay you know what maybe we should just leave you know maybe they'll just leave the town they live in and go to another city in the same country that's a bit more I don't know friendly towards their way of life or maybe just leave the country altogether or you know something like that but basically just leave the environment they're in but both of them are kind of hesitant about it because even though this place is hostile towards them it's still their home it's still where they grew up where their friends and family are and they just aren't sure what to do and meanwhile this giant war against the enemy is still going on and that will lead to some sort of obligations for them you know like maybe as an example Kai's brother gets conscripted into the army and has to leave and he has to take care of one of their parents who is severely disabled and can't work you know and he wants to take care of them because they're still his family and they love him or and he loves them but they're really hostile to his way of life and to who he is and he also just doesn't like the environment you know just as an example something like that like war even if you're not fighting in it does bring up obligations for you and so at this point the story is about people being torn apart like not just Kasia and Kai being torn apart by you know society the society that we all live in but also each of them being torn apart from their families and from their friends and from just their whole social network like it's about how things get torn apart because of these arbitrary rules which are just tradition and just have been put in place forever and it could also be about how even if the law says that people are fine to exist it doesn't necessarily mean that equality has been achieved yet you know like these are problems in the real world that maybe you could make a dystopia about the outcome of the war probably wouldn't be that important in this version of the story I'm aware this is kind of vague and definitely a very general rewrite but you know it's basically all the level of effort that matched deserves but it then it would end with Kai and Kasia like being in a new home maybe it's nearby where they live maybe it's far away maybe it's another country but it would be them in a new home and getting ready to just start their life together because they're in love and that's how they want to live their lives so in the end they made a place for themselves in this hostile world and maybe they even advanced the cause a little bit you know maybe by seeing the two of them be in a perfectly fine relationship even though they weren't matched maybe other people start to realize like okay maybe it's fine if people who are not matched can be in relationships you know it's again it would be kind of childish it would be again like the way I wrote it was vague and it wouldn't quite fit in with the young adult dystopia boom that we saw but it would be better than what we got goodbye huge thanks to everyone who watched this whole thing all of my nonsense that I put out there it's appreciated and a huge thanks to all my patrons as well especially my ten dollar enough patrons whose names are oppo savalainen olivia rayon brother santotes buffy valentine carolina clay dan anceliovich dark king deo echo flax great grebo johnny st claire carcat kitsune liza rudakova lord tiebreaker microphone mist boy peep the toad robbie reviews sad martigan sillier the vixen stoned stares tesla shark vivictus and wesley and of course everyone else whose names you see here uh if you want to get your name put on here consider becoming a patron and if you don't feel like doing that you can also like be a channel member or just like the video and subscribe you know share share it around help help more people see my genius i'm not appreciated enough uh anyways uh see you later bye