 Campfire Blaze is brought to you by this video- Wait, ah, whatever. It's not a journey. Every journey ends, but we go on. Files disappear. You forget where they went. Your dog chews up the map you drew. Folders take over. You know there is no better place to store all your world building and story notes. But wherever I go, there you are. Campfire Blaze. A browser-based suite of tools that keep track of all your world building and story notes, with character sheets, maps, timelines, encyclopedias, and more. Organization. That's the name of the game. The game all writers and world builders play. Those who can't play lose all their progress. Your creations can be shared with others, but only those to whom you give access. Privacy. For those who desire it. Publicity. For those who don't. Even real-time collaboration on projects is possible when you set your mind to it. All these modules can be yours, or you can only take what you need most of all at either a one-time purchase or a monthly subscription. Campfire Blaze can be customized to suit whatever purposes you need it for and whatever price you can afford. There's even a free tier, so you can try everything without paying a dime. There's also a month-long free trial, allowing you to see if this is the journey you were destined to undertake. Campfire Blaze. Inevitable. It's tradition to start off video essays with a seemingly unrelated discussion that only makes sense as an introduction when brought into context later on, so I'm gonna do that. A huge criticism that people have of the epic fantasy genre is how it's just the same story over and over again. To the layman, it's just a tale of some being of pure evil, whether a god, demigod, or mad wizard king, who is stopped by some farm boy chosen one who is possibly the secret heir to the human kingdom. The whole thing takes place in a world which is basically medieval Europe, except there's some magic and one or two sapient races besides humans. The most likely candidates are elves, dwarves, and orcs, but sometimes they'll throw in a unique race that the author made up all by themselves, like sentient plants or beastmen who are totally different from furries, mom. The plot will follow the chosen one farm boy, as his village is burned down by the evil villain's minions, then he goes off on a journey to discover the magical way that the evil villain can be defeated. He's accompanied by a wise old wizard, at least one badass warrior, some sort of thief, a childhood friend, a comic relief, and a woman. Mix and match these archetypes to make up the adventuring party. Also, the chosen one is a super awesome sword fighter after a week of training because wish fulfillment. The adventurers have trouble on their journey, but in the end they defeat the evil villain, either killing him or locking him away in a magical prison so someone else can deal with him in a thousand years or so. Obviously, if you're well versed in the genre, you know that this is a vast oversimplification, albeit one with some truth at its core. If you aren't, then this probably sounds like how you imagine most fantasy to be, and the sameness bores you away from the genre. When patterns emerge in art, there inevitably come people who find some sort of meaning in those patterns, and with meaning comes commentary, either positive or negative. Now that the intro is done, I'll start talking about the thing in the title. Wheel of Time, otherwise known as Watt, or that series that's really long even by epic fantasy standards and gets boring in the middle but my cousin keeps telling me to read it. If you watch my channel, you might be at least a little familiar with it. I've talked about it a bit in the past since it's a solid series. Not that much though since there's other people who have more or less cornered the market on Watt discussion. Despite the books ending eight years ago, there's still tons of folks who like to talk about it. They talk about characters, theories, fun facts, the themes, the magic system, the way it inspires you to be less crazy, all sorts of stuff. What I never see anyone talk about, even people that love the books, is how meta the story is and how it comments on the entire epic fantasy genre. This is way beyond coincidence and it's way beyond just subverting genre tropes. Robert Jordan clearly meant to air some opinions on all the other books he'd read and been inspired by over the years. I don't mean that in the standard subverting expectations way of doing things, that's more the realm of George double R Martin. Subverting expectations is what happens when you expect Ned Stark to be the protagonist who always manages to squeeze his way out of trouble, then he gets his head cut off two thirds through the first book. The tropes and cliches are followed up until a point before making a hard turn to surprise the audience. No, Watt follows most of the standard epic fantasy cliches to the letter, with stuff like farm boy protagonists and the villain made of pure evil who wants to destroy the world just because. Then it sets up the world around those cliches in a way that frames the story as a small piece in a grand puzzle that is all of epic fantasy. Spoilers for everything ahead, so if you're in the middle of reading, leave now. Quick rundown on the plot and world. Watt takes place in a world similar to most epic fantasy you've read. Have you read about Middle Earth? Then you have a good idea of what the Westlands are like. The technology is mostly at a late medieval or early modern level, with the exception being that there are no gunpowder weapons at first. The world is split into a bunch of different countries, all of which are run by one flavor of monarchy or another. There are wizards, here known as Ice Sadi, who wander around performing magic stuff, and of course there are evil creatures that work for a being simply called the Dark One. But most people think they're just legends since they all hang out in their own territory called the Blight. There's also savages who live outside the civilized world who everyone is afraid of, all sorts of things that you've almost certainly seen before. They're not exactly the same of course, the devil is in the details, and while it has some issues, the world building is pretty solid overall. There's a reason for the similarities though, and we'll get to it later. Thousands of years ago, during a time called the Age of Legends, humanity was far more advanced than it is now, with magic and technology far beyond what modern humans can comprehend. It all came crashing down when they released the Dark One from his prison and there was a long war that destroyed stuff. The leader of the forces of light was a guy named Luz Theron, who led the final assault on the Dark One's home. They managed to seal him away, but in the process the source of magic, simply called the One Power, was tainted, meaning any men who use it will eventually go insane, though women are unaffected. All the male Ice Sadi went insane and destroyed most of the world in an event called the Breaking, so in the present only women are Ice Sadi and men who can channel are imprisoned. However, there's also a prophecy, because there's always a prophecy, that Luz Theron will be reincarnated as a man who can channel, the Dark One will break three once more, and this man, called the Dragon Reborn, will save the world. Cut to the modern day, and a farm boy named Rand Althor barely survives his village getting attacked by the Dark One's forces because he's the chosen one and stuff. The rest of the series follows Rand and company as they fight off the forces of evil and unite the world to take part in the last battle so that he can seal away the Dark One and save the world. Overall, a good fantasy adventure tale, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. Throughout the whole series, the characters remark that all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. The world's technology and political landscape will change, but the Dark One will emerge once more and the Dragon will be reborn again to fight him. Then it'll happen again and again. Time has a cyclical nature, it moves in a circle, or a wheel, if you will. Reincarnation exists in this world, so the people who take part in each battle are often the same group of heroes that took part last time. Sort of. Average people are reincarnated all the time, and most live perfectly normal lives. Some are destined for greater things though, and not just the Dragon. See, part of the prophecy of the Dragon is that an artifact known as the Horn of Valir will be found. The Horn, when blown, will summon an army of mythical heroes from the past to help fight off the Darkness. But even when they aren't summoned, they still go through the cycle of reincarnation. They're born, do some heroic stuff, and then die over and over. Some of them help the Dragon when he's sealing up the Dark One, some of them don't. If a regular person performs some sort of heroic deeds in their life, then they can become one of the heroes of the Horn. The Horn only summons them when they're between lives. We see a couple heroes of the Horn, but they include a beloved king who was a military genius, a woman who's a better archer than anyone alive, an ugly badass fighter who doesn't get along with the archer before they fall in love, a runaway noble woman who became an adventurer, an old explorer who became famous for visiting far-off, unknown lands, a big burly man who fights with a hammer and loves battling, along with a few others. And those are just the heroes who are summoned with the Horn. It doesn't count those who have been reborn normally before the story begins, like the wise old magic user who guides the chosen one, or the deposed king who's also a badass warrior. If those sound familiar, that's because every fantasy series ever has used similar archetypes. Even if none of them are the chosen one, they still help him on his journey. Without them, he couldn't succeed. Every time he's reborn, they are too. People aren't the only things that repeat themselves here either. A few brief mentions are made about the time before the Age of Legends. Myths about people like Matariz the Healer, or Len who flew to the moon in the belly of an eagle. Wait, those sound familiar. Yeah, it's heavily implied that Watt is just our world in the distant future. The Age of Legends is already thousands of years from now, so who knows how far ahead the adventures of Rand and company are, or how many disasters have happened to lose all this knowledge. And if you do a deep dive into the lore of Middle Earth, Tolkien said a few times that it was just our world in the distant past. Our world came around when all the magic left, taking all the dragons and hobbits and such with it. So while Middle Earth is different from Watt's world, namely in that it has multiple sapient races and several evil entities similar to the dark one, they both have a land where the villainous gods and creatures live. The Blight isn't a rip-off of Mordor, it's a deliberate homage. The land where all the evil things come from, and where men fear to tread, is a common trope. Other fantasy series in the same boat include Septimus Heap, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Unicorn, The Shinara Chronicles, and basically any other series that draws inspiration from Mordor. I can already hear you slamming your keyboards in rage, so yes, I am aware that I'm leaving out some nuance here. Obviously they're all different, but they use the same framework, that's what makes it a trope. This goes even deeper though. The god who made the world, creatively called The Creator, has made countless other worlds, each slightly different than the others, each under the same threat from the dark one, and each with their own reincarnation and heroes. Over the millennia, many of them have been destroyed, and everyone there killed. Their cycle came to an end. Each of them similar, but each of them a little different. Do you see what that means? Every single epic fantasy takes place in the same world. Each one is just a different turning of the wheel of time. Each chosen one is just Randalfor in a past or future life. Every wise mentor is Gandalf a few million years after Gandalf died. Every legendary warrior is just Mike Tyson without the lisp. There are a lot of buzzwords that surround discussion on tropes and cliches. Words like subversion and deconstruction, that most people don't seem to understand the meaning or purpose of. Hell, I've seen people use them interchangeably. I already explained how subversion works, and that's usually used to surprise your audience to either comedic or dramatic effect. Deconstruction is when a trope is taken to a logical conclusion or is invoked in a more consistent way that isn't seen in fiction. Ned Stark being beheaded is a subversion, but Daenerys Targaryen's benevolent conquering queen act blowing up in her face is a deconstruction. In the land of fiction, everything will usually become awesome just because a good person is in charge. The fact is that things are more complicated than that, and even doing something good, like freeing all the slaves, can lead to unintended trouble down the line. Normally deconstruction is used to somehow comment on the nature of the trope in question, to point out inconsistencies or how illogical some things we take for granted are. By design, this will usually change up the storyline, whether by a little or a lot. Wheel of Time is unusual because Robert Jordan managed to deconstruct the epic fantasy storyline while still following the formula to a T. The same things happen over and over, but there's a reason for that. It goes beyond the basic plot and world structure, though. There are things in here that directly poke fun at how little sense some things in fantasy make. In the series, several main characters are what's known as a Teviren, which are kind of difficult to explain. Essentially, a Teviren warps reality around themselves just by existing. This reality warping is uncontrollable and causes various weird things to happen. People will act in uncharacteristic ways, such as two people who hate each other suddenly getting married, and odd things will happen seemingly at random. One man might trip on a stick and break his neck while another might fall out of a tree and get up without a scratch, or maybe a pair of dice will hit its snake eyes a hundred times in a row. None of it is impossible, but it's all very improbable, and it always seems to work out well for the heroes. There are points in the books where characters lose track of each other in major cities, then find each other again by just picking a random direction to walk in, and points where they manage to convince others to help them out with very little effort, even when that completely goes against their personality. When the good guys wind up in a jam they can't squeeze out of, the entire universe bends around them to get the desired result. Only the heroes, though. Normal people tend to be screwed over by this. You get it? Teviren have literal plot armor. The good guys must win, so improbable, but not impossible, things happen to help them out of trouble. Plot armor is hardly contained to fantasy, but it's endemic there. The perfect people always meet at the perfect time to save the day, even when the forces of light are facing insurmountable odds. Even when the villains have the most carefully laid plans, the biggest armies, the most powerful magic, and the most badassest warriors, things always work out. For a while. Isha Mile seems like a mad villain at first. Why else would someone side with the embodiment of evil? The problem is that he was kind of correct. Eventually darkness will win. It's inevitable. Humanity needs to win every time. The dark one only needs to win once, kind of like Thatcher in the IRA. But the dark one only wins when we surrender. He wouldn't be able to do half of what he does without the help of servants like the Forsaken, as long as humans fight for their survival they get to live. Even if the end result is always the same, that's no excuse to give up. The journey is the important part. The journey before destination. When you start watching a well done video essay, you know what you're getting into. You know that it'll have a bizarre eye-catching title. You know that there's a certain rhythm or pattern that things will fall into. You know that a lot of time will be spent on hammering out specific definitions. And you know that the conclusions reached will probably be outside of what is commonly thought. Maybe there will be a few references to deep philosophical, historical, political, or economic principles that the writer may or may not just throw in to make themselves sound smarter. So what's the deal with the recent changes to generally accepted accounting principles that allow shell corporations with an income tax of less than 17.4% to keep their deprecation costs hidden from investors? That's totally like when the Castilian royal family brought in too much silver from their American colonies and the rapid inflation caused a complete collapse of their economy, which eventually allowed the Bourbon dynasty to ascend to the Spanish throne. Classic Hegelian dialectics reminds me of Aristotle's take on utilitarianism. But you keep coming back. Because even if the same pattern is being followed, the important part is what the pattern is used to say. Fans of epic fantasy generally know that, beyond a couple of modernist or subversive books that come out every few years, we're going to get something similar to what we've seen before. That's not the important part. The important part is seeing how, no matter how many times adversity is faced, it can be overcome. Wheel of Time setting seems bleak and nihilistic at first since the darkness will eventually consume every world in creation. Even if more are made, that makes no difference to the people who fight and die endlessly, only to have everything they love disappear into oblivion. The light has to win every time. The darkness only has to win once. That's what drove Ishmael into the dark one's embrace. He didn't see any point in expending energy to try and win if he would eventually fail anyways. But when Rand seals away the dark one, it's implied that the darkness can't possibly win. Because the darkness can't change, it's going to attempt the same tricks every time and be foiled every time. There will always be betrayals. There will always be people who side with the evil guys because they're looking for personal wealth or power. And evil monsters that can tear us to pieces and terrible curses that kill thousands of us. But those aren't enough to win. Humans, along with whoever sides with them like elves, dwarves, fairies or hobbits, are generally decent folks who won't actively try to kill you for no reason. While bad things can happen in the world, it's overall a good place, it's worth fighting for, and it's worth staying in. There will probably never be a major epic fantasy series that ends with the overwhelming evil force winning and destroying the world. Even if it's done in a subversive, modernist way, that would be an immensely unsatisfying way to finish things. Maximum Ride Forever did something similar and that book fucking sucked. All the suffering and struggle the heroes went through to save the world in the first eight books wound up being for nothing. Imagine if he read all the way through a memory of light and at the end, Rand suddenly decided that Isha Maia was right and he let the world be destroyed. You could maybe set the story up in a way where this makes sense, but you would have to change Rand's actions, unless the story, so much that it would no longer be epic fantasy. And making sense still might not be enough to make the climax entertaining to read. The whole thing has a weird sort of inevitability around it, like the world will never fundamentally change, like humanity is just going to be spinning its wheels forever with no greater purpose or destiny out there. And yet that's totally okay. You don't need a greater purpose to justify your own existence, you just need the ability to keep going. Special thanks to all my patrons, you guys are the best, and special thanks to my ten dollar and up patrons including Apo Savolanin, Eva Tuma, Brother Shantotis, Christopher Quinten, Deanna Dehim, Ambus, Emily Miller, Joel Carcat, Kitsune, Liza Ruta-Coba, Madison Lewis Bennett, Microphone, Sad Martigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, Vacuous Silas, and Vaivictus. You guys rock! I love you almost as much as I love Gerard Way. Please like this video, comment, and subscribe to show me that you are not a prep. Bye.