Writer Wander 031 - I Hate Dystopian Rebel Fiction

The One Genre I have zero interest in writing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Rider Wander thirty one. It is Good Friday, so by the time you listen to this episode, you can imagine just how much of a lag exists between the recording of these episodes and their uploads. But that serves a very specific purpose so that I never run out of content and I never feel forced to record episodes just to get out a quota when I'm not inspired. But on this Good Friday, I had some early morning musings. Um this uh there are no writing updates this time around because uh during Holy Week I I take I took the conscious decision to to not write so that I could focus more on this holy time and be able to appreciate you know the other aspects of my life that inform my writing on a fundamental level with the idea that once I do get back into the game I will do so with rejuvenated strengths and renewed capacities. But I did have some some thoughts for you that are related to my writing this time. And I was thinking through all of the works of fiction that I that I have made, and I was thinking through things you know, the kind of worlds that I've made and the kind of political situations that I've created, and I'm also thinking about Echoes of Heroes this time around. And I think that one thing that's interesting when I look back and analyze my own writing is that I think I have a much more positive outlook on power structures in general than most people who write fiction. Now, what what do I mean by this? Let's take the world of Echoes of Heroes, for example. We've already discussed that Echoes of Heroes is a world that takes place after the heroes have won a victory over the Great Bad, have sealed it away, and are now in control of basically all of the major political institutions in the entire setting. So much so that there is virtually a United Nations that is headed by each of the countries that are headed by the leaders or the the heroes or the companions or the people that had been comrades of the of the companions. And I one of the things that uh you know I was I was looking at was that I obviously I frame this alliance as something that is you know centered around this this group of heroes, around this group of states. And I feel that most writers, if they had been given charge of you know, a similar political arrangement, they would have depicted it as corrupt, ineffectual, and um you know, just not in a positive light. And that isn't to say that I'm just gonna be like some some bootlicker in Echoes of Heroes, because uh there will be ten there are tensions brewing between the heroes, but fundamentally the system that they have started works and is for the greater good of the society that they are in. This is also the case with the fantasy trilogy that I completed, um called the Narrow Path, which is probably my biggest project to date, where part of the main conceits of this novel was that there would be that the main character would at one point and one point did become this imperial figure called the Pancabar, and part of the role of that imperial figure would have been to unite the entire continent by force in order to make sure that all of the kingdoms were were united uh for a coming catastrophe. And I treated that as a good thing, I treated the unity that will be acquired by such conquest as a as a good thing, and you know, thinking about these trends that I I spot in my own fiction, one of the things that a lot of people, one of the storylines that a lot of people make that I myself are I'm not often enticed to make, is the rebel versus empire storyline. I I do not I I don't find the rebel versus empire storyline generally speaking, I don't find it particularly compelling, right? And I kept thinking about it, and I'm like, hey, you know, this is very aligned with my actual experience because I do not like dystopian fiction. You know, I I try to think, you know, I've tried to read multiple works of dystopian fiction recently, and it's just not my cup of tea. Um at one point I tried to read 1984, it was a great book, it was a masterfully written book in its genre, but I I was not interested in continuing to read it. And then I also read Hunger Games, I read um there was another one I read. I I can't quite remember that one. Well, whatever the the other one, you know, these dystopic fiction books. I think I I just I'm just not appealed by that kind of of narrative, right? And there's two elements, so oh yeah, the other one that I read was um the the The Flesh is Tender. The flesh is tender. And they're not bad books by any regards. Well, maybe Hunger Games is, uh, because uh I I remember not liking the narration style and whatnot, and feeling feeling very um very out of touch with the story. So maybe Hunger Games is not that good, and if that offended anyone, uh sorry, I don't care. Um but but uh you know what I noticed in these kinds of stories, at the very least, in the ones that don't have to do with rebels, such as The Flesh, the The Flesh is Tender and 1984. What I don't like too much about them is that it often feels like the protagonists are too passive because these books are often just explorations of an oppressive society and the consequences of living under one and what it feels like to live under one. And you know, it oftentimes doesn't feel like a story, it just feels like a sandbox in which you are caged and you are allowed to go from one station to another, but there's no agency on the part of the character, things just happen to him, and the guy is just reacting to them all the time. And again, this is not disparaging the quality of those works, it's just that that passive frame of reference is just it's not the kind of thing I'm very interested in reading about personally, but then there's the other variation of this topic stories, such as Hunger Games, for example, and I suppose Star Wars, where you do have a rebellious protagonist who is taking action against the the oppressive government. And I I've been thinking recently, why is it that I I often A, why is it that I often write stories that seem somewhat sympathetic to to governing structures? Am I a bootlicker? Question mark, or B, which I also think about is like why am I not why am I not so interested in stories about rebels, right? And I think that through much thinking, the realization I came to is that I I simply I have read too much history to to have much hope in rebel causes in general. And the way I look at it, right, is that uh in a lot of this fiction, like uh Hunger Games, Star Wars, for example, Star Wars is good, but again, I I don't I'm not too appealed to it, part of partly because of that that perpetual rebel storyline. And the thing about both of these works is that there's this idea that there is this little person that rises up and leads a you know a rebellion of the lower classes against the higher classes in the society and to tear the corrupt society down and bring about something new. Pretty cool, right? Well, the issue I have is that when I look at the historical record and I look at the most equivalent political revolutions that have existed, you know, you think about the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, uh, the revolutions that uh the liberal revolutions that swept across all of Europe in the 1840s. When you look at those and you start to think to yourself, also the American Revolution, for example, you look at those, what you notice is that none of those revolutions were really led by people in the lower classes. It was usually led by people who maybe were middle class or sometimes disaffected high members of the high class that harnessed the energies of the lower classes so as to bring about their desired result in the rebellion. And in most of those cases that I mentioned, I won't specify which ones because uh, you know, I don't I suppose that can be somewhat controversial. Um but in I think it's pretty easy to guess which are the ones that didn't end up well. But in most of those cases, the resulting system that comes right after the prior system ends up being worse. It ends up being worse because um oftentimes the disaffected leaders that take over the system are people that were somewhat outside of the system to begin with, and once they come into power, they have zero clue about how to how to manage things and how to keep things afloat. And over time I've realized that you know it is more, you know, and this is again, take this with a pinch of salt. I'm not saying that this is always the case. Um, you know, there there are occasions where armed resistance is licit, where it is, where it is permissible, and where it might even be effective. But I think that in most cases, it simply results in a worse system than what came before. And part of the reason is is again because it is over time as as I grow older and as I think more about these things, I realize that I see more value in people that dedicate themselves to constructing something, to maintaining something, to keep a certain machinery going, than you know, than to take it down. You know, this whole rhetoric about, you know, I I this is the name of a band, right? Like rage against the machine. You know, I'm not talking about the band, just the the idea of that phrase uh of raging against the the machine. Um, there are certainly many injustices that uh should be called out, but there's a certain futility when you want to disrupt the entire system. Because from my perspective, the default state of human beings is actually anarchy. And you think about it, and I think I mentioned this in the last episode. You know, we we have lived most of our lives as hunter-gatherers without a state over us, without a coercive governing authority that keeps us in check, that organizes our our endeavors. And so when we destroy systems, most people are not visionaries, they they don't have the capacity to project ahead as to the kind of society that they want to build. Oftentimes they just want to tear things down for for the sake of tearing it down. And what happens is that when you do that, you just resort to a state of anarchy that eventually becomes a state of warlords until it is eventually once again reunited by a particularly ambitious warlord. And if you're lucky, that ambitious warlord will probably be of around the same quality as the previous leader that you were trying to depose, but on most occasions it is completely the opposite. Usually the person that deposes the system oftentimes puts in place a much worse system than what existed before. So over time I've really appreciated that more. This is why I really like Dune, for example. What I really like about Dune, especially from the second novel onward, is that um you know Dune is a very good example of what an effective a realistic version, and uh I don't know how controversial this will be, but Dune is an example of what a realistic version of of the of a rebellion that worked out would look like, right? And you know, I know that there's a lot of controversy, or I don't know, I assume there is because it sounds like something that there would be controversy about, you know, this idea that uh you know Paul Trade is being the main character leading the frame is an example of like the white savior uh trope, and um, you know, uh again, I I feel that uh, you know, I'm I don't I don't really care too much for that this discussion, you know, if it's a trope and if it's happened on occasions and it's worked, then uh I have nothing against people you know using it in their stories. But in the case, I think Polytrades is a very interesting example because his rebellion in the first Dune novel comes from a place where he is an elite, and he is an elite that was kicked out of power, he was forced out of power, so he is someone who comes from a lineage or family that knows how to maneuver around the world of politics, and when he is thrust out of his position, and when he comes upon the Fremen, which are the native population of the planet that he's on, Dune, he is able to basically leverage the indigenous lower-class population into his advantage, and he is able to use their power so that he can come into his own power, and this is something that is explored in the second novel onwards, where you can see not just the you know the fact that he won the rebellion, but you can see the system that you know that Paul is putting in place in order to maintain the power structure that he has just acquired. And what's again, what's very cool about Dune is that it takes a very realist approach. I can sense that Frank Herbert was someone who was very uh pessimistic about the nature of power and politics in the in the real world because the methods that Paul Atreides uses to consolidate his strength, to consolidate his power, I think that they are explicitly anti-democratic, right? We're talking about a man who basically uh founds a theocracy, uh in a what is essentially a theocracy to gain absolute control over an empire, and to us, you know, such a system might seem repressive or or disgusting, but the reality is that the reason that most you know systems historically have been repressing or have been you know oppressive from from our perspective, right? And uh, I again I think there's a lot of people that are gonna disagree with me on this, but uh, you know, it it's okay. Um, even if you disagree with me, well, you you must admit that uh this is not typically the perspective that that is shared. So I'm gonna share it anyway. I just think that when you when it comes to power, right? When it comes to maintaining power, it it is not the reason so many systems in the past have been taking harsh measures, so that they've been rough. The reason that so many of these systems have been like that is because the the natural urge that people have to slip back into anarchy, which is almost always worse than whatever system is existing. Not not always, almost always, because you know, we can think of some exceptions, such as World War II, where um certainly anarchy would have been better than whatever the state was perpetuating. Uh however, um you know, there's always this perpetual threat of slipping back into this stateless state of existence. I think that um, I don't know if it was Freud who was talking about it, that you know, humans, the default state of like human society, something called the barbary, where it's like this, you know, this, you know, this hypothetical savage state in which people exist unmoored by by the state for for instance. And again, that's typically worse than what happens. And so the reason that systems are so repressive is because the you know, the elites of those times, you know, obviously there was a certain desire to preserve their own power that you know that I'm not saying they're benevolent or anything like that, but you know, the reason they they did that is because every political system is very is fragile by its very nature and difficult to maintain because of the fact that you know these kind of systems, um, these kind of bad massive political systems, you know, we're sort of playing against our own nature as human beings by constructing large systems like this. This also applies to religion, for for example. And uh, you know, have you have you ever thought about the fact that you know basically wherever you go, even in the countries that have like the best governments on earth, people are like always bitching about the government? Like it doesn't it doesn't change. And part of what the reason why that happens, including in countries that are relatively well run, is because by our nature, we are not inclined to to be subject to a governing authority, even if we can intellectually recognize the advantages of being subjected to such a governing authority. You know, we we don't realize just how much our bodies have not evolved for this particular state of being. So I think that on a deep level, on a subconscious level, when we find ourselves coerced, even you know, even if it's something as simple as like, you know, annoying paperwork that you that you have to fill out, when we find ourselves coerced, again, it is a reminder that we are participating in the system that is not is against our nature. However, by the very fact that it is to some extent against our nature, it is it is effective because it goes beyond our nature. And so a society that has a state, that has a an organized governing body, uh, is always going to be more powerful than a society that is say simply hunter-gatherers that are you know living in an anarchic an anarchic life because the level of organization that the state brings about is um is very real. And uh again, uh, you know, I don't want to give the impression that this is just bootlicking. Uh the elite has perpetrated many crimes against the human race throughout throughout history. The the elite has uh well to this day they've been involved in questionable things in certain islands, for example. And you know, there's a reality to that, but I think it's also worth Remembering that the reason we have these systems in the first place, and the reason that it's typically elites that rise up to these systems is because it's not just any person that can take control of systems as complex as the ones that compose a civilization or a country's government. So, you know, going back to the to the writing, you know, in writing, especially in Echoes of Heroes in my novel, you know, the world that I am portraying is a world in which the you know, for now at least, the systems, um, they function. They they they work and they they they work as they are supposed to be intended, uh, in large part because uh you know the I'm portraying the governing structures at the top in a more positive light than I feel fiction typically typically does, right? And I also feel that it in my writing, right, and I think that this is a tendency that is more present in fantasy writing than in other types of of um of genres in my fiction, whenever I whenever I depict a governing authority that is failing, I I treat it as a failure of the particular person holding the office, not so much of the system that the person is is leading. And my portrayal, and I think that this is very common in fantasy novels where you have plot lines about people who want to restore the true king, and part of that is because again, fantasy has a more mythic, a more ancient, a more medieval mindset where you don't have this very modern desire that exists to overthrow the system of monarchy entirely, but rather than overthrowing the system, you will replace the people leading it because the system itself works. And if you look at the grand scheme of human history, it is hard enough to get a system that works, let alone a system that is good. Okay, and what what's often what often needs to be prioritized is that the system works, because if you have a system that's just good, well it's gonna collapse in in short order. And fantasy fiction is often about restoring monarchs for precisely that reason, because there is there is this mythical understanding that the you know the monarch is a mystical mythical figure, is someone who puts things in order, and if there is a failing in the monarch that is preventing him from you know going across his duties, then he is replaced. But the the concept of monarchical rule is not replaced, or if it is replaced, it is replaced with a higher imperial ideal that is simply the logical conclusion of the monarch if he came to a stronger place of power, which is what I did in that fantasy narrow path trilogy that I mentioned, and it's also what uh Frank Herbert did in Dune, even though at the end of the day he he was fundamentally skeptical about power, and I think that by by the fourth book, by the fourth or or fifth book, he starts to take things in a in a different in a different direction. But I'm not gonna comment on that because I've you know of that la of those latter books, I've only read the fifth one and I have zero fucking clue what you know the the the later have you guys read the later Dune books? They get weird, they get very weird, and I'm I'm not talking about Dune 2 to 4. Dune 2 to 4 are weird, but in a you know, in an understandable way. But once you get to Heretics of Dune, like that, you know, you know, I I'm not you you if you get the chance um look into it. There's there's really it's really weird. But um, you know, this this was Rider Wander. These are some reflections I had this morning concerning my thoughts on on power signing out.