You’re in for a treat today! For starters, there’s the first scenes of //023: Exit Interview. I didn’t know if I’d have this sorted out in time to post immediately after the last chapter’s finale, but I’m reasonably confident in the material and ready to get it up. This will be a shorter, more experimental chapter for reasons which will be clear on reading. It’s a chance to tie up a lot of loose character ends, while paving the way for Little Monsters and the big finale, Dreamweaver.
But that’s not the treat, no sir. The treat is this blog post. ’cause I GOT OPINIONS on dystopias. I haven’t done a good rant in awhile, so if you like rants, read on! If not, well, there’s new story you can enjoy. It’s cool.
So! Recently I watched the CinemaSins rundown of The Purge, which got me to thinking about how much I love a good dystopia… and how few GOOD dystopias are actually out there. Too many of them rely on “for reasons” as their big explanation, refusing to provide a plausible cause for the dystopian dawn itself and the way that dystopia continues to operate. Massive suspension of disbelief required to make the world shift plausible.
Let’s look at The Purge, for example. The big conceit of that movie is that for reasons, America has chucked all common sense out the window and decided to make all crime legal for one day a year. This makes crime the other 364 days of the year practically unheard of, for reasons. It’s Murder Christmas! And it’s completely impossible. Give it two seconds of rational thought and you can start poking holes in the idea immediately. People do not behave like that, would not behave like that.
I can’t just swallow it and say “Well, it’s a stupid entertaining movie, go with it” because these writers present their world as plausible, with a full faith effort to have everything make sense. It’s not a parody, it’s not a comedy, it’s a sincere effort to make their dystopia “terrifyingly real” when it’s actually “bloody stupid.” Nothing about it rings true with the actuality of history and human nature itself; it’s a forced conflict set up by lazy writers to make a lazy point about class warfare.
Worst example is Elysium. “But wait, everybody loved that movie!” Put the quality of the visual effects and action aside and look at the PLOT. It’s contrived as hell: you can physically land a spacecraft inside an artificial atmosphere without any sort of airlock for reasons, the only defense against illegal immigrants to the space station is a guy with a rocket launcher on the surface of Earth for reasons, they keep sending immigrants up there despite a 99% fatality rate for reasons, the entire space station’s root password is fantastically insecure for reasons and then gets stored in the most pointless brain-lock security method where anybody can copy it (meaning it actually has no copy protection at all) but the brain it gets copied from explodes for reasons, the super-rich society just happens to have thousands and thousands of magic healing beds going completely unused in surplus for reasons…
But you could just say both of those are terrible stories in general. So, let’s look at something with decent writing, engaging characters, good dialogue, a nicely designed overall plot… and a terribly broken dystopia setting. Let’s look at the Hunger Games. The idea of a superpowerful elite crushing the underclass is a time-honored tale. In its guts, HG is constructed quite well. The movie in particular does a good job depicting a desperate and unpleasant situation, even amdist glitz and glamor.
But… again, the setup in HG is completely ridiculous. The supercity of rich people has nanotechnology and genetic engineering and holograms, but they still need a peasant underclass to mine coal for reasons. They want to keep the underclass oppressed, so they routinely murder their children live on television assuming this won’t cause immediate angry rioting in the streets for reasons — and whaddya know, an angry riot HAPPENS in the first book immediately after a little girl’s death. Rioting which, with Katniss as a figurehead, inevitably snowballs into full revolution. Couldn’t see that coming, for reasons. How is the actual Hunger Games oppressing anyone? It’s like poking a bear with a stick; it doesn’t demoralize the bear, it gets your head torn clean off your neck by gargantuan bear claws.
Right. Let’s summarize.
If your entire fiction’s setup requires that much handwaving to justify incomprehensibly stupid forced conflict? If the great “because” is followed by “for reasons” or just “shut up” or “I said so”? You are doing it wrong. Even if your characters are awesome, your dialogue is snappy, and your plots are well crafted… if the dystopian setup can only possibly exist for reasons, I can’t enjoy your story. Sorry.
Lest you think I’m throwing stones in a glass house… I’m not innocent in this, myself. The apocalypses I’ve set up are not perfect; I have a doubt America would concede territory to the Faeries, would wall themselves up and call it a day for two hundred years. I have a doubt technology would stall out. I THINK I did a reasonable job establishing the hows and whys, but I know I have work to do to improve as a writer, and I’d like to one day write a story where nothing ever happens for reasons, that things only happen because it makes perfect sense for things to happen that way. I can dream.
But meanwhile, be tough on writers who rely on laziness, who demand you accept the unacceptable just to get their greater point across. Demand better in your dystopias. You deserve it, dear reader.
Michael Brazier says
As far as Anachronauts’ worldbuilding goes, you have nothing to apologize for. The US yielded its territory west of the Appalachians because of force majeure – faerie magic proved superior on the battlefield. Its cultural stasis afterward is a fairly plausible result of so massive a catastrophe. The Black Death knocked Europe for a loop for about two centuries. And the Winter Queen’s prophetic abilities account for Faerie’s not conquering the US completely, though they could have done so.
Loki says
I must disagree with you on Hunger Games. Spoilers ahead.
The way I interpreted the setting in the books (still haven’t seen the movies), the Districts are basically kept working to give them something to do, not because the City particularly needs them to function. Another purpose is breeding resentment betweent the Districts – it is believed my most Districts that life in e.g. the food-producing District is better, while in fact, it is only marginally so.
As for the child sacrifices, there are documented cases of human sacrifice in human history. Hell, Katniss at the end of book 3 actually goes on to advocate the practice (leading to a massive “What The Hell, Hero?” moment in my head).
I do concede it is not particularly believable, but not as plothole-ridden as you make it out to be.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
I’ll admit that I’ve only the HG movies to go by, so I may be dead wrong. But I wasn’t seeing any inter-district resentment, other than District 1? 2? the one which volunteers regularly and takes pride in the games. Nor was there any indication that the labors of the districts are pointless busywork. I’m not sure how either competition or busywork keeps them oppressed; again you’re just giving the population another thing to be angry about.
I think there’s two ways they could’ve saved the setup.
1. When the riot breaks out after (redacted)’s death, put it down immediately and bloodily. The guys in charge HAVE to be expecting this and it has to have happened in the past; they need to be ready to make a harsh example of anybody who doesn’t sit down, shut up, and watch the Hunger Games as instructed.
2. Another take could be that HG participation is VOLUNTARY… but that the district which wins gets massive benefits. Make the peasantry active and willing participants in their own oppression by dangling a carrot rather than just beating them with a stick. Yes, you get more lottery entries if you ask for more resources, but if you actually train and put forward a candidate in hopes your food rations will be increased by their win, it encourages compliance with the entire awful system.
But, those are “If I was writing it” scenarios. I don’t advocate writers deviate from what they want to write just because someone else would’ve written it differently. If this is the story the author wants to tell, then they can, and it’ll find an audience. I just feel it’d be a LARGER audience if it wasn’t so contrived a setup.
Raigne says
I agree with your analysis with dystopia in general. I would even go further in the Purge and say that had anyone taken an entry level sociology class they would know that crime is a byproduct of a large, organized society and their plot line falls apart. Organized societies have specialists. Specializations have different values. We value a doctor more than we value a plumber. That difference in value creates social stratification where people at the very bottom may frequently be left with no socially acceptable way to survive. Ergo crime.
I disagree with your analysis of your own worldbuilding. You do not go into great detail about how all this shit works, but the glimpse you give us is enough for us to plausibly suspend disbelief and fill in the blanks on our own. The fact that you don’t plan everything in exhaustive, rational detail leaves room for wonder. If you had done it I would have put anachonauts down and been like, “Huh. Interesting.” Instead I put it down and kept thinking about it. Not thinking about the holes, thinking about the characters and what the world was actually *like*. You managed to put aliens and faeries in the same story in a way that didn’t make me roll my eyes.
Why would we concede territory? Fear. Magic is real, and you can’t just burn it on a pyre to make it go away. The inquisition can only defend against it with technology, and the two ideologies are wholly incompatible. Either they make a venn diagram without any intersection so they can’t interact, or they are two ends of a spectrum and they form a double exponential function. I thought about all that and it hooked me. I hope you never write a book where everything is predictable because the reasons are all explained, because it would be terribly boring.
An author/illustrator I have followed for almost as long as I have followed you wrote a blog post about it once. Her explanation refers more specifically to describing how things look, but I think it applies to how things work as well. It’s here, if you’re interested: http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1536076.html
Are you a perfect writer in my mind? No. But you are absolutely capable of making something fantastic plausible enough to force your reader to suspend disbelief long enough to be captivated.
Raigne says
It occurs to me there’s an interesting thing happening in Ursula’s post, since she’s trying to turn a couple plushes she made and the short stories she wrote to go with them into a game, something she has no experience with. You are very familiar with worldbuilding for a game, so I wonder if that’s part of what leaves that niggling worry that you need to elaborate as much as possible. I think it’s very cool when a writer has all the reasons planned out for why things work and how they look, but it’s not necessary to tell me what they are for me to get what I want/need out of reading their story. It can get in the way of that, even. But having all of that planned behind the scenes does make it easier to write a story that is at least internally consistent.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
Interesting ideas there, and I’m going to have to study Ursula’s post. Honestly I’m a terrible judge of my own work; I’m always feeling utter embarrassment in direct proportion to my temporal distance from a finished work. Having outsiders look at the writing and evaluate it is a more balanced take. Thanks!
Lirazel says
Why do you think we’re all clamoring for Unreal Estate? Yeah, it’s not “realistic”. And for those not up on their tropes, it can be mystifying. But it’s brilliant in places, and some part of me wants to stay in I’s Land.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
The book version of Unreal Estate is basically finished. Just waiting for Jen to complete the book cover (she’s reworking the old character art for higher resolution). I anticipate it’ll be out this year.
Andy says
I agree!