I can't wait for book 3! You have been incredibly helpful alongside other channels I've been watching. I plan on buying all 3 books, paperback, as soon as the 3rd is out. The ability to go back and reference things without having to scrub through a 30-90 minute video will be really helpful
Since 1602AD, the most repressive global regime has been "laissezfaire Capitalism" of the "VOC"(The Dutch India Company); the world's first globalist, anti-Black, chattel slavery megacorporation. Their asset wealth was estimated at 23 TRILLION USD. They enslaved 2 MILLION employees. They exterminated dozens of wild species across the Pacific/Asia. Plant and HUMAN... *EDIT: They were a secret international cabal of Anglo-European White Supremacist investor-nations; that survived to this date... These are dystopian numbers. #DystopiaNow Bitterly Ironic statement @29:01🤷🏿♂
I always find it funny that in the Hunger Games children are forced to murder each other on television, but the capitol just wants to focus on a romance between pretty people. And when the Hunger Games books/movies came out everyone ignored the murder and focused on the romance between pretty people.
Really? I guess i don't really consider that stuff since no one ever sees what i see in media, but I didn't realize everyone was going that crazy over the pretty people. Also probably waiting for the series to be completed to start it I guess😅
well then the book proved a point - we watch murder and true crime for entertainment, we watch viral videos of awful tragedies but boi are we invested in celebrities relationships.
One of the biggest problems I have with the Star Wars sequel trilogy is that they had the perfect opportunity to explore the aftermath of a revolution and collapse of an empire, yet chose not to go that route because they wanted a story more like the original trilogy than the prequels. I would have loved to have seen a fledgling new republic trying to establish itself among the successor states/factions of the Empire, Luke trying to re-establish the Jedi order, even Kylo Ren's admiration of Darth Vader and the Empire could have played a bigger part in the story. Instead, we got a hot mess with no direction and no overarching themes.
It's honestly even more annoying how in an odd attempt to explain how the original films got to the world of the sequels they're just making the new republic absurdly incompetent.
Not to mention the visual contrast you could see of a new-republic now flush with resources and uniformity while the once limitless-imperials are now the ones having to deal with the challenges of shortage and relying on increasingly outdated weapons/gear
If there's one thing I know about revolutions, it's that more people die at the end of a revolution. Civilian casualties increase after a revolution because revolutionists suspect any neutral entity as a potential threat to their new order. Revolutionists become what they hated.
One of the things that writers almost always neglect is that a lot of the time the rebels are more likely to fight each other over small ideological differences than together against the ruling regime
I once came up with this explanation, that seems to be pretty helpful: If your political demand is: "Things should be, as they are now", there is no discussion in your base. Everyone knows, what they are up for, because they see it every day. If your demand is "we should change stuff" people will disagree on what they want to change and how.
16:26 When Katniss sings to Rue and zips up her jacket to cover her wound. Closing her eyes, covering her in flowers, and giving her a proper funeral even in the middle of a life or death situation. This is what makes the people start to revolt not rue initially being killed. Many 12 year olds have been killed in the games but this is the time it’s different. She shows humanity in the face of inhumane treatment. Even at the end saying either both of us die or neither of us do. She gives hope even when put in a seemingly hopeless situation. Her individual actions that were more about her mindset than physical actions (though that is part of it) is what impacts the masses watching.
Awesome, but in reality that moment would have been filtered out as the AI preditctors realized what she was about to do and 'went to a commercial' before that occurred. The ONLY thing powerful about that moment was people saw it.
@@Veritas.0 Yes, I think in the book Katniss herself acknowledges in her narration that most likely the Capitol would cut away - and after she wins the games and an edited version of the Games is aired to feature the winners, she notes how that while they leave in the part where she sings to Rue, they *definitely* cut out the part with the flowers. That being said, I liked the choice in the movie to show us the Districts seeing Katniss' actions for Rue, leading District 11 to revolt. It gives the impression that Revolution has always been a slow boil, and there was a trigger point for everyone somewhere - perhaps in 11 that trigger point was Rue's death + Katniss showing her humanity in the face of inhumanity. Not only did 11 have a reason to be angry (they always had a reason to be angry), but they were also shown hope. Plus I liked how they led with that in the second movie to display how much more high security District 11 was - in the books it was simply treated as a surprising fact in comparison to 12, but in the movies it creates a narrative thread that _something_ happened to cause this, and creates a sense of foreboding for the events to come.
@@Veritas.0in the book, Katniss' internal monologue explains that while people likely won't see her gathering and placing the flowers, they'll see they're there because they always have to show the bodies being removed - so even if the capitol chose to film an extreme close-up or from as far away as possible, they would either see the bed of flowers or her eyes closed, her pose or the flowers on her chest and by her face. And even if the capitol did choose to not show it, they'd be singling her out, because it would be the only death not shown, so people would still know something was up. It was an instinctive thing to do, sure, but it was also a calculated move (not towards a revolution but to mark Rue's death in some way)
@@Veritas.0 Other comments already covered the books, but the movies seem to imply that Seneca Crane really believed the hype of the Games, that they were just about putting on the best show possible. So I could totally see Seneca screwing up and letting it air.
The districts can't communicate with each other so they can't organize. But Katniss' actions show them they are together, that they see each other as equal, that union to revolt is possible.
I think the real love story of hunger games was of a big sister trying in vain to defend her little sister from a cruel world. With rue being a surrogate little sister and also foreshadowing prime’s death.
Yeah, I liked Katniss's love story with Peeta a lot (I always fall for the fake!dating trope), but I didn't think there was ever a chance of her ending up with Gale so I really didn't care about the "triangle." I think the movie marketing team tried to hype it up because of Twilight's success. But no what worked in the Hunger Games was the fact that the whole time, the ONLY thing Katniss wanted was for Prim to be safe, and she was unable to protect her in the end.
I have heard that Gale was originally going to be Katniss's cousin but editors suggested to do a love triangle, so it was literally just to try get the attention of more people, like the ones who loved Twilight, as you said.
It really was not a big deal at all for Katniss in the book. The movie made more of it then the book and movie advertisement made WAAAY more of it than the movie.
@@TheDawnofVanlifeehhhh just read the books and she thinks about the love triangle a bunch. Mostly it's in context of "Do I love him or him? But can I really care at the moment because my hands have been tied behind my back ever since I faked the romance"
@@jrlombardi5251 maybe bc in the books they labeled him as her cousin when she and peeta started their fake relationship to not raise any suspicious of their closeness
In the Discworld novel "Guards! Guards!' by Terry Pratchett, the Patrician, who rules the city of Ankh-Morpork with an iron fist, is temporarily knocked out of power. When he is restored to power by the end of the novel, he gives a sort-of villain monologue about how the bad guys will always win the long game because they have a plan for how things should be run while the good guys' only plan is to knock the bad guys out of power.
“You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you're good at that, I'll grant you. But the trouble is it's the only thing you're good at. One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one's been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It's part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don't seem to have the knack.” Of course, in the same novel he also claimed “I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
Which is honestly BS. Being evil does not make you competent or mean you have a sensible long term plan. If anything, most things we consider evil are also just bad ideas and completely unfeasible in the long run. Which is why most evil empires tend to collapse or constantly cycle through instability.
The Patrician is an awesome character because he's not categorized as a hero or a villain... he's almost explicitly the status quo at large, uncaring of small changes except insofar as they affect large scale events.
I love that you talk about the horrors of the whole dune saga and not just the first book. And honestly, I feel like the part of the hunger games that was most soberingly realistic was the way that the real world media talked about it. The way both the fictional and real media talked about the romance and ignored the call to revolt against authoritarianism was kinda striking
What always bothered me about 'V for Vendetta' (the movie) is the way that the "opressed" people are represented: They are like the middle class of a flourishing first world country, all well fed, they live in generously sized, comfortable and fully equipped apartments and wear stylish clothes. They have jobs, they are well educated (even though it's made clear that there are many forbidden or censored books), and they are all open about seeing through government propaganda. I think this way of life is way too comfortable for the average people to actually want to change anything.
"As long as you keep the masses fed & entertained, they'll be apathetic to the dictator in charge." Trump failed to make a dictatorship cuz Covid shut down the theaters & tv shows(the modern circus) and food insecurity spooked lots of people (bread). The US is still a hellscape but we dodged a dictatorship by a hair
History has proven that that's not the case though, take the Czechoslovak Velvet revolution of 1991 for example - sure, the living standards weren't the same as in the west, but the population was well fed and comfortable, all the repression was exclusively political - you couldn't read certain books or watch certain movies, and if you did so you would be denied education or working oppurtunities, but that was the extent of it, much like in V, yet a significant portion of population rose up I think the issue is that deep down there are two kinds of revolutionary tendencies - those of desperation, where people rise up because they have nothing to loose, and those of convenience, where people believe that they have nothing to loose, not because they literally don't have anything, but because the system outwardly appears to weak to take anything away. That's why the czechoslovaks rose in '91, those people weren't ready to fight for the same ideal with a gun in hand in a revolution akin to the russian or the french one's, but they felt that they could rise up without that, so why wouldn't they The former is what the revolution in Vendetta presents itself as, the latter is what it should by all accounts be. That's the disparity that makes it unrealistic, not the simply fact that the world is too good to revolt in
People often talk about bottom-up and top-down types of revolutions, but people should keep in mind that especially if a certain cause is dependent on geography (different ethnicities for example) it usually turns into a civil war. In general, a lot of writers avoid the messy aftermath.
All revolutions are civil wars. Even here in America, there were large militias of Americans loyal to the British King who fought for the British. And in France, the conservative Vendee uprising and the Federalist revolt waged a civil war against the French revolutionaries.
So, I know plotting out a novel isn’t writing one but I was plotting out a series of three books, one for the set up of the main characters motivations and how the system is flawed, book two is about the revolution that drags out into a bloody civil war that challenges the main characters ideology and the problems of especially a top-down revolution (since he was apart of the “Blooded” Class), and how hard it is to divide power well fighting for your lives. And then the third book I wanted to be reconstruction. As the main character attempts to both recreate a society and build his idealogical vision, especially when he is spreading power to stop another dictator, even himself. I was wondering why everyone basically skipped over that part, but I realize it must be extremely boring to people who don’t love deep diving into that stuff
I know this barely counts as dystopian but the Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi is definitely guilty of this. She originally wrote a trilogy where the final book ends with her killing the evil bad guy and that’s it. It’s obvious she hadn’t planned to write the aftermath until fans demanded she did. That’s why she tacked on 3 more books.
Are we talking about hierarchy? Hierarchically top-down "revolutions" don't exist. A revolution is, per definition, always bottom-up. Top-down change is called reform(ation), or it might be a coup d'état which has absolutely zero revolutionary potential.
I've come across many critiques of Katniss, especially in the second half of "Mockingjay" which focus on her fundamental "ineffectiveness" when it comes to the actual fighting. What these critiques fail to accept is that, other than a "Symbol" and too often one used by others (Snow, Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee), Katniss is a seventeen year old, seriously and multiply traumatised young woman, struggling with her multiple PTSDs (her Father; her first Hunger Games; the threats Snow makes against her "extended" family; her second Hunger Games; the destruction of District 12; Peeta's capture; the fact that throughout the rebellion Snow psychologically targets her; Peeta's release as a "Mutt"; and getting shot in District 2). That Katniss is able to walk and talk by the time the Invasion of the Capitol happens, is frankly unbelievable. The critics seem to want her (and she wants )to cut off the "Head of the Snake", but her various traumas only result in her being present to witness the murder of her sister by Coin (arguably, aided and abetted by Plutarch). Suzanne Collins COULD have made Katniss's raid successful; Katniss might well have "cut off the head of the Snake"; Prim might have survived and they all might have lived happily ever after, but Collins chose the harder and darker path, thus subverting the "Chosen One" trope for which Coin/Plutarch had fitted Katniss. Yet Katniss's essential "Goodness" meant that she was still able to see through Coin and choose to end Oppression, rather simply than the Fallen Regime...
I think you're giving Collins too much credit for Jennifer Lawrence's work here. Katniss' heel turn is way more jarring in the books and poorly set up. With the benefit of reading the book Lawrence added more descent into madness into movie 2, and is a good actress. I think Collins honestly got lucky that the ending holds up as well as it does.
@@InterloperBob For me, the books are far more focussed on Katniss's mental state, than are the movies. Written as they are, exclusively from inside Katniss's head, they have to be. Lacking the possibility of only doing the movie from behind Katniss's eyeballs, the movies were compelled to try to show the effects of the multiple traumas externally... But as anyone who has experienced any trauma will tell you, the main effects are internal and fundamentally unfilmable. As a personal example, I once woke up to find the bottom of my bed on fire. For months thereafter, everytime I closed my eyes, I not only saw the flames, I also continued to smell the fumes... You can't film smell and most experts suggest that smell and taste are the strongest memories...
@@michaelodonnell824 Even a decade later I will recall a smell from the past the same as ever before, while the visual memory associated with it is fragmented and barely understandable.
@@michaelodonnell824 Katnis became a passive character. her actions didnt affect the story. that it is not good writing. there is a reason stroeis with passive characters arent successful. it was a bad decision to make her go from doing everything to protect Prime to mopping around, complete whiplash and tone change, it was an different series all together
@@michaelodonnell824 seems Collins didnt know what to do after the first book seeing the second is basically a repeat of the first in some aspects. also there are ways to make PTSD characters work in a story like in Joker. the book was just poorly written
Honestly there’s nothing quite as infuriating as when the story (or rather, revolution) screeches to a halt because the characters have romance drama to deal with. Like the secret police have killed your family and are breaking down the door, but by all means have a long dramatic conversation about the two of you. 🤨
but it kind of makes it more relatable. People have their personal human lives and focus on their own shit all the time. As someone from a country with an oppressive authoritarian regime, I can confirm that otherwise outrageous things can become just another shit that happened while your life and your responsibilities are still there. I also have seen a lot of people who choose to focus more on their personal stuff because they need that sense of control over something in their life. It's a coping mechanism in a way.
@@leoreth2179 this is absolutely true. That being said, there's a way to translate this in story without it being so jarring and off putting for the reader. Like, tension from say high stakes negotiations, an interrogation, or even a battle scene shouldn't be so easily broken to talk about relationship issues. I believe that it happens in real life, but it kinda ruins the steam an author builds up
@@elektraeriseros I think it depends on how it's done. One of my favorite books is half of a yellow sun, which is not a story about a revolution as such, but set during the Nigerian Civil War. The book focuses primarily on the characters relationships to one another (including romance drama), but it also portrays the harsher realities of war from a civil (and for a short bit a soldier's) perspective. This dichotomy works wonderfully, and is part of what makes the book feel so realistic and grounded. Because even as the world is falling apart around them and they're constantly experiencing traumatizing things, life does go on. And people in shitty situations still often struggle with many of the same issues as those that live under better circumstances.
Or, when a girl gets sent to a gulag-like working prison camp and nothing happens to her but she whines how oppressed she is 'coz she is in ratty clothes and does some work. She does not get rpe or tortured. The "injustice" was certainly not believable and certainly contrived to stroke the ego of the author's avatar.
@@leoreth2179A certain author thought it was compelling for her main characters (leaders of their faction) decided to have sex while their camp was being attacked. She described how erotic it was inside their tent (they know they are being attacked) while the rest were getting slaughtered. Yeah. Readers with a conscience will certainly relate to it.
The problem with making a story entirely about “the elites vs the people” is that nearly every revolution is able to get off the ground because of a significant minority of disaffected elites
I learnt that from Edmund Burke, "Reflections on the Revolution in France". It was not a bottom-up revolution. It was an up-up revolution. Wealthy lords and lawyers stuffed up with Enlightenment ideals.
@@zimrielits richer people but not the richest of the richest. they were part of the 3%/97% i think. you could be the other 97% but you couldve gain money after making a good business etc, you could buy titles but for a lot of money and then you couldnt be a lawyer, or do other jobs, that's what annoyed them.
One of the best, if not THE best, revolution stories I've ever read, is Red Rising by Pierce Brown. He takes a much more realistic approach to the subject, with the main character having to infiltrate the Society he's trying to destroy while being at war with himself when he realizes not all of them are bad people, that even within the higher cast, people still suffer. Pierce Brown continues expanding the world and addresses what happens AFTER they win the revolution and how it's not just a one-and-done thing. It takes decades if not more to remake a society, and even after that, not everyone agrees on how things should be run. The second part of the saga is quite literally the characters ten years into the future dealing with the ramifications of the war.
I already replied to another RR post, but I just wanted to express my love for the series and add a little to your comment. One thing I love about the second part of the saga is the fact that it explores the flaws of the heros of the revolution and the revolution itself. Such an amazing series!
I mean after a few revolutions and republics they finally got one going that wasn’t immediately replaced by a monarchy (the third republic) still even since then there has been numerous crisis and wars which forced the creation of new republics. I think another thing that makes revolutions complicated is outside preassure. France was coalitioned multiple times. The Russian civil war had like 20 nations intervene with Britain using chemical weapons.
Same with the Russian Revolution, can you imagine writing a revolution where all of the opposition leaders were out of the country when it started, or where the dictator just agreed to step aside?
I think the most hilarious was when they tried replacing the 'irrationality of religion' (as they saw it) with a new temple dedicated to... the Cult of Reason. Complete with people bedecked as the Goddess of Reason (But no statues because that would be idolatry and gods did not exist.). Then shortly replaced with the Cult of the Supreme Being which believed in a god and immortal soul but worshipped reason and the opposition to tyranny above any godhead. The latter was installed by of all people the not tyrant Robespierre.
I watched a documentary on it and still find myself floored by some of the things that happened. It seems like something out of a really good drama novel. The public forcing the King to re locate. The fisherwomen trying to butcher the queen. The weird Cult of Reason that sprung up to combat the Catholicism of past. The fact that a guy in a bathtub was a major player in who the mob decided to kill. Reign of Terror indeed.
I think the Mistborn trilogy does a great job of showing how merely removing the big evil tyrant is just step ONE of the revolution. Getting a handle of governance as well as handling the fallout of the tyrant's removal is just as important.
I was just coming here to comment on Mistborn and how book one is all about remove the big bad guy, but it’s so much more, and messier, by the time the first book ends. It’d be interesting to hear other people’s opinions though.
In the Spider Punk comic run, this is actually Hobie's exact character arc. It's him realizing he can't just kill the guy in power, because the whole system is built to just put in another big bad.
I thought the politics were not well written in the second book. And Dockson literally has a "oh well if WE had killed the nobles we'd be the baddies!" internal monologue in his death scene that is very dumb lol
@@poisonforsocrates Because its hard to come to terms with something like that, try and imagine the nobles as Nazis and the Scaa as the jews, then try and imagine not wanting to kill every single last one of them.
What do you mean it's not easy for a bunch of teenage heros to replace a giant multi-ethnic continental absolutist empire with a direct democracy after murdering its last monarch and proclaiming the new order with no infrastructure or legitimacy?
that’s what i like the best about the hunger games trilogy. even though katniss is without a doubt the focus of the series, she is more a symbol than anything, which is what makes the final book hit even harder. collins had the opportunity to go true YA dystopian and make the 17 year old girl a hero and take out the big bad (snow) and take control, but instead she becomes a chess piece in the game between coin v snow, two regime leaders that are ultimately not that different from each other. her complexity as a character allows her to see through this and put down the new regime, but her youth means she suffers intense PTSD and takes a step back in the world, even trying to commit suicide instead of living in a world without her sister. its just so real, something i can truly appreciate instead of teenage dystopian fantasy belief of “everything is better now that the bad guy is dead”.
Exactly the same problem with “Cross Ange” especially after Ange killed Embryo; somehow a few years after Libertus Ange will become the very tyrant that she despised of just to keep her new nation of Arzenal alive.
Javert's Suicide is actually my favourite song and part of Les Miserables. It's so powerful, this rigid man who's entire worldview just collapsed from a single act of mercy, and he finds it impossible to reconcile with reality. There's so much to love in that musical.
Disco Elysium does an excellent job at portraying you last point; in how different people you meet in game interact with nostalgia. The city, by the point you’re playing the game, has gone through at least four different pseudo-revolutionary phases, and every character in game feels some connection to at least one of those periods. Fascists missing the old autocratic dynasty, communists missing the revolutionary days, capitalists missing the economic boom, and moralists trying to be happy with the way things are.
@@ruckzuruck7039 make an experiment - take a person that has no knowledge of communism and make him read everything that the game has on the subject. Then ask him a simple question - what the heck is communism even? He won't be able to. There are no communist games out there. Simple as.
I think it should be noted that even if a revolution is successful, it doesn't mean that the previous regime is completely beaten. There will still be people who support the old ways. For example, in star wars legends the empire still exists after episode 6 and continues to fight the rebels/new republic for several more years
The thing with revolutions, more so perhaps than any other event in history, is made of things that went just right. Maybe the presence of one more regiment in a city could stop those dreams for good. And it is often hard to weave all the treads so perfectly as has happened in history.
And that actually is pretty hard to craft without it feeling coincidental. Most of them that I see feels like the people always had the capacity but just chose to remain subservient
@gamegod273 yes, certainly, it can be like that sometimes. It might take something to show the people that they should not accept the status quo. (Correct me if I am wrong) In Ireland, support for full independence from the united kingdom only really began after the people saw how the british handled the easter rising. Even so, it always takes more than just a group of people wanting something, no matter how large that group might be.
@@gamegod273isn’t that how revolutions irl work too? the people always have the power to overthrow the government whether it’s oppressing them or not. even if a revolution takes years or decades to fully come to fruition, it’ll always happen because shitty governments are inherently unstable. the people usually just need some big catalyst so that enough of the population believes that the social order and rules they live under don’t matter. that’s really all a revolution is. it’s the people deciding that they don’t wanna listen to the government anymore because they’ve stopped believing it has power.
Maybe best to say that revolutions are what happen when things go wrong...the previous system had to screw up things so bad that the masses get to a breaking point where continuing to suffer no longer outweighs the risk of rising up. The spark in the tinderbox being some horrific event aimed against those of the masses, like a large protest being suppressed by the state turning into the first battle of a civil war. Things only go downhill from then on. It's only when it's all over that one can look back and say "everything went just right"
@@gamegod273 not really, the most important aspect is organisation. it doesn't matter if you have the majority if you are discorganised. meanwhile orgnaised rebelions only need 3.5% of the population to suppport them. communism was very unpopular in Russia yet they won the civil war because they were better ogranised than the majority.
I hope you get to talk about Andor, because the way it portrays revolutions is so complex and nuanced that it makes you forget it was a Disney Plus show
Best Star Wars since Empire Strikes Back (I like The Last Jedi and think Mandolorian and other Disney shows have their enjoyable moments. I’m not part of the anti-woke hate queer and black folks in Star Wars crowd)
@@morningglory.2 yes, that was the group I was trying to separate myself from. I thought Kenobi was lame not because they cast Moses Ingram as an Inquisitor, but for it’s meandering plot and the fact that Obi Wan is now an idiot for leaving a defeated Vader alive twice given the amount of carnage he will commit in the future. Walking away once because you assume the lava will melt him, sure, but leaving the Empire’s number one enforcer alive after you’ve seen him destroy a village firsthand and pulls ships out of the sky… Obi Wan is now culpable for Vader’s future destruction. I don’t think the Last Jedi is perfect by any means. But it does have some of the best cinematography in the series (Snoke’s chamber, Holdo Maneuver, Crait)
The Battle of Algiers is a really great movie about the Algierian resistance against the French in the 1950s. It focuses on a small scale rebellion within one city and shows a lot of the little things that go into a revolution. It also doesn't really endorse or condemn either side. I think it would be very good for understanding revolutions.
"So, let me ask you a question about this brave new world of yours. When you've killed all the bad guys, and it's all perfect and just and fair, when you have finally got it exactly the way you want it, what are you going to do with the people like you? The troublemakers. How are you going to protect your glorious revolution from the next one?" ~ The Twelfth Doctor, Dr Who, "The Zygon Inversion"
The Operative: It's not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin. Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world? The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.
That whole speech really stuck with me! I liked it so much that I actually memorised it and recited it regularly (although I doubt I could still recite it now). Thanks for reminding me of it again.
Writing revolutions is like world building with many factions. You need to make it complex so that it’s realistic but also simple enough to understand and execute in a story. Tolkien’s Middle Earth is actually a good example because it shows the reality of the consequences of one’s actions and that people are still people that mess up and hurt each other in the various hero factions, even though there’s concrete Good and Evil.
A lot of people focus when people start rioting or cause a civil war but not the build up of the factions behind the scenes. Spontaneous revolutions are very rare.
In the Expanded Universe the Galactic Empire did splinter into several factions. The Galactic Civil War lasted over twenty years after Palpatine's death.
@@SuperWindsageit happens in the new canon too. Most of the Imperial warlords are gone in less than a year after Palpatine dies (too fast, if you ask me), but one of them goes on to become the First Order
@@Muljinn it's not really hand-waved as much as it's only ever directly relevant to expanded universe material lol. The sequel trilogy happens after most of that has calmed down
@@Muljinn Even despite that, I heavily doubt they could have all been defeated in a year. Both in Canon and Legends, the Empire had tens of thousands of Star Destroyers, and having everything fall apart in a year is quite unrealistic. To be fair, without Thrawn's campaign and Operation Shadow Hand, the Galactic Civil War in Legends probably would have ended around 12-13 ABY, rather than 19 ABY, but 5 ABY is just ridiculous.
Pratchett(GNU) probably has one of my favorite quotes about revolutions in night watch. "But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions."
4:30 Y'know, I've always wondered how Javert was able to work for the First French Republic, Napoleon's Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, and the Orleanist Monarchy, and still have such an ironclad sense of morality.
I suppose mainly because it was so black and white. In Javert's world view, he was a policeman and his opponents were criminals. Who made the law and what the law said was inconsequential to him so long as he could hold to the idea that those who broke the law were evil and that those who enforced the law were, therefore, by definition good. And that's why, when Valjean shows him the world was not as black and white as Javert thought, the man jumps off a bridge rather than live on in uncertainty of what is right and what is wrong.
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel. And of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I'd have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolishionist. I would've been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac; but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic.
He was an initially a low level cop. You can’t toss out EVERYONE who worked for the old regime when you come in. You gotta keep some people around. Streets gotta be patrolled.
My absolute favorite of the "If you kill him, you'll be just like him" remains Transformers: More than Meets the Eye. Ratchet: "No. If we kill him, we're no better than him. If we kill him, he wins." First Aid: "Yeah, except-we are better than him and he doesn't win. He doesn't anything. He's dead. That's the point."
"If we kill him, we're not better than him?" This trope really annoys the hell out of me. Didn't you, like, kill dozens and dozens of soldiers to get to this point? Soldiers who had friends and families? Soldiers who had wives and children? Why is it okay to kill all of them, but it is not okay to kill the one person responsible for everything?
The problem with revolutions is that they have to have a goal. The Rebellion in Star Wars is the best example. They were fighting for liberty, a goal you can get behind, but nothing more than that. This resulted in anarchy after their victory because they didn't plan for a galaxy without the stability of the Empire.
Their goal was to restore the Republic. Which is why one of their names is the Alliance to restore the Republic. The problem being is that the Republic kinda sucked.
I feel that was more of writing problem. The trilogy ended with victory celebration, so they didn't need to give rebels nuance on what was going to happen. When the sequels came out, they just needed a new villain, and decided to recreate the original trilogy, so there is a big gap between the defeat of the empire and the rise of the new fascist empire (which we basically know nothing about).
@arditlika9388 It doesn't make sense that the New Republic sucked as much as it did in the ST, but it does make sense that it sucks. It's easy for a lot of diverse interests to get together on the principle that the old government is bad and needs to be replaced, but it's very very hard for them all to agree afterwards on what to replace it with
@@kirkkerman The problem is that the Rebellion was an alliance of several very different cultures, who all have different views. They had a clear goal, but as soon as that goal was achieved there was just no reason anymore to stay united. Rallying behind a common enemy is very effective, but only as long as that enemy exists.
Although it wasn't mainstream or even canon, the Old Expanded Universe (Legends) of Star Wars had entire book arcs about a post-RotJ galaxy and how the New Republic worked to build itself again. There are long running stories on fighting warlords, the difficulties of a fledging democracy, political infighting and so on. It was incredibly compelling and intriguing. The current canon is how the current writers decided to play it (anarchy) 30 years after the fact. Stories are written by good or bad writers, they don't just spawn outta nowhere lol
Crazy timing! I was just about to start writing a story about a revolution. I've been researching the Servile Wars and its got me wanting to write something similar.
29:00 Side note though, those graphs aren't just people idolising the past, there's more to that. In case of Lithuania and many other Eastern European countries, after the Soviet collapse and their subsequent independence, to transition to a market economy they were subject to 'Economic Shock Therapy' which was, let's just say, a terrible disaster both economically and socially. I would not be surprised the living standards dropped because of that and need a lot of time to recover. In the case of the soviet graphs, romanticisation of the Soviet Union by the Putin regime is a major component in its propaganda (re-establishing itself as a superpower etc.), on top of the economic woes following the collapse of the USSR (also Shock Therapy amongst other factors). So although factors like the latter might lead to people naturally idolising the past to some extent, there can be a definite regime push towards it to advance political goals.
Another good point is how revolutions rarely ever succeed in real life. They almost never do. So if you are trying to write something really realistic consider it not succeeding.
Yup. Usually, the persons getting swept to the top during a revolution are not the persons needed to consolidate a stable peace afterwards. Revolutionary leaders have a tendency to devolve into neurotic, paranoid dictators.
@@leo9597 Russian Revolution Haitian Revolution Latin American Wars of Independence Iranian Revolution Velvet Revolution Chinese revolution of 1911 Chinese Civil War Cuban Revolution These are just the things i could remember from the top of my head. I'm sure there's more successful ones throughout history.
Ohh noice topic that's relevant to me. Im writing my own fictional book which includes revolution however Im modeling it on the Mexican Revolution. Specifically because of how messy it was where there are multiple factions that have their own goals, occasionally allied together against a common foe, but then not agreeing on the outcome and start fighting each other
Same here. Mexican revolution is such a mess, but gives so many opportunities for interesting and complex characters... Hope that you get a story that you are more than satisffied with ☺️
We really need a movie about Pancho Villa, the last cowboy. Pancho Villa starts out as a cowboy stuck in a western movie fighting the tyrannical government in a patriotic war of liberation to fighting trench warfare with Carranza and Obregon because he doesn't like that Obregon wears perfume. The youthful optimism of Pancho Villa literally rams head first into trench warfare.
I think it’s because, that’s not what the story was about,the marketing of the movies only made it seem like it was,?while the books barley touch it Like Gale was never an option 💀
Peter was never an option either. Prim was the only option. Katniss was trying to save her family and the whole time these boys are fighting over her like she cares at all about this drama when she has way more important things to care about. She frankly only ends up with Peter due to trauma bonding. She's fucked up and he's all she's got left. The love triangle was never the point.
@@Saktoth I’d disagree, both boys represented something, Gale was fire and hatred, Peeta represented peace and love. The other main difference is that Peeta actually have katniss space in catching fire while Gale acted like a little bitch boy
@@Saktoth I agree. I never once bought that Katniss ever actually loved Peeta through all three books. Indebted, but never in love. I also hated at the end when Katniss admits she never wanted the kids, but Peeta did, so she had them anyway.
@@Saktoth i agree i never really felt that she felt any romantic love towards either of them. her and peeta became co-dependent given the hell they went thru together. the end where they're together with kids felt kinda morbid cuz i felt like they were still acting and didnt know how to stop. i read them when i was really young tho and havent reread them since but i remember vividly thinking that it makes no sense that they had kids together. (also given the ptsd idk if they would even be able to properly raise multiple kids when they're both full of ptsd and there is no therapy or anything. it all felt empty in the end)
Yay! I'm so happy to see you have so many books out and sold now! I've been watching your videos for a long time now. I may have begun watching these videos as critiques of some od my favorite and least favorite works to better my own writing, but they've also helped me better understand people and how to communicate w them in general, even in a non-writing context. Thank you so much for all the hard work you've put into the world!
Ngl, as a Hunger Games fan, the thumbnail of this video had me terrified. Super glad to have left this video having an even greater appreciation for The Hunger Games series! This videos overall was fantastic, not that I expected anything less from this channel.
I honestly do not know many people who have criticized the Hunger Games as a story. It is one of those series that really earned its popularity because of how well-constructed it was and how deeply the story cares about the messages it sends.
@@albedougnut The few cases of criticism regarding the story I have seen are based more on the ignorance of the detractor than real problems with the plot. For example someone complained that the districts are specialized in a given industry, even when that occurs in real life. Another person complained that the capitol had so much technology while other districts were starving even when the whole point of the plot is that the capitol is oppresive so that inequality is intentional.
Yeah, thg ain’t a perfectly written story (that dumb love triangle for example) but for a YA novel, it really does have a lot more to say than the average bear. Not to dunk on YA or anything, but there’s a reason why YA book to film adaptations are so… questionable lol
@@WingItMan217 Don't quote me on this, but I think the author didn't even want to push the love triangle at all in the first place. To my knowledge, her editor pushed for it, and she worked it into a commentary on celeb relationships as best she could.
@@kylepangilinan9075 yup I heard that too and I believe it. I agree with you on the commentary part (its actually one of my favorite parts about catching fire and peeta and katniss’ dynamic) but it got super tiresome in mockingjay. The gale and katniss stuff I mean
I've been writing a story for 5 years. I know how it starts, how it ends and how every character is built. However, I've been struggling to get from point A to point B because I didn't know how to build tension points. This video just gave me clarity on that! Thanks!!! Going to check your book now!
One of my favorite fictional revolutions is the one found in the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. The first three books follow the initial revolution, how the main character slowly infiltrates the society, and him figuring out the acts he needs to take to bring about change. Constantly at war with himself, caught between learning to trust those close to him, while also feeling like he needs to keep himself so closed off, as he has no one to trust. The struggle of fixing things, acting not out of revenge, but justice, and in the dream of creating a better world, not a worse one. After the first three books, the revolution has come to pass in much of it's capacity, but the cracks are showing with the newly formed Republic at war with the remnants of the Society. The actions the main character commited previously, both good and ill, reverberating into the future. Showing the failings of those with the keys of power within the Republic, mostly from the perspective of those who have been left behind. For example, one of the perspective characters in the second series goes from being what is essentially a slave in the mines, to a refugee in a camp hiding while terrorists are allowed to run rampant.
I've yet to start the second trilogy and I'm glad it exists exploring these post-revolution themes, because Morning Star was quite a let down, it definitely suffered from the "Head of the Snake" problem and it a major issue with the scope, which ended up fizzling out in the end. Thankfully, the story continues after that, so it's not that big of an issue overall.
@@LightningRaven42 Yeah morningstars ending was one of the weaker points of the series. But i can understand Pierce's need to wrap up the plot without treading on the same ground as previous(another space battle, or iron rain). The sequel series is shaping up to better than the original IMO, though Iron Gold has an issue of introducing a bunch of characters at once, which may cause you to struggle to maintain interest, atleast initially, if you are solely focused on Darrow's journey. Overall though, probably my favorite book series of recent, and it really picks up come Dark Age, with a return to form.
The Expanded Universe novels actually tackle what happens after the Emperor dies. The Empire splintered into multiple factions, some still loyal to the old regime, but not trusting each other, some looking out only for themselves, competing for the scraps. And in the middle of it is the Rebellion, that still doesn't really have legitimacy as a government, and is now working to consolidate their gains, kicking out the old one planet at a time, but having to contend with all of the new power blocks, both within and without, trying not to turn into a new Empire.
That's more or less what's happening in the Mandalorian and Ahsoka, I'd say. Moff Gideon, Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Shadow Council... Imperial warlords continue to operate, the First Order is growing, and the New Republic has very little power or influence (with many already disillusioned.) Pretty neat!
What's remarkable about Andor is how unafraid it is of revolutionary violence. It doesn't waste time asking if its characters are "going too far." It understands that, for the oppressed, violence is not a moral decision. Hell, it's not really a decision at all. It is the method by which they liberate themselves. Lesser projects (*cough* Falcon and the Winter Soldier *cough*) are incapable of telling revolutionary stories because they are committed to the idea that revolutionary violence is wrong. Literally any character in Andor could easily be "Killmongered" so to speak. Any one could be condemned by the show as basically correct but too extreme. I mean, that's essentially what Saw Gurrera exists in Star Wars to do, but even he isn't condemned by this show. God, Andor is so good.
@@VoonNBuddiesare you seriously trying to suggest that the show is an endorsement of revolutionary violence? it’s literally acknowledged that the early rebels did some really fucked up shit and the show doesn’t explicitly endorse that (like showing how the aldhani raid causes misery for so many people with the crackdown that follows and how leuthen says ‘that’s the point’
@@hegantank6495 The show doesn't condemn any of it either. There is no act of violence carried out by a revolutionary that is condemned by the show. Even the acts that we might morally be against, the show understands aren't questions of morals for the characters involved. They don't perform these acts of violence because they are good or bad. They do so because that's the only way they can fight back. You personally already coming into the show not liking these things isn't the same as the show condemning them. In your example, the show never confronts Luthen's idea that repression breeds rebellion. No one questions that idea in the show. He's never shown to be wrong. In fact, the worsening conditions of the prisoners as a result of the increased repression directly leads to a prison break. If anything, the text proves Luthen right! Repression does in fact breed rebellion. You might personally think that is a bad thing, but the show doesn't.
Arcane also does revolution super well by capturing the allure and complexities of all sorts of factions. It also in my opinion captures the diversity of each side that comes crashing together in times of different types of scientific and then later setting up a political revolution while still being deeply character focus
One thing that very few revolution stories cover is the idea that countries don't exist in a vacuum, so I'm glad to see you point that out here. For instance, my ancestors came from the Philippines. They had just succeeded in an anti-colonial revolution against Spain in 1898, when the same geopolitical reasons that pushed Spain to take them over in the first place pushed the USA to take them over and pretend they were never independent in the first place (see also Puerto Rico). So the success of getting rid of Spain had more to do with Spain dwindling in power over the years, and not with a recognition that colonialism is bad, because the rising power of the USA just jumped right in and took over. After the USA left, the lack of experience with self government and probably a desire for the good old days of autocracy led to a series of "democratically elected" dictators, who of course get to keep power partly because they allow USA naval bases, etc. There are many other examples from Central and South America as well, but I just cited the example I know best.
For people curious about Revolutions and want another "unified" theory from a political history standpoint. The last mini-series of Mike Duncan's Revoltions Podcast is an excellent resource! Around 10 episodes that goes over some aspects a lot of historical revolutions have in common after studying them for around ten years.
Only problem is that the Mexican revolution is much better than any friction. It has a much better story/characters arc than Star Wars for example. I say Poncho Villa does a better hero's journey than Luke.
@@mcpiddle1099 I think that goes with most historical revolutions, there are some things that happen in reality that just can't be thought up in fiction
Your videos have been insanely good of late! I've been enjoying your channel for a long time now, but since the essay on Unit 731 the quality and seriousness of your videos have been increasing wildly! Keep it going! Best regards
One of my problems with fictionalizing revolutions is that I do think there is an interest both in co-option by the the established order as well as an attempt to fantasize it focusing on the ephemeral aspects of it as means of placating the desire for it as well as trivializing/minimizing it as way to distract away from its true concerns and the means it truly goes about building collective action. They also focus on the individual and the chosen one trope a lot to undermine the fact that most revolutions are not the product of a great leader but the many actions of many individuals working in concert together that are no more or less important than the others.
As a massive Star Wars fan, I think that the best thing SW has is it's length. With all the spinoff shows and books and movies, you get to see a really complex picture of the Revolution, from all the reasons that the empire formed, to the dark times under the empire, to the beginning of revolution, the anarchy of a lawless galaxy, and finally the rebellion taking hold and trying to secure the New Republic and make it powerful enough to function as an actual powerful force in the infinite sea of powerful groups.
Wow, loved this! Writing a book series that starts in the middle of a rebellion, but the one main lead doesn't care at all, and the other doesn't know why the rebellion is even happening. It leaves a lot of room for exploration. This video was very helpful in putting a few more pieces of the puzzle together for me. Thank you!! Also, I had to rewind the video a couple times because your wand waving was very distracting. 😆 Also also, Les Miserables is the best! I love the musical so much! ❤️🎶
Be careful to not make these characters too passiv - let there individuell goals colide with the rebellion AND the old order. Make them struggle and be annoyed by the conflict. If they just react to stuff happening it is boring and really hard to read and feel hocked.
This might have been you're very best video yet, thank you so much. Please Please do a deep dive solely focused on Les Misérables. It's such a complex story it breaks my brain - but I love it anyway. The way you were explaining it by layers with the board and notes somehow made things I've never noticed pop. I don't know why - but today I realized I'm such a character on the ground reader and film watcher that I completely miss other meaning and relationships that themselves say something. I can trace after the fact what the theme is by tracing the start, turn and end of the plot - which I read as the statement of the theme. But that's as far as I get. My dream would be a layer by layer vid series examining each topic you discussed here through the example of Les Misérables . 🙏
Andor is probably one of the few revolution based pieces of material that has changed my perspective towards many things. That show in only 12 episodes has been able to create a fully realized, nuanced and complex portrayal of a rebellion in a way that few pieces of media have been able to do, it's insane to me that it came out under Disney.
Fire Emblem Three Houses is very fascinating as a revolution story, since in 3 of the 4 story routes you are fighting directly against the force working for the most open change. The others are very much on the “change from within” approach, though to different extents. It plays with the player and tricks them using old series tropes (the blue hero vs the red villain) to make it difficult to tell that you are the one working to preserve the primary status quo.
Eh, this may not be a popular view, but I am firmly of the opinion that Claude's original plan was to invade Fodlan outright and conquer it in the name of Almyra. He merely presents it as opening up the xenophobic barriers between the two to dress up the fact that Almyra's historic method of going about this was to run armies down Fodlan's Locket. Claude doesn't need to do this anymore in his route of Three Houses but in Three Hopes, we get to see Claude basically stab Faraghus in the back to side with the then hostile Adrestian Empire, basically screwing over the Leicester Alliance, becoming it's first and only king, and basically empowering an unaware Edelgard to attack Leicester or at least make it a puppet state, with her and everyone apart from Shez completely unaware that the Almyrans have his back and are now free to march across Fodlan's Locket.
@@LB-py9ig three hopes Claude is pretty fascinating from the revolutionary framework. He is hyperfocused on one specific area he wishes to revolutionize, that being the border. In Houses he quickly realizes that Byleth is a shoe in as the next archbishop, so he throws his support behind them and imprints his ideology upon them. Hopes Claude lacks this, but I wouldn’t say his endgame is invasion. It’s a worthy interpretation of his goals before the game starts, but I think it ignores how much he cares about the golden deer. I’m not a believer in “pacifist Claude,” but he does tend towards the strategies that lead to the fewest on his side dying, and a secondary war featuring Almyra would be somewhat antithetical to that. The breakthrough that Claude makes in Hopes is similar to Houses, but this time he places his trust in Edelgard, albeit with a healthy dose of skepticism. His lack of trust in others at the start is his biggest downfall across every route.
Babylon 5 (TV show) has a some really interesting potrayals of politics a few different revolutions. My favourite one is "oh f*ck, the man I put on the throne with my political machinations is both insane and murderous".
@@KingFlameHawkBut in space with aliens and philosophy and a lot of inter-cultural politics and genocide. The human plot/civil war is actually a lot closer to a WWII story based in Germany or Italy about the rise and resistance against fascism.
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike, as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes, and wave. Like this."
This is one of the most serendipitous video suggestions I ever got. Not only did I hust finish the Hunger Games trilogy a couple of days ago, my own novel Im working on has revolution in it ! You gave me a lot to think about! Thank you so much.
I've noticed how in pre-modern politics, revolutions as we know it don't happen outside of China during a dynasty change. Like, the edge of an empire with a regional majority wanting independence being more common then a complete regime change unless it's caused by an outside source like Barbarians making themselves the new elite after a successful invasion.
I feel like a lot of books with political intrigue and revolutions fall flat because most writers are not very political themselves. Authors like Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler are very compelling because when you read them you can see how much they understand the political and economic theories they’re exploring. Authoritarianism = bad for example is an infantile way to look at history but that’s what a lot of novels in this genre conclude to.
I have your first two worldbuilding books, and think they're terrific. And this video was SO helpful, I made 3 pages of notes! Thank you a thousand times over. I'm off to watch your other videos on revolutions. Thanks! Stay nerdy.
As a history major, I think the Powder Mage series does the best job. You have a long standing aristocracy whose power is imbedded in their elemental magic. Suddenly throught advent of new technology a new magic is discovered that allows the lower classes to fight back. The rage and mass executions at the start, the reaction from established powers, and the scrappy will to fight for a.dream make it so unique and worth reading.
27:20 side note it took me a long time to realize why Katniss said yes to Coin holding more hunger games. It is so vague in the book but the movie gave like a line of context that completely changes it. In that moment Katniss decided to say yes to not let on that Katniss knew Coin was responsible for Prim and to get on her good side to get close to her and stop the games for good. I only realized this like a few months ago hi but not at all the 10 times i read the books as a kid
Yes I used to be confused by this but honestly it was quick thinking on her part, rather than being rash and expressing her opposition to coin she goes along with it and uses it to orchestrate a chance to kill her
I’m only on season one, but the noble revolt is legends of the galactic hero’s is a good example, show goes in depth with Politics comparing how an autocracy and a democracy differ and how it’s not always the case that democracy is flat out better
This video has legitimately saved my book I've been writing, I feel like I was writing revolution in a lense that made sense but the way you've explained things made me realize some pretty severe worldbuilding gaps I was having. Thank you so much for these videos!!
This is so relevant to me right now, working on a D&D campaign which is about revolution and revolt. Understanding where the realism of real world revolution (which is messy and does not necessarily have a cohesive narrative and is often a result of fractious divergence of elements in existing power structures) and fictional revolutions (which follow narrative beats and can be tied together in a literary sense) is really key to creating even mythic revolutions which FEEL real and like they have relatable weight and meaning.
I love Red Rising, this is the first time I've seen it in an essay from memory. Do you think you'll reference it more? I really liked its gritty and grounded sci-fi style
This is great! Revolutions in real life are extremely difficult to pull off well without replacing one tyranny for another type of tyranny. Great story, but so tough
Exactly the reason why we are seeing so much criticism on “Star Wars” especially with the New Republic; I have looked through some videos and I can see parallel references in anime.
I like that you touch on the difficulty of reconciling your attachment to a home country or culture with "what you find out ot did or might have done" Because that's how I feel about my country and culture. A way I've begun to look at it is like a dysfunctional family. There are problems. Maybe even big ones. But it's still your family and you still love them. And maybe the flaws hurt even worse because it's HOME.
I love your stuff! It's great to see a fellow New Zealander make such rich (and useful!) content. If the book I'm writing ever gets published, you're definitely going to be in the acknowledgements haha, your videos have been a huge help into forcing me to think more deeply about the world building and storytelling
"Romanticizing the past" yup.... seen that quite a lot in my country (Iran). A lot of people wish for the "good old times" under the Shah and while I'm dubious as to whether or not it's a good Idea to wish for an autocracy (at least an official one since the current system can be argued to be autocratic as well), I do understand the merits they saw in the former regime and their lack of faith in the current war. we have arguably been in the throws of another revolt for at least a decade now and living it, you do feel the hesitation and fear of such an uncertain tribulation despite the great mistrust in the current establishment.
So one thing about the love triangle in Hunger Games is it's thematic- peace vs violent methods, the old life she had vs. the new future she wants to build.
24:06 Funny you say that! That's actually what is happening in the Mandalorian and such, (and what the First Order arguably was). Moff Gideon, Grand Admiral Thrawn... it's a whole thing. It's true that the Original Trilogy treated Palpatine's defeat as the finish line, though. Great video, as usual!!
I recently decided to write a very complicated revolution story that will act as an allegory as well, and though I am daunted by the enormity of the task, I am also excited to get the world building done so I can explore the characters on all sides. Thank you for posting this, I knew this stuff, but it is helpful to be reminded of the big picture and how best to paint it.
To be fair to Star wars back before the retcon killing the Emperor didn't end the empire, it stuck around for another 11 years before desolving and was reformed again within a year of that
Respectability politics is also known as Tone Policing, and it is something that is pretty common in real life. Common examples is someone saying "well, you can just say that all men are potential predators, we wont get anywhere in this discussion if you don't acknowledge that this issue is not specific to men" or "well you cant come calling me a slur like 'cis' this is not how you make change" or something as simple as "I wouldn't go so far as to call you 'oppressed' you know, that word is very strong". No matter what is said, the point is often that the wording or way you're expressing your problems is incorrect and you should do it differently if you want to be heard... the end result is wearing down the oppressed until they spend so much energy defending why they can say things like that that they can't really argue the original point, and the (sometimes accidental) oppressor doesn't have to hear hard truths
Another part of revolution you didn't touch on: sometimes revolutions are quashed but end up achieving their aims anyway. An example would be the Upper and Lower Canada rebellions in what is now Ontario and Quebec. Both were put down by force, but in the end the British government put in place the principles of responsible government to make the government more responsive to the demands of the populace. That's not to say there wasn't still bad stuff going on, but just keeping the focus on the topic at hand.
Revolution and Civil War storylines can be some of the most nuanced, interesting and gripping stories if done right. I mean, literally half the plot of GoT's first ~3 books/seasons revolved around what was , essentially, a civil war storyline which culminated with the Red Wedding. And the entire plot is kickstarted due to the long term effects of a revolution that happened years before the first book/season
There are examples of Revolutionaries who were not ruthless enough to their former enemies in the regime and died because of it. Francisco Madero lead a successful revolution against the Dictator of Mexico from November 1910-November 1911 during which he allowed all of his political opponents to return from exile, run against him in a free and fair election (which Madero won), and generally treated his defeated enemies with kindness even after they lost the war. He even allowed the conservative generals and whole armies who had supported the dictator to continue to keep their old jobs. When his old revolutionary generals like Pasqual Orosco demanded that Madero purge the old elites and promote themselves to positions of power without holding elections, Madero had those rebels crushed by the traditional Mexican Army. Madero went through a two year phase of cozying up to the conservative Mexican military and screwing over all the people who had fought and died for him during the war. He surrounded himself with conservative advisors and when the time came those advisors were happy to sign his death warrant. In February 1913, an incredibly complicated event known as the Ten Tragic Days occur during which the conservatives in the Army lead a coup which overthrows President Madero. The revolutionary democratically elected president of Mexico and his vice president were shot behind a few bushes without a trial. If Madero had simply fired all of the old conservative generals and replaced them with die hard loyalists then none of this would have happened. This conservative counter revolution only served to radicalize the remaining revolutionaries. Where as the first wave of the Mexican revolution was dominated by moderates who wanted to spare their political enemies and focus on writing constitutions and winning elections, the second phase will be dominated by men like Pancho Villa who orders massacres and gets rich by stealing anything that isn't nailed down. We had tried winning elections and that didn't work. Mass violence was the only way forward.
The one thing that is constantly missed in stories about revolutions, especially YA, is that overthrowing the big evil tyrannical government is only the half way mark, and is often the easy part. Far more difficult is the aftermath, figuring out what sort of new government can and should be created, more far more important is the intersectional conflict. Its pretty much a codified rule of history with very few exceptions that eventually the revolutionary faction will break up into competing ideological factions, usually with the most extreme and violent seizing power, and executing and violently repressing the moderates and neutrals in the process.
Re: head of the snake fallacy, something I enjoyed about the old EU was that it explored the splintering of the Empire into various successor states as Imperial commanders and officials grabbed and consolidated their own power.
24:07 star wars does show this. In the lore there are many warlords and factions that split out of the collapse of the empire, and the new republic has to go around trying to take them out. Grand Moff Gideon in the Mandelorian, for example. He was a warlord from the empire that had a large splinter in the outer rim. The movies might not show it, but that's because there's almost nothing from directly after the rebellion in the films.
I want to say first that this discussion definitely makes me think about the legend trilogy by Marie Lu. Showing how even the protagonist who's torn between loyalty to the regime but demands change as well due to hardships placed alone then and everyone he loves. And how sometimes outside regimes idealistic in nature may actually be worse than the one you already live under. It's partially why I keep going back to reading the series. Also I wanted to ask a question regarding how one could implement some of these ideas into even a ttrpg kind of setting? Cause I've tried to in the past but it always never felt right or really revolutionary enough. So wanted to get thought on how one might even make a revolution possible in a ttrpg setting where can become far more fluid based on your party playing in the setting.
The web serial novel "Pale", I think, is one of the best stories about revolution I've come across. In part, it's because it captures a lot of where a revolution can fall apart, and where it can be done well. The heroes of the story are the ones trying to overthrow unjust power structures through building community, through empowering the disenfranchised, and showing that their way is *better*. It's small, slower changes but ones that need to be made, ones that ultimately aren't "ideal" but necessary to try to build a better future. Some antagonists...they want to burn it all down. That's it, that's their entire drive; revenge, anger, vitriol...and when that initial burst of anger is spent there's nothing left. Nothing holding them up, nothing to fall back on, nothing to base their Selves upon.
The Disney+ Star Wars shows have done a lot to expand the Galctic Civil War, I think. We see the nuance and complexity of the revolution in Andor, of course. And in Mandalorian and Ahsoka, we see the chaos left in the aftermath (with Imperial warlords, shadow councils and loyalists), and the New Republic's inability to properly respond. This instability would ultimately allow the First Order to fester until it was too late. The story is still unfolding though, so we'll see where it goes from here!
I do find that some of that instability seems a bit more of a result of a desire to have the final rebel victory seem more major than it should have been- the empire, in it's entirety, only actually lasted about 4 years from when the galactic senate was dissolved to the emperor falling down a hole. Whilst Palpatine was certainly ruling autocratically for much longer, the senators mailing addresses were probably still written down inside the actual senate building (providing it hadn't been used as a concert venue whilst they worked out what to do with it), so just, you know, tell them to come back and finish their term of office.
![On Writing: Subtext (and how to use it)! [ Tarantino | Thrones | Gatsby ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/58FyvzttlIg/mqdefault.jpg)
Sponsored by the CIA (Cullinary Institute of America). Myyyyyyy boooooks and stories!! linktr.ee/timhickson
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Ha ha I thought it's the Central Intelligence Agency. XD
How to Do a Revolution Right, brought to you by the CIA.
I can't wait for book 3! You have been incredibly helpful alongside other channels I've been watching. I plan on buying all 3 books, paperback, as soon as the 3rd is out. The ability to go back and reference things without having to scrub through a 30-90 minute video will be really helpful
Interesting timing….
Since 1602AD, the most repressive global regime has been "laissezfaire Capitalism" of the "VOC"(The Dutch India Company); the world's first globalist, anti-Black, chattel slavery megacorporation.
Their asset wealth was estimated at 23 TRILLION USD.
They enslaved 2 MILLION employees.
They exterminated dozens of wild species across the Pacific/Asia. Plant and HUMAN...
*EDIT: They were a secret international cabal of Anglo-European White Supremacist investor-nations; that survived to this date...
These are dystopian numbers. #DystopiaNow
Bitterly Ironic statement @29:01🤷🏿♂
I always find it funny that in the Hunger Games children are forced to murder each other on television, but the capitol just wants to focus on a romance between pretty people.
And when the Hunger Games books/movies came out everyone ignored the murder and focused on the romance between pretty people.
if i’m not mistaken, suzanne collins said something about this during one of the media tours as well.
Really? I guess i don't really consider that stuff since no one ever sees what i see in media, but I didn't realize everyone was going that crazy over the pretty people. Also probably waiting for the series to be completed to start it I guess😅
Because we are the Capitol
Nowadays society is the capital. It even has similar taste of fashion
well then the book proved a point - we watch murder and true crime for entertainment, we watch viral videos of awful tragedies but boi are we invested in celebrities relationships.
One of the biggest problems I have with the Star Wars sequel trilogy is that they had the perfect opportunity to explore the aftermath of a revolution and collapse of an empire, yet chose not to go that route because they wanted a story more like the original trilogy than the prequels. I would have loved to have seen a fledgling new republic trying to establish itself among the successor states/factions of the Empire, Luke trying to re-establish the Jedi order, even Kylo Ren's admiration of Darth Vader and the Empire could have played a bigger part in the story. Instead, we got a hot mess with no direction and no overarching themes.
Look to Heir to the Empire for what you want. Has much more of it.
You mean, like if Disney was trying to erase the aftermatch? I couldn't think of a single time during the Cold War that this could trace roots.
It's honestly even more annoying how in an odd attempt to explain how the original films got to the world of the sequels they're just making the new republic absurdly incompetent.
Not to mention the visual contrast you could see of a new-republic now flush with resources and uniformity while the once limitless-imperials are now the ones having to deal with the challenges of shortage and relying on increasingly outdated weapons/gear
If there's one thing I know about revolutions, it's that more people die at the end of a revolution. Civilian casualties increase after a revolution because revolutionists suspect any neutral entity as a potential threat to their new order. Revolutionists become what they hated.
One of the things that writers almost always neglect is that a lot of the time the rebels are more likely to fight each other over small ideological differences than together against the ruling regime
Andor
I once came up with this explanation, that seems to be pretty helpful:
If your political demand is: "Things should be, as they are now", there is no discussion in your base. Everyone knows, what they are up for, because they see it every day.
If your demand is "we should change stuff" people will disagree on what they want to change and how.
Honestly this is what I loved about Andor
@@Jan-gh7qi yeah typically what is done is purging or using a common enemy then placing your rivals into the front to weaken them
Berlin, 1922......
16:26 When Katniss sings to Rue and zips up her jacket to cover her wound. Closing her eyes, covering her in flowers, and giving her a proper funeral even in the middle of a life or death situation. This is what makes the people start to revolt not rue initially being killed. Many 12 year olds have been killed in the games but this is the time it’s different. She shows humanity in the face of inhumane treatment. Even at the end saying either both of us die or neither of us do. She gives hope even when put in a seemingly hopeless situation. Her individual actions that were more about her mindset than physical actions (though that is part of it) is what impacts the masses watching.
Awesome, but in reality that moment would have been filtered out as the AI preditctors realized what she was about to do and 'went to a commercial' before that occurred.
The ONLY thing powerful about that moment was people saw it.
@@Veritas.0 Yes, I think in the book Katniss herself acknowledges in her narration that most likely the Capitol would cut away - and after she wins the games and an edited version of the Games is aired to feature the winners, she notes how that while they leave in the part where she sings to Rue, they *definitely* cut out the part with the flowers. That being said, I liked the choice in the movie to show us the Districts seeing Katniss' actions for Rue, leading District 11 to revolt.
It gives the impression that Revolution has always been a slow boil, and there was a trigger point for everyone somewhere - perhaps in 11 that trigger point was Rue's death + Katniss showing her humanity in the face of inhumanity. Not only did 11 have a reason to be angry (they always had a reason to be angry), but they were also shown hope. Plus I liked how they led with that in the second movie to display how much more high security District 11 was - in the books it was simply treated as a surprising fact in comparison to 12, but in the movies it creates a narrative thread that _something_ happened to cause this, and creates a sense of foreboding for the events to come.
@@Veritas.0in the book, Katniss' internal monologue explains that while people likely won't see her gathering and placing the flowers, they'll see they're there because they always have to show the bodies being removed - so even if the capitol chose to film an extreme close-up or from as far away as possible, they would either see the bed of flowers or her eyes closed, her pose or the flowers on her chest and by her face. And even if the capitol did choose to not show it, they'd be singling her out, because it would be the only death not shown, so people would still know something was up. It was an instinctive thing to do, sure, but it was also a calculated move (not towards a revolution but to mark Rue's death in some way)
@@Veritas.0 Other comments already covered the books, but the movies seem to imply that Seneca Crane really believed the hype of the Games, that they were just about putting on the best show possible. So I could totally see Seneca screwing up and letting it air.
The districts can't communicate with each other so they can't organize. But Katniss' actions show them they are together, that they see each other as equal, that union to revolt is possible.
I think the real love story of hunger games was of a big sister trying in vain to defend her little sister from a cruel world. With rue being a surrogate little sister and also foreshadowing prime’s death.
It wasn’t
@@dontworryaboutit5490 It was
Yea primm was there day 1 and pushed katniss more than the boys
Yeah, I liked Katniss's love story with Peeta a lot (I always fall for the fake!dating trope), but I didn't think there was ever a chance of her ending up with Gale so I really didn't care about the "triangle." I think the movie marketing team tried to hype it up because of Twilight's success.
But no what worked in the Hunger Games was the fact that the whole time, the ONLY thing Katniss wanted was for Prim to be safe, and she was unable to protect her in the end.
I have heard that Gale was originally going to be Katniss's cousin but editors suggested to do a love triangle, so it was literally just to try get the attention of more people, like the ones who loved Twilight, as you said.
It really was not a big deal at all for Katniss in the book. The movie made more of it then the book and movie advertisement made WAAAY more of it than the movie.
@@TheDawnofVanlifeehhhh just read the books and she thinks about the love triangle a bunch. Mostly it's in context of "Do I love him or him? But can I really care at the moment because my hands have been tied behind my back ever since I faked the romance"
@@jrlombardi5251 maybe bc in the books they labeled him as her cousin when she and peeta started their fake relationship to not raise any suspicious of their closeness
@@sarar4270 ik but I'm talking about the original idea
it’s almost like revolutions are complicated
* gandalf headbanging *
Damn I thought all you needed was one (1) attractive teenager
/shocked Pikachu face
I'm french and thus I disagree, here it's ">government does stuff
>Blow up the capital''
And it's fun
@@kaikalter * upbeat saxophone *
In the Discworld novel "Guards! Guards!' by Terry Pratchett, the Patrician, who rules the city of Ankh-Morpork with an iron fist, is temporarily knocked out of power. When he is restored to power by the end of the novel, he gives a sort-of villain monologue about how the bad guys will always win the long game because they have a plan for how things should be run while the good guys' only plan is to knock the bad guys out of power.
I think the "why revolutions suck" speech was more in Night Watch.
“You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you're good at that, I'll grant you. But the trouble is it's the only thing you're good at. One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one's been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It's part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don't seem to have the knack.”
Of course, in the same novel he also claimed “I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
Which is honestly BS. Being evil does not make you competent or mean you have a sensible long term plan.
If anything, most things we consider evil are also just bad ideas and completely unfeasible in the long run. Which is why most evil empires tend to collapse or constantly cycle through instability.
Guards! Guards! has one of the finest displays of the predesination paradoxes I've seen
The Patrician is an awesome character because he's not categorized as a hero or a villain... he's almost explicitly the status quo at large, uncaring of small changes except insofar as they affect large scale events.
I love that you talk about the horrors of the whole dune saga and not just the first book.
And honestly, I feel like the part of the hunger games that was most soberingly realistic was the way that the real world media talked about it. The way both the fictional and real media talked about the romance and ignored the call to revolt against authoritarianism was kinda striking
What always bothered me about 'V for Vendetta' (the movie) is the way that the "opressed" people are represented: They are like the middle class of a flourishing first world country, all well fed, they live in generously sized, comfortable and fully equipped apartments and wear stylish clothes. They have jobs, they are well educated (even though it's made clear that there are many forbidden or censored books), and they are all open about seeing through government propaganda. I think this way of life is way too comfortable for the average people to actually want to change anything.
I think that’s what makes it so realistic. Most people won’t want to change anything
"As long as you keep the masses fed & entertained, they'll be apathetic to the dictator in charge." Trump failed to make a dictatorship cuz Covid shut down the theaters & tv shows(the modern circus) and food insecurity spooked lots of people (bread). The US is still a hellscape but we dodged a dictatorship by a hair
@@yeetyeet1655
It's not realistic because nobody would want to revolt in that reality.
In Soviet Russia there were millions of people starving.
@@aldiascholarofthefirstsin1051 Your pfp is from an incest game
History has proven that that's not the case though, take the Czechoslovak Velvet revolution of 1991 for example - sure, the living standards weren't the same as in the west, but the population was well fed and comfortable, all the repression was exclusively political - you couldn't read certain books or watch certain movies, and if you did so you would be denied education or working oppurtunities, but that was the extent of it, much like in V, yet a significant portion of population rose up
I think the issue is that deep down there are two kinds of revolutionary tendencies - those of desperation, where people rise up because they have nothing to loose, and those of convenience, where people believe that they have nothing to loose, not because they literally don't have anything, but because the system outwardly appears to weak to take anything away. That's why the czechoslovaks rose in '91, those people weren't ready to fight for the same ideal with a gun in hand in a revolution akin to the russian or the french one's, but they felt that they could rise up without that, so why wouldn't they
The former is what the revolution in Vendetta presents itself as, the latter is what it should by all accounts be. That's the disparity that makes it unrealistic, not the simply fact that the world is too good to revolt in
People often talk about bottom-up and top-down types of revolutions, but people should keep in mind that especially if a certain cause is dependent on geography (different ethnicities for example) it usually turns into a civil war.
In general, a lot of writers avoid the messy aftermath.
All revolutions are civil wars. Even here in America, there were large militias of Americans loyal to the British King who fought for the British. And in France, the conservative Vendee uprising and the Federalist revolt waged a civil war against the French revolutionaries.
So, I know plotting out a novel isn’t writing one but I was plotting out a series of three books, one for the set up of the main characters motivations and how the system is flawed, book two is about the revolution that drags out into a bloody civil war that challenges the main characters ideology and the problems of especially a top-down revolution (since he was apart of the “Blooded” Class), and how hard it is to divide power well fighting for your lives.
And then the third book I wanted to be reconstruction. As the main character attempts to both recreate a society and build his idealogical vision, especially when he is spreading power to stop another dictator, even himself. I was wondering why everyone basically skipped over that part, but I realize it must be extremely boring to people who don’t love deep diving into that stuff
That is why they have the lost heir to the throne. It is someone whom the system can run off of more easily after.
I know this barely counts as dystopian but the Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi is definitely guilty of this. She originally wrote a trilogy where the final book ends with her killing the evil bad guy and that’s it. It’s obvious she hadn’t planned to write the aftermath until fans demanded she did. That’s why she tacked on 3 more books.
Are we talking about hierarchy? Hierarchically top-down "revolutions" don't exist. A revolution is, per definition, always bottom-up. Top-down change is called reform(ation), or it might be a coup d'état which has absolutely zero revolutionary potential.
I've come across many critiques of Katniss, especially in the second half of "Mockingjay" which focus on her fundamental "ineffectiveness" when it comes to the actual fighting. What these critiques fail to accept is that, other than a "Symbol" and too often one used by others (Snow, Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee), Katniss is a seventeen year old, seriously and multiply traumatised young woman, struggling with her multiple PTSDs (her Father; her first Hunger Games; the threats Snow makes against her "extended" family; her second Hunger Games; the destruction of District 12; Peeta's capture; the fact that throughout the rebellion Snow psychologically targets her; Peeta's release as a "Mutt"; and getting shot in District 2). That Katniss is able to walk and talk by the time the Invasion of the Capitol happens, is frankly unbelievable. The critics seem to want her (and she wants )to cut off the "Head of the Snake", but her various traumas only result in her being present to witness the murder of her sister by Coin (arguably, aided and abetted by Plutarch).
Suzanne Collins COULD have made Katniss's raid successful; Katniss might well have "cut off the head of the Snake"; Prim might have survived and they all might have lived happily ever after, but Collins chose the harder and darker path, thus subverting the "Chosen One" trope for which Coin/Plutarch had fitted Katniss. Yet Katniss's essential "Goodness" meant that she was still able to see through Coin and choose to end Oppression, rather simply than the Fallen Regime...
I think you're giving Collins too much credit for Jennifer Lawrence's work here. Katniss' heel turn is way more jarring in the books and poorly set up. With the benefit of reading the book Lawrence added more descent into madness into movie 2, and is a good actress. I think Collins honestly got lucky that the ending holds up as well as it does.
@@InterloperBob For me, the books are far more focussed on Katniss's mental state, than are the movies. Written as they are, exclusively from inside Katniss's head, they have to be.
Lacking the possibility of only doing the movie from behind Katniss's eyeballs, the movies were compelled to try to show the effects of the multiple traumas externally... But as anyone who has experienced any trauma will tell you, the main effects are internal and fundamentally unfilmable.
As a personal example, I once woke up to find the bottom of my bed on fire. For months thereafter, everytime I closed my eyes, I not only saw the flames, I also continued to smell the fumes... You can't film smell and most experts suggest that smell and taste are the strongest memories...
@@michaelodonnell824 Even a decade later I will recall a smell from the past the same as ever before, while the visual memory associated with it is fragmented and barely understandable.
@@michaelodonnell824 Katnis became a passive character. her actions didnt affect the story. that it is not good writing. there is a reason stroeis with passive characters arent successful. it was a bad decision to make her go from doing everything to protect Prime to mopping around, complete whiplash and tone change, it was an different series all together
@@michaelodonnell824 seems Collins didnt know what to do after the first book seeing the second is basically a repeat of the first in some aspects. also there are ways to make PTSD characters work in a story like in Joker. the book was just poorly written
Honestly there’s nothing quite as infuriating as when the story (or rather, revolution) screeches to a halt because the characters have romance drama to deal with.
Like the secret police have killed your family and are breaking down the door, but by all means have a long dramatic conversation about the two of you. 🤨
but it kind of makes it more relatable. People have their personal human lives and focus on their own shit all the time. As someone from a country with an oppressive authoritarian regime, I can confirm that otherwise outrageous things can become just another shit that happened while your life and your responsibilities are still there. I also have seen a lot of people who choose to focus more on their personal stuff because they need that sense of control over something in their life. It's a coping mechanism in a way.
@@leoreth2179 this is absolutely true. That being said, there's a way to translate this in story without it being so jarring and off putting for the reader.
Like, tension from say high stakes negotiations, an interrogation, or even a battle scene shouldn't be so easily broken to talk about relationship issues. I believe that it happens in real life, but it kinda ruins the steam an author builds up
@@elektraeriseros I think it depends on how it's done. One of my favorite books is half of a yellow sun, which is not a story about a revolution as such, but set during the Nigerian Civil War. The book focuses primarily on the characters relationships to one another (including romance drama), but it also portrays the harsher realities of war from a civil (and for a short bit a soldier's) perspective. This dichotomy works wonderfully, and is part of what makes the book feel so realistic and grounded. Because even as the world is falling apart around them and they're constantly experiencing traumatizing things, life does go on. And people in shitty situations still often struggle with many of the same issues as those that live under better circumstances.
Or, when a girl gets sent to a gulag-like working prison camp and nothing happens to her but she whines how oppressed she is 'coz she is in ratty clothes and does some work. She does not get rpe or tortured. The "injustice" was certainly not believable and certainly contrived to stroke the ego of the author's avatar.
@@leoreth2179A certain author thought it was compelling for her main characters (leaders of their faction) decided to have sex while their camp was being attacked. She described how erotic it was inside their tent (they know they are being attacked) while the rest were getting slaughtered. Yeah. Readers with a conscience will certainly relate to it.
The problem with making a story entirely about “the elites vs the people” is that nearly every revolution is able to get off the ground because of a significant minority of disaffected elites
I learnt that from Edmund Burke, "Reflections on the Revolution in France".
It was not a bottom-up revolution. It was an up-up revolution. Wealthy lords and lawyers stuffed up with Enlightenment ideals.
@@zimriel very true!
@@zimrielmany times the poor were the royalists who were massacred by enlightened city gremlins
@@SafavidAfsharid3197if you were rich, the revolution would have affected you but not as much as being poor i think. (Josephine and other rich women)
@@zimrielits richer people but not the richest of the richest. they were part of the 3%/97% i think.
you could be the other 97% but you couldve gain money after making a good business etc, you could buy titles but for a lot of money and then you couldnt be a lawyer, or do other jobs, that's what annoyed them.
One of the best, if not THE best, revolution stories I've ever read, is Red Rising by Pierce Brown. He takes a much more realistic approach to the subject, with the main character having to infiltrate the Society he's trying to destroy while being at war with himself when he realizes not all of them are bad people, that even within the higher cast, people still suffer. Pierce Brown continues expanding the world and addresses what happens AFTER they win the revolution and how it's not just a one-and-done thing. It takes decades if not more to remake a society, and even after that, not everyone agrees on how things should be run. The second part of the saga is quite literally the characters ten years into the future dealing with the ramifications of the war.
I already replied to another RR post, but I just wanted to express my love for the series and add a little to your comment. One thing I love about the second part of the saga is the fact that it explores the flaws of the heros of the revolution and the revolution itself. Such an amazing series!
@@garrettmckinnon8212 omg especially Light Bringer! Killed me.
The red rising series goes so damn hard omg
Oh my god I love Red Rising and its look into the dark side of revolution
If you tried to make up The French Revolution, no one would believe it 🤣
I mean after a few revolutions and republics they finally got one going that wasn’t immediately replaced by a monarchy (the third republic) still even since then there has been numerous crisis and wars which forced the creation of new republics. I think another thing that makes revolutions complicated is outside preassure. France was coalitioned multiple times. The Russian civil war had like 20 nations intervene with Britain using chemical weapons.
Same with the Russian Revolution, can you imagine writing a revolution where all of the opposition leaders were out of the country when it started, or where the dictator just agreed to step aside?
@@MsJaytee1975uhh what neither of those things are true about the Russian revolution
I think the most hilarious was when they tried replacing the 'irrationality of religion' (as they saw it) with a new temple dedicated to... the Cult of Reason. Complete with people bedecked as the Goddess of Reason (But no statues because that would be idolatry and gods did not exist.). Then shortly replaced with the Cult of the Supreme Being which believed in a god and immortal soul but worshipped reason and the opposition to tyranny above any godhead. The latter was installed by of all people the not tyrant Robespierre.
I watched a documentary on it and still find myself floored by some of the things that happened. It seems like something out of a really good drama novel. The public forcing the King to re locate. The fisherwomen trying to butcher the queen. The weird Cult of Reason that sprung up to combat the Catholicism of past. The fact that a guy in a bathtub was a major player in who the mob decided to kill. Reign of Terror indeed.
I think the Mistborn trilogy does a great job of showing how merely removing the big evil tyrant is just step ONE of the revolution. Getting a handle of governance as well as handling the fallout of the tyrant's removal is just as important.
I was just coming here to comment on Mistborn and how book one is all about remove the big bad guy, but it’s so much more, and messier, by the time the first book ends. It’d be interesting to hear other people’s opinions though.
In the Spider Punk comic run, this is actually Hobie's exact character arc. It's him realizing he can't just kill the guy in power, because the whole system is built to just put in another big bad.
Mistborn is brilliant in that. Overthrowing the evil emperor is just the start of the story.
I thought the politics were not well written in the second book. And Dockson literally has a "oh well if WE had killed the nobles we'd be the baddies!" internal monologue in his death scene that is very dumb lol
@@poisonforsocrates Because its hard to come to terms with something like that, try and imagine the nobles as Nazis and the Scaa as the jews, then try and imagine not wanting to kill every single last one of them.
What do you mean it's not easy for a bunch of teenage heros to replace a giant multi-ethnic continental absolutist empire with a direct democracy after murdering its last monarch and proclaiming the new order with no infrastructure or legitimacy?
that’s what i like the best about the hunger games trilogy. even though katniss is without a doubt the focus of the series, she is more a symbol than anything, which is what makes the final book hit even harder. collins had the opportunity to go true YA dystopian and make the 17 year old girl a hero and take out the big bad (snow) and take control, but instead she becomes a chess piece in the game between coin v snow, two regime leaders that are ultimately not that different from each other. her complexity as a character allows her to see through this and put down the new regime, but her youth means she suffers intense PTSD and takes a step back in the world, even trying to commit suicide instead of living in a world without her sister. its just so real, something i can truly appreciate instead of teenage dystopian fantasy belief of “everything is better now that the bad guy is dead”.
Exactly the same problem with “Cross Ange” especially after Ange killed Embryo; somehow a few years after Libertus Ange will become the very tyrant that she despised of just to keep her new nation of Arzenal alive.
Javert's Suicide is actually my favourite song and part of Les Miserables. It's so powerful, this rigid man who's entire worldview just collapsed from a single act of mercy, and he finds it impossible to reconcile with reality. There's so much to love in that musical.
Disco Elysium does an excellent job at portraying you last point; in how different people you meet in game interact with nostalgia. The city, by the point you’re playing the game, has gone through at least four different pseudo-revolutionary phases, and every character in game feels some connection to at least one of those periods. Fascists missing the old autocratic dynasty, communists missing the revolutionary days, capitalists missing the economic boom, and moralists trying to be happy with the way things are.
Disco also provides some of the most thoughtful and nuanced communist perspective in any video game.
In other words, no one is happy with what they have.
@@anafu-sankanashi8933 it really doesn't.
@@nonono4160 what does it better then? why do you think it doesn't?
@@ruckzuruck7039 make an experiment - take a person that has no knowledge of communism and make him read everything that the game has on the subject. Then ask him a simple question - what the heck is communism even? He won't be able to.
There are no communist games out there. Simple as.
I think it should be noted that even if a revolution is successful, it doesn't mean that the previous regime is completely beaten. There will still be people who support the old ways. For example, in star wars legends the empire still exists after episode 6 and continues to fight the rebels/new republic for several more years
Or that their foreign allies will just let it happen, look at France or Russia
@@tanostrelok2323yeh russian civil war where tsar supporter are there but red army conquer them
@@runajain5773 You are missing the point, my guy.
@@tanostrelok2323or what's happening in the west africa in predominantly Francophone country.
Or that all disenfranchised/revolutionaries have the same goals and/or ideals--which came to a head for the U.S. in the Civil War.
The thing with revolutions, more so perhaps than any other event in history, is made of things that went just right. Maybe the presence of one more regiment in a city could stop those dreams for good. And it is often hard to weave all the treads so perfectly as has happened in history.
And that actually is pretty hard to craft without it feeling coincidental. Most of them that I see feels like the people always had the capacity but just chose to remain subservient
@gamegod273 yes, certainly, it can be like that sometimes. It might take something to show the people that they should not accept the status quo.
(Correct me if I am wrong)
In Ireland, support for full independence from the united kingdom only really began after the people saw how the british handled the easter rising.
Even so, it always takes more than just a group of people wanting something, no matter how large that group might be.
@@gamegod273isn’t that how revolutions irl work too? the people always have the power to overthrow the government whether it’s oppressing them or not. even if a revolution takes years or decades to fully come to fruition, it’ll always happen because shitty governments are inherently unstable. the people usually just need some big catalyst so that enough of the population believes that the social order and rules they live under don’t matter. that’s really all a revolution is. it’s the people deciding that they don’t wanna listen to the government anymore because they’ve stopped believing it has power.
Maybe best to say that revolutions are what happen when things go wrong...the previous system had to screw up things so bad that the masses get to a breaking point where continuing to suffer no longer outweighs the risk of rising up. The spark in the tinderbox being some horrific event aimed against those of the masses, like a large protest being suppressed by the state turning into the first battle of a civil war. Things only go downhill from then on. It's only when it's all over that one can look back and say "everything went just right"
@@gamegod273 not really, the most important aspect is organisation. it doesn't matter if you have the majority if you are discorganised. meanwhile orgnaised rebelions only need 3.5% of the population to suppport them. communism was very unpopular in Russia yet they won the civil war because they were better ogranised than the majority.
I hope you get to talk about Andor, because the way it portrays revolutions is so complex and nuanced that it makes you forget it was a Disney Plus show
Best writing Star Wars has had since clone wars and rebels
Best Star Wars since Empire Strikes Back
(I like The Last Jedi and think Mandolorian and other Disney shows have their enjoyable moments. I’m not part of the anti-woke hate queer and black folks in Star Wars crowd)
@@ricopena2053 hating last Jedi isn’t about woke it’s about how it made Luke not Luke.
@@DRKTROOPER15 Well, yes that’s why reasonable people hate it. But there are plenty of nasty bigots who hate it for bad reasons too.
@@morningglory.2 yes, that was the group I was trying to separate myself from.
I thought Kenobi was lame not because they cast Moses Ingram as an Inquisitor, but for it’s meandering plot and the fact that Obi Wan is now an idiot for leaving a defeated Vader alive twice given the amount of carnage he will commit in the future. Walking away once because you assume the lava will melt him, sure, but leaving the Empire’s number one enforcer alive after you’ve seen him destroy a village firsthand and pulls ships out of the sky… Obi Wan is now culpable for Vader’s future destruction.
I don’t think the Last Jedi is perfect by any means. But it does have some of the best cinematography in the series (Snoke’s chamber, Holdo Maneuver, Crait)
The Battle of Algiers is a really great movie about the Algierian resistance against the French in the 1950s. It focuses on a small scale rebellion within one city and shows a lot of the little things that go into a revolution. It also doesn't really endorse or condemn either side. I think it would be very good for understanding revolutions.
I keep meaning to watch that.
"So, let me ask you a question about this brave new world of yours. When you've killed all the bad guys, and it's all perfect and just and fair, when you have finally got it exactly the way you want it, what are you going to do with the people like you? The troublemakers. How are you going to protect your glorious revolution from the next one?"
~ The Twelfth Doctor, Dr Who, "The Zygon Inversion"
The Operative: It's not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world?
The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.
That whole speech really stuck with me! I liked it so much that I actually memorised it and recited it regularly (although I doubt I could still recite it now). Thanks for reminding me of it again.
Don't forget this story is written by British "people"
@@franswaafranswaa5026 It's called experience.
@@franswaafranswaa5026umm, yeah. British “people” are indeed people 🤨
Writing revolutions is like world building with many factions. You need to make it complex so that it’s realistic but also simple enough to understand and execute in a story. Tolkien’s Middle Earth is actually a good example because it shows the reality of the consequences of one’s actions and that people are still people that mess up and hurt each other in the various hero factions, even though there’s concrete Good and Evil.
A lot of people focus when people start rioting or cause a civil war but not the build up of the factions behind the scenes.
Spontaneous revolutions are very rare.
@@Projolo Definitely True
@@Projolo also even when and after people are rioting the logistics and power struggles often get left behind
In the Expanded Universe the Galactic Empire did splinter into several factions. The Galactic Civil War lasted over twenty years after Palpatine's death.
much smarter. alas, we are in the dumb timeline.
@@SuperWindsageit happens in the new canon too. Most of the Imperial warlords are gone in less than a year after Palpatine dies (too fast, if you ask me), but one of them goes on to become the First Order
None of which is *shown* in the sequels, nor even given much thought or reference. In short, horseshit hand waving to make room for Ma-Rey Sue…
@@Muljinn it's not really hand-waved as much as it's only ever directly relevant to expanded universe material lol. The sequel trilogy happens after most of that has calmed down
@@Muljinn Even despite that, I heavily doubt they could have all been defeated in a year. Both in Canon and Legends, the Empire had tens of thousands of Star Destroyers, and having everything fall apart in a year is quite unrealistic. To be fair, without Thrawn's campaign and Operation Shadow Hand, the Galactic Civil War in Legends probably would have ended around 12-13 ABY, rather than 19 ABY, but 5 ABY is just ridiculous.
Pratchett(GNU) probably has one of my favorite quotes about revolutions in night watch.
"But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions."
"Night Watch" is my favorite book of all time.
@@TakariCritic THUD! was good too. Also had some trenchant observations about community-organizers.
"Kill me, and you're just as bad as I am!"
"Untrue! That's a false equivalency."
*Stab.*
Ah yes something that even anime has a hard time grappling with.
“I’m slaughtering one man. You slaughtered thousands. Just, like, *this.* “
(Villain thrown from a cliff onto a spiked fence)
4:30 Y'know, I've always wondered how Javert was able to work for the First French Republic, Napoleon's Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, and the Orleanist Monarchy, and still have such an ironclad sense of morality.
I suppose mainly because it was so black and white. In Javert's world view, he was a policeman and his opponents were criminals. Who made the law and what the law said was inconsequential to him so long as he could hold to the idea that those who broke the law were evil and that those who enforced the law were, therefore, by definition good.
And that's why, when Valjean shows him the world was not as black and white as Javert thought, the man jumps off a bridge rather than live on in uncertainty of what is right and what is wrong.
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel. And of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I'd have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolishionist. I would've been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac; but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic.
All he ever knew was a straight line.
Jsvert is an example of the banality of beauctatic evil. The divorcing of law from justice and how narrow mindedness is dehumanizing for all parties.
He was an initially a low level cop.
You can’t toss out EVERYONE who worked for the old regime when you come in.
You gotta keep some people around. Streets gotta be patrolled.
My absolute favorite of the "If you kill him, you'll be just like him" remains Transformers: More than Meets the Eye.
Ratchet: "No. If we kill him, we're no better than him. If we kill him, he wins."
First Aid: "Yeah, except-we are better than him and he doesn't win. He doesn't anything. He's dead. That's the point."
I both love MTMTE and that specific bit of dialogue, so this made my day
Might Makes Right!
More "following through on your correct beliefs doesn't make you wrong"@@martyr_lightsilver1833
Wasn't expecting MTMTE to be mentioned here, but I really loved how blunt the dialogs are.
"If we kill him, we're not better than him?"
This trope really annoys the hell out of me. Didn't you, like, kill dozens and dozens of soldiers to get to this point? Soldiers who had friends and families? Soldiers who had wives and children? Why is it okay to kill all of them, but it is not okay to kill the one person responsible for everything?
The problem with revolutions is that they have to have a goal. The Rebellion in Star Wars is the best example. They were fighting for liberty, a goal you can get behind, but nothing more than that. This resulted in anarchy after their victory because they didn't plan for a galaxy without the stability of the Empire.
Their goal was to restore the Republic. Which is why one of their names is the Alliance to restore the Republic. The problem being is that the Republic kinda sucked.
I feel that was more of writing problem. The trilogy ended with victory celebration, so they didn't need to give rebels nuance on what was going to happen. When the sequels came out, they just needed a new villain, and decided to recreate the original trilogy, so there is a big gap between the defeat of the empire and the rise of the new fascist empire (which we basically know nothing about).
@arditlika9388 It doesn't make sense that the New Republic sucked as much as it did in the ST, but it does make sense that it sucks. It's easy for a lot of diverse interests to get together on the principle that the old government is bad and needs to be replaced, but it's very very hard for them all to agree afterwards on what to replace it with
@@kirkkerman The problem is that the Rebellion was an alliance of several very different cultures, who all have different views. They had a clear goal, but as soon as that goal was achieved there was just no reason anymore to stay united. Rallying behind a common enemy is very effective, but only as long as that enemy exists.
Although it wasn't mainstream or even canon, the Old Expanded Universe (Legends) of Star Wars had entire book arcs about a post-RotJ galaxy and how the New Republic worked to build itself again. There are long running stories on fighting warlords, the difficulties of a fledging democracy, political infighting and so on.
It was incredibly compelling and intriguing.
The current canon is how the current writers decided to play it (anarchy) 30 years after the fact.
Stories are written by good or bad writers, they don't just spawn outta nowhere lol
Crazy timing! I was just about to start writing a story about a revolution. I've been researching the Servile Wars and its got me wanting to write something similar.
Crazy timing! I was just about to start -writing a story about- a revolution.
Interesting choice since that revolution was a failure. Kind of an under represented topic honestly.
@@jacobweeks777 crazy timing! I was just about to start a repressive regime.
I’m also writing one 😅
I strongly recomend the talks on literature and art, by Mao Zedong
29:00 Side note though, those graphs aren't just people idolising the past, there's more to that. In case of Lithuania and many other Eastern European countries, after the Soviet collapse and their subsequent independence, to transition to a market economy they were subject to 'Economic Shock Therapy' which was, let's just say, a terrible disaster both economically and socially. I would not be surprised the living standards dropped because of that and need a lot of time to recover.
In the case of the soviet graphs, romanticisation of the Soviet Union by the Putin regime is a major component in its propaganda (re-establishing itself as a superpower etc.), on top of the economic woes following the collapse of the USSR (also Shock Therapy amongst other factors). So although factors like the latter might lead to people naturally idolising the past to some extent, there can be a definite regime push towards it to advance political goals.
Another good point is how revolutions rarely ever succeed in real life. They almost never do. So if you are trying to write something really realistic consider it not succeeding.
Yup. Usually, the persons getting swept to the top during a revolution are not the persons needed to consolidate a stable peace afterwards. Revolutionary leaders have a tendency to devolve into neurotic, paranoid dictators.
The American revolution would like to speak with you.
@@maninthecamohat2735one example does not negate "rarely"
@@leo9597
Russian Revolution
Haitian Revolution
Latin American Wars of Independence
Iranian Revolution
Velvet Revolution
Chinese revolution of 1911
Chinese Civil War
Cuban Revolution
These are just the things i could remember from the top of my head. I'm sure there's more successful ones throughout history.
@@cyooldog3920 people do not talk about the failed ones though. plus, even several examples from all of recorded history is still "rarely"
Ohh noice topic that's relevant to me. Im writing my own fictional book which includes revolution however Im modeling it on the Mexican Revolution. Specifically because of how messy it was where there are multiple factions that have their own goals, occasionally allied together against a common foe, but then not agreeing on the outcome and start fighting each other
Same here. Mexican revolution is such a mess, but gives so many opportunities for interesting and complex characters...
Hope that you get a story that you are more than satisffied with ☺️
We really need a movie about Pancho Villa, the last cowboy. Pancho Villa starts out as a cowboy stuck in a western movie fighting the tyrannical government in a patriotic war of liberation to fighting trench warfare with Carranza and Obregon because he doesn't like that Obregon wears perfume.
The youthful optimism of Pancho Villa literally rams head first into trench warfare.
The Cristeros were the good guys all along.
"For Greater Glory"
Hunger games succeeded in so many ways where similar stories failed.
Even the love triangle doesn’t feel stupid.
I think it’s because, that’s not what the story was about,the marketing of the movies only made it seem like it was,?while the books barley touch it
Like Gale was never an option 💀
Peter was never an option either. Prim was the only option. Katniss was trying to save her family and the whole time these boys are fighting over her like she cares at all about this drama when she has way more important things to care about. She frankly only ends up with Peter due to trauma bonding. She's fucked up and he's all she's got left. The love triangle was never the point.
@@Saktoth I’d disagree, both boys represented something, Gale was fire and hatred, Peeta represented peace and love.
The other main difference is that Peeta actually have katniss space in catching fire while Gale acted like a little bitch boy
@@Saktoth I agree. I never once bought that Katniss ever actually loved Peeta through all three books. Indebted, but never in love. I also hated at the end when Katniss admits she never wanted the kids, but Peeta did, so she had them anyway.
@@Saktoth i agree i never really felt that she felt any romantic love towards either of them. her and peeta became co-dependent given the hell they went thru together. the end where they're together with kids felt kinda morbid cuz i felt like they were still acting and didnt know how to stop. i read them when i was really young tho and havent reread them since but i remember vividly thinking that it makes no sense that they had kids together. (also given the ptsd idk if they would even be able to properly raise multiple kids when they're both full of ptsd and there is no therapy or anything. it all felt empty in the end)
Yay! I'm so happy to see you have so many books out and sold now! I've been watching your videos for a long time now. I may have begun watching these videos as critiques of some od my favorite and least favorite works to better my own writing, but they've also helped me better understand people and how to communicate w them in general, even in a non-writing context. Thank you so much for all the hard work you've put into the world!
Ngl, as a Hunger Games fan, the thumbnail of this video had me terrified. Super glad to have left this video having an even greater appreciation for The Hunger Games series!
This videos overall was fantastic, not that I expected anything less from this channel.
I honestly do not know many people who have criticized the Hunger Games as a story. It is one of those series that really earned its popularity because of how well-constructed it was and how deeply the story cares about the messages it sends.
@@albedougnut The few cases of criticism regarding the story I have seen are based more on the ignorance of the detractor than real problems with the plot.
For example someone complained that the districts are specialized in a given industry, even when that occurs in real life. Another person complained that the capitol had so much technology while other districts were starving even when the whole point of the plot is that the capitol is oppresive so that inequality is intentional.
Yeah, thg ain’t a perfectly written story (that dumb love triangle for example) but for a YA novel, it really does have a lot more to say than the average bear. Not to dunk on YA or anything, but there’s a reason why YA book to film adaptations are so… questionable lol
@@WingItMan217 Don't quote me on this, but I think the author didn't even want to push the love triangle at all in the first place. To my knowledge, her editor pushed for it, and she worked it into a commentary on celeb relationships as best she could.
@@kylepangilinan9075 yup I heard that too and I believe it. I agree with you on the commentary part (its actually one of my favorite parts about catching fire and peeta and katniss’ dynamic) but it got super tiresome in mockingjay. The gale and katniss stuff I mean
I've been writing a story for 5 years. I know how it starts, how it ends and how every character is built. However, I've been struggling to get from point A to point B because I didn't know how to build tension points. This video just gave me clarity on that! Thanks!!! Going to check your book now!
One of my favorite fictional revolutions is the one found in the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. The first three books follow the initial revolution, how the main character slowly infiltrates the society, and him figuring out the acts he needs to take to bring about change. Constantly at war with himself, caught between learning to trust those close to him, while also feeling like he needs to keep himself so closed off, as he has no one to trust. The struggle of fixing things, acting not out of revenge, but justice, and in the dream of creating a better world, not a worse one. After the first three books, the revolution has come to pass in much of it's capacity, but the cracks are showing with the newly formed Republic at war with the remnants of the Society. The actions the main character commited previously, both good and ill, reverberating into the future. Showing the failings of those with the keys of power within the Republic, mostly from the perspective of those who have been left behind. For example, one of the perspective characters in the second series goes from being what is essentially a slave in the mines, to a refugee in a camp hiding while terrorists are allowed to run rampant.
Good example, God I love that series
I've yet to start the second trilogy and I'm glad it exists exploring these post-revolution themes, because Morning Star was quite a let down, it definitely suffered from the "Head of the Snake" problem and it a major issue with the scope, which ended up fizzling out in the end.
Thankfully, the story continues after that, so it's not that big of an issue overall.
@@LightningRaven42 Yeah morningstars ending was one of the weaker points of the series. But i can understand Pierce's need to wrap up the plot without treading on the same ground as previous(another space battle, or iron rain). The sequel series is shaping up to better than the original IMO, though Iron Gold has an issue of introducing a bunch of characters at once, which may cause you to struggle to maintain interest, atleast initially, if you are solely focused on Darrow's journey. Overall though, probably my favorite book series of recent, and it really picks up come Dark Age, with a return to form.
@@majorscrub2856 As long as Pierce Brown does my girl Victra some justice, I'm fine.
@@LightningRaven42 She's done well yeah, if she's one of your favorite characters, you'll really enjoy dark age.
The Expanded Universe novels actually tackle what happens after the Emperor dies. The Empire splintered into multiple factions, some still loyal to the old regime, but not trusting each other, some looking out only for themselves, competing for the scraps. And in the middle of it is the Rebellion, that still doesn't really have legitimacy as a government, and is now working to consolidate their gains, kicking out the old one planet at a time, but having to contend with all of the new power blocks, both within and without, trying not to turn into a new Empire.
That's more or less what's happening in the Mandalorian and Ahsoka, I'd say. Moff Gideon, Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Shadow Council... Imperial warlords continue to operate, the First Order is growing, and the New Republic has very little power or influence (with many already disillusioned.) Pretty neat!
I'm just imagining how much potential was lost with the sequels. Imagine if they'd adapted the Thrawn books instead.
@@Kedai610 Both Thrawn and X-Wing books are some of the best Star Wars stories.
@@Kedai610We would have lived in a truly beautiful world
Which is why I'm impressed how Tony Gilroy wrote Andor and even got Disney to publish it.
What's remarkable about Andor is how unafraid it is of revolutionary violence. It doesn't waste time asking if its characters are "going too far." It understands that, for the oppressed, violence is not a moral decision. Hell, it's not really a decision at all. It is the method by which they liberate themselves. Lesser projects (*cough* Falcon and the Winter Soldier *cough*) are incapable of telling revolutionary stories because they are committed to the idea that revolutionary violence is wrong.
Literally any character in Andor could easily be "Killmongered" so to speak. Any one could be condemned by the show as basically correct but too extreme. I mean, that's essentially what Saw Gurrera exists in Star Wars to do, but even he isn't condemned by this show.
God, Andor is so good.
@@VoonNBuddiesare you seriously trying to suggest that the show is an endorsement of revolutionary violence? it’s literally acknowledged that the early rebels did some really fucked up shit and the show doesn’t explicitly endorse that (like showing how the aldhani raid causes misery for so many people with the crackdown that follows and how leuthen says ‘that’s the point’
@@hegantank6495 The show doesn't condemn any of it either. There is no act of violence carried out by a revolutionary that is condemned by the show. Even the acts that we might morally be against, the show understands aren't questions of morals for the characters involved. They don't perform these acts of violence because they are good or bad. They do so because that's the only way they can fight back. You personally already coming into the show not liking these things isn't the same as the show condemning them. In your example, the show never confronts Luthen's idea that repression breeds rebellion. No one questions that idea in the show. He's never shown to be wrong. In fact, the worsening conditions of the prisoners as a result of the increased repression directly leads to a prison break. If anything, the text proves Luthen right! Repression does in fact breed rebellion. You might personally think that is a bad thing, but the show doesn't.
@@VoonNBuddies
Ah, the Cult of Reason in the French revolution, truly great!
Andor is so fucking good. It’s ridiculous honestly how good of a show it is compared to everything else released on D+.
Arcane also does revolution super well by capturing the allure and complexities of all sorts of factions. It also in my opinion captures the diversity of each side that comes crashing together in times of different types of scientific and then later setting up a political revolution while still being deeply character focus
What happens in Arcane is more akin to the threat of civil war. Zaun wanted independence.
One thing that very few revolution stories cover is the idea that countries don't exist in a vacuum, so I'm glad to see you point that out here. For instance, my ancestors came from the Philippines. They had just succeeded in an anti-colonial revolution against Spain in 1898, when the same geopolitical reasons that pushed Spain to take them over in the first place pushed the USA to take them over and pretend they were never independent in the first place (see also Puerto Rico). So the success of getting rid of Spain had more to do with Spain dwindling in power over the years, and not with a recognition that colonialism is bad, because the rising power of the USA just jumped right in and took over. After the USA left, the lack of experience with self government and probably a desire for the good old days of autocracy led to a series of "democratically elected" dictators, who of course get to keep power partly because they allow USA naval bases, etc. There are many other examples from Central and South America as well, but I just cited the example I know best.
For people curious about Revolutions and want another "unified" theory from a political history standpoint. The last mini-series of Mike Duncan's Revoltions Podcast is an excellent resource! Around 10 episodes that goes over some aspects a lot of historical revolutions have in common after studying them for around ten years.
Only problem is that the Mexican revolution is much better than any friction. It has a much better story/characters arc than Star Wars for example.
I say Poncho Villa does a better hero's journey than Luke.
@@mcpiddle1099 No editor would green light reality if it was fiction.
@@mcpiddle1099 I think that goes with most historical revolutions, there are some things that happen in reality that just can't be thought up in fiction
I was honestly waiting for HFM to reference the "entropy of victory"
Where can I find it?
In the book I'm writing, the characters are living under a dictatorship, but there is a lot of soft magic. This video was very inspiring. Thank you!
Your videos have been insanely good of late! I've been enjoying your channel for a long time now, but since the essay on Unit 731 the quality and seriousness of your videos have been increasing wildly!
Keep it going!
Best regards
One of my problems with fictionalizing revolutions is that I do think there is an interest both in co-option by the the established order as well as an attempt to fantasize it focusing on the ephemeral aspects of it as means of placating the desire for it as well as trivializing/minimizing it as way to distract away from its true concerns and the means it truly goes about building collective action. They also focus on the individual and the chosen one trope a lot to undermine the fact that most revolutions are not the product of a great leader but the many actions of many individuals working in concert together that are no more or less important than the others.
As a massive Star Wars fan, I think that the best thing SW has is it's length. With all the spinoff shows and books and movies, you get to see a really complex picture of the Revolution, from all the reasons that the empire formed, to the dark times under the empire, to the beginning of revolution, the anarchy of a lawless galaxy, and finally the rebellion taking hold and trying to secure the New Republic and make it powerful enough to function as an actual powerful force in the infinite sea of powerful groups.
Something needs to be pointed out that the rebel's alliance is a restoration or reactionary counter revolution to restore the republic.
That's what she said
Wow, loved this! Writing a book series that starts in the middle of a rebellion, but the one main lead doesn't care at all, and the other doesn't know why the rebellion is even happening. It leaves a lot of room for exploration.
This video was very helpful in putting a few more pieces of the puzzle together for me. Thank you!!
Also, I had to rewind the video a couple times because your wand waving was very distracting. 😆
Also also, Les Miserables is the best! I love the musical so much! ❤️🎶
Be careful to not make these characters too passiv - let there individuell goals colide with the rebellion AND the old order. Make them struggle and be annoyed by the conflict.
If they just react to stuff happening it is boring and really hard to read and feel hocked.
This might have been you're very best video yet, thank you so much. Please Please do a deep dive solely focused on Les Misérables. It's such a complex story it breaks my brain - but I love it anyway. The way you were explaining it by layers with the board and notes somehow made things I've never noticed pop. I don't know why - but today I realized I'm such a character on the ground reader and film watcher that I completely miss other meaning and relationships that themselves say something. I can trace after the fact what the theme is by tracing the start, turn and end of the plot - which I read as the statement of the theme. But that's as far as I get. My dream would be a layer by layer vid series examining each topic you discussed here through the example of Les Misérables . 🙏
Thanks for all of these worldbuilding and storytelling videos. They've been super helpful in crafting the setting and story for the TTRPG I'm running!
Andor is probably one of the few revolution based pieces of material that has changed my perspective towards many things. That show in only 12 episodes has been able to create a fully realized, nuanced and complex portrayal of a rebellion in a way that few pieces of media have been able to do, it's insane to me that it came out under Disney.
Fire Emblem Three Houses is very fascinating as a revolution story, since in 3 of the 4 story routes you are fighting directly against the force working for the most open change. The others are very much on the “change from within” approach, though to different extents. It plays with the player and tricks them using old series tropes (the blue hero vs the red villain) to make it difficult to tell that you are the one working to preserve the primary status quo.
Eh, this may not be a popular view, but I am firmly of the opinion that Claude's original plan was to invade Fodlan outright and conquer it in the name of Almyra. He merely presents it as opening up the xenophobic barriers between the two to dress up the fact that Almyra's historic method of going about this was to run armies down Fodlan's Locket.
Claude doesn't need to do this anymore in his route of Three Houses but in Three Hopes, we get to see Claude basically stab Faraghus in the back to side with the then hostile Adrestian Empire, basically screwing over the Leicester Alliance, becoming it's first and only king, and basically empowering an unaware Edelgard to attack Leicester or at least make it a puppet state, with her and everyone apart from Shez completely unaware that the Almyrans have his back and are now free to march across Fodlan's Locket.
@@LB-py9ig three hopes Claude is pretty fascinating from the revolutionary framework. He is hyperfocused on one specific area he wishes to revolutionize, that being the border. In Houses he quickly realizes that Byleth is a shoe in as the next archbishop, so he throws his support behind them and imprints his ideology upon them. Hopes Claude lacks this, but I wouldn’t say his endgame is invasion. It’s a worthy interpretation of his goals before the game starts, but I think it ignores how much he cares about the golden deer. I’m not a believer in “pacifist Claude,” but he does tend towards the strategies that lead to the fewest on his side dying, and a secondary war featuring Almyra would be somewhat antithetical to that. The breakthrough that Claude makes in Hopes is similar to Houses, but this time he places his trust in Edelgard, albeit with a healthy dose of skepticism. His lack of trust in others at the start is his biggest downfall across every route.
Babylon 5 (TV show) has a some really interesting potrayals of politics a few different revolutions. My favourite one is "oh f*ck, the man I put on the throne with my political machinations is both insane and murderous".
I loved Molari. He seemed very shallow, but that was a facade to hide complexity. 🖖✌
Basically the plot of Game of Thrones.
@@KingFlameHawkBut in space with aliens and philosophy and a lot of inter-cultural politics and genocide.
The human plot/civil war is actually a lot closer to a WWII story based in Germany or Italy about the rise and resistance against fascism.
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike, as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes, and wave. Like this."
Came here to write something about Babylon 5. Turns out I didn't need to. I seriously think Babylon 5 is a must watch for most humans on the planet.
This is one of the most serendipitous video suggestions I ever got. Not only did I hust finish the Hunger Games trilogy a couple of days ago, my own novel Im working on has revolution in it !
You gave me a lot to think about! Thank you so much.
you just helped me out of a three month plus creative block you magnificent bastard. subscribed.
also i've found a way to do optimistic and a pessimistic revolutionary ending at once. :)
I've noticed how in pre-modern politics, revolutions as we know it don't happen outside of China during a dynasty change. Like, the edge of an empire with a regional majority wanting independence being more common then a complete regime change unless it's caused by an outside source like Barbarians making themselves the new elite after a successful invasion.
It was typically a coup or war of succession instead.
I think The Poppy War is one of my favourite revolution stories, it's so visceral and complex.
My friend has recommended that book really highly to me! I’m thinking of reading it
I feel like a lot of books with political intrigue and revolutions fall flat because most writers are not very political themselves. Authors like Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler are very compelling because when you read them you can see how much they understand the political and economic theories they’re exploring. Authoritarianism = bad for example is an infantile way to look at history but that’s what a lot of novels in this genre conclude to.
I have your first two worldbuilding books, and think they're terrific. And this video was SO helpful, I made 3 pages of notes! Thank you a thousand times over. I'm off to watch your other videos on revolutions. Thanks! Stay nerdy.
As a history major, I think the Powder Mage series does the best job. You have a long standing aristocracy whose power is imbedded in their elemental magic. Suddenly throught advent of new technology a new magic is discovered that allows the lower classes to fight back. The rage and mass executions at the start, the reaction from established powers, and the scrappy will to fight for a.dream make it so unique and worth reading.
27:20 side note it took me a long time to realize why Katniss said yes to Coin holding more hunger games. It is so vague in the book but the movie gave like a line of context that completely changes it. In that moment Katniss decided to say yes to not let on that Katniss knew Coin was responsible for Prim and to get on her good side to get close to her and stop the games for good. I only realized this like a few months ago hi but not at all the 10 times i read the books as a kid
Yes I used to be confused by this but honestly it was quick thinking on her part, rather than being rash and expressing her opposition to coin she goes along with it and uses it to orchestrate a chance to kill her
I’m only on season one, but the noble revolt is legends of the galactic hero’s is a good example, show goes in depth with Politics comparing how an autocracy and a democracy differ and how it’s not always the case that democracy is flat out better
Season 1 is easily the weakest season. It only gets better
Thank you for mentioning Red Rising. That series is SO underrated.
This video has legitimately saved my book I've been writing, I feel like I was writing revolution in a lense that made sense but the way you've explained things made me realize some pretty severe worldbuilding gaps I was having. Thank you so much for these videos!!
This is so relevant to me right now, working on a D&D campaign which is about revolution and revolt. Understanding where the realism of real world revolution (which is messy and does not necessarily have a cohesive narrative and is often a result of fractious divergence of elements in existing power structures) and fictional revolutions (which follow narrative beats and can be tied together in a literary sense) is really key to creating even mythic revolutions which FEEL real and like they have relatable weight and meaning.
I love Red Rising, this is the first time I've seen it in an essay from memory. Do you think you'll reference it more? I really liked its gritty and grounded sci-fi style
As per usual, German has a word for wishing the USSR was still around, Ostalgie, a blend of Ost (east, as in east Germany) and nostalgia.
This is great! Revolutions in real life are extremely difficult to pull off well without replacing one tyranny for another type of tyranny. Great story, but so tough
Exactly the reason why we are seeing so much criticism on “Star Wars” especially with the New Republic; I have looked through some videos and I can see parallel references in anime.
I like that you touch on the difficulty of reconciling your attachment to a home country or culture with "what you find out ot did or might have done"
Because that's how I feel about my country and culture.
A way I've begun to look at it is like a dysfunctional family. There are problems. Maybe even big ones. But it's still your family and you still love them. And maybe the flaws hurt even worse because it's HOME.
I love your stuff! It's great to see a fellow New Zealander make such rich (and useful!) content. If the book I'm writing ever gets published, you're definitely going to be in the acknowledgements haha, your videos have been a huge help into forcing me to think more deeply about the world building and storytelling
"Romanticizing the past" yup.... seen that quite a lot in my country (Iran). A lot of people wish for the "good old times" under the Shah and while I'm dubious as to whether or not it's a good Idea to wish for an autocracy (at least an official one since the current system can be argued to be autocratic as well), I do understand the merits they saw in the former regime and their lack of faith in the current war. we have arguably been in the throws of another revolt for at least a decade now and living it, you do feel the hesitation and fear of such an uncertain tribulation despite the great mistrust in the current establishment.
How are you using UA-cam in Iran?
@@TerrariumDiscoveryGamingMore take a wild guess....
@@yami-131 VPN?
@@TerrariumDiscoveryGamingMore naturally. It's pretty much the routine for almost every single person in Iran.
So one thing about the love triangle in Hunger Games is it's thematic- peace vs violent methods, the old life she had vs. the new future she wants to build.
24:06 Funny you say that! That's actually what is happening in the Mandalorian and such, (and what the First Order arguably was). Moff Gideon, Grand Admiral Thrawn... it's a whole thing.
It's true that the Original Trilogy treated Palpatine's defeat as the finish line, though. Great video, as usual!!
As a kiwi expat in the states who loves film theory UA-cam - I'm really stoked to find this channel
I recently decided to write a very complicated revolution story that will act as an allegory as well, and though I am daunted by the enormity of the task, I am also excited to get the world building done so I can explore the characters on all sides. Thank you for posting this, I knew this stuff, but it is helpful to be reminded of the big picture and how best to paint it.
Was so happy to see Red Rising mentioned here! Was wondering if Tim head read that series or not and am really curios to see his thoughts!
To be fair to Star wars back before the retcon killing the Emperor didn't end the empire, it stuck around for another 11 years before desolving and was reformed again within a year of that
The things that happened before and after the Bolshevik revolution are a perfect example for what you said.
Respectability politics is also known as Tone Policing, and it is something that is pretty common in real life. Common examples is someone saying "well, you can just say that all men are potential predators, we wont get anywhere in this discussion if you don't acknowledge that this issue is not specific to men" or "well you cant come calling me a slur like 'cis' this is not how you make change" or something as simple as "I wouldn't go so far as to call you 'oppressed' you know, that word is very strong". No matter what is said, the point is often that the wording or way you're expressing your problems is incorrect and you should do it differently if you want to be heard... the end result is wearing down the oppressed until they spend so much energy defending why they can say things like that that they can't really argue the original point, and the (sometimes accidental) oppressor doesn't have to hear hard truths
Another part of revolution you didn't touch on: sometimes revolutions are quashed but end up achieving their aims anyway. An example would be the Upper and Lower Canada rebellions in what is now Ontario and Quebec. Both were put down by force, but in the end the British government put in place the principles of responsible government to make the government more responsive to the demands of the populace.
That's not to say there wasn't still bad stuff going on, but just keeping the focus on the topic at hand.
Such a great video. Well written, well edited. Amazing job guys!
Revolution and Civil War storylines can be some of the most nuanced, interesting and gripping stories if done right.
I mean, literally half the plot of GoT's first ~3 books/seasons revolved around what was , essentially, a civil war storyline which culminated with the Red Wedding.
And the entire plot is kickstarted due to the long term effects of a revolution that happened years before the first book/season
The civil war in westeros is still ongoing, just with the balance of the factions changing
There are examples of Revolutionaries who were not ruthless enough to their former enemies in the regime and died because of it. Francisco Madero lead a successful revolution against the Dictator of Mexico from November 1910-November 1911 during which he allowed all of his political opponents to return from exile, run against him in a free and fair election (which Madero won), and generally treated his defeated enemies with kindness even after they lost the war. He even allowed the conservative generals and whole armies who had supported the dictator to continue to keep their old jobs.
When his old revolutionary generals like Pasqual Orosco demanded that Madero purge the old elites and promote themselves to positions of power without holding elections, Madero had those rebels crushed by the traditional Mexican Army. Madero went through a two year phase of cozying up to the conservative Mexican military and screwing over all the people who had fought and died for him during the war. He surrounded himself with conservative advisors and when the time came those advisors were happy to sign his death warrant.
In February 1913, an incredibly complicated event known as the Ten Tragic Days occur during which the conservatives in the Army lead a coup which overthrows President Madero. The revolutionary democratically elected president of Mexico and his vice president were shot behind a few bushes without a trial. If Madero had simply fired all of the old conservative generals and replaced them with die hard loyalists then none of this would have happened.
This conservative counter revolution only served to radicalize the remaining revolutionaries. Where as the first wave of the Mexican revolution was dominated by moderates who wanted to spare their political enemies and focus on writing constitutions and winning elections, the second phase will be dominated by men like Pancho Villa who orders massacres and gets rich by stealing anything that isn't nailed down. We had tried winning elections and that didn't work. Mass violence was the only way forward.
Gotta love the elderwand being used as a pointer 👌🏼 the content is as superb as always ❤
Book 1 was so solid and I ate it as it comforted me on a stint in the hospital. I've been meaning to get Book 2. Now I'll have to get 3 too.
The one thing that is constantly missed in stories about revolutions, especially YA, is that overthrowing the big evil tyrannical government is only the half way mark, and is often the easy part. Far more difficult is the aftermath, figuring out what sort of new government can and should be created, more far more important is the intersectional conflict. Its pretty much a codified rule of history with very few exceptions that eventually the revolutionary faction will break up into competing ideological factions, usually with the most extreme and violent seizing power, and executing and violently repressing the moderates and neutrals in the process.
Mike Duncan's revolutions podcast is a good source if you want to hear about real world revolutions and just how messy they are
Re: head of the snake fallacy, something I enjoyed about the old EU was that it explored the splintering of the Empire into various successor states as Imperial commanders and officials grabbed and consolidated their own power.
24:07 star wars does show this. In the lore there are many warlords and factions that split out of the collapse of the empire, and the new republic has to go around trying to take them out. Grand Moff Gideon in the Mandelorian, for example. He was a warlord from the empire that had a large splinter in the outer rim. The movies might not show it, but that's because there's almost nothing from directly after the rebellion in the films.
I don't know how you can make such amazing videos every time. But please keep doing it!
The "Red Rising" series is an amazing example of what happens after an uprising and how difficult it really is and how easily it all can go to shit
I want to say first that this discussion definitely makes me think about the legend trilogy by Marie Lu. Showing how even the protagonist who's torn between loyalty to the regime but demands change as well due to hardships placed alone then and everyone he loves. And how sometimes outside regimes idealistic in nature may actually be worse than the one you already live under. It's partially why I keep going back to reading the series.
Also I wanted to ask a question regarding how one could implement some of these ideas into even a ttrpg kind of setting? Cause I've tried to in the past but it always never felt right or really revolutionary enough. So wanted to get thought on how one might even make a revolution possible in a ttrpg setting where can become far more fluid based on your party playing in the setting.
It's not nostalgia. Things got worse when USSR collapsed. Check life expectancy, price of food, housing, mafia rise to power, etc...
The web serial novel "Pale", I think, is one of the best stories about revolution I've come across. In part, it's because it captures a lot of where a revolution can fall apart, and where it can be done well.
The heroes of the story are the ones trying to overthrow unjust power structures through building community, through empowering the disenfranchised, and showing that their way is *better*. It's small, slower changes but ones that need to be made, ones that ultimately aren't "ideal" but necessary to try to build a better future.
Some antagonists...they want to burn it all down. That's it, that's their entire drive; revenge, anger, vitriol...and when that initial burst of anger is spent there's nothing left. Nothing holding them up, nothing to fall back on, nothing to base their Selves upon.
“Help help in being repressed!”
I love that you are a man of culture
The Disney+ Star Wars shows have done a lot to expand the Galctic Civil War, I think. We see the nuance and complexity of the revolution in Andor, of course. And in Mandalorian and Ahsoka, we see the chaos left in the aftermath (with Imperial warlords, shadow councils and loyalists), and the New Republic's inability to properly respond. This instability would ultimately allow the First Order to fester until it was too late.
The story is still unfolding though, so we'll see where it goes from here!
I do find that some of that instability seems a bit more of a result of a desire to have the final rebel victory seem more major than it should have been- the empire, in it's entirety, only actually lasted about 4 years from when the galactic senate was dissolved to the emperor falling down a hole. Whilst Palpatine was certainly ruling autocratically for much longer, the senators mailing addresses were probably still written down inside the actual senate building (providing it hadn't been used as a concert venue whilst they worked out what to do with it), so just, you know, tell them to come back and finish their term of office.