The Pitfalls of Political Fantasy Series

hello everyone my name is jordan and today i'm going to be talking about fantasy because i love fantasy books however i have now finished the david bad trilogy i believe that's what it's called it's the the city of brass books i've just finished those books and my previous video i discussed how in the first book it was brilliant set up for political fantasy and i stand by that the first two books in the trilogy are just phenomenal however i've now finished the third book in the trilogy and i it's not that i didn't like it i liked it however it was not the most satisfying conclusion and i feel like it fell into several pitfalls that i've noticed most political fantasy series fall into and i started thinking about why that is what are these patterns and what do they mean and so today i'm going to be talking about two big pitfalls that i think a lot of these series fall into now disclaimer this video is unscripted and perhaps unhinged uh so you be the judge but i think i have two good points to make and they are subjective but i do have evidence to back me up also so [Music] i think there's two big traps in political fantasy and the first one is what i would like to call magic crawl because it's something that i don't think has been talked about that much not that i've noticed anyway and it's like power crawl which has been talked about a lot but with magic and so power crawl basically is this it's like in a series when it starts out with like a little monster that the characters have to fight with their powers and then over the course of the series to maintain tension they fight bigger and bigger monsters because once they've defeated the little monster it needs to be a little bit more scary a little bit more powerful so that they have like a new challenge however there's a danger to that because once it gets to a certain point it starts to lose tension because it just gets too big and too abstract and the characters like it it loses the magic of the original because it basically becomes less about the characters problem solving with magic but more just about like it gets out of hand basically and i think that there's an issue with that in political fantasy novels because one of the best parts of it being a political fantasy is the fact that it's fantasy however it's a trap you see the best parts of the political fantasy are the fantasy elements because it allows for a look at humanity through i guess circumstances um that allow the author to play with human nature like for example giving certain characters more power than others or different powers and how that manifests in different ways in those cultures or giving external conflict through external forces of power that then the characters have to band together and fight but basically what it does is it allows for human nature to be played with and manipulated in certain ways to explore how humanity would react to those circumstances that's what the best kind of political fantasy does in my opinion so like the fantasy element is integral to that uh and it also allows for a degree of separation you can look at actual things that we do as humans actual problems in the world through a safe lens of like separation um it's a metaphor but it's not like it's not like you know reading a newspaper so you get to examine these things through this different kind of filtered lens that allows the author to play a little bit it allows for a little bit of unexpectedness but it is a trap because one thing that i've noticed a lot of political fantasy books do you know i'm looking at game of thrones i'm looking at this trilogy is the magic becomes more and more a part of it as it goes on and that can be that can be good but oftentimes i think it's not because it takes it from a political fantasy to like an adventure thing it becomes less and less about the politics and more about slaying the magical elements and i think there are a couple traps that come along with this because on top of that it then can become very much good versus evil and i think this book series really does do that in my previous video i had talked about how the author went to these great lengths to establish a world in which there was no good versus evil and i really enjoyed that but as the book series progressed that was thrown to the wind as more magical elements were introduced we got a antagonist who just was the it was like evil incarnate which is a lot less interesting political fantasy is interesting to me because it evaluates humanity through morally gray characters if there's a good versus evil it becomes an adventure slash war thing which is separate it's not it's no longer about the politics of court and you know how to gain little steps of power to make changes to you know benefit your goals and and that to me is very interesting the more magic you bring into it the more external forces get brought into it the less it becomes about that and the more it becomes about these epic wars and these epic adventures and good versus evil and i think that a lot of a lot of stories fall into that trap game of thrones definitely did it in my opinion the first three seasons because i haven't read all the books but i know that the first three seasons are pretty faithful to the books and they're the strongest seasons and i don't think that's just because of george rr martin's writing which i is a big part of it but i also think that the more magic gets put into it the less important the minuscule little conflicts between people and the minuscule little plots for power become important because then they're fighting these larger forces hi this is editing me realizing that i write scripts for a reason um but basically what i was trying to say here is that in a similar way as the power crawl the magic crawl would have dubbed that there is a threshold where a certain amount of magic makes the political elements more interesting because it manipulates the way in which we get to explore humanity however there's a threshold where then it gets to a point where the magical elements kind of overtake the political fantasy to the point where it becomes less about humanity and more about humanity versus something else like exterior forces which is to me less interesting than like human nature versus human nature if that makes sense because when humanity bands together to like face an evil there's only like one way it can go you know uh whereas like people with different alliances and different goals and different needs that are all trying to manipulate each other for whether that be like personal goals or what they want to achieve politically that's some spicy stuff right there that i think is the first pitfall that these things fall into and i think they fall into it for a variety of reasons the more interesting magical obscure elements get introduced i think the more the author feels pressure to have those things be integrated into the story and you know play a part in the ending um i don't think that necessarily needs to happen i think there's a lot of things introduced in the series i'm using the series as a kind of case study for larger issues that i've noticed but i think that this series introduced a lot of things in the first two books that the author felt the need to then include in the final book because otherwise why is it there but i think honestly readers have a bit of forgiveness because they want an expensive world but they don't necessarily need everything to be tied up with a pretty little bow at the end as long as like several things are whereas this author i think felt the need to include all of the different factions magical factions and beings that they had introduced into the finale which then bloated this kind of power to a point where it really wasn't about politics at all and a lot of the first two books like the interesting stuff that happened in the first two books just got thrown away in the third book because the focus was then on you know finding armies and destroying evil i think also it's a thing of like tension in the same way that the power crawl thing is where the author feels the need to up the stakes but instead of doing that through the established kind of political court for example because it's always it's always got to be a kingdom in political fantasy but we will get to that um but anyway it's not it's always it's not just like the court and losing the your political attraction at court what you've built there it's always got to be some big creature at the end some big monster some big bad who they have to defeat and dismantle which then negates all of the work that they had done in the court like that becomes irrelevant basically which happened in this book which was so tragic because it was so interesting watching those dynamics and they just became like irrelevant basically by the end so that is the first pitfall that i think a lot of these books fall into is basically feeling the need to a include all of this heightened magic stuff as the series progresses because they introduced it but also i think it's the same thing as the power crawl where they feel that they need to up the stakes with the magic rather than with the political intrigue um to the point where the political intrigue takes a back step to the magic and therefore in my opinion uh becomes less interesting now a big caveat uh as i'm sure you've noticed er with this video it is it is again very subjective and so this video is really for people who enjoy political fantasy if you enjoy the more action-adventure side of fantasy which i do if like that's the intent from the get-go um then you're probably gonna disagree with me you're probably gonna be like girl listen girly um that's the good stuff like i don't know what you're talking about but if you set it up as a political fantasy and then like throw that aside at the end it just feels like it was never what was the point you know why but now we're going to talk about the second issue and that is i think there is no good way to end a political fantasy maybe that's not true maybe that's bold of me to say but i am rarely satisfied with the ending it's more about the journey than the destination usually because there's really only a couple ways it can go and none of them are satisfying to me um like they're varying degrees of satisfying again i don't think that the third book was a bad book but i've realized i realized while reading it i was like even if this was more about the political intrigue and less about the good versus bad there's really only two things that can happen okay three things the first thing the characters that you're rooting for die and get defeated and then you're like why did i read this why did i read this it's always gotta be it's always gotta be a freaking monarchy so either the monarchy is upheld and they basically become the new rulers which you're like yeah so you're you're the new ruler and you we like you hopefully that can be somewhat satisfying because you're like yeah you're good you're gonna do some good things we love that for you however you can you can pop out a baby then usually like monarchs don't they'll start bad usually and then but then with time you you pop out a baby or two or even you just stay in power for too long and you either get corrupted or a couple babies down the line who's to say that's the issue with monarchy who's to say if it's inherited who's to say who you're gonna get so it's like this is satisfying for now but then what uh or the other option is dismantle the monarchy and for it to become a democracy and like yes sure however you never see the transition you never see the actual democracy and if that's better we're like yes that's good because we are we have been trained to believe that democracy is good so therefore that is a happy ending but we never actually see how it unfolds also which i'm not saying democracy is bad baby i'm just saying there are a lot of democracies that are bad but also it's just kind of the expected you know like you're just like why do i go into this political fantasy believing that it's going to end in democracy because it always does and then it does and you're like cool cool so basically then the structure becomes like set up a monarchy and court work within that court gain political power uh oh magic comes in destroy the evil person who somehow took power was already in power harnessed evil powers whatever destroy that and then you have a fresh slate apparently and just builds a democracy from the ground up and that is the structure that is the structure baby of like 90 of these books you can't tell me otherwise or they just like go crazy with it and like queen of the tearling it was all a dream you know that's worse so my issue is i've realized i love the political intrigue and like the middle bit but it's so hard to end a political fantasy because there's really only a few options and none of them are great and that's because there is no system of governance that is great you know power corrupts but at the same time i know what i don't want you know like i don't want the magic to like completely overtake the political intrigue i want it to matter you know i want the political intrigue to matter which usually it doesn't in the end because it becomes a good versus evil thing and often the characters who were in power then are like i never wanted it that's what makes me a good ruler is i never wanted it so i'm retiring baby girl yes understood however then who is then who is gonna be in power i'm so sorry if it's a democracy like it's just a bunch of faceless dudes okay so me realizing i'm i'm an idiot part two um basically what i'm trying to say here is there it's not a happy ending and they portray it like it's a happy ending every system of governance has issues obviously we haven't found that utopic dream baby girl because humanity is flawed so the issue is that they portray it like this is this utopic happy ending oh bam baby democracy has come um this is the end y'all this is it y'all did it it's less interesting to depict it as like this utopic happy ending because it doesn't acknowledge that the transition from monarchy to democracy is going to be like a whole whole process baby girl that just feels like the beginning you know where is the fantasy novel that starts with the transition from monarchy to democracy where is she because that would be some spicy that's all i'm saying so i think the conclusion that i've come to is unless there is some series that i don't know that wraps these things up in a way that's like and if there is please do tell me i think what i've realized because i do like political fantasy for the reasons that i mentioned before in that there it's an interesting way to look at politics to look at human nature through a lens of separation but also getting to play with it a little bit and see if it's well done how people would react to different circumstances and different types of power um i think that's a lot of fun so what i've realized is maybe there is no right answer maybe i will just have to enjoy it for the journey and not the destination and sacrifice the ending to the gods because it will never be as good as i want it to be but i would love to know your thoughts about this and some of the other pitfalls of political fantasy if you do have any others these are just some things that i've noticed and been thinking about for the past a little bit because i was like why why am i never satisfied for what reason do these always hurt my feelings you know and i think those are the two big ones but if you have other thoughts please let me know but yeah let me know if you disagree um if you're like nabi the big magic that's the good stuff the the gods playing and the big evils and all of that that's that's what you want why let me know why but that is it that's all for today sorry this video is a bit of a mess [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Jordan Harvey

Views: 27,757

Keywords: jordan, harvey

Id: xZ2EbuNIwA0

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021