The Mythcreant Podcast

The discussion tackles the shift from dark to uplifting storytelling in modern media. It examines how light narratives can maintain tension without becoming dull. Unique video games, like 'Unpacking' and 'Lake,' serve as examples of engaging yet cozy stories. The podcast also critiques the current landscape, highlighting the charm of community-focused tales and cozy aesthetics in fantasy. A humorous take on naming conventions adds a fun layer to the conversation, showing that stories can be both lighthearted and profound.

We’ve all read a book or watched a show that we could only describe as soooooooo slooooooow, but what makes a story feel that way? What choices take the plot from zooming along to a painful crawl? The answer is, naturally, a lot of things! This week, we’re exploring a few of them, from multiple POVs to red herrings, all in the name of making sure our stories keep moving and get us the delicious tension we crave.Show Notes The Wheel of Time  The Witch King  Lord of the Rings  First Person Retelling  A Deadly Education  How to Pace Your Story Understanding Conflict and Tension  Buffy the Vampire Slayer Trese  The Art of Prophecy Transcript Generously transcribed by Elizabeth. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast. Chris: You’re listening to The Mythcreant podcast with your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle. [opening theme plays] Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren. Chris: And I’m Chris. Oren: And I’ve written up the perfect opening bit. And it’s only two hours long! You can wait that long for a punchline, right? I promise it’s very good. Chris: Oh, what about the deleted scenes from this opening bit? Can we add those in? Oren: Oh yeah, absolutely, that will definitely bump the length up quite a bit. And anyone who doesn’t like those are not real fans. Chris: Yeah, I mean, if it’s a serious opening bit, it should be at least three hours long. Oren: No pausing for bathroom breaks. So today we’re talking about what makes a story slow. And it’s not just because we finished the Wheel of Time’s second season recently. But it’s not not because of that either. [laughter] Chris: Slow is a generic term, but usually when we call something slow, the issue is either pacing or movement; we had a whole podcast on pacing and movement, but what it boils down to is it’s boring. [Chris laughs] But in any case, pacing is more, there’s no tension or excitement, and movement is like, it’s wasting time and not getting anywhere. Oren: I’ve noticed that there are a couple of very different things that people will describe as being slow. And they look very different, but they contribute to a similar feeling. So there’s… The lack of movement, which you were talking about, and also sometimes lack of tension, although movement is the most common one, and this is where stuff happens but no major arcs are any closer to resolution. And then there is the multiple plotlines, which also often gets the show or book described as slow. Even if each plotline has movement on its own, if you are constantly splitting your time amongst them and you have a bunch of them, your show feels slow, because you go through a whole episode and ten minutes of real time have elapsed, because you keep cutting back and forth between everybody. Chris: In each arc, because you’re only getting a few minutes for each arc in, like, the whole episode, they still feel like they’re slow, because for every episode you watch, each arc only moves a tiny bit because you just don’t have any time with them. Oren: The most blatant example of this in the Wheel of Time second season is the episode where they, at the beginning, bring up that Nynaeve is gonna do a dangerous magic ritual to graduate to the next stage of magic apprentice. And it’s like, okay, that’s neat. Let’s do that. And then, a bunch of stuff happens in the episode, because we have to cut to all one million other characters who are all in different places doing their own thing. And by the time we get back to Nynaeve, it’s like, okay, Nynaeve, are you ready to do the thing? Come back next time. Chris: Yep, that’s pretty irritating. We’re so sure that we would get to her magic test that episode. Nope. Nope. Multiple viewpoints is the movement killer. Oren: I have to admit, I have developed some sympathy for this recently. Not that I think it’s good, but because I do a lot of roleplaying. I do a lot of Game Master, GM campaign running. And in those scenarios… A lot of the things that people like are that I’ll give the players a plot hook, there’s some weird, destroyed vegetation down by the lake, and we don’t know why people are doing that, you should go and investigate. They’ll be like, alright, I’m gonna go investigate, and then they stop somewhere to get some equipment, and I’ll mention a character, and they feel like that character’s doing something suspicious, so one of them’s like, I’m gonna go follow that character, and I’m like, alright, that’s where the character is going, so I’m gonna make that a storyline. And it’s not like that can’t ever be a problem in roleplaying games – you don’t want to let someone go off on a ten day solo adventure that has nothing to do with the rest of the party – but you have so much more leeway in roleplaying games. And it’s hard to remember that you don’t have that when you come back to other mediums. Chris: I do think a lot of times it is the result, and definitely in Wheel of Time, of having too many characters. We’ve talked about that a lot, where the author puts in too many characters, they don’t want to give any of their characters up, but they also have trouble finding things for all of their characters to do. And this is definitely something that Wheel of Time struggles with. The show writers are clearly struggling with it. And they’re trying to rework it and give the characters things to do when they didn’t really do anything in the books. So to give them something to do, you start to split them up, because if you have the party together, it’s actually much harder to balance them and sort them apart from each other and give them all a role because there’s just too many of them. If you split them up and have it so that you just have two or three characters together, then you can all give those characters something to do in their storyline, ideally. And it’ll allow you to keep all these characters that you probably should be cutting from your story. Oren: Yeah, again, I do that in roleplaying games. If I have a group of six people, I very often split them into three and three. Or sometimes three groups of two, because that is easier than trying to run one blob of six people. And in roleplaying games, people accept it because we want to hang out with our friends, and it would be really rude to give one person all of the spotlight time, but you just need to understand that other mediums don’t have that tolerance. Chris: So besides Wheel of Time. Let’s start at a small scale, because all sorts of things will make a story slow. And so maybe we can talk about the wordcraft level a little bit. Oren: Eh, but words are hard. I don’t do those. I’m not a word person, Chris. I don’t even see the words. I just look at a manuscript and I seeplot hole, character contrivance, setting issue. Chris: Shall we plug you back into the narration matrix because ignorance is bliss? Oren: It’s fine, I just want to eat my delicious, seriously flawed main plot and not have to worry about sentence structure. Chris: Oh man, they did make that steak look really good in that scene. Oren: It looked very tasty. Chris: Even thinking about it makes me want steak. Okay, enough Matrix references. So obviously, if your wordcraft is too verbose, that’s gonna create a sense of slow, it’s gonna slow movement down, nothing can happen because there’s just too many words. And, obviously there’s some common culprits – exposition is notorious for being too much, and that varies from writer to writer. Some writers, yeah, just write mountains and mountains of exposition and there’s nothing happening. Some writers become too extreme on the other end of the spectrum because exposition is so notorious. But usually if you have tons of exposition and there’s no action happening in real time, you really want to examine what you’re doing and if you have a lot of summary, a lot of time passing really quickly, It’s like, why isn’t there a scene? A real time scene happening, and if you need to change some of the logistics of the events so that you can do real time, you should do that. Other times, exposition is just, we don’t need to know all this. It’s too much. Oren: We don’t need to know the heraldry and the family trees of every knight and noble who comes to help fight at Minas Tirith, Tolkien. Tolkien, pay attention. We don’t need to know that.  Chris: Related to exposition, often exposition is thoughts and there can be too much internalizing. I just listened to Martha Wells’ Witch King, and the narration was pretty good, but the main character does a lot of thinking in very time sensitive times [Chris laughs] where somebody will ask him a question and he does a whole bunch of thinking. It’s like, Are you going to respond to that person? And then eventually… Again, the wrong time for that. But any block of the same kind of text for too long will make it feel slow. Dialogue dumps. If you have a character that is just filling in, this is basically a replacement for exposition. Character that’s just doing a whole lecture. It’s like, alright, maybe we should break that up, get somebody more involved in it instead of just saying it. You might need to show instead of tell again. Or excessive description. This is what Tolkien was known for. That and lots of songs. So many songs. The only book where songs are slowing the story down cause Tolkien just liked writing poetry. Oren: Tolkien was ahead of his time on that one because in written form, songs, eh, but in audiobooks, the songs are great because they get the voice actor to do a little singing, and it’s nice. It’s like a little musical in the middle of your fantasy book. Chris: Fair, I did read Lord of the Rings instead of listening to it. But yeah, I think the classic one with a high fantasy is like the characters enter a new city and then we have several paragraphs telling us exactly what the city looks like. Nobody can remember that, alright? You need to give your city some standout traits that make it memorable, and not try to just draw a map inside somebody’s head. That doesn’t work. Oren: Yeah, but in defense of the writers everywhere, that is a very hard balance to strike. Man, I had so much trouble when my characters get to the big new city. I had beta reader comments that were like, I need more description, I can’t picture this city. And I also had beta reader comments that was like, there’s too much, I’m overwhelmed by this city. Which one is it? Is it a blank, empty void, or is it overwhelming? I, how could it be – I don’t know how to fix it if it’s both. Chris: That’s tough. I think breaking it up into pieces and doing it periodically is just a lot better than doing it once. And part of it is, I think, when people can’t picture it, maybe what they are complaining about is whether or not you have enough detail that’s evocative. Because if you say something vague, it’s much harder to picture than if you say very specific details in the picture.  Oren: Then if I say vague things, they can’t pin me down on them later. If I’m specific, I’m opening myself up for someone to notice that my plot doesn’t make any sense. Chris: If you just don’t tell them how many people are in all of your armies, then they can’t notice that you have weird discrepancies in the number of people throughout the novel. Oren: Guilty as charged. Chris: Oh, logistics are terrible, just being vague is better when you can get away with it. Unfortunately, we cannot always get away with it. Oren: I definitely think that authors should need to apply for a permit if they want to use a first person retelling narrative. Because I love first person retelling, I think it has a lot of value, but man, some authors use it as an excuse to just go off on tangents because, technically speaking, unlike with an unfolding narration, a retelling narration can, theoretically, break the timeline as often as the author wants to, without the main character just sitting there thinking for two hours. Because this is the main character’s later, future self, thinking about all these things. But that doesn’t mean you should spend 19 pages describing how your magic school works in the first chapter. Chris: Yeah, I was gonna say, did A Deadly Education hurt you, Oren? Oren: A little bit. You could say it was… Deadly. Chris: [pained] Oooh… Yeah, no. Retelling narrators, first person retelling narrators are notorious for being really long winded. Not that they always are, though. The Murderbot Diaries are also first person retelling. They’re fine. No pacing problems there. Sometimes the action is a little confusing, but being too long-winded is not one of their issues. Oren: I think all books should just be Murderbot from now on. That’s my solution to this problem. Everyone just write Murderbot. Chris: Yeah. The other thing that can happen at the wordcraft level, if you end up filling in stuff, that just doesn’t matter, you gotta use your power to time skip when necessary. You don’t have characters come in and just make small talk about the weather before they get to the point, right? Or just little actions that don’t matter. You don’t have to have your character walk up to the door and knock on it and somebody answers. You could just skip to when they’re inside on their visit. So that’s just a habit thing in practice. You get used to trimming off those little unimportant bits and making that natural, but that’s another thing that can slow things down on a wordcraft level. Oren: I had a really hard time in the epilogue of my current novel. I needed to describe the scene that they were in, and it was a new location because plotwise, there was no previous location they could go to for this epilogue to make sense. So I had to describe it and I just felt so conscious of every paragraph. I was like, this is so much description at the end of the book. And we’ll see. Hopefully it’s okay, because the main plot has already resolved itself and this is like the saying goodbye period. Chris: And also, people can always just, if they get bored, they can put it down. Right? The story’s already resolved, they’re not missing anything. Oren: That’s the hope, but oof, man, I felt every single line. This is so much description, I am asking so much of people at this point. Chris: But the assumption is that we’re saying goodbye. It had a little bit different purpose. But yeah, at the upscale, we’ve got the scene level. Extra scenes. Good scene design, good scene selection: also very important for keeping readers entertained and keeping the story from feeling slow. This is one reason why I tell people who are outlining in some detail to just block out their scenes. You tell me what’s going to be a real-time scene ahead of time. Figure that out so that you don’t get into weird situations where you have, for logistical reasons, a whole bunch of scenes where people just talk to each other to make the plot work, but not because that’s exciting, or there’s anything interesting happening. Oren: Yeah, it’s like, when you describe all these things, is this gonna happen in a scene, or is this just gonna be summary? That’s actually very useful for an editor to know, if you’re doing content editing on an outline, is to just know when this is a real time scene, and when it’s summary. Chris: Yeah, because if it’s not blocked out, we have to guess, and that determines whether this section of your story is going to be too slow or not. Oren: And if we guess wrong, that can really warp our perception of your story, right? And we try to correct – we ask questions, we try to get clarification – but if I get the really strong impression that this story is too slow because I thought that these were all going to be scenes, and in the author’s mind they were just some summary, that can color my judgment later, and it can make it harder for me to give good recommendations. Chris: But yeah, of course, there are tons of stories where the author also just wants to squeeze in extra scenes where heroes introduce a couple of characters that I really like that I just made up, or here’s a scene just to advertise some of my world building that I worked so hard on.  Or repetitive scenes. That’s another big one. Again, this is another movement issue, is that things need to keep moving forward, right? If you have a character who is struggling with something, you don’t want to show three scenes of them struggling with that thing without anything changing. You want to use your scenes to show how things change. Something’s got to be different, or else it’s just going to feel repetitive. Oren: Yeah, in terms of pacing, I generally recommend one high tension scene followed by one quiet scene. There are some reasons to break that pattern, but in general, if you have two low tension scenes, one after the other, something’s probably gone wrong. Chris: Yeah, if you have two scenes, again, I think the important point is that you escalate and so the tension goes up every scene until you get to something that’s exciting, and then you can drop it again. So, what you don’t want is two scenes that are about equal in tension. You want the second scene to be higher in tension than the first on so that things are ramping up. And then once it gets exciting again – and what exciting is depends on your story. That’s one of the hard things, is this is all relative. And that’s another thing that can make something slow is if you have a high tension arc, right? Something that’s really exciting, and that arc is not complete and it’s urgent, and then characters are like, okay, let’s react, relax, and go to the beach [laughter] people are just going to resent that beach scene, even though it might be a really cute interpersonal character moment, because it’s being drowned out by the higher tension arc that feels very urgent. It’s like, but there’s people dying over there. Why aren’t you helping them? Or people could die over there. Why are you at the beach when people are suffering right now? Oren: You do not have time for a low key social event, right? You’re in the middle of a ticking clock. Stuff’s gonna happen. Chris: And this is also partly why the filler episode problem becomes a problem, is that, especially now when all of these show writers are making much more serial short shows for streaming services than they used to, and they’re used to something like Buffy has 22 episodes per season, and we do have a big bad for the season, but there’s no urgency there. So we don’t really worry about – the villains there, but we know that we don’t have to take care of the villain now, so we can just have our little monster of the episode, and sometimes it doesn’t have to be that much tension per episode. But then when you take something like the Mandalorian, and it’s only eight episodes, and now there’s a really urgent problem that always exists, in which bounty hunters are like, hunting down Baby Yoda. And you’re like, okay, we’re just gonna have a small scene where Mando tries to make some money. People start to resent that, and resent that that’s not part of the season arc, because we made the season arc feel overwhelming and urgent, as opposed to Buffy, where the season arc didn’t feel important for most of the season. Oren: Yeah, it’s just a question of if you want a lot of these self contained episodic storylines, you need the throughline to not feel as urgent. That’s just the way it is. You ramp up to the throughline feeling urgent rather than establishing it in the first episode. If we’re talking about sort of the episode or maybe several scenes level, one thing that also makes stories feel slow is red herrings, because you have someone working on a plot or looking for a clue or whatever or fighting a bad guy, and you get there, and nothing happened. You fought those guys, and it didn’t matter. They got away, everything’s the same as it was. And even if that was an exciting action scene, it’s still gonna feel slow, because it didn’t bring the big conflict any closer to being resolved, one way or the other. Chris: Or if you retroactively remove your character’s agency. So there’s nothing that they did mattered. It felt like the plot was moving forward, and then it’s like, oh, actually, none of that. You were just dinkering around. Oren: That’s why we always recommend that with red herrings, it can be something other than what the protagonist thought it was, but it shouldn’t ever, or almost never, be just a complete dead end. They should still find something that moves the story forward, even if it’s not what they expected to find, or what they wanted to find. Chris: And sometimes you can have them move the story forward by giving the villain a win. The protagonist chased a red herring they shouldn’t have and now, that gave the villain time to capture a side character. But that still moves the confrontation forward because now the protagonist has to go and rescue that character, bring them one closer to their final fight with the villain, for instance. Oren: That’s the old, fun little dance where you need to both move the story closer to a conclusion, but also make it seem increasingly more difficult to resolve in the protagonist’s favor. Chris: Yeah, the red herring should make a difference somehow. We don’t want to just realize, oh, that was all for nothing and we haven’t actually moved the story forward like we thought. That’s disappointing. What about at the throughline level? Oren, what have you seen? Oren: Well, we were talking about multiple points of view earlier. You can also have too many plots with a single character. It’s rare, but it happens. This is, there’s an animated show. It’s from the Philippines. I believe it’s called Tress, or Trés [spelled Trese]. I believe that’s how they say it in the show. And that’s, I think, the main character’s name. And she has weird errands that she goes on. There’s an investigation that she’s working on, and then she gets called, and now she’s working on a different investigation. And that feels really slow. It’s like, hang on, what about the first one? We’re not moving, nope. Chris: So rather than focusing on one investigation at a time, we do it in a more realistic manner where she’s got a whole plate load of investigations, but that means they all move very slowly. Oren: And that’s actually one thing I was wondering about, Chris. Maybe you can solve this for me right now, podcast. Is there a way to do that correctly? Because it feels like that should be a thing you could do, of having a character who’s super overworked and having all these problems they need to solve that aren’t necessarily related to each other. Chris: Honestly, I think the way that you would do that is make them secretly related to each other. And you can’t, it would still though be a problem if they all seem to be separate until the end. And only at the end when they come together, that’s still going to be a problem as long as they’re separate. We need that chain of causality, is what creates movement. And as long as all of them are on a separate chain of causality, we’re going to have that feeling of very slow movement. I suppose it’s possible that the different investigations could affect each other somehow without having the same root cause. A lot of times what happens is the protagonist will investigate one thing and it turns out that one thing is the result of the other, the villain they are looking into, or something like that, so that they were always underneath related to each other. I suppose you might be able to have something where, for instance, the protagonist is investigating two different villains. As a result of those investigations, the villains come into contact with each other, start fighting or something, or start working together so that their presence in the protagonist’s life ends up linking them together so that they influence each other in some way. That would be interesting, but I think it’s less common. Oren: Also at the throughline level, a big cause of a lack of movement is just not knowing what the throughline is, from either an authorial or a reader perspective. Because sometimes you have books that start off with what looks like a plot, and then they resolve that plot, and then you’re just left wondering, what is the story about now? And this is tricky because as the writer, you don’t want to just lean out from behind the page and be like, oh hey, the story’s about this now. You have to show that in character. And an example that I always go to is the Art of Prophecy. It’s a novel I’ve talked about on the site a few times. It starts off with this kinda interesting premise of the protagonist being a wizened old mentor who has to train the hot shot young chosen one to face the bad guy. And it’s okay. That’s an interesting concept. But then the bad guy, spoilers, dies a few chapters into the book. He’s just randomly killed by some soldiers, and at that point the book stops knowing what it’s about, and we briefly have a storyline about trying to keep the Chosen One alive, because now all the political factions want to kill him. But then we resolve that pretty quickly, and so now we have the mentor is gonna go look at some records to see if maybe there’s any more plot material for this Chosen One to do. And the Chosen One is gonna hang out at a training hall for a while, have some kind of nebulous character arc. Chris: Here’s the thing. I would say that your throughline ultimately is the biggest source of tension. Now, generally, we can set up an episodic story where there’s a lower, overarching sense of tension in episodes, but generally, especially in a novel, right? And I think that the mistake that writers make is they think of, this is my problem, but then they don’t think of what is actually generating the most tension, and usually, the easiest way to find that is with the stakes,  because the stakes are generally the biggest part of what determines how high tension an arc is. So, what is the thing that is a big deal that is bad that could happen? What is creating that sense of threat? And find that, and then that has to be sustained. And I think the mistake that people make is, their sense of tension is coming from the threat that, for instance, this chosen one the protagonist is training, will be killed by the villain, but then when the villain dies, the stakes are gone. The tension is gone, and then we can start up tension again, but now it feels like a different story then it was before. It feels like we’ve ended one story and we’re starting a new one. We have to use, we want to use some kind of causality so that our earlier threat, if we want to kill off that villain, we almost need – I don’t want to say another villain behind that villain, because that can definitely get overplayed. But let’s say this villain turned out to come from a bunch of people who were very angry and they have been sending out multiple warriors and this villain was just one of them. So we’ve moved the root cause of that threat somewhere else. Then we can kill off that villain, but the threat is still there, and have the threat sustained all the way through. Oren: Yeah, I could be wrong, but with that book it really feels like a big part of the problem is that the author wanted to subvert a trope that they really needed. And it’s hard for me to imagine, if that’s true, it’s hard to imagine what a solution would be, because the trope they wanted to subvert was, oh, you thought we were gonna fight the bad guy, and now they’re dead. And it’s like, sure, we could replace them with someone else, but then that’s not going to be subverting the trope the way this author wanted to. And if that’s the case – I’m guessing, right? I don’t know what this author actually wanted, that’s just what I’m guessing from the text. If that’s the case, that would be really hard to fix. Because at that point the author would be trying to do something that is just sabotaging their own story. And that would be a tough one. If someone came to me with a project like that, and I haven’t had that specific one, but I have had a couple of clients who their core concept was a thing that was negatively affecting their story, and I can’t do anything about that. Chris: [dramatically] At what cost? Oren: Yeah, I’m not a miracle worker. Alright, with that, I think we have come to the end of our throughline. We’ve worked our way up from the small stuff all the way to the big stuff, although we started with the big stuff to make it a little more confusing. Maybe it’s gone in a circle. Chris: If you’d like to keep us from getting too slow, consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/mythcreants. Oren: And before we go, I want to thank a few of our existing patrons. First, we have Callie MacLeod. Then we have Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And finally, there’s Kathy Ferguson, professor of political theory in Star Trek. We’ll talk to you next week. [closing theme plays] Chris: This has been the Mythcreant podcast. Opening and closing theme, The Princess Who Saved Herself, by Jonathan Coulton.

The prophecy has spoken: We must now destroy the discourse and bring balance to the podcast. Whatever “balance” is supposed to mean. This week we’re talking about those special protagonists chosen by the gods, weird aliens, or an amorphous destiny. Such characters get a lot of well deserved criticism, but do they have any redeeming qualities? It’s time to find out! Show Notes Ditch These Five Character Archetypes  Jen and Kira  Taran Wanderer  Benjamin Sisko  Garion  Rand al’Thor  Aragorn  Lirael  Buffy Summers  Avatar Aang  Emmet Brickowski Jack Crusher  Steven Universe  Willow Ufgood Elora Danan  Force DyadTranscript Generously transcribed by Sofia. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast. Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreant podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle. [Intro Music] Chris: Welcome to The Mythcreant Podcast. I’m Chris. Oren: And I’m Oren. Chris: All witness the prophecy written in the stars! That one day a podcaster of no note will lead our world to victory against the silent scourge. Also, the prophecy specifies the podcaster will have a first name of Oren, a last name of Ashkenazi, and will be born in March. Oren: Okay, well… Chris: I think this is a sign that you are the chosen one, Oren. Let’s put you in charge of all the audio content in the world. I’m sure it’ll go fine. Oren: But I have only ever done simple farming podcasts. A simple farm-pod-boy, as it were. Are you certain, Chris? Chris: Maybe after we give you a mentor who will train you and give you a magical microphone. Oren: Meanwhile, we’ll be like, there are a lot of other people around who probably could have benefited from that training a lot more, or were maybe just ready and didn’t need it. It’s fine. Don’t worry about that. Chris: This time we’re talking about chosen ones. And that level of relevancy today, they can be surprisingly contentious. Back in 2015, I talked about them in an article Ditch These Five Character Archetypes. And at the time I was complaining about how the trope was used to prop up characters that were otherwise irrelevant and hadn’t really earned anything. The character that most qualifies in my mind is Jen in the original Dark Crystal. Oren: Yeah! Chris: It’s just, he’s raised as a last gelfling, but it turns out there is another last gelfling and she has to do everything for him. He doesn’t know how to travel or get anywhere. He knows math, but that’s hardly important. There is one scene where he reads the prophecy and she can’t read. So that’s something. But other than that, she can talk to animals and she has wings and he doesn’t. And there’s just no reason that he has to complete the prophecy. At one point he even throws their precious prophecy item, the crystal shard, away… [laughs] Oren: Whoops! Chris: … and then she has to go and find it for him. Oren: Oh no! Chris: So anyway, that was, I think, my main complaint. However, since then I’ve seen enough just ridiculous anti-chosen one takes to back off on that to some degree. Doesn’t mean that a typical chosen one is perfect and should just be used in the story as is. I mean, if you love it, go for it. You may get a few negative reactions. But at the same time, we’ve seen takes where it’s like all main characters qualify, so we shouldn’t have main characters anymore because they’re all chosen ones. Oren: Yeah, what is a chosen one is a fascinating bit of sandwich discourse. You have your obvious examples where there’s literally a prophecy and it literally is choosing someone because fate has arranged it. And then you have weirder ones where it’s not really a prophecy, but the character has unusual parentage or is the inheritor of a special power. And then you get people who are basically any protagonist with an unusual ability as a chosen one now. It’s like if they aren’t the most boring everyperson you can possibly think of, if they have any unusual background or history, chosen one. Chris: Katniss is a chosen one. Oren: Katniss is a chosen one. Chris: I don’t still don’t understand. She has skills she earned herself through years of hard work. Oren: Katniss is just a source of weird takes. My other one that I loved was someone was trying to do a video about how rich people versus poor people are portrayed in film and media. And was trying to make the argument that poor people are portrayed as unintelligent and ugly, and rich people are always pretty and smart. And was using Katniss as an example. Jennifer Lawrence from the movies. And it’s like, wait, hang on. Are you saying that Katniss is rich or that Katniss is poor and is thus an example of a person who is not smart and not attractive? Because it could be either one. I don’t know which one it is. And they’re both just mind-blowingly wrong. Chris: I think of a kind of the stereotypical classic chosen one as, again, a farm boy usually. Or it could be another young character of newest significance. But I think that the farm boy is so iconic because, again, originally a lot of these were boys. Of course, there’s a lot of chosen ones of other genders today, but the classic one was usually a boy. And even today, if there’s a random side character, side child in a story that’s a chosen one, it’s usually a boy still. If you have a team of characters in a show and they pick up the chosen child, it’s almost always a boy. Any case, and then there’s a prophecy that declares this person of no significance is a savior. And then everybody reveres them because they are in the prophecy. And then they do the thing in the prophecy. I would say that’s the straightforward chosen one situation. Oren: Yeah, the reverence is important to that, right? An interesting little subversion of that I have seen is the chosen one doesn’t have special skills and is somewhat of no consequence. But instead of playing it as, wow, you’re so cool, you’re gonna save the day. It’s more of like, oh boy, you have this huge responsibility and you are not prepared and sucks to be you. And that can work. It can also feel forced, but it works okay in the Prydain books. Taran is an assistant pig keeper who has no particularly useful skills. Now it helps that with Taran, we don’t know that he’s prophesied as a chosen one until pretty late in the books. Chris: Yeah, I feel like that’s revealed in the end. Oren: Yeah, so you could argue that he doesn’t count. Chris: He technically is, but we don’t know that. Oren: Yeah. And then you have characters who are partway there, like Sisko from Deep Space Nine is a chosen one. And he has some reverence. Some of the Bajorans are like, you’re pretty cool, Sisko. But overall, I’d say it’s pretty mild and he doesn’t get powers from the prophets or anything. If anything, the pah-wraiths give their champion powers and the prophets are just like, don’t look at us, man. What do you want from us? Which I always found very funny. Sisko is also in that camp. He gets some candy for being the emissary, but not as much as he could. Chris: Yeah, definitely the classic chosen one is chosen, so you have a relatable character, because they’re a character of no note, and we don’t have any outstanding traits that they know of at first. I always think of Garion. Oren: Yep. Chris: From the Belgariad, where he has a silver circle on his palm. And so you know that there’s something special about him. But he thinks, oh, it’s just a birthmark. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean I have a super special power that will make me a savior. So, there’s some sign, but again, we don’t reveal that he has powers until later. Oren: Yeah, this is your really classic chosen one. The one who has not only a straight up prophecy chosen by fate, or some equally powerful entity that says they will save the day, but also they get special powers that no one else has, or at least no one else has to the same degree. And they usually don’t start the story with those powers. They develop them pretty quickly as the story goes, though. Garion is one. Rand al’Thor from the Wheel of Time, Neo from the Matrix, Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. He’s a little unusual in that he’s not the main character, but he still fits the archetype. Chris: He definitely is a chosen one. He is clearly, unlike Garion, for instance. Garion is clearly designed to be the audience stand-in character, the blank relatable character, in a way that I don’t think Aragorn is. Aragorn still got some candy, and so he’s still a wish fulfillment character to some degree. But I think that there is a certain combination of starting with a character that’s super relatable, and then giving them all the wish fulfillment. That’s been very attractive. Oren: Aragorn is interesting, because in the movies, he doesn’t have what you would call a special power. He is of a special bloodline. But you could watch the whole movies and not realize that Aragorn is supposed to be quite old. He’s super long lived. But in the books, not only is he super long lived, he has magic healing hands, which kind of come out randomly to show that he’s the true heir in the third book, because why not? Chris: Yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty funny. But yeah, I would say that all the things that we just said, if you play all of that straight, and you don’t make it unique in any way, I do think that’s going to feel somewhat cliché at this point. But there’s not that many stories at this point that are doing that whole shebang without any changes. And there’s a number of different ways to mix it up. You can make the prophecy evil, which I have seen before. It was a reveal then, but it was an interesting one. You can make the prophecy wrong. You can make a side character or the villain a chosen one, something that unfortunately Mistborn did not do. Oren: So close. I was so excited when I thought that’s where we were going with that story. Chris: I thought that the chosen one’s gonna be evil, but no, that was just an imposter who killed the chosen one. So disappointing. Or I like to personally like a protagonist that has an ability that’s very niche. So, it’s not very powerful and therefore not super glorified, but it just happens to be the right ability for the current situation. A good example, even though I don’t actually like this book, is Lirael. This is a sequel to Sabriel by Garth Nix. Unfortunately, Lirael is not nearly as good as Sabriel. And in addition to having the ability, she also gets a lot of stuff. But the one ability of hers that I think is neat is that she’s born in a line of seers who would usually see the future, but instead of seeing the future, she sees the past. So objectively, it’s not any more powerful than seeing the future. Some people might say it’s less, because we have other ways of seeing the past. But for this particular situation, it’s important. Oren: From a storytelling perspective, it’s way more powerful because it is so much easier to give a character useful information by seeing the past than it is by having them see the future. Because if they can see the future and get useful information, that breaks the story so quickly that you almost never actually give them anything. It’s always, oh, your vision is clouded, or oh, who knows what you saw? It was too vague to be sure. It’s always stuff like that. Whereas in the past, it’s like, yes, I have the power of exposition vision. Bwaaah! Chris: I was a little annoyed that she also got to be the Abhorsen, like Sabriel. And we have this other character. She gets all the goodies and the other character doesn’t. Oren: Poor Sameth. Chris: But in any case, I like that idea. So yeah, if there’s various ways to mix it up, and if you do something a little different, then I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Oren: We can get into what I call the Schrödinger’s chosen one, which is a kind of character who could or could not be a chosen one. And whether or not they are called a chosen one generally comes down to A) how they are referred to in the story, and B) whether people like them or not. Because chosen one is enough of a cliche that people often use it as a pejorative. For example: consider Buffy and Aang from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Avatar the Last Airbender. They are both inheritors of a special power, and they both have a special job to save the world. They are the exact same level of chosen one. The Slayers are called chosen ones in Buffy, but there’s not actually any specific prophecy about Buffy saving the world. It could be any Slayer. And Aang is told he has to go fight the Fire Lord, but there’s not a prophecy that says he’s gonna win. He’s just told that’s his job. So, they are the same level of chosen one, but Buffy is routinely referred to as a chosen one. There are think pieces about how Aang is totally not a chosen one, or subverts the chosen one. Chris: [laughs] Subverts the chosen one. Oren: Even though they are the same thing. Chris: There’s so many stories now where people have different powers and then the one special protagonist has all of the powers. Oren: Yeah! Chris: That’s real popular now, and Aang is a fairly early example of that. So, the idea that he’s somehow a subversion is very funny. Oren: If you’re at that level of chosen one, you have a big boost to candy from doing that. You need to be aware of how much candy you’re giving your protagonist and think about that and balance it out somewhat. With Aang, they do an okay job, not the best job. Aang’s not a bad character, he’s just notably not as good as the other characters he hangs out with. And in Buffy, they overdo it sometimes, where they’re like, Buffy has it too easy. We’re going to have all the other characters get together and do a public criticism session of Buffy. Chris: Oh man, yeah. Whedon just loves putting Buffy through. Ugh, sometimes it gets bad. Oren: Yeah, I guess that’s supposed to, I don’t know, make Buffy’s life suck so it doesn’t feel like she’s getting too much candy from being the Slayer. Of course, the writers on that show were definitely not using that terminology, but same thing. And I think it’s a bit of an overcompensation at some points. It’s like, this is just deeply unpleasant to watch. Chris: Yeah, most of the time she doesn’t even actually get any spinach. She’s just really unhappy. She’s just miserable. She’s still candied. Yeah, it can be tough because if the character doesn’t have enough candy, again, sometimes they just, why are they the hero? Why is this story about them? And it feels extra, like they aren’t deserving of having special powers or whatever makes them a chosen one. Emmett in the Lego movie, the Lego movie is funny because at the end they’re like, oh, but he wasn’t the chosen one. Everyone is the chosen one. It’s like, hmm. And we do the same thing where we have a woman, just like for Jen and Kira in the Dark Crystal, have Wyldstyle, who’s right there, clearly much more qualified to be the chosen one. And why is it Emmett? Doesn’t feel like it should be Emmett. Oren: I keep thinking whenever you say Wyldstyle, it’s like, you mean Trinity? Oh, wait, no, hang on. Chris: Certainly, we want some humility in our characters. It’s definitely harder to like them if they just have tons of candy out of the gate. Hopefully they have some traits that are strong points besides just a magical power that they happen to have. Ideally, they have a magical power. And also, they’re such a nice person that they are the one who will use the power in the best ways, in the most moral ways, because they have such a good heart or whatever. Some reason why your character deserves to have that. It’s helpful. Oren: It’s really interesting to see how the Wheel of Time TV show is trying to handle this. Because I mentioned at the top that Rand is arguably the most chosen chosen one who has ever chosen oned. Other than Garion. Chris: Garion’s very classic. Oren: Garion is a little bit more of a chosen one just because he’s so generic when he starts. Whereas Rand is also generic, but not that generic. Rand is at least a little mouthy. That’s as deep as the characterization in Wheel of Time ever gets. But it’s something. So, the show, I think the writers realized that that story was already going out of fashion in 1990. And in 2021 and 2023, that’s gonna get you laughed out of the writer’s room. So, what they’re trying to do, I think, is to really emphasize that it’s a team sport. They’re really trying to emphasize that, yeah, Rand is the Dragon Reborn, but he needs all of his friends to help him win. And the real power was the friends we made along the way. And also all this magic. Chris: But they also want to make the fans happy. Oren: Yeah. Chris: The story puts so much on Rand. He’s so powerful. Look at how powerful he is! Look at the dragon! The dragon has the most powers! So powerful. Oren: But consider that he Indiana Jones’d that one guy who wanted to sword fight him. And I don’t know, I feel like a lot of the season was worth it just for that moment. Chris: So in the book, does he actually, I’m trying to remember, because he does sword fight because he’s got the Heron Sword. Over time, he develops those skills, right? He doesn’t come out of the gate just being super good at the sword. Oren: Yeah, no, he does learn to sword fight in the book. I forget exactly how he wins that fight, or what happens. I think he does channel, but he does sword fight the guy, right? It’s a much more drawn-out sword fight when that one Seanchan guy, Seanchan or whatever, I don’t know how to say that. Chris: Okay, so does he win? Or does he lose? Oren: He does win. But I think he uses his powers to win. So it’s just a sword fight that the story didn’t need. Rand’s already gonna have a big fight. He doesn’t need to have another one with a mini boss before he can get up there. That was just a funny reference to me, especially since the show’s interpretation of the Seanchan, they are pretty goofy in the books. And in the show, they are, if anything, even goofier. And they have these super long nails, which only makes sense if they aren’t also supposed to be fighting, but apparently they’re supposed to fight. So… Chris: Yeah, the thing that occurred to me when I saw how long the nobles’ nails were, were they were even a point of honor. Where when you dishonor yourself, your nails get cut off, and you have to grow them back before you can be seen in court again. The obvious thing, we’re like, okay, that is clearly a sign of leisure, because a working person couldn’t have nails that long. So clearly the reason why they’re a status symbol is because that means that they don’t have to work. But no, they fight apparently. So yeah, that would be a big liability. Oren: At least they think they can. Chris: They try to. Oren: We’ve never seen any of them fight, because Rand just annihilated him with magic, but he seemed to think he could fight. Chris: Look, either your nobility keeps super long nails… When I’m talking about long, I mean a couple feet. That’s how long we’re talking about. Either your nobility keeps two foot long nails, or they fight. They can’t do both, that’s a contradiction. Oren: One thing that’s interesting to me in this whole chosen one discussion is the special parentage. Because not all chosen ones have that, right? A lot of chosen ones don’t, but it’s definitely associated with it. And I think that at this point, having special parents is probably worth some candy, but maybe not that much. Especially in the United States, where we have this whole cult of the bootstraps thing going, which has its own problems, but as a result it means that we have an almost instinctive dislike of characters who are shown on screen to be getting their stuff through nepotism. Now, of course, we have lots of nepotism. I’m not saying we don’t. It’s just a cultural value. But at the same time, authors really seem to like it. Chris: I think it is a way of sneaking in more candy, because the assumption is if your parent is really cool… There’s unfortunately some kind of eugenics in here. The assumption is if your parent is really cool, and they’re your biological parent, that should make you more cool. It was weird in Picard when they were almost doing the reverse, where Picard now has a son, and his son is super special. It felt like a weird way of trying to give Picard some candy, by giving him a special son. Oren: Just very strange. It also felt like normal narrative nepotism, where we were expected to care about Jack because we care about his parents. Jack does almost nothing to endear himself to us. Chris: Honestly, if he actually seemed like a kid instead of being in his 30s, maybe it would have worked better. Then he would have seemed a little bit more hapless, somebody to take care of. But yeah, I just… Man, the actor they chose. Just too old. Bothered me all the time. But yeah, I think that’s what it is. I think there’s some level of just flattery and some wish fulfillment about having cool parents, and that being revealing of your own potential. Oren: And I think you can subvert that a little bit. You can have the Steven Universe storyline about how your mother was special, but also, she made you to be a weapon sort of thing. And that’s a little bit of a subversion there. A little bit. Not a lot, but some. Chris: It was nice that it was the mother that was special, because in so many stories, it’s always a father. It’s nice when it’s both. That’s the other thing, is that having both parents come from a special line provides a convenient explanation for why your main character has so much more powers than anybody else. So, I do think that’s another reason it gets used. But if you’re going to do it, can you please pile the candy on the mother? I would appreciate that instead of the father. Assuming you have a mother and a father. One movie that I do think has a neat subversion is the classic Willow movie from 1989. Because in that one, it sets up Elora as the chosen one, and she’s just a baby. And the movie has this whole opening about how the evil Queen Bavmorda needs to get rid of this child who’s been prophesied to defeat her. This child with a special birthmark. We didn’t even talk about birthmarks, other than Garion and his silver birthmark. Pendants are another classic one. But yeah, so she’s trying to hunt this child down. And then Elora’s not the main character in the original movie. It’s Willow, and he’s trying to protect her. And then at the end of the day, what happens is that basically Willow defeats Bavmorda, not the baby. The baby kind of causes it in that a ritual to get rid of Elora goes wrong. But it’s really Willow that creates that effect by being clever. Oren: Yeah, it’s a fun little self-fulfilling prophecy where Bavmorda is destroyed by this baby because she is trying so hard to kill this baby. Chris: But Willow, who is actually the main character and who is a farmer. Not a farm boy, farm adult, although he was so young. I did not realize that Warwick Davis was only 17 when he played that role. He acts so mature, you can’t tell. In any case, he’s the main character and not the chosen one, right? And that’s one of the reasons why it was so strange when they did the sequel show, where suddenly they made it so much more about Elora. Oren: Yeah, that one was just weird. That dissonance was there a little bit in the first movie too, at the end, where they’re implying that Elora is going to be in charge now. Why? Why would anyone follow Elora? She didn’t destroy Bavmorda. She had nothing to do with that. And then we try to do a sequel and it’s, I guess, Sorsha is still in charge and now Elora is important and back, but it’s still called Willow. They didn’t change it. It’s not called Elora, a Willow story. Chris: Yeah, Elora didn’t actually need to be a major character in the show because she actually wasn’t as important in the original movie. Willow was. And so again, I would have expected Elora to be queen and then her to send Willow out on a mission and that mission to be the story. Oren: That seems obvious in hindsight. Chris: It’s pretty obvious, but then we had to do something to make it so she’s the chosen one again. We have to take away her chosen one status so that then we can reveal that she’s a chosen one. Oren: She was actually double chosen the whole time. Chris: Yeah, that was pretty awkward. I can see how the writers looked at that and were like, oh, we have this chosen one. Clearly, she’s the main character. But no, it was actually more interesting the other way. Oren: Yeah, and Warwick Davis is only in his 50s. You didn’t need to have the hot young cast take over, right? Warwick Davis was perfectly capable of still being your protagonist. And I know because he was in every episode. It wasn’t like he wasn’t available. Chris: Yeah, and again, so many actors that they’re bringing back these days are really aging out and are sometimes having trouble in their action roles. But Warwick Davis, again, was only 17. So, he’s still quite young. Should have taken better advantage of that. Oren: People are always talking about how they really want more fantasy stories about middle-aged characters going on an adventure. This is the perfect opportunity for that. But instead, it was like, no, it’s about Elora and these other young kids. And they’re all here for some reason. Chris: It was interesting in the latest Matrix movie how they decided that they would try to fix the gender imbalance by making Trinity also a chosen one. I almost think it was to make up for the fact that she spends large portions of the movie just not involved. She’s damseled, we might say. But yeah, there was part of that where at the end we’re like, actually, Neo and Trinity are now both chosen one, and we need to bring them together. It almost felt like a bit of an apology. Oren: Oh, like a force dyad. Everyone loves force dyads! Chris: Okay, you’re gonna have to explain the force dyad. Oren: Do I? That was just a part in Rise of Skywalker when Palpatine was being like, ah, yes, Rey and Kylo Ren, you’re very important and you need to be together. And the force said so and he called them a force dyad, which just means two of something. Chris: Okay, so if a couple characters communicate psychically without their shirts. Oren: Yeah, that’s a force dyad now. Chris: That makes them a force dyad. Okay, got it. Oren: Sure. Well, why not? Nothing in Rise of Skywalker means anything. It’s all just nonsense. Chris: But knowing Disney, they’ll keep adhering to how every part of it is canon forever. Oren: Yeah, I’m waiting for the late next TV show to have goddamn force dyads. Clearly the force dyads were the chosen ones the entire time. Chris: What’s important is the force dyads we met along the way. Oren: Alright, now we’ve reached the end of the prophecy and I guess I won. I’m gonna go and retire and back to my pod-farm-cast. Chris: If this episode was entertaining, consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/Mythcreants. Oren: Have you considered that perhaps you were chosen to support us on Patreon? Ooh! Chris: Oh, yes, that’s right. It makes you very special to support us on Patreon. Oren: Before we go, I want to thank a few of our existing Patreons. First, we have Callie Macleod. Then there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And finally, we have Kathy Ferguson, professor of political theory in Star Trek. We’ll talk to you next week. [Outro Music] This has been the Mythcreant Podcast. Opening and closing theme: The Princess Who Saved Herself, by Jonathan Coulton.

No one wants their readers rolling to disbelieve, but how do we stop it? Sometimes it can feel like beta readers are flagging every single aspect of the story as unbelievable, which is super discouraging. Fortunately, we authors have options for helping readers believe in our stories, so there’s no need to throw up your hands and disavow the entire concept just yet. Listen on as we discuss how to keep a story believable, what causes disbelief in the first place, and when it’s time to just accept that some readers won’t buy it.Show Notes The Tiffany Problem  Why Should Fiction Be Believable? Should You Show or Tell?  A Complete Guide to Beta Reading  A Deadly Education Aftershocks The Hound of the Baskervilles 1983 The Masquerade  Animorphs  Oppressed Mages  Joyce Summers  The Martian   Legends and LattesTranscript Generously transcribed by Mbali Mathebula. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast. Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreants podcast with your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle. [Intro music] Oren: Welcome everyone to another episode of The Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren. Chris: And I’m Chris. Oren: And it’s just the two of us today for the next couple weeks. It’ll be just us. We can complain about things Wes and Bunny like, the Three Parts Dead. Wait, I like Three Parts Dead. Darn it. Chris: Oh, I can complain about Three Parts Dead. Oren: No, it’s my favourite. Chris: Hoisted on your own petard. Oren: I don’t like it. Chris: Readers get to watch you fan rage. Oren:  Oh man, that’s going to be rough. But okay, so we should probably talk about our topic for today. Problem is, I don’t actually believe in podcasting. You just listen to strangers have a conversation for half an hour. That sounds really contrived. I don’t think anyone would ever do that. Chris: Oh, geez. It’s like some author came up with a bad social experiment. Oren: Certainly, when I used to listen to a lot of podcasts, I certainly felt like, why am I not allowed to join this conversation? This seems cruel. Chris: It’s like a Black Mirror episode. What if the conversations happened where you couldn’t join in? Oren: What if everyone you thought was cool was having conversations? And also, Mythcreants. Chris: That is a common impulse upon listening to the podcast, because everybody is like what? Sometimes people get mad at us for not mentioning a story they wanted us to mention in the podcast. Oren: I understand that impulse. I’ve listened to plenty of podcasts that I’ve been like, why aren’t you bringing up this? This thing is really relevant to what you’re talking about. Why aren’t you bringing it up? I just generally managed to not comment that. Chris: I don’t believe that you’re not bringing this up right now. Must be deliberately ignoring it. Oren: What we’re talking about today is making your story believable, which is a pretty hot button topic, a subject of much debate. Not quite as hot button as likability, but pretty hot button. Chris: It’s hot button when you blatantly call things unrealistic. Our oldest hit post on the site, five unrealistic character traits, was me going around and pointing at popular characters and being like, that’s unrealistic. Made people very mad back in the day and we kept getting lots and lots of traffic to that. The more you make people mad, the more traffic you get. Oren: There’s also just a huge backlash to the idea of something being realistic or not because people get tired of pedantic, silly critique like CinemaSins, which is just pointless. There’s nothing to it, but it’s not enough to just say that. So instead, they rebel against the idea that anything in fiction should be realistic. And I caught myself recently writing, this has a problem of not being grounded. And Chris had to call me on it. What does that mean, Oren? Why are you using the word grounded? And it’s because I meant realistic, but I was afraid people would think I was uncool if I said that. Chris: The grounded, it is the hot new term, apparently. Oren: Yeah, that’s a term people like to use now. And it means the same thing. Chris: And you can expect that anything that readers often complain about, there are going to be a lot of storytellers, authors who come up with reasons to dismiss that because nobody likes to hear people criticize their stuff. That’s natural. I do think this is an area where we really have to come in with the right expectations because readers do flag all sorts of different things as unbelievable. And for reasons that may have nothing to do with what’s in your story, sometimes they are even factually incorrect. Objectively wrong. But again, blaming them is just not productive. Oren: Yeah, and I get it. I’ve had some comments about something that wasn’t believable or was unrealistic. And I’d be like, I got that from history. That’s a thing that happened in these exact circumstances that I wrote in the story. Chris: Oh, but you found something that was stranger than fiction. Oren: Ooh, and look, there are two possibilities when that happens. One, you might just have a weird beta reading reaction. These things happen sometimes. Two, maybe that thing is perfectly believable, but the way that you are portraying it is not. You are doing something in your portrayal that is making a believable thing seem hard to believe in. Chris: But fiction does have to adhere to a higher standard of plausibility than reality. Because in reality, we talk about the things that are incredibly unusual and unlikely, because those are the interesting things. And we believe them because they actually happened, or usually, hopefully, we have some evidence that they happened. That is, sometimes they didn’t happen. But nonetheless, they have that at least a veneer of credibility. And that’s why we believe it. Whereas when a reader knows everything in your story is made up, it’s just you can’t get away with stuff that people will believe is true in a nonfiction story. That’s too bad, but it’s how it is. And yeah, I don’t think you can make every single reader happy about everything. That’s just, don’t try. You’ll wear yourself out. And you’ll probably insert way too much exposition and explanations in your story. I personally like to look for anything that more than one reader flags independently of each other. If you have a critique group that acts like a focus group and they all talk to each other, that’s harder. Oren: Yeah, because then they all contaminate each other, and they all get each other’s ideas. Yeah, no. Chris: You don’t want to bother with things. If you sense that one person in your critique group brings it up and another person is like, oh yeah, now that you mention it, don’t know. That doesn’t count. Look, we have enough work on our hands without also addressing things that readers didn’t actually notice while they were reading and therefore didn’t negatively impact their experience. So you want things that multiple readers independently noticed. And if multiple readers flag the same thing, then usually it’s worth, what can you do, right? Even if they’re objectively wrong, again, there’s no point in blame. Our purpose is just to see how we can optimize their experience. And sometimes there might be either you wouldn’t change it anyway, hence the Tiffany problem. Or do you want to talk about the Tiffany problem? Oren: The Tiffany problem is just shorthand for things that seem like anachronisms but aren’t, because the name Tiffany is actually quite old—many centuries old. But if you had a story set in the Renaissance and you had someone named Tiffany, there’s a good chance that would sound weird, like that would sound too modern. And there’s just a lot of these things, right? Some anachronisms are real, and people don’t ever notice them. Some are fake, and people flag them all the time because they go against people’s conception of what the story should be like. And you just have to decide how much of that is worth fighting. Chris: Yeah, probably taking a stand that Tiffany is a historical name may not be your goal for the story. So that’s a place where you probably just don’t want to use the name Tiffany, even if it is technically a historical name. Oren: Yeah, and I had a scene in my story that a couple of people flagged as being unbelievable. And it was a scene where it was a battle and some cavalry were doing this maneuver where they charge in and shoot a bunch of arrows, because they’re mounted archers, like rude guys, and they would shoot a bunch of arrows at the infantry and then very quickly ride away and try to lure the infantry into chasing them. And my beta readers, a couple of them, were like. This doesn’t make sense. Why would the infantry do that? That’s a thing that happens in actual battles. This is a common tactic that the cavalry will use because, unless they are a very specific kind of cavalry, they can’t actually break through a packed infantry formation. So, they instead try to harass the infantry into breaking formation. And that was important to me. I wasn’t going to take that out, even though a couple of people did flag it as not believable, because I wanted this battle to be based at least somewhat on reality. So, I just did my best to make it believable and to show why that happens. And I decided to take the hit. I’m sure there will be some readers who are like, why would they do this? I don’t believe this. And I’m not saying those people are bad people. They just don’t happen to be as into the historical battle’s fandom as I am. Chris: But hopefully somebody who is into that fandom will appreciate the tactics that are in the fact that they’re real. Oren: Problem is the people in that fandom are gonna be like, well, your commanders aren’t nearly ruthless enough. Why aren’t they slaughtering all the civilians? I didn’t want to write that story. That’s why. Chris: Oh no, no way to win. But yeah, readers flag all sorts of things everywhere. And don’t panic. Do the best you can. And honestly, if you get your ants high enough, if you make them entertained enough, they won’t care as much when something is not believable. Oren: Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself. There’s a concept here that I find really useful. And you touched on it earlier. It’s called intuitiveness. Intuitiveness is a very simple way to make your world more believable. Your plot too, not just your world, your whole story. And that is when things feel like they follow naturally from each other because that just makes them much easier to explain. For example, here’s an intuitive set of facts. The world has fire magic. Fire mages are employed as smiths and soldiers. You barely have to explain that. That just feels very natural. An unintuitive example, a world has fire magic. Fire mages are employed only as doctors. That’s weird, right? That doesn’t make any sense. How is that? And it’s like, okay, well, here I have this long explanation about how you can’t use fire to kill thinking beings because the god of fire loves humans because they created fire. And fire that mages make maxes out too low to melt metal. So, they aren’t really any use in a smithy. But it’s high enough to sterilize medical instruments, which makes them really useful in surgeries. And so, they gain a lot of medical skills by doing that. And then they become doctors. You can see how even if that made sense, that would take way more time to explain. Chris: Yeah, I think that’s a good segue into when explanations can work and when they can’t. Because a big thing that we see a lot is that authors, especially since we have the option of adding exposition pretty easily into our narration, that think that explanations are the hammer, and everything is a nail. And we can just insert explanations or even arguments. That’s where it gets really funny is now when somebody’s, no, I can put in my arguments. I’m explaining, but it really sounds like arguments. Oren: Yeah, every once in a while, you come across a book where this just feels like you’re arguing with a beta reader. Like some beta reader brought up that this doesn’t make sense and you wrote your argument with them into the story. Chris: So yeah, sometimes if something is just unclear, the more explanation can… if something is just too subtle or implied, sometimes explanation can help. And this is an issue where, most of the time, we want to show where we can, right? And only tell where we have to. And if there are some things that you are showing that are just not coming across, sometimes you may need to tell to get that clarity. But again, too much explanation is going to clutter the story and add way too much exposition. This is definitely a reason, again, not to try to address every single thing a beta reader brings up. And I do wonder how many stories with extra exposition, part of that is that the author is trying to explain every question the beta readers have, everything the readers flag instead of just letting it go unless you have a reason to believe it’s a trend. Oren: Yeah, I’ve definitely read client stories like that. It’s in my experience not super common in published stories just because the too much exposition bad mentality is really ingrained. I find it’s not super common for stories to be published with too much exposition. Though there are exceptions, and those exceptions are called a deadly education. But not entirely, right? There are also some stories where it’s hard to tell, does this story have too much exposition or not enough plot? It could be like that at one book series that I read, like Aftershocks, I think it was called. This book has a lot of exposition, but it also has no plot. Maybe that’s the real problem. Chris: Sometimes explanations don’t work because the idea is just inherently unbelievable. And it doesn’t make sense, and there’s no compelling enough argument or explanation you can make that will make it make sense. And of course, nobody wants to admit or wants to hear that their idea is one of the ones that just doesn’t inherently make sense. But sometimes it doesn’t matter. As Oren pointed out, sometimes the story is too complex, and the explanations are just too much to keep track of. That instance where we have why the fire mages are only doctors and the amount of text needed, that’s just too much. If you have to explain that much, it’s not going to stick in the reader’s mind. You need something simple and strong if it’s going to work. And then another reason explanations may not work is if you’re showing something different than you’re telling. Showing is always more convincing. If the readers look at the actual events of your story or the actual things your characters are saying and they draw a conclusion that is in direct contradiction to what you tell them, they are not going to believe you. They are going to believe what they saw directly in the text. For instance, if a character is a jerk and you tell them the character is charming—it’s just an example—they’ll be like, no they’re not, they’re a jerk. Oren: It’s rude to personally attack Sir Arthur Conan Doyle like that, Chris. That’s like a thing, I just finished recently a complete read of all of Sherlock Holmes, and it’s so weird how Sherlock is a huge jerk, similar to the way he is portrayed in the BBC Sherlock, but everyone around him acts like it’s no big deal, and the characters say that he’s super charming. It’s really weird. Chris: Yeah, man, he is such a jerk. Oren: Yeah, there’s a 1983 adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles where they basically adapt most of the book line for line. Most of the dialogue is just lifted right off the page. And it’s so weird to watch Holmes say these deeply hurtful things to Watson, and Watson just be like, eh, whatever. Chris: And the actor’s trying really hard, too. He’s saying these jerky things in a kind of friendly voice, but it’s just like, wow, you condescending bastard. Oren: It’s very strange. Chris: Again, there are a few places where explanations do help if it’s just a lack of clarity, but yeah, you can definitely do more harm than good by sticking explanations in everywhere. Oren: And I would say that there’s a good chance that you may, at some point, need something that’s counterintuitive. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t, but plotting’s not perfect. There’s a good chance you’ll run up against something that is critical for your story to work. And at that point, okay, you may just have to take the hit. But you should try to minimize that, right? You don’t want to go around adding unintuitive things that you then need to explain if you don’t really need them. Chris: The other thing, again, I’d like to mention, is the point that when you do explain something, you are calling attention to it. So if it is an unrealistic conceit that you just need for your story to work, it’s better to just, that’s how it is and oftentimes not explain it at all. And let just people get used to it and forget it’s there. And it’s really annoying when a story comes up with a very bad explanation, and then they keep mentioning their bad explanation. And they would build off of their bad explanation its like, look, okay, I understand why you need this thing, but can we just, can we let this go? Can we get rid of the blatantly wrong thing? Oren: Yeah, a lot of masquerades are like that. Where the masquerade is really hard to explain. Often, there’s no way to do it in a way that makes any sense. But we accept it because we need it for urban fantasy to work. Chris: Just in case anybody is unfamiliar with the term masquerade, this is the conceit in most urban fantasies where most people don’t know magic is real or magical creatures are real, etc. Oren: And we need it to make that premise work; similar to, you might have something that’s sci-fi with a similar concept, right? Animorphs only works if we maintain the masquerade that nobody except for the Animorphs and one or two people knows the yeerks are here. That is something that’s necessary for a lot of stories to work. It’s almost impossible to explain it. That almost there means that there are some exceptions, but they are very rare. Most urban fantasy stories are not using them. And so in general, it’s usually best to just accept that’s a thing and tell your urban fantasy story, and stop calling attention to the masquerade. But some authors just can’t help themselves. I’m going to build huge plot points around the masquerade. Please don’t. Chris: But what if we used oppressed mages to explain the masquerade? Oren: Oh boy. Chris: Now we have to explain the oppressed mages in addition to the masquerade. It just keeps getting better. Oren: Yeah, the problem with oppressed mages is that almost no one adds them to a setting casually anymore. People add them to settings because that’s what they want the story to be about. And there’s not really a way to ignore the oppressed mages in most cases. It’s not like a masquerade; where it’s like a utilitarian setting device that allows you to have a certain kind of story. It’s just if it’s in the story, it’s almost certainly what the author wants to write about. Chris: The masquerade starts to stick out. Again, a lot of things don’t stick out until the story makes use of them. In the masquerade, it is a thing that’s pretty easy to ignore until you get to the point where the protagonist is supposed to tell somebody about their situation. And they’re like, no, I can’t tell my mom I have magic because of the masquerade. So my mom’s gonna think I’m being real bad instead and ground me. That’s a typical thing. Now that’s when it becomes a lot harder, right? Or even worse, I’m not gonna tell my girlfriend I’m a hero. I’m just gonna not show up to dates frequently. There’s always a reason why the love interest doesn’t get to know. That’s a very bad reason. Oren: Yeah, and that’s another one that’s, to a certain extent, that’s just a kind of story that people like. And I don’t necessarily know if it’s practical to be like, don’t ever have any conflict in an urban fantasy story where your protagonist is caught between their real-life responsibilities and their magical responsibilities. I do think you probably don’t want to lean on those too hard. Not like we don’t talk about Teen Wolf enough here on the Mythcreants podcast. But I think Teen Wolf has the balance on that pretty well set up. Teen Wolf has, especially in its early episodes, some sequences where the protagonists are like, oh no, we have a high school thing that we can’t do because of werewolves. Or, oh no, our parents grounded us because we were out all night, and we can’t tell them why. And it works okay, but they know when to stop. Chris: They also have somewhat of emotional reason because they’re all werewolves, right? They’re not doing the whole urban fantasy shindig. There’s always the fear that a loved one will fear them when they find out, right? And again, when it’s between telling somebody and letting other people die, being afraid that somebody will fear you is no longer a compelling motivation. But it still gets to you a little ways when it’s personal. Oren: Yeah, as a counterexample, they don’t go all the way that Buffy does, where Buffy and her mom have these really emotionally upsetting fights over this. At that point, it’s just, tell her already. I’m just frustrated that this is happening over such a nonsense reason. Chris: Okay, so when we do have believability problems, we obviously have a variety of ways to take care of them. We talk about explanations a lot. Obviously, foreshadowing is one of our primary tools. Basically, what happens is that readers have a conception of how things work in their head that’s sometimes subconscious. And when you surprise them, things often seem unbelievable. So foreshadowing sets expectations, usually before they become super important, in which case they’re under a lot more scrutiny. And it allows you to have cool reveals, right? Where we put in little hints. We don’t actually realize there are aliens in the story until we want to reveal that. But then once we know that we’re like, oh yeah, we have these characters studying UFOs and these mysterious things happening. That was all the aliens. Makes sense. We have a better reaction. Another thing that’s commonly used, instead of doing little hints, you can just change things gradually. If you do it slow enough, it tends to work. If you want to introduce aliens, you could start with people discovering alien microbes first. Which is, depending if you have a high-realism setting. Oren: If you had the Martian, you wouldn’t just have ET show up in the Martian. That would not make any sense. That would be unbelievable. But if you wanted to do the Martian and Mark Watney first finds some bacteria on Mars, that’s more in line, and you can work your way up to ET. Chris: If you move it slowly enough, usually it works. Then there’s—we talked about this a little bit—it can be tough if you have contradictory ideas. That’s where it’s much harder to be like, yeah, just do it slowly. And sometimes there are two things that just don’t exist very well simultaneously. If you have a high-tech setting where characters are using swords. If you have aliens and also a bunch of fantasy tropes, it’s going to give people some dissonance, usually. And sometimes you can reconcile them by showing how they fit together. It’s a little tough, it’s not necessarily impossible. In Firefly, one of the things that they do is they have their sci-fi elements and their western elements, and they show that there’s these border planets that are generally much poor and low on resources, and all the high-tech stuff takes a lot of resources. They don’t have swords; they’re still using guns because guns don’t actually take that many resources. It’s hard to justify why people wouldn’t use guns. But nonetheless, there’s lots of, they ride horses, right, in the border planets, for instance. Oren: The one that gets me is you have a modern setting or whatever, and everyone’s using swords, and I’m like, all right, sure, swords. I like swords. Let’s get into this. And then suddenly, one of them pulls out a gun. I’m like, no, why didn’t you do this earlier? Why are you not doing it again? Oh God, it’s ruined now. Chris: I couldn’t pretend. I could forget about those guns as long as you didn’t pull one out. Oren: It just feels like you’re trying to get one over on me. I feel like the author is making fun of me for putting in the work to suspend my disbelief. When it comes to characters, the maxim to remember is from the Vulcan dictates of poetics, which is that characters should act in accordance with their established traits. And that can be tough because sometimes we want a plot point that requires them to act against their established traits. And we’ve all seen Game of Thrones season eight by now. That’s a pretty obvious example where we want Daenerys to burn down the city, but that obviously goes against her interests and everything that we’ve established that she would do until that point. So just do it, whatever. You also have stuff like in book form in Legends and Lattes, minor spoilers, or not minor spoilers, significant spoilers for Legends of Lattes. Viv has this whole plot line about not giving in to the mob’s demands and not paying protection money because it’s against her principles. That’s like her entire stance. Not because she can’t afford it, because it’s against her principles. And then she has a meeting with the mafia leader and agrees that she’ll totally pay the protection money as long as she can do it in goods instead of coins. Chris: And pastries? Or what have you? Oren: Food and drinks. So now a bunch of mob guys are going to hang out at her coffee shop. What is this? What is happening? Chris: I will say, though, that besides things that are plot reasons for having a character act out of character, there are also a lot of perceived character inconsistencies that can happen because readers do interpret characters very differently. And they may project themselves onto a character, for instance, or just have a different idea than you do about how a character works. In particular, if you have a character who is supposed to make some kind of behavior change, they are intended to change their mind. They have an act, and then they drop the act. Or they stop putting in an effort in. Any kind of changes that we would normally want when we are depicting complex characters, those can come off wrong or come off unclearly so that people just look at it and they’re just being out of character. In which case, sometimes if it’s a point-of-view character, you might need more internalizing to help keep people on the same page with that character. You may need to if you don’t have a stimulus, right? What is the reason they changed their mind right then? Did they get a new piece of information they didn’t have before? Was there something that emotionally moved them? They may need a catalyst to make that clear and to show the audience, okay, the before and after picture more clearly. This is tougher if it’s not a viewpoint character, but you can have your viewpoint character speculate on what’s going on with that character and wonder themselves, and that will help the audience because it will give the audience some kind of reasoning. Last, just remember that preventing believability problems can be a lot easier than fixing them later, after you’ve already drafted your story. Plan your magic system. Put limits on that magic early, because once that powerful magic is in your story, it’s going to be a mess to keep all of your plot points from being contrived. Choosing a theme, being conscious about the level of realism you’re employing. Do you want people to walk off bullet wounds, or do you want wounds to get infected? You probably don’t want both of those things in your story. So, planning does, in some areas, really help keep you from running into huge problems that are just too hard to fix after you’ve drafted the story. Oren: Okay, with that, I think we are going to call this episode to a close. Chris: If you found what we said believable, consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash Mythcreants. Oren: And if you didn’t, I’m prepared to argue with you about it for five paragraphs. Before we go, I want to thank some of our existing patrons. First there’s Callie McLeod. Then we have Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And finally, we have Kathy Ferguson, professor of political theory in Star Trek. Talk to you next week. [Outro music]

A story always says something, but is it what the author wanted it to say? All too often, a message is garbled, undercut, or completely destroyed because the author doesn’t understand how to properly communicate it. That’s one of the most common issues that comes up in content editing, so we have quite a lot to say on the topic. We discuss audience trust, stories that say one thing but do another, and, of course, the philosophy of consequentialism.Show Notes Five Mistakes That Destroy a Story’s Message  Fire Lord Ozai  The Imperfects  Wolf Pack  The Light Brigade  Paradise  ConsequentialismTranscript Generously transcribed by Maddie. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast. Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreant Podcast, with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi, Wes Matlock and Chris Winkle. [Intro Music] Chris: Welcome to the Mythcreant Podcast, I’m Chris and with me is…  Bunny: Bunny.  Chris: And…  Oren: Oren.  Chris: This podcast is not about messages or how they fail, it just looks exactly like that. What it’s really about will be subtly woven into our conversation via metaphor and symbolism. It’s for the second listen, maybe the third.  Bunny, Oren: [Laugh] Chris: Very deep. It’s layers, like an onion.  Oren: It’s conveyed in such a way that it can mean whatever you want it to mean, and you can argue about it forever. [Chuckles] Bunny: It’s a podcast as starry as the seeds of a pumpkin.  Oren: Okay, that’s good. I do like pumpkin.  Bunny: Listen to it two other times and you’ll understand.  Chris: [Chuckles] If you don’t understand, maybe you’re not an adult.  Bunny, Oren: [Chuckle] Chris: But yeah, we really see that now. That argument. It’s very sad. [Laughs] Okay, we are actually going to discuss, for real, what gets in the way of sending a message. And by that, message being something you actually want to communicate to the audience. Some opinion or statement, and then have them receive that communication. And that’s kind of an important distinction.  Because I want to start by talking about tea leaf messaging. Just because this is something I see in a lot of client works, and it’s hard to identify in something that is published or popular because you can’t usually tell that was the approach unless you talk to the storyteller and find out what their intent was. We’ve talked many times about how very difficult it is to read a storyteller’s intent by looking at a work. This is one reason why the tea leaf messaging approach, oftentimes you just can’t see it until they tell you it’s there.  So what happens is, in the US at least, in our English and literature classes, we’re all taught to analyze stories for what we might call theme and meaning. And this is a really subjective exercise where the teacher makes you look at all the tiny details of the story and what various people say, or anything. Literally anything that’s there and guess what it all means. And it’s considered very subjective and the onus is on the reader to basically read into the tea leaves to figure it out. And you can come up with just about any conclusion by doing this, which honestly is why people like it so much. [Laughs] Because it’s a great fodder for discussion.  And again, I’ve said it before, but when literature is analyzed in class, it’s very much a culture that was created by fans for fans, not by writers for writers. And if they’re all reading the same beloved classic book again and again, and they’re trying to keep their conversations fresh, this is a way to accomplish that.  Bunny: Shakespeare [Fake cough].  Chris: [Laughs] Oh, you have a bad cough there, Bunny.  Bunny: Oh, I don’t know. Just jumped into my throat.  Chris: Yeah, geez. So what happens is that when writers want to put meaning to their story, they usually are following the mentality that was imbued in them by these types of classes where they’re thinking of meaning as a subjective exercise and that they as the writer just decide what it means. And then they put in little encoded hints and they don’t realize that nobody who reads their story is going to pick up what they’re putting down because those tea leaves are probably going to be insignificant compared to all of the other things that they put in their story, and are just insignificant and ambiguous. And so there’s not really a message that’s going to be communicated there.  Oren: Right. And it’s not even that they aren’t going to be looking and they aren’t going to notice the tea leaves, it’s that they will probably notice the much more obvious thing that you put in by accident, because if the tea leaves are tiny, then the rest of your story will take over and there will be a much more apparent message based on the bigger, more easily recognizable things.  Bunny: Look, if you put tea leaves into orange juice, all you’re going to taste is orange juice.  Chris: Very good metaphor. It’s very deep. I’m sure you will understand it on the fourth listen.  Bunny, Oren: [Laugh] Chris: So basically to actually send a message, it has to be built into the story at a more fundamental level and more clearly. So you have to make your heroes and credible characters embrace this opinion. You want to often make your villains stand against it, is one way. Make people who embrace the opinion succeed because they embrace it, and then don’t undermine it, which is the thing I’m sure we will talk about where people put in a message and then they basically undo that message with how their story works. Oren: It’s great being at Mythcreants because on the one hand, we tell people that, “Yes, you do need to be clear if you want your message to actually come across”. But we also tell people not to just put their manifesto in their first chapter, and then everyone gets mad at us because you get the people who are like, “No, I don’t think I should have to be clear”. Bunny: [Chuckles] Oren: And you got the people who are like, “Oh, but I wrote this manifesto. What do you mean I can’t just put it in as chapter two?”. Bunny, Oren: [Chuckle] Chris: And to be clear, if you like themes and tea leaf reading, it’s not that it hurts your story. It’s not that you can’t do that if that’s what you like. It’s just that if your goal is to actually have a message that is received, tea leaves will not accomplish that goal.  Bunny: Here’s a question. Can you tell a story without a message?  Chris: Not really, but you can make your message kind of common and generic enough that people don’t really notice it.  Oren: Yeah. Most stories are going to have a pretty basic like “if being clever is good”. Bunny, Chris: [Laugh]  Chris: Being brave is good. Sticking by your pursuits is good. [Chuckles] Oren: Persevering through hardship is good. That sort of thing.  Bunny: The friends we made along the way.  Oren: Yeah, those are messages. They’re pretty uninteresting. No one’s going to talk about them because they’re so common.  Chris: They’re so common people won’t even notice them really. But they are still messages that are in fact being sent. So yeah, stories are always going to have a message unless you make them unsatisfying. If readers get to the end and “What was the point of all that?”  Bunny: [Chuckles] Chris: [Laughs] There may not be a message in there. Or they’re feeling the lack of a message. Yeah, you’re going to lower engagement if you don’t have something. But it does not necessarily have to be something that really stands out.  But yeah, the point is that when you have a message, generally there are very specific story mechanics that are used for that. That by default, people believe heroes, for instance, and what they believe. And I know a lot of people hate that. [Chuckles] But that’s just, look, heroes are right 99% of the time. So that’s just how people are going to expect them to be right again. That’s just how it works. Anyway, or what people are fighting for. The things that the stories rely on.  Oren: The one that is of course the most common, in my experience, the biggest problem that I run into both in published works and in client works, is that the author wants to send a message that the thing the hero needs to do to solve the main problem is bad. And that’s just not going to work. It’s just not going to come across.  And usually, it’s violence or acting on your own and being hot-headed. You got all kinds of authors who want to send a message that violence is wrong, but their main characters need to fight someone to stop a bad thing from happening. And I’m sorry, but your story can’t say that violence is unequivocally wrong if you then use violence to solve an important problem. You just can’t.  And the best you’re going to end up with is a story that’s really dark and dismal, and then when people don’t like it, you’re going to pop out from behind the page to be like, “Yeah, that’s because I was trying to say violence was wrong, so actually, you not having a good time was intentional”.  Chris: Don’t you like being challenged?  Bunny: [Chuckles] Chris: Clearly, you’re not an adult.  Bunny: Oooh. Oren: Congratulations, you said nothing.  Bunny, Chris, Oren: [Chuckle] Bunny: Go back to your baby literature. Oh wait, baby literature has messages too? Well, shit.  Oren: Yeah, damn it. Chris: That’s a constant thing with people undermining messages, is that they want to have their bad trope and eat it too, right? Or in this case, when we’re talking about violence, sometimes it’s an action story, but for children. And I think some writers, something about that doesn’t sit well because I’m going to have children engaging in violent fights, and I don’t really want to promote violence to children.  And so then they try to both have a story about that, where the reader can enjoy those fights, but also condemn it, and that doesn’t work. You have to be willing to give up. You could potentially have a story where people learn that fighting is not the answer, but you would have, at the very least, much less action, and then you actually solve the problem without it and show that it wasn’t necessary in this particular case. But that goes against having cool fights.  Oren: And you can also, either, A: You don’t need to have tons of fights, you can make a story that works without them, it’s just harder. And, you can also embrace nuance, because most of us think that violence is bad most of the time, but is acceptable in certain situations, and that can be an interesting thing to talk about in your story. That’s a thing you could embrace. It’s much easier to do that than try to deliver some blanket “violence bad” type message at the end.  Bunny: Or like the pacifism thing at the end of The Last Airbender that comes out of nowhere. I don’t know, you’ve been beating up guys for three seasons now.  Oren: Yeah, that one at the end is just weird, because it’s like, “It would be wrong to kill Ozai”. And at first it’s like, would it? We don’t really have time to discuss that, because we’ve had so many fights where we didn’t have to kill anybody, why does suddenly this one need someone to die?  Bunny, Oren: [Chuckle] Bunny: Yeah, that’s a pretty deathless series. There’s one, maybe one implied death.  Oren: They made fun of how unclear that was in The Ember Island Players episode.  Bunny, Chris: [Laugh] Chris: Another one is beauty. So many popular stories that are supposed to have a message that beauty isn’t important, always cast a super hot actor in that role, because they want to say beauty isn’t important, but they also aren’t willing to give it up.  Oren: “Note to the producers, Margot Robbie is the wrong actress to cast if you want to make this point”.  Bunny, Chris, Oren: [Laugh] Oren: That was a beautiful line, I loved it.  Chris: That was a line from the Barbie movie, for anyone who has not seen it. Any of the three people who have not seen that movie at this point.  Bunny: There’s also: Just put their hair in a bun.  Chris: Yeah, and put on glasses. Make their hair frizzy. Style it so it’s frizzy.  Bunny: Yeah, frizzy hair. Incredibly ugly. Ugh.  Oren: Although, that one’s usually a lead up to the makeover sequence, right? Where they take the glasses off or what have you. Whereas the ones that are like, “It’s okay, you don’t have to be beautiful, it’s what’s on the inside that matters”, and it’s said by a bunch of very beautiful people with perfect makeup.  Bunny: [Chuckles] Oren: Okay. Okay, Hollywood.  Chris: I’m just annoyed with all the one-sided ones when it comes to heterosexual romances, right? Where it’s about, “Oh, see, she sees his value even though he’s not hot”. But she’s super hot, of course.  Bunny: Of course.  Chris: [Chuckles] Oren: Yeah, or one of my recent ones, spoilers for the show The Imperfects, is they have the characters straight up say that this villain’s tragic backstory doesn’t excuse his actions. Everything about the show is designed to make you think that maybe his actions aren’t that bad because of his tragic backstory.  Bunny: Oh my god. Just decide!  Oren: It’s so weird that the characters say that as if it almost feels like it came out of an argument about tragic backstory villains that you can imagine happening online. But then they’re like, “No, we’re definitely still gonna do it”.  Bunny: [Laughs] Oren: Because we want that trope.  Chris: That sounds like an embattled writer, right? I wrote this and this was a criticism I received and so now I’m just gonna write everybody in my story saying, “Oh no, we’re not excusing his actions”.  Bunny: [Chuckles] Chris: Meanwhile, we’re clearly trying to build sympathy around him despite his actions because of his backstory and make him look less evil.  Oren: He certainly never gets held accountable for any of the things he did. It feels like you excused his actions a little bit.  Bunny: Just a little. It’s like having a movie about how it’s so cool to smoke cigarettes and at the end one of the characters says, “Don’t smoke cigarettes, kids”.  Oren: Don’t you do it.  Bunny: Don’t do it.  Chris: Another thing that can be really tricky sometimes is the protagonist learning curve. Because we talked about how people by default, they do believe the protagonist. And so the protagonist, unless you do something to counter it, has authorial endorsement. And what they think is a message your story has unless, for instance, you bring in a mentor to be like, “Oh, hero, someday you need to learn X. You’re wrong”. There are many stories where the protagonist needs to learn a lesson and this can be a great way of communicating a message, by having them have to learn this lesson to save the day and then they succeed because they’ve learned it.  But the problem is that in the beginning of their arc, they have not learned the lesson. [Chuckles] They have to be wrong about it in order for them to go through that learning curve. And if the story is long enough and it takes them long enough to learn, that means it looks like you are pushing the opposite point until they learn.  Sometimes with books, if the message isn’t super contentious or super important, sometimes that’s fine. Or sometimes it’s just obvious. So a protagonist, for instance, who doesn’t accept themself for who they are, especially if they’re like, “Oh, no, these cool wings make me such a freak”. Bunny, Oren: [Chuckle] Chris: Nobody believes that. Everybody assumes they’ll just be on a self-acceptance arc.  Bunny: [Chuckles] Chris: But there can be things that are more contentious and if it’s stretched out for long enough, that can be an issue. I have a couple examples. For one, in the show Wolf Pack, so the showrunner, Jeff Davis, has anxiety and the lead Everett has anxiety and he wants to get rid of it. He becomes a werewolf.  Bunny: [Chuckles] Chris: We know from interviews…  Bunny: Who needs therapy? You have werewolves.  Chris: Well, he becomes a werewolf by accident, but what happens is that he thinks that becoming a werewolf got rid of his anxiety and that his anxiety was bad and it’s great that he no longer has it. But we know from interviews with Jeff Davis that his point that he wants to make is that anxiety is a part of you and it’s not something to get rid of.  But that is absolutely not where season one ends. We see Everett reveling in the fact that he doesn’t have anxiety anymore and thinking that he became neurotypical basically by becoming a werewolf. It’s not a great way to end the first season. And then when you throw in the fact that there’s also an autistic kid that might get bit and, suggestion, an antagonist of questionable credibility, but still, suggests that the autism might go away.  Bunny: Hmmm. Chris: This whole thing is… eughh. Bunny: I will say werewolves as parallel for mental health is not something I’ve encountered before.  Chris: And I don’t think it’s supposed to be. I think it’s supposed to be separate. But it’s just, again, it’s supposed to be part of a learning curve, but in season one, the main character doesn’t get there and by default we assume that he’s right. And I would have no idea that was the showrunner’s intent, is to show that he’s wrong and have him learn better.  Oren: Just from an industry perspective, that is a huge roll of the dice, assuming you’re going to get a second season. Especially the way things are today, right? But even assuming you do get a second season, assuming you had a second season locked down and you knew you were gonna get it, considering how many people in real life talk about trying to cure various neurodivergences as if that’s a desirable good thing, you are asking a lot of trust from your audience. And I guess I would ask, what have you done to earn that trust? What have you done to make your audience confident that they can trust you on this? And with Wolf Pack, I’m just not convinced.  Chris: It has some detail on coping strategies for anxiety, which is good. It shows that at some level they’re doing their research. At the same time, what it doesn’t show is that it is neurodivergent friendly, especially with this kid who has autism and is being given a “mystical cryptic child trope” treatment. That would absolutely destroy any trust because he’s being othered. And so I definitely would not trust that a show like that would do the right thing. And even if there’s been an effort made to make the depiction of neurodivergence accurate.  Bunny: Which is a shame because we definitely need more neurodivergent characters.  Chris: But as a good example, for instance, the story Light Brigade, we have a future narrator who then states her own opinion and how it’s different from the character that is going through the book.  Oren: A retelling narrator is so useful there. You can just head off the entire problem by being like, “Wow, I knew so little back then”, or something.  Chris: And this is important because in Light Brigade, the main character believes in a fascist system, right? And is following it. To make that more palatable and to show that “No, I swear I am not endorsing fascism”.  Bunny, Chris: [Chuckle] Chris: We have the future version of the main character narrating the story who would just say that she was wrong at the time. And that completely corrects the issue.  Oren: And obviously that requires a specific narrative premise, which not every story is going to have. But man, if you got it, so useful. [Chuckles] Chris: Otherwise, again, bringing in a mentor that is more credible and trustworthy than the main character to state your actual opinion is very helpful.  Oren: Right. Because then what you have is a situation where the mentor is like, “This is the case, young one”. And the young one is, “Nuh uh, I know better. It’s this thing that’s problematic”. And then everyone’s like, “Okay, I get it. The young one is wrong because they are young. I get it. I understand”. [Laughs]  Bunny: I’m curious, when is stating it not enough, though? So imagine you have the retelling premise and the narrator is like, “This wasn’t good”. I imagine that in some situations, the story leans hard enough onto the message that it is good, that it’s very tell don’t show.  Oren: You still need to maintain basic likability for your protagonist. But in the case of Light Brigade, the protagonist is a conscripted soldier who is from a really impoverished background where joining the corporate military is the only option that she really has. But you don’t see her going around and committing mass atrocities and then having the future narrator be like, “It was wrong of me to do that”.  Bunny, Chris, Oren: [Laugh] Bunny: Yeah, that probably wouldn’t work.  Oren: But she does join the corporate army and she is sent to supposedly repress a resistance movement on Mars. Now, spoilers, it turns out she’s mostly fighting other corporations and the Mars resistance is actually largely an invention of the corporations. So that is an interesting twist. So it’s good to have the future narrator, but it’s a balancing act.  Chris: And this could be undermined. We’re talking about undermining messages. So if then this main character went out and got really cool and badass being a space marine or whatever, and we felt like the fighting was glorified, that would definitely undermine this message. But it doesn’t feel that way in this book.  It’s very interesting, but basically what happens is that there’s different location jumps and the protagonist starts jumping through time by accident. And that creates a central conflict for the book that makes it very fascinating without leaning super hard into these fight scenes and making them super cool and exciting. So it has another way to entertain audiences without being like, “Hey, look at this cool action sequence”. So that it’s not glorifying violence in the same way as the other books we were talking about.  Oren: One that drives me up the wall is when you have a story that has a really reprehensible antagonist and you’re just really excited to just take them down. They’re the worst. And then suddenly… They had a point.  Bunny, Chris: [Groan] Oren: And it’s such a weird problem because usually the problem with a villain who has a point is that they have some kind of legitimate grievance, but they’re being evil. So their legitimate grievance can’t be addressed, like half the MCU nowadays.  Bunny: [Chuckles] Oren: But this is the opposite. And so an example is the Deep Space Nine episode Paradise, where there is a lady who has tricked her entire colony into having to live on a planet where none of their technology works and they die of easily treatable diseases and probably starve to death sometimes because they have to do subsistence farming without any advanced tech. And anyone who questions her, she puts in a torture box.  Bunny: [Laughs] Oren: And it’s like, okay, this lady is obviously evil and the worst and everyone, we’re all ready for her to be defeated. And then when the good guys finally defeat her and they’re like, “Okay, everybody, we can beam you away from this terrible place where you’ve all been horribly traumatized”, and the people that she tricked are like, “No, we’ll stay because she might have lied to us. But we did get a sense of community out of it”.  Bunny, Chris: [Laugh] Bunny: Medicine and community are incompatible, Oren.  Oren: Yeah, and this allows her, the evil lady to give Sisko a knowing “I told you” look, and it’s just, what, what are you doing? [Laughs] Bunny, Chris: [Laugh] Oren: Why? Of all the villains, that one. [Laughs] Chris: Here’s the problem with having a villain that then ends up being a friend or just misunderstood or not so bad, is that you’ve got basically one of two options. Either, one, you don’t really have enough tension because you’re not willing to make the villain act that bad because that would be out of character. Or two, they really are that bad and then when you’re like, “Oh, but see, they were just misunderstood all along”. Your audience is like, “What?” That’s just, ugh. I think in many cases writers also just underestimate the amount of cruelty they’re depicting, which is sad.  Bunny: Yeah, again, that’s one of those things that I think has become normalized more than it should.  Chris: Or I think there’s also a story logic problem where we see all of these problems all the time in stories and that kind of also normalizes things within the story universe, right? And people don’t take this out. Okay, imagine you met this person in real life and you accidentally insulted their mother and then they killed your sibling. Would that be an appropriate response? [Laughs] Bunny, Oren: [Laugh] Chris: Would you be like, “Oh, see, it was my fault. I accidentally insulted your mother”. You know, right? And we see a lot of things like that where it’s just, no, every person is responsible. You don’t get just an excuse to murder somebody if somebody makes a slight mistake. And we don’t think about how that would actually be evaluated in a real context.  Oren: My absolute favorite one on Chris’s post about mistakes that destroy a story’s message is when causality is neglected, where the author thinks that the character doing something right or wrong is enough and doesn’t consider how that leads to the outcome that is supposed to be good.  I love how in Age of Ultron, the second Avengers movie, the city is going to explode and Captain America’s like, “No, I’m going to stay here and die with the civilians”. And it’s played as a really dramatic, selfless thing for him to do, even though it doesn’t really seem like it. Is he giving up his seat so someone else can escape? Because that would actually be cool. It’s not clear if he’s doing that. Maybe he is. But then, suddenly, just after he does that, Nick Fury shows up with a helicarrier to evacuate everybody, and it plays it like those things are connected, but they’re not.  Chris: [Chuckles] Oren: If he had decided to leave, he just would have met Nick Fury going the other way and they would have paused for a moment and been like, “Oh okay, let’s go back”. [Laughs] Bunny, Chris: [Laugh] Oren: Maybe a little awkward, but nothing different would have happened.  Chris: Or just makes the character seem right by luck. So you have to defend your message, right? If you want a protagonist to succeed or fail because they embraced your message or went against it, you have to actually make a convincing argument by showing that causality.  Bunny: So today in philosophy class we were talking about consequentialism, which is this weird ethical theory where what makes something good is whether the action, the output was good. And because this is philosophy class, there was a very funny, strange example of, you’re a person who just loves sucker punching old guys. So you go up to an old guy in a cafe and you sucker punch him and it turns out he was choking. So you sucker punching him saved his life. I think this causality thing is basically that.  Chris: It is. I think that’s a hilarious example because we do see writers do that sort of thing in their story. At that point, it’s a matter of how contrived is this implementation? Does that feel like a natural causality or does that feel like something that was cherry picked by the storyteller to justify something that doesn’t have a good justification?  But I could definitely see, not this exact thing, but something similar to an obnoxious character that the storyteller just loves. And they’re always showing up the main character. “See, I just like to punch people and I think I should be able to punch people”. And the main character being like, “Oh, you’re such a bad person”. It’s like, “No, I’m really smart. I can definitely… See, look!” and then punch somebody. And then that person turns out to be, “Oh, wow, I was choking and you saved me. Thanks!”– Bunny: [Chuckles] Chris: –And walking off. And then the obnoxious character the storyteller loves gets their smug last word in.  Bunny: Oh, yeah, that’s terrible.  Bunny, Chris: [Laugh] Chris: That’s obviously a dramatic example, but storytellers do that. They really do, especially when they really like a character, they love it when other characters doubt them and then their favorite character is proven right. And so you see really funny things like that. But the implementation problem in that case would just be, that obviously feels like the storyteller’s invention, not a natural occurrence of events. Because that’s such a coincidence that somebody happened to be choking.  Oren: All right. With the clear lesson that it’s okay to punch people because maybe they’re choking– Bunny: [Chuckles] Oren: –I think we will go ahead and call this podcast to a close.  Bunny: Consequentialism, baby.  Oren: [Chuckles] Chris: And if you feel like punching somebody and we just gave you a great idea as to how to justify it, please support us on Patreon.  Bunny, Oren: [Laugh] Bunny: Brilliant. A-plus segue.  Chris: We swear we do not encourage punching among our patrons. Or do we? If you listen to this four more times– Bunny: [Chuckles] Chris: –May discover our real opinion about punching and whether it’s good or not.  Bunny: [Chuckles] Write me an essay, five to eight pages.  Oren: All right. Before we go, I want to thank a few of our existing patrons. First, we have Callie Macleod. Next, there’s Aymon Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And finally, there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. And we would never punch any of them because they’re great. So we’ll talk to the rest of you next week.  [Outro Music] Chris: This has been the Mythcreant Podcast. Opening and closing theme, The Princess Who Saved Herself by Jonathan Coulton.

Dive into the enchanting world of imaginative storytelling! Revel in the debate over typography's role in narrative and explore how to craft unique fantasy settings that captivate. Uncover the magic behind contrasting worlds, from apocalyptic landscapes to inventive punk genres like stitch punk and solarpunk. Discover whimsical inspirations like pycrete cities and giant water bears that breathe life into your stories. Join the conversation and unlock the secrets to unforgettable world-building!

The hosts dive into the challenge of telling stories where underdogs face off against authority figures. They explore creative ways to keep authorities out, ensuring protagonists can shine. Humor and seriousness are balanced in discussions about beloved series like Nancy Drew and Teen Wolf. Insights into world-building reveal the importance of simplicity to avoid narrative clutter. Plus, a whimsical song adds a light-hearted touch, celebrating friendship and empowerment amidst the chaos!

Is darkness in storytelling truly meaningful or just edgy? The discussion navigates the art of crafting dark narratives that resonate with audiences by ensuring a payoff. Through examples from 'Deep Space Nine' and other series, the hosts dissect the effectiveness of unsettling themes and the significance of character deaths. They analyze tropes like 'death fake outs' and the balance of dark elements against narrative tension, illustrating how thoughtful writing can create powerful emotional connections.

The Mythcreant Podcast discusses the use of passive voice in writing. They analyze its appropriateness, explore its impact on tone, and provide examples on making sentences more active. They also address the perceptions of passive voice and advocate for considering its utility in storytelling.

The undead rise from the grave to eat your brains, but why? When did they start doing that, and what’s the history behind it? Do zombies even eat brains anymore? This week we’re looking at all these questions as we examine the history of zombies in fiction, from the latest prestige fungus shows to stories that actually predate the introduction of “zombie” into white people’s vocabulary. Listen on, and enhance your braaaaaaiiiiiiiiins!Show Notes PBS Zombie History Night of the Living Dead Magic Island White Zombie  I Am Legend  Reanimator  The Shambling Guide to NYC 28 Days Later  Shaun of the Dead  World War Z The Walking Dead  The Last of Us We’re Alive  Army of the Dead  Romero Smart Zombie  Marvel Zombies  The Strain Thriller Music Video Resident Evil  The Witch: Left For Dead  White Walkers Transcript Generously transcribed by Ace. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.  Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreant Podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi, Wes Matlock, and Chris Winkle. [Intro Music] Wes: You’re listening to the Mythcreant Podcast. I’m your host, Wes, and with me today is… Chris: Chris. Wes: …and… Oren: Oren. Wes: And we begin today’s podcast with an obligatory “braaaaains!” Oren: Braaaaaains! Wes: Today we’re talking about zombies. Specifically zombie fiction, a history thereof. Oren: Mmm, history brains. The most delicious kind of brain. Wes: The most delicious kind. I do feel though that we need to begin by simply asking, what is zombie? Because corpses have been rising from the dead in fiction for a really long time. I was reading that the Greeks were worried about revenants springing up from the grounds, exhumed coffins had those bodies laying in there with stones pinning their arms and legs down, right? Because otherwise they would just walk right out of these shallow graves, I guess. Chris: Is Frankenstein’s monster a zombie, for instance? Wes: Great question. Great question. And I think that is, I’m inclined to say that before basically the middle of the 20th century, there were no zombies. And then zombie fiction, boom, started with I Am Legend and just went from there. Oren: I have some dates for us. Wes: Okay. Oren: Alright. So, first of all, trying to do a history of zombie movies is an exercise in futility because there are so many, going back to the 20s. There are hundreds if not thousands of them, and it’s really hard to tell who’s influencing who. Some of them are lost, we don’t even know what some of them were anymore. But, we can pretty much pin the popularization of the term zombie, at least according to a PBS documentary that I watched, and I have no reason not to trust them, to William Seabrook and his book, The Magic Island. Now, we’ve had corpse reanimation before that. In fact, there are some stories that were published shortly before. Chris: What year was this? Oren: This was 1929 and there are a few stories published before then which we now call zombie stories, but certainly did not call themselves that and were not really called that at the time. Reanimator, for example, by Lovecraft is generally now considered a zombie story, but it’s a few years older than this. Basically, what happened is that Seabrook did a cultural appropriation on people from Haiti and the Caribbean. Chris: So he was actually using the term zombie. Oren: Yes. Chris: Okay, that’s interesting because Night of the Living Dead, which is what people usually cite as the origin of zombies in 1968, they were not using the term zombie, they were using the term ghouls. And then George Romero said that basically the term zombies had been applied by film critics. So when he did the next zombie movie, by that time he was, okay, all the film critics are calling them zombies, I guess I’ll call them zombies. Wes: It must have been that some of them had read that book, right? Chris: Mhm. That would explain where they got the term from, because otherwise it’s a little strange. I don’t think Romero felt like it was much of a fit. Oren: Okay, here’s the thing you have to understand about Romero, is that he’s a big ol’ liar. If not a liar, he is definitely in denial about a lot of things, because, for example, he also insists that he intended no racial commentary on the film, a film in the 60s in which a black man shoots a bunch of white zombies to protect other white people and is then killed by a white militia coming to save them. No political or racial implications were meant by that at all. Stop saying they were. I’m not saying he’s lying, actually. I’m saying that he does not realize where his influences come from. It seems extremely unlikely that he had no idea about any, or that there was nothing at work here. And zombie movies were already extremely popular when Night of the Living Dead came out. They had been, zombie movies had already gone through at least one cycle of boom and bust by then. They had gotten so popular that they became silly and were spoofed. And this all happened in the 40s. Chris: Here’s a question for you. Okay, so the earlier zombie movies, before I Am Legend, did they have a zombie apocalypse? Oren: There are so many of them, but usually no. Before I Am Legend, the default was, again, these were much more obviously appropriated from spiritual beliefs. And again, they were not sincere most of the time, and they were certainly not accurate, but they were much more often going to be a single person controlling a group of zombies. The idea of the zombie apocalypse doesn’t become popularized until later. I Am Legend, you mentioned, is one of the big ones, and then of course Night of the Living Dead really helped to popularize it. Chris: For anyone who’s not very familiar with I Am Legend, this is a 1954 novel, and it’s actually about vampires, but it made waves because of its post-apocalyptic setting, and it has vampires in a setting that’s very much like a lot of our modern zombie movies, where the world is just overrun by vampires and there’s one dude left. And the vampires are not active during the day, which kind of allows him to go out and just stake a whole bunch of them and kill them at once. But they’re very much vampires. They’re susceptible to garlic and everything. So it’s not actually about zombies, but this is the book that Romero said was his inspiration for Night of the Living Dead. Oren: Yeah, and I’m sure it was, right? I’m sure that there was also inspiration from that book, but Romero can’t pretend he wasn’t at all influenced by the incredibly popular film genre that existed at the same time. Chris: What he did then is he took the zombies from earlier films and this kind of post-apocalypse that was overrun by the undead from I Am Legend and combined them together. Oren: There’s even a funny little nod in the movie to previous zombie films that were popular at the time because we go through phases of what causes the zombies, and prior to Night of the Living Dead, a very popular one had been radiation. Before that, it was usually magic, because, again, we were more directly stealing from its spiritual roots. But there was a period in the late 40s and 50s when radiation zombies were very popular. I cannot imagine why. And even though Night of the Living Dead doesn’t specifically say what caused the zombies, there is some dialogue about radiation from a space probe. It was clearly a bit of hat tipping there, regardless of what Romero is saying. Wes: I really think we should bring back radiation zombies, the virus stuff is so passé. Oren: What I’m curious about is are we going to get a wave of fungus zombies? Wes: Yes. Chris: We might, but at the same time, I feel that we can’t really… It’s worth a little novelty, but I think that novelty is going to get tapped out pretty fast. Wes: But I think kind of the point of the zombie is also the gross out. Actually, no, no, I just fear what’s next after mushroom zombies. Oren: That is definitely a trend that if you look at, again, very broadly, there are always films that either are ahead of their time or buck the trends, but very broadly, zombies have gotten grosser over time, right? Because originally, again, the older zombie movies stick closer to the idea of an undead laborer. Or just a guy that you order around, or a lady who wasn’t into your affection, so you make her a zombie to play piano for you or whatever. These are all real zombie movies I’m referencing. They’re great, they’re not, but anyway. That’s another thing that Night of the Living Dead is generally considered to be very influential on, is making the zombies real gross. And having them eat people, and it was not the first one to do that, but it was certainly a very popular one that did that. Chris: So Oren, did you see, do you know of any early film where they ate brains before 1985 with Return of the Living Dead? Oren: No. Again, there are so many. I can’t say that there wasn’t one, but as far as I know, that’s the first time. Chris: Of course, at this point, zombies pretty much no longer eat brains. Wes: They’re less discriminatory, right? Chris: They still eat brains, but they’re not especially interested in brains. They’ll eat anything. Oren: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a zombie movie where they actually eat brains. The closest I’ve ever come to a zombie story where they eat brains is Mur Lafferty’s story, where the zombies are just regular creatures like every other kind of magical creature, and they eat brains to stop themselves from becoming gross and undead. And so that was the closest, and so that was obviously a subversion of the expectation. I can’t think of a time I’ve seen a zombie movie where they sincerely go around trying to eat people’s brains. Chris: Yeah, I think that’s just a little bit restrictive if the only thing the zombies will bite is somebody’s head and then they have to get through the skull. Wes: I think, like, Night of the Living Dead was like, okay, here’s the story, and it ends with that militia showing up, and definitely not, nothing political for the ending there. But then, Dawn of the Dead, that’s when it really went, like, full zombie-pocalypse scale, and then Return of the Living Dead was like, okay, let’s gross out further by doing brain feasting. There’s definitely something there with just trying to, like, each new zombie installation is like… Up threat, or up gross? And then, fast forward to then, 28 Days Later, which is, okay, what about gross and fast? Chris: Yeah, it was 28 Days Later when we got fast zombies. Wes: I think that was, that’s the one I remember, I mean there may have been one before, but I remember that being the first like, fast zombies, because it terrified me. Oren: Certainly popularizing the fast zombies, right? Again, there are so many zombie movies that trying to find the first one to do anything is like an exercise in futility, but as far as big budget popular ones go, yes, that seems to be the consensus. Wes: What was really scary about that one, too, not only were the zombies fast, but the infection rate was also so fast. I don’t know, spoilers or anything, but that really nice, like, bearded character who I obviously sympathized with, beard solidarity, looks up and a body in a rafter drips one drop of blood that hits him in the eyeball. And then, moments later, turns into a zombie and they have to kill him. Yeah, that was some scary fast moves. Chris: Yeah, and I do think that’s a sign that, again, the zombie movies had been losing some of their terror, right? We need to turn up the notch. And then, by 2004, okay, we’ve, we’re just gonna make them funny now. Which, as Oren pointed out, has happened before. But I think it’s a lot easier to identify when a general cultural trend changes, or when something is popularized, than to look and find the very first instance of it. And, Shaun of the Dead… Wes: Great movie, great movie. Chris: …in 2004, definitely seems to mark the point at which we start doing a lot of zombie subversions. Oren: Yeah, the time was right. This has all happened before, it will probably all happen again. Zombies have a remarkably enduring film legacy, and I don’t think that’s going to stop, although I suppose it might, right? Maybe The Last of Us is going to be the last big zombie thing for the next 50 years, I don’t know. Wes: I don’t know, because Shaun of the Dead accomplished that, but then 10 years later was World War Z. Right. And it’s, okay, we’re going to bring back fast, scary, strong zombies and the military. It suddenly got super serious again. Chris: Was World War Z a success? Wes: They tried hard, right? Brad Pitt was brought into it. It made waves when it showed up in theaters. I don’t really think, though, it had a lasting impact because The Walking Dead came to TV, which is not a movie, but had a much bigger cultural impact, I think, for bringing more of a mood to it. World War Z was quite literally named. It’s, it’s like, it’s more like a military type operation movie, which I think pushed it so far in that direction that it lost what really made zombies scary, which is that sense of being almost like on a frontier, and alone, and hunted. Chris: Right. And The Last of Us definitely uses the drama of the situation. I think one of the reasons there aren’t more zombies in it is because they figured, okay, zombies are actually old now. What’s interesting is looking at how being in a zombie apocalypse affects the people. Oren: The real monster is maaaaaaan! Yeah, okay, so to answer some World War Z questions that we had. So the movie was financially successful, but was critically panned, surprise, and was generally considered not particularly influential. Like, people didn’t really remember it, it was a very forgettable movie. The book was much more influential, from what I can tell. The book that it’s based on, which has very little to do with the movie, right? They made a lot of changes and changed the entire vibe. Chris: Yeah, that book is not a book that you can just adapt into a single movie. You could make, since it’s multiple stories, you could take a bunch of stories from the book and make them into separate movies. Oren: Yeah, because the book is a bunch of vignettes of varying quality that document the initial infection, then the collapse, and then the rebuilding afterwards. And yeah, that would be really hard to make into a movie. Chris: You could, uh, do a TV show where each vignette is like one episode. And it’s just completely episodic. Oren: It certainly seems like the book fueled the cultural phenomenon known as the zombie plan. Did you all have that in high school? Anyone? Chris: Yeah. Wes: Yeah. Oren: Everyone was talking about what their zombie plan was. Wes: Arguing about what weapons you should have, pros and cons of each, yeah. Oren: And that happened. And I honestly think The Walking Dead is much more influenced by the World War Z book than the World War Z movie is. And heck, The Last of Us is also like that. They’re very different zombies, right? But the idea of this very rigorous approach to whatever causes the zombie infection, and this idea of building the world around it, that’s something that we see in both The Walking Dead and The Last of Us. We also see in all three of them a lot of hand waving, where it’s like, yeah, it’s all perfectly realistic, it all makes sense, until you get to this part of it, don’t look at that part. This is my favorite part in, from World War Z, the book. They have this section where they’re describing when the army tries to fight the zombies, right? And it’s like, oh wow, the army, they brought anti tank rounds to fight zombies, that doesn’t work, the zombies don’t have tanks, lololol, army logistics, am I right? And it’s like, okay, yeah, that’s pretty funny, but it covers over the fact that they could have just run the zombies over with their Abrams. The Abrams has a wade depth of four feet, so unless there’s enough zombie to cover the entire battlefield in four and a half feet of liquid zombie, then the zombies aren’t winning that fight. So that’s, and The Last of Us does that too, right? Every zombie apocalypse story does that. They draw your attention with something that seems credible, and then they gloss over the parts that don’t make sense. And that’s fine, right? That’s the tradition of the zombie story. I’m not calling out World War Z here. I just find it interesting. Chris: One of the issues is that a distinguishing feature of zombies is that they’re not smart. Right? They’re not smart enough to actually act strategically, and that does limit their threat level. And because if we make them smart enough to coordinate, then they’re just not zombies anymore. Oren: And there have been several attempts at smart zombies, and so far none of them have been particularly influential. The podcast We’re Alive was very popular. It was one of the first really big fiction podcasts, and it’s a zombie story, and… by really late, it starts to introduce smart zombies, which is incidentally also when I stopped listening. And I think there are some smart zombies in that, oh gosh, the Zack Snyder movie, the Michael Bay, there’s a Netflix zombie movie where they have to go to L. A. and steal a safe that’s full of zombies. And I think there are some smart zombies in there. One of the Romero movies actually features a smart zombie who can use tools and teaches the zombies combat tactics, which is pretty scary, but I think Chris is right. In general, that has just never caught on because that’s not what people want from zombies. Wes: One thing on smart zombies that I was thinking about was Marvel Comics did that run about Marvel zombies. And what I liked about that one is yes, they turned into zombies, but they were effectively themselves except the hunger gnawed at them. So if they weren’t eating human flesh. They became increasingly more zombie-like, right? And I’m talking like 28 Days Later zombie because they’re all superheroes and super powered, too, so really fast, still very strong. But I remember a particularly gross section of that was that Black Panther got captured by Dr. Pym, who was a zombie. But he had, like, just eaten, and so he still had his brain, and with his smarts, he caught Black Panther, and then kept him so that he could study the condition, but also have a snack every now and then to keep his mind focused. I was like, oh, this is grossing me out. Well done! Oren: Mission accomplished. Chris: It might be worth mentioning that there is, of course, with zombie subversions, protagonist zombies. And then usually that’s where we get some level, but yes, usually like iZombie, definitely follows a trend that you have to eat brains and if you don’t eat brains, then you become mindless. There is an interesting TV show called The Strain by Del Toro that has a combination. They’re like a cross between vampires and zombies where there’s a kind of an infection like a plague, but it’s caused by vampirism. So you have the boss vampire at the top that creates these parasites that infect people and then they become zombies. It’s an interesting way to combine it so that you have an intelligent boss. And some intelligent villains, but at the same time, at the low level, people are more like zombies than vampires. Oren: Yeah, having some kind of smarter, higher level villain that controls the zombies to a certain extent, I think that’s doable. I think you can do that. I think making the average zombie smart is where you’re running into problems, because at that point it just, it becomes too different. It’s like making a dragon that doesn’t have wings or a breath attack. At that point, it’s starting to miss too many of the qualities that we want it to have, right? Wes: With both options, it completely alters the mood, right? Depending on what you’re offering, because we can talk about how some zombie films and stories might be parallels for, I don’t know, climate change or any kind of global destruction or something like that. But the second you introduce a puppet master, that kind of situation, suddenly it’s just, it’s not about that. It’s about a bad evil sorcerer. Who just raises the dead and doesn’t use it for a good necro industrial complex. Oren: It can still be political commentary. It can be about how rude, uh, people with darker skin than us are coming to steal our light skinned women. Chris: Oh… Oren: Not an uncommon zombie story in the old days. Uh, fortunately, we’re a little less blatant about that nowadays. Wes: You mentioned Reanimator, which I think is an interesting Lovecraft story. Because I like the approach, it’s a frustrating story to read because it’s one of the few that I think Lovecraft actually really got paid for and it was serialized, so like at the start of each section, it recaps what happened before, and it’s not always super accurate. Which I think is hilarious. But like the point of that is that Herbert West, the Reanimator, is trying to successfully reanimate a corpse. And, like, hilarious tagline is he keeps saying that it just, the specimen just wasn’t fresh enough. And you can see, like, where it’s going with him starting to just murder people to try to bring them back perfectly. And I like that push of just, oh no, foul science. We try to learn too much and it bites us, right? It’s just this guy that’s just like, killing people to bring them back to life perfectly, but at the end, he can’t do it, and so all of his creations come back as zombies and take him out. I’m like, okay. But I like the push of that story, of just, I’m not trying to make zombies, I’m trying to bring people back from the dead perfectly. And I thought that made it a little bit more compelling. Oren: Yeah, that’s not a super common element in zombie stories these days. I don’t know, maybe just the idea of casting medical science as the bad guy has fallen out of favor with mainstream film producers. Maybe vaccine conspiracy theories made that a little too real, and people were like, let’s not endorse that viewpoint. Chris: But you could take it from a magic perspective too, like Buffy, for instance, had a storyline like that. After Buffy’s mother dies, Dawn is eager to bring her back to life and doesn’t care, doesn’t want to look at the fine print for the spell she’s casting. Wes: Yeah. Chris: For instance, so it’s the idea of carelessness and then here’s your karmic consequence. Of course, with magic, you’ve got all this, oh, you’re disrupting the natural order and life and death is like the one thing that magic can’t do. Everything else… Oren: Look, it can turn you into a goose, but it can’t cure your cancer, okay? It just can’t do it.  Wes: Maybe that’s why fungal zombies are popular now, because death and fungus is repurposing death into new life, and so thus completes the cycle. Oren: Yeah! Wes: You’re not violating anything, it’s fine. Oren: Very pretty, too. Chris: I loved how after The Last of Us, there were all these articles about what this fungus it’s inspired by can and actually can’t do. Right? Like, people were wondering if it was capable of animating humans. It’s like, no. No, no. It makes ants move a little bit, okay? It’s very different.  Wes: Yeah, I think it’s, I think they specifically call it Cordyceps, as, like, the mushrooms, and I have that in the coffee that I regularly drink, and it’s just a nice additive. Oren: Delicious! Wes: So far, I could be an intelligent zombie, for all I know, but I’m not falling, I’m not falling apart. Oren: Zombies are known for doing repetitive tasks, and we all show up to do a podcast every few weeks, so what other explanation is there? I did have fun explaining to a few friends that the new zombies in Last of Us are not any more realistic than the zombie virus, because the Last of Us zombies have as much in common with the Cordyceps fungus as 28 Days Later zombies do with rabies. Right, it’s like, there’s a connection, but it’s pretty slim. I am really curious to think about what old types of zombies might make a reappearance. I don’t think radiation zombies are coming back, that’s my gut feeling. I think that’s a little too goofy nowadays. Wes: Yeah, radiation in general. It seems like it had its time, and I don’t know, it’s just kind of gone. Oren: It’s interesting because it’s still a big problem. Wes: Yeah. Oren: We’re still concerned about radiation, about nuclear weapons and nuclear power. It’s not like that went away, but I think we just got tired of it. Yeah, all right, I guess it’s just here now. I do think that magic zombies have potential. I think you could bring those back. Although, if you… if you did it in the ways that they did it in the 30s and 40s, your movie’s not gonna be in for a good PR time. But I think you could distance it enough from the actual spiritual practices that were first pilfered, that it wouldn’t raise too many hackles. Chris: How about more zombie music videos? Like Thriller? Clearly we’ve done movies, we’ve done TV shows, it’s time for the zombie music video. Wes: The power of the zombie music video and the zombie video games, Resident Evil, definitely got it out there. But yeah, it was funny looking into this history of zombies and yeah, Thriller gets so much credit for getting zombies out there into, I don’t know, the zeitgeist. Oren: Which is, of course, funny because the reason zombies were in Thriller was because they were really big at the time. Michael Jackson didn’t pick zombies out of the ether or because he was like an obscure film nerd. Right? He picked them because they were very popular, and then, of course, that became a lot of people’s first introduction to zombies, and so it’s all connected, it’s all a cycle. Video games definitely help keep zombies alive during periods when they aren’t super popular at the box office or on TV, because video games will always love zombies because video games always need a source of enemies to fight. Wes: Uncomplicated enemies to kill. Oren: Zombies are just so flexible in terms of uncomplicated enemies to shoot. And because it’s evolved beyond the standard zombie for video game purposes. So you can make zombies that are giant and zombies that can shoot stuff and they can all be zombies. It’s all fine. I don’t know how well that would work in a TV show, right? If we started doing, like, Left 4 Dead, the TV show, and then the witch showed up, I feel like people would maybe question if that’s really a zombie. But in video game terms, sure. Wes: It’s a zombie witch! Chris: Maybe what we need is the fantasy zombie. Except for the problem with that is budget. Oren: Zombies are also pretty popular in high fantasy. They serve a different purpose there, right? The walkers are basically zombies in Game of Thrones, and depending on what kind of fantasy setting you’re in, right, if you’re in anything that’s even kind of D&D related or adjacent, a zombie is a low level enemy you beat when you’re leveling up in the noob zone. But for something that’s more realistic, they can be a serious threat. Especially since you have to fight them with swords and you don’t have any Abrams tanks to run them over up to a depth of four feet. Chris: But it’s true, every high fantasy story just refers to zombies as something else. Oren: Yeah, that’s a pretty popular thing now, right? The Walking Dead never calls them zombies. I don’t think Last of Us ever calls them zombies. I think that’s just a trend. Yeah, we all know, we all call them zombies, but no one in the universe does. Chris: Because we’re trying to pretend that zombie fiction doesn’t exist in that universe. Oren: Yeah, I think that’s just a defense to explain why none of the characters are genre savvy about zombies. Wes: That makes sense. Chris: Yeah, also I feel like tying it to pop culture, if you’ve got something like Shaun of the Dead, where it’s subversive and flippant, then that works much better. But if you want something that is supposed to be serious, I think just bringing up pop culture zombies when zombies are supposed to be real in the setting is going to create a clash of moods. Oren: Alright, so we’re getting close to the end of time here, but I do want to bring up one weird historical fact that I’ve discovered. Which is, so Wikipedia has lists of zombie fiction, right, and there’s a lot of zombie movies, as you would expect, and they’re spread out pretty evenly, there’s no period in which we weren’t making zombie movies. But if you go to their list of zombie books, and you organize by date, it’s 1921, Reanimator. 1929, The Magic Island, which was later adapted into the movie White Zombie. And then, the next book isn’t listed until 1976. Chris: No books! Oren: Explain this gap in your resume. I’m sure there were zombie books during that time period, but for whatever reason, they didn’t rank high enough for the Wikipedia editors to put them on the list. Wes: Yeah, I guess so. Oren: I don’t know if that’s because they actually weren’t popular. Some of the ones that are listed here from the 70s and 80s are extremely obscure. So I don’t know, maybe that’s just a weird Wikipedia error, but for some reason it struck me as very funny. Okay, with that, I think we will call this episode to a close and shamble on off the podcast. Chris: If you want to feed us some brains, support us on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/mythcreants. Oren: Yeah, brains aren’t cheap, man. Before we go, I want to thank a few of our very brainy existing patrons. First, we have Callie McLeod. Then there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And finally, there’s Kathy Ferguson. She’s a professor of Political Theory in Star Trek. We’ll talk to you next week. [Outro Music] Chris: This has been the Mythcreant Podcast. Opening/closing theme: The Princess Who Saved Herself, by Jonathan Coulton.