How to write science fiction & fantasy - part six

1. Intro to writing politics in science fiction: Hello and welcome to the sixth workshop for advanced science fiction and fantasy writing, the 21st century. Mf, My name is Damian Walter and in today's workshop, we are looking at utopia and dystopia. For the lens of Georgia was 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to very famous science fiction novels. And through this FEM, we're going to be exploring political modelling in science fiction, the way that science fiction books, novels, films, television shows, don't just tell a story. They talk about the political structures of our society. Thank you very much for joining. I hope you enjoy what we're going to be diving into in today's workshop. 2. 1984 vs Brave New World: It's arguably more than a little dystopian. That's, the dystopia has become such a popular part of today's contemporary culture. From novels and television shows like Margaret outwards, the handmade stale to novels turned into movies like The Hunger Games. We're kind of obsessed with the pathways that will turn our society into a kind of living nightmare. Perhaps because we're worried that we might actually go there or in fact may already have gone there. This is not a new issue for humankind. We have of course been thinking about how to make a better human society for thousands of years. You could argue that perhaps Plato's Republic, the great classical Greek philosopher, put forward one of the most compelling arguments for what would be an ideal of human society by defining the Republic, which has remained the model right through to today's United States of how we might think about, with some alterations from Plato's model, what it is to make an ideal human society. Thomas More's Utopia took this a step further. Thomas More was a famous English statesman and in this novel, sometimes argued to be the first science fiction novel. He described what a utopian human society might be. An almost define the idea that we could perfect society. We couldn't just avoid dystopia. We could achieve utopia. Through into the 20th century. This idea of the Utopian society became incredibly popular because we were achieving something new in human history as we came into the 20th century, we had ever accelerating technological progress. And the idea amongst many intellectuals and across society as a whole was that this progress might allow us to achieve utopia itself. The famous science fiction author HG Wells, and the number of novels described visions of a new Utopia, which would be achieved for a global centralized government, a technocratic authority that could shape the lives of each human towards that ideal and therefore achieve a utopian state. I don't want to mess characterize HG Wells. He also talked widely about the potential for the same thing to create a desktop bear in humankind. But he set the tone or captured the tone of a society that in the early 20th century was fascinated, obsessed, perhaps with the potential achieving a utopia. This thinking had been expressed in the ideas of political theorists like Marx and Engels as they described the potential of communism to Marx and Engels though utopia was an idealistic dream because it ignored science. And in communism, Marx and Engels described how scientific principles of historical materialism could achieve a true non fantasy utopia. And through the 20th century, many of these principles were actually put into effect. The aims of both Soviet communism and the nationalist Nazi state. The arose in Germany and fascism across some parts of Europe, Spain and Italy were all to achieve through different means, a utopian state. In communism, it was about government of the proletariat, of the masses who had previously been oppressed by the forces of capitalism. In the nationalist states, it was about absolute identification with the nation as the ideal structure. Human society, both of these forms of utopianism, it turned out, didn't work quite as well as intended. I say that with an edge of humor, but of course it's very humorous. The Nazi state achieved concentration counts among many other horrors. And the attempt to create an F no state by the elimination of the Jewish gypsy, people, of disabled, people of different races and absolute nightmare on, well, it's the Soviet state and its other manifestations in communist China and in Cambodia achieved the Gulag and the mass murder of intellectuals, artists, and others who challenged the rule or the proletariat utopia, it seemed went terribly wrong. To think about why we can look at two great dystopian novels of the 20th century. On one hand, George Orwell's 1984 and on the other hand, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's vision of Utopia turned dystopia is familiar to everybody. The symbol of Big Brother has become the shorthand in our society for overbearing, oppressive, totalitarian government in 1984. Or well documented, how the dream of communist or socialist dystopia would become a totalitarian nightmare or well, had held strong socialist views as a young man. And the experience of going to fight in the Spanish Civil War completely disillusioned him to the socialists and communists project, as it did for many English social S, which led to the creation of the ideals of social democracy which were practiced in many European states post-World War II. An Orwell continue to advocate. But 1984 is without doubt a complete rejection of the ideals of socialism and communism. And a brutal depiction of how they create absolute totalitarian state through the use of fair 1984 models. How fair inflicted from the top down, from Big Brother over the different tiers of society can create a nightmare state. We understand now that the totalitarian state will use as it does in big brother mess information, the reformation of the language, and indeed torture itself to inflict fair across an entire population and keep them not only under control, but deeply believing in the big brother that is oppressing them. The pinnacle moment of this and Orwell's 1984 is the torture of the story's protagonist Winston Smith. The every man character at the heart of this dystopian tail. Smith isn't only MAY to obey Greg brother. Room 101, ways forced to face his deepest fear. Rats as symbol at the fair that we might all hold. Winston Smith is made to portray the person he most loved. He has made to denounce his lover and demand that she be tortured and started to blame her for their lack of faith. To big brother. Is this breaking of the human spirit that most defines our fear of the totalitarian state that Orwell was describing as he saw rising across Europe and Asia. This is why 1994 has become the most famous of all modern dystopias. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was written before the horrors of the Second World War and before Orwell's 1984. And it describes a society that could easily be mistaken for utopia. This is a society governed not by fear, that by pleasure. The genius of oldest Huxley's vision, writing in the early 1930s was that he foresaw the society. That will come to pass across large parts of the world that we're not crushed by totalitarian dictatorships. This was the kind of society that would arise for the sixties, seventies and eighties in capitalist strongholds like America, the United States, countries in Western Europe, which had pursued the same capitalist model. This was a society where persuasion and powerful drugs would lead people into very high levels of control by offering them great pleasure, pleasure to the senses. Pleasure by a victim suffering. Brave new world depicts the society control, not through the fair deployed by Greg brother in George Orwell's 1984. But instead, through pleasure. It's a society where human beings are no longer naturally born from their mothers, but instead grown in tanks. This might sound horrifying, but it's easily accepted by the citizens of Brave New World because it gives them a place in the world. You don't have to go searching for an identity. You are bred to fulfill a particular role as either an alpha or an omega in society. And you don't have to feel any guilt or shame about your level in this rigidly cast based, genetically determined society, individuals are given unlimited material pleasures. There is no scarcity, there is no poverty. You don't have to struggle for many people living today, this would seem like utopian state. If you are unhappy or depressed, you can be given a drug in Brave New World called soma that will chair you up and that will allow you to continue your place within society. Quite helpfully. It's notable that many people mistake brave new world for a utopia, but that was clearly not how Aldous Huxley intended it. The line, brave new world is taken from the William Shakespeare play, The Tempest, where it's spoken with irony. The visitors to the island have come from why it's called a brave new world that is understood by the audience in fact, to be neither brave or new, to be a corrupt old world. This time at the brave home of the brave, is rooted in Aldous Huxley's criticism of the 1920s and 1930s America that he had visited and which had enlarged part, inspired brave new world, along with the writings of Henry Ford, great industrialist who had exerted incredible control over that tens of thousands of people who are employed making ford Motor commons. Brave New World is a work of genius because oldest Huxley understood something, perhaps had escaped or well, in 1984. But it wouldn't be necessary for controlling totalitarian or Wally and dystopian state to use fear to control the population. Instead, we could be much more easily and effectively controlled through pleasure. This raises the question of which is the more horrifying dystopia, the fair driven world of George Orwell's 1984, complete with the torture chambers of Big Brother, a place we're undoubtedly none of us would want to live. Or they equally, or perhaps even more dystopian vision of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World where the same control is exerted for the strategic use of pleasures. Perhaps what ultimately makes brave new world the more terrifying dystopia is that while we can all recognize absolutely the dystopian horrors of 980 for many people living today would think that the pleasure society and its close resemblance to our own society. It's some kind of utopia. Or for human history. Those people who have sought power had sought control. Ultimately, wealth, power, and privilege are only about how many people you control and how completely you control them. From the feudal states of the medieval world for the use of slavery in the industrialized world in the Americas, right into our modern day, where control has been exerted through the totalitarian state and through the world of pleasure that is built through marketing and corporate control. In modern capitalist world. The answer then is which you see as more controlling the fair and terror of 980 for, for the pleasure of Huxley's Brave New World. 3. The Everyman: As you will already know, if you've made it this far. And advanced science fiction and fantasy. This is a course for advanced writers in these forms of storytelling. And we're deep diving into some of the ideas that let you create. Not just entertaining stories, not just immersive experiences, as wonderful as that is. We're getting into some of the techniques, some of the ideas that make rarely great works of science fiction and fantasy. I have been promising for the last two workshops, at least that the next workshop will be on Lord of the Rings and JRR Tolkien. The next workshop may be on Lord of the Rings and JRR Tolkien. This one is not because I feel we need some more steps before we get there. Because Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, as such pivotal works of sci-fi and fantasy that they kind of encapsulate everything else that these forms of storytelling and doing. So, I want to take some more steps before we get there. And one very important step to take is to look at the dystopia and the utopia to incredibly popular forms of sci-fi and fantasy and horror as well. All three of these forms of storytelling very closely related, as we have discussed, as modern 21st century myth-making. But the dystopia in particular has become incredibly popular. In the last decade or so, we have had the Hunger Games cabinets ever Dean and her adventures mixing reality television with dystopian themes. We have had Margaret outwards. My mind is pulled a blank there, but it's of course, a very, very famous dystopian novel with strong feminist themes and a television show of the same thing. And I'm going to have it beep up here somewhere. What the type of Margaret outwards novel. But these have become popular for a reason. It's because we're asking lots and lots of questions about what our society is and where our society is going. Because through the 20th century, our society has changed so much. It's been revolutionized by new technologies. First half of the 20th century. All kinds of transport revolutions, the airplane, the jet engine, all kinds of new technologies and energy sources coming in. And then the second half, you have nuclear power, you have computing Europe, the information revolution, digital technology. And this is all turning our society upside down. And we're asking the question, how to make a better society, or is society going to come worse? The inverse of the same eternal questions as you know, if you've made it this far in the course, sci-fi and fantasy on the advanced level of built around eternal questions, myth-making. It's finding on says to the eternal questions on says the are eternally true. A myth. He's not an untrue story, a toll. Great myths are stories that are tonally true then not just true in the moment that we're talking. They are always true for every point in the history of humanity who was told these myths. And so we have creates a great 20th and arguably 21st century myths about how to make a good society, how we might become a terrible society to utopia and dystopia. And two of the greatest, George Orwell's 1984 oldest Huxley's, brave new world. Huxley's not all written earlier, but I believe arrives at a more sophisticated answer before we get into utopia and dystopia though and political modelling. Because this is where I want to take today's workshop, the way that science fiction and fantasy, these areas of storytelling we might greetings gathers speculative as fantastical. However we want to define them. We can include horror as well, many other sub-genres, Cyberpunk, et cetera, the space opera. They're doing something, you know, in most mainstream that sure, in storytelling we follow the story of a human being, a character, and we're following their personal and emotional journal, journey, sorry. In sci-fi fantasy. In modern myth-making, what we do is we look at the structures, maybe the matter structures that create our society. We ask big questions about this and we think about politics. Politics in the broad sense, politics is not turning up to vote or having an MP or the parliamentary system that represents you, assuming you live in a democracy. Politics comes from the web polis, which is the Greek root word for the P poll. Okay, So politics broadly is just about how people live to gather science fiction and fantasy, both of them, some of you might be saying it's just science fiction, no fantasy does this brilliantly as well. They're all skiing amazing questions and modeling the structures of our politics in our society. That's what makes the dystopia and the Utopia such fascinating areas of storytelling for us today. But before we dive deeper into this, I want to touch back on some of the themes of archetypes, archetypes or storytelling. The journeys, the archetypal characters make. Hero takes the hero's journey. In the Cambodian sense. Archetypes that we've been talking about from the work of Karl Young, depth psychology, that kind of area. And I want to touch on this briefly again, specifically in relationship to 1984 great work of George Orwell, one of the great dystopias in arguably a dystopia. And look at the way that one response, one criticism you can make of archetypal storytelling, which is a brilliantly powerful toolset for sci-fi and fantasy storytelling. One criticism you can make or critique is say, well, it's really just about heroic over the top superhero stories. You're not going to find these archetypes in more realistic or subtle or political or sophisticated storytelling about the human condition. Untrue on true. Let's just look very quickly at how the archetypes appear in 1990 fall because they're very deeply there at the center we have the protagonist, Winston Smith. When instance may face a very strong archetype. Here's the archetype of the innocent. This is one of Carl Young's core archetypes. We will look more at the innocent. And you might also call the innocent. One of the very strong stock characters for modern literature. Every man, the, every man, the man who was living the ordinary life of his society, of his point in history. Someone who is not taking a hero's journey, a tool, but who does take an innocence? Gianni. And as we know, these archetypes are formed around the ego by the shaping of the ego into a persona. And the persona in this case is the innocent, all the, every man. But Winston Smith encounters all of the other n or archetypes that we being discussing, the shadow. The anima. If you remember from the Blade Runner 2049 video, God. No, not God, god and the self. That's correct That very quickly. Okay, so we have these core inner archetypes. There are a few more, but these are the ones that appear. How do these appear in 1994, we have the shadow. The shadow is, uh, Brian, this senior member of the party apparatus who ultimately interrogates and tortures Winston Smith. Winston Smith is innocent. Brian is the corrupt person. He's the person who completely understands what's going on in the society is playing his role as corrupt as he knows that to be. These are all the characters, the shadow or Brian. He's old parts of Winston Smith itself. They can't admit the anima. Who is Julia? Winston Smith, lover who he betrays in the book, sorry for the spoiler. Those of you who haven't read the book, you'll see not very good movie adaptation and jewelries, all of the feminine characteristics very strongly represented that Winston Smith, particularly in this oppressive society, as an ego persona isn't able to admit about Himself, god, Big Brother, themselves, creating a fake narrative. Remember that this is God's row, the fake narrative that the world we have to go and character and Blade Runner 2049, who is controlling this to start being well. And it couldn't be Clara in 1994 is big brother who controls every aspect of these people's lives, who is trapping them in a fake story, a fake narrative, a fake reality. Finally, the self. Who is the character of Emmanuelle Goldstein, and I'll just put him as Goldstein. Who is a figure of hate, you know, to God the big brother teaches you to hate the manifestations of your true self. And that's what Winston Smith, it's trying to escape into. So this is just so important to recognize that so many of the great works of science fiction and fantasy be they dystopian, utopian space opera, cyber punk, whatever it may be. The archetypes that you can even begin to structure and you'll develop your stories from the archetypes as we've recognized before. Let's talk a little bit more about the every man though. Because it's a really good way to open up what's going on in 1994. So we have Winston Smith at the core of the story. Who is an every man on the every man sits. We've looked at this pattern before. The every man sits at the center of topology. Okay, and we've explored this quickly, but I'll remind you. And what this typology outlines. This is what Carl Young gave us his ideas is that we're thrown into the world without any sense of meaning and we give our lives meaning. And the ways that we do this is we come up with the rules of society. So we become one of the governor archetypes. Or we look for individual fame and glory status. This is where the hero is, this is where the magician archetype. Or we place ourselves in society. We look for our social relationships, we look for our friendships, we look for our place within a hierarchy. And this is where the every man is, say Vm, the every man has built their life entirely around social connections, social belonging entirely for the purpose of safety. If the hero is looking for accomplishment on behalf of that community, if they're magician is trying to bright old barriers, these are the meanings that we give to people. If the governor archetype is developing meaning by creating the rules. The every man archetype, he's looking for safety. So think about Winston Smith as the every man. Just pencil him in here. What has Winston Smith done before we've meet him in the book? Now we know that actually in 1994, sorry for those who haven't read it, who this might confuse, but there's a group in 1994 who had basically the walking clause that he under close. And they're not really controlled by big brother. You could go and live in the underclass. You'd be Pole, you'd be subject to disease and that kind of thing, a much higher levels. But when you'd be three, mostly 3, if you did that, Winston Smith hasn't done that. He's actually the victim of his own drive for safety. He has embedded himself in the structure and the hierarchy of Big Brother. He's taken a role within and he, maybe he'd be fine even if he didn't long for something else. Because the other group, the people who make the social bargain, relate to other people who long for paradise, IE, escape. I know the relationships on these part of the young you knock types are important because you usually long for and therefore sometimes hate the opposite side of the archetypal table him. So Winston Smith has built his life around safety, but he also lungs for paradise. We see this in his character and his visions of the countryside outside to corrupt city of being free. Because the Skype is a manifestation of desire for freedom. And actually all of the archetypes on some level 1 freedom and a trap trauma achieving it. But this is particularly strong for the every man. So what actually happens, there's an entirely other way of reading 1984 beyond the political allegory that he talks about. What you can look out in the Jungian sense as the internal story. The Winston Smith is a manifestation. The every man, archetype, the Innocent, has built his life around safety. And what we see is the inner struggle of the ego, the persona, the every man trying to escape itself. I'm running into conflict with its anima, its shadow, it's God to try and reach itself. And that scene of torture that is pivotal in the novel. The confrontation between the, the ego image against the self and the shadow. You know, there's much more that we can, we can say about this on the archetypal level. This is really just making the point that these archetypes playing out and that you can make these same archetype or readings even of a highly allegorical political novel, very subtle novel about the human condition, which is 1984. 4. Genre vs Question: For another matter, that dystopias and Utopias can open up for us. In science fiction and fantasy is something that we've discussed before. And it's quite important, the courts, which is the idea of genre. And of course, it's a very common way to think about science fiction and fantasy as genres, genre fiction. And I wanted to discuss why that's a much less good idea. Genre is useful. It's a useful part of thinking about science fiction and fantasy, but it's only a very small pump genre. See is understanding these something we've talked about before as a question. These are open questions. Open challenge is for a creative, intelligent people draw into writing these kind of stories to think about. Now if you think about dystopia as a genre, you're gonna do that thing that we've discussed. You're going to think about the typical dystopia and tropes. I mean, there are many of these, but the typical ones. What does a utopia have? It has great dictator. Very often. They brought the thing he thinks he snow in the Hunger Games. Sorry, I've forgotten his full name that. But these assembler characters modeled of course on the dictators who are rows and kind of 1940s 30s, Europe and across lot of Asia. Hitler or Stalin, Mao, that kind of thing. The Great Dictator, you have secret police. You have gladiatorial games. Hunger Games, of course, a good example of that, but not the first example, the Long Walk by Stephen King. Long novella, One in King's most interesting pieces of fiction published as one of the Bachman Books. Really great piece of writing actually, because you're essentially inside one characters. He's just walking down the road. I won't give you any more details than that, but he also invented the idea of adolescence forced by their society in some kind of a gladiatorial game that is televised. Stephen King, responsible for IE mode in the horror genre, he's created a lot of what we now think of as standard in science fiction and fantasy and horror. And you also have, of course, you know, revolutionaries. Revolutionaries often actually characterized as terrorists. There's an interesting political question. When is a terrorist revolutionary and vice versa. Usually when they're on your side or not. So if you think about dystopian fiction as a genre, you're going to take a bunch of tropes and essentially repeat them. You might adapt them slightly. You might make your dictator a woman set of a man. They are typically men. But this is, it's a very cosmetic level to develop heel story from. And you are not going to be Margaret Atwood or George Orwell, oldest Huxley, or any of the great creatives or Stephen King of dystopian fiction and storytelling. If you approach it from the genre side. And this is a reviewing really of what we do with questions instead. And of course, what is the core question? Take the question, how to make a better society? And eternal question that we've been asking since Plato, at least for well over 2 thousand years. And dystopia, Utopia, utopia dystopia. Asked this question. We also thought about in the introduction Thomas More's Utopia. There are hundreds of really intelligent dystopias that we could think about. But let's think about, for instance, what HG Wells to HG Wells said, Aha, well, the answer to this question is state power. You know, we'll just have super powerful technocratic, technocratic governments. And they will create a utopia for us. And then sometime later or well came along. He's asking the same question, how to make a better society. And he said, no, the problem with state power. This is going to become totalitarian. As we have discussed, I'm being slightly buzzed by flies at the moment. The problem with being in beautiful Bali for making my courses is sometimes eaten by insects whilst I'm talking. But thank you for bearing with me whilst I vent my frustration about being bitten. And let's continue what's happening here. We have a progress of ideas of answers to this question. And then we get Huxley came back earlier, came up earlier but gave them more sophisticated answer actually. And Huxley said, no, you know, we are going to have a very powerful governments, but they're not going to be totalitarian. They didn't do something else. Instead they're going to create the pleasure society, very controlling. But in a way that we almost invisible to us as human beings. In its way, arguably more scary than the Well's vision of a totalitarian state. So what's happening here? What's happening is that we have this a tunnel question and we have crucially a dialogue. Okay? What we call a genre. He's really a dialogue between imaginative, creative storytellers giving answers to this question, the back and forth. So you can study the genre of dystopia and you can look at the genre tropes. But the smart way to look at it is to understand the dialogue the genre represents. Pick out the key question. And then of course, you must find your own answers. 5. Political Modelling: And this brings us step-by-step to the technique, the technique I want to explore in today's workshop. Just make some nice decoration to gas that. One thing I like to ask all the writers I meet with a new writes, his famous writers is what kind of graphs they draw for you, the stories, because I find that the, the progressive nature of storytelling, the linear nature, typing, the rate is going to read through for that. We want an antidote to it and that we also want a better way of conceiving their ideas. So we grow off stories, so we can think about them in nonlinear patterns. But let's get into this, Let's get into the political modelling. Now this is a really powerful technique, a really powerful concept about what sci-fi and fantasy doing. Modelling our politics. As I say, we wouldn't necessarily do this in a literary novel exploring the knife of a single character as beautiful as those can be. But one of the things that brilliant about science fiction and fantasy and is fantasy as well. And we're going to look at this when we talk about Lord of the Rings as the political modelling that they give intelligent, creative storytellers a space to play with. Let's think about, let's put a question again. How to make a better society? And let's put around this question. Different answers the represent different values. So let's think about it. We had from, from that progression and it was very simply bind the, I gave you. But we went from HG Wells OL Huxley, and we had some different ideas given to us That one was the power of the state, strong state that might then become totalitarian, which then gives us the place of the individual. Maybe the way to make utopia is to completely in power. The individual is you see these two different answers here that we're building into a model for one and Huxley, we can also take this kind of dichotomy between violence and pleasure. You can control with violence or you can control with pleasure. There's probably other ways to control it as well. And these give us something like Iowa utopia and dystopia. So you see how we're creating some kind of map of where our society can be on this map. She also gives us something else like freedom and safety. This is one that we're really struggling with US, society, ourselves. Look at our current situation for the lost year or so at the time recording of staying inside. So traditionalists saying lockdowns to stay safe from a pandemic. Well, so at the same time, we lose much of our freedom. So however, we choose to build our society, we're going to have this balance between safety and freedom. Now let's play again, which is going to be all exercise, going to be a workshop exercise. Two, sets up a modal. You can use this model of your arm. Or you can take something like another sub-genre that we've explored, Cyberpunk, space opera, untick those. Think about what the dialogue gaze, dark free to major works. What's the eternal question in the hall to that sub Jonah? What's the dialogue that the genre has grown from? Who are the major writen as well? There are different positions and then trough out the values. Make yourself a model like this, a political model of what they're talking about in those wonderful realms of storytelling like Cyberpunk or it could be, the zombie story, could be rise, the AI overloads. And you get the idea where you can use this map here and income work group dystopia. And then what do we do from here? Well, here's something fun you can do. Okay? Just create a triangle that pulls together. Mind's going to have to be a wonky triangle because I've made my child's a little bit. A little bit compact, pulls together a set of these values. In fact, no, i'm, I'm gonna make my triangle like this. You see, you can make different triangles. So in this triangle I have Utopia violence and freedom. Store inbred. Just show that this is the triangle I'm whacking with Utopia, violence and freedom. Okay, let's put these down hand. Let's improvise on completely improvising him, utopia, violence and freedom. So what can we say? Hmm, society has built great utopia in which there is no violence. We have achieved a non, a nonviolent utopia. And let's say we do this. Let's pick one of our tools, the Novum. What technology might we have invented? Mind control. Everyone essentially mined controlled to get rid of that violent tendencies out about you completely free but you being mind controlled. So that if you have a violent fought, the mind control apparatus just moves your full in something much more peaceful. It's fine. You don't even know it's happening. But then we want violence in hair as well. So every three years in order for this to work, in order for all the tension that's built up in the populace. To work. They have a season of violence, say a month for violence. Every three years they have 30 days of violence. Just like civil war across the society, guns, people killing each other all at the grudges that built up. Over the three years in 30 days I exercised. And this is the cost to mind controlled nonviolent utopia. Okay, let's think about archetypes as well. Let's put an every man at the heart of this as a protagonist. What kind of every man might live in this society? They'd never participated, they'd never needed mind control. Because then naturally nonviolent. And then in one, let's hold it in another season. We've got a title now. It gets a bit Stephen King, but I like it to season the murder season. Okay, In the previous Medici's and the every man's family were noted. So then he was filled that whenever he had the murderous thoughts, they were controlled out. So you didn't even know he's having them. He's been training. And then when the next mode is season comes three is on. He goes after. And who wasn't? It's not like a street gang. What's the opposite of the every man? What did they run into? The shadow is over here as the governor, the every man. So let's, let's think about what the shadow of the every man is. So the shadow, what the every man is keeping down is the pleasure seeker. So he was kept, the family of the every man was killed by these pleasure seeking trust fund kids like they're the children of the elite and they've gone crazy and this Medici's and bad. Of course there's no legal consequences. These pleasure see, because let's call them hippie pleasure seekers. So then in the Medici's and he goes looking for his shadow to confront the shadow on the way he meets. So he rescues a young woman. The everyone where rescues young woman, who is his anima. And the anima, she's kind of violent, crazy girl because these are all things that he's being keeping them. So let's call ha, unless she's actually kind of sociopathy. Ok. And she ends up helping him if she brings out that Kayla, in the every man, protagonist, anti-hero at the heart of the Medici's them. And we have, hey, uh, kind of a revenge story structure as he goes seeking a bit like the Cro, O, those Liam Neeson movies like taken, that kind of thing. If I pitch this to Hollywood, they would buy it. So if you're out there watching, you want to buy this, It's three-quarters of a million dollars. No less for the for the rights to that. Let's put in what could we do? We can have one more. Yeah, let's put it in a God archetype peer. So who is doing the mind control? Who is running this dystopia? It's an AI and artificial intelligence that has gone, Let's say it's gone rogue. You know, it's not controlled by people. It's made its own decision to do this. It is governing the society. And we have some scene where the every man anti-hero couldn't fronts like the mainframe supercomputer, where the godlike AI, who's doing the mind control is situated. You can think about not really great scene in either the second or third Matrix movie when Neo goes and talks to the architect another manifestation of union archetypes very powerfully that. So you see what you can do here. You see how the political mapping, combined with our archetype or messaging, gives you this engine of storytelling. So take this as our workshop exercise. For this, the SEC workshop. Look at sub-genre that really interests you of sci-fi fantasy, horror, fantastic as speculative storytelling. What is the eternal question there? What are the main creators in that area? Look at the dialogue that they are having. From that make the political model. As we looked at the question the middle around it, put the values, the answers to the questions that the subgenres found and the values they represent that always opposite. And then from that, draw a triangle that gives you three of those. Combine them together. Create your story from there, find your own answer to that eternal question, and build on that with these archetypes we've been exploring, that is a complex workshop and they say is the advanced course. Looking ahead of it. We are gonna get to token. I think we're going to go via at least May 1 be to maybe even more stops on the way to Tolkien. And then we're also going to open up the course for creation for your stories. As I've been saying throughout the course. This is the search for the 21st Century myth. I think I've found some nominations. I think perhaps the MOF will, mythos is making a pretty powerful 21st century MF. Neil Gaiman didn't agree with me, but I think I'm right on that one. I think there's others out there as well. But I want to know what your 21st century myths. I'm not ready to look at them yet, but as the course Advanced says, we will open up for submissions and we will find ways to share the really good stories the members of this course have written. Thank you very much again, my name is Damian Walter. Please make sure that you watch the entire course if you want to get the most from it. Lookout for the seventh workshop, wherever you are following this course. And I look forward to speaking with you again. Thank you very much.