Mario the lone bookwolf's Reviews > Battle Royale

Hunger and squid games, Kings´death marches, close to every new, great slaughter fun is an interpretation of, an homage to, or simply stolen from this alternative selection procedure trope to form the true, pure elite.

I think the origin of the idea isn´t important as long as it´s hardcore violence
No matter who really first invented this concept (probably an ancient writer who carved it in a cave wall or the Roman entertainment circus) it´s always a great, manly alternative to the, in contrast friendly, softer tributes (Collins) or just not as good death marches (King). Ok, King had the idea first, but he focused on exactly one storyline, so that´s not really such a big copyright infringement. And close to all literature is somewhat reinterpreted, borrowed, or, well, really stolen, but who says that these concepts can´t be used a thousand times? Nobody would say that a thriller or a romantic love comedy novel is stolen, because of the extremely small leeways of these genres that force authors to write with similar character and plot stereotypes to live up to the readers' expectations. Of course, it could sometimes be that the coincidences sum up to incredible improbability, but even if someone took more than 3 or 5, but 10 or 15 elements and tropes, it doesn´t really subjectively matter to me. Because even with the same story, there are different groups of readers who want their journey told in individual ways with focus on completely different elements and perspectives.

Society needs strict rules
I don´t know why people are always having so many problems with testing procedures, the real world is no rainbow unicorn playing on the pony farm paradise. Maybe it´s more human to select before the poor teens have to suffer in soul eating jobs and offer them cool ways to avoid suicide by getting killed by their peers? Did anyone ever think about the positive aspects of such a system, how much suffering is prevented that way, and how proud the parents of the survivors must be? We´re sadly just getting too soft as a society…

Social criticizing the heck out of mentioned society
There is of course the background of dystopic, fascistic, dictatorships that keep the population motivated with hardcore selection processes, selling the whole thing in cooperation with the military industrial complex, and thereby camouflaging the dystopic living conditions with bread and circuses. The only difference to modern society is the level of bloodthirstiness and how brutal the elite manages to keep the masses calm and dull, but I don´t really see that much difference to close to all modern, Western, democratic countries that drug their population up to the eyeballs with consumption, all kinds of entertainment, and media reporting about the free, great election hold up all few years that don´t change anything substantial. But at least the politicians managed to outsource the battle royales to the exploited, poorer nations.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...