https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas
Utopia requiring the perpetual suffering of a child.
Actually pretty fucked up they didn't credit her, it's almost the same story
Fwiw its also in Brothers Karamazov and Ursala Le Guin remarked as much, realizing she had probably read it decades before Omelas and just forgot.
I mean if you're writing sci Fi you've almost certainly delved into Ursula K Le Guin, so I think that's likely the inspiring fiction.
Her story was also predated anime as an extent form of media.
Not to mention it's almost a 1:1 recreation of the story.
I'm not critiquing the show. The story they did is hard to see as anything except a critique of social inequality. Just think it'd be cool to credit the story lol
But yeah tvtropes is cool everything is anime and no one has ever been inspired by anything or whatever
It's just fucking irrelevant to my main point lol. Ursula K La Guin was a famous sci Fi author whose story showed up beat for beat on a show I just watched and thought it was neat.
It was almost certainly not the responsibility of anime.
But yes, the origins of the genre go back further than what I said. My bad
One of the few TVtropes pages I was relieved to see no “Real Life” examples of.
I always hated this story. That is, the story is fine but libs surface level takes about it piss me off to no end.
I do like how it implies that abusing and shaming white people is the key to utopia tho
The thing your supposed to do is end the suffering of the child. The ones who walk away are also not accomplish anything, and obviously you can't ethically or morally stick around knowing the kid is suffering. You must liberate the child, at least that's what I got out of it.
I feel like that is slightly generous as well. That would be a better end, true. While the story and everyone belives that the child is the key to it. The child is unimportant. Abusing a child doesn't do that. So killing the child wouldn't change anything. We don't need to consider the morality of it or think of cleverer solutions. The people are simply wrong and none of it needs to be.
At least it ripped off something good.
They could have done worse and ripped off complete garbage instead.
The Giver is also based on this premise and came out after Le Guin's version.
Didn't realize it was a common trope.
Always felt like the giver had this very anti-communist bent. Like "hey look what you'd give up in this egalitarian society! All those gritty aspects of life is what makes it worth living!". Maybe I'm just wrong
It is literally the foundation this capitalist world order is built upon :parenti:. The wealth of the western world is gained from the exploitation of the global south, and this philosophy of "equal exchange" in life: that one must suffer so other may prosper; is nothing more than a cowardly attempt to justify this system.
I find this incredibly funny personally because my mom tried to team up with the mom of this incredibly sheltered kid who was also evangelical to try to get us to not read this book. The entire time she didn't realize the book essentially reinforced her beliefs.
it undeniably reflects the liberal politics of the author, but to me it reads as more incidental than a pointed anti-communist allegory, since the society as presented doesn't really make sense, and it's not made clear why the elements of total central control are necessitated by the elements of stability and material comfort. i think it works better at a baser emotional level in its depiction of a single, secret point of cruelty shattering the protagonist's understanding of his apparently harmonious world. i know it definitely affected me greatly as a kid.
art is derivative. there is no truly original work. and leguin plagiarized from globalized capitalism so who's the real thief here?
There was also a Dr Who that steals this but it's a space whale.
Isn't there also an SCP with that premise? The one with the Montauk procedure, which is like an incredible amount of abuse directed at one girl or else demons destroy the world or something
