Black Panther - I sure do love watching a film about a progressive militant anti-imperialist legitimately coming into power and immediately setting about trying to improve the lives of the people in other imperialised nations, then being overthrown by the CIA and the former pro-US monarch (once the former monarch comes into power he immediately opens up Wakanda's markets for exploitation by foreign nations).
https://redsails.org/jones-on-animal-farm/
Its not really "no one" since its relatively common to dunk on Orwell on the left now, but this essay points out some really good points if you read it really critically, such as the worker-substitute animals being essentially mentally challenged by biology despite the intellectuals/party leaderships attempts to genuinely educate them for the better. This is basically echoed in 1984 as well where the only people the party actually needs to "brainwash" and manipulate are the middle class intellectuals and white collar workers, the proles are essentially cattle that can be pacified with the most uncultured and lowbrow entertainment out there.
It really demonstrates how Orwell remained British upper class at heart, wishing for a nice pretty aristocratic socialism if even that. Both this and Isaac Asimovs critique of 1984 also point out how Orwell despite writing literally during the worst Nazi slaughter of Soviets and in the years afterwards as the details of the holocaust became clear, he barely spends single words let alone full sentences talking about the Nazis at all. Seems like even after the war he was unable to summon any true emotional animosity towards Hitler.
Seems like even after the war he was unable to summon any true emotional animosity towards Hitler.
he literally said that verbatum
I thought the Hitler quote was pre-war? But if its post-war thats even more hideous.
Also in general with a lot of media it feels like authors love to create worlds with fundamentally different divides in society between people, and then also try and make some political reference or statement out of it.
AoT seems to still have people split on what the fuck its message is but overall making a message about genocide and persecution by blood seems to be slightly off if that blood also literally inherently gives the people with it the potential to become willing or unwilling living weapons on par with WW1 era weaponry.
BNHA just recently had an all lives matter arc where theres essentially a race riot by people that have quirks(X-Men powers but umami) that deform their appearance, during which a flashback reveals that they have suffered several waves of pogroms in the past and are still regularly discriminated against, but then they are also shown trying to burn down a hospital, and their whole movement is run from the shadows by an evil organization that wants to topple
westernHero society. This did get some pushback from the fanbase during publication but a large chunk just told everyone to shut the fuck up and look at the funny pictures, and I didnt see any wider acknowledgement of this at best ill-advised arc and at worst literally racist anti BLM propaganda, even the AoT shit I recall for a while periodic discourse over it being supposedly a fascist story.Seriously just begging authors to shut the fuck up about real life social movements if they cant put in the effort to transpose those movements and messages into the premises of their artificial world.
Oh yeah also this isnt "sus" in that sense but I thought it was a dogshit move to make the ultimate "message" of the Rebuild movies to solve the problem of lifelong trauma by just retconning the trauma out of your life in the most literal sense, and also get married to solve those problems. Unless it was meant to have 0 message at all in which case thats still worse than what the original show managed with its ending.
The BNHA arc kinda reminds me of the way Faunuses were treated in RWBY. They're set up as a discriminated minority with legitimate ongoing grievances, but then the authors try to "both sides" it by having their liberation group go too far by doing terrorism and not caring about innocent casualties so that they can be the bad guys. In the end you get some liberal idealism about changing peoples' hearts but you just know that the underlying problems haven't actually been addressed.
Weird how when hack writers try and be morally gray they turn oppressed peoples into antagonists who do performatively evil shit, Im sure that isnt reflective of any societal anxieties though.
We all know the 'hearts and minds' strategy the US employed in Vietnam, Iraq War 2, and in the War in Afghanistan famously worked very well
Haha oh man I was watching My Hero with my spouse and just kept saying, wait am I supposed to support the non-heroes because they make a pretty good point.
Big "I will now kill this puppy in order to prove my goals wholly unreasonable and evil" energy.
wait am I supposed to support the non-heroes because they make a pretty good point.
The villains are all basically fash-adjacent libertarians who make real, cogent critiques of the dysfunctional system but then their desired solutions range from "but what if the status quo was bloodier and more brutal in training its enforcer class?" to "clearly it needs to be even more stratified into a brutal might-makes-right hellworld," to Tomura's "lol, lmao" scorpion mentality shit.
Even X-men has this problem to some extent. You’re supposed to feel for the mutants and understand that the way humanity treats them is wrong, which obviously it is. But also some of them have the power to end the world so it’s not exactly the same as being afraid of black people having equal rights. It makes some level of sense that parents would be nervous having a girl in their kids class who can kill them with a single touch, or a guy who shoots lasers out of his eyeballs at all times
Theres literally a mutant in the comics whos power randomly activates one day and it turns him into a zone of death where anyone near him spontaneously combusts, like yeah no shit you would wanna invent a cure to prevent that, absurd to have a roulette wheel rolling at all times where the most realistic good outcome is the kid becomes a controllable living weapon, worst case scenario they become an uncontrollable weapon, and top jackpot they maybe get some power to help people that science cant do.
The other part of the yuzan vong that is kind of sus is how it was retconned that palatine knew about them all along and made the death star and all the space armies and shit to fight them eventually. I really don't like the idea of "militarized fascism good actually because aliens might be coming"
How did WH40k manage (in part) ripping off Star Wars decades ago, only for Star Wars to turn around and rip off the premise of WH40k?
I really don’t like the idea of “militarized fascism good actually because aliens might be coming”
Was this before kotor? If not, imagine writing this bs after kotor has its main sith lord get bodied in the intro as the direct result of trying a far more competent version of this plan. :who-did-this:
I know nobody is expecting anything substantial out of capefilms, but the first MCU Spiderman has this whole "rich suburbs are super diverse and accepting, blue collar working class people are exclusively angry white men who shoot each other" thing going on. The bad guy is a Small Business Tyrant tho so I guess it evens out
So not exactly what you're asking but there's always been something a bit sus to me both in how the Firefly universe appropriated confederate civil war aesthetics and has a super large libertarian presence in its fanbase, and that suspicion has only been further intensified after the revelations on Joss Whedon.
But pinning down the ideology of the show itself...I don't know...it still seems mostly innocuous? There's definitely some gender stuff and weird fetishization happening sure...but no worse than most scifi from that time period or previous. Not like the unification war was about independents rights to own slaves or anything. Still...much as I like the show whenever I think about it now something about it bothers me.
The show does treat all the feamle characters really badly. That was his fetish though, strong female characters being abused and broken. I read about some unused script ideas. You know how far you have to go for a regular holloywood producer call an idea too misogynistic?
Reminds me of how every time the author of My Hero Academia adds a buff muscular woman he brutalizes those characters like 10x worse than the average male character.
Pretty sure the main buff lady of the cast right this moment currently has like 1 intact limb or something and shes fighting with stumps, really weird and discomforting to the point where the average shonen audience picked up on it being weird and excessive.
yeah mirko, its so weird. She gets cyborg limbs that just also get ripped off immediately and is now fighting with I think one leg? They also had stars and stripes, another big powerful women character who existed just to die brutally.
I mean star kind of had to be removed from the story with her jojo main villain stand type power. It's just so far beyond everyone else that it kind of breaks the world for it to exist. But mha is still so absolutely inexcusably shit at writing women. You've got your sexualized teenage girls, bland characters with nothing beyond d "love interest" for personality, and any powerful women who just loses badly.
I chalked the confederate aesthetic up to irl former confederates like Jesse James becoming well-known outlaws after the Civil War. It was definitely something I noticed, and I was like, "So the Union is bad in this scenario??????" but there wasn't really a a 1:1 connection between the irl and fantasy sides--like you said, the Firefly guys weren't pro space slavery or anything, so I gave it a pass at the time. Now it seems like an apologia for "the Civil War wasn't about slavery, it was about state's rights and the Firefly folks just want to do whatever they want and fly free without the bad old government breathing down their necks." So yeah, I agree that the large numbers of libertarians in the fan base was definitely a clue. I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm pretty much just saying "yes I agree" but longer, lol. Anyway, this place runs on :posting: and :im-doing-my-part:
It took heavy inspiration from the ACW IMO primarily because of the aesthetic and vibe of the genre. Westerns have always had the ACW and veterans of that role play a huge role. The historical context of the show is more important. It aired in the early 2000s, which was a groundswell of renewed Lost Causer mythology that permeated pop culture and political discourse (see: Gods and Generals, Newt Gingrich's Lee-whitewashing alternate history novels). That inevitably rubs off on Hollywood as a whole.
Ideologically, the show is a very generalized "I just want to be left alone and autonomous" libertarianism. This is very common for Hollywood, which very much wants a generalized ideology-less appeal that can mean anything to anyone who is viewing, and doesn't alienate anyone in particular. Andor is a great recent example of this phenomenon, and nobody can really argue that show is "problematic".
“Diversity Alliance” and was actually an asset of the Vong. Basically, space SJW that wants space diversity is actually a space religious terrorist asset.
well also that the Yuuzhan Vong thing was basically a conspiratory way to say "actually palpatine the space nazi wizard was doing his space holocaust because he had a pretty good excuse", which is problematic for reasons.
And the worst part about this is that someone already did this story better with the 1993 book "Truce at Bakura" where the aliens use force-sensitive souls to power their technology and was a much more nuanced story. The angle is less "The Emperor needed space fascism to defend humanity" and more "the power vacuum left by the collapse of the empire has left the frontiers vulnerable."
Brief description of the book
No sooner has Darth Vader's funeral pyre burned to ashes on Endor than the Alliance intercepts a call for help from a far-flung Imperial outpost. Bakura is on the edge of known space and the first to meet the Ssi-ruuk, cold-blooded reptilian invaders who, once allied with the now dead Emperor, are approaching Imperial space with only one goal: total domination. Princess Leia sees the mission as an opportunity to achieve a diplomatic victory for the Alliance. But it assumes even greater importance when a vision of Obi-Wan Kenobi appears to Luke Skywalker with the message that he must go to Bakura—or risk losing everything the Rebels have fought so desperately to achieve.
Even as the Alliance arrives, the aliens have almost overcome the Bakura Imperial garrison, whose desperate commander will accept help from any quarter—even Rebel—against an insidious foe that enslaves human minds to pilot their invincible machines of war and destruction.
While marshalling the tattered Imperial forces, Luke, Han Solo, and Princess Leia must win the trust and cooperation of the Bakurans. For although Imperial Governor Nereus has granted the Rebels temporary amnesty there is the possibility of treachery among those whose first allegiance lies with the Empire.
That book was really good. They really shoulda mined the Extended Universe for plotlines for the new Star Wars movies; I think they'd have been a ton better.
Yeah, when I saw that the new Trilogy wasn't going to be the Timothy Zahn series I was like "Oh, okay it's fine to stop caring about this now."
There's an alternate universe where the EU novels were mined for their best entries for movie adaptation. Star Wars 7-9 are the Zahn trilogy, instead of Rogue One they did Truce at Bakura, Solo was based on one of the Han Solo Adventures novels by Brian Daley, etc.
Franchise bloat giving writers brain poison trying to out-twist every previous story beat and raising the stakes all the time so theres always one much bigger villain, or *gasp*, the good innocent victimised guys are now evil this is so dramatic!
That corruption is just one of the writers poorly disguised mind control fetishes.
Many of these series are using Asian-sounding names for their villains (yuzhaan vong) which is sus. As a teenager I read the libertarian Wizard’s First Rule / Ayn Rand fan fiction series and by the end of it the villain had some kind of Asian name, I can’t remember.
I’m watching/reading Game of Thrones for the first time and think the politics are actually mostly pretty good but GRRM is still a lib. I’ve noticed that Jews/Roma don’t exist in any form in his alternative medieval Europe, at least so far. Also, white saviorism, and nearly all the main characters are nobles, which for me undermines GRRM’s supposed critique of feudalism. He was just on Colbert a few weeks ago saying he wishes he had a dragon so he could attack Moscow.
he wishes he had a dragon so he could attack Moscow.
he doesn't wish for world peace. he wishes for this.
Been hearing people rave about how House of the Dragon is all about how playing around with dragons is foolish shit and sooner or later they will fuck you over and how they're a big nuke analogy etc, seems GRRM should watch it.
Tbh they managed to distill whatever little story and intrigue was mixed with the copious amounts of misogyny in Fire and Blood, and then turn it into a sort of cool tale about people. It's not without its faults, but I'd even say that s1 is better than anything after s3 of GoT
he wishes he had a dragon so he could attack Moscow
Did he even read his own books? My takeaway from them was definitely not "all of our problems can be solved by an application of incredible violence".
Secret new character in winds of winter, Zelenskyyyy Targaryyen.
GRRM is at heart a capital-R Romantic and it shows very frequently in ASOIAF. The series is a Deconstruction-Reconstruction of the High Fantasy genre.
Big hero 6.
A man found a beautiful new technology and that same day threw his life away so he could use it so save his daughter and take down a corrupt military contractor. He is the villian.I still feel like most people don't talk about how weirdly fascist Mass Effect is. I didn't catch it when I was a teen playing it for the first time but with the release of the legendary edition I almost can't play it anymore, all the stuff in it is so pro military, pro intervention, and anti politics that it honestly makes me uncomfortable now.
It's still not perfect, but I liked that Andromeda was about being a space explorer instead of a space CIA death squad. Of course Gamers hated it and killed the planned sequels by whining that the women weren't hot enough or whatever.
Honestly replaying the trilogy made me reappraise the writing in Andromeda, it really was about as good as most of the ME2 or 3.
Spider-Man's origin story.
It's pretty well-known now how the co-creator was big on objectivism, but fuck that, Parker's employer wage-theft the hell out of him, and the moral of the story is to protect the wealth of that price of shit?
Also, it paints a picture that all petty theft criminals are would-be murderers? Uncle Ben is geriatric and never packed heat, why would he kill him if he already got the money?
Slippery slope as fuck.
and they only are that way because of cut-throat capitalism eradicating away safety nets...
It's been a while since I read Dune, but I remember enjoying the story, but it having A LOT of moments about women that had me going :fidel-wut: I don't participate in any Dune-related fandoms or anything, so I'm not sure if that's a common criticism or not.
Herbert for sure has some Opinions About Women. He wrote another book which was about a supervirus bioweapon that only kills women, and the first symptom is getting uncontrollably horny. One of the scientists who is working on a cure informs her research team that she is going to die by revealing that she had masturbated that morning
If a feminist fiction author of Herbert's time had written that kind of a story as satire they'd probably be in english literary canon for it. It's so pig-headed and backwards that it wraps back around to being funny.
One of the scientists who is working on a cure informs her research team that she is going to die by revealing that she had masturbated that morning
lol
One of the scientists who is working on a cure informs her research team that she is going to die by revealing that she had masturbated that morning
She lived through the plague but never lived that moment down
Yeah, Herbert has real collar-tugging moments when it comes to women in his books.
Chapterhouse: Dune gets REAL funky with it once you get to the Honored Matres and where their uhhh technique differs from the Bene Gesserit.
I read something about the further Dune books that made me decide I wasn't going to have a good time with them, so I stopped at the first book. I don't remember the book that clearly since it's been too long, but I remember there being something about the Bene Gesserit fearing something about the male side of their visions and not being able to go there because they're women, and I was like, "Fuck you Herbert, I ain't scared!" It's very gender essentialist when you think about it.
It’s very gender essentialist when you think about it.
This point in particular is complex. On the one hand yes, it is, but on the other hand the Bene Gesserit are canonically wrong; disproven by the existence of Leto II who is actually able to access that, and it's not because he's special (I mean he is, but it's besides the point) and that Paul / the Bene Gesserit are just too scared to press on that essentialist understanding.
That being said, once you get later than that even, once Herbert starts getting much older, you start seeing themes around sexual control and that I think gets much more into the yikes territory
Getting to God Emperor of Dune I think is critical to having an appreciation for the series, because the other books are setting up things to be subverted in God Emperor.
Paul is not a white savior, he is an incredibly flawed messiah figure; and one of the biggest themes of the series is to beware messiah figures.
That's fair, but I don't think I'm going to return to the series anyway. I liked Dune, but I didn't love it enough to continue the series or return to the book in the ~15 years since I read it.
Not every book is for every reader!
Though I may come across as one, I'm not an evangelist for the series and don't really recommend it to people because like I said the payoff is so buried in the books.
Dune: Chapterhouse, aka the book of Sex Combat (?!?).
I love the Dune books dearly (mostly the first 4 tbh), but yeah, my man Frank got randy in his later years.
Yeah Chapterhouse is the only Dune book I've read only once. I wasn't fooling at the top when I said he gets real fuckin weird with it later on
Lol, this applies to like every sci-fi writer. I read through all of Larry Niven's Ringworld books and boy is there a lot of weird sex stuff, especially the later books when he ran out of new ideas for the ringworld.
Dune is also super orientalist, i.e., the fremen can’t get anything done until Paul the colonizer helps them. And their belief system has basically been molded by the bene gesserit, meaning that the dark hordes/unwashed masses have no agency and are just playthings of ruling elites, a very lib take on things.
Disagree. This is a very superficial take. Herbert does not just superficially take Middle Eastern aesthetics because he thinks they look cool. He engages meaningfully with Islam and the world around it as he construct his future.
Here's a good article that addresses this idea: https://www.tor.com/2021/10/18/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-reading-of-appendix-ii-the-religion-of-dune/
Also, it's not just the fremen who are molded by the Bene Gesserit: the entire galaxy has been shaped by their religious manipulation.
Similarly to my other comment, also when you continue on in the series Paul is shown to be very wrong and is essentially responsible for destroying the Fremen as a culture which is depicted textually as a tragedy and a bad thing.
Yeah, my favorite quote from the book about this is:
Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it.
I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought.
Which, considering that due to his Prescience, Paul knew that this would happen, and chose that path anyway. Its some subtext, but Paul only superficially saves the Fremen, which in actually destroying them.
The Museum Fremen of the 4th book is the final nail in the coffin; where the crysknifes are plastic, the Fremen are actors, and outside the cave 'Rakis is a temperate paradise.
That's a good point, the Bene Gesserit manipulated every place just in case they find one of their members stuck there.
Oh yeah, definitely. Very racist in the "but I think ______ is cool, how can I be racist?" kind of way.
It'd be trite to mention all the sci-fi and political thrillers that have an objectively correct villain who's only a villian because they "go too far."
spoiler
The Expanse does this really bad and I think the author knows it, seeing as he has to ass-pull some way in which the "moderate" anti-colonial forces end up winning anyway.
Also the fantasy trope of having different species at conflict in a story being a stand-in for modern race relations. Besides completely ignoring the material causes behind racism, it also carries the implication that different races are fundamentally, irreconcilably different both psychologically and biologically. It squicks me out enough that as a rule I only run human-only campaigns at my table.
Robert Jordans extended aes sedai naked/spanking hazing sections were something I didn't really fully process when I was reading wheel of time in middle school :blob-no-thoughts:
Lmao yeah, lot authors tell on themselves with their writing, but RJ really showed his kink. My wife read through the series for the first time recently and was like, "why is there so much spanking?"
Wasn't that EU story written to kind of mirror the war on terror with the Vong being Muslims? That's how someone back on the old sub explained it to me when I was interested in SW EU shit for a little while.
