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TheDag  Per Aspera ad Astra  2yr ago (text post)   2187 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 11, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It's also notable how on twitter people liked it and there is no seeming political category that doesn't have people liking it. If something is beloved both by trans they/them socialists and e.g. hard right Pinochet appreciators, it is kind of special.

I think Cyberpunk is in kind of an ideal position to do this, actually. The sci-fi body modification technology allows for things like intersex characters, huge bruiser-brawler women, and so on without it seeming shoehorned in. The leftist may feel that it's vaguely empowering, the rightist that it's part of the dystopia, but neither feels like it doesn't belong or add to the story and setting.

Likewise the economic realities of Night City could be taken as an indictment of capitalism run amuck - and even have revolutionary figures like Johnny Silverhand fighting against the system - it also never really posits the Glorious Comrades' Revolution as a viable alternative, since Resistance Is Futile anyways and that's the point. Also, the sort of capitalism they depict is so far out there that I don't think rightists really identify with it anyways, however bullish they might be on markets. It's clearly the bad aspects of capitalism to the Nth degree, no-one's gonna argue it's a good look.

I have noticed a trend, though, for things that would trigger culture war in a Western show just...don't when it's Japanese. Popular recent examples - Jujutsu Kaisen is a progressive-trending show, and Demon Slayer is a quite conservative show, and I literally think that no one in America even notices. A combination of the exotic settings and stories, and of Japanese bromides not being ours, perhaps? Certainly the culture that Demon Slayer is conservative of is quite different from the Anglosphere.

Might write more about that later, I've had a proto-essay banging around in my head about it hah.

Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable,[1][2][3] typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authority, property or tradition.[4][5]: 693, 721 [6][7][8][9][10] Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences[11][12] or competition in market economies.[13][14][15]

Yeah, us RW doesn't have to stick to neolithic biology, I think.

Personally I'm fairly RW in that I believe hierarchies are inevitable, inequality unavoidable, competition indispensable and important and traditions ignored at one's peril, however, it's clear there's simply no winning in a future if you stick to traditional biology and eschew the easy kind of eugenics to boot. It's just losing like a noble idiot.

Letting psychologically aberrant women get biomods so they are physically competitive with fighting men doesn't strike me as dystopic if artificial wombs mean other women are less burdened by childbearing which would mean they'd probably do it slightly more so you don't have to exert psychotic iron age Greek levels of control over the population's means of reproduction.

But maybe there's a personal bias. I have a marked preference for man sized women. Found Dorio the most attractive female character.

Having a partner that's not much smaller than I am strikes me as being just right. Sad it didn't work out with one girl I met who was about my size, actually even slightly taller than me.

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