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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33257 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Krylov's «The Golden Key» depicts a whole post-apocalyptic posthuman civilization built on the basis of the only surviving data source, that is, a single corrupt Russian MP's laptop hard drive – with the intricate, humane religion of «Daughter-Mother», its «icons» meditated upon by chaste «Pedobear monks».

I suspect this fictional Russian MP browsed some 4ch boards...that, or read John Ringo.

Oh, that's a classic. For my sins, I managed to make it all the way through Ghost, but regretted it. That was before reading OH JOHN RINGO NO; I would have skipped the book had I read the blog post first. I have heard that the rest of the series (...because of course there's a rest of the series...) is worth reading if you match the target audience, however.

As per the book, he was a straightforward pedophile, and over generations, posthuman characters reasoned their way to a (barely) functional social arrangement approximating some Russian features (parodied by the book, on one of its levels) by erecting abstractions and esoteric readings on top of his laptop's contents.

But Krylov himself was intimately acquainted with 2ch/4chan culture, of course. There is a well-developed Equestria-equivalent domain, for one thing. Really it's a masterpiece. Very uneven, very rushed, deliberately trashy, smarter than virtually all of Western fiction.

It was dark and smelt of smoke. There was a rotten incense sticking out of the cresset, and fine white ash floating in a bowl of water underneath it. The cat found another nearby, put it in the cresset and lit it with his left laser. The flickering flame somewhat moved the darkness aside. It didn't go far, though, but at least he could see the walls – uneven, dark. A huge chest, blackened by age, on the left side of the door, was almost entirely occupied by a massive rusty padlock. Above the chest hung an icon from the «Daughter-Mother With Nipples» series. The cat looked at the icon with interest: as far as he knew, such images were considered too old by most pedbears. Apparently, the landlord belonged to a rare Universal-Orthodox branch of the Cathedral Cult, which regarded all files from the Dead Man's Chest as equal and only variously revealing facets of the Eternal Image.

Some notes from the thesaurus accompanying the trilogy (a ton of context is missed with such shabby translation, sorry about that):

DAUGHTER-MOTHER. In the Land of Fools, the central object of the universal Cathedral cult, the standard of holiness. The origin of the image of Daughter-Mother is not entirely clear. The most common hypothesis is that it is the fusion of at least three ancient human cults - the patriotic cult of the Motherland Calling, the criminal cult of Mama Dear and the anti-fascist cult of the Tajik Girl. Very little is known about all these religious teachings.

"Too old" (eng.) is a popular mantra among the pedbears. Symbolizes disillusionment with decrepit worldly values and contrasts them with pure service to the Daughter-Mother. In colloquial speech, it is something like "long out of date", "banal and trite", "not worthy of attention", "let's not talk about it anymore", etc.

PEDOBEAR, PEDVED. An artificial A-base combining bear, elephant and other genes. Legend has it that it was created in the Directory at the behest of authority figures in the Land of Fools. Pedobears are bred as a caste of clergy supporting the Cathedral Cult of the Daughter-Mother.

Virtually all Pedveds are Kalushians, for although they possess sexual organs, they do not reproduce naturally, due to the sublimation of all thoughts for the holy image of the Daughter-Mother. However, they have surnames, with the knowledge of which pedobears are born. Usually the surname is related to a so-called honourable disease, which the pedobear will suffer in his or her advanced years in the name of the Daughter-Mother. The most common surnames are Asthmatics, Hypertensives and Prostatics. Prostatics are considered to be a particularly distinct genus, the highest pedobears are usually Prostatics.

For reasons unknown, Pedobears consider themselves to be Greeks. What they mean by this is unclear.

God, part of me wants to read a proper translation of this. I need more brain-melting content in the vein of Ring: Legend of the Nibelungen.

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