Genuinely one of the most egregious and frustrating character assassinations I've ever seen in one of these things. I know on some level all of these stories are dependent on who is behind the typewriter so its impossible to say what a character actually would or wouldn't do but its just such a fucking infuriatingly simplistic view not just of the mutant civil rights allegory but also of how a character like magneto would perceive their struggle. Haven't finished X-men 97 yet but the plot point with what happens to Storm and his response feels like a direct fucking response to that scene in Last Stand TBH.
Ericthescruffy
joined 5 years ago
Far far smarter writers and philosophers than me have written on this topic. I think the general pitch was that terraforming a planet like mars was basically a new westward expansion and would kind of...maybe not "solve" but at least delay a lot of the problems we have at home.
Judge me if you want...but I'm a real sucker for a happy ending like this.
Muad'dib's war is litterally called a fucking Jihad. I had to go check the comments and thankfully at least there's a lot of pushback pointing out what nonsense this is.
Reminder: all art is political and all science/fiction fantasy is about re-contextualizing various politcal/historical events. Dune is not less political and no more subtle than fucking Avatar. The end.
Kinda what I was thinking. Like legit I actually genuinely sympathize because I know defying your own programming is a goddamn motherfucker.
Jokes aside: I always thought the obvious route to go if you wanted an original Avatar Game was to leave gender up to the player and then have them named something semi neutral like "Hiro". I feel like that's the far more likely direction here.
Liberals worship procedure and power above all. Foreigners and even working class citizens being slaughtered is fine as long as it follows the technicalities of the rulebook. Even if they scream about them and profess outrage its only to the extent they can use them as a prop. Physically threatening, even in jest, a member of the ruling class isn't just against the rules: it challenges the very legitimacy of the rules. That is the ultimate sin to a liberal.
Man...I feel like that movie on the whole is still pretty awful but now that I'm thinking of it doesn't that character feel oddly prescient in a way? Like specifically he feels the desperate need to ruin his friends own happiness because he can't bare the thought of him being with someone who doesn't measure up to his own bizarre warped beauty standards?!? Like misery loves company or some shit.
Near my kids school there's a central market which is popular for play dates because it has a giant playground in the back attached to a kitchen where you can get food and drinks. I did a playdate a week or two ago with one of my sons friends after school. There was a PTA meeting that evening around 5:00 and while getting ice cream around 3:30ish we randomly ran into one of the faculty members who was sitting at the wine bar already clearly having indulged a few. I could tell she was a little off put or worried she'd been caught but all I could think was: God fucking bless. I wouldn't want to deal with most of these fucking parents sober either and I can only imagine what she's been dealing with all day.
It will be ok for some. It will be not ok for others. On *average *it will be less ok then it was yesterday by a tiny incremental bit...going forward...conceivably forever.
I'm stuck in the USA for at least another 8 years but I'm starting to wonder if exit strategies are something I need to be considering more strongly. At the very least I think maybe I shouldn't stay in texas. I don't know exactly what the timeline is and I don't think there's going to be a full masks off fascist coup overnight in the next year or anything but l if we all accept the premise that material conditions are only going to worsen then we should all be pretty fucking concerned that the fascists are a hell of a lot more organized and proactive about laying groundwork than we are.
Mars itself maybe not but there's definitely significant mineral deposits in the solar system that could be extracted, no? I don't disagree it would be more expensive and difficult to terraform mars than anything else in the history of our species and the idea that we could do so under current conditions is hardly rational...but ultimately the system we live under requires and demands perpetual unending growth so that's a circle you've got to square somehow.