Dystopian Science Fiction only reinforces the real world Status Quo

[MithrandirOlorin]

I still haven't watched Invincible but that does sound pretty interesting.

[MithrandirOlorin]

Well I've now seen Psycho Pass Providence since it's English Dub has dropped, and it states explicitly "nobody wants Extremism" the who's devotion to Centrist Ideology is unambiguous.

[Al-1701]

Lots of Slice of Life Amine depicts a Paradise Present, there's no reason a Paradise Future can't work. But that isn't what I wrote the above to discus.

The thing is, people want to feel good about the status quo. They feel like they cannot do anything about things, so if you tell them and past and future are terrible compared to what you have, it makes them feel comfortable. People like feeling comfortable.

[MithrandirOlorin]

Environmentalist Allegories in Sci-Fi and Fantasy have a common recurring problem

From Final Fantasy VII in 1997 to Darling in The Franxx in 2018, but also in between many interpretations of how and why Krypton blew up. The common tactic is to allegorize it so it’s that Humanity or the Evil Corporations are killing the Earth via what they take out of it, essentially being Parasites who are Vampirizing The Earth.

That is a problem because the actual issue with real life Climate Change is the opposite, the Fossil Fuels themselves are just Ancient Prehistoric Garbage in and of itself removing them from the earth isn’t a problem. The problem is how the Atmosphere is poisoned by the byproduct of burning those fuels. The primary issue is what we’re putting in, not what we're taking out.

Now I don’t think a good Allegory needs to be a perfect 1 to 1 allegory, my opinion on allegory in general is similar to Tolkien’s. For example in a JRPG type setting having the energy source also be a source of Magic makes perfect sense.

So you may wonder what the problem even is? The problem is getting the nature of how we are harming the planet reversed makes it a lot harder to propose any useful solutions, since both scenarios also have it so we need to do more than just stop, we also need to fix the damage already done somehow.

The truth is something like The Lifestream to me would make a better allegory for the renewable energies we want to encourage. On a Metaphysical level I have trouble believing something like that could ever be depleted.

It’s not a coincidence that this mistake is made so many times however. It’s a product of the desire to tie environmentalism to mysticism, making The Earth itself a Deity we are taking from and not giving back to. But also way back in the day the issue of CO2 emissions caused by Fossil Fuels wasn’t even the original main concern of the Environmentalist movement, it first grew out of Conservationism, concerns about things like Deforestation. The thing is as bad as Deforestation can be, it's not the irreversible damage that CO2 emissions are becoming.

The Irony about how these tropes pop up even in Japanese media is that I feel it would actually fit Japanese Mysticism more.to make it a matter of poisoning the Life Force of The Planet rather than Vampirising it. Shinto mysticism includes a concept called Kagere, direct references to which in Anime often get translated as Sullied. The concept of a spiritual pollution tied to immoral or even merely taboo acts or sometimes just negative emotions. Plenty of Anime and Video Games have concepts that definitely feel to me like a fantastical adaptation of that concept given a new name, Miasma gets used a lot, the recent Zelda Games have Malice/Gloom, Tales of Zestiria has Maleficence. Now I consider this concept an unhealthy and toxic way to look at morality, but as a Fantastical allegory for CO2 emissions I think it would be much better. Make it the source of your Dark Magic and the Planet’s Life Force the source of the regular Magic.

Another thing both FFVII and Franxx have in common is that in the backstory actual Fossil Fuels had been the dominant form of energy production before the villains of the story succeeded in imposing their system on the world. And that is where the concerns I’m talking about relevant to this topic. Making your allegory for fossil fuels something that replaced what it's an allegory for makes it so many won’t see it as the allegory for that at all. Fears that what we might replace Fossil Fuels with could turn out to be worse have long been a vital tactic of how Fossil Fuel Energy companies suppress alternatives, Nuclear Energy never took off in the United States because shows like The Simpsons present it as cartoonishly toxic.

I imagine critics of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII who come at it from a Leftist perspective see all the stuff about rebuilding the Oil Industry in stories set after the original game as Recuperation, but that an Oil Industry being suppressed by ShinRa helped cause the crisis was part of the Lore already in the original game, that wasn’t something added later.

Both these stories I actually like overall, I defended the later part of Franxx in 2018 when doing so was not very popular, and FFVII’s lore intrigues me for how it can intentionally or not be read as Stoic and how I think it’s thematically more like Tolkien then any Medieval setting JRPG. This is just one critique I felt had to be made.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2 ... ci-fi.html

[MithrandirOlorin]

A Certain Magical Index Deconstructs Meritocracy

During the Index account of the Sisters Arc back in season 1 we are shown how the official propaganda of Academy City is that any Esper could reach Level 5 if they try hard enough. But in Index III at the end of the plotline with the Item characters it is made clear how certain people had the known potential to be a level 5 very early on.

And this was always heavily implied, by the Sisters Arc itself Misaka was selected for the cloning experiment as a small child long before she was odically known to be a Level 5 yet the implications of that don't ever seme to be something that's occurred to her. We've also seen that Accelerator and Mental Out were already already singled out to be experimented on as small children.

And now I feel compelled to return once again to The Last Jedi/Sequel Trilogy discourse. The fact that so many online leftists think it's more Left Wing for anyone to be equally a potential Jedi shows how actually Liberal their mindset still is.

Leftists are Materialists, we acknowledge that some people do have innate natural advantages to being able to be successful that most people don't have. We are the opposite of Nazis in that we reject that those with innate advantages should actually be considered more valuable. But to deny the innate advantages exist ultimately serves the interest of Conservatives, it lets them convince themselves those already with power must be the ones who earned it.

The Raildex Anime are better social commentary then any Dystopic Science Fiction precisely because they are avoiding the usual Aesthetics of Dystopia. It's world is different from the real world but about the same in how Free or not Free it's society is.

I recently watched all of Durarara!! and it has a similar especially with the character of Shizuo Heiwajima who becomes of his naturally strength and rage is unbeatable in a fight even though he's had no trainer, multiple far more trained fighters consistently lose.

Interestingly that's another Light Novel series that also started in 2004.

[CharlesPhipps]

I still say the argument is wrong because it makes a wild unjustifiable claim.

"Utopian fiction only reinforces the status quo by implying things will get better."

[MithrandirOlorin]

I still say the argument is wrong because it makes a wild unjustifiable claim.

"Utopian fiction only reinforces the status quo by implying things will get better."

I justified my claim several times over.

[McAvoy]

I still say the argument is wrong because it makes a wild unjustifiable claim.

"Utopian fiction only reinforces the status quo by implying things will get better."

I justified my claim several times over.

How about you make that claim nice and simple for us then.

[CharlesPhipps]

I still say the argument is wrong because it makes a wild unjustifiable claim.

"Utopian fiction only reinforces the status quo by implying things will get better."

I justified my claim several times over.

I mean and I rebutted it to.

It's also funny because it's the same argument in TOMORROWLAND and Jenny fucking Nicholson (not exactly a harsh academic source) tore into it in her review of that movie. She's like, "1984 isn't aspirational. No one is going to read that and go 'wow, that's a really good idea.' It's a warning and gets you to think."

[MithrandirOlorin]

I still say the argument is wrong because it makes a wild unjustifiable claim.

"Utopian fiction only reinforces the status quo by implying things will get better."

I justified my claim several times over.

I mean and I rebutted it to.

It's also funny because it's the same argument in TOMORROWLAND and Jenny fucking Nicholson (not exactly a harsh academic source) tore into it in her review of that movie. She's like, "1984 isn't aspirational. No one is going to read that and go 'wow, that's a really good idea.' It's a warning and gets you to think."

Completely missing the point.