#gene's bullshit utopia

[parrhesiac]

Transcript: #i feel like it's because TNG was so far into the whole 'in the future we evolved past interpersonal conflicts' thing #which is nice and lovely and i wish we were there in real life #but doesn't offer much in terms of interpersonal drama in fiction #ds9 on the other hand went 'yeah no we aren't evolved we just have nicer things and THERE ARE NO FUCKING NICE THINGS ON THIS STATION"

This is Gene's fault. TNG was there at the start, and especially for the first few seasons before retconning "we've in fact been at war recently and have trauma and violence we're just in denial about." And that's directly dragged forward from TOS, where on the regular Kirk and Bones were like "we in the Federation have solved all problems and consider the troubles of others archaic vestigial unpleasantness which we have excluded from our utopia."

Which was, at least, a frame for presenting inclusive diversity as normal in a big ol' fuck you to the normative racist mores of the times, both of the 60s and the 80s-90s, reflecting the potential of achieving ultimate civil rights victory and relegating revanchist white supremacist cishet patriarchy to the dustbin of history. Which we obviously haven't managed.

But it was also, as the utopian idea of a white man, very clearly not interested in any ongoing fight for justice, much less the fight against the exact kinds of imperial colonialism the Federation and its Super Not a Military Enforcement Arm, Starfleet, represented. And so on the regular TOS would do battle for "civilization" against an array of "savages" to prove how they had evolved past all of this and you should too.

TNG was supposed to be this only better, and off the bat we saw the crew of the Enterprise D as representing a lesser utopia, still struggling its way to achievement, with a little dirt still under its fingernails but having come so far up out of apocalyptic horror. A more honest, hard-working utopia, but absolutely living into the consumer-culture idea of fully-automated luxury space communism, where instead of destroying war the thing we destroyed was capitalism, and we did it using the replicator.

And still, on the regular TNG would do battle for this version of "civilization" against an array of "savages" to prove how they had evolved past all of this and you should too.

But these tags are right: there's no evolution at play, that's eugenicist clash-of-civilizations bullshit, they just have nice stuff and lots of it, and are willing to buy you into their empire with the promise that you, too, can have nice stuff ... in at least some reasonable quantities ... provided you prove you can be trusted not to fuck shit up.

So, while there's a lot of "DS9 is set in a mall food court" complaining that goes on, the first and most important detail established in "Emissary" is that this is not a nice suburban mall with corporate retail and little shops for bougie people, and the gentrifier bougie Starfleet needs to fucking go home and not start buying up houses in inner-city Bajor just because it's fallen into their price range.

And that means they also threw out the major anti-personnel-drama tenet of Gene's previous series, and hired on a few solid soap/drama actors and let them use their chops! Let's look behind the curtain of Gene's rules, shall we? Let's put forward a cast of Starfleet characters that aren't the shiny front-line diplomatic corps on the flagship of the fleet. Let's drop them in a colonial backwater that resents being treated as a backwater and colonized yet again. Let's mine the backstory of Trek for conflict on purpose, and let it roost inside the so-called utopia, and be forced to deal with it!

(Which are all the same kinds of ideas that led to Lower Decks, where they were done with more comedy and way more fanservice, and less drama.)

Deep Space Nine ruled constantly giving characters to interact with different pairings. Master of the A/B plot structure. Is this episode about an ethical dilemma causing big debate around a conference room table? No. We’re following Odo and Garak being catty bitches at brunch today. Also O’Brien is getting tortured again but what can you do.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

After taking some time to consider the insane reactions some Zutara fans have been having about the Roku book, I've changed my mind. It's not just that zutarians like Zuko (or at least the idea of him) and treat Katara as the exotic trophy-wife he deserves for redeeming himself - they're Fire Nation dickriders that want to use the ship to go "See? The Fire Nation was right all along!"

That's why they act like Aang, the scared 12-year-old, is to blame for the war, instead of Sozin, the guy that chose to start that shit.

That's why they're obsessed with acting like Katara's tribe is as sexist as the North, then pretend the Fire Nation is a feminist utopia. Why they act like it being the more industrialized nation means it isn't "stuck in the past" like her tribe and thus Katara would admire it, meanwhile that insdustrilization is literally being used to kill the whole world, AND even harming the Fire Nation itselt - something Katara felt so strongly about, she went full eco-terrorism mode.

That's why they want to crucify Aang for completely misreading the moment on Ember Island and kissing Katara, but say nothing about Iroh very deliberately taking advantage of the fact that June was paralyzed to cuddle up with her because he KNEW he'd get slapped otherwise. Why they call Katara "a broodmare for airbenders" for having three children with Aang, yet are constantly writing about her being Zuko's Fire Lady (often in AUs in which she starts off as his actual slave), having his children, and potentially obsessing over the quality of Zuko's genes and how their interracial marriage will potentially fix any "bad genes that skipped his generation".

That's why they're "mad" that the new Roku book "romanticizes the air-nomads too much" and "doesn't call them out on their intolerance" (because saying people shouldn't murder each other is the same a genocide somehow) yet treat Legacy of the Fire Nation as a great book even though it made Katara say Iroh, the guy that was helping Zuko torment her and her friends for months and that was a war general helping his father commit GENOCIDE, "was always doing the right thing, no matter which side he was on."

Hell, a ton of them believe that "Good Grandpa Azulon" bullshit. They think the guy that ordered Zuko's death, by the hands of his own father no less, was a loving grandpa that adored his grandson - after all, he favored Iroh over Ozai! Clearly that's a wise, kind man! Please ignore the fact that most of the attrocities of the war, including the raid that killed Kya, happened while he was in power.

They really are just so fucking desperate to go "The villains were secretly right! The Fire Nation IS superior, there were just some bad apples that needed to be dealt with! That's why Katara would fall for Zuko once she stopped seeing them as this 'elusive' threat that is totally not super real and specific!" that at any second now they're probably gonna complain about all the "everything changed with the Fire Nation attacked" memes or start making theories that the air-nomads totally DID have an army, Aang just thinks they were innocent pacifists that were randomly ambushed because HE was fed propaganda.

[goddamnwebcomics]

My Not-so-Brief Review of Gene Catlow (Part 2)

In this part we'll talk about the main protagonists and characters I hate the most.

Characters (Part 1)

This comic has SO many characters, it has probably the biggest cast of every webcomic I’ve riffed. I don’t have an issue with huge character casts if it’s a story whose purpose is to show different events around the world and as such we get focus on a lot of people, or even a story that is generational. However, one third of this comic’s cast was actually useful and necessary to the story. Our main protagonist is Gene and he is kind of in the middle as a character, he gets shafted for the first arc of the story, mainly acting as Cotton’s mentor and someone who has a lot of secrets he doesn’t want Cotton to find out. Once Cotton leaves the scene, we see Gene’s street smart personality kind of take a backseat when Gene finds out about HIS powers, he briefly turns into a copy of Cotton. Thankfully his personality is coursecorrected, but he also starts showing signs of sociopathy when he cuts electricity from the entire city so he could go on vacation. Outside of that moment, I think Gene returns back to his streetsmart smarmy self, but he also loses a lot of his independence and is just taken from situation to situation, and a lot of that can be blamed on his partner, CatWhisker.

If Tawana Gilroy was a real person, I would be praying for Albert. CatWhisker is a domestic abuser who sees Gene as a breeding slave, an useful tool. Catwhis doesn’t allow Gene to express himself or even slightly critique her. She is also more vocal in terms of “Family of Intelligent Life” bullshit, and her framing of Matt as an abuser feels really insincere. Also anytime Gene expresses any sort of anger over Matt she is like “remember your vow, don’t get angry”, but Catwhis is allowed to be mad, angry and even physically abuse Gene. She then tells Gene that if he kills Matt in his anger, she will kill Gene. Wow, what a healthy relationship. She and Gene really have no chemistry and they never really bond as a couple. It doesn’t help they’re really established to be a couple in the beginning, and the only time they really feel like a couple and bond is when we see the flashbacks of their first moments together.

So yeah, because of Catwhis’s behaviour, I can’t be too harsh on Gene. It feels like despite being the protagonist he gets shafted a lot. We never really see into his mind or his psyche, every character would rather explain shit to him, whether it’s his Tech Master abilities or his other self, which is actually his ancestor’s spirit living inside him. Gene interacting with his ancestor would have been cool to see, but we never see it because this comic is too busy focusing on the FoIL bullshit, and it’s not like this comic has done inner monologues before, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Let’s move on to the secondary protagonists of this comic, Cotton Taylor, his wife Tavatiana and his daughter Michelle. Cotton starts off as the main protagonist pretty much in the first arc, despite this comic being named after Gene. He is a psychopath who does a bunch of awful decisions, and we never really get to feel the anxiety of having all these powers put into him, and every person in the world wanting to use him to eradicate humans or something. However he eventually leaves to Ancient Canovia with Tavatiana. Tavatiana, despite being a character who has appeared since the beginning, really doesn’t have personality. She turns into a copy of Catwhis for a brief time where she is a dommy mommy psychopath, but she then turns back into a doting mother, who hates being a politician. The only notable thing Cotton and Tavatiana do after their return to Ancient Canovia is getting sick of the way Canovia runs things, and would rather bring the whole place to present day. I like that they basically are like “fuck your bunny utopia” and want to return to normal society.

But what is as far removed from normal as possible is the character who pretty much symbolizes all the craziness this comic has to offer, Michelle. Michelle is Cotton and Tavatiana’s unborn daughter, seemingly born from Sight of the Soul as opposed to birds and the bees. Michelle seemingly is capable of speaking at first through Sight of the Soul with invisible messages, where she invisibly torments Tavatiana’s replacement Thalburd in order to prevent him from commiting a political assassination. Then we actually start seeing her physically as a bunny silhouette, which starts gaining more and more details until she is a full formed baby bunny but due to still being unborn she still turns everything around her into childish scribbles. She basically helps random people who conveniently are relevant to the story through her astral projection fetus powers. She doesn’t talk at first but eventually learns to speak, at first she has toddler talk but then she just speaks like an adult because Albert is a hack. Michelle then goes after the power structures of Canovia, and even helps to bring in an old traitor of Canovia, Clayton, into the group so he can bring Ancient Canovia to present day. She shouldn’t exist, and yet she isn’t as bad as some of the other characters in this comic. For one, she actively goes against Canovia’s “if you help people they never function right” mindset and she never actually says the same bullshit Family of Intelligent Life says. Her role in the comic is mainly helping others, and she begins taking a backseat after she goes through the process of being born. Michelle kind of improves as a character without doing anything mainly because of Family of Intelligent Life hijacking the comic towards it’s last years. She is also accompanied by two baby bunnies eventually who basically replace her, but unlike her they never talk, and also they’re reincarnated bunny ghouls. Yeah seriously.

Lastly there is our third protagonist couple, and characters who mainly interact with Michelle or some other little shitter, Borzoi and Beryl. Borzoi starts off as a repositor traitor to the animen who secretly works for Michael Alan Avariss. However, Borzoi is given a chance to redeem himself by freeing two Canovian politicians from control of a mysterious figure who turns out to be Matt. Matt takes Borzoi under his wing and even gives him a love interest, Beryl. Beryl however thinks Matt is EVIL and wants to free Borzoi from Matt’s alleged terror. But things are complicated by Borzoi having an evil twin inside his brain, who was formed due to evil he had to face while in prison. So yeah Borzoi is then freed and Dorzoi the evil twin is given his own body, more on him later. Borzoi and Beryl really should’ve stayed out of this comic once their arc ended, because I feel like they were just living their own life. The story of Borzoi’s redemption is an intriguing one and much better than most other redemptions in this comic. But sadly due to Dorzoi and later Forzoi he has to get back into the story and we learn that Beryl has an ability to not fall into Matt’s manipulation or something. Beryl is obnoxious due to how righteous she pretends to be, while Borzoi is an anxious wreck who has a lot of issues with himself, so you do root for him. Even if this couple doesn’t really do anything too big and really should have taken a break, I still think they’re the most decent out of these three couples.

Now that we’ve talked about the main protagonists, let’s move on to everyone else. I am going to do something different here and talk about each group of characters in order from worst to best. And the group of characters who are just the absolute fucking worst, just the most despisable group of characters you can think of that aren’t Riley, are the denizens of Friendship Island. These characters scream kiddy appeal, but they’re shitty kind of kiddy appeal. There’s Friendship Island Entity who is an important character because she is the one who plants Gene and Catwhis’s minds with the whole World of Friends agenda. She also represents the craziness of the comic as she is a talking island. Ermmm ACKHUALLY she is a talking form of energy but you get the idea. Friendship Island Entity is just annoying with how nurturing she is like her “no killing ever” stance. She feels like a preachy grandma just without the Bible. She also has sex with Host once it’s reformed and this causes her to get embarrassed. Her skunk design is kind of okay, but this comic’s tendency to treat skunks as some holy beings is kind of weird. She also holds a big plothole, as she is implied to be able to see into the future, but she never actually tells how future goes to anyone, instead leaving everyone to figure out the future for themselves. The second most prevalent Friendship Islander is The Leader, or Horton, nicknamed after my least favourite Dr. Seuss character. He starts off as a villain who is pathetically incompetent, he destroyed himself by giving his puppets, the transgressioneers, free will because he didn’t want to give them orders, yet Horton also wanted control over every aspect of the world. He is kind of like a deconstruction of “evil AI” because he was given sentience against his will and by MATT OF ALL PEOPLE. But once he redeems himself when he meets Friendship Island he just turns into a manchild, who grows into a giant and kills Felin Family’s power by petting their family power’s physical manifestation, Toothy, too hard. Other hideous denizens of the island include the “cameos” Burlington and Moonlight, the overly social and overly intelligent Treeka birds, the psychopathic womanchild Hannah whom I talked about in detail earlier, the transgressioneers who are all just clones of Catwhis and Gene, and who all work as slaves for Hannah and fuck eachother in order to create “GABF” babies, Patchy the marshmallow fetishist, amphibians who used to help nazis but now live under the sea and are desperate in giving humanity their technology but they don’t know humans are fucking stupid, Toothy the old family power who purrs in ancient languages and lastly Scruffy, who is probably the decent character out of everyone in this group of hideous assholes because he often gets abused by Hannah.

The second most hideous group in this comic are all the people who backstabbed Matt, Jeremy Vixen, Big Momma and Big Daddy, Dorzoi, Forzoi, Dawn and Dusk, Tane, The Webcats Stuart and Tassy, Wilhelm, the Cat Grandma and that one hick whose name I forgot. Jeremy is Matt’s mentor that Matt legitimately looks up but he is also a colossal piece of shit, who not only told Cydnee to hide her matagot abilities and become an erotic dancer instead, but also willingly works against his student because Matt is allegedly a tyrant. Big Mamma and Big Daddy at first appear to be some sort of mobsters and true leaders of Felin Family, overtime we learn that they are apparently god-like beings capable of traveling across time and space. They disapprove of Matt’s ways based on his alleged selfishness, but it’s clear to me they only exist so they could say the exact same shit Jeremy and Friendship Island say. It makes me really question if their anti-tribalistic behaviour was how they also handled problems during the great furry-animen war, where it is implied that the furries came close to being WIPED OUT. The Fat Cats are also hypocritical because they have an issue with Matt making Earth feline-dominated, but they also regularly hang out in a planet full of cats which is where Tane is from. Dorzoi is Borzoi's "evil twin" given a physical body from a puppet gifted to him by canovians. I feel he is a different character entirely once he gains a physical form as he goes from evil to kind of self-conscious, regretting his association with Matt and trying to seek help from Gene and Catwhis. Then Matt kills him in a pretty bold move. But when Matt rebuilds Dorzoi’s puppet, the puppet itself becomes sentient, and wants to get revenge on Matt by any means necessary. This entity, known as “The Avenging Puppet” by the comic and “Forzoi” by the blog, might legitimately be the worst character in this entire comic. Their dialogue is 90% “Matt Bad” and they pretty much Twilight Zone-esquely torment Carson in order to get him to do his bidding, and Forzoi even chokes Carson so he can prevent him from talking. Forzoi feels like the horrific implications of World of Friends and the ilk given a face. He is oppressive spirit who spews lies about Matt in order to justify his violent ways. Also he acts like a guide to Borzoi and others, saying similar bullshit as Friendship Island, Big Cats and Michelle, and quite frankly his role could have been taken by any of those characters. So he is terrifying, morally corrupt concept and also a redundant character architype, and that’s why I hate him.

I hate the rest of Matt’s backstabbers almost as much. Many of them don’t see any good in Matt, Dawn and Dusk go from being evil cat hookers to wanting to beat Matt up at every opportunity (Catwhis never scolds them at any point for this by the way) and still continue to see Matt as a heartless monster even if Matt is willing to work together with them and even give them assistance with their projects. Rest of the traitors are just as bad, but we don’t get as much focus on them as we get on Dawn and Dusk and later webcats. Even if you think Matt sending his CGI puppet to assassinate them was a bit much, the whole reason Stuart and Tassy considered betraying Matt was because Matt told Tassy to not interfere, and this pissed Tassy off. Their betrayal was unreasonable and I feel they had a lot more charisma when they were still on Matt’s side, the minute they join Family of Intelligent Life, their already childish designs become even more childlike and they start acting more like children too, Wilhelm adopts them and they start calling Gene “Uncle Gene” and start participating in hugpiles. Hugpiles mainly are done by children, unless we see a hugpile off-screen where every adult member participiates as well, which probably was a rejected idea for a porn coAUGHBLUGHAGH. So yeah, Stuart and Tassy kind of get ruined by joining the Family of Intelligent Life, and they aren’t the only ones.

[timeclonemike]

I've heard Solarpunk described as "infrastructure as a form of resistance" and that raises the question "resistance against what?" Even generalized answers like "capitalism" are a little too broad in scope for a story or even an anthology, though that usually feels like the best fit thematically, and it complicates attempting to write a Solarpunk story on any level. I know this because I've tried many times, succeeded... not as many, mostly because too much emphasis on the off-grid infrastructure part turns the story into prepper fiction. (On the other hand I do have some mostly finished prepper fiction stories I can publish if I ever get my ducks in a row.)

But I think @a-girl-called-bob is on the right track here with tackling the holes in the setting backstory and filling them in. Utopian futures tend to have gritty origins; Star Trek had all sorts of unpleasant shit in between the present day and the events of The Original Series, up to and including World War Three. (And speaking of Star Trek, TNG is said to have only really hit its stride after Gene Roddenberry had less creative control, because of his creative vision being more devoted to an idealized future; without his influence the rest of the writers could spend more time on issues that paralleled those faced by the viewers at the time the show was made, which helped the show gain traction. This roughly overlaps with Jonathan Frakes growing a beard, and the phrase Growing The Beard has now become shorthand for the process. Solarpunk has not grown its beard yet.)

If Solarpunk is all about growing and building, sooner or later somebody HAS to show how any potential utopia was built, and how they fertilized crops without access to industrial agriculture. I'm reminded of one of Deacon's Affinity conversations in Fallout 4, where he discusses how the different factions vying for control will make their various causes seem like the best for everyone involved even if it's objectively not true:

"There are other organizations out there, and in time they're going to spoon-feed you their own patented form of bullshit. Ignore the verbage and look at what they're doing. What they're asking you to do. What sort of world they'd have you build, and how they're going to pay for it." (Emphasis mine.)

I think a lot of the reason there's not been a ton of big solarpunk-style media is because it's inherently utopian and that leads to a real lack of conflict. Which is a shame that there's not a lot, because I LOVE how Solarpunk looks! But A lot of it is very big-scale from what I've seen; theorizing about ways man can integrate technology with nature, but not really what man is actually doing after that. What are the kinds of lives people would live in a solarpunk city? Surely actual human stories don't simply end because a lot of our needs are met. There's gotta be something!!

[thelexlucifer]

Multiculti - Just another Wet Dream of the Left?

As you might have already found out from previous postings, I do not like “the Left” too much. To me they promote illusions and blame the achievers when their dreams bust. I do my best to debunk their illusions and help people to achieve their individual goals, far from following the herd.

Multiculti is one of their illusions because they neglect that it’s not just about culture but also about language and stratification. But let’s work on it step by step.

Culture can be seen as a backpack one carries. It contains values, patterns of behavior, norms - in fact a lot of parameters influencing how we handle things, see and thus handle others and much more. To some extent that backpack is passed on to you while you grow-up; you need not reinvent the weel as you learn how to cope with challenges in the society you grow up in.

The thing is that people originating from different cultures, or if you like carry a backpack of a different brand might feel “intercultural stress” due to a phenomenon called “culture clash”. Distance between cultures differ (there is scientific evidence for that, no matter what the left tells you). Hence, one might feel comfortable with people from different countries / regions, while disliking those from other regions in the world. Due to that people tend to form groups. Other people being perceived as members of the “in-group” appear more sympathetic than those seen as members of an “out-group”. 

So why mixing folks in a so called multi cultural society, if that tends to induce intercultural stress (that can escalate even to civil war)? 

One pro-argument is diversity. This means increasing a group’s capacity when it comes to solving complex tasks. It’s not just limited to economy, but that’s one of the major fields of application (money makes the world go round).

Another argument in favor of the concept is peace keeping and mitigating the risk of social unrest. The idea is that if borderlines between in-group(s) and out-group(s) vanish, there won’t be any inter-group conflicts anymore. There would be rather a highly-diverse group collaborating to co-create a compelling future.

Doesn’t that sound good? - Yes it does. Will it work out? - Probably not. Please read on.

Diversity. And overcoming cross-cultural stress.

First the good news: Diversity can really improve things. You can observe that at the World Bank, in the trading room of Goldman Sachs, during board meetings of international enterprises and so forth. Smart people, working on complex problems they are interested in. Properly educated (Master degrees and higher), all of them fluent in English or having access to high class translation services and according facilities.

That is backed by science: There is scientific evidence that people collaborating to jointly achieve common goals will overcome prejudices and therefore reduce cross-cultural stress. That is also what the left is telling you. So far so good. What they won’t tell you is that those studies were mainly done with international studies in the US. They have in common that they posses an IQ over the average and they are fluent in English. Otherwise they would not pass the tests necessary to be granted access to US universities. And where we are at it: They maintain a good financial standing, which is necessary to get access to student loans and/or the cash to pay the tuition fee. In other words what research is telling you in particular is that if wealthy individuals with an IQ above the average and advanced skills in a language common to them collaborate in resolving issues they share mutual interest in, then cross-cultural stress will decline. 

This is what the left regularly neglects in public discourse when they try to convince you that immigration of non-educated, broken illiterates is a great deal for the society you live in. And the only factor preventing the success from taking place is the fact that you are a Nazi. 

Please do not believe that bullshit. The herd however does.

The picture above illustrates the babel tower. You can read about it in the “holy bible”. I chose a metaphor from that book as many Europhiles refer to it. In brief the story is about a decadent nation that was punished by God in the way, that many language arose among its inhabitants. Co-creation was no longer possible due to this and the great nation disappeared - because it became decadent. 

That is what I foresee for Europe and more and more also for the US: The decadent left imposes its utopia on the nations, increasing cross-cultural stress, abandoning co-creation ... thus, leading society closer to civil war. 

Incidents that some sociologists denote as molecular civil war already took and take place. 

The left however comes up with weird examples were they think “multiculti” works. Recently one of them pointed me to Dubai. She spent her holidays there and saw ladies wearing mini skirts next to women wearing a hidschab. That’s great example for mixing up different layers one needs to take into account when studying mechanics of a society. She just referred to obvious things, the symbol layer which is just the tip of the cultural iceberg. Dubai provides a space for high-networth individuals (and those pretending to be such for some days) to go shopping together. Outside downtown you will meet illiterates being exploited like slaves needed too accomplish that. All that under the constant rigorous surveillance of the secret service, protecting Arabic aristocracy. In fact Dubai is the city opposing the ideals of the left the most. In Dubai you can find slavery, surveillance, injustice and inequality. 

In other words: The left praises its utopia while neglecting facts. Instead they just invent more and more weird concepts of backing their wet dreams (I chose that term as it will provoke leftist feminists the most). At some conferences the discuss the usage of genetics and nano technology to discover genes causing xenophobia and “curing” it. In other words they seek to streamline the gene pool. They are the real Nazis.

Satanism on the other hand promotes Pentagonal Revisionism: A Five-Point Program. The fifth point shall be cited here as it provides a better goal:

The opportunity for anyone to live within a total environment of his or her choice, with mandatory adherence to the aesthetic and behavioral standards of same Privately owned, operated and controlled environments as an alternative to homogenized and polyglot ones. The freedom to insularize oneself within a social milieu of personal well-being. An opportunity to feel, see, and hear that which is most aesthetically pleasing, without interference from those who would pollute or detract from that option.

I think no more comments are needed at this stage. Hail Satan!

[sunshine-tattoo]

okay since yall dont seem to get it, im going to lay it out:

the star trek reboot movies do not, in any way, try to capture the super progressive themes that were created by gene roddenberry. 

number 1- post-scarcity society

the world of star trek is a utopia where the fears of poverty, war, disease, and overly powerful capitalism have been whipped out for ordinary citizens. starfleet is a research-based organization that series that seeks to gather knowledge for all the people living under the federation, which is a democratic collection of different alien races. 

number 2- james t. kirk is a holocaust survior

this is the one that fucking pisses me off so damn much. the reboot movies wrote jim as your cliched Daddy Issues™️ hero who somehow stumbles into all his successes. james tiberius kirk was one of less than a dozen school-aged children who survived a eugenics-based massacre on the colony planet of tarsus iv. if anything was going to turn him into a self-pitying little fuck boy, it should be that. but guess what, assholes. jim never once pulled that kinda bullshit in tos. and he had a waaaay better excuse than just growing up without a dad. kirk is a fucking hero in every sense of the word and he didnt get that way by having stupid fistfights in bars. 

number 3- casual sexism

gene roddenberry was a fucking feminist icon who wrote kirk, and by extension all the other male crew members, as honorable men who deeply believed that women were their equals. yet the aos movies feature at least one naked chick per film, a complete lack of amazing female protagonists apart from uhura (who is stuck in a Forced Hetero Relationship ™️ for no apparent reason), and sexist remarks by many of the main characters. im looking at you, bones. mr. i-lost-everything-in-the-divorce. (even tho in tos bones is perfectly ok with his divorce and even has a wonderful relationship with his daughter). 

number 4- fucking stupid ass space battles

get it through your thick skull, jj abrams. star trek and star wars are not the same thing. yes i know, they both have star in them and it confused you. but kindly fuck the fuck off. star trek never ever is about space battles. its about science and strategy and trying so damn hard to make peace with others even though it feels hopeless sometimes. yes, star trek is full of drama. but its an intelligent drama that uses problem solving. i can think of only maybe two episodes in the entire original series that even had ship to ship combat. and even then it was more of cake icing, not the whole fucking show cake. most of the actual plots came from examining motives and shit like that. 

number 5- fucking whitewashing

this is kinda a small one since it only happened once i think, but its still pisses me off. the character of khan was a man of color. he was played by famous mexican-american actor and latino human rights activist, Ricardo Montalbán. so why. the fuck. did yall get benedict cumberbatch, the whitest british dude in the history of white british dudes, to play a character who opened the doors for more pocs to be in tv? like dont get me wrong i think cumberbatch is a lovely man, but seriously? its like getting a white bitch to play uhura. who i remind you made tv history with the first inter-racial kiss ever to be broadcast on american television. 

so yeah. even if you think the films are a fun ride, which they are to some degree, the level of disrespect that they give to the original series just fucking floors me.  like i feel like they just googled the basic elements of star trek (character’s names, basic info about the different species, etc.) and then made a film base on that. 

whether you enjoy the original series or not, star trek is a work of art and one of the most progressive science fiction series ever made. anybody who does not respect that can royally go fuck themselves . 

[annarcana]

I've seen so many shit takes blaming DS9 for S31 and all of them have completely failed to understand the most fundamental thing about DS9's original take on Section 31:

HE WAS THE FUCKING VILLAIN.

Sloan himself is repeatedly demonstrated to be dangerous, unhinged, violent, and utterly without any moral compass. In basically every episode Sloan appears, Bashir only goes along with his bullshit to find out what he's up to and stop him.

Bashir and O'Brien literally go inside the man's warped ass, dying brain, risking their lives, not to "carry on his legacy" or any bullshit, but to find out as much as they can about what he was up to so they can stop it.

And also, another point about S31 in DS9? Pay attention to my choice of pronounds, because it is deliberate, in service to another very important point:

HE WAS ONE FUCKING GUY.

It is deliberately ambiguous as to whether there ever even was a real "Section 31", and not just the product of one paranoid rogue agent running around the galaxy murdering people for his own personal agenda.

S31 only gets canonized by later writers, under showrunners like Berman and Abrams and Kurtzmann who by their own admission do not and never have given a fuck about the utopia. Berman thought Gene was a kook, and kept the Fed's principles only so far as was necessary to preserve brand value. Meanwhile, nuTrek shit is terminally 9/11 and BSG/GoT brained, totally unable to even conceive of the utopian ideal of old Trek.

The only exception seems to be Lower Decks, which got abandoned to its own devices save for one ill-concieved SNW crossover ... which is why the utopia is consistently front and center, because it's written by people who know what Trek is even about.

All this Kurtzman/Section 31 stuff reminds me that not enough people have seen (or understood, I guess) Star Trek:Deep Space Nine.

Because it gets described as "it made the Federation a morally gray society instead of a utopia!" or "it fought back against Roddenberry's vision for the Federation and Star Trek!" and it's like... did you watch the same show?

DS9 didn't think the federation was any less of a utopia, than TNG or TOS or VOY, it said EVEN IN A UTOPIA, THERE WILL BE CHALLENGES, THERE WILL BE USURPERS, THERE WILL BE SNAKES IN THE GARDEN: THAT IS WHY WE MUST FIGHT!

Homefront/Paradise lost are about how even in a utopia, authoritarians will sell fear and get people to give up their freedoms. Fascists will burn the Reichstag to create a crisis they can exploit.

Doctor Bashir, I Presume showed that for a society without money, people still worry about success, and their legacy, and they'll do horrible things to their children to make sure they can be that legacy. And the episode CLEARLY DISAPPROVES OF THIS! The man responsible realizes the error of his ways and submits to punishment to save his son.

I don't want to list examples all day, I have other stuff to do, but DS9 very much didn't say "utopias aren't real, every so-called utopia has evil somewhere in the foundations", it said that utopias are something you have to fight to maintain. You can't take the easy answers, listen to the fascists promising safety, and avoid examining the faults of your society. Sorry. But the good news is that you can, you can win, and you aren't alone.

DS9 was aiming for more of a "realistic utopia" than other Treks, it's true, but despite that realism it still said a utopia was possible. It used that realism to show that a better world must still be fought for. And it warned against anyone selling easy solutions to those battles.

Because as has been pointed out recently, fascists don't sell eternal war and oppression to the in-group: they promise safety and power and belonging and prosperity. They're gonna oppress them to save us.

DS9 said those men are not to be trusted, and must be opposed. It won't be easy, there will be struggles, but they will be stopped. The world will get better. We can do this, together.

I don't know about you, but I find that more optimistic than if they hadn't, and just said The Federation is Perfect Forever.

[evilelitest2]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but can you name 10 major MRA works you have read? Wouldn't want you to be uninformed. (From an ex-feminist who was one for decades and now much prefers the term egalitarian) For your edification, you might want to look at the "inventor of the modern women's shelter" who is a self-described MRA, there's one.

hi @fiyabwal you know it is really obvious its you right?

Hey look, its clever because it is a subversion except it isn’t because Feminism is an actual field studied in colleges by actual professions as a job and has been around for centuries while the MRAs have existed for about 3-4 decades and aren’t remotely taken seriously by any academic field because their beliefs don’t make any sense. Also the MRAs don’t have major works, they mostly just have websites and internet diatribes, and they don’t have an acreed upon canon unlike feminism becasue one is an actual subject, and the other is a blithering hate mob of incoherent insecurities trying to prop up a persecution complex. but ok, lets pretend that its a legitimate movement for a moment. Here we go

“The Fraud of Feminism” by Ernest Bax, a “Response” to “The Subjection of Women” by John Stuart Mill, proving that MRAs from the start are about awkwardly trying to co-opt feminist language even as they fail to understand it “The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege” by Herb Golberg, basically a giant homage to victim blaming

“A Voice for Men” the major website of Paul Elam, one of the “Ideological” centers of the MRA movement, as well as “Going their own Way” by the same writer because you know…idiots

Chateau Heariste, the website run by James C. Weidman, another ideological corner stone of the internet defined by you know…science fail

Roosh V’s Book “Bang” and the Return of Kings website that goes with it

The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell which is kinda adorable compared to everything else on this list because he honestly doesn’t get it

Men are from Mars;, Women are from Venus by John Gray who isn’t an MRA himself but his work provides the ideological bedrock of the movement (also its fucking bullshit)

The Manipulated Man by Esther Vilar, which posits that women historically have had all the power…this is literally the Elders of Zion rewritten

Christina Hoff SOmmers ‘Who stole feminism" which is the one “feminist” book they like soley because they can point at it and go “Look a feminist agrees with me” even though they aren’t a feminist

Sexual Utopia in Power by F. Rodger Devlin

The collected writings of Theodore Beale because MRAs lack both academic sense and basic taste

Atlas Shrugged, which isn’t even an MRA book but that is where they draw msot of their ideological foundation

The Selfish Gene isn’t actually an MRA book either, but they won’t shut up about it either

Hey look I did it, and the funny thing is, I bet you haven’t even heard of these books. Bceause lets be honest here, the real center of the MRA’s ideological foundation the ‘Intellectual" core of the movement is 4chan’s /Pol/8chan’s existenceSluthate.com (which makes the Manson Family look sane) Vox Popoli (irony, MRAs don’t have it) Love-shy.com Return of KingsThe Counter-Feminist The Spearhead back when itw as a thing and of course /r/redpill and /r/mensrights subredditoh and that weird virignity nice guy forum hotwheels use to be at

Weirdly enough they also all seem to love

And yes i am familiar with Erin Pizzey, and not just the one paragraph descriptions MRAs use to try to justify their own misguided beliefs

I would personally add the Elliot Rodger’s manifesto to the list, because it perfectly sums up most of the movement or at lest the 'Beta" side of it

But yes, lets pretend a movement that always fails when ever applied to academic scrutiny is totally equivalent to a major academic field with some of its seminal works written by John fucking Stuart Mill. I mean feminism arguably started with the writings of Rousseau (cause women weren’t allowed to write back then) and MRAs think their works are equivalent that’s hilarious

[undeadentropy]

We did get some things. Our ability to jog for miles is mostly unique, and we the best at it, better than even wolves. We can get glucose from our bodies to maintain brain function even during periods of starvation. We can consume all sorts of things like garlic and onion, alcohol, caffeine, spicy foods, mints, and many others, and are the only ones who can eat chocolate without worry. We work in groups better than most animals that aren't insects. We can smell rain before it falls, which is orders of magnitude stronger than a shark's ability to smell blood in the water.

We just didn't get any of the cool stuff. But our love for the exotic might be why we're the last humans. We might not have our-competed the others, but instead absorbed them through taking the others into our tribes and breeding with them. For sure we did that with Neanderthals.

But yeah, it'd be nice to have some cooler stuff too. I want a wolf's jaws and teeth to gnaw on bones. I have a theory that it's delicious. Think about how much flavor a good stock gets, and that literally just boiling it. Have you seen the bliss in a dog's eyes when they have a good bone?

I'd like to have a bird's vision too. Not just the acuity, but they can have 4 or 5 color rods, allowing them to see millions of times more distinct colors than we do. I mean, humans have stripes. What else can't we see? Dogs can smell health problems. How much can't we smell?

Though I'd settle for a spine not designed by Apple. Its such bullshit our spine goes to hell less than halfway through our life. It's like biologically planned obsolescence.

Wisdom teeth is another, but we did have Biggers jaws back then. Neanderthals had them without any difficulty.

Though if humans can purge the xenophobia gene, we could really make some progress. Once we understand it enough to turn it off, utopia might actually become a real possibility.

Evolution gave us so much, but not horns 😔

[radplaidtacofan]

So many people complain about how DS9 shows the Federation isn’t the utopia it was in TOS and TNG but it never was a utopia. That was clear in both TOS and TNG. There were tons of people on TOS and TNG who discriminated against other species and they were portrayed as the “good guys.”

Both TOS and TNG also showed that things weren’t perfect in the Federation. TNG had plenty of episodes that showed that even on Federation worlds there was inequality and that the higher ups in Starfleet were doing evil things for power and profit.

DS9 was more vocal about it but TNG was also pulling back the curtain on the Federation even when Gene Roddenberry was alive.

I was always glad when Quark, Odo, Garak, Kira or anyone else outside the Federation pointed out that the Federation wasn’t perfect. They were absolutely right to call their Federation friends out on their bullshit. I wish there’d been some more non-Federation characters on TNG that did the same thing.

I always think of when Keeve Falor called Picard out on the Federation’s non-interference policy. “You were innocent bystanders for decades as the Cardassians took our homes. As they violated and tortured our people in the most hideous ways imaginable. As we were forced to flee.” Picard defends the Prime Directive with a feeble, “We were saddened by those events, but they occurred within the borders of the Cardassian Empire,” and Keeve’s scathing retort of, “And the Federation is pledged not to interfere with the internal affairs of others. How convenient that must be for you. To turn a deaf ear to those who suffer behind a line on a map,” was absolutely valid. It was one of the few times I sided completely against Picard and it was refreshing. I lost a bit of respect fr him when he weaseled out of the debate with, “Well, I’m not here to debate Federation policy with you.”

I love when the Federation is called out on its bullshit. It’s refreshing and valid.

Bless DS9