wodneswynn: avita-creator: wodneswynn: wodneswynn: wodneswynn: wodneswynn: The way most...

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wodneswynn:

avita-creator:

wodneswynn:

wodneswynn:

wodneswynn:

wodneswynn:

The way most people try to do cyberpunk is….tedious.

The moral and philosophical implications of body modification are (1) not interesting and (2) not worth debating anyway. The subgenre’s been hijacked by boring weird dudes who are in awe of their own intellect and want to play “What if phone but too much??” with their transphobia and ableism.

I talked before about how I’m no fan of Gibson, but I will give him this much, that Gibson at least knew what the important questions were and knew how to explore them. For the most part, the people who bit off of Neuromancer ignored all the good bits.

Those mooks behind the Cyberpunk 2077 game had this boiling hot take:

And there is, as they say, a lot to unpack here.

For one thing that’s not fucking what Ghost In The Shell is about. It is not about that At All. Y'all making crap up.

GitS: Imperialism’s bad. Cultural chauvinism is bad. The police state is bad. The way our lives and selves become commodities is bad.

You absolute dorks: Wow, cool cyborg!

And as long as I’m on a roll, let’s bring in some Real Shit™.

I’m a queer woman. I modify my body in various ways because if I don’t I’ll never feel comfortable existing in it. I’m disabled; I live in constant excruciating pain, there are times I can’t get around without a mobility aid, and oh boy wouldn’t it be nice if there were something I could change about my body to make the pain go away, I’d be all over that like gravy on biscuits.

So that line, “She’s not clean,” well, that echoes around in my brain like a rifle’s crack. That’s what I see in the eyes of all the people who stop and stare at me when I go to the grocery store. That’s what’ll probably be on the lips of the person who eventually murders me. “She’s not clean.”

And I don’t even have any cool robot parts yet.

Holy… Had never considered cybernetic augmentation being analogous to transitioning. It makes the ‘not clean’ comment so much more insidious. This fixation by the Cyberpunk 2077 creators on bodily purity is an absolute “different is bad” perspective, and that’s just scary.

Oh no I was being completely literal, not metaphorical.

Medical transition isn’t analogous to augmentation, it *is* augmentation.

This is one thing I really liked about the BBC sci-fi drama Years and Years, being transhuman is directly compared to being trans and is at no point shown to be wrong or unhealthy- we see a transhuman character get happier and happier as she gets further augments, and although they are depicted as dangerous, it’s made clear that’s because of the way society gatekeeps these procedures rather than any concept that they are inherently bad.

Also there’s a trans character who just quietly transitions in the background and barely anyone comments on it.

I’m probably going to keep blogging about Years

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I’m probably going to keep blogging about Years and Years because it’s an absolutely fascinating show. 

I can’t say I 100% loved it and I think they chickened out on the plot at the last minute with a ‘And now Voldemort is dead and everything can go back to normal yay’ ending which was just… no.

However, this is 100% perfect example of How To Do It Right when making an allegory for real life issues with the transhuman plotline in the story, which was amazingly well-handled.

One of the character in the story is transhuman, and wants to upgrade herself with the aim of eventually leaving her body and becoming pure data. There are explicit parallels drawn between this and gender transition. 

Her parents originally believe she is trans. When she runs away to get risky and unsafe surgery it is pointed out that this was originally the only recourse for trans people to get gender reassignment. 

And, most importantly and so fucking rarely when working with ideas of transhumanism- the character is shown as 100% right in her decision to transition and we see her becoming happier and more outgoing with each procedure she gets done, as her body becomes more and more hers. 

The audience is encouraged to follow the point of view of her parents, who are not very accepting to being with, but eventually come around as they see how happy their daughter is becoming.

Finally, although this plotline gets more attention, another major character is shown as trans and transitions throughout the course of the story. Some characters remark on it, but it’s implied that being trans is not a big deal to them and we watch her development from a AMAB girl realising she wants ribbons in her hair, to an adult woman by the end of the series. 

It’s a very sweet point in an an otherwise very dark story, and it is so important this actually depict the people whose struggles you are referencing.

I could go on to the tangled knot of gay representation and how much of it ends up as a bury your gays narrative, how much of it is the most touching and loving relationship int he series, and how much is the show creator working through his own grief at his husband dying. This whole plot is authorial intent and the author is dead narratives colliding in a massive trainwreck.

Also, Stephen got waaaay too much sympathy, I was really hoping his redemption arc would be him shooting Rook and then killing himself and that would have a worked a lot better, and would have given us a more realistic view on how to remove dictators from power.

So yeah, hit and miss on a big scale. But even the misses are interesting enough to get us thinking, so that’s valuable in itself.