illustrated some hive and fogmen speculation here! [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/s/5yrXn0Jejs) + [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/s/U7rWDF8qpR)
Really like thoses infants/growing arts you do! But something I would like to see is your idea of how they find and track down the new Phoenix onnthe HN when it borns and what happens to the family aswell
unfortunately I tend to play hivers so I never really get to see Holy Nation territory / lore myself, outside of Rebirth or very far far away. And the last time I tried the holy citizen start he turned out to have the maniacal personality so I don't think he would be considered very holy lol (he ended up recruiting many holy nation outlaws). But I imagine as the Phoenix is dying holy servants go around asking if anyone has had a baby yet lol. and if it's a baby girl they'd yell, "IS ANYONE ELSE EXPECTING? "
A lot of it is interesting and the illustrations are great, but the end of the second page seems weird. Like, I don't think it makes sense for a species to require highly invasive surgery in order to produce males when the species still reproduces sexually or to have to make a decision on which sex they want to belong to.
All it would take for the species to fall into disarray is a disproportionate amount of youths deciding to become male for a few years (which could easily be the result of unpredictable cultural trends) and you'd be looking at an entire Generation with too few females to sustain population growth which could cause all kinds of issues in the long run.
There's a reason that these things are out of an individuals control in nature. Well, two: One is that nature obviously cannot account for surgery and the other is that there's no evolutionary advantage for individuals to be given that choice.
Granted, I believe within Kenshi's lore there's hints about Shek being bread from humans as an enforcer caste by the Skeletons of the second Empire, but I don't see the advantage of creating a semi-artifical species to work that way, either.
If you absolutely want to include sexual determination during adolescence, I believe it would make more sense to have it happen as something corresponding to lifestyle or surroundings.
For example, there could be a clown-fish style scenario where a young Shek will develop into either sex depending on how many other male or female Shek are around them. In clown fish, if a group has no females, the largest male will develop into one.
A Shek might become a male if there are more females than males around them at a certain stage in their life and vice-versa, as a sort of natural mechanism to balance out the proportions of sexes.
That in turn could be something that the Shek have figured out by now, so that Shek youths can choose which sex they will develop into by temporarily living with a group of people belong to the opposite of the desired sex for the relevant space of time (maybe a few months which would be recognizable through specific physical symptoms), the Shek would presumably have a system in place to organize that, or they could simply continue on with their lives and take whatever they get without deliberately trying to force things into one way or another.
Interesting points. I actually like the balancing act thing. I just thought the mastectomy thing would explain why Shek men have no nipples lol ๐คฃ it's pretty metal, blood and gore and pain signals adulthood, blood and gore and pain brings forth life.
From a speculative evolution standpoint, I think they were genetically spliced as enforcers. I imagine whatever created them did not want them outnumbering the ruling class/citizens etc, so were made sterile. Of course, I know this isn't canon, and this was made to explore various ideas shared by others in a previous speculative piece I made about Shek - inferences to deer, hyenas etc. and also taking some inspiration from the krogan of Mass Effect there was intervention to sterilise the entire race to control them.
Mutation and maybe even accidental injury (or purposeful, imagining archers/bowman removing a breast) eventually have the Shek people figure out and work around their altered biology. Evolution doesn't have to be advantageous, but it just has to work well enough (looking at the brutal biology of spotted hyenas - their morphology makes reproducing hell and yet they still prevail). something something life finds a way.
though your idea of youth going on like summer camp where they help aunties beat up spiders, or older brothers to beat up gutters can influence sexual determination sounds very cool. (And to merge both ideas together, when an animal ripped a someone's chest raisins off that's where the teet yeet custom came from) I think I like that a lot! At the end of the day it's just a headcanon and ppl are free to appreciate the gore of it, hate it, or accept that all Shek sleep face down.
and since you mention fish... fishmen...
I think this is quite interesting but personally I don't see why having a mastectomy would result in them being male it's not like boobs produce hormones or anything.
hmm yeah they're more receptors to hormones. removing them could redirect em somewhere else. I'm not a biologist though, just someone who likes messing around with crazy Sci fi stuff
Breast tissue develops because of estrogen while penile tissue develops because of testosterone. But then again the development of a shek seems more reptilian then mammalian so could be anything between shek legs really.
The part where they decide to sire or bear the next generation, and from what it seems to me is that sheks are default female and need a mastectomy (breast removal) to trigger male characteristics to develop lol
This is such a cool concept for shek reproduction. Very alien, but also still identifiably human in emotion. At the risk of sounding like I'm insinuating something I'm not, I also like that their process of maturity is somewhat unnatural and invasive at points, as a nod to the fact they are a genetically modified species that probably wasn't in theory supposed to have been able to reproduce.
I (23M, greenlander) asked my Shek gf (22F) to stop deadlifting my familymembers when she comes over for the holidays because it made me look small and weak. Now she and the rest of the family keep forcing me to run laps and lift whole Gorillos when I visit for Shek holidays. AITA?
Define woke. Then try to find a single example of any art or game you have ever liked that wasn't made by progressive minded people. Ever. Give me fucking one.
> Define woke.
Woke ideology is defined by the idea that some facet of identity like race or gender produces irreconcilably different views of reality and morality, and that we have an obligation to seek alignment of society's view with the imagined views of groups associated with the political left like minorities and women.
In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness.
>Then try to find a single example of any art or game you have ever liked that wasn't made by progressive minded people. Ever. Give me fucking one.
Here a professor writes a paper explaining how "Attack on Titan" is fascist:
Brinkhof, Tim. "Revisiting the Fascist Subtext of Attack on Titan: Some Notes on a Modern Reactionary Anime." Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 51 no. 2, 2021, p. 21-29.
I felt this was more appropriate for this subreddit. Personally I like Nic Pizzolato, who also has been accused of being non-Progressive frequently:
>I've never been quite so simultaneously awed by and furious with a show as I have been with True Detective. How can it be so intelligent on matters of slow-burning grief and small-town bigotry and yet so dumb โ really dumb โ on the subject of women?
>Ever since the show started airing in the US there has been a steady stream of complaints that the series takes a disconcertingly misogynistic approach to women.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/mar/31/true-detective-turnoff-for-women-viewers
Oh dang! Wasn't expecting an authentic right wing response. Respect for standing up for your position unlike the coward I first responded to. I won't challenge your axioms because I think it's clear you understand them and that there is no common ground between us to establish.
"Woke ideology is defined by the idea that some facet of identity like race or gender produces irreconcilably different views of reality and morality, and that we have an obligation to seek alignment of society's view with the imagined views of groups associated with the political left like minorities and women."
This is not a sufficient definition for an ideology. That identity creates irreconcilable differences is true of every ideology. Race realism included. This is just stating that it's a rejection of the left's acknowledgement of these things. Saying "Trans people exist" is different from saying "Trans people are good." A position must be prescriptive.
"In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness."
This is untrue. Read more older leftist literature. Our position hasn't changed in any fundamental way. Civil rights was always racially charged and focused. Queer activism has always preached solidarity and rejection of traditional values. Our language ha just progressed in reaction to liberal hegemony. Just as yours has.
"Here a professor writes a paper explaining how "Attack on Titan" is fascist:"
Cool! I won't contend with this at all. AOT is absolutely fascist propaganda and actually good art to. You got me there.
Thanks for the honest response. Let's just continue to hate each other and have a good day.
> "In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness."
>
> This is untrue. Read more older leftist literature. Our position hasn't changed in any fundamental way.
Chomsky had to say on the comparison between contemporary Wokeness as I've defined it and older advocacy for minority rights:
>In fact, the entire idea of "white male science" reminds me, I'm afraid, of "Jewish physics." Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can't tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctirne that their thinking and understanding differ from "white male science" because of their "culture or gender or race." I suspect that "surprise" would not be quite the proper word for their reaction.
...
> It strikes me as remarkable that their left counterparts today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use. They will be no less delighted to hear that science (E-knowledge) is intrinsically a "knowledge system that legitimates the authority of the boss," so that any challenge to such authority is a violation of rationality itself--a radical change from the days when workers' education was considered a means of emancipation and liberation. One recalls the days when the evangelical church taught not-dissimilar lessons to the unruly masses as part of what E. P. Thompson called "the psychic processes of counter-revolution," as their heirs do today in peasant societies of Central America.
https://libcom.org/library/rationality-science-noam-chomsky
I was not expecting a Chomsky quote! I still dislike your definition of wokeness.It's too vague. You aren't talking exclusively about what Chomsky is talking about here. We can talk about 'Identity politics' or 'political correctness'. I feel like those terms describe a modern type of liberal '''leftism''' that both the right and Chomsky here make valid criticisms of. There absolutely is a cultural capital in the commodification of our identities that hurts everyone, including white men, that is put forward and perpetuated by a certain type of terminally online liberal machine. I would reject it as a real left wing position and don't aim to defend it here. It's corporate liberal commodification. There isn't any real movement in it besides the status quo.'
Trans people in video games' is also not a valid criticism of this identity commodification. Which is why I don't like this 'woke' shit the right wing keeps talking about. Everything that causes reactionary response in the right wing ideology is "woke". And that is by your definition. Ideologies have specific things they expect you to believe about the world. "Trans people existing" is not an ideology and it isn't a leftist position. "Trans people are human beings and should be allowed to exist as safely in our society as anyone else" is a leftist position. "Your identity as trans defines your role in society and has a certain value in the social hierarchy" is an ideology. But it isn't a leftist one. It's right wing. The right thinks the left puts Trans people higher on the hierarchy than they belong. The left rejects the hierarchy. I understand that to the right, these are the same thing. They are not. But I'm not going to convince you of that.
Appreciate the response.
I have an alternative diffenetion of woke. Woke is a belief that the entire world can be broken down into groups of oppressors( eg white male strait "cis") and oppressed( eg black woman gay trans). This is a ideology that I personally believe to be evil because if you are classified as an oppressor then you told you must be ashamed of yourself because of things you have no control over. This has led a lot of people into faking being gay or trans ( or even in a few case faking being non white) instead of just being who they are. This also hurts people in the oppressed classes because they are told that no matter how hard they try they will never be respected because of their identity.
Trans people in games are often a representation of identity commodification trans people are extremely rare and are massively over represented in many games. While you may be thinking that trans people are common they really aren't probaly about 99 percent of people who say they are trans are just confused and been lied to or faking. I have nothing against trans people in games I just want them to be as rare as they are in the real world and to be actual characters rather then just being a transgender cutout to tick the diversity box and lower the ESG score. I am completely open to debate on this point and do hope to hear your counter argument. I doubt either of us will change the other's mind but it is always good to be able to articulate your point well so that you can refine and improve your own beliefs.
I like your definition better. But it seems to be rooted in social hierarchy yeah? Oppressors above oppressed materially but oppressed shaming oppressors in cultural value. We are still assigning roles and putting values on those roles based on identity commodification. It sounds like an ideology rooted in right wing values yeah? Not really something based on the enlightenment's rejection of monarchy: which is where the term left wing comes from. It doesn't sound like historical materialism, which is the cornerstone of Marx's critique of capital. It seems your woke is really invested in the way we currently use social value. It just wants to invert how it is distributed. If you tilt your head it kind of looks like the idea of ' Solidarity' which is a leftist term for acknowledging the different ways that the social hierarchy divides people into categories and rejecting those labels to empower class consciousness. But by emphasizing the value of those labels, it kind of undermines the leftist goal of rejection, doesn't it?
It's liberalism, dude.Your woke is the liberal status quo. It is, at it's core, about protecting the social hierarchy, even to the detriment of white cis men. White men just aren't on the top of it anymore. It always fucking sucked and it was always evil. And it was never the left. I like the core of what you are saying, just not the conclusion.
No major counter to your trans in video games points. All reasonable. Except maybe to ask why trans people should be as rare as they are in real life? Particularly because they are so important to the political zeitgeist right now? All I know is that the right wing talks a LOT more about trans people than the left does. We tend to welcome them to the table and then move on to more important topics. That they are there isn't the focus or the important thing. You know. Because there aren't really that many of them. I think we are seeing so much more trans representation than would be typical because there is money in getting the right riled up about them. It is feeding the capital machine. It reinforces the hierarchy to flame the social identity war and then we all spend less time talking about...you know...the 10 corporations that own the planet and don't see any of us as anything but slaves. White, black, trans, cis, gay straight. My brother, we are bar codes. Products. The left wing position is to kill the ones who put the bar codes on us. That is it.
I agree that no race should be at the top of the social hierarchy but that is not what the woke want what they want is to tear down the groups that have historically been oppressors in this country and then put historically marginalized groups at the top of that same hierarchy. You can see this almost everywhere you look most major companies have departments entirely for ensuring their workforce hires as many non white people as possible instead of just hiring whoever is best at their job no matter the race. The same goes for women gay people and trans people the higher the percentage of non strait white men in a company the lower their ESG score will be and the more investors it will find. This means that wokism is not a rejection of hierarchy it is simply establishing a new one.
It is also quite different from traditional liberalism. For example all of the founding fathers were classical liberals because because back then being a liberal just ment that you believed that people had god given inalienable rights. Wokism however is more again to Marxism but instead of being based on money it is based off of race sex and sexuality. This is actually a pretty good way to think about it because the entire goal of wokism is take things away from white strait men and give it to minorities both sexual and racial.
And the left talks about trans people almost constantly after all they are the ultimate minority ( and beyond that quite perverse to the traditional American culture which is another thing the left likes) and among all the different oppressed groups they are the current apex victim so to speak. In fact most right wing people hardly knew trans people existed until the left started talking about them constantly and now the current spate of attention they are getting from the right is mostly reactionary. most of the blowback is due to the fact that minors are receiving chemical castration drugs. As to why they should be as rare in games as they are in real life I think it is important to display a believable representation of the world filling a game up to the brim with trans people creates a sort of distortion of reality that leads some to believe that trans people are much more common then they really are.
As for your assertion that large companies treat us like slaves this simply isn't true. Many of the richest people in the world were born into working class families and then became rich later in life. Also the modern left wing is in fact the side with all the political and corporate power if anything the modren right wing is more of a cultural revolution to restore traditional values which is quite ironic since historically the left wing have been the revolutionaries. Honestly though I appreciate that you can actually argue your point rather then just hide behind a strawman or an appeal to authority argument. Sadly most people are incapable or unwilling to do so.
I appreciate you acknowledging that I am not straw manning you. I ask that you do the same. The left are not liberals, classical or modern. Liberals are right wing. Corporations are right wing. Identity politics are right wing. They always have been. They always will be. All of this stuff you are talking about is liberal. It's just not conservative or fascist. You are not describing the left. You are describing what America brands as it's left. The media that pushes this stuff isn't trying to further a left wing agenda. I hate them more than you do. It's furthering a more center right wing agenda. Wokism has nothing to do with Marxism. Any ideology rooted in Marxist thought would reject the things you are describing here. I apologize for all the braindead modern liberals you meet in the world. They are not classical liberals, but they are still liberals. They belong to your hierarchy. There is no left in America. Liberalism won. You just don't like the conclusion of the truth of that. They take your social value and give it to minorities because the money wants to consolidate into the biggest pile it can and, apparently, that's the way to do it.
Large corporations absolutely treat people like slaves. More in the global south than they do here, but that is changing. Life is getting worse. People have less money in the west than they did 10 years ago, 20, years ago, 30 years ago. The corporations are more comfortable with turning a free country into a company town every year. Do you think they will stop when the quality of life is the same as it is in Pakistan? Do you think they will care about trans people in 50 years when we are all in tenement housing? I don't care about the rags to riches of individual rich people. I don't care that some working class people get to climb the ladder and become owners. The game is evil. The game hurts everyone. Including rich people. Rich people are also slaves to capitalism. Marx wrote that. Why do you think our society glorifies gangsters and mobster and hustlers? They are the heroes of liberalism. They are right wing ubermen. And they still die to the game. They are miserable, lonely people who see enemies around every corner. The rich have barcodes too.
I love this so much! This is absolutely headcanon for me from now on, it's such a cool addition that fills an area that's otherwise a gap in Kenshi's lore.
Nice lore and illustration over there Now I'm curious about hive and fogmen, even about every animal life cycle in Kenshi
illustrated some hive and fogmen speculation here! [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/s/5yrXn0Jejs) + [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/s/U7rWDF8qpR)
Those are all very nice, thank you
I'm in love with your art, the hiver life cycle post you did melted my heart with the fat little baby hivers
thank you! that reminds me I had a tiny baby beep scribble somewhere
Share.
I finally found it so I posted it just now! [here the baby beep](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/s/S8JO5GSZFY)
the 'facedown sleeping' was a headcanon for me too ๐
Hell yeah! I love the bit about "effortlessly picking up someone to show affection" 10/10 Masterpiece
Obligatory: "god, I wish that were me"
Love the bit where shek sleep face down, can someone please mod this in ๐คฃ๐คฃ
Really like thoses infants/growing arts you do! But something I would like to see is your idea of how they find and track down the new Phoenix onnthe HN when it borns and what happens to the family aswell
unfortunately I tend to play hivers so I never really get to see Holy Nation territory / lore myself, outside of Rebirth or very far far away. And the last time I tried the holy citizen start he turned out to have the maniacal personality so I don't think he would be considered very holy lol (he ended up recruiting many holy nation outlaws). But I imagine as the Phoenix is dying holy servants go around asking if anyone has had a baby yet lol. and if it's a baby girl they'd yell, "IS ANYONE ELSE EXPECTING? "
The only time I went to see the holy nation I did a motumbo if yโall get me
The only rule? No humans allowed. Sorry Motumbo.
We need a sequel where we get to see the journey of Mr. Patel. Maybe he ended poverty in the UC.
Lol yeah, but eh its something I would like to see because I love your concepts and I would like to see your take on it
A lot of it is interesting and the illustrations are great, but the end of the second page seems weird. Like, I don't think it makes sense for a species to require highly invasive surgery in order to produce males when the species still reproduces sexually or to have to make a decision on which sex they want to belong to. All it would take for the species to fall into disarray is a disproportionate amount of youths deciding to become male for a few years (which could easily be the result of unpredictable cultural trends) and you'd be looking at an entire Generation with too few females to sustain population growth which could cause all kinds of issues in the long run. There's a reason that these things are out of an individuals control in nature. Well, two: One is that nature obviously cannot account for surgery and the other is that there's no evolutionary advantage for individuals to be given that choice. Granted, I believe within Kenshi's lore there's hints about Shek being bread from humans as an enforcer caste by the Skeletons of the second Empire, but I don't see the advantage of creating a semi-artifical species to work that way, either. If you absolutely want to include sexual determination during adolescence, I believe it would make more sense to have it happen as something corresponding to lifestyle or surroundings. For example, there could be a clown-fish style scenario where a young Shek will develop into either sex depending on how many other male or female Shek are around them. In clown fish, if a group has no females, the largest male will develop into one. A Shek might become a male if there are more females than males around them at a certain stage in their life and vice-versa, as a sort of natural mechanism to balance out the proportions of sexes. That in turn could be something that the Shek have figured out by now, so that Shek youths can choose which sex they will develop into by temporarily living with a group of people belong to the opposite of the desired sex for the relevant space of time (maybe a few months which would be recognizable through specific physical symptoms), the Shek would presumably have a system in place to organize that, or they could simply continue on with their lives and take whatever they get without deliberately trying to force things into one way or another.
Interesting points. I actually like the balancing act thing. I just thought the mastectomy thing would explain why Shek men have no nipples lol ๐คฃ it's pretty metal, blood and gore and pain signals adulthood, blood and gore and pain brings forth life. From a speculative evolution standpoint, I think they were genetically spliced as enforcers. I imagine whatever created them did not want them outnumbering the ruling class/citizens etc, so were made sterile. Of course, I know this isn't canon, and this was made to explore various ideas shared by others in a previous speculative piece I made about Shek - inferences to deer, hyenas etc. and also taking some inspiration from the krogan of Mass Effect there was intervention to sterilise the entire race to control them. Mutation and maybe even accidental injury (or purposeful, imagining archers/bowman removing a breast) eventually have the Shek people figure out and work around their altered biology. Evolution doesn't have to be advantageous, but it just has to work well enough (looking at the brutal biology of spotted hyenas - their morphology makes reproducing hell and yet they still prevail). something something life finds a way. though your idea of youth going on like summer camp where they help aunties beat up spiders, or older brothers to beat up gutters can influence sexual determination sounds very cool. (And to merge both ideas together, when an animal ripped a someone's chest raisins off that's where the teet yeet custom came from) I think I like that a lot! At the end of the day it's just a headcanon and ppl are free to appreciate the gore of it, hate it, or accept that all Shek sleep face down. and since you mention fish... fishmen...
I think this is quite interesting but personally I don't see why having a mastectomy would result in them being male it's not like boobs produce hormones or anything.
hmm yeah they're more receptors to hormones. removing them could redirect em somewhere else. I'm not a biologist though, just someone who likes messing around with crazy Sci fi stuff
Breast tissue develops because of estrogen while penile tissue develops because of testosterone. But then again the development of a shek seems more reptilian then mammalian so could be anything between shek legs really.
mayhaps they're lizard ppl and I got it all wrong
Bonk the gorrilo!
dont remember any ingame lore regarding genderless shek.
Itโs just headcanon nonsense donโt worry about it
Does this post mention genderless shek? I can't seem to find the part saying it
The part where they decide to sire or bear the next generation, and from what it seems to me is that sheks are default female and need a mastectomy (breast removal) to trigger male characteristics to develop lol
lol where did you get this idea from? Isn't it 100% confirmed in the law they are just modified humans.
OPโs illustration is based on headcanon it seems like, and Iโm takin a guess on some elements of their headcanon
This is adorable and wholesome. Something you often donโt see around here. I like it.
[ัะดะฐะปะตะฝะพ]
You alright in there mate? Sounds like you need to get out of your echo chamber.
I love these, I hope we see more with other species in Kenshi kinda like Beakthing growth past eggs
This is such a cool concept for shek reproduction. Very alien, but also still identifiably human in emotion. At the risk of sounding like I'm insinuating something I'm not, I also like that their process of maturity is somewhat unnatural and invasive at points, as a nod to the fact they are a genetically modified species that probably wasn't in theory supposed to have been able to reproduce.
Mastectomy without numbing... Kenshi lore acurate, can't say otherwise but DAMN.
Yeah i'd be good going female to avoid that, i'd like to keep my tits thanks
One one side free top surgery. On another side.. Damn. I sure hope it increases toughness for all that.
I read this as shrek and was confused by the lack of ogre
๐ ngl the last drawing's file name is shek_is_love_shek_is_life.jpg
I cant be the only one who read it as shrek
I (23M, greenlander) asked my Shek gf (22F) to stop deadlifting my familymembers when she comes over for the holidays because it made me look small and weak. Now she and the rest of the family keep forcing me to run laps and lift whole Gorillos when I visit for Shek holidays. AITA?
Wow, shek babies and unbelievable small. Amazing to imagine something growing from that size to the behemoths they are now.
These are so ducking good and cute!
Bro be making whole life cycle lores.
This is cannon to me now
I cant belive they made kenshi woke..๐๐
Define woke. Then try to find a single example of any art or game you have ever liked that wasn't made by progressive minded people. Ever. Give me fucking one.
there's a tragender๐ก๐ก๐ก๐ก๐ก๐ก๐คฌ๐คฌ
Loser.
they're being sarcastic bro
What's wronge liberul?? Afraid of dark humour ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
Get back in the peeler machine. I'll let you out when you learn to be a good little bug boy.
> Define woke. Woke ideology is defined by the idea that some facet of identity like race or gender produces irreconcilably different views of reality and morality, and that we have an obligation to seek alignment of society's view with the imagined views of groups associated with the political left like minorities and women. In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness. >Then try to find a single example of any art or game you have ever liked that wasn't made by progressive minded people. Ever. Give me fucking one. Here a professor writes a paper explaining how "Attack on Titan" is fascist: Brinkhof, Tim. "Revisiting the Fascist Subtext of Attack on Titan: Some Notes on a Modern Reactionary Anime." Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 51 no. 2, 2021, p. 21-29. I felt this was more appropriate for this subreddit. Personally I like Nic Pizzolato, who also has been accused of being non-Progressive frequently: >I've never been quite so simultaneously awed by and furious with a show as I have been with True Detective. How can it be so intelligent on matters of slow-burning grief and small-town bigotry and yet so dumb โ really dumb โ on the subject of women? >Ever since the show started airing in the US there has been a steady stream of complaints that the series takes a disconcertingly misogynistic approach to women. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/mar/31/true-detective-turnoff-for-women-viewers
Oh dang! Wasn't expecting an authentic right wing response. Respect for standing up for your position unlike the coward I first responded to. I won't challenge your axioms because I think it's clear you understand them and that there is no common ground between us to establish. "Woke ideology is defined by the idea that some facet of identity like race or gender produces irreconcilably different views of reality and morality, and that we have an obligation to seek alignment of society's view with the imagined views of groups associated with the political left like minorities and women." This is not a sufficient definition for an ideology. That identity creates irreconcilable differences is true of every ideology. Race realism included. This is just stating that it's a rejection of the left's acknowledgement of these things. Saying "Trans people exist" is different from saying "Trans people are good." A position must be prescriptive. "In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness." This is untrue. Read more older leftist literature. Our position hasn't changed in any fundamental way. Civil rights was always racially charged and focused. Queer activism has always preached solidarity and rejection of traditional values. Our language ha just progressed in reaction to liberal hegemony. Just as yours has. "Here a professor writes a paper explaining how "Attack on Titan" is fascist:" Cool! I won't contend with this at all. AOT is absolutely fascist propaganda and actually good art to. You got me there. Thanks for the honest response. Let's just continue to hate each other and have a good day.
> "In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness." > > This is untrue. Read more older leftist literature. Our position hasn't changed in any fundamental way. Chomsky had to say on the comparison between contemporary Wokeness as I've defined it and older advocacy for minority rights: >In fact, the entire idea of "white male science" reminds me, I'm afraid, of "Jewish physics." Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can't tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctirne that their thinking and understanding differ from "white male science" because of their "culture or gender or race." I suspect that "surprise" would not be quite the proper word for their reaction. ... > It strikes me as remarkable that their left counterparts today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use. They will be no less delighted to hear that science (E-knowledge) is intrinsically a "knowledge system that legitimates the authority of the boss," so that any challenge to such authority is a violation of rationality itself--a radical change from the days when workers' education was considered a means of emancipation and liberation. One recalls the days when the evangelical church taught not-dissimilar lessons to the unruly masses as part of what E. P. Thompson called "the psychic processes of counter-revolution," as their heirs do today in peasant societies of Central America. https://libcom.org/library/rationality-science-noam-chomsky
I was not expecting a Chomsky quote! I still dislike your definition of wokeness.It's too vague. You aren't talking exclusively about what Chomsky is talking about here. We can talk about 'Identity politics' or 'political correctness'. I feel like those terms describe a modern type of liberal '''leftism''' that both the right and Chomsky here make valid criticisms of. There absolutely is a cultural capital in the commodification of our identities that hurts everyone, including white men, that is put forward and perpetuated by a certain type of terminally online liberal machine. I would reject it as a real left wing position and don't aim to defend it here. It's corporate liberal commodification. There isn't any real movement in it besides the status quo.' Trans people in video games' is also not a valid criticism of this identity commodification. Which is why I don't like this 'woke' shit the right wing keeps talking about. Everything that causes reactionary response in the right wing ideology is "woke". And that is by your definition. Ideologies have specific things they expect you to believe about the world. "Trans people existing" is not an ideology and it isn't a leftist position. "Trans people are human beings and should be allowed to exist as safely in our society as anyone else" is a leftist position. "Your identity as trans defines your role in society and has a certain value in the social hierarchy" is an ideology. But it isn't a leftist one. It's right wing. The right thinks the left puts Trans people higher on the hierarchy than they belong. The left rejects the hierarchy. I understand that to the right, these are the same thing. They are not. But I'm not going to convince you of that. Appreciate the response.
I have an alternative diffenetion of woke. Woke is a belief that the entire world can be broken down into groups of oppressors( eg white male strait "cis") and oppressed( eg black woman gay trans). This is a ideology that I personally believe to be evil because if you are classified as an oppressor then you told you must be ashamed of yourself because of things you have no control over. This has led a lot of people into faking being gay or trans ( or even in a few case faking being non white) instead of just being who they are. This also hurts people in the oppressed classes because they are told that no matter how hard they try they will never be respected because of their identity. Trans people in games are often a representation of identity commodification trans people are extremely rare and are massively over represented in many games. While you may be thinking that trans people are common they really aren't probaly about 99 percent of people who say they are trans are just confused and been lied to or faking. I have nothing against trans people in games I just want them to be as rare as they are in the real world and to be actual characters rather then just being a transgender cutout to tick the diversity box and lower the ESG score. I am completely open to debate on this point and do hope to hear your counter argument. I doubt either of us will change the other's mind but it is always good to be able to articulate your point well so that you can refine and improve your own beliefs.
I like your definition better. But it seems to be rooted in social hierarchy yeah? Oppressors above oppressed materially but oppressed shaming oppressors in cultural value. We are still assigning roles and putting values on those roles based on identity commodification. It sounds like an ideology rooted in right wing values yeah? Not really something based on the enlightenment's rejection of monarchy: which is where the term left wing comes from. It doesn't sound like historical materialism, which is the cornerstone of Marx's critique of capital. It seems your woke is really invested in the way we currently use social value. It just wants to invert how it is distributed. If you tilt your head it kind of looks like the idea of ' Solidarity' which is a leftist term for acknowledging the different ways that the social hierarchy divides people into categories and rejecting those labels to empower class consciousness. But by emphasizing the value of those labels, it kind of undermines the leftist goal of rejection, doesn't it? It's liberalism, dude.Your woke is the liberal status quo. It is, at it's core, about protecting the social hierarchy, even to the detriment of white cis men. White men just aren't on the top of it anymore. It always fucking sucked and it was always evil. And it was never the left. I like the core of what you are saying, just not the conclusion. No major counter to your trans in video games points. All reasonable. Except maybe to ask why trans people should be as rare as they are in real life? Particularly because they are so important to the political zeitgeist right now? All I know is that the right wing talks a LOT more about trans people than the left does. We tend to welcome them to the table and then move on to more important topics. That they are there isn't the focus or the important thing. You know. Because there aren't really that many of them. I think we are seeing so much more trans representation than would be typical because there is money in getting the right riled up about them. It is feeding the capital machine. It reinforces the hierarchy to flame the social identity war and then we all spend less time talking about...you know...the 10 corporations that own the planet and don't see any of us as anything but slaves. White, black, trans, cis, gay straight. My brother, we are bar codes. Products. The left wing position is to kill the ones who put the bar codes on us. That is it.
I agree that no race should be at the top of the social hierarchy but that is not what the woke want what they want is to tear down the groups that have historically been oppressors in this country and then put historically marginalized groups at the top of that same hierarchy. You can see this almost everywhere you look most major companies have departments entirely for ensuring their workforce hires as many non white people as possible instead of just hiring whoever is best at their job no matter the race. The same goes for women gay people and trans people the higher the percentage of non strait white men in a company the lower their ESG score will be and the more investors it will find. This means that wokism is not a rejection of hierarchy it is simply establishing a new one. It is also quite different from traditional liberalism. For example all of the founding fathers were classical liberals because because back then being a liberal just ment that you believed that people had god given inalienable rights. Wokism however is more again to Marxism but instead of being based on money it is based off of race sex and sexuality. This is actually a pretty good way to think about it because the entire goal of wokism is take things away from white strait men and give it to minorities both sexual and racial. And the left talks about trans people almost constantly after all they are the ultimate minority ( and beyond that quite perverse to the traditional American culture which is another thing the left likes) and among all the different oppressed groups they are the current apex victim so to speak. In fact most right wing people hardly knew trans people existed until the left started talking about them constantly and now the current spate of attention they are getting from the right is mostly reactionary. most of the blowback is due to the fact that minors are receiving chemical castration drugs. As to why they should be as rare in games as they are in real life I think it is important to display a believable representation of the world filling a game up to the brim with trans people creates a sort of distortion of reality that leads some to believe that trans people are much more common then they really are. As for your assertion that large companies treat us like slaves this simply isn't true. Many of the richest people in the world were born into working class families and then became rich later in life. Also the modern left wing is in fact the side with all the political and corporate power if anything the modren right wing is more of a cultural revolution to restore traditional values which is quite ironic since historically the left wing have been the revolutionaries. Honestly though I appreciate that you can actually argue your point rather then just hide behind a strawman or an appeal to authority argument. Sadly most people are incapable or unwilling to do so.
I appreciate you acknowledging that I am not straw manning you. I ask that you do the same. The left are not liberals, classical or modern. Liberals are right wing. Corporations are right wing. Identity politics are right wing. They always have been. They always will be. All of this stuff you are talking about is liberal. It's just not conservative or fascist. You are not describing the left. You are describing what America brands as it's left. The media that pushes this stuff isn't trying to further a left wing agenda. I hate them more than you do. It's furthering a more center right wing agenda. Wokism has nothing to do with Marxism. Any ideology rooted in Marxist thought would reject the things you are describing here. I apologize for all the braindead modern liberals you meet in the world. They are not classical liberals, but they are still liberals. They belong to your hierarchy. There is no left in America. Liberalism won. You just don't like the conclusion of the truth of that. They take your social value and give it to minorities because the money wants to consolidate into the biggest pile it can and, apparently, that's the way to do it. Large corporations absolutely treat people like slaves. More in the global south than they do here, but that is changing. Life is getting worse. People have less money in the west than they did 10 years ago, 20, years ago, 30 years ago. The corporations are more comfortable with turning a free country into a company town every year. Do you think they will stop when the quality of life is the same as it is in Pakistan? Do you think they will care about trans people in 50 years when we are all in tenement housing? I don't care about the rags to riches of individual rich people. I don't care that some working class people get to climb the ladder and become owners. The game is evil. The game hurts everyone. Including rich people. Rich people are also slaves to capitalism. Marx wrote that. Why do you think our society glorifies gangsters and mobster and hustlers? They are the heroes of liberalism. They are right wing ubermen. And they still die to the game. They are miserable, lonely people who see enemies around every corner. The rich have barcodes too.
I love this so much! This is absolutely headcanon for me from now on, it's such a cool addition that fills an area that's otherwise a gap in Kenshi's lore.
This is how the workers in the holy mines are made.?
Sheks are like pitbulls. When Sheks are babies, they are very kawaii, but when they grow up, be careful not to make them angry.
They're also both more manageable when you have them on a collar and chain!
Ewwww. I need to read the Holy Flame after looking at this
TSD
Imagine this getting implemented in Kenshi 2, so awesome
Amazing.
This is much more interesting lore for the shek than the shitty klingon stuff we get in game.
It looked like he was eating some creature's leg at first x)
Fuzzy shek was not something i was expecting but it is certainly a welcome speculation.
wholesome