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cultureulterior

@cultureulterior / cultureulterior.tumblr.com

Transhumanist, anti-deathist, rationalist-adjacent, cryoprocrastinating, no-ea, yud was right, Tech exec, London
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wake up, wormblr, it's time for your irregularly scheduled schizopost:

so in an earlier post i discussed the ways in which worm resembles literature of the first world war--its style of violence, its psychoanalytic tropes--but i believe now that that was inaccurate. where i recognized one of worm's defining characteristics (its lack of ideology) i failed to put it in the appropriate theoretical framework. i now understand it is End-of-History Fiction.

i reached this insight while reading about the contemporary mexican civil war: i believe that, just james cameron's Avatar is essentially gillo pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers repackaged to be sold to an american population incurably brainpoisoned by a century of insidious hollywood plot-structuring, worm is essentially an attempt to repackage the battle between the mexican government and the los zetas drug cartel for a generation of hpmor readers. at the center of worm is, for all intents and purposes, a non-ideological civil war between the commonwealth of massachusetts (although political borders are not a useful concept here, as we shall discuss later) and a whole concatenation of gangs, namely the one of which the undersiders are but one part. but these are not gangs--as in the case of los zetas--that run according to the antiquated patriarchal model as exemplified by the italian mafia; instead, they are entirely sans ideology.

they are, as opposed to the familially or religiously or politically bound criminal/terrorist actors of the twentieth century, essentially an-narco-capitalist in nature. they have no goal but the bottom line. their mode of governing is a return to what foucault would call the society of sovereignty, which defined the feudal era. as reporter seth harp says of the so-called drug war in mexico: "it isn't that the governors are corrupt so much as they are of the cartel." but crucially, this is backed by conspiracies of technocapitalists (cauldron in worm; the united states in the case of mexico). the global circulation of drugs, guns, and money requires a speed only attained through the porousness of borders made possible by neoliberal policies such as NAFTA. both wars are not feudal but neo-feudal.

in his book Specters of Marx, jacques derrida describes the fundamentally christian eschato-teleology of hegel's conception of history, which francis fukuyama adapts and updates for the post-cold war world. this is the method by which worm reconciles its cynical post- or anti-ideology with its messianic content (in the form of taylor, who is far more christlike than moses-like, defined by the sublimated violence engendered by the "turning of the cheek"). post-coil brockton bay is the concretization of the ultimate logic of neoliberal capitalism as anticipated by fukuyama. (remember, hegel did not believe that the victory of the liberal state would end conflict forever; he believed conflict was eternal.)

just as in mexico, brockton bay exemplifies what derrida would call the hauntology of liberal democracy. there is a promise of democracy, an injunction to democracy, but there is no democracy. these words defined the twentieth century, and in the twenty-first, where they have nominally "won," they are not to be found. there is only the farce of khepri.

“Finally they’re closed. No more atoms, pure renewables from now on!”

Not only are they putting on a celebration of the end of nuclear power generation in Germany, but the adjacent sign on the same board advertises a talk about the “climate protection policy” of the main governing party ― a policy which apparently consists in burning more coal.

How can anyone be so depraved?

It’s no excuse to be misinformed : when the information is so readily available, a person must want to believe lies.

the smug grin on the face of the cartoon nature god adds so much to the germanness of this little slice of hell. it’s the same look congregationalists and unitarians get when they tell you some dead shopkeeper had it coming. the grimace of a repulsive idiot who’s decided to fuck up the world and believe nonsense on purpose, who’s not fit for self-governance and never will be. we should colonize germany, hang merkel and schulz from a gas station girder, and replace berlin with a nuclear plant

forcefem is funny like the concept. youre meant to want that on purpose dummy

lmao okay yeah good point. why do i have to do all this stuff someone else should do it (to me)

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Meiji period fashion was some of the best in the world, speaking purely from an aesthetic standpoint you can really see the collision of European and Japanese standards of beauty and how their broad agreement even in particulars (the similarity between Japanese and Gibson girl bouffants, the obi vs the corset, the obi knot vs the bustle, the mutual covetousness for exotic textiles, the feverish swapping of both art styles and subjects) combined and produced some of the most interesting cultural exchange we have this level of documentation for. Europeans were wearing kimono or adapting them into tea gowns, japanese were pairing lacy Edwardian blouses with skirt hakama and little button up boots. haori jackets with bowler hats and European style lapels. if steampunk was any good as an aesthetic it would steal wholesale from the copious records we have in both graphic arts and photography of how people were dressing in this milieu.

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«The botany professor,» from Kkokei Shimbun, October 20, 1908. she's wearing a kimono blouse or haori, edwardian skirt or hakama, gibson girl bouffant, a lacy high-collar blouse with cravat and brooch, and a pocket watch with chain

1910-1930 (Taishō era, right after Meiji, which I should have included in my OP) men's haori with western lapels

"No parent should have to bury their child," said Theoden.

"No child should have to bury their parent," said Gandalf the White. "None should die. Let us make war on Ilûvatar until all are as he."

"Is godslaying the madness of all white wizards," asked Gimli, "or just you and Saruman?"

"Madness, perhaps," said Legolas, "but there is something sweeter here, which Elves know and cannot share."

"It can be shared," said Aragorn, and the light of the Elfstone glittered in his had

I’m not talking about Velma with this but I genuinely do not care if people make a cynical remake of a beloved cartoon franchise where the characters are terrible people like that can lead to a bad show that’s written poorly or a good show that’s written well but people being like saddened by it is like, do you also get “depressed” over 3rd graders making jokes about Barney getting blown up and ahh his guts are everywhere

counterpoint: it's not actually the same when the rightsholder does it, because it's a reminder that rightsholders are worse stewards of IP than the general public, because they view media purely as assets rather than as having intrinsic value. if a fan did this sort of thing it'd be wholly unobjectionable, but the fact is that any such series a fan made would be illegal (de facto where not de jure), regardless of its merit or lack thereof! if someone is going to monopolize a resource that many people care about more than they do -- even one that's very stupid, like Scooby-Doo -- then people will judge their use of that resource with a particular harshness.