Would you like to live in the SR universe?, Soy, Acid Rain, Invae, Woohoo!!! Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[emo samurai]

On one hand, you have magic and gizmos and gadgets. Magic fucking rocks, and if the Awakening happens, I will become a mage by virtue of my rocking. Crippled people will walk and manipulate things again because of cloned organs and cyberware. Most current diseases will have been cured because of crazy unethical medical research.

On the other hand, you have soy food, monsters that go bump and "grr eat human" in the night, and megacorporate control. Oh, and cybered gangs, and drugs, and coffin motels, and... you get the point.

So which world would you live in, our world, or the world of sort-of-darkness?

[ShadowDragon8685]

That's more of a human phenomina. Almost anything seems better than what you're in right now.

You ever heard an old guy grumping about the good old days? That's because he's in the now, and he's forgotten what life was actually life back then, and he just remembers all the good things, like being 20 years old and courting his beau.

Or any of us, who love escapist fantasy. D&D, Shadowrun, whatever. We hate modern day life. Iraq, Afghanistan, terror in the air, 9/11...

Some of us pine for a future where mages and trolls exist and you can master your own destiny with a cyberdeck/comlink/set of cyberware/magical powers.

Some of us pine for heroic fantasy, where the elves were beautiful and put out, the heros were huge and heroic, and evil was powerful but dumb, and thus overcomable.

Some of us pine for romantic notions about pirate gold and treasure, and high adventure on the high seas. (Watch Pirates of the Caribbean again, it'll come back to you.)

Hell, some of us think that being back in the Cold War would be better than now. In a way, it's true. We were 99.99% certain that the Soviets didn't want to see their way of life anhilliated any more than we wanted to see ours anhilliated, and we were at least 50% sure they didn't nessessarily want to anhilliate our way of life, only safeguard theirs.

You could understand and reason with the Soviets. The modern day terror? No way. How can one reason with someone who will strap a vest of explosives on and detonate it in a crowded bus? They literally think that if they blow up the world and in doing so anhilliate our way of life, they'll get on the express straight to heaven and their 77 virgins.

Or worse, Kim-Jong Il, the lunatic nut who takes brinksmanship to a whole new level. The North Korean has no freedom of information, he only knows what he's allowed to know, and he's been brainwashed and propagandized into believing that we could sweep over the border at any minute to wipe out their democratic people's republic. (Even if it's democratic and a republic in name only.) Thusly, he'll fight to the death.

You can't reason with that. And frankly it's scary.*


Or hell, you could pine for the days of WWII, where everything was clean-cut, everybody knew without doubt that we were fighting a war that was not only just and rightious, but that would dictate the terms of our civilization's unfolding for at least a century to come, and probably longer. Sure, the technology sucked and yadda yadda, but at least you could look in a mirror and say "I'm doing what is right, and if I don't, my children are either going to be shipped to a gas chamber, or grow up swearing Heil Hitler."

You can't get that today. Freedom of information and the sensationalist press cloud things and tint them to the point that you can't do anything without being called a bully. And when you try, shit gets ploughed in your face.

Yes, I do believe Afghanistan and Iraq needed to be invaded. I do not believe invading Iraq under false pretenses was good. I do not believe going in with only vauge goals and no definable exit strategy was good. The only good thing that has come so far of the war in Iraq is the nipping in the bud of the Hussein Dynasty.



*Yes, I am expressing my own opinions. Islamic fundies scare the shit out of me, just like fundies of any stripe would if I had reasonable cause to believe they could get their hands on some very nasty weapons of mass death. I'm not accusing every moslem or arab of being a lunatic - I'm just saying that the lunatics amongst them scare me pale.