Ok but why would I want to read a story where every negative aspect of capitalism, a thing we’re all personally affected by, is taken to a logical extreme and you can’t even make a meaningful difference and just have to deal with it? What does it say about the media landscape when so many dystopian writers have always seen fit to have endings where all efforts to change things fail and/or the story doesn’t even mention this possibility? It’s supposed to be a critique about trends in modern society and how bad they could get in theory, at least that’s how the genre started.
But ever since the beginning with Orwell, the most common ending, and most common theme, tends to be “there’s no way to fix this, the heroes fail”. I feel like a lot of people think it’s bold and brave and honest to have endings like that, but I think it’s cowardly, and cheap, and uselessly cynical. It’s far more powerful and impactful to have the status quo changed and a better world emerge. That tells people things can be changed if you fight for it, it’s not inevitable, we can do something about this. A sad ending tells you “this is the way things are going, just lay down and die I guess.” It’s actually a whole lot more convenient for the people who uphold the systems you’re criticizing. If you don’t suggest ideas for change, big companies don’t have to worry about people eating into their bottom line. Considering this game became a symbol for the massively abusive work culture in the gaming industry (especially the company that made it, which was front and center of the criticism), I feel like maybe this “punk” isn’t as counterculture as punk is meant to be. The Cyberpunk endings are actually the perfect example of why tragic endings can make a work worse than it could be.
Who said you had to read the story or play the game? Nobody.
That’s there is such a thing called ‘Genre’, so there is always something for someone.
I don’t think you are supposed to take down Big Corp in Cyberpunk. I don’t remember any game where you could do such a thing.
You are supposed to play within the confines of the world and it’s corrupt. And that’s the attraction to it. Similar to people who play Fallout games, where everything is gone and we are left with dust, mutants, and radiation.
Or take Medieval, you don’t get to be king. You don’t get to command a huge Army, you just a sell sword for hire…an adventurer.
A couple of years ago I would’ve agreed with you. But reality suck, and the truth is: No matter how much you wish you can change things, you can only change small things. Not the big ones. As it is, humanity is fighting a losing battle against it self.
So telling stories where we preach ‘Yeah! Keep on fighting and one day we will be Victorious!’ really come off as selling dreams and lies.
I take a depressing ending over false hope personally.
I don’t think Cyberpunk the game made by Cdprojkt did justice to the setting of Cyberpunk the original game where it came from.
That’s not tragic, that’s shitty.
The Titanic sinking was Tragic. Cyberpunk Ending was just shit camouflaged as ‘Good’.
Yeah I think that’s bad too. That’s what I’m saying. This is exactly my issue. Applies to the source material too.
I always hear people talk like this about how change will never truly come and all that and I usually find they get proven wrong about whatever they’re talking about in a few years when something massively changes. I’ll save real world examples for the politics thread but literally every major change to the status quo in my life time had dozens of people saying it’d never happen be The System ™ is too strong for the little people to make a difference. Cynicism feels comforting in some ways, because if something is just how things work, then you just have to deal with it, cope. Don’t have to worry about change and upheaval, what needs to happen to make said changes. Coping is less daunting than improving things. Doesn’t make it true.
This thread is literally called “tropes and stories you hate”. This is not a place for “don’t like, don’t read”. It’s fine if you like it but this is the place where we tear things we don’t like apart. Statistically, stories and tropes you like will end up here too, it happens to me all the time.
Oddly enough, I sometimes enjoy tearing apart works that I like (probably because if I don’t like it, then I don’t care enough to even complain about it).
I understood where you were coming from for every other part of the posts you’ve made about this topic, but this one confuses me. The IF doesn’t insinuate in any way that these things are your fault or are things that can be brushed under the rug in any way, as far as how I read it? Like, I read the pencil incident as the MC’s very young realization of just how helpless they were when it came to that, and everyone else (your family, the teacher,) seemed to be horrified by it. And the whole thing with your mom isn’t at all framed like your fault. …Unless I entirely misinterpreted what you meant by that, and you were just talking about how your MC saw it, haha .
This… isn’t true, though? Like I get what you mean by this, but disregarding the whole “hey, caring about and accommodating someone you love isn’t a burden” thing, your presence is pretty explicitly positive for Sally, in that she can’t see your future and isn’t plagued with Visions Of Your Death and such. Now, whether or not her presence is wanted is another thing, (so far she’s my least favorite character, but that’s just because I don’t find her mannerisms too endearing or her character as interesting as the others, haha.) but you aren’t a burden to her at all.
But I’m also not gonna lie and say a suicide ending doesn’t intrigue me. A sacrifice one ESPECIALLY so. And, yeah, the MC’s circumstances ARE incredibly sad and depressing, haha. To be honest, Mind Blind is kind of hard for me to play just because I find making a character that’s somehow still continuing despite everything kind of hard; the whole thing with Nick coming back and you now being a 5 on the scale changed that, but the aftermath… Oh dear. I don’t want to think about that.
…This is all presuming Nick gets his body back, though… which I know some MC’s really do want, and his presence would just exacerbate everything they despise about being a 0, but my MC sees it as a win-win for them. Their brother is alive AND they aren’t a 0 anymore? SCORE!! (Don’t think about the complete lack of autonomy your brother has now, just like you did hahaha don’t even worry about that don’t feel guilty !! It’s fine!!!)
See I actually think there’s an issue with this particular mentality, logically speaking.
Superpowers do often give people abnormally large ability to be dangerous, but you can make that case for a lot of things it’s wrong to ban or discriminate against. Regular people can do a lot of horrible things if they put their minds to it, and towards getting the means to do it, but it’s simply not possible to ban everything you can do that with. And superpowers are no exception.
Like, sure, someone could blow up a city block with super powers and kill lots of people, but terrorists often do this with regular bombs. Not even military grade ones, home made. And we can’t ban all the materials you can do that with, it’s not possible. Or say a super can make dangerous, addictive substances with their body. You can also do that with cough syrup and other stuff like that. But obviously, people need cough medicine.
Some things can be controlled but not banned. And in much the same way, segregating with super powers is not going to stop more people with powers from popping up in most settings. It happens constantly. Someone gets exposed to an off brand soda, there’s a 50% chance the sketchy ingredients give you super powers.
And to prove my point further, in these stories, lots of people with no powers find other ways to do both good and bad. The Joker has a body count that rivals even the strongest supervillain, except for like, alien invaders and good luck legislating that away. “The law says you can’t nuke us from orbit.” Heck, lots of heroes and villains use comic science that enables this stuff with no in born powers. “Don’t you think it’s reasonable to keep an eye on anyone who can blow things up with your mind?” No actually, Tony, I do not, because you have a power suit that fires wrist missiles, and when they tried to regulate that, you complained.
Ironically, the MCU made one of the few good cases for laws like this because the legislation, while unfair in many areas, focused more on government oversight on heroes specifically, NOT just people with powers, though the Accords do do problematic things with that in the tv shows.
One thing I always notice that no one points out with Super Registration Act type deals is that everything you can do to harm people using powers is already a crime. Blowing up a city block is already terrorism, mass murder, and destruction of property (not as important obviously but still something you’ll be charged with). Doing it with super powers gets you the same sentence as with bombs. There’s no point in adding additional penalties for superpowers and having the dilemma of discrimination, the same sentence should deter both powered and non-powered people alike. If that’s not working, you need either stronger sentences or a solution to whatever is motivating all these attacks. It’s the same with the drugs and stuff too. Locking up anyone who needs painkillers isn’t going to curtail the drug trade. It’s the same thing.
Every cynic call’s themselves a realist. It changes nothing. I know you think it’s reality, I doubt you’d say it otherwise. I’ve faced this stuff too, we all have. Your conclusions are not inherently more correct. And since I don’t back your conclusions about what’s “reality”, I’m not going to like stuff that endorses it. Simple as.
The whole “no one’s forcing you to read the story” implies “don’t like, don’t read”. But also, to answer your question, most people do not know the ending beforehand. People often don’t want to know the ending beforehand.
More importantly, it’s just false to say it’s ‘core aspect of cyberpunk’. In MANY founding Cyberpunk works, the protag just win and the Megacorps collapse onto themselves, leaving place for something else to rise.
Hell, even in the Cyberpunk tabletop itself, you have official campaigns where your characters just win against the biggest top dogs of the setting.
It does when you start realizing you could just replace ‘superpowers’ with ‘being able to see’ in a world where everyone else is blind.
Tall Poppy Syndrome IS a major form of discrimination after all and people do need to be faced with ‘Do you truly think it’s fair and justified to hamstring someone who has done no wrong except being born in a way that make you feel unsafe, insecure and / or uncomfortable?’. Same for the ‘Crabs in a bucket’ mentality. Like we all know the classic story of kids ganging up on the smartest guy in class or the older kids bullying the younger ones who skipped a grade.
Why should someone who can lift a ton get crippled just because you and most other people can’t lift that much? Would YOU let yourself be blinded if you found yourself in a world where you’re the only human who can see?
Oh actually speaking of that, we do content warnings usually as an unskippable first page thing. As nothing really bothers me I get spoiled for nothing. And this being an interactive medium I feel this is unneeded, you could at least like have a choice to go see them. Like first page is offering to take you to the warning.
I mean, the status quo, at least in regards to Arasaka, changes in most endings, and you didn’t even have much of a part to play in most of them. Like the whole reason the tragedy starts us because someone else was doing changes and you just so happened to be the fall guy.
Also it could be used to show how oppressive the setting is. Like cyberpunk in particular everyone is landlocked because an a.i kills everyone at sea. I’m surprised your bionics aren’t subscription based or playing ads. And we seen them being shut off with corpo.
Anyway I would say shoeing in a happy ending is pretty lazy. There’s no need to cite realism or a lack of in either way and just how with your setting. I mean I love dragon’s dogma despite the endings. Plus like, Dark Souls and Yoko Taro. Again Cyberpunk change was ultimately made, mostly not by you because the story is more personal, like most of the time you don’t even get revenge for yourself because it’s all about living.
Anyway with the powers thing. Yeah I tend to dislike it strictly as a metaphor for insert minority. Since you can always shift it to a weapon analogy at that point. If it’s random or some can’t control it it just gets worse. Even if in universe it is a race thing.
Mages in dragon age I do think is one of the examples where I do see it as more racial. Since most discriminate based on demons, which could happen to anyone. Nevermind the party mage oppressors are an uncle tom, I’m not like the other elves, and my sad backstory made me prejudiced.
Also I feel like present day morality would naturally oppress people with powers anyway. Power should be used to protect the weak>. You have literal powers why aren’t you wasting away protecting us. Like if apathy is evil, especially when you have power, than life would be intrinsically unfair for them even besides being a threat.
I have been reading a lot of WIPs the last few days, and one tiny little thing that keeps popping up, and which bothers me waaayy out of reasonable proportions, is when princes and princesses (who are children or siblings of rulers, not rulers in their own right) gets titled ‘your Majesty’ instead of ‘your (royal) Highness’.
I’m pretty sure NWN2 and the MotB expansion weren’t made by Bioware?
hey, you are right! It was made by Obsidian and published by Atari.
Weird, I always thought it was Bioware for some reason…
It would explain why the writing is good (I’m still bitter I didn’t get to sledgehammer that fucking Wall of the Faithless thought…but I heard it was covered in a comic…shame. Would have loved to blast it, would’ve made the expansion that delicious…)
The issue is when these people are actively dangerous to people around them, whether they want to cause harm or not. All these tall poppies and being one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind don’t mean shit if you can harm someone just by existing, if you actively cause harm by existing like some X-Men mutants.
You’re essentially a living nuke with all the radiation trails and hilarious consequences of all that being a nuke entails. Honestly, I’d probably be much happier living in a separate community where I know for sure I won’t harm anyone with my powers. Tall poppies and one-eyed men don’t cause people’s skulls to crack, they don’t turn into rampaging abominations. They’re still people with the abilities of people that usually do not harm others by simply existing.
You can harm people just by existing if everyone else is made of glass.
Tell that to people who blame nukes on Oppenheimer being an ‘uncontrolled genius’. Replacing societal harm with physical harm is just there to make the conflict personal and resolvable on a matter of days instead of decades to even start showing effects, that doesn’t really change the metaphor in any substantial way.
Couldn’t you just… give them power dampeners or something, to avoid causing accidentally harming others by existing? I mean, in a setting where that kind of powers exist, there usually also exists technology to neutralize them, right?
Depend in the setting and then you get into the issue that a mutant without powers change from ‘we’re scared’ to ‘Hey, easy target’, with the usual argument of ‘Now that the dog is muzzled and can’t bite, let’s put it down so it can’t ever remove the muzzle’.
And it doesn’t change the ‘Lobotomize someone selectively if they’re too smart in a way that rock the boat of society’ aspect of it, which is just no good.
Obviously you also have powers that just passively cause harm and can’t be controlled at all but those are never part of the discrimination allegory, those are more about people who just aren’t compatible with society, like people with uncontrollable urges to cause harm. Otherwise there’d be no reason to make the power fully uncontrolable, unlike the X-men where even laser-eyes can just be controlled with training and time.
But I was indeed thinking of some harmful passive power that can’t be turned off. I mean, I’d see it more as “wear a mask to not spread respiratory viruses” but. Anyway I was more thinking of practicalities in-world, not any allegories.
(I do like the Mythcreants’ take on the subject though.)
In term of practicality, you can just go with how the X-men do it, not only they learn to control their powers but they also get devices that make it easier to control the powers, like with Cyclops and his glasses.
That way you avoid the problems of the power dampeners and ethically don’t have to deal with the problems of ‘we put a proverbial leash on people’ while also helping with the ‘powers can be dangerous’ issue.
Maybe I’m using the word wrong then, because if I’d need a device to make sure I don’t accidentally activate my powers in my sleep, I would call it a power dampener.
(Although my setting is also just… trying to help people to deal with their superpower-caused problems instead of discriminating based on them, so I’m probably looking at this differently.)
Gonna disagree. Superpower allegory to racism/ableism is extra stupid. Average black guy is no more dangerous than a average white guy, but a guy who can punch a hole in a brick wall without breaking every bone is his arm is quite a bit more dangerous than them both together. One drunken brawl or just being pissed, ooops your house is torn down and/or you are a bloody smear on the ground.
Even worse if there are a group of people can control minds. A single rogue actor and a lot of lives are ruined. Even more tragic if they can’t control their powers.
At least a registry of people with powers. I know they can’t do anything about having powers but for safety of powerless people some things need to be sacrificed.
Is that cruel? Yes it is, but for safety of masses some restrictions need to exist.
You mean the thing that happen with normal humans? With people who take the wrong punch during a drunken brawl and just die and drunken people getting mad and committing arson?
You can’t punish a population for what one MIGHT do, that’s just insane. By that logic the third world should destroy the west because one wrong guy and we’d be nuking millions.
Oh yeah, registry of minority groups, those totally go well and don’t turn into target lists. How the hell is that gonna make anyone safer or control their power better at all?
Funny how it’s always one side that need to sacrifice and it’s never the side making the decision. How about for the freedom and dignity of humans, some safety need to be sacrificed?
Glad we agree so it shouldn’t be done. ‘I have a reason for my cruelty’ isn’t an excuse and by definition, cruelty isn’t something you can do ‘for the greater good’, it’s something you inflict because you don’t care.
Read ‘With Folded Hands’ one day.
You can justify literally everything with ‘for the safety of the nebulous masses’.
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!! It’s fine!!!)