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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2246 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 29, 2025

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In the current cultural moment, progressivism is mostly associated with shoddy, preachy art. I could name names, but I think everyone has at least one example that comes to mind. So: is there an example, today, of good progressive art? I’d say yes, and point to Toby Fox’s DELTARUNE.

DELTARUNE is a pseudo-sequel to the extraordinary success of Undertale, with most of the same characters but almost none of the same plot points. Both games are fairly linear 2D turn-based RPGs with some puzzle and real-time elements.

First, in what way is it progressive?

  • The game is absolutely saturated in gender non-conformance. The fighter of the party is a tough girl. The healer is a sensitive boy in a dress. The main character is deliberately androgynous, and is referred to as “they.” The main romance that features is lesbian.
  • Ditto pluralism. Most of the characters are “monsters,” which are generally anthropomorphized but come in all varieties. The main character is the one human. They all live happily together.
  • To expand on this, the “enemies” in the game are not really enemies. Persuade them a little, and they will lay down arms. Mistake theory predominates.

So, what makes the game good?

  • On the aesthetic front, the obvious standout is the music. Toby Fox is a competent and creative composer with a real flair for making catchy tunes.
  • Equally, the game oozes creative vision and whimsy. It’s full of interesting ideas - like a computer-themed level replete with viruses, ads, and a “Tasque Manager” - which it executes on splendidly.
  • In that vein, Toby Fox also is superb at tying everything in the game together like an auteur. The sound matches the gameplay matches the story matches the graphics. It is very hard to find anything seriously out of place. (I do not call him an auteur simply because that implies that all ideas for the game source from him, when there are very obviously sections that match someone else’s vision. What he does is seamlessly mesh those sections into the overall experience.)
  • The gameplay is also quite expansive. It includes elements of bullet hells, rhythm games, etc, all as they make sense. The game is never shy to add something new if it might be fresh or interesting. This especially livens up the combat.

But what I think makes this a good PROGRESSIVE game is something a little different:

  • The game is not slavishly progressive. It is set in a small town, where everyone knows one another and goes to church on Sundays. This is portrayed as a little stifling but also kind of sweet. There are plenty of straight and gender-conforming characters (though it’s pretty low on typical machismo). It does not follow line item requirements on any topics du jour, and indeed there is a section lampooning a polyamorous “throuple” (Toby’s words, not mine) run by a deeply obnoxious busybody pushing around two hapless and unhappy orbiters.
  • Real-world politics are totally absent. There is no sexism. There is no analogue to any real racial group. There are rich and poor people, and differences between them, but there’s no hatred for one or the other.
  • The characters themselves are compelling. I’m not going to go so far as to say they’re particularly deep, but Toby is great at showing rather than telling, and overall they ring true. Small example: at the start of the game, you wake up in a room with two beds. One has a shelf full of trophies and awards and all kinds of cool games, music discs, and so on. The one you wake up in is barren and gray. It very quickly becomes apparent that your older brother is off at college. This paints a picture that does not need extensive textual elaboration. You get a sense of who your character is from the world you inhabit and how people talk to you. This pattern is repeated over, and over, and over, and it’s quite refreshing.

These points are where most progressive art falters. It slavishly follows a set of predefined norms, instead of the artist’s opinions; it drowns itself in politics and analogy; its characters exist purely to push one or another point, which must be driven home explicitly, and wind up flat because of it. This creates something pretty drab and uninteresting, no matter the political stance which generates it.

I’ll leave off there. I don’t want to point too much attention to the line-items of progressive ideology in the game, which are better suited to the CW thread, but draw out how art is able to include ideology without being consumed by it, which I consider fun enough for Friday.

Opinions on DELTARUNE or other ideological but non-terrible art welcome.

These points are where most progressive art falters. It slavishly follows a set of predefined norms, instead of the artist’s opinions; it drowns itself in politics and analogy;

Interestingly, it feels like doing the exact opposite of this this is how the best "Social Justice" episodes of Star Trek excel. They'll take a topic where the audience will reflexively pattern-match to modern social issues, but then the writers take careful effort to never break the fourth wall and point out the comparison. They never use obvious terms that would make the viewer take a side. They maintain plausible deniability the whole time.

I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that back when the older series were produced, those ideas were genuinely subversive, and you had to have both skill and subtlety to avoid getting fired. That's not really the case anymore, so the material ends up looking like a fun house mirror version of world war II propaganda entertainment.

These points are where most progressive art falters. It slavishly follows a set of predefined norms, instead of the artist’s opinions; it drowns itself in politics and analogy; its characters exist purely to push one or another point, which must be driven home explicitly, and wind up flat because of it.

This is where my language differs; this is 'art that happens to show a progressive worldview' and not 'progressive art', which I believe is by definition driven by hatred for all non-progressive worldviews. Same thing with Christian art, for that matter, for exactly the same reasons- if you ever wondered what the difference between a Chick tract and Lord of the Rings is, it's this.

Maybe you could call it a Traditionalist game because a certain negative aspect of Ralsei 'being a girly/GNC boy' is not only revealed, but actively punished? I dunno.

Anyway, I posit that a work in which 'mistake theory predominates' can't really be specifically labelled to ideology-specific. "Correct" is not a political identity- though I get that they all pretend to have a monopoly on it.

Oh yeah, and depending on your choices you can to a degree, rape one of the implied-to-be-teenage female characters

which is rank blasphemy against all of the Progressive gods (and is to my knowledge the only major post-release artwork change), and you're actually encouraged by the game to do this.

This is something that should have generated absurd amounts of butthurt and problematization, but it has not; I suspect the offended are mostly told "fuck off, it's a good game" (partially because of Undertale and how well its narrative also happens to include 'yes, you can kill basically everyone' while not being absurd grimdark), and because everyone is more interested with where the so-far-incomplete story is going to go.

Most of the points you've made can be beat-for-beat substituted for Omori, as well, and it's actually kind of interesting to see the parallels between them (to the point that Toby Fox did to a point co-ordinate with Omocat to make sure they weren't making the exact same game).

Heck, both of those games have the 'seemingly-indifferent protagonist', 'girly boy who loves you', and 'tomboy bully/bruiser who the protagonist probably prefers romantically' archetypes; and the relationship the game revolves around is same-sex[1]. Omocat is, at least publicly, a bit more progressive (though perhaps that comes with the territory; Toby Fox is an Easterner and makes his money on the game itself, whereas Omocat is from California and the game was an incidental and more funded by merchandise). Also, Omocat is a woman and Toby Fox is a man.

And yeah, I think a lot of that comes through in the writing and gameplay; Omori's RPG system has emotion control as its primary mechanic where Deltarune's mechanics are kind of all over the place (and are more often played with), and Omori's more interested in being a good story where Deltarune focuses far more on its self-awareness as a game. Not that Omori doesn't do that at times (specifically at the end), but 'changing the mechanics in a place you don't expect it to be done' is something traditional media doesn't get has an emotional impact.

[1] This is a lot more in your face in Deltarune where it's more subtle in Omori. Something something 4 Loves, and Omocat's writing is a lot more intentionally shipping-bait-y than anything in Deltarune, but Omori's plot revolves around loving Sunny loving Basil far more than any other character in the game. That may fit into one's description of 'romantic', or it may not; I don't think it matters.

The Harry Potter game was mechanically awesome. The main story was good too.

Harry Potter has always been very progressive in its outlook. JK Rowling had the TERF fight. But the video game distanced itself from that with a Trans character. I think they did the trans character badly, but it's mostly only a side quest.

I didn't finish Hogwarts Legacy because it turned out not to be my type of game, but I also recall that the student body seemed rather more diverse than what one would expect there in the early 20th century, with one student who was a major supporting character coming from some wizarding school in Africa.

Wizards can teleport at will and express their ethnic bigotry towards muggles/muggle-borns and sentient magical creatures. Also, African wizards would have the oldest magical tradition and probably live like Wakandans. If they have a negative stereotype in the wizarding world, it'd be being a bit full of themselves.

Maybe current-day hogwarts is a second-tier School and doesn't attract as many international students as it used to. It'd fit thematically with the general decline of Britain, many of the old pureblood families have fallen on a hard times by the time we reach the late 90s.

Also the game depicted Slytherins that weren't evil, and added lore that Merlin was in Slytherin house.

I was always annoyed that in the final book the entirety of Slytherin house sided with the Voldies.

Also, African wizards would have the oldest magical tradition and probably live like Wakandans.

African-American wizards, on the other hand...

Wizards aren't going to get enslaved by black muggles and sold to white muggles to pick muggle cotton.

Nor were there wizard dutchmen involuntarily transporting African wizards to the Caribbean.

There wasn't a parallel wizard British empire that established a wizard Raj in wizard india, and German wizards didn't holocaust Jewish wizards during Wizard War 2, wizards iraelis arent currently genociding wizard Palestinians in an open-air wizard prison. Wizards have their own history, they dont just ape muggle history but with wands and silly names.

I suppose that most african-american wizards would be muggle-born, and thus would carry with them whatever dysfunctions an 11-year-old African American would have.

Was there a wave of ellis-island wizard european immigration to the Americas? Or would almost all American wizards be WASPs?

This also brought me completely out of the experience. There are mods to fix it but I haven’t got around to trying them.

I could name names, but I think everyone has at least one example that comes to mind.

I want to nominate Andor and Arcane (season 1 only for both, haven't seen the rest yet) as cases of very progressive seeming stuff that comes across as both true art and not annoying.

I'd appreciate other recommendations if people have them (and Deltarune/Undertale are good choices!).

Arcane (season 1 only for both, haven't seen the rest yet) as cases of very progressive seeming stuff that comes across as both true art and not annoying

Arcane didn't seem obviously progressive to me. The unrepentant revolutionary willing to stop at nothing was the villain of the first season, and his main redeeming quality was his paternal instinct. The roster of heroes includes an acceptably nerdy Chad Beefcake and a heiress of a 1% family who rebels against her privilege by... becoming a cop.

"Anti-capitalism" + lots of LGBTQ* themes and relationships + girl bossing + "diverse casting" up the wazoo.

Also, how many white men can you name in the cast who aren't villains or being set up to be villains?

The daddy, the fat shop owner and the two kids that all die in episode 3, the aforementioned Chad Beefcake, the hairy mascot guy.

For Season 1 purposes:

A bunch of people who die early, someone who isn't white (Chad), and someone you can't tell is white (mascot)

What part of him isn't white?

Jayce is somewhat hispanic coded and his voice actor is hispanic.

The main characters are (per wikipedia cast list): white woman (LGTBQ, voice actor is not white supposedly and she identifies as multi-racial), white woman, hispanic man, asian woman (LGBTQ), black woman.

Major supporting cast is: white male (but not human character, is orange?), white male (villain), white male (villain), white male (diesish, sorta villain), black male, black female, black female, white male villain.

Definitely Netflix casted.

I'll second Andor and Arcane. For Andor I'd say season 2 is as good as 1, for Arcane season 2 is great but in different ways than 1 so YMMV.

For gaming I'd nominate Life Is Strange, and to a lesser extent its prequel, but Life Is Strange 2 fell into the "ideological and terrible" category and I never bothered with the others.

Caveats: Life Is Strange is a "choose-your-own-adventure"/"puzzle" style adventure game; not quite "walking simulator" but adjacent enough that it's not recommended for anyone who wants a higher percentage of game in their games. It's also not quite the best of its genre if you consider less-ideological games too; my pick for that would be the first season of Telltale's Walking Dead.

Season 1 is so good I stopped watching it 8 episodes in. It's just so predictable. Socialist realism. You can tell the writer read a few essays on fascism by the language people at ISA use. In the end it just bored me.

Life Is Strange is a great game, but not an especially progressive one. Maybe a few plot details would count. I'd say it's more nostalgia / coming of age / loss of innocence than anything.

I'd instead offer Tell Me Why, by the same developer. Tell Me Why is a worse game (can't honestly recommend it) - much more of a walking simulator - but it's impressive just how ideological it manages to be without ruining the whole thing. You play as twins, one of which is a trans-man with a chip on his shoulder, who gets dialogue options to be petulant and preachy toward various conservative residents of small town Alaska, but this doesn't go so great for him, and he comes off looking like an asshole some of the time. Its main achievement is that the progressive messaging is such a load-bearing part of the plot, and the thing still holds together.

To me Life is Strange felt like a very progressive game, but it was in a "we're all progressives here"/"fish don't know what water is" way: they didn't make a big deal about any artistic choices that stemmed from that, but so many artistic choices felt like they stemmed from that. It's hard to go into details without spoilers though.

Life is Strange 2 often went the "petulant and preachy towards various conservative residents" route by contrast, but didn't seem nearly as self-aware or unreliable-narrator about it as what you're describing. It felt almost like the converse of an Ayn Rand novel; instead of Rand's fascinating but disturbingly realistic villains mixed with corny one-dimensional heroes, LiS2 (or at least the majority of it; I quit about 2/3rds of the way in) mixed fascinating troubled heroes with cartoonish one-dimensional villains.

agree that there's some "in-the-water" progressivism in LiS, but it all felt pretty natural to me. It is indeed hard to point to specific examples without spoiling things, but there were also some obvious fake-outs where you think a character is supposed to be a tool to hammer home a message, and they're not, or are actually the opposite. I would also say "the good ending" feels thematically conservative to me (almost Christian?), but can't really say more without spoiling it.

I had to quit LiS 2 for the same reason. I can handle a character being preachy just fine, but when the game itself is preaching to me without any room for nuance, that's too much.

Is it remotely possible they don't understand the character is being an asshole? And they are just depicting how mean they think people are to the lady for living her "authentic self"?

I first noticed this with that Cat Person short story. Taken on it's own, Cat Person seemed vaguely aware of the all the grey areas in trying to date when it was written? Then the lady goes and does this interview moralizing about how the woman in the story was clearly the victim and the man was clearly wrong. And I'm sitting here thinking "Oh.... this lady basically just accidentally admitted how awful she is". The kinda passive in a shitty way female character in Cat Person is her, and that's literally how some dude reacted to her being so passive aggressive, and she doesn't understand what she did wrong at all. She just wrote down what literally happened thinking nobody could possibly find fault with it. And then I think at some point this was more or less proven true when the guy from the story got doxed?

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