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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1575 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 29, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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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.

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!).

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.

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.

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