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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   23916 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025

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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/dungeons-and-dragons-elon-musk/684828/

In This Thread, 2D3D Wonders Why Race Concern Shit In Pop Culture Still Matters

So, Elon Musk apparently had a spergout over WOTC because WOTC apparently did a faerun land acknowledgment and apologized for racially essentializing... well, anything (or everything, I can't tell).

Per the article,

After a designer at Wizards said that the company’s priority now was responding to “progressives and underrepresented groups who justly took offense” at those stereotypes, and not to “the ire of the grognards”

And that made Musk tweet an implied consideration to buy out Hasbro, owner of WOTC. Perhaps he should keep away from napkins and lawyers for a few weeks, but WOTC staff and progressives have more to lose from a Musk takeover than Musks does if he accidentally commits to the sale.

My questiob is WHY do progressives still want to fight dead battlegrounds either lost permanently to the enemy or scorched to irrelevance.

I trust this forum understands the broad strokes enough to make a culture war summary unnecessary. Anything white nerds love must have more women and minorities and it must explicitly come at the expense of the white nerd favourites. Duke out details in the comments if necessary, the battle itself isn't the point.

The progressives won the previous round already. They got the victory lap of defeating racial essentialism by incorporating noble blacks, I mean orcs, in the rulebook a few years back. Vice, Kotaku, Polygon spammed articles about how this proves the rejection of white supremacy by the powers that be. Hooray for the Resistance, we are now the New Republic. Did I mix my factions? It doesn't matter, and apparently neither did the battle. Because WOTC still saw fit to dig up ancient corpses and put them on trial for heresy.

Except it is patently clear that the audience for this public shaming doesn't exist anymore. The volume of pop media culture wars has deflated in the face of victory, and perhaps Sydney Sweeney deadeyeing a millennial journo hoping for self abasement to atone for even being proximate to white advocacy is emblematic of how irrelevant this public opinion war is. You can, in fact, yeschad someone trying to make you feel guilty for not grovelling for zillenial approval.

But what exactly is the battlefield now? Racial/sexual/gender/whateverfuck representation? Moral ambiguity of 'bad' people unless the bad guy is generational trauma/white supremacy? Sinecures for adherents via "narrative consultancy"? Is the objective to win a battle or just to make noise.

Theres a destructive incentive structure here that I can't parse out fully. The unwoke are perfectly happy to sit back and be gradually edged out, as seen from the ready faggification of media starting with Will and Grace and reaching a high point (maybe) in Bridgerton where intraracial relationships are the enemy (maybe, I don't watch Shondaland slop). Or maybe the ongoing media projects where you can't have minorities be bad guys anymore - its always a white guy somewhere at the end pulling strings. Except if its Giancarlo Esposito.

Back to topic. The unwoke are silent dragged along consumers, the woke think they can accelerate the slide or celebrate the slide, suddenly reactionaries Notice and generate backlash, and the woke get smacked in. Retreating in confusion, they conclude that the issue is the message not being made clear enough, and the message is doubled down despite vocal opposition.

Rinse and repeat, but always back into defeat. Social justice went fucking nuts in 2016 because Trump descended from his golden staircase to snatch victory from Hilary Clintons anointed hands, and without the popular vote it seemed that this was merely a technical mistake, one that needed to be message disciplined to ensure the course of history is maintained. Biden won as a moderate but governed as a progressive because his brain turned to soup about a year in and the entire white house was Jill roleplaying Eleanor except without enough balls to lead a relatively competent cabinet, so the progressive staffers wrote every communique and channeled The Groups. Opposition was simply the last gasp of straight white men (and blacks and gays and women and asians and latinos and....)

Then Trump won, the illusion shattered for about a year. But now the same dead fights are being rehashed.

I don't really have a concrete point to interrogate in this culture war. My stance that any media featuring a minority front and center being likely to suck because it always means the writers room can't have room to criticize stupidity is enough for me to optimize my consumption because I'm an old moron and nostalgia for old shows from my youth gives me enough tinglies. Yet the strength of reactionary pushback to culture war attempts clearly shows that this is a conflict progressives seem intent on reigniting, and it should be clear that they not only lost the previous rounds but the upcoming battlefield is likely lost. The Dispatch sold a million copies and none of their characters were "body positive" in any way. Contrast that with Concord that literally was dead on arrival with their fat ugly minorities, making me wonder if the skirmishes being reignited are just masochists indulging in a public humiliation/victimization kink.

There's an interesting dynamic to this kind of thing in fantasy universes.

The original Star Trek was revolutionarily progressive in having a multiracial crew. There was a presumption of American leadership (Kirk), but it also featured a Japanese crewman twenty years after Hiroshima (Sulu), a Russian during the height of the Cold War (Chekov), and a black woman during the civil rights era. Trek unites all of humanity by creating an alternative "other," the Klingons. The displacement of the kinds of stereotypes that we used for the Other and the Enemy, the Russians/Japanese/Blacks, onto the Klingons inevitably leads those who feel othered to identify with the Klingons. So then we have to reform our views of the Klingons in TNG, and so we need the Borg to be the new absolute villain.

Same thing happened in WoW, the Orcs go from bad guys to misunderstood victims.

To be fair, TOS Trek includes some pretty clear allegory where conflicts with the Klingons and Romulans (one episode of basically submarine warfare) are also themselves allegorical for the Cold War. The movie Star Trek VI is pretty interesting to watch because it's loosely portraying the end of the Cold War that had just happened (complete with a coup attempt, but no *Swan Lake).

But the recycling of villains into friends did occur multiple times (see also the Ferenghi) and you have a pretty reasonable take on how that was done more broadly.

But the recycling of villains into friends did occur multiple times (see also the Ferenghi) and you have a pretty reasonable take on how that was done more broadly.

The implication here being that Ferengi were modeled after Jews and they work in industries of vice? Bad joke/observation aside, the culture that early Trek embodied was if you want to call it the right kind of progressivism at least for the day, if not in an objective sense. I don’t think anyone here would disagree with that.

At least in TOS, I think the intended comparison is between the Vulcans and Jews. The Vulcan hand sign is also used in Judaism.

The implication here being that Ferengi were modeled after Jews and they work in industries of vice?

They were explicitly compared to "Yankee traders" at their introduction, so wrong minority group offended, I guess?

Right, the Ferengi were supposed to be Americans. (Presumably Outgroup-Americans, but Americans nevertheless)

Speaking of Star Trek, I notice that in their future they've also cured humans of religion and homosexuality.

However, in the newer series they've reintroduced homosexuality. I wonder if we're just a few years away from the new first officer [1] of the Enterprise F showing off an ingenuous device that will let him know which way on the starship to face so he can pray towards Mecca.

  1. who takes orders from a badass girlboss captain of course

I've never watched TOS, but based on the fanfiction I've read it has to have been among the most pro-gay shows ever made.

...why would you read fanfic of a show you have never watched?

Because it was recommended on /r/rational or TVTropes, in my case. Also because Naruto moves at a glacial pace and fanfiction does not.

who takes orders from a badass girlboss captain of course

Trek had that during the good years, Voyager remains my personal favorite in the series as it is the one I grew up with.

Janeway isn't a girlboss. She's just a boss and a stone cold bitch and I love her.

Star Trek (in the more modern incarnations) tried to be "spiritual not religious". The Bajorans got to be religious, but there was always the clash (once made explicit) about "yeah we know the Prophets are in fact Sufficiently Advanced Aliens".

Chatokay, God help that character, got stuck between "I want to practice my native heritage traditions but I can't believe in them as religious because my mother knocked all that nonsense out of me" so we got the worst of both worlds there: using the trappings of (all chucked in a blender) indigenous traditions from North and South America which came off looking a bit patronising at best, but no actual "why yes I do in fact believe in the spirits" because this is the future and science rules.

in the newer series they've reintroduced homosexuality

What do you consider new Trek?

The Outcast with an "ambiguous" kiss, Rejoined with a "symbiote confusion" lesbian kiss, and The Emperor's New Cloak with a "dark mirror universe" lesbian kiss are all prime time line. More than, about, and just less than 30 years ago respectively at this point.

I haven't seen, and do not consider to be head cannon, anything after Voyager. I suppose the more recent series have explicit homosexual characters, where it's a recurring part of their character rather than incidental to an episode theme?

In TNG era they were relatively slow with their introduction, with only moderate controversy following each showing. It probably doesn't hurt that Terry Farrell as Jadzia Dax is pretty easy on the eyes.

There is a difference between the occasional queer-coded alien and just outright portraying homosexuality as if it were normal. Not a huge difference (it's pretty clear the TNG actors wanted to push the gay agenda and had to be reined in by the producers), but still a difference. It's the next step in promoting deviancy.

I'd be pretty comfortable letting kids watch TOS-era Star Trek, somewhat comfortable with letting them watch TNG-era Trek, and very uncomfortable letting them watch NuTrek.

Enterprise tried to be The Smexy and just ended up embarrassing everyone.

There was also that terrible episode with Riker and the non-binary alien, which was supposed to be an After-School Lesson about gayness and tolerance, but which could also be applied to transness if one wanted.

It was done so badly, though. Riker of all people?

The better one was with Dr. Crusher and the Trill character where Crusher is in a relationship with a male Trill, he dies, the symbiont has to be placed in a new host, and that one turns out to be female. The symbiont/new host is willing to keep the relationship going, but Crusher eventually turns it down.

So far as I remember, the reasoning behind all the gay relationships being lesbian is because they could get lesbian kisses past the censors, but no way (at the time) would two guys in any kind of explicit relationship be acceptable.

I suppose the more recent series have explicit homosexual characters, where it's a recurring part of their character rather than incidental to an episode theme?

Oh, God. Disco Trek. There was a gay couple there, which in itself wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing is that one of the couple was the crazy mushroom-obsessed engineer, and once they introduced the spore drive (don't ask) I couldn't watch any of this show for the amount of wincing I was doing.

Mind you, if we are talking about Trek and homosexuality, this is the fandom that invented (or at least popularised) slash 😁

At the end of season 1 of Picard they have 7 of 9 getting romantic with that alcoholic woman. For example.

Though you draw the line at Voyager, so that's that.

Oh, I didn't go next, nigh or near any Trek once Disco hit the screens. I stayed well away from Picard (once bitten, twice shy) and by all accounts that was the best decision, though even there apparently they had to go back to classic Trek roots for the ending?

Snakeroot addict ex-officer Raffi livin' in poverty in the desert because the system and The Man done her dirty and down - ugh. Yeah, drop that anvil on our heads several times so we get the point about WOMEN, MINORITIES, SYSTEMIC RACISM, WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE, why don't you?

That's not Trek, not TOS Trek and if it's gone downhill to that degree by Picard's time then we really are in the Reboot timeline and not Prime.

an ingenuous device that will let him know which way on the starship to face so he can pray towards Mecca.

I unironically like that idea, though? How to incorporate religion into sci-fi is always a neat thing when done well. I'd also like some discussion about communion wafers/wine made via the replicator device, and any potential implications of that.

Early scifi dealt with it a lot; I'm thinking Arthur Clarke (The Star, the Nine Billion Names of God for a more comedic take that would be up the alley of our Caliph) or even Asimov with The Last Question. It probably only really stopped being a thing once scifi became a mass-market endeavour.

Regarding Catholicism, at least, you could replicate wine and unconsecrated wafers (as long as the elements were in line with the rubrics). You can't take a consecrated host and replicate that as a communion host, though. You'd need to have a priest there to perform the consecration.

For the Protestant denominations where it is an ordinance not a sacrament, replicating wine and wafers would seem to be okay. Make that grape juice and wafers, I imagine, for those with the prohibition on alcohol. I can't see much difference between replicator communion kits and these (your choice of juice and cracker or wine and round wafer! now gluten-free!).

And would it be okay to name a starship the USS Corpus Christi?

Heh.

Only if it's named after the city, I guess!

You'd need to have a priest there to perform the consecration.

Real life naval vessels have chaplains on board so this would not be a stretch.

Mass onboard ship has been discouraged in the past, although I'm not sure what the current rules are. In the middle ages there was a specific 'missa sica' performed onboard ship with no consecration of the host.

Aircraft carriers usually have regular Catholic mass, I don’t know about ships with smaller crews.

It's a good sci-fi idea in general. It would be a great fit in, say, Babylon 5. But I take the point to be that it's iffy at best whether it fits the Star Trek universe as established in the first few series and first ten or so movies.

It's true that it'd fit the B5 setting, but I wouldn't have trusted the writers to do it well. Most of their handling of religion gave the impression of a good-faith attempt by people who have never met anyone that actually believes his religion in real life.

It did work well for the Centauri, though, given their sincere but not earnest regard for tradition.

Yes. Whether or not I find this stuff to be stupid cope IRL (I did amuse myself watching Muslims trying to figure out how to fast in northern regions with very short spells of sunlight) it can actually add a bit of reality to the character and world.

Utopian scifi needs to get over its religious hangup.

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