MacN'Cheezus

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 29th, 2023

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  • Right, that makes sense. Unfortunately the “kill the bad guy and the evil will end” trope is very much entrenched not just in video games, but also most popular fiction as well (“all we need to do is throw the Ring into the fires of Mordor and Sauron’s reign will come to an end”).

    I guess growing up is realizing there’s a new evil forged every day and you have to keep making the trip again and again, like Sisyphus. But I suppose that wouldn’t make for a good game, would it.


  • I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?

    All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?

    What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.

    Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes. Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?

    Lo, I teach you the Superman!

    The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman SHALL BE the meaning of the earth!

    I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.

    Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them! Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!

    Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.

    Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!

    But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?

    Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

    Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged.

    What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.

    The hour when ye say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!”

    The hour when ye say: “What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”

    The hour when ye say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”

    The hour when ye say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!”

    The hour when ye say: “What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.”

    Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!

    It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!

    Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?

    Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!



  • Yes, I get that, and it’s just as cringe as communist power fantasies if you ask me. Like, I understood what was bad about the communist dystopia she painted, and I didn’t resent her heroes for trying to escape that and rebuild society from the ground up, but I also didn’t think they were good people. Rand’s heroes are just as insane as the villains they’re fighting.

    That’s not to say they didn’t have a point, though. Excessive pandering to people who simply will not lift a finger to change their own condition is just as harmful as excessive pandering to those who will.



  • Does he though? In Atlas Shrugged, which Bioshock seems to be somewhat of an antithesis to, it’s not the capitalists that go crazy, but the socialists, who enact more and more draconian laws depriving the productive class of all their profits in order to funnel more money to the unproductive, which ultimately makes working entirely unprofitable.

    Both works are basically at opposite ends of the spectrum — Atlas Shrugged depicts a communist utopia gone wrong, while Bioshock shows a capitalist utopia gone wrong. They’re both myopic in their own way, but the common thread seems to be that absolute power corrupts absolutely, which is a truth no one can escape. In reality, a functioning society requires a delicate balance between both forces, not a winner-takes-tall approach. Unfortunately, that idea seems to be lost on both of them, which is probably what anon is trying to hint at.