anon_53d said in #3041 2w ago:
(https://substack.com/home/post/p-162809813)
The J'Accuse people (and Amarnites in general) are up to something interesting but I don't entirely understand it. This little story starts out describing the "Examinations of the Crossworld Meritocracy", a ritualized gaokao for citizens of a future political order established after a revolution pulled off in the early-mid 21st century by people who are a stand-in for J'Accuse themselves. It's a fun and well written cross section of the society of such a world. It's a world in which Armarnite (right wing anime zoomers) culture has become entrenched as the highest and most solemn commitments, high level candidates for the exam already have several genetically-enhanced wives, and the whole solar system is populated by only about 100 million highly selected people. I would like to know more.
Partway through, it becomes apparent that the exam is itself a framing device: one of the main characters (an ambitious and irreverent student-destined-for-greatness typical of shonen anime) has to write a history paper on the founding revolution of the Meritocracy. This is itself a framing device for laying out a theory of revolution for how such a thing could be done in modern Britain, and what would need to be done. Of course being fictional it has to commit to a particular future and play to certain tropes beloved by the Amarnites (triumph-in-intrigue of young handsome amoral calculating genius over normalfag conflict-avoidance morality (pic of yagami-kun very much related)). I found myself annoyed by the belief in the power of lies and subterfuge in founding a glorious new order, but hey at least they are breaking out of the "everyone in the story talks and thinks like a millennial young adult fiction reader" trope.
But the last bit devolves into a strange pseudo-occult biography of the founder of Meritocracy which reads like a fictionalized self-mythologization of the author. I believe it falls flat, or at least I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Maybe I would understand it better if I studied, and this is me failing the Examination, making me fair game ("just a clump of cells") for murder by some bored Meritocrat. Maybe you guys will have more luck.
Overall though, I like radical political fiction. Hell I even liked atlas shrugged. I am bored with yet another dystopian sOciAl CriTiQUe or ZHPL-like moral horror. I like to see earnest and sincere attempts at depicting the future the author actually wants and how it might come to be, no matter how insane. I may have to write some of my own.
Partway through, it becomes apparent that the exam is itself a framing device: one of the main characters (an ambitious and irreverent student-destined-for-greatness typical of shonen anime) has to write a history paper on the founding revolution of the Meritocracy. This is itself a framing device for laying out a theory of revolution for how such a thing could be done in modern Britain, and what would need to be done. Of course being fictional it has to commit to a particular future and play to certain tropes beloved by the Amarnites (triumph-in-intrigue of young handsome amoral calculating genius over normalfag conflict-avoidance morality (pic of yagami-kun very much related)). I found myself annoyed by the belief in the power of lies and subterfuge in founding a glorious new order, but hey at least they are breaking out of the "everyone in the story talks and thinks like a millennial young adult fiction reader" trope.
But the last bit devolves into a strange pseudo-occult biography of the founder of Meritocracy which reads like a fictionalized self-mythologization of the author. I believe it falls flat, or at least I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Maybe I would understand it better if I studied, and this is me failing the Examination, making me fair game ("just a clump of cells") for murder by some bored Meritocrat. Maybe you guys will have more luck.
Overall though, I like radical political fiction. Hell I even liked atlas shrugged. I am bored with yet another dystopian sOciAl CriTiQUe or ZHPL-like moral horror. I like to see earnest and sincere attempts at depicting the future the author actually wants and how it might come to be, no matter how insane. I may have to write some of my own.
The J'Accuse people