feotakahari

This is going to sound like a criticism, so I’ll try to explain in advance. Some stories are just dripping with a particular subculture. They make the kind of jokes that subculture makes, consider the kind of issues that subculture considers “serious issues,” and characterize other groups according to that subculture’s stereotypes. Like when The Erogamer jokes that futarchy is government by futanari--nobody outside of Rationalist subculture would ever make that joke. Or how every character in Boyfriend Dungeon dresses like a San Francisco hipster. It’s not necessarily positive or negative. It just is.

This is what I mean when I say that Star Renegades feels like it was collectively written by leftist Tumblr. The characters are what leftist Tumblr thinks people outside of leftist Tumblr are like, and they band together as diverse warriors against a uniform, hegemonic empire, because leftist Tumblr somehow still thinks it bands together against hegemony even while it keeps driving people out for allegedly being agents of hegemony. The heroes can’t use real swear words even while they’re killing and dying in a brutal war, the villains refer to women as “females,” and I’m pretty sure the relationship system is going to turn into polyamory. In some ways, it feels more honest than something like Star Wars, which has vaguely leftist aspirations but never goes far enough to potentially lose out on merchandising deals.