Dunno how to explain why but they all annoy me.
They all annoy me because they’re always like “look how capitalism caused this” and then instead of actually saying that’s what happened they go "oh actually it was because communists made them do it " or “actually it was because this one person nobody knew about pressed the big magic button that ruined society even though it was perfect before.”
That’s literally the progression of the canon of Fallout over the past ten years, and it drives me absolutely insane
Turning the Enclave from what was simply the escaped remnants of the fascistic US government into a seeeecret illuminati cabal group that conspired with Vault Tec to start the war because they’re eeeeevil is…so fucking lame
In my view it’s cause many of them start after the fun and interesting bits are over, so all you’re left with are vague implications and a depopulated world, which negates the stakes of “Apocalypse” and renders the story down into inter-personnel soap opera drama, but with dirty clothes
So many stories accidentally kill their own settings before the narrative even starts, they try to build a haunted house but end up with a monotone tomb
I’ve watched and enjoyed so many of them but they really are just like a fascist fantasy. “Man if all the poors turned into zombies and tried to kill us we’d fucking OWN them, right?”
I don’t think it’s exactly fascist, but it is certainly spiritually adjacent. It’s important to recognize that Apocalypticism is a way older phenomenon than fascism or even capitalism. The feeling that the world is hopelessly broken, that everyone around you is alien and hostile, that no future can be imagined where things are better, and if one did imagine such then it would be impossible - those are all old friends to humanity.
The reason doomerism swings towards fascism today is because we live in capitalist societies, and that’s what those do in the face of crisis.
What’s interesting to me is how neo-liberalism and hyper-consumerism has stripped even explicitly fascist narratives of their optimism. Most apocalypse media has no Hyperborea, no Pre-lapsarian ideal to look back on. There is no Millenarian promise of the coming kingdom of god or a thousand year reich. So it ends up as this bleak nihilistic murder fest. In games it’s a hedonic treadmill of murder-loot-gearup-repeat. In shows it’s a stylized celebration of directionless violence. It’s 's zen fascism, forever stuck in an an endless, pointless now.
In conclusion. apocalypse media sucks, but maybe I should check out CDDA again, it’s been a few years
Most of the time it’s the poors surviving though lol. The elites are either irrelevant dirty people like everyone else, or they continue to rule and become targets by every survivor. I enjoyed the first season of Telltale’s Walking Dead because there are a lot of nuanced characters and motives
I’m always afraid to recommend it because I’ve never heard anyone talk about it- but I would recommend Station Eleven. Its post-apocalyptic after a covid-like disease. But unlike every other apocalyptic media it has so much love for people. It has some very sad moments but it’s so wholesome. And I loved their little traveling commune.
Even Adventure Time?
