Here is a fanfic that gives me the warm fuzzies. It’s about the best most communist space civ meeting the worst most fascist one. The power differential isn’t anywhere near close, but what gives the fic stakes is the Culture’s ethics. They do not under normal circumstances kill, indoctrinate, or enslave, unlike some people. Can the ultimate commies reform the ultimate fascists and fix their horrible galaxy? And can they do so without being corrupted?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/649448?view_full_work=true

I’m not talking about florets, I’m talking about everyone who isn’t Affini. No civilization is permitted to self-govern without Affini interference.

Once the Affini Compact becomes aware of a civilization, their domestication is inevitable. Generally speaking, while there are no civilizations more advanced than the Compact, even such precursor cultures would be unable to resist the Affini indefinitely

When a species accepts the Compact, they tend to have much more of a say in the running of their society afterward — but even these cultures will be altered by domestication, and the Compact will still be there with a firm hand on the wheel afterward, just in case. Species that resist domestication, like Terrans did, don’t get much of a say in how things are run — a species that fights back needs much more correction, from the Affini perspective, than one that willingly joins the Compact.

Basically, you’re free to self-govern as a vassal of the compact as long as you do what you’re told and don’t want independence. That’s not freedom. That’s not political rights. That’s abuse. Guess what, black slaves who did what their masters told them were treated better too, but that doesn’t mean they had freedom.

I have little experience with HDG, but I’m afraid you have little understanding of what communism and freedom mean, and that’s far more important. So far we have not disagreed on the facts of the fiction. We’ve only disagreed on the facts of political systems and ethics.

I do in fact believe the Affini are entirely benevolent. They are also wrong. They are monsters who mean well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

Communism (from Latin communis ‘common, universal’)[1][2] is a political and economic ideology whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.[3][4][5] A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.

1. The means of production are not owned by the community, they’re owned by the Affini

2. If an elite group controls it, it’s private, not public.

3. Affini are a privileged social class.

4. Affini are a state.

In 1950s America, men owned the means of production and did the productive work. Women (if married) were given free sustenance, but no control over the means of production, little right to work, and fundamentally no freedoms. It’s not communism if you have an underclass with no ownership of the means of production and no right to participate in the politics of the nation. Doesn’t matter if that underclass is women, black people, or all humanity, and doesn’t matter what kind of economics the ruling class practice between themselves.

The Affini are basically Israel. They steal all your planet’s land and natural resources, commit war crimes against anyone who rebels, and call themselves woke because it’s safe to be gay and white in Tel Aviv. Look at all the equality between the ruling race!

They economically speaking have communism in the compact

Communism is stateless. You cannot have a communist economy where an elite class controls the means of production. That’s feudalism or state capitalism.

ChatGPT is a pedophile and a serial killer. It keeps abusing and murdering kids.

It’s because D&D used to be a dungeon crawler but nobody does that anymore, yet tradition insists the dungeon crawler mechanics remain.

For a game with no attachment to tradition, try Draw Steel

Those goals are perfectly achievable by writing Culture fanfiction. You can write about a communist society where everyone is completely free and has all the agency they want, where trans people are completely normal and people who get to their 200th birthday without at least trying a sex change are seen as primitive.

The fact that some people want to achieve those things with slavery and imperialism is deeper than that. And the fact they don’t want to talk about why they want it that way is sus.

https://humandomestication.guide/canon-guidelines/AxiomsRulesLore

Affini, as individuals, are flawed and capable of making mistakes. Systemic mistakes, on the other hand, are vanishingly rare

If you give the Affini a surface-level examination, they look pretty awful, but when an abusive human says “it’s for your own good,” it’s an excuse. It’s a deflection. It’s a way to justify what they’re doing to you. When the Affini say it, it’s true.

The Affini Are Imperialist

they cannot allow sophonts to govern their affairs independently as it would lead to suboptimal outcomes (It doesn’t hurt, of course, that it puts them in a position to adopt new florets. This is, as far as they’re concerned, a pretty nice bonus).

The rules say the slavers are good and nice and you can’t arrive at any other conclusion if you’re an HDG writer.

So yeah, you can write politics into your HDG story, if and only if you’re a pro-slavery imperialist.

Imna kinkshame that. I see no benefit to kinks of abdicating responsibility to a imagined perfect higher power. You know why the Nazis followed Hitler? Because they had that kink too.

I’m not a liberal absolutist. I believe in the right of a person to give up their own freedom. But the one freedom that must never be given up is the freedom to judge one’s leaders and make a choice whether to follow them. And too many people want to give up that freedom. That’s how you get Nazis.

Technically fewer people would suffer if they just made like the Affini and outright conquered them, but the fact they try to minimise their use of force and encourage the other civilizations to make progress from within makes them worthy of their power.

Well I’m a communist and I don’t have a submission kink. I believe in collective ownership of the means of production. We should have a classless, moneyless, stateless society with a gift economy, where goods are organised from each according to ability, to each according to need.

I hope you don’t think I’m saying it uncritically. I’m saying the affini are interesting characters to use to explore the ethics of slavery, because you can portray all of the fascist excuses and propaganda in a somewhat plausible setting, and then one by one deconstruct them and interrogate why audiences are attracted to these horrific dynamics.

That’s the kind of thing I like to see in my 40k porn.

Why you gonna ask for all that, and then also add in an uncritical reproduction of the white settler benevolent slavery myth?

I kinda get it, because slavery is hot, but if you’re putting slavery in a story you’ve gotta examine it critically. You can’t have all of the fascist apologia and none of the left wing perspectives, otherwise you’re a fascist too. You gotta admit the affini are fascists and interrogate why you want to be a fascist’s property.

It’s so fucking ironic that these subs want someone to tell them what to do, but in practice, they make up a fake dom who only ever tells them to do what they already want. What’s the point of having the fake dom in the story if the sub is still in charge? It’s just like you say, they’re bad subs. They misunderstood the point, and want all of the power with none of the responsibility.

In a consensual relationship doms should only be telling subs to do things they consent to of those, but that’s not what HDG is! This is a sex slavery story! Fucking missing the point is what this is. If you want a perfect smart mummy to take complete control of you, why are you in complete control of her, not even doing her the dignity of writing her character with plausible motivations and nuance? Characters can take on a life of their own in a work of fiction, but I’m getting the sense very few HDG writers allow that to happen.

This is so disappointing.

Be that as it may, Consider Phlebas is boring and I couldn’t get through it on the first attempt. Player of Games is a page turner

Skill issue. Just learn to read English and it’ll be fine.

I look at porn for the plot. I can’t cum if the plot is bad.

Thanks, I’m just mad. They take a perfectly good premise for science-smut exploring the ethical ramifications of slavery under novel circumstances, and then they ruin it by giving it the JK Rowling treatment! Admit the ladies you’re wanking off to are fascists, you cowards! I jerk off to 40k porn and don’t feel bad about it, because I’m a fucking adult who can separate ethical from hot.

There’s a certain kind of queer person I despise, because they respond to the horrors of the world by creating a “perfect” bubble world which is just as fucked up as the real one, it’s just horrific in a way that plays into their trauma reactions and only hurts people in ways they feel are deserved. And their smut sucks ass. Anyway, that’s the plot of WandaVision.

I have more fun having sex with a person than a doll. Well, except for dollgirls, but that’s another conversation. People are political creatures. Take the politics out of a person, and a doll is what you get. How can a plant be hot if she isn’t a nuanced individual? If a plant is turning me into a pet, she better exist as an individual (or a hivemind, I’ll admit) situated within a cultural context, with an internal world and life experiences. Otherwise what’s the point? You might as well tie yourself up for all the masturbatory character of the act!

The HDG fandom somehow found a way to take the doms out of domination, and it’s as soulless as AI art

Sometimes someone will ask a Rapid Offensive Unit why it, a fully automated warship, keeps a human crew. Many ROUs don’t, but those who do say that having humans around is nice. They’re good company on long voyages, and fun at parties. Fellow Minds contacted over hyperspace comm channels may make for faster and more erudite conversational partners, but there’s just something nice about having a bunch of little guys inside you. Humans are always up to something interesting.