How do I write leftist narratives in fiction?

Holy shit, I liked Dead Rising and all, but how the fuck do you put together 2 hours of Marxist analysis on that shit? I'll try to get through this, but tbh you probably could have been more succinct.

How's South Park libertarian? Which episodes make you think that?

NITW is an awful game just because Mae is such an awful character, I ragequitted just because how much I grew to hate Mae and you should be ashamed of suggesting it.

point out how individual good or bad people are ultimately meaningless in system that creates inherently antagonistic human relationships

Fuck you, Mae was a great character. She had character flaws and was sometimes a naive, insufferable jerk, but that doesn't make her a bad character and it definately doesn't make NITW a bad game. You're a complete retard if you think every story needs an entirely likeable protagonist.

Mae wasn't flawed, she was annoying and the plot made her annoyances rage inducing

It's more than that, though of course that's a central theme inspired by Dawn of the Dead.

Eh I really love the game so it expanded into a sorta Let's Play type thing… and it's harder to analyse a game than a movie since there's a lot more actual content. Idk.

She was sheltered while growing up and the plot makes this fact extremely clear. Additionally she's socially awkward and has impulsive tendencies. Through the course of the story we see her struggle with this and we also get to see the consequences of her stupid, self-centered, impulsive actions. Mae hates herself for being the way she is, she fucks up and makes mistakes, but she isn't ever unrepentant about it. Even if you're critical of Mae's actions you can't deny that asking "Why am I like this? I'm so fucking stupid, I wish I were dead" is something most people can relate to.
You're treating Mae like she should be a blank, featureless avatar for the player to inhabit, which is stupid as fuck.

No worries, I'm 30ish minutes in and I've been enjoying it for the most part. The format you chose is reminiscent of the way Zizek analyzes movies. Tbh I think the video would be more interesting if you embraced that and just used the game as an excuse to theorize rather than trying a analysis of content of the game's plot.

It's pretty hard to write a story about capitalisms economic trends over a few decades

Rediscover the past in all its wonderful variety. There are 10,000 years worth of human culture that can be mined for meaning and stories. Today, it seems like we are locked in a homogenous planet-size cultural wasteland dominated by the hollow products of capitalism, billions of people streaming the same 'critically acclaimed' TV shows for all eternity. but it wasn't always like that, it still isn't like that. If you look for shards of Utopia you will find them everywhere. The shards are intermingled with lost time, dead ideology and the great crimes of history, but they are still there. It's up to us to bring them together into a greater whole. The present is the key with which one unlocks the past, the past is the key with which one unlocks the future. Step out of your comfort zone. Check out different artforms: old hollywood movies, shakespearean theatre, cartoons, biographies of previous revolutionaries (I'd recommend Serge's Memoirs of a revolutionary) ancient myths, you can even learn a lot from ads. Everything is full of meaning if you look at it critically.

I never got to the parts of the game that make her look got or try to justify her personality and I was never able to identify with her struggles

On a video qame that is actually a plus

now I'm curious, what did she do?

The creators are classical libtards

she's a socdem

The Underpants Gnomes episode aka Big Businesses dindu nothing

Holy fuck, why is the Villainous fandom so bit?

it was the game that made me realize there are only two boards on this site, Holla Forums and Holla Forums

I'll try to not be too spoiler-y here, but basically she's a mess of a person, she's unemployed and she acts poorly and impulsively. This all makes her a burden on the people she loves and leads to strain on her various relationships throughout the game. Every time it seems like things are going good for her she ends up fucking it up by being self-centered and impulsive. She's a bad friend a lot of times in the game, but she's also a good friend a lot of times too, especially near the end of the game.

Additionally she's naive and doesn't understand how the world works. Some people think this is a bad thing, but this is wrong because it makes Mae a great vehicle for conveying left ideas to the audience. Every time Mae learns how her previous worldview was wrong and bad so does the audience.

Also true

I will personally also add:
Yourself made a list of why Mae is a turd but calling her a "vehicle for conveying left ideas" implies we're all turds and we want the world to be nothing but turds, quiet the opposite Mae is what ideology does to you and what we should fight against

Holy shit, you're a literal retard. I was answering a person who asked why people disliked her. Of course I'm going to list her negative traits, that's what they wanted to know. She has plenty of redeeming traits and she's a genuinely good person. I agree with you that she's immature, but she's not insincere at all. She cares so damn much about everything, how the fuck is she insincere?
No it fucking doesn't. She's a flawed person but that doesn't mean that everyone who agrees with her is like her. My only claim was that her naivete (not her flaws) made her a good vehicle for leftist ideas.
Everyone has an ideology and nobody is above ideology. The belief that you aren't ideological is a flimsy excuse to avoid confronting the contradictions in your own ideology.

But anyways your opinion doesn't even matter because you didn't finish the game. Do you have strong opinions on novels or movies you've only gotten halfway through? Because that's fucking retarded.

Watch Gurren Lagan

kys
It asks real questions with regards to the modern Left and comes to a Holla Forums-like conclusion - that idpol must go, that class warfare is what really matters and not these tiny identitarian struggles within affinity groups competing for attention, that it is only that which actually changes the day-to-day operation of capitalism itself which matters. I wish there was some way to incorporate a modern Cybersyn into it - perhaps incite workers to take over a multinational firm and use its ERP as a way to direct themselves and further a global insurrection, while Elliot is imprisoned by a backstabbing from the Chinese collaborating with ECorp and then freeing himself as the revolution grows on its own? That would be awesome to watch.

Nah
Nah
All the cases I can think of call fall under immaturity, so scratch that off

"people who disagree with me doesn't have a valid opinion"
Nigga, I cared for the game enough to play it and got invested enough to ragequit
My opinion is valid because I experienced the other end of the spectrum

Bitches, please.
Mr. Robot is literally "The problem is just that we are living in crony capitalism not real capitalism" the show.

this

Bump XXXDDD

explore both sides with ironic distance. The truth will show out

French poetic realism was a film movement in the 30s that had a huge influence on world cinema. Most of the directors where leftist or left leaning and films often dealt with the struggles of working class characters in a realistic yet poetic way. Jean Vigo came from an anarchist family and only finished one full length film before his death at the age of 29, L'Atlante, now counted amongst the most acclaimed films of all time. It might take a while to get used to different narrative styles, such as those of old films, but imo, its worth it, as the past is full of beautiful things that are worth rescuing. If you watch Hollywood films from the 40s and early 50s, you get a picture of a society in which the working class and the labor movement still played a major role. Lots of Hollywood people where left leaning before the McCarthy blacklist

Bump

I'm really digging this fluid druid

This is why it's impossible to write leftist fiction. Sterile and self-destructive behaviors aren't sympathetic. The stink of willful failure isn't sympathetic.

Gone Home ran into the same problem when the protag deserted the military and stole from her parents but lol it's okay because she's a lesbo. No one really cares if you took it up the butt and got aids. They just want you to go away.

...

who is she

Dementia from the new cartoon Villainous, literally a deviantart comic turned into a cartoon.

i dunno how to resolve that tbh, especially when you make it worse by having some bad businessmen and some good ones, because then it's even easier for people to look at the good ones and think "ah, we need good capitalists" instead of "ah, the good guys actually fell into some lucky positions in successful companies so get to be nicer on the face of it, while the bad guy is a corporate raider, but both are acting on behalf of the inhuman object - capital - based on a perception of self interest, and even good people have to do some bad things.", i dunno. I mean even with additional layers of complexity ("the bad bad guy, the okay guy made into a bad guy by a horrible situation, etc") it doesn't really seem to clarify things a lot, while it does create a lot of opportunity for readers to completely misinterpret things. (which i probably should just allow, since the opportunities for an outright ancap reading would be nearly null, and even socdem would be an improvement.)

good thing i'm a terrible writer with zero executive function and very little understanding of interpersonal relationships, guaranteeing that nothing will ever get off the ground :^)

Please don't. We are up to our eyeballs deep in distracting entertainment media we don't need anymore.

On the contrary we need as much good entertainment as possible. We are a dying species living on a dying planet. The best we can achieve at this stage is alleviative care, if we must die - and we must - then let us die laughing.

palliative care.

Stop trying to talk tough. You yourself are not in any immediate danger of dying and i doubt you will be laughing when the time comes.

It's not tough talk, it's realistic talk. There's nothing I can do to help people politically, if I was a good entertainer I could at least help people that way.

When death comes I won't be laughing. It's very hard to do anything when laughing, let alone kill yourself.

Death to NoFunAllowedistan

storytelling is a crucial social function in all societies. much of modern pop culture is designed to keep people alienated. Its contents are engineered to sell as much commodities as possible and focus grouped to be as inoffensive as possible. There are billions of dedicated media consumers, people who understand their world through the lens of the most popular dozen or so multimedia franchises. It's obviously a really alienating way to live. but it doesn't have to be that way. There is a huge potential for someone to come and challenge that, bringing back the full power of narrative. We have to create content that drives people to engage with the world and with each other. Think about myths and folktales in premodern society and how they were a compass that helped people find their way in the world.

...

A good start is depicting post-capitalist societies. Whether that's FALC or Fallout where capitalism has destroyed the world.

Don't force some Leftist plot, be smart about it.

They Live style.

That's what makes Fallout 4 such a masterpiece from an artistic point of view. That game is literally perfect.

Art=/=Politics

It is maximum cringe when politically minded people put their own ideological spin on analyzing art. They're missing the point and most actual artists hate these kinds of people.

As for making the political fiction the politics would definitely need to be second to the actual narrative with real emotions, characters, etc. Otherwise you'll just turn off your average person who is not politically minded, which is most people.

Read Lukacz

"Real" capitalism starts and ends on reading.

Nah, rub it. Smell that? That is real life farting in your face.

It could either be ancom or ancap the way it's going tbh

What book

...

I was told there's a couple of Swedish gommies who write (wrote?) a long series of novels involving common people and how they're interconnected via class struggle.

Every single damn episode that involves something political literally ends up with "You know Kyle, I learned something new today. Both proposed solutions are equally shhit, and there are no other possible solutions, so it's just best to leave the status quo be." It turns apathy and disenfranchisement into a political """""action""""".

Tell that to all the leftist artists, and all the fascist artists, and really just all the artists who actually have a political ideology. Art is filled with politics, and artists spread their political views through their art whether they want to admit it or not, even if it's only subtle.

South Park is honestly one of the most dangerous shows on TV

The last season was a big miss tbh, they've lost it.

only in fiction =)

Nah see the art will communicate everything the artist thinks is important which will end up including politics. I can't think of any decent art that had a political message as the focus. Shit like South Park and Futurama (since OP gave them as examples) resonate with people for completely unpolitical reasons first because the creators are never political minded first.

I'm just trying to explain why no one here or on Holla Forums will ever write anything decent.

It's been unwatchable since whatever season had that Piss Water Park episode imo. Probably earlier since I remember giving it a few extra seasons just because I was used to watching South Park whenever it was on.

Just curious, but could you name some examples of what you think is decent unpolitical art? Because I know a lot of good art that is explicitly political.

Well it depends on what you classify as political. But that's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that it needs to resonate on a deeper level with people without getting explicitly political. I believe 1984 accomplished this even if almost every normie has no opinion on it beyond "wow so communism is pretty fucked up…"

Listing some great modern leftist movies.

Someone already mentioned They Live. Most sci-fi have a leftist bent to them already.

about a class divided society

about the consequences of war -> societal decline, mass refugees, fascism etc

about class division and climate change

about apartheid

it's easy to get the wrong impression from this. but in its essence it's a rejection of both the anprim devolution of society and a rejection of received wisdom and values of existing society. it's a true hegelian movie.

The main character is reprehensible, but he's also the outcome of a system – contemporary hypermediated capitalism.

Old 80s sci-fi like Total Recall, Robocop, Running Man is also great.

La Chinoisie (1967) by french new wave director Jean Luc Godard is a reality show style pseudo documentary about a cell of aspiring Maoist terrorist beatniks who share an apartment in pre 68 France. Yeah, it's kinda self indulgent, but visually pretty cool and probably an interesting historical document as well. Godard himself later became a hardcore maoist and did a bunch of pretty much unwatchable dialectical maoist films. Some of his early work is really good though. The theme of the film is a really catchy pop song about mao.

youtube.com/watch?v=5ecMgcTpmdw

Dude that movie was garbage.

Well of course it has to resonate with people. If it doesn't then it's not doing its job. But that doesn't mean that art shouldn't be political, or that political art succeeds in spite of its political message, quite the opposite, the political message is supposed to make it resonate more. To use your example (even though I personally dislike the book), 1984 wouldn't even be a story without politics, it would just be a story about some dude who bangs some chick, gets locked up in a room, and says some weird things.
Political art is more than just having a writer lecture the viewer through his characters, we have plenty of examples of how badly that can go, it's about crafting the art around the message so that it resonates with the viewer.
I will also stress the point that there is no art that doesn't have a political nature. People tend to shape their beliefs around the art they consume, see all the Liberal Harry Potter fans and all the Conservatives who love Lord of the Rings

Of course you're oversimplifying massively here. The book's successes are in showing a human spirit crushed under the strict totalitarian system it presents. Creativity, love, happiness etc. Now you could say "well a totalitarian state is a political system so this is all political" but I'd say this message is human first, the message of natural human feelings and joys and the feeling of having these things strangled.
And most people I think would agree the middle section where it drops all pretenses and becomes a political essay is the worst part of the book.

Of course I've also heard that 1984 (as well as Brave New World) are just rip-offs of We so maybe Orwell is a total hack and it's that we should be talking about.

See I can't imagine this kind of MO turning into some good art.
And I gotta stress again that you only think this way because you're politically minded.

See I don't read fantasy so I wouldn't know personally but I've seen it argued before that LotR is conservative wank for being about tradition while I've seen others argue that it's more about crafting a mythos specifically for brits. While other people have told me it's literally just fantasy nonsense with no meaning whatsoever. No comment on Harry Potter other than that way too many adults care way too much about a children's fantasy series they read as children imo.

Whats that gif from?

Subvert traditional story structure, which almost always is designed to support the status quo or traditional society. I'm not talking about like hero's journey story structure, but like "the hero restores the rightful ruler to the throne" type shit. I guess it's more plot than story maybe. I've been wanting to write a story with this sort of concept for a while…

Is S3 out yet?

Tried to browse 8/v/ once
Trully, I'd like the new Far Cry for it's effects on pol, if it wasn't yet another of the same…

this is bait, right?

Grapes of Wrath.
Anything from 1920s US that isn't bourgie propaganda.

EVERYTHING is political. Sorry if you think politics is Voting for President, but human is a political animal and everything you do is political.

Everything on your list is 101.

South Park is made by burgers for burgers.
What did you expect?

What?

Yes, the book's message is "totalitarianism bad". Orwell was telling the readers how much the Soviet Union sucked. It's political. It's extremely political
Because it's a lecture. Orwell's not using the story to send you a message, he's just sending you a message.
Except 1984 fits perfectly into that kind of MO. Orwell wanted to make a story about how the Soviet Union was bad, so he made a story about a guy getting fucked over by a totalitarian system and tells the reader "this could be you." He's making a story to send a political message.
Name one story that isn't political.

Everything is political.

I mean Zizek always being like "I'd sell my mother to see the day after V for Vendeta.

Well.. Considering Mr Robot is, V, Fight Club and Matrix in a blender, with a pint of crazy narator…

AH! But, you see! It's not just about soviet union! It's about power structures and how to hold the status quo going!
If you read it just as "Stalin is bad" you miss the point.
Same with Animal Farm. It's not just "Evil Gommies". It's about how every revolution will become like this, unless we prevent it.

Little Red Riding Hood.
Cause it's about teaching girls not to fuck "Bad Boyz".

the personal is political

That's not what 1984 is about you stupid faggot. Good job showing your burger education. Read Pynchon's essay on 1984. I'll post it if I can find it but it's no wonder you didn't like 1984 if you took the most banal reaction to it possible.

You mean name a story that a politically minded person cannot put a magnifying glass called "political analysis" on.
But let's have fun anyways. Tell me how Eraserhead is political.

This is how books get banned.

How very vague.
I'm not reading it just as "Stalin is bad", stories can say multiple things. But you would definitely be missing the point if you don't even take into account the context the story is written in, the Cold War, and the fact that the author of the story is a democratic socialist who hated Stalin.
That's the part the majority of readers caught, since the story never explained the latter. Also, that is a political message.
So the story is teaching girls not to fuck around and accepting the husband their families have chosen for them, thus enforcing the status quo. Sounds political.

No, books get banned because authoritarian governments don't want people to think.

Isn't it about the oppression and alienation modernity creates and so on?

Not a burger. Burger education would say that it was about how Communism is bad, I'm saying it's about how the Soviet Union is bad, since Orwell hated the Soviet Union, which is also what Pynchon's essay says.
Just because you refuse to look at it that way doesn't mean it isn't there.

Villainous

But if books are inherently political and help form the politics of those that read them then wouldn't it make sense to ban books that are anti the current structure to society? What's the Stalin quote? "education is a weapon that can be aimed" or something along those lines?
And so on and so forth? I'd say that's more of an interpretation of Lynch's subconscious inspirations. You're not really saying much about the work itself (which you have not seen I assume?)

I'm actually rereading it right now. You should read it for the first time I think:
scribd.com/doc/100899/Pynchon-s-Intro-to-Orwell-s-1984

Just because you insist on looking at it that was does not mean it is relevant.

You were saying?

Thx user

So you read that at the time Orwell was disenfranchised from the british "left" and 1984 was not exclusively his personal reaction to stalinism?

I mean you're obviously seeing whatever you want to see, which is proving my point, but I think you should read the whole essay anyways.

Stop putting fucking words in my mouth. Here's what I said right below your post
Stories can be looked at in different ways, and in the context of the time period and looking at Orwell's personal history, as well as the allegories in the fucking book (the Trotsky-figure) to say that it's about Stalinism is completely accurate. It's not a full analysis, but this is a fucking image board.
And this is completely disregarding the fact that my original point was that 1984 is a political book with a political message BECAUSE STORIES ARE POLITICAL AND THIS THREAD IS ABOUT USING STORIES TO SEND A POLITICAL MESSAGE. Now quit being a faggot.

Only if it has practical impact.

Sometimes just letting them go out there with nobody reading them is much easier.

That's the insidious thing about bourgeois democracy in general. Officially, no, the communist party isn't banned - but it's a minor party and everything is subtly slanted against it and the minor parties. Officially, everyone is making a voluntary informed choice to vote for the two major interchangeable parties…

Same with books. No need to ban a book if nobody reads anyway, etc.

No it's exclusively an oversimplification you're pushing because it benefits your argument.
Then shut the fuck up??
This thread is dumb, op is a faggot and you're a prissy bitch. Obviously I'm posting because I disagree with the thread's topic.

Well yeah I'm hardly arguing that our free and open liberal society is such based on definition alone. There are obviously insidious measures in place to keep people from even questioning the status quo or for a common person to have any say whatsoever in the "free and open" political systems.

This is like, a totally horrific but very modern problem that's the subject of it's own reactions in contemporary literature and other art.

How exactly would a deeper analysis of the book make it look less political. Regardless, Orwell is sending a political message, which is the argument I'm making. The idea that 1984 is somehow not political because it carries broader meanings about "totalitarianism" or "power structures" is idiotic, especially when both of those are political subjects.
Then shut the fuck up and stop bumping the thread you idiot. Make a new one about politics in art and be a faggot elsewhere.
To bring this thread vaguely on topic, , an interesting idea would be to take a critical look at a "tired" or status-quo affirming genre or story and flipping it on its head, such as a superhero story where the hero tries to change the status quo rather than defend it (V for Vendetta being a prime example, for a given value of hero), or a fantasy epic where the chosen one is destined to destroy the corrupt feudal order instead of saving it by becoming the best king ever, whatever. Basically write stories that stress the need for radical change and which don't simply affirm the established order, where the heroes struggle to change the system instead of saving it or climbing the ranks. You can go pretty far with just that, and the story doesn't even have to be about socialism or 'politics' or whatever, there's no need to preach. Just by writing a different kind of story you'll be leaps and bounds over a lot of the ideological bullshit out there.

The argument is not about proving that it is less political or apolitical, the argument is that you're ignoring facets of the book for the sake of the political interpretation. This is precisely why art=/=politics. It's more accurate to point to the examples of human elements and how and what ways they were strangled in 1984 and how you can used this as an argument against authoritarianism rather than "the fact that Orwell wrote the book and it's clearly anti-Stalin like duhhhh".
It's nice to see you're so dedicated to free and open discourse. Sage isn't a downvote btw. I have no problem with bumping a thread I disagree with.

Also nice "idea" lmao. Your basically asking for Star Wars.

Except that's the point I'm trying to make you dullard.
And to go back to what you quoted, how is that not political? Or do you somehow think Orwell was not trying to make a political point?
As for "human elements", a lot of leftist dissident art are about people crushed under corrupt systems (totalitarianism, capitalism, whatever), because the authors are trying to make a statement about those corrupt systems. They're explicitly political, and so is 1984. Just because you say it's about generic authoritarianism rather than stalinism doesn't make it less so.
Yeah, that's pretty much proof you don't know shit about what you're talking about. Star Wars is literally about restoring the old social order. Now quit embarrassing yourself.

Except that's not the problem. The problem is you don't actually get anything out of art but confirmation of your ideology. That's WHY you're in a thread with the topic "how to write propaganda lol????" That's WHY you'll pigeonhole everything into a political ideological framework. That's WHY any decent artist would spit in your face.
No. You're pigeonholing Orwell's self-expression. If all he wanted was to make a political statement then he wouldn't have written literature. Read Pynchon's essay.
Who cares about your nerd wank, faggot? Dune then? The point I was making is that when pushed to actually coming up with an original idea, you default to genre-fiction like a typical pleb bitch which is exactly what I'd expect from someone who doesn't care about art as expression of life but as "covert education on the writer's ideology". People like you NEVER make decent art.

Also by your own words this thread is even more than cringe-inducing. It's utterly pointless. According to you a person's ideology will always shine through in a work and that everything is political (this is where you gave more genre-fiction as example iirc). So really the problem for you isn't "hur dur how do I write propaganda", the problem is "more people with leftist tendencies/ideologies need to write more and that the natural process of expression, since it's inherently tied to the political along with everything else, will produce leftist fiction".

bitch

Literally only leftists think this, and it's because all their policies are such dismal failures in reality that they need to turn fiction into propaganda to put themselves in a "good light", but even that doesn't work because the public rightfully rejects such obvious anti-human bullshit even in fairy land, so leftists inevitably demand control of "art" and "history" as propaganda.

In short you should all get jobs and/or kys.

...

Underrated Post

Tapping into the alienation and foul machinations of the system always provide great literary yarns.

The art style reminds me of a contemporary interpretation of Beetlejuice's art style

she seems like she gives really sloppy head

seriously, why are you here?

marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/theory-novel/index.htm

Embarrassingly wrong

This. Evangelion is a clearly leftist anime with leftist values. Shinji's father can be compared with today's silicon valley nerds in a modern context.

It's true though. Only authoritarian minded people like SJWs or fascists think otherwise.

but shinji rejects instrumentality

what makes you think that fascism disregarded art?
the entire ideology grew out of art movements
communism by contrast is decidedly anti-art

Shinji is meant to represent you (or Anno) rejecting the big god parent sacred society figure

I'm still not sure you can easily define Evangelion as being "left wing" there's nothing really about it that screams leftism over any other ideal.
just seems like Shinto religious ideas of purity and sacrifice to me

A lot of the central themes in Evangelion came from Anno reading Jung while making the show, he also started making the show in the first place as a response to the massive disillusionment he got from working in the tv industry previously, this was him "not running away" from anime. I also have friends that swear it takes very heavy inspiration from Crichton novels and even some parallels to Gravity's Rainbow. Aside from this it has many many homages to other anime and tv shows which you could look up. Not sure if any of that makes it "leftist".

But I'm willing to bet that if you stopped Anno and said "hey it's cool you put communist themes in your anime lol" he'd say something like "what? no I'm apolitical if anything".

No no no. It is about using art as a tool to maintain, seize, or propagate power. Seeing art not as individual self-expression but as a way to reflect ideology. This naturally leads to "we must rid ourselves of art that does not reflect the correct ideology" since art only serves the purpose of propagating ideology in such a view.

Shinji is a scapegoat. Everybody in the show other than Shinji and Asuka is a dirty coward but can't accept it so they project onto Shinji. He gets shit on the whole time despite taking on more responsibility than ever makes sense for someone his age, and takes shitloads of trauma on the chin. (Same for Asuka but she copes differently) Because that's what he's supposed to do. And then Instrumentality reveals everyone's hands. Shinji and Asuka reject it because they have hardened themselves enough to have the bravery needed to reject it. Meanwhile everyone else was merely hiding their fear and are eager to join and have their individuality annihilated. What's really going on here is that for Instrumentality to be possible, all the adults needed the kids to operate the Evas and be brave for them. Society (NERV, the adults) molded the workers (the kids) into what it needed to get what it wanted (Instrumentality).

But in being shaped that way, the ones being shaped became someone who would reject society's goal. It's a weird paradox where everyone wants Instrumentality because the pain of life is too much to bear, but in order to achieve Instrumentality they have to fight on for a while longer. Since fighting on takes more bravery than they have, they must make the kids brave enough to handle it. And once they're made that way, the kids don't have a need for Instrumentality. The sucker punch at the end is that Shinji thought he was unusual in that he wasn't as brave as everyone else, but the truth is he was normal and as a kid he hadn't learned to hide his fear like the adults had. Since he was thrust into everything so young, he never learned that and instead had to learn how to truly confront his fears. This is very clearly reinforced throughout the show in the characters' personal lives. Everybody has problems and they try to run away instead of dealing with them. Only the kids learn to deal because they are forced to.

Is it just me, or does MGS seem to incorporate several leftist undercurrents? Besides the occasional parallels between Big Boss, Lenin and Che, some titles bring up ideas reminiscent of those of Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, Debord and probably others I never even heard about.