Look, the assumption that public-facing jobs inherently suck is an outgrowth of the idea that your job should be the locus of personal fulfillment in your life. Americans don’t have hobbies; they have jobs — call it a “calling,” call it a “passion,” call it what the fuck you want, but at the end of the day, it’s just a fucking job.
Read MoreThe game itself takes place in the far future, and all of the characters are “Lancers” — giant-robot-piloting aces engaged in campaigns between different states that make up the Union, a laissez-faire interstellar state that claims to represent all of humanity in the vastness of space. Aliens are notably absent, but that is not to say that there is nothing inhuman about the setting: a rogue machine intelligence, RA has stolen Mars’s moon Deimos, and it is sometimes seen floating strangely near significant events in the history of the galaxy.
Read MoreThis is a reference to the Nietzschean idea of the eternal return, which is originally used as a part of a vital and life-affirming philosophy, but when considering that not all of us have agency at all times, it hints at something darker: if you're going to relive every part of your life, you need to make decisions you're comfortable making again – but you're also doomed to re-experience the worst things that happened to you innumerable times.
Read MoreThere is a bit of generational discourse that forms the backbone of the plot. The older generation knew prosperity, they knew the value of a hard day's work and that if you put in your time you should get what is due to you. The younger generation knew only the loss of that prosperity, a town where local institutions close down, where jobs are few and far between.
Read MoreThe problem with railing against nostalgia as a cultural phenomenon is that when you experience it yourself, you feel like a phony.
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