numb3r_5ev3n (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
numb3r_5ev3n) wrote2025-04-05 08:23 pm
numb3r_5ev3n) wrote2025-04-05 08:23 pm
American Cultural Narcissism and the New Gender Synthesis
(TW for mentions of the concept of unaliving, not actual unaliving.)
Full disclosure: I was assigned female at birth, but I identify as Nonbinary. I spent the 2000s identifying as "Genderqueer." I've always seen Gender Identity as a spectrum. I feel like I fall more on the masculine side, but not enough to identify as a Trans Man, if that makes sense. So, "Trans Masc" it is.
Those of you who have been following my blog for a while might be aware that I am a tad obsessed with The Matrix. (Just a tad, ha ha!) I spend a lot of time on this blog analyzing The Matrix, and how pivotal it was. Maybe the last real cultural touchstone before 9/11 "changed everything." And though its appeal was near-universal, it has turned out to represent very different things to very different groups of people. 25 years after the fact, a film created by two Trans Women has been nearly entirely co-opted by reactionary men, and taken to mean something that is the opposite of what its creators intended. The fact that the so-called "Redpill Movement" exists at all is a massive thorn in the side of anyone who likes this movie and its sequels that isn't a reactionary weirdo.
There is a three-part blog post from The Last Psychiatrist from back in 2009 that I've been referring back to a lot in regards to the "Redpill movement" in a "tap the sign" kind of way. Because it contains analysis of how, by the late 2000s, the symbolism and themes of The Matrix had already been appropriated by men who were living in a state of quiet desperation, who had turned that anxiety into grievance and resentment. Looking back at this document from 2009, it's easy to see in hindsight how this would eventually metastasize into "the manosphere" in the 2010s and 2020s. However, a new post just dropped on the Liberal Currents site, and I feel like it's the best take on where we are 16 years later.
Taken together, both essays point to this: That modern reactionaries don't live in the world, they live in a movie that is perpetually running inside their heads. And they demand that reality conform to that movie, and not the other way around. And they demand that everyone play their assigned roles, or else.
I've seen references to people "living inside the movie playing inside their heads" dated as far back as The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, author Tom Wolfe's account of The Merry Pranksters, their travels around the USA during the 1960s, and Ken Kesey's eventual arrest and persecution for LSD trafficking. But The Last Psychiatrist really lays what what he/she/they refer to as "The Schizotypal Condition" out in brutal detail:
"With every passing day, you realize you will not fight bad guys, not join the CIA, not be in a band, not throw the winning touchdown.
You will not know kung fu.
Your body sickeningly, boringly confirms it. You breathe harder when you run. You don't run anyway. Hair missing, appearing.
Women your age are better looking than men your age. Wait, wait, what?
Hopes and dreams are now only dreams. You start to care about office politics because nothing else is happening. Clothes matter more because very little else does.
Drinking helps. You don't know why, you aren't an alcoholic, but you need it.
"I will never be in love." You love the sister you've married, but there's no hunger, no need. There never really was. This was supposed to be temporary until... she came along. The woman with the dark hair tied loosely in a bun, wearing a scarf, glasses, stunningly beautiful (no one had noticed her but you, of course)-- lost-- needing to be saved---
But wait, you're still young. Ish. You still have some time-- something could still happen.
What modern middle aged narcissist wants is to find a way to put one foot in reality and keep one foot in fantasy. A solution that lets him keep fighting the traffic twice a day. Providing just enough lack of self-awareness that he doesn't reach for a bazooka and blow his brains out. (If only he had even energy for that.) To have just enough hope that one day the fantasies could come true that he keeps on going. That a 30 something year old man could suddenly know kung fu.
Fortunately, we find ourselves at the tenth anniversary of just such a solution.
The Matrix: the natural, necessary end to the action movie generation, temporarily postponing a tripling of the suicide rate."
Reactionary, male chauvinist guys like the ones currently calling themselves "Redpills" loved the Matrix because it provided them a means to live in this schizotypal hypermasculine fantasy. They misunderstood it the same way they misunderstood Fight Club, another film that they glommed onto.
This is something that the Wachowski Sisters appeared to have noticed right away: because the Matrix sequels have all been attempts at course-corrections away from this. Neo isn't the actual Chosen One: or if he is, it's because the Prophesy is a trick by the machines to account for any humans who might try and reject the simulation. Or if he was, the thing that makes him "The Chosen One" was activated by Trinity, and shared with her: it was never just him, it was both of them. And of course, the "Redpill" guys are livid.
Edit: And I've just realized that the first 1/3 of Matrix Resurrections is a riff on this. A middle-aged Thomas Anderson himself is just going through the motions of a boring, repetitive, tedious life, before Bugs shows up to tell him that he's Actually Neo For Real. The thing that, according to The Last Psychiatrist, every guy in The Schizotypal Condition is desperately hoping for.
And of course it isn't just middle-aged guys. So many people grew up reading Harry Potter and wishing they'd gotten a Hogwarts Letter, or found the portal to Narnia, etc. I think it's just gotten way worse as late-stage capitalism has given way to end-stage capitalism, and it's getting harder and harder for people to self-actualize and have a fulfilling life. I think it's common for people in the working class (and if you are not a part of the owner class, you are part of the working class) to imagine a lifetime spent performing labor in obscurity and mediocrity and go, "that can't my destiny. I'm not an NPC, after all. I'm a Main Character."
My point here with this post is not "these guys are born losers." It's that the method they've chosen to cope with the effects of life in end-stage capitalism is chasing a toxic fantasy that is doing real harm to themselves and others.
It's worth noting that in Matrix Resurrections, Neo is not wanting to be told he is The Protagonist, not really. He just wants a way out of the simulation, like everyone else. And he wants to be with Trinity. But (spoilers) it's Trinity who ends up saving him - both in the original film, and at the end of Resurrections. And they end up flying off into the sunset together.
And I want to address something here that The Last Psychiatrist touches on, which is very relevant to what this whole post is about. I guess would be an example of how what folks today call "Toxic Masculinity" hurts men, too: the fact that the hypermasculine cultural tropes that seem to make guys feel like they're a complete failure if they haven't learned kung fu, or fought the bad guys, or made a billion dollars, or written the Great American Novel, or become a rock star, or met The Girl Of Their Dreams and had a Whirlwind Romance. To the point of "suicide rates tripling" being mentioned a possible hazard, and "The Scizotypal Condition" being necessary to cope. To the point that we've seen the rise of Reactionary movements like the the Men's Right's (aka "Redpill") movement, Gamergate, and MAGA in the 16 years since those blog posts were written.
People in America are not raised to live in the Real World. But the Matrix we live in is not a simulation created by machines. It's a mythology built over the course of two and a half centuries. A mythology which is destroying us.
People who are much smarter and more eloquent than I am (Hbomberguy, Lindsay Ellis) have already thoroughly examined and discussed this phenomenon. But Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li just knocked it out of the park, with A New Gender Synthesis.
We've gone way beyond The Schizotypal Condition, and into the realm of Reactionary Camp.
"Gender is about more than just flesh. It's about how you function in society: how you act and how you are acted upon; how you perceive others and how others perceive you.
And this takes us back to reactionary camp. Watch this video: a pretty boy so puffed by gear he can barely wipe his own ass, pretending to Do Business in front of his Instagram followers, while a faceless wifemaid serves him an all-protein breakfast. The fantasy is a fantasy of power and recognition. He needs to be seen to be admired. Yet he has done nothing of worth to command that admiration.
The cheat skill fantasy is the crypto fantasy is the sports betting fantasy is the day trading fantasy is the litrpg fantasy is the reactionary fantasy. There is a secret cheat code out there, one that only you possess, one that will transport you to luxury and leisure. You won't need to work hard. Wealth and esteem will fall into your lap and everyone will have no choice but to adulate you.
This is called a rent: a return earned not from any real production, but just from excluding others. Melinda Cooper argues that the post-WWII economic order was structured to provide such rents to white men by excluding everyone else from the best-paying and most secure jobs. This economic rent was coupled with a social rent, a social rent embodied in a specific family structure: the fantasy of the housewife and the white picket fence, the fantasy of a woman not permitted any better options forced into dependence on and subservience to you.
This is the interpersonal promise of reactionary camp. Testosterone is literally magical, a secret chemical possessed of great power, and just possess enough of it and you will have Masculine Energy and riches and adoring women.
But look at these hollow men. Elon Musk has to pay someone else to play his video games for him so he can pretend to be good in front of a chatroom of anonymous fanboys. Look at these hollow men. Robin Hanson speculates that unfuckable men should get helpmeets assigned to them by the state. Look at these hollow men.
In a free society, the state should not be in the business of telling people who to love. The state should not be in the business of telling people how they have to live their lives based on some demographic category they got slotted into at birth. Why do you think the DMV should be handing out gender roles? There is nothing more antithetical to human freedom and human flourishing."
There is an entire school of thought in journalism right now which seems to be devoted to hand-wringing over Young Men's Pain, presumably the fault of a "woke," post-feminist world that seemingly has has no need for what they dub "traditional masculinity," but which is actually Reactionary Camp. Because Traditional Masculinity has historically emphasized civic duty, responsibility, personal growth and sacrifice - something which Reactionary Camp notably lacks, and scoffs at as "woke nonsense."
These pundits ask, can we truly blame them if these young (white) men, seething with the rejection of their (female) peers, end up shooting up their school or workplace, or retreating into their rooms to play Fortnite Forever, as a life which seems to hold no options and no future for them passes them by? We Live In A Society, after all.
But is it really all Woke/DEI's fault? Or is it the unrealistic expectations of a life lived nearly completely immersed in media tropes that tell them that they will never be good enough if they don't look the part, act the part, play the part, be the part? A part which ends up making them miserable and maladjusted, but that The Mythology that this Society pretends it runs on - but in actuality is desperately trying to prop up as more and more people see it for the hollow sham that it is - demands they play? (Well, that and late-stage capitalism: but I repeat myself!)
But as we go forward into this uncertain future, I hope to see more of the kind of "New Gender Synthesis" that will let us truly be ourselves. To live outside of The Movie, in the Real World, as our real, best selves. Whatever that ends up looking like for each individual person.
That's the real Red Pill.
Full disclosure: I was assigned female at birth, but I identify as Nonbinary. I spent the 2000s identifying as "Genderqueer." I've always seen Gender Identity as a spectrum. I feel like I fall more on the masculine side, but not enough to identify as a Trans Man, if that makes sense. So, "Trans Masc" it is.
Those of you who have been following my blog for a while might be aware that I am a tad obsessed with The Matrix. (Just a tad, ha ha!) I spend a lot of time on this blog analyzing The Matrix, and how pivotal it was. Maybe the last real cultural touchstone before 9/11 "changed everything." And though its appeal was near-universal, it has turned out to represent very different things to very different groups of people. 25 years after the fact, a film created by two Trans Women has been nearly entirely co-opted by reactionary men, and taken to mean something that is the opposite of what its creators intended. The fact that the so-called "Redpill Movement" exists at all is a massive thorn in the side of anyone who likes this movie and its sequels that isn't a reactionary weirdo.
There is a three-part blog post from The Last Psychiatrist from back in 2009 that I've been referring back to a lot in regards to the "Redpill movement" in a "tap the sign" kind of way. Because it contains analysis of how, by the late 2000s, the symbolism and themes of The Matrix had already been appropriated by men who were living in a state of quiet desperation, who had turned that anxiety into grievance and resentment. Looking back at this document from 2009, it's easy to see in hindsight how this would eventually metastasize into "the manosphere" in the 2010s and 2020s. However, a new post just dropped on the Liberal Currents site, and I feel like it's the best take on where we are 16 years later.
Taken together, both essays point to this: That modern reactionaries don't live in the world, they live in a movie that is perpetually running inside their heads. And they demand that reality conform to that movie, and not the other way around. And they demand that everyone play their assigned roles, or else.
I've seen references to people "living inside the movie playing inside their heads" dated as far back as The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, author Tom Wolfe's account of The Merry Pranksters, their travels around the USA during the 1960s, and Ken Kesey's eventual arrest and persecution for LSD trafficking. But The Last Psychiatrist really lays what what he/she/they refer to as "The Schizotypal Condition" out in brutal detail:
"With every passing day, you realize you will not fight bad guys, not join the CIA, not be in a band, not throw the winning touchdown.
You will not know kung fu.
Your body sickeningly, boringly confirms it. You breathe harder when you run. You don't run anyway. Hair missing, appearing.
Women your age are better looking than men your age. Wait, wait, what?
Hopes and dreams are now only dreams. You start to care about office politics because nothing else is happening. Clothes matter more because very little else does.
Drinking helps. You don't know why, you aren't an alcoholic, but you need it.
"I will never be in love." You love the sister you've married, but there's no hunger, no need. There never really was. This was supposed to be temporary until... she came along. The woman with the dark hair tied loosely in a bun, wearing a scarf, glasses, stunningly beautiful (no one had noticed her but you, of course)-- lost-- needing to be saved---
But wait, you're still young. Ish. You still have some time-- something could still happen.
What modern middle aged narcissist wants is to find a way to put one foot in reality and keep one foot in fantasy. A solution that lets him keep fighting the traffic twice a day. Providing just enough lack of self-awareness that he doesn't reach for a bazooka and blow his brains out. (If only he had even energy for that.) To have just enough hope that one day the fantasies could come true that he keeps on going. That a 30 something year old man could suddenly know kung fu.
Fortunately, we find ourselves at the tenth anniversary of just such a solution.
The Matrix: the natural, necessary end to the action movie generation, temporarily postponing a tripling of the suicide rate."
Reactionary, male chauvinist guys like the ones currently calling themselves "Redpills" loved the Matrix because it provided them a means to live in this schizotypal hypermasculine fantasy. They misunderstood it the same way they misunderstood Fight Club, another film that they glommed onto.
This is something that the Wachowski Sisters appeared to have noticed right away: because the Matrix sequels have all been attempts at course-corrections away from this. Neo isn't the actual Chosen One: or if he is, it's because the Prophesy is a trick by the machines to account for any humans who might try and reject the simulation. Or if he was, the thing that makes him "The Chosen One" was activated by Trinity, and shared with her: it was never just him, it was both of them. And of course, the "Redpill" guys are livid.
Edit: And I've just realized that the first 1/3 of Matrix Resurrections is a riff on this. A middle-aged Thomas Anderson himself is just going through the motions of a boring, repetitive, tedious life, before Bugs shows up to tell him that he's Actually Neo For Real. The thing that, according to The Last Psychiatrist, every guy in The Schizotypal Condition is desperately hoping for.
And of course it isn't just middle-aged guys. So many people grew up reading Harry Potter and wishing they'd gotten a Hogwarts Letter, or found the portal to Narnia, etc. I think it's just gotten way worse as late-stage capitalism has given way to end-stage capitalism, and it's getting harder and harder for people to self-actualize and have a fulfilling life. I think it's common for people in the working class (and if you are not a part of the owner class, you are part of the working class) to imagine a lifetime spent performing labor in obscurity and mediocrity and go, "that can't my destiny. I'm not an NPC, after all. I'm a Main Character."
My point here with this post is not "these guys are born losers." It's that the method they've chosen to cope with the effects of life in end-stage capitalism is chasing a toxic fantasy that is doing real harm to themselves and others.
It's worth noting that in Matrix Resurrections, Neo is not wanting to be told he is The Protagonist, not really. He just wants a way out of the simulation, like everyone else. And he wants to be with Trinity. But (spoilers) it's Trinity who ends up saving him - both in the original film, and at the end of Resurrections. And they end up flying off into the sunset together.
And I want to address something here that The Last Psychiatrist touches on, which is very relevant to what this whole post is about. I guess would be an example of how what folks today call "Toxic Masculinity" hurts men, too: the fact that the hypermasculine cultural tropes that seem to make guys feel like they're a complete failure if they haven't learned kung fu, or fought the bad guys, or made a billion dollars, or written the Great American Novel, or become a rock star, or met The Girl Of Their Dreams and had a Whirlwind Romance. To the point of "suicide rates tripling" being mentioned a possible hazard, and "The Scizotypal Condition" being necessary to cope. To the point that we've seen the rise of Reactionary movements like the the Men's Right's (aka "Redpill") movement, Gamergate, and MAGA in the 16 years since those blog posts were written.
People in America are not raised to live in the Real World. But the Matrix we live in is not a simulation created by machines. It's a mythology built over the course of two and a half centuries. A mythology which is destroying us.
People who are much smarter and more eloquent than I am (Hbomberguy, Lindsay Ellis) have already thoroughly examined and discussed this phenomenon. But Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li just knocked it out of the park, with A New Gender Synthesis.
We've gone way beyond The Schizotypal Condition, and into the realm of Reactionary Camp.
"Gender is about more than just flesh. It's about how you function in society: how you act and how you are acted upon; how you perceive others and how others perceive you.
And this takes us back to reactionary camp. Watch this video: a pretty boy so puffed by gear he can barely wipe his own ass, pretending to Do Business in front of his Instagram followers, while a faceless wifemaid serves him an all-protein breakfast. The fantasy is a fantasy of power and recognition. He needs to be seen to be admired. Yet he has done nothing of worth to command that admiration.
The cheat skill fantasy is the crypto fantasy is the sports betting fantasy is the day trading fantasy is the litrpg fantasy is the reactionary fantasy. There is a secret cheat code out there, one that only you possess, one that will transport you to luxury and leisure. You won't need to work hard. Wealth and esteem will fall into your lap and everyone will have no choice but to adulate you.
This is called a rent: a return earned not from any real production, but just from excluding others. Melinda Cooper argues that the post-WWII economic order was structured to provide such rents to white men by excluding everyone else from the best-paying and most secure jobs. This economic rent was coupled with a social rent, a social rent embodied in a specific family structure: the fantasy of the housewife and the white picket fence, the fantasy of a woman not permitted any better options forced into dependence on and subservience to you.
This is the interpersonal promise of reactionary camp. Testosterone is literally magical, a secret chemical possessed of great power, and just possess enough of it and you will have Masculine Energy and riches and adoring women.
But look at these hollow men. Elon Musk has to pay someone else to play his video games for him so he can pretend to be good in front of a chatroom of anonymous fanboys. Look at these hollow men. Robin Hanson speculates that unfuckable men should get helpmeets assigned to them by the state. Look at these hollow men.
In a free society, the state should not be in the business of telling people who to love. The state should not be in the business of telling people how they have to live their lives based on some demographic category they got slotted into at birth. Why do you think the DMV should be handing out gender roles? There is nothing more antithetical to human freedom and human flourishing."
There is an entire school of thought in journalism right now which seems to be devoted to hand-wringing over Young Men's Pain, presumably the fault of a "woke," post-feminist world that seemingly has has no need for what they dub "traditional masculinity," but which is actually Reactionary Camp. Because Traditional Masculinity has historically emphasized civic duty, responsibility, personal growth and sacrifice - something which Reactionary Camp notably lacks, and scoffs at as "woke nonsense."
These pundits ask, can we truly blame them if these young (white) men, seething with the rejection of their (female) peers, end up shooting up their school or workplace, or retreating into their rooms to play Fortnite Forever, as a life which seems to hold no options and no future for them passes them by? We Live In A Society, after all.
But is it really all Woke/DEI's fault? Or is it the unrealistic expectations of a life lived nearly completely immersed in media tropes that tell them that they will never be good enough if they don't look the part, act the part, play the part, be the part? A part which ends up making them miserable and maladjusted, but that The Mythology that this Society pretends it runs on - but in actuality is desperately trying to prop up as more and more people see it for the hollow sham that it is - demands they play? (Well, that and late-stage capitalism: but I repeat myself!)
But as we go forward into this uncertain future, I hope to see more of the kind of "New Gender Synthesis" that will let us truly be ourselves. To live outside of The Movie, in the Real World, as our real, best selves. Whatever that ends up looking like for each individual person.
That's the real Red Pill.
The Narrative
Recall, the good one, and then of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". There's also a Warner Brothers cartoon about a young boy who spends his time in class and afterward daydreaming of being an adventurer and hero that comes to mind. And BTW, Total Recall didn't get the point of "We can Remember it for You Wholesale", but that's not a big surprise at all, because it can be said of pretty much everything Hollywood's done of his stuff that they don't know Dick (I think I've read most of his stuff, including some of his mainstream work too)..
And the big thing I think people are missing is self-analysis -- how did they get themselves into the situations they're in?
Transgender theory has dealt with the simple fact for a while, we live in a construct; this is taken from psychological approaches to the topic. But it's not a computer construct, it's one consensual society has foisted (what a great word) upon everyone to create a quotidian narrative to keep the pack functioning. The question often not asked is not if someone is something other than they appear to be, it's the question of what if each person isn't who they've been told to be by consensus -- gender markers, like so much else, are false labels. The drive for being an undiscovered hero runs counter to the need for authenticity, and as we've all seen multiple times (David Koresh was one of many who made this error), never believe your own press.
Reality Therapy is one of the therapeutic modes that deals with this, looking at the modes of awareness, that we don't experience the world at the level where the rubber meets the road and the quarks dance the mambo, but instead work on multiple levels switching from one to another as needed (and yeah, this sounds a bit like something Hubbard and his church[notchurch] uses, but remember, even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.
And BTW, we also see the "Bro's" infiltrating other spaces too -- the fascist attempts to co-opt White Wolf's World of Darkness games for example, with mage being the most obvious playground (which annoys me in great measure, because I love that game).
As to the issues about men no longer being men, you nailed it -- those men don't know what being a man is, it's a lot more than getting "money for nothing, and chicks for free".
Re: The Narrative
I think about the whole "Don't Dream It, Be It," thing from Rocky Horror Picture Show, and how it's kind of been flipped on its head by the guys trying to live the Reactionary Camp fantasy. At first, it seemed to be a call for folks to let their inner "freak flag" fly: for all of the repressed, closeted offspring of Cold War-era suburbia to accept themselves and Embrace Queerness. And that seems to be how a lot of the young Queer folks trapped in suburbia (like me) who latched onto that movie interpreted it. But then, Frank ends up getting shot by Riff Raff. Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott are left to crawl around in the wreckage singing "Superheroes." And then, decades later, Riff's Real World Alter Ego ended up speaking out in support of gender essentialism, even as he admitted to his own gender struggles.
(Seriously, I have a whole essay about Dark City that I am working on, which is stalled out because I don't know how to reconcile Richard O'Brien's very real and beneficial influence on my life with the opinions he's voiced recently.)
And of course, one needs look no further than the number from Rocky Horror's sequel Shock Treatment, "Thank God I'm A Man" for an example of what Reactionary Camp looks like. That whole thing is really "Reactionary Camp, The Movie" and it was ahead of its time. And seems to have predicted Trumpism.
It feels relevant that one of the major reasons I Went Goth as a teen is because things like face makeup, lipstick, hair dye, and nail polish are part of the accepted Uniform for both men, women, and everyone in between. But it is a uniform. It does feel like a bunch of teenage nonconformists in the late 1990s went about trying to conform to a very specific look the moment that we got it into our heads that this was what nonconformity looked like.
And there are probably some people for whom "Reactionary Camp" is "the real them." But the way to find this out would be to ask: is it making them happier? Or more miserable?
Re: The Narrative
I think Neal Peart also hit the nail dead center with "Limelight" -- "Living in the limelight, the universal dream for those who wish to seem." So in other words, performance and illusion. But he continues, "Those who wish to be, must put aside the alienation, get on with the fascination, the real relation, the underlying theme."
I'm adjusting my perceptions of how I view skeezy behavior and stuff that seems contradictory from public figures by applying the objective thinking model Robert Anton Wilson put forward in either his Cosmic Trigger books or one of the related ones -- we can't say anything definitive about someone or something, in fact pretty much the whole nouniverse, without adding specificity to it -- so saying, for instance, that bob is a plumber is inaccurate, because Bob isn't always a plumber, and there have been times when he wasn't and some where he won't be; the objective viewpoint is that Bob is working as a plumber as his career at this time in his life. Likewise, Isaac Asimov wasn't always a groper of women, and as far as anyone's told me he wasn't groping anyone without consent when he was writing. Of course, as![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flamingsword pointed out on a recent phone call,
he's dead, so it's easier to deal with his genius in relation to his skeezy
behavior.
RHPS has been pointed to as a mediocre script that somehow hit a nerve and now it's the longest running movie on its first run, still, unless something got FUBAR during the plague upon our houses. I believe that a lot of critics didn't understand what they were watching, even though it was in the first song of the entire thing -- it hit people in the face with what they were about to watch. For me it wasn't the subtexts and interactions on the stock, it was the social camaraderie in the audience participation with friends. I also got to it a bit before you did, so I'm told by your cadre things had changed some (though the criminologist still had no f'ing neck). Still, you're on the nose, the story is about flying a freak flag and getting executed for it -- what a crappy ending, though it didn't occur to me back then because I was too busy thinking up things to call out at the screen.
Let me know if you're interested in checking out the M:TA novel I'm working on.
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