I'm going to be honest with you. As a 33 yr old guy, who's been involved with the most of the Alphabet soup "Right" groupings since at least post-Gamergate, your post spoke to me at a deep level.
I feel like I lost 5 years of my life due to some flavor of Conservative/Right Wing Negative Reinforcement where they tell you stuff about the inevitable downfall of the West, the Left being some kind of undefeatable monolith, how if we don't do something now then there is no hope for the future blah blah blah and on and on. Stuff gets so depressing that there could be Communist propaganda factories looking at the state of Right-wing "discourse" and deciding to just not do anything, because so much of the Movement™ acts as it's own demoralization machine.
It's shit like this that causes people to go to more extreme places, not that a lot of them were any better, I ended up in some Atomwaffen adjacent online groups AND THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING was going on there because they think there negative motivation will somehow lead people to radical action as opposed to them just becoming lazy slobs with a nasty case of crab mentality.
Quite literally, the only time things fixed themselves on my part was when I cut off from the Movement™ drivel, became more serious with my faith, committed to making stories and story ideas again, and accepted that I was on a road to nowhere if I continued partaking of the "discourse". Even then, I still feel miffed that I lost those years.
Keep up the good work. You and your buddies make great stories. I know I'm reading them and the good old stuff to help inspire mine.
I'm at the point where I think we should reject the whole "RW/LW art" thing. It's not a real thing. It's a category of the mind that we impose on ourselves for ideological reasons. People will cite the works of Tolkien and Lewis (especially Tolkien) as examples of RW art. But I can guarantee you that they're not thinking of making "RW Art" when they were penning their works.
People can cite how Tolkien was some based and trad right wing guy who really loves the Latin Mass and is pro-Franco and whatever. But there's a reason why most people don't know that, and that's because no one cares. In a sense, these things are irrelevant. I'm not saying that one's personal lives don't matter in his works, but it's something that only culture analysts and nerds like me will pay attention to. As for Lewis? Lol; he was so committed being apolitical that he rejected a knighthood.
And on the other side, I would hear that Star Trek is a "LW Art". Admittedly, I thought this way too. But no, it's not LW Art, it's just art. Obviously it's made by a liberal atheist, so it's going to have some "left wing" stuff into it. Similarly, the works of Tolkien and Lewis or any "based" author you can think of aren't "RW Art", they're just art.
I've said it many times before, and doubtless, I'll say it many times again: when you tie your art directly to the politics or ideologies of your day, as so many on the left and right alike have been doing, all you've ultimately done is given it an expiration date.
I think it's the correct move to wholly eschew the idea that your art is either right or left wing. You don't need to label it in such a way for it to have merit. Personally, I'd argue that labeling it in such a way actively removes merit from it, partly for the reason stated above, but that's just me.
Regardless, I see no value in any artist labeling their own work in such a way, not even monetary gain. We've seen that proven by the precipitous decline in sales that overtly left-leaning media products have seen over the years. We've seen it on the right, too, as shown by the fact that every comedy The Daily Wire produced other than "Am I Racist?" failed to connect even with its target demographics because they were more about overt messaging than comedy.
Leave such labeling to the audience. They're going to do it based on their personal interpretations of our work anyway, so why should we creators bother sullying our hands with these when they have no positive effect on the quality of our work? Our hands and minds are busy enough trying to develop worthwhile stories to share. As such, the only labels I'm inclined to worry about are those of genre, not politics. Quality matters more than ideology when it comes to entertainment.
All the other artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, game devs who wish to celebrate heroism, adventure, the indominable human spirit left to twist in irradiated wind because boomers & Gen X cons can't stand the idea of matching the left in anything other than rhetoric
I'm a classic conservative, which means I believe that expenditures must be covered by receipts, people should work hard and make something of themselves, and you can't depend upon the government.
My writing shows that, as my characters are fiercely independent and would never bow down to anyone. I have never taken welfare and only taken unemployment once in my life. Every other time, I've kept looking until I got any job that would support me. I work hard, I am loyal to my employer, and I don't lie, cheat, or steal.
I don't want to discourage anyone, and I always tell the generations below me to save money and not take on debt. I want to see the Millennials, Gen Z, and Alpha succeed. Nothing would please me more than for everyone to tell the boomers to retire and play shuffleboard.
I think Gen X -Alpha will have to band together and support each other. We will have to break the mold and reorganize our lives.
I don't buy in that false dichotomy both because it's the usual make everything an Esau Gambit and sportsball style thing, and because nearly everything called "right" wing is pretty hard "left". As far as I am concerned, it's the same bird and I am the guy cooking fried chicken.
It definitely doesn't help that anything even remotely based usually gatekeeps out the standard variant NPCs in the first chapter, while the tradcuck NPCs stay around longer and seethe about true traditions.
Ultimately, the first group will seethe that men being so disengaged with soyciety they'd happily leave the planet if given a chance is "right wing", and the fake, controlled opposition will call inspirational speeches "filth" because they that strongly oppose humans being raised instead of lowered. Also, much in the way of Cute Aggression, the primary sign of being subhuman.
In any case, I'm gonna write what I'm gonna write and continually double down on the basedness because both sides absolutely cannot help but follow their programming scripts and prove the NPC meme real.
I'm going to be honest with you. As a 33 yr old guy, who's been involved with the most of the Alphabet soup "Right" groupings since at least post-Gamergate, your post spoke to me at a deep level.
I feel like I lost 5 years of my life due to some flavor of Conservative/Right Wing Negative Reinforcement where they tell you stuff about the inevitable downfall of the West, the Left being some kind of undefeatable monolith, how if we don't do something now then there is no hope for the future blah blah blah and on and on. Stuff gets so depressing that there could be Communist propaganda factories looking at the state of Right-wing "discourse" and deciding to just not do anything, because so much of the Movement™ acts as it's own demoralization machine.
It's shit like this that causes people to go to more extreme places, not that a lot of them were any better, I ended up in some Atomwaffen adjacent online groups AND THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING was going on there because they think there negative motivation will somehow lead people to radical action as opposed to them just becoming lazy slobs with a nasty case of crab mentality.
Quite literally, the only time things fixed themselves on my part was when I cut off from the Movement™ drivel, became more serious with my faith, committed to making stories and story ideas again, and accepted that I was on a road to nowhere if I continued partaking of the "discourse". Even then, I still feel miffed that I lost those years.
Keep up the good work. You and your buddies make great stories. I know I'm reading them and the good old stuff to help inspire mine.
I'm at the point where I think we should reject the whole "RW/LW art" thing. It's not a real thing. It's a category of the mind that we impose on ourselves for ideological reasons. People will cite the works of Tolkien and Lewis (especially Tolkien) as examples of RW art. But I can guarantee you that they're not thinking of making "RW Art" when they were penning their works.
People can cite how Tolkien was some based and trad right wing guy who really loves the Latin Mass and is pro-Franco and whatever. But there's a reason why most people don't know that, and that's because no one cares. In a sense, these things are irrelevant. I'm not saying that one's personal lives don't matter in his works, but it's something that only culture analysts and nerds like me will pay attention to. As for Lewis? Lol; he was so committed being apolitical that he rejected a knighthood.
And on the other side, I would hear that Star Trek is a "LW Art". Admittedly, I thought this way too. But no, it's not LW Art, it's just art. Obviously it's made by a liberal atheist, so it's going to have some "left wing" stuff into it. Similarly, the works of Tolkien and Lewis or any "based" author you can think of aren't "RW Art", they're just art.
I've said it many times before, and doubtless, I'll say it many times again: when you tie your art directly to the politics or ideologies of your day, as so many on the left and right alike have been doing, all you've ultimately done is given it an expiration date.
I think it's the correct move to wholly eschew the idea that your art is either right or left wing. You don't need to label it in such a way for it to have merit. Personally, I'd argue that labeling it in such a way actively removes merit from it, partly for the reason stated above, but that's just me.
Regardless, I see no value in any artist labeling their own work in such a way, not even monetary gain. We've seen that proven by the precipitous decline in sales that overtly left-leaning media products have seen over the years. We've seen it on the right, too, as shown by the fact that every comedy The Daily Wire produced other than "Am I Racist?" failed to connect even with its target demographics because they were more about overt messaging than comedy.
Leave such labeling to the audience. They're going to do it based on their personal interpretations of our work anyway, so why should we creators bother sullying our hands with these when they have no positive effect on the quality of our work? Our hands and minds are busy enough trying to develop worthwhile stories to share. As such, the only labels I'm inclined to worry about are those of genre, not politics. Quality matters more than ideology when it comes to entertainment.
All the other artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, game devs who wish to celebrate heroism, adventure, the indominable human spirit left to twist in irradiated wind because boomers & Gen X cons can't stand the idea of matching the left in anything other than rhetoric
I'm a classic conservative, which means I believe that expenditures must be covered by receipts, people should work hard and make something of themselves, and you can't depend upon the government.
My writing shows that, as my characters are fiercely independent and would never bow down to anyone. I have never taken welfare and only taken unemployment once in my life. Every other time, I've kept looking until I got any job that would support me. I work hard, I am loyal to my employer, and I don't lie, cheat, or steal.
I don't want to discourage anyone, and I always tell the generations below me to save money and not take on debt. I want to see the Millennials, Gen Z, and Alpha succeed. Nothing would please me more than for everyone to tell the boomers to retire and play shuffleboard.
I think Gen X -Alpha will have to band together and support each other. We will have to break the mold and reorganize our lives.
I don't buy in that false dichotomy both because it's the usual make everything an Esau Gambit and sportsball style thing, and because nearly everything called "right" wing is pretty hard "left". As far as I am concerned, it's the same bird and I am the guy cooking fried chicken.
It definitely doesn't help that anything even remotely based usually gatekeeps out the standard variant NPCs in the first chapter, while the tradcuck NPCs stay around longer and seethe about true traditions.
Ultimately, the first group will seethe that men being so disengaged with soyciety they'd happily leave the planet if given a chance is "right wing", and the fake, controlled opposition will call inspirational speeches "filth" because they that strongly oppose humans being raised instead of lowered. Also, much in the way of Cute Aggression, the primary sign of being subhuman.
In any case, I'm gonna write what I'm gonna write and continually double down on the basedness because both sides absolutely cannot help but follow their programming scripts and prove the NPC meme real.