mauveOkra

Personally I don't think it's very interesting to approach the game as critique of society directly, maybe because of the RPG mannerisms of kings and queens, but I think the game does have something interesting to say viewed as a media critique. What I got out of it was this postmodern parody of the narrative tropes of video games (and other media as well) wherein you are a cosmically anointed ubermensch going out to do something and you'll kill anything that gets in your way without a second thought of its interiority. So as a foil look at Hollowknight which is pretty much exactly that narrative structure, and while there are a couple bugs with interiority most of them are othered quite explicitly through a mind virus. But beyond even that there's creatures that are just set dressing like the birds, which you end up exploding without even realizing when super dashing across a map. In HK these moments are normalized through a lack of commentary while the whole point of UT is problematizing this dynamic by creating a sense of interiority in these small background creatures whose life is at your mercy. The frame of this is individual ethical choices which same may call a liberal branch of thought, but I personally think it's worth examining your personal ethics.

Interestingly, the subversive narrative of the true pacifist route not only includes pacifism which is obviously anathema to serious political leftism (but again, I'd say is a good pursuit as an individual), but this narrative also includes building together a community and transforming the society of the game. If I remember correctly it's maybe a restoration of monarchy (ew), but the narractive structure of sublimating your individual interests in order to help others and reshape society is quite radical. And the salient point: UT implicitly makes us question why this narrative structure is uncommon compared to destructive quasi colonial ones of other games. So then the question posed is not "why is society not like undertale?" but "why does society create games with violent individualistic narratives?"

Not sure if it's what you're looking for but I'm enjoying The Iron Heel by Jack London right now, it's an early sci fi book about a failed revolution in the US basically. But it's quite expository and has lots of speeches, that early 20th century socialist style. But the conceit of the novel is very cool in my opinion--you're reading the journal of one of these future revolutionaries annotated by a historian in a future utopian society.

Honestly I found it kind of cheesy when I read it in high school. I just had this idea the other day about a similar idea for a novel but it has some sort of sci fi future archeological slant...

In my experience it doesn't matter how much coffee you were drinking, you'll get withdrawal headaches. I even think sometimes when I've been drinking absurd amounts then suddenly stop I don't get headaches somehow. I think they go away in less than a week though.

It's kind of impossible to not judge others by the standards we set for ourselves, but I think it is important to learn to isolate that judgement from the appreciation of someone else as an individual---social life is full of contradiction and you must learn to operate with these ambiguities---that is to say, I don't think you need to stop being critical of how people use substances but you can compartmentalize this thought and still be friendly with people. From another perspective, people are usually offended by judgement of their habits, so it doesn't serve you to share these thoughts directly. They will be more receptive to you and your ethical code if you give them enough subtle social signals that you don't care what they do, and if you actually want to change someone's behavior you have to form this social bond first.

And with regards to partners, it's not unrealistic but you may have to be very patient. Personally I sometimes think about how capitalism reifies this one path of life, finding a life partner and starting a family. All the media and narratives in our current society reify this, elevating and transforming the sexual impulse towards this; whereas in radically different social contexts of the past it was not pathological to deviate from this. Engels wrote about this ("On the Origin of the Family" I think) and as comunists we should interrogate all aspects of the existing social order.

TFW you meet a Latin American student at a US university who only knows 1 word in Spanish "from his nanny".

Unfortunately I think that would be a compelling story to these people