I'm torn on this cyberpunk trope of kids being very self-sufficient, getting into world affairs, working, doing PR, and so on - not with their parents but with digital helpers.

Kids are important and should have adventures unsupervised!

But kids are also kids, and their adventures shouldn't be with grown-up politicking.

I don't know. It just rubs me the wrong way.

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"The elites Luce’s masters would install as puppets, restoring the rich/poor ruler/ruled binary Drow was constantly railing against.".

So he's been put on Earth by malicious aliens. There goes my theory of him being a sentinent and traumatized airlock supervision program who's seen his crew die 😔

(My other theory was that he was an airlock supervision program from a human generation ship that had been lost in the Setback.)

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“You can’t—Listen to me. A person’s consciousness doesn’t continue after they die.” “That’s not what your churches say.” “My chur—okay, ignoring the spiritual angle—” “Why? Because it’s rhetorically inconvenient?” “Because it’s legally meaningless. People don’t continue to post to social media after they’re gone.”

😂

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"Wanting kids wasn’t so much about Anselmo burning to nurture new life—though he would defy anyone to find him saying otherwise, in any transcript. Children were good company, in limited doses, and they outgrew their appalling qualities over time. Permission to parent was an undisputed win."

GAH. Neat that parenting is high-status but that is a horrible reason to decide to become a parent.

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"The days of 'She musta misunderstood, officer', or 'I didn’t know he was thirteen!' or 'C’mon, they led me on' had been sandblasted by transcripts and video footage."

I'm not buying this. Today, video evidence isn't always sufficient to convict rapists; what can "sandblast" these things are changes in attitudes, not new tech.

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I like how we see the 22nd century as utopian on the outside (humanity has survived, people are mindful of resources, there's universal coverage of necessities) but with a dystopian underbelly (police brutality, social control, and people not being able to live well on the basic income). An explosive mixture for sure.

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The setup reminds me a lot of William Gibson's "The Peripheral": plague and collapse and downfall; gaming as an occupation and fandom and traumatic experience; old guys having been through it all; fully immersive online worlds.

It also has, with Rubi, a protagonist that's a bit similar to the standard Gibson female protagonist: well-protected, lawful good, a little sensitive.

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