/lit/ - Literature

>>12456143
needless to say, the Empire is burdened with a large helot population, but we have a peculiar relationship with them as well. unlike the Matrix, we cannot quite seem to work out the perfect simulation. somehow, people always know that something is slightly wrong about the way that we do things, and as such the only way we have of incorporating the spectre of their discontent is by radicalizing it.

one way of doing this is through game shows - hardly new territory. if any of this reminds you of Battle Royale or the Hunger Games, you're not wrong. that is pretty much our program as well. as such one of the peculiar rituals of the Empire is in fact not only to allow the helots a chance for revenge against us, but even to require Defenders of Camelot to participate in something not unlike pic rel. if you are a particularly decadent and corrupt plutocrat, you are welcome to participate as well - on *either* side, and the possibility that someone from the reality TV show might decide to do this themselves is indeed a possibility. but there the stakes are real. the idea is to stage something not unlike the Super Bowl for class warfare, in place of an electoral process - after all, the whole idea behind the Empire itself is to find the maximal number of ways to ensure that nothing ever really changes. this is our ultimate maxim: the Empire always was, and always will be, and to force every conceivable conduit through which the New might take place into a channel.

sex we have taken care of; you will never want for sex in the Empire. we like drugs and pharmacology too. but intra-species violence is the big one. owing to the nature of the climate - or whatever other weird experiments we may be getting up to - there are always regions of the Empire overrun with mutations, or monsters, or simply unclaimed wilderness. the fact that we ceaselessly and remorselessly abuse every other potential power that stands in our way also allows for Max Intrigue, whether on trumped-up charges of being insufficiently open-minded or not.

so to become a true Defender of Camelot, you occasionally have to participate in a Krypteia-like game of Running Man, which actually gives contestants the chance to fuck up or be fucked up by the Vigilant. that the whole rotten edifice should be torn down, set on fire, and the earth salted afterwards is obvious, of course: everybody (including us) is fundamentally choking on its own ressentiment that this horrorshow continues, year after year. but it does. it works, because it is very hard to imagine an alternative.