Starring YOU! If you could have survived the biological pandemic and GMO apocalypse!
Waiting to post the time machine / travel caption I made for Elena Starz' caption contest, so when I found this photo, figured I would make another futuristic sci-fi caption. Looked like a guy that had been through some sort of gender war and his hair had been growing, and his body was shaping his shorts and tank top much differently than it had a few months prior.
Then when I started writing it, it went dark, and dark quickly. Worse than that, what I was writing wasn't something that I could just pin to a future dystopia. Everything (except for the last paragraph) I wrote is going on now, albeit not to levels that would make the ending happen in real life. What big business is doing in the name of food sustainability and productivity is beyond scary.
It goes way beyond making a new version of a banana that is resistant to blight like we did in the 1940's, and possibly will have to do again in the next 10 years. Watch any short film on food products in the 50's and 60's and see what they considered to be a healthy and succulent turkey or chicken. We are truly raising Franken-birds that barely see the light of day, stuffed with soy and corn based pellets, injected with hormones to increase mass and antibiotics because they can't fight infections when they can't get exercise needed to support their weight.
And government oversight? Not likely in this administration. Considering Cheeto Mussolini figures that big business knows best how to run their own business ethically (HA!) and that he mainly subsists on KFC and Pizza Hut, it isn't a wonder that the rest of us are going to be fed nutrient depleted 'cuisine' without proper vetting. Hell, pink slime will become a delicacy! Remember those elitist snobs the Obama's telling everyone to start planting gardens and fighting childhood obesity in public schools? Americans demand salt, sugar, fats and carbs .. and salt and sugar substitutes of dubious origins!
Well, what's the big deal? Well, fantasy wise, who doesn't want a big set of (possibly lactating) tits and a womanly figure, surrounded by dominant, Amazonian women? Or being a real man like John Wayne in that dystopian future (2 in 10 chance?) able to impregnate women the old fashion way. Mostly I prefer to keep my fantasy life out of my reality, thank you very much; especially one as bleak and depressing as this one could turn out.
Yeah, I promise the caption I made for Elena's competition is WAY happier and fun than this! Also, check out the last caption. There is a good discussion question in there too!
DISCUSSION QUESTION: I guess it goes without saying that just about any of the TG captions we enjoy could turn dark and horrific with attention to a different set of focal points or narrative beats. What TG trope do you think would be the most terrifying if done seriously and in factual life, even taking into account magic being real in this universe? My vote would probably go to "male to female BBW" where you throw in a feeder-feedee twist in with the standard feminization. What says you? Leave a message in the comments! Also feel free to talk about the caption itself.
Re: GMO and the caption - yeah, it's scary. Much is pretty groovy, the issue isn't so much nutrient depletion as greedy stockpiling of crops that could solve issues of drought and augment LDC economies in the name of corporate greed (mainly through 'renting' GMO copyright DNA rather than through selling seeds). The apparent conflict with 'safe' organic produce is as much part of that corporate greed as anything else (take a look-see at what constitutes organic in different areas of the globe, for example, or the changing face of agriculture where the only option, currently, is organic that could be helped with GMO). Franken-animals are definitely an issue but the bigger, and more pressing, one is the copyright of otherwise tried and tested GMO grains. There's a good overview of it (and the effect on Indian agriculture) on www.thenib.com (alas, you may have to dig a bit to find it).
ReplyDeleteOn your discussion question, I think any of the standard TG caption tropes have terrifying consequences if they were to be real, ESPECIALLY ones in which magic was real and used that way. The Great Shift, the Beach one, the Wizard one (I am so rubbish with names), hell, any of them. Terrifying.
You have it much better over there in Europe. Right now our president is deregulating everything. His nominees/representatives all have issues with the departments they are now heading up. He just nominated someone for the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) that sued the EPA at least 14 times while the CEO of a company. The head of energy is a climate change denier, etc .. It is a systematic destruction of government provided to keep the public safe, under the guise of 'bureaucracy is impeded the business of business!"
DeleteOh, yes, I am keeping up with that. That is also terrifying!
DeleteWe have Brexit, which is... well, allowing people to do similar things over here. Not one orange bag of bull testicles fighting to get out but lots of neo-lib toss-pots fighting to see who can dismantle regulations quickest.