aria / zeni / late for dinner
 
a bright-eyed possum and/or cyborg wolf and/or a glimmering nebula and/or a physical manifestation of yearning
 
mid-30s, genderweird, bi (as in bisexual), bi (as in biting)
 
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bi flag gif from horseblob

 


GoopySpaceShark
@GoopySpaceShark

so there's been someone going around on the hellsite saying stuff like "NASApunk is just cassette futurism" and "it's not even punk, you can't have the name of a governmental organisation in there", so I wanna clear a few things up and prove them wrong on absolutely every count


aesthetics first, cassette futurism: at best, NASApunk is a subset, or cassette futurism lite; NASApunk is still as sleek as it can be, but it's practical - things are only bulky because they're ruggedised or they have to be for ease of maintenance, not because the technology hasn't been miniaturised. case in point: the MFDs in the cockpit; they're not CRT monitors, they're just slightly thicker LCD panels. furthermore, whereas cassette futurism usually either goes out of its way to be either clean or dirty with little in-between, NASApunk sits right in the middle, feeling more lived in. it's not even retro-futurism, there's very visibly modern technology there

now, the punk: no, there's no rule against using the name of a government organisation with it. that said, punk isn't "all about style", sorry John Gravato - it's also an ideological opposition to authority and the status quo, and support for hacker culture (i.e. DIY), among other things. NASA itself most certainly falls under that last one - improvisation is critical in space travel, and that will only become more true when - not if - we establish a new frontier. "in-situ resource utilisation" is just professional speak for "idk just fuckin bang some rocks you find together"

the status quo for sci-fi in general has been extraordinarily shit for a long time now; the vast majority of it is either grimdark "everything's fucked and we're never going to fix it, the best we can hope for is endless torment", or just so 'gritty' that you can't grow attached to anyone because you know they'll just die a pointless death, or the stakes are permanently raised so high that it feels so damned oppressive

NASA, and space agencies at large, however, seeks to unfuck things. weather satellites give us a clearer picture of the damage we've done to the planet so we can more effectively combat it. probes tell us a lot about other planets and how they're similar to - or how they differ from - our own, so we can better understand the effects of changes to it. asteroid mining could entirely supplant terrestrial mining, not only preventing the destruction of more ecosystems, but also providing us with large quantities of rare-Earth materials. you get the idea

I'm not sure how to fit in anti-authority specifically here without drawing parallels to Starfield, so I'll leave that be, but in short, NASApunk is a perfectly valid term that fills a very specific niche, and people should find more productive things to be mad about. k thanks


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in reply to @GoopySpaceShark's post:

I don't begrudge someone wanting to breakdown why they don't like the term or whatever, but the degree of anger over something I assume some devs came up with as something of a joke and that marketing then decided to run with is funny