In short, maleness has been positioned as the default, but part of the problem with this is that every default is an empty set. It quickly leaks out all particulars and so people who identify that way are robbed of a particular identity. This is exacerbated when society moves (rightly, I add!) towards a more equitable distribution of prestige and power. All of a sudden, being the default, being located at the center, doesn’t mean anything.
Read MoreI’ve been playing tabletop games for at least half of my life, and it’s been a rewarding hobby. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it, and I think I’d be a measurably worse person without it. From Dungeons and Dragons in high school and college, all the way up to more recent experiments with Powered by the Apocalypse, FATE, and Chronicles of Darkness games, it has been a constant for me.
Read MoreHere's a game: find a self-serious person in their thirties and, in conversation, refer to them as a millennial.
Read MoreIn fiction, and broadly in aesthetics, punk is largely anti-authoritarian but non-revolutionary. In the political compass sense, it tends towards the bottom or “libertarian” end (caveat: people who claim to be libertarian in the US political sense are not and never will be punk. Don’t @ me.) In narrative media, this tends towards a somewhat mythic structure (similar to the thing I called “the millennial monomyth” a while back), a paradigm that all -punk stories usually follow, similar to 19th century realism or naturalism in many ways. Consider a capable but fairly normal person who wishes to be largely left alone; consider some powerful agency or circumstance that will not do that. The story is the Rube Goldberg interaction that arises here.
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