TKO Creations

Okay… deep breath time.

I’m about to criticize some good friends.

Now, as I do so, I want to lay down some opening caveats. Firstly, there is no way the creators here could have anticipated what was going to unfold in our society at the time they committed to their story. Secondly, it’s not really a criticism of them, as much as it is a criticism of our entertainment and the tropes it leans on. Thirdly, people should be able to make the distinction between fantasy and reality.

Now, with all that said, let me paint you a rhetorical picture.

A cabal of elitists, potentially spanning the entire globe, have been pulling the strings of society for decades, if not longer, manipulating people, killing people, starting wars, conflicts, abusing men, women and children, etc… all to advance their twisted machinations of power… until a small movement of scrappy heroes untangle all those sinister knots and finally take the fight to the secret society!

Does that story sound familiar? You’ve probably seen that many, many times in the dramas of our age. It’s one of the most enduring tropes in dramatic entertainment for the last fifty years.

I’ve never been a fan of “Illuminatti” style storylines. I don’t think they represent how people or societies work at all. We can’t even keep a secret between three people for more a couple days. A group of logistically thousands (if not more), operating in secrecy across an entire country or the world? There is no way that doesn’t come unraveled even before a second generation has a chance to take the reins.

Think about it. There is no massive covert operation that has survived more than a couple of decades, even in the most repressive countries in our planet’s history. And even those were more of the “open secret” variety where anyone who wanted to know could have found out, but there was an implied investment of the public to not confront it.

Watergate literally came unraveled because one dude couldn’t figure out where to stand. You want me to buy that a cabal has gone [x] number of years without even one critical misstep? Sorry… my suspension of belief only stretches so far.

So when The Uniques went head on into the secret society angle, my eyes started rolling. And they kept rolling as it ticked every single “conspiracy” trope in the book. Our intrepid heroes, taking on the “burden” of exposing this themselves? Check. The nutty recluses that have a few critical pieces but are too out there for anyone to take seriously? Check. The galaxy-brained chess masters who have every step our heroes make plotted out ten moves ahead of time? Check.

I am giving the creators the benefit of the doubt, because they have been so very good at twisting tropes on their head. But… ugh… I will admit that this particular part of the volume has been a tiring slog for me.

But now, I have another reason to not like this type of story.

Because that picture I painted for you at the start of this blog post? That was also in the heads of the people who charged the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. People are believing this sort of shit, and it’s getting people hurt, and even killed.

Our entertainment is awash in conspiracy theories. As I said, it has been one of the most enduring tropes in our entertainment for a long time. We are obsessed with conspiracies, and I do believe that our fiction is tinting how people see the real world.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Comfort Love and Adam Withers have any culpability in a bunch of morons who thought baby-eating leftists were trying to steal an election from Donald Trump. And they would have no way of foreseeing this happening at the time they were plotting their magnificent story.

But it is informing me as I read through this storyline, which is but one of hundreds and hundreds of such stories that fill our media every year. And it reinforces to me that I really need to remain committed to a different direction.

This entry was posted on March 30, 2021 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Grumblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.