- Envisioning What-ifs (And the Politics of It All) -

Parable of the Sower | Octavia E. Butler

Prompt: Engage (OR even construct your own) Speculative Narrative

Explain why you think your choices of cultural work constructs/shapes a particular kind of narrative that is future directed and engages Speculative Narrative. Explain how your choices might connect to the current unit.

// Politics in Speculative Narratives

When it comes to fictional universes, especially science fiction, one of my favorite things to examine is the political system of that world. Whether it's a world on a galactic scale like Star Trek or a more plausible "slice of tomorrow" world like Detroit: Become Human, there is always some form of governance structure.

I’m reminded of Professor Alexander’s lecture on how speculative fiction cannot be divorced from the social and political context of our reality. These narratives are cautionary tales that reveal not only the failings of our current political and social structure, but also mankind's greater desire for a better future.

Parable of Sower: Power and Corruption

One of the main themes present in Parable of the Sower is humanity’s constant struggle for power.

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Company Towns

Corporations putting profit above all else is a tale as old as time. As the name suggests, the residents of these towns are employed by corporations. However, rather than earning actual wages, they work in exchange for housing. There is nothing in place to prevent these corporations from essentially debt-trapping and enslaving the populations.

The city of Olivar sounds like it would be a great setting for a YA novel. Once upon a time, there was a teenager who, through misadventures, became the leader of The Rebellion™ and managed to overthrow the evil conglomerate that ran the city...

Corporate greed... now where have I heard of that?

"Shells must sell", that will be your new philosophy

Swallow all your morals, they're a poor man's quality

Money Game Part 2 imagines a world where capitalism perpetuates profits at the expense of the people and environment. Oh wait, that world is now. Coporations aren't people—they don't have morals.

Five: why just shells? Why limit yourself? She sells seashells, sell oil as well

Although it is not explicitly stated in Parable how Earth became an apocalyptic hellscape, the burning fire everywhere signifies extreme changes in climate, likely exacerbated by the reliant on fossil fuel and other non-renewable energy sources. Like many other science fiction novels, Parable envisions a scenario in which humanity fails to prevent/mitigate a real-life catastrophic crisis.

Corrupt Police Force

Somewhere out there, there's a quote about how people will abuse the smallest amount of power.

In the lawless, chaotic state of 2024 America (as seen in Parable of the Sower, of course), you might be unsurprised to learn that there is no shortage of police corruption. After all, they've got the bigger guns and the government is too incompetent to keep them in check. The result is a police force that resembles a militant group more than a peacekeeping force. Yet, people resort to calling the police because it's the last semblance of an orderly society.

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In any case, police reform in the United States has been a movement since the 1960s and corporations have always had significant influence over people's lives, especially now more than ever. Both of the above dystopian scenarios are extrapolations of real-life social and political issues that need our attention.

So what if things got worse?

THINGS WILL GET MUCH WORSE FROM HERE is a response to the explosive rise and widespread adoption of generative AI in recent years. AI images are getting better and better, obscuring what's real and what's not. Perhaps one day it will be impossible to know that's "the truth." This fits nicely under the umbrella of speculative narratives driven by scientific and technological advancements.

Well, maybe not so speculative now is it? It seems like nowadays every company and their mother are all racing to implement GenAI into their products. Seriously, we don't need an AI chatbot on every website.

And while the masses will point out the crude deficiencies

Missing the forest for the trees of its to be utility

Technological advances always come at a price. It sure as hell looks like we're living in a timeline where we'll have to grapple with the environmental consequences of AI technology and perhaps thwart its wrath before it's too late.

Speculative Narratives in Other Media

⚠️ Contains A LOT of spoilers ⚠️

❝ Earth is the cradle of humanity but one cannot live in the cradle forever. ❞

— Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, father of rocketry and astronautics

While reading Parable, this was the quote I kept thinking of. It captures the philosophy of Earthseed quite well. Since there are only so many resources on Earth, perhaps it is humanity's destiny to spread among the stars.

Or, rather, to conquer the stars.

This is one of my favorite scenes from the show. For context, the Sea Dragon was never built in real life; it was a concept study. In this clip, it's launching a resuply mission to the Jamestown colony/moonbase.

No doubt that shows like these can inspire people to pursue a career in engineering for the good of all mankind. Or they think it makes the military-industrial complex look "based" and want to work in defense. Believe it or not these are not mutually exclusive statements.

// For All Mankind

For All Mankind (FAM) is what I would consider hard science fiction, sci-fi based on actual scientific concepts, and tells a story within the bounds of a plausible reality. FAM is an alternate history series that imagines a timeline where the Soviets landed on the moon before the Americans and the space race never ended.

The Future is Now the Past

With things we imagine happening in the 20XXs, like human landing on Mars, achieved in the 19XXs, FAM poses a rather optimistic view of the future.
Rule 1 of science fiction: emphasis on the rise of science and technological progress (Alexander). The premise of this entire show is based on the rapid advancement of space technology, and you really can't get more sci-fi than that. Many of the spacecraft and launch vehicles in the show, like the Sea Dragon rocket, are based on real-life concepts that were never realized.

Space Colonization

Y'know the thing about how sci-fi cannot be separated from colonization? Well, guess what, humans are colonizing the moon and Mars and mining asteroids.
There is a debate to be had about whether or not the exploitation of natural resources off-Earth and the colonization of space is considered morally evil. A loaded question, I know, but an interesting (and argument-inducing) one nonetheless.

// Transformers

Disclaimer: I’m new to TF so if I get any lore wrong uhh go yell at me in the guestbook lol.

TFOne: Utopia turned Dystopia

Cybertron is the home planet of the Transformers. It was practically a utopia* with an unlimited supply of energon, the lifeblood of the Transformers, until the source which powered this energy vanished. This brings us to the start of Transformers One, where Cybertron is ruled by one man, and energon must be mined through manual labor.

In many ways, the politics of Cybertron parallels that of human society. This franchise is so much more than silly robots that can transform into vehicles.

*at least before the war with the Quintessons

Trust me guys this is definitely an accurate summary of the movie.

Slight tangent: pre-war Cybertron politics in the Aligned continuity is such a complex and intriguing world. Dear Primus it's so right up my alley. But alas I'm not too familiar with it (yet) and the continuity's kinda all over the place anyway so I'm just gonna talk about whatever's in TFONe lol. For the sake of writing this, I'm treating TFOne as its own universe/continuity.

Every speculative fiction got that one corrupt leader

Cybertron is ruled by Sentinel Prime. How legitimate is his rule? Not very. He partnered with the Bad Guys (Quintessons) to secretly kill off the other leaders.
All that energon mined, most goes to the Quintessons as payment. Sentinel literally sold off the planet & his people in exchange for power. This is like, the textbook definition of a corrupt politician.
Political executions of dictators such as these are often seen as highlights in the history of many nations.

How one bot managed to invent racism and classism

Sentinel Prime single-handedly invented racism and classism. Full stop. He created an underclass of manual laborers by removing their transformation cogs at birth. No T-cog = can't transform = inferior = less rights & confined to labor jobs.
In the words of Professor Alexander, sci-fi is "a genre that explores the experience difference." Here we have a story where difference is artificially created and maintained through an oppressive caste system.

Unions? Worker's rights? Never heard of it

All around poor working conditions and quotas that are increasingly hard to meet.
The gif above is a scene where Sentinel demanded work time be tripled for all miners. Unfortunately, in this universe, there are no unions to protect against unfair working hours. The miners are essentially treated as disposables.
The exploitation of workers continues to be a common theme in all forms of media. It is a very real and pressing issue, one that has been debated and fought about for millenias.

Don't wanna be (Won't be) E-M-P-I-R-E

Rule 2 of science fiction: science fiction exists in the social and political context of colonization and empires (Alexander). In almost all Transformers continuities, Megatron is the quintessential villain whose end goal is to conquer the entire universe with his faction the Decepticons. Supposedly, he believes that under his rule, his empire will be one that is more just than the regime he overthrew...

Earth, a Heterotopia?

Across the different continuities, one way or another, the Cybertronians always end up on Earth. I'd like to make the case that the Earth can be classified as a heterotopia in Transformers lore.

WHAAAT I'VE DONEEEEEEE *Directed by Michael Bay*

I needed another gif to fill the space here; may TFP Megop be upon ye (S1 EP26)

The creation of a heterotopia can be described as moving to a different place—not ideal, not awful, but different. For the Cybertronians, Earth is that place.
Bayverse has this famous scene which has since been memed to hell of Optimus Prime calling Earth "a new world to call home" (see top left clip). Indeed, to the Cybetronians, our world is a place with a completely different and alien culture.
The Earth and humans being imperfect is an essential element to any Transformers story. For example, in Transformers: Prime, there's an evil terrorist organization that wants to establish a "new world order" (opening another can of worms here, aren't we?). Still, the Autobots deem humanity worthy of protection.
A heterotopia also has the capacity for change. One way or another, the existence of Cybertronians has always altered the course of human history. Another important theme of Transformers is the capacity for amoral individuals to change for the better. In the words of Optimus Prime taken from The Covenant of Primus, "every sentient being possesses the ability for redemption." Hell, even Megatron had a change of heart in EarthSpark and reformed to protect Earth.

My Own Speculative Narrative

I have a lot of original characters and imaginary worlds. Here's one of them ✨

💜

🩷

Believe it or not, I never named them or their story despite making an entire universe around them. This is why I'll be referring to them using heart emojis (💜🩷). Art credit goes to this Picrew made by aruku. Their designs are greatly inspired by the song メンヘラじゃないもん！

Throughout the story, 💜 and 🩷 bond over their shared trauma and learn to trust each other in the face of the cruelty of the universe. I love toxic doomed yuri enemies to lovers <3

Again and again, reborn and reborn

Dancing on a mountain of corpses

Reincarnation, grievous cry of reincarnation

These reincarnations are not particularly pleasant. When 🩷 takes over the conciousness of a character for the duration of her mission, she inherits their memories, pain, and suffering. Most of the times, her mission ends with her death in the world. She comes to the conclusion that acceptance of such routine is the path of least resistance. 💜 is not so sure about that.

// Main Premise

The premise of this universe is based on a Chinese genre of speculative fiction called kuaichuan (快穿) where the protagonist travels to different worlds, usually through reincarnation into the body of an already-existing character in the world. Guess who spent their middle school years reading kuaichuan danmei light novels and willingly poisoned their brain lobotomy-style...

Much like the main character of Reincarnation Apple, 🩷 gets reincarnated into different worlds as a Host (employee) who works for The System. 💜 is her assistant and communications officer, who's always with her as she resides in her consciousness. The System is an inherent part of their universe; every world within this universe has a storyline that specific characters must follow. When these storylines are broken/altered, The System will send Hosts back in time to prevent these changes from happening. If any native inhabitant of the world suspects 🩷 to be an "outsider" or if she fails her mission, the world will collapse and she will be gravely punished. Under the all-knowing System, disobedience means a fate worse than death.

// The Revolutionary Wars

As 💜 and 🩷 rise through the ranks, they come in contact with other Hosts. Noticing the underlying growing of dissent and motivated by her own resentment towards The System, 🩷 vows to disband The System. She becomes a revolutionary, leading an insurgence. The first time, she fails, losing 💜 in the process. Confronted with the omnipresent and eternal nature of The System, for their universe would not last without it, 🩷 pivots her ideology from total dismantlement to reformation. The second time, she succeeds.

💜 gets resurrected at some point, somehow. (I don't know my own OC lore.) And in the end, 🩷 and 💜 are free. Well, freer than before at least. I imagine their life after the wars would be something similar to this music video. With the war over, they prefer a much quiet and peaceful life in each other's company.

What can I say, I love them so much that I have to undoom them from the narrative <3

// Post-War Reformation

Personally, I'm a firm believer that human society cannot exist without some form of government. The social contract is a necessary "evil"—you give up some of your natural rights in exchange for an orderly society. The government should, in theory, solely exist to serve and protect the people.

The System is somewhat representative of this ideology. Since it must exist, the question 🩷 and her fellow revolutionaries are more concerned with is how to make it a just system and ensure that it remains as such.

Distrust in government is deeply ingrained in many political cultures across the globe, and it is this fact that inspired the concept of The System. It's an oppressive system that lures people in with the false promise of a better life, only later revealing its rotten core. 🩷 understands this all too well. However, she felt that her duty was over. The role of leading the now-reformed System is better left to a new generation of Hosts.

Reflection

Without a doubt, this entry is by far my favorite out of the three! It's also the one where my voice is the closest to how I typically write in my personal Discord server that I use as a journal (yes you read that right). You can tell how informal my writing is by the amount of slang I use. I had a ton of fun writing this—I guess the trick is to yap about your fixations lol. Cough cough I may or may not have yapped about TF a little too much <3 This time around, I pretty much disregarded the fact that this page was supposed to be a 5–7 minutes read. I have things to say and I WILL say it. I've always found politics in speculative fiction to be fascinating and I hope the passion shined through :]

However, that's not to say the whole process was smooth sailing. I deviated from my original vision a lot. Initially, I had wanted to write about JPOP/Vocaloid MVs that told speculative narratives and explore how music and animation work together to tell a story. Once I started writing and got to the part about company towns, my writing just sort of had a mind of its own. I realized that I really, really wanted to write about politics in sci-fi. So I pivoted; sometimes you gotta kill your darling. Once I had this new direction, I had a hard time getting myself to actually start writing. Eventually, I realized that I was too concerned with following the prompt to a T, something that was much the cause of my agony in the last two entries. Sometimes, your outline doesn't have to be that detailed; once you feel like you have a pretty good idea you can just go with the flow. Just gotta trust the process.

Update (06/10/2025): This page becomes really funny in hindsight because it marked my descent into the Transformers rabbit hole. I find it hilarious that you can track how I got more and more into Transformers over the school year through this website. You could even say it is truly a digital archive...heh... Anyways Transformers One unironically changed the trajectory of my life. If it wasn't for that movie I would've never gotten into Transformers and my spring research project would've been very different. 10/10 peak cinema, megop doomed yaoi changed my life❤️

Fall Quarter Reflection

Course Content

I really enjoyed my time this quarter with Human Core <3 After hearing about other people's experiences in their writing classes, I feel fortunate that I'm taking Human Core instead. The way this course is structured, especially with the assignments we do in seminars, I found it to be rather reminiscent of my high school AP Lit & Lang class in the best way possible. I'd consider the biggest challenge I faced to be the rather short turnaround time for the essays. Unlike high school, we don't have the privilege of spending a month on an essay lol.

A big reason as to why I decided to join CHC is this year's theme: Worldbuilding. And I have to say, it did not disappoint :D If it's not obvious already, I'm a huge fan of characters and fictional universes. I have a lot of paracosms (highly detailed imaginary worlds) easily triggered by music, so the concept of worldbuilding is rather personal to me. This might be recency bias, but Parable of the Sower is my favorite unit, partly because I felt it had the strongest connection to worldbuilding. Specially, how the act of building fictional worlds reflects and shapes the real world.

Digital Archive

I appreciate the amount of creative freedom we're given when it comes to the digital archive, both in terms of prompts and web design :} It made building this website a much more enjoyable experience.

Over the course of this quarter, I think I've come to understand my writer's voice a little better! I like the flexibility of having a natural voice that is somewhat unserious and sarcastic in nature, but also able to transition to a more serious tone when desired. As for the website's aesthetics, I thought it was good but admittedly it can get a little bland and repetitive. So, I decided to spice things up with another background style: solid black and sky blue to make a sleek look. Gotta say, I'm quite happy with how the website looks right now. I look forward to seeing how it'll evolve in the next quarter <3

References / Image Credits

Sources:

Alexander, Jonathan. "Genre as Worldbuilding Lectures." Humanities 1A, September-December 2024, University of California, Irvine.

Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower. Graphic novel adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, Abrams, 2021.

For All Mankind

Header Image: NGC 6537 with Pismis 24

Credit: NASA, ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain). Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

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