Pirates of the Coal Sack #23

Apr 25, 2023

This one was hard to write. In Star Trek tradition, I tried to tackle some serious themes. Hopefully I didn’t sacrifice the fun in the process.

Galens embodies the upper class of Terran society for us: elitist, racist, human-supremacist and complacent. How often in fiction have you seen a character like that confront their prejudice, realize they're wrong, and try to overcome it?

I couldn't think of a single one.

I believe prejudice is an error. We can learn not to make the misjudgment. Galens is trying to break a lifetime of conditioning and learn to be better. It will be a struggle for her, as it would be for anyone to reject something their whole society says is true and that is a large part of their identity. But I think people should be applauded for trying, while not being excused for their failures.

When our fiction tells us that no one can overcome their own prejudice, we excuse it. There’s no reason to “do the work” if you can never make progress, let alone complete “the work.” I think that needs to change; this is my little contribution.

The other story of division here... well, if you can’t tell what I’m talking about with red and blue going at each other for no good reason, then odds are you’re not aware of what’s going on in America these days. Every reason the departments had for fighting with each other was rooted in something real–different priorities or objective shortcomings–but how they expressed that conflict was toxic.

Everybody’s wrong sometimes. When we work through those differences we arrive in a better place. Shouting and fighting isn’t helpful.

Harding’s speech and the orgy that follows were also surprisingly difficult. It turns out ordering people to fuck just doesn’t sound right coming out of his mouth. Fortunately, the bosun stepped in to bail me out. I actually had to do the whole orgy scene twice; the first attempt came off too much as a montage. It’s still not as dynamic as I’d like, but at some point, you have to give up and ship it.