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What is the chud equivalent of Disco Elysium? What game most defines and comprehensively explores what it means to be a chud?
(hexbear.net)
Yes I know that fascism 
is a playable ideology in Disco Elysium, but presenting fascism as with its integral ugly reality, glaring contradictions, and unsustainable death drive is a pretty leftist (and correct) way of portraying it. 
"The world is shit, even trying to improve it somewhat is naive, and everyone in it with any meaningful agency is probably an asshole" settings leave very little room for me to care about what the fiction is portraying. I'm glad I didn't buy in to it.
I get that. Nihilistic grim dark shit is really overused in media. Personally I didn't buy into any message the game was or wasn't trying to push, because Cyberpunk 2177 would just be endless deserts, ruins and skeletons. I just find the established setting and lore interesting in a dark way.
I personally find the message and the setting inseperable, or at least too much trouble to be worth the effort. For me, if the central narrative is repulsive, it stains everything else I may otherwise be doing. There's plenty of pop-nihilistic edgy fiction settings out there to choose from if I wanted that.
Hell, you're not wrong. What kind of fiction do you enjoy? Like non-nihilistic stuff. A recent fave for me was Fionna and Cake.
I enjoy a wide range of fiction, but my problematic (yet all-time) favorite is Frank Herbert's Dune series. It's dark, tumultuous, full of vast and difficult-to-fathom massive political movements that span the stars, but it isn't just ripe for change, it is dangerously ripe for change that does come and does change everything, in good ways and bad.
There are very bad people in it, there are misguided people, there are people with true and actual messiah complexes, but there are also deeply sympathetic and heroic people. It's a complicated struggle, much like the world we live in, just expanded into the far future.
I've always wanted to delve into Dune! I liked the recent movie but I heard it only taps the surface of the books.
Yeah, the books feel different too, and not just in the details.
One of the main things I like about Dune was that it was the first science fiction series I ever read that had potent emotional impact for me. The characters feel alive, driven by beliefs and passions. There are literal warrior-poets. There are religious beliefs that are cast so far in the future of speculative reckoning that they are both absurd by modern understanding (don't get me started on the Orange Bible or Zensunni) but also very immersive in setting. It feels messy and alive in ways that resonate and feel real.
That sounds so awesome. Added the first book to my wishlist.
Enjoy!