On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Rhea Seraph wrote:

Usagi
is far too chaotic a person to create a time of unstoppable law and
mind-control.  Extremely dark Crystal Tokyos annoy me because they're

not

Crystal Tokyo.  It's supposed to be a bright, shiny place, and while
nothing can stop someone from reshaping  it to fit their story needs,

it

feels contrary to the spirit to of the series to me to make it a dark
utopia.  It's the dream of a better future, not a nightmare.  

Maybe it's a cultural thing.  But the whole premise of Crystal Tokyo is
something very questionable, at least if you don't believe in divine

right of

kings, and if you believe that social problems have causes that can't

just be

wished away.  Usagi is funny.  Usagi is nice.  But with power over five

billion

lives, she's only slightly less scary than the kid in "It's a _good_

life"

(short story and Twilight Zone episode).

I think most serious attempts at writing about Crystal Tokyo are going

to

make it dark, simply because nobody believes it could really work.

That's not a cultural thing, it's a personal thing.  All of you who write
Dark Crystal Tokyos see it that way.  

Look at Biles' Crystal Tokyo - is it Utopia?  Not bloody likely.  Is it a
nice place to live?  Yes.  Or Sean Gaffney's - his own character
describes it as a utopia, but as he said, as uncomfortable as a utopia
may be for some of us, the people are happy, and it's a hell of alot
better than the alternative.  Davies' version isn't a Utopia - hell, CT
falls in his future.  In the SME universe it's almost a utopia - there's
crime, but it's minor.

I haven't gone into it myself in either of my future-CT fics, I probably
will in Turn the Page.  My vision is this - imagine a city the size of LA
- with about 1/1000th the crime problems.  Yes, murders, violence, theft,
all kinds of mean nasty horrible kinds of things still happen - they just
happen less.

Think about it - would YOU want to be a criminal in a city with that kind
of power at the top of the political structure?

--
Christopher "God-boy" Angel
cja124@mail.usask.ca      http://www.engr.usask.ca/~cja124
"The Man.  The Myth.  The Legend.
The Action Figure from Bandai!"