Survivors New Dawn Vol 2 Now Out (Spoilers Ok)

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Regards

mark687

I've listened to the first story so far. I thought it was very good, however I'm at the point with this range that if there's a man in a prominent part I automatically think he's either A) the villain, B) useless, lacking in agency and going to mess up, or C) going to die. Sometimes all three, which is quite a feat.

I mean, I'm all for stories with strong women characters and leaders, but it's almost comical. We had some fantastic male characters. Greg, of course, and Daniel. But they are few and far between.

Our review
indiemacuser.co.uk/2022/02/21/audio-review-survivors-new-dawn-2/

It's not just you noticing it.

I almost hate to say this, and it may well be controversial, but I strongly suspect that if Survivors was "real" and the post-Death world regressed to some kind of more primitive, agrarian society then a lot of the more "traditional" ideas on family and the role of women would return with a vengeance. The idea of women becoming the leaders in this new society, other than the occasional exception who proved the rule, strikes me as flying in the face of the likely socio-economic reality of a post Death world.

The logic of Charles Vaughn (have as many babies as possible to ensure the survival of the species) would likely come to the fore. There would likely be higher infant mortality, meaning more children needed. As many of the labour-saving machines used in agriculture and other areas of life became obsolete, there would be a renewed emphasis on physical strength and stamina as desirable / dominant qualities, which would favour men. Likewise the violence of the world of Survivors would give more emphasis to the traditional idea of males as the warrior / soldier / protector.

And bear in mind also that the Survivors starting point is the social attitudes of the 1970s, not our attitudes of the 2020s. Back then, Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher were very much the exceptions. All the glass ceilings broken in the last 50 years, some of which we now take for granted as broken, would still be unbroken.

I personally think this is something that could be interesting to explore in Survivors and make for good drama as individuals, both male and female, find themselves forced by society and social pressure back into "traditional" roles that they had broken free from in the pre-Death world. But what would give this a unique spin is that it would not be a simple tale of social conservatism vs social liberalism (as might happen in the real world) but the result of a pragmatic "ensure-survival-of-the-species" ideology, the logic of which would be hard to fault and would mean there were no simple, easy answers to the questions raised. But that's just my opinion (and I should add I haven't listened to New Dawn yet).

I hope I don't come across as a sexist throwback to the 1950s - what I describe above certainly isn't how I think our society ought to be run. But I think BF ought to be more realistic about what a post Death world might be like, rather than just defaulting to a "strong female characters because those are the kinds of characters our female actors want to play" mentality.

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Regards

mark687

Finally finished this set off tonight and I am....whelmed? Like there's nothing specifically bad about it, it's perfectly engaging, good dialogue, great sound design as always, and so on.

But did we really just kill off a second long-term character -- and it still wasn't Abby? Really? And our final episode, a bit inconclusive? And this entire second New Dawn boxset, not really addressing the new British nation situation?

It feels like while nothing wrong was done here, it went down some curious creative paths, and failed to address some of the more pressing/interesting ones.