There’s been a thought rattling around in my head for a long time and I haven’t had a good way to articulate it until now, so I’m planning to ramble for a bit.

Everything going on in the world right now, in Palestine, in Ukraine and Africa is a good reminder that the mass killing of humans isn’t some archaic practice that went out of style a thousand years ago. There are real consequences for dehumanization and calling for one group or another to be wiped out. It starts small, as many things do, as just a little grain in your head that some people are just lesser or worse and thus you’d be okay if they weren’t around you. I find that a lot of this rhetoric comes from pop culure, you see it in books, movies, anime, and video games. Especially when it comes to the fantasy genre. For anime, you have stuff like Goblin Slayer or Frieren where Goblins/Demons are little more than animals and need to be genocided for the betterment of society. Books, you have Orcs in Tolkien (Something I appreciate about ASOIAF is that Grrm doesn’t do this and always treats the idea of a full on massacre like it’s horrible). But video games is where it goes all out.

–Nerd Speak Below This Line–

I’ve been playing a lot of Elder Scrolls lately, which means I’ve become reaquinted with the lore, and one thing aout TES that’s always been a little concerning to me is how many of the backstories end in genocide and displacement. The Nords, the strapping 6-7 feet tall beautiful white people came down from the north and killed all the snow elves nearly to the last, the Orc homeland of Orsinium has been sacked and destroyed multiple times scattering them across the land, the Redguards showed up and killed pretty much everyone they could find for miles before being happy to stop in the desert, and the Empire has essentially been engaged in an extermination war with the Elves (who aren’t saints either) for thousands of years. Two events that I think are really disturbing are Pelinal Whitestrake and Tiber Septim’s conquest of the Summerset Isles. Now I’ll be brief: Pelinal is this uber badass Terminator from the future who had a bad habit of murdering elves so hard that he came home from war covered in blood. Which wouldn’t be too bad if they didn’t specify that he often wiped out civillian populations and even other races that aren’t even involved just because they look like them. Tiber Septim was mad that the High Elves were able to fight off his Imperialist bullshit multiple times and ultimately got a superweapon to go kill them all horribly until they submitted. Both these characters are beloved and their victims get the old “They deserved it” routine. And yes, the backstory does “justify” the purges because the Elves are almost always cartoonishly evil, but still. TES tries to be morally gray but that’s kind of a lie because when all we ever see is what was written by the winners, it starts to look like that’s what we’re supposed to takeaway.

–Nerd Speak Ends–

When you wake up in the morning and see a news program about a school or hospital being bombed, seeing someone say “They deserved it” even in regards to a fictional species hurts in a deep way. People are programmed to think this shit is a joke from a young age. And some react violently when you try and pull them out of that mentality. So yes, I don’t like genocide. Even if it’s happening to to a nonsense race of animal people.

  • Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
    17·
    11 months ago

    I don’t necessarily mind it existing in fiction, anymore than any other hard reality can exist in fiction, but it depends on how it is handled. If the denizens of the world accurately recognize it as a horrible thing, it’s very different to me than matter-of-factedly “we murdered all the native inhabitants of this realm and now it is ours!” takes.

    I hate it when say…a race was oppressed by another race, and the player character single handedly settles generations of animosity between the two. Or when the oppressed people take back their land and are somehow portrayed as bad for not wanting to work with their colonizers.

    • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      11 months ago

      Or when the oppressed people take back their land and are somehow portrayed as bad for not wanting to work with their colonizers.

      I feel like this could actually be made to work in this exact method no no no wait hear me out. Treat it as satire and have America (for example) be colonised, and one of the colonizers is the main character. They have to struggle against the American population for their ‘right to exist’ and many of Israel’s justifications are used; the villains? Americans who are more or less actually justified in trying to protect themselves and their homes but they’re portrayed as villains. It’s so ludicrous that (hopefully) the audience can put themselves in the shoes of the ‘villains’ and extrapolate from there. The portrayal of Americans should also be as mean-spirited as portrayals of non-white foreigners often is to send the point across and hopefully aggravate people into acquiring empathy.