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.
Makes me think of Attack on Titan.
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Eren’s reasoning to basically kill off all of humanity is so dumb, and lowkey makes suspension of disbelief really hard to accept for the sake of the plot.
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AoT’s plot strikes me as the most convoluted, unrealistic way of nigh forcing Eren to commit genocide and yet remain halfway “sympathetic” and “justified,” TBH. It’s such a mess that personally I can’t even blame him all that much, however horrible his actions were- if it’s genuinely “do or die,” I certainly would like to think I would only ever choose the former- but reality doesn’t work the way it does in the fantasy universe with giant-shifting humanoids, gas-propelled rappelling parkour swordsmen, and the “inherited will” of some ancient textbook Stockholm syndrome personification with the means of manipulating an entire nation’s memories.
Reality doesn’t function as a old west-style standoff between inherently oppositional nations nigh destined to wipe one another off the face of the map.
Though if it were, fuck the west and the Japanese,is my take on it- they should be aware that what goes around can also come around, if they push hard enough.But there’s always another option- hell, there’s always a plethora of thousands of other options that don’t involve genocide, and can even be described as mutually beneficial arrangements in one way or another, even if you have to pummel the other side into the negotiating table and repeatedly beat them into behaving halfway decently, as is probably the case with the white supremacist brotherhood of the west.
Mixed feelings about AoT myself, TBH. I don’t really interact with the main work, but I like the universe and characters. But there’s no way the author isn’t some sniveling fascist-adjacent Japanese apologetic who probably has a serious victim complex.
The thing that makes Attack on Titan weird is that at the last minute before the final arc, it’s revealed that the Marleyeans were basically completely right that the Eldian Empire was a conqueroring, genocidal hellhole that employed armies of man eating monsters to get what they want. But even with that revelation no one stops and considers anything, they just continue with the “It’s us or them” shit. Obviously the Marleyeans were a clear standin for Fascist Italy so the conflict comes down to Nazis vs Nazis.