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.
Heh, when I read ‘fictional genocides’ in your title I though you were gonna talk about Xinjiang
Its almost as if entertainment creates the socio-cultural tropes to uphold exploration and capitalism. Most people solely lay the blame on STEM for building the weapons that kill, but forget that the social sciences create the ideas that kill.
It’s not weird at all. In fact, I’d argue it is very healthy.
Stories are our way of transferring human experience from one to another. Our brains intentionally blur fiction and reality to facilitate this transfer regularly. While not a positive example, you can see it in action when fictional representations of, say, trans people are only informed by the media consumed due to the lack of other experiences to draw on. Once an experience/story is no longer relevant or helpful, we forget it. When you read a forgettable story, that’s exactly what happened.
To categorize them in the way of the Ancient Greeks, Tragedies are cautionary tales, and Dramas are explorative/navigational—meaning they primarily help us navigate the comprehensive options of situations.
Looking at the stories themselves, we can see their structure parallels that of proper arguments.
One-act stories are a thesis—they answer a single question Three-act stories are a thesis, countered by an antithesis, and then the synthesis/conclusion. Five-act stories are more based on Marxist thought—a thesis that examines the contrast, contradiction, and possibly the negation of the negative before forming its synthesis.
Long story short, what is a story beat but elaborate dressing for points A, B, and C, leading us to the next logical point and its reasoning? It’s an illusion and allegory of crashing emotions, symbols, and situations for our subconscious to process the same way it does all our experiences. Memory itself is a story we are retelling ourselves.
And that’s underlying all stories that at least have some structure holding them up. Of course, it’s going to affect you. And it should.
I’ve taken a morbid interest in watching the drama of the Kaldorei/Night Elves story unfold and the drama erupting from it. For some in the Imperial core, it’s the first thought they’ve ever given thought to the complications and effects of colonization and genocide on a people. Is it anywhere near enough? Oh, hell no. But the capitalists’ need to sell [edgy] stories at least is breaking the veneer of silence civility of not talking about hard issues. And they’ll keep having to push that line to make money. And as they do, more voices that generally get glossed over will slip through in the trend-chasing. And now and again, we might get a comrade’s allegorical voice (see some of the classics like A CHRISTMAS STORY). Contradictions exist in storytelling, too, and it plays out the same way as it does in other areas. It will affect you like everyone else because you are digesting it like everyone else. We communists, arguably more so because we can see most of it as the junk food it is—and trying to enjoy the odd bit of nutrients that slip through capitalism/liberalism’s processing. But these imagined yet shared common experiences are also what will provide us with the common ground needed to reach others here and there.
Yeah it bothers me. /r/Stellaris likes to make xenocide jokes and it makes me uncomfortable because I feel it hides a desire in the real. Threads like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/18fvk6p/do_you_think_the_north_sentinelese_people_and/ reveal that people aren’t able to joke about genocide given their views on real world people.
The only reason I still take it as just a joke is because Paradox themselves released stats showing that most people actually play xenophiles.
Im critiquing the subreddit more so then the game. The game mechanics themselves make égal/phile the most powerful playstyle as its much easier to befriend the galaxy then conquer it.
Guess I’m just trash at the game since everyone seems to hate me as soon as they know I exist.
All my Stellaris colonies have basically been progressive space communism. Or robots/hive minds. I can’t bring myself to RP fascist xenophobes even in fiction.
Rimworld communities have similar “haha, warcrimes are fun, right?” issues. Yet I don’t actually know anyone who plays rimworld that way regularly. Maybe people try it out once just because you can, but I don’t know many that consistently do terrible things to their colonies. I’ve always built my RW colonies to be nice places to live, and try to maximize everyone’s positive moods.
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Fictional genocides make me just as angry and uncomfortable as real genocides and I do not think that’s weird
This is good.
