Jul 18, 2025
Confession #974
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Confession #974
Vulcan racists
I'm trying to follow along with Starter Treks "Star Trek Has Always Been Political" episodes and Enterprise 2E14 "Stigma" is the roughest of the bunch strictly from a Star Trek fan perspective. I'm firmly in the camp of hating the artistic decision to make the Vulcans super racist as a Trekkie. Setting that aside, I get it. Having the "logic bro" species be obviously flawed demonstrates the limits and implicit biases of the more noxious extremes of the Rationalist / New Atheist way of thinking that was starting to get going around that time or would be shortly. I might have my timeline wibbly wobbly because I never took them seriously as either someone to emulate or concern myself with in an adversarial way, so Enterprise might be reacting to antecedents of these movements.
Logic only works if your data is "coded" correctly. Put garbage in, get garbage out. Just like LLMs. Being able to dispassionately argue in favor of not curing Space AIDS doesn't make your argument superior in any way except rhetoric, and that's just Sophistry.
So I love the meta messaging here.
I hate that Vulcans were conscripted to be the messengers.
In large part because there's no real species wide character arc that I can observe. As late in the Trek chronology as Star Trek 2009 and S1/2 of Discovery, i.e. the mid 23rd century, the Vulcans were still being depicted as fairly supremacist.
Which I think is based on such a narrow and largely incorrect reading of Spock's character in TOS. Spock's own personal dickishness was in the context of friendly and not so friendly bullying by the Human members of the Enterprise crew. We're entering into a relationship that was already established prior to us, the viewer, becoming privy to it, so we never really know who "fired the first shot" when it comes to the back and forth and if it was always and at all times understood by all parties to be "friendly." At some point the command crew would all be willing to take a phaser beam for each other and despite the long established norm of "Spirk" in fandom, its always seemed to me that Spock and McCoy are role playing as a dysfunctional 1960s sitcom couple.
Vulcans don't really play much of a role in Trek in the 24th century shows until Tuvok, who seems mostly fine with Humans? At the worst he has a somewhat milder version of the back and forth Spock had with the Enterprise crew? My Voyager-fu is admittedly weak. We do have that one instance of an all Vulcan crew from a Captain that is a rival to Sisko and seems rather implicitly if not explicitly racist in a way that I'm kind of surprised Starfleet tolerates.
Anyway, I had to stop "Stigma" 15 minutes in because I was so irritated I needed to write this.
guide to names in elderscrolls
if it sounds old english, germanic, or scandinavian, it's a nord.
if it has roman or latin suffixes, it's an imperial
if it has softer consonants and sounds elegant, it's a high elf
if it has sharper consonants and sounds similar to a high elf name, it's a dark elf
if it has soft consonants and flows elegantly off the tongue, it's a wood elf
if it sounds celtic, french, or old english, it's a breton
if it sounds like a description and has dashes, it's an argonian
if it sounds arabic, north african, or middle eastern, it's a redgaurd
if it sounds like onomatopoeias strung together by cavemen, it's an orc
if it starts with an obscure letter of the alphabet, and has apostrophes everywhere, it's a khajiit
and now for racism
snowback: nord
N/A: imperial
golden rod: high elf
ash-born: dark elf
tree-hugger: wood elf
N/A: breton
scaleback: argonian
goblin meat: redgaurd
pig-man: orc
furlicker: khajiit
Do you think humans have a bias against (for lack of a better term) mobians?
Yes, it was worse in the past
Yes, but it’s not very common
Yes, other additional reason
Most humans don’t, but their governments do
Not now, but they did in the past
No, humans and mobians have and do get along fine
No, other additional reason
Results
Do you think humans have a bias against (for a lack of a better term) mobians?
Yes, it was worse in the past
Yes, but it’s not very common
Yes, other additional reasons
Most humans don’t, but their governments do
Not now, but they did in the past
No, humans and mobians get along just fine
No, other additional reasons
See results
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God, Moby Dick is a lot sometimes.
Ishmael, upon meeting Queequeg: OH SHIT IT'S A CANNIBAL, INSERT EXTREMELY RACIST STUFF HERE
Ishmael, five seconds later: Hm. Y'know what, on second thought, this heavily tattooed guy who's trying to sell human heads is actually pretty normal. (He then slept better than he ever had before.)
Ishmael, the next morning: Okay, he's hugging me in his sleep like I'm his wife or something, I'm going to be normal about this.
―
Queequeg, in Ishmael's interpretation: ... and thus, you and I are now married, by which I mean bosom friends.
Ishmael: If this guy was white, this sudden display of intimacy during the first day we knew each other would be wierd and suspicious, but something something noble savage or w/e
―
Ishmael: You know, joining Queequeg in his idolatry is actually the Christian thing to do, in this context. Praying to a small statue alongside a cannibal is a completely reasonable thing for a devout Presbyterian to do. Anyway, let me put even more emphasis on the idea of us being married --
―
Pequod owners: Dude, we can't let that guy join our crew, that's a fucken cannibal.
Ishmael, a Presbytarian: Excuse you, he's totally cool! We're all Catholics under God, in the end, aren't we?
Pequod owners: Okay, y'know what Ishmael, you're cool enough for the both of you, let's let him aboard!
―
Ishmael: So. Now that Queequeg and I are officially whalers and we're at sea, let me explain at length why whaling is actually cool and sexy and not at all lame or lower-class. Yeah, maybe we're sort of butchers, but high-ranking military officers are also butchers in their own way, and everyone thinks they're cool, did you think of that!? Oh, what, you think a battlefield's more "perilous"? Yeah, right, I'd like to see a soldier hold his lunch at the sight of a whale's tail going over his head! Also, you benefit materially from the meat and fat and oil we bring back from whale-hunting, and it's a really really lucrative business, are you going to scorn us for providing such valuable goods? You hearing me, you hearing me? I'm not even done yet! I will physically fight anyone who disagrees with me about whaling being awesome! (this continues for an entire chapter)
Ishmael, next chapter: I'M NOT DONE YET! Do you know wh
The Daily Inconveniences of an Au Ra: Skin Color
Keshet had known, of course, that the people in Eorzea wouldn't look like him. But he'd expected a lack of horns and tails with fur rather than scales. He hadn't expected to find that even the parts of his body that could pass as 'normal' in Eorzea were still different.
Everyone in the West was so pale! He'd been startled enough to see his pale-scaled cousins in his brief sojourn in Kugane, as if the pigment had been bleached away from their horns and scales to leave nothing but a bone-like white in its place. He'd heard the stories about them, of course, the lost children of Azim who had left their homeland to become one with the foreign cultures outside the Steppe, and he couldn't help but wonder if the pale horns were perhaps a sign of their treason. Or maybe they were just a sign of Azim's favor, the sun cruelly blasting away the darkness that ought to be the purview of the Au Ra. (He liked that theory in particular, because it would serve as proof that Magnai and his louts were not, in fact, favored by the sun-god, and he would certainly take a vicious satisfaction in watching the Oronir mooks contend with that realization.)
But at least in Hingashi, there had been a familiarity underscoring that oddity. Pale scales layered onto dusky skin, and even among the Hyur and the Roegadyn, he stood out more for the color of his scales than his skin. In Eorzea, the overwhelming majority of people not only lacked scales and horns, but their skin was bleached as though they had never basked in the blessings of dusk. Hyur, Elezen, Roegadyn, Lalafell, every race seemed to tend towards light tones, and Dusk forbid he see someone with skin of deep red or the midnight blue that was so common amongst the Dotharl. Some of the Roegadyn tended towards green or grey tones, which was a relief even if he couldn't recall a single green-skinned Au Ra. At least they added some variety to the otherwise shockingly ubiquitous cream of the West.
Which was not, of course, to say that he was the only dark-skinned person in all of Eorzea. Meeting Raubahn was a relief - even if he wasn't auri, his skin was nearly the same shade as Keshet's, and that familiarity alone was enough to endear him to the general even before learning of his battle prowess. Carvellain, too, in Limsa, who had skin even darker than his own - and, he later learned, most of the Durendaire line in Ishgard and a handful of the Dzemael. Travelling to Ala Mhigo was like a homecoming, both for the return to the desert and for the people with their dusky brown skin (though the number of blonde haired, blue eyed, and pale skinned Ala Mhigans he knew seemed oddly high for a country with so many darker folks).
He was fairly certain, at least, that it was not the color of his skin that made people wary of him. The horns and scales accomplished that well enough on their own, but no one seemed to treat Carvellain or Raubahn as particularly exotic, or at least not because of their skin. He would almost have said that no one even remarked on such a thing, if not for the way the Gridanian's treated the Duskwight. He hadn't even known of their existence until he ran into one in the markets one day - rather literally. Keshet glanced down, apology already on his tongue, and blinked in surprise at the navy-skinned Elezen before him. "You're not a Wildwood, are you?" His lips moved without his mind directing them, and he could have kicked himself for what slipped past them. Now he was the one drawing too much attention to another's appearance. And judging by the look on the woman's face, she did not take kindly to that.
"What's it to you?" she demanded, glaring at him. A distant part of him was impressed by her nerve - so few strangers were willing to look him in the eyes without a hint of hesitation or caution - but given the whispers he could overhear from the nearby shop owners and the surreptitious looks he now realized were not directed at him but at the woman, he could guess that she was overly used to people reacting poorly to her mere presence.
"I'm sorry," he said, cramming as much earnesty into his tone as he could manage. "I thought you were one of my people at first. I'm not from around here; I've never seen an Elezen who looks like you before."
She seemed mollified by that, her irritation shifting from him to their onlookers as she cast a displeased glance around them. "Not surprising. Like as not, you won't see many more of us either. My kind aren't very welcome around here."
"Oh," he said, following her gaze to an uppity looking man behind him. "Is there anything I-" He turned back around to find she had vanished, lost in the crowds and probably returned to wherever her people came from.
But though she had disappeared like smoke on the wind, the encounter lingered in his mind, and he asked Urianger about it the next time he saw him. His scholarly friend told him all about the other subset of Elezen and the discrimination they faced, which was perhaps not entirely due to the color of their skin but was directly related to it in a way that chafed at Keshet's scales.
Ultimately, there was little enough even someone in his position could do to change the opinions of the people, but he took it upon himself to advocate for the Duskwight from then on in his dealings with Gridania and Ishgard. Of all the features that set him apart, the color his skin was hardly the most notable, but though he couldn't rightly say he could relate to the trials the subterranean Elezen faced, he knew all about people judging him based on his appearance. And maybe, if he was lucky, someone else would look at him and see his otherness amongst the group of pale, white-haired Sharlayans, and feel the slightest bit of comfort to know they weren't alone.
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Random thoughts about Ai no Kusabi
So, if you’re older, you may remember that Ai no Kusabi is considered a classic of BL literature in Japan, but one thing that I always found strange was the weird reluctance by even western fans to engage with the obvious racist society in the story that even the anime and AFAIK the novels didn’t spend time on. Maybe it’s just the autistic side of me but wow would it be interesting if the story did get into it and make a point about racism since Japan certainly is not exempt from racism in their society (Ainu, Koreans, burakumin, native Okinawans, etc). Also digging into that fictional world’s sexual politics where sexual exploitation is institutional. I’m fully aware the story is primarily focused on the two lead characters but I just find it interesting the restraint of the source material and fans of this story that way too many people IMO claim is an exploration of caste systems when at most it’s a darker love story with the barely explored backdrop of a caste system (that I think could’ve been a techno-fascist society if things were explained more)
Also, it would've been so interesting to see why the Jupiter supercomputer and the Blondies were created and who their creators were, was the society it created from technological determinism or socially determined from its interactions with its creators? I had the idea that fascists took over earth and colonized the AnK world originally as a penal colony before somehow earth was destroyed and the few remaining fascists running the colony made the supercomputer to continue their legacy.
But hey, just a ramble.
SE definitely has issues writing dark skinned characters sadly and Foulques fit in there.
Even when they end up good like Raubahn. He receives some weird dialogues from Ilberd and a bad title.
Duskwights show up as pale as some Keepers but still get it bad.