I really am sorry I currently keep harping on the entire youth liberation thing. But y'all really need to understand that the current harm put onto children by not just legally but culturally oppressing them, is a harm that basically affects everyone in some way. It is the baseline that us currently used to push for all other kinds of oppression. And always has been.
"Protecting the children" has been used as a reason a thousand times over to take non-white children from their families and raise them outside of their cultural heritage, often in abusive boarding schools or abusive foster systems. And even if the context they were put in was not abusive itself, the fact remains that a lot of non-white children were removed from loving families because the culture they came from was inherently framed as "dangerous". (Meanwhile inherently abusive white Christian families can abuse their children in a Christian way, no problem.)
"Protecting the children" has been used as a reason a thousand times over to keep children of abusive privileged families with their families and keep them from people who had actually tried to help them, especially often the helpful adults are of marginalized groups. Child protection often includes putting a runaway child of a privileged family back with the abusive but privileged family.
"Protecting the children" also has been used quite often to abuse, torture, and at times kill queer children. As attempts to erase their queerness have been framed as "protecting the child" from a supposed corruption.
"Protecting the children" has also been used many, many times over to exclude disabled and mentally ill children from their peer groups, as their disabilities have been framed as an inherent danger to the peers, and their own mental wellness has been considered less important than anything else.
"Protecting the children" quite often has led to violence against children, both physical and mentally. "Protecting the children" in many cases makes children less safe.
I think a lot of people underestimate how important it is that marginalized and exploited people are given credibility. There's lots of ways to do this, but one important way is helping them reach a position where they can speak out as experts on their fields.
Basically, a lot of people view marginalized and oppressed people as naive, incompetent, and childlike, and this impression does a lot of harm.
If somebody who considers themself an activist isn't working to give marginalized/oppressed people credibility and challenge these kinds of infantilizing assumptions, they're being negligent in their work.
„I love that the film doesn't have a fatalistic ending. What recourse does the creature have but to live? in all the drudgery and sadness and rejection, what else will you do but keep walking toward the sun?“
Jacob Elordi about Guillermo del Toro’s „Frankenstein“
If you read Frankenstein's creature from the original novel as a personification or metaphor for disabled, queer and/or otherwise marginalized people - as many people writing literature analysis have done ... these days, you wouldn't want the creature to end in a deeply tragic way. Which reminds me of the horrible trope "Bury Your Gays" which has been so overused in the past and has given viewers and readers the problematic idea that there cannot be a happy queer existence.
Which reminds me of the horrible trope "Bury Your Gays" (or queers) which has been so overused in the past and has given viewers and readers the problematic idea that there cannot be a happy queer existence.
But queers, disabled and/or otherwise marginalized people deserve stories which do not end with dramatic, tragic deaths of the marginalized characters.
And so I am very glad that Guillermo del Toro hasn't done a 1:1 adaptation of the original novel, but changed a few things significantly.
(Adapted from an ask I once sent out in... three parts to someone but unfortunately didn't hear back from. It might have really been too long, so after over a month I thought I would post it here since I like the topic a lot! Please feel free to disagree with me on anything here, just remember I am posting this in good faith with the intent of starting a conversation, not to cause an argument or anything like that)
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And I wanted to give some more thoughts in regards to culture and (cultural) representation. I also would have wanted to push back against assimilation more but like I said (and also the game tells you), if you never knew another culture, it would be hard to do so…
Not just conceptually, but also emotionally, considering that the assimilation is what gave birth to the culture you grew up with in the game and if you were trying to completely oppose it you'd like, be trying to pull the rug underneath you and detach yourself from almost everything cultural that means something to you while not even having any way to connect with much else except for the few things that have persisted.
That would be very hard and harsh on you psychologically, in that situation I would probably instead try to connect with the nature around me more… or I guess the more reasonable option would be to try to incorporate what you can still find out about your parents' cultures and make it part of your life as well.
It's why while I really enjoy the connection between Cal and Islam and have used it to think about where part of his family might be from (and think fanart showing him connected to it in some way could be great, he just deserves more fanart in general…) we don't really know much about the specifics, like the geographical region, or how exactly Islam ties into his background. And with how large and diverse his family is I think it's unfair to try to pin him to one specific culture, considering he clearly loves every parent he has so much. So for me it feels wrong to not just think of him as someone whose background is mixed or maybe ambiguous, until he tells us otherwise! :D
So personally, when thinking of him or writing about him in a story I prefer to think about it as one of many things that subtly influenced him growing up, but not by far the only thing. Not knowing (or being able to know) the specifics of his cultural background is fine with me, maybe he wouldn't even want to talk about it much to not have other people try to define him by that, considering his passion clearly is with his current home and the nature in it and I like him as individual so much that I would want to respect that! It's the least I can do.
He seems like he would still tend towards a more religious outlook despite religion being so downplayed on Vertumna (again, on a meta level I can imagine why even if it's a bit sad, my country is very secular though so I can relate) and inspired by that and some post I saw on here before I think he would tend to a religious view that is more rooted and grounded in the earth he walks on, in the most literal way, something that would see all the xenos, fungi, xenoplants and maybe rivers, stones and like forests as a whole as not just equally having a right to exist and being equally important to life, but also equally sentient, someone you can listen to talk and respond. Some kind of animism that partially grew from his work…
Something I imagine Dys, being much more inclined to scientific fieldwork, would not be able to relate to and maybe slightly criticize or mock him for despite sharing much of his outlook. By the way, I had no idea you could see him in some way as Asian representation, and I really like that actually. I was wondering if there's any in that game and because there are not really any cultural references to Asian cultures I couldn't really think of anything so thank you for telling me about that! I didn't even know there are so many cases of an Asian character being shown as "weird and creative and shunned for it" that it has become a recognizable trope. I agree it's good it's not exaggerated, same with Tangent.
I am actually thinking of ways of leaving some more (obscure) hints to those in my fanfiction! Right now I just have one. I have a post on my belief that the Vertumna Group originated in Estonia (and even an idea for an alternate Vertumna Group that set out in 1910 to search for Atlantis under the ocean rather than Vertumna in outer space) and so I included a reference to the national flower of Estonia at one point:
"And, and these bold blue cornflowers fit really well with both! Their petals look like tiny flowers, surrounding a slightly darker disk. Your mother always called them rye flowers, never even explaining what rye is. But she did tell me they were once important to many of the people that organized our spaceship that brought us here. Symbolized their old home they were willing to give up for their children or something. A reminder of Earth and what we escaped, then?"
With no point of connection to Earth cultures beyond some pop culture like music and having grown up in such a different cultural environment would probably make you have a very different view on what it really means and stands for than someone on Earth, wouldn't it?
Also, on top of that, I feel it would be hard to really do longer segments about reconnecting with Earth culture justice from a writing perspective, since it seems like it would either have to remain very general and not amount to much more but some stressing and depressing moments, or be culture-specific in a way that would be hard to get right and significantly increase the amount of time and effort needed to complete the game and while it's sad it's not in there I can understand wanting to emphasize other themes (like growing up and the friendships and relationships you have along the way, ecology and resistance to militarism and environmental destruction) … but maybe in a potential sequel? or side-quel? Or it can be just a topic for fanfiction, like in the example I gave above.
With Rex I heard that the idea that his parents gave him that augment to make it easier for him to find friends and connections and so hopefully face less marginalization and stigmatization. While it reduces his lifespan they might have hoped it makes the years he does have better than they might have otherwise been, but yeah, I also can't really talk on it myself, I just really liked that idea. Maybe it's also why he can seem meek (although he does stand up for himself, and I think also Cal at one point?) because he doesn't want to turn people against him, or it's part of his experience (trauma…) of growing up on the Helios spaceship, where he was basically alone against all those soldiers from what I can tell.
And yes, I wish you'd be able to find out more about Helios culture, it's a bit kept very general. The way Lum first addresses you as "fugitives" made me think "oh he's some interstellar law enforcement sent by the US government or something and he will arrest us and make us prisoners!" but then it didn't happen. It's probably why I was surprised they still let you go into the wilderness, especially after that one moment where if you try to sneak away a soldier pushes you back into the circle to listen to Lum!
Actually also had some idea for a pre-canon story that would detail exactly what happened before the launch, how the Vertumna Group in Estonia had to somehow "acquire" a rocket in the US and then coordinate its shipment to a Nigerian spaceport via the internet all while traveling on trains and buses there themselves to avoid flying because Russia had made the airspace unsafe (and maybe the US was monitoring it) and they needed to have their departure and trip be harder to notice. I can talk about that in another ask if you are interested!
Anyway, the internalized shame and what not Rex (and Nomi-Nomi) clearly carry with themselves would be worth a lot of talk, too, and also what they are not ashamed about. Clearly for all their faults the soldiers didn't mind gender non-conforming attitudes on the ship as much, which is interesting for an otherwise so evidently strict and spartanic culture. It's the same with the Stratos, yes.
This actually touches back to something I said before: the fact that it represents queerness as something as natural of a diversity as eye or hair color (and even goes further with those as well! I never realized I like blue hair so much…) while also representing (even if maybe not entirely intentionally) some degrees of disability and the lack of understanding and internalized shame they tend to so often carry with themselves (you can view the future visions as representation of anxiety disorders and/or something like schizophrenia, and the belief in past lives can fit in here as well!) and also my favorite occupation is one of the main reasons why this game means so much to me!
And yeah, it not coming up much just … also mirrors how I deal with it a lot of the time, trying to suppress a lot of it and not think about it. The lack of a connection to Earth heritage is not something I can relate to, but having been born in the 90s I can with doing the same for queerness, also having been born abroad and not having had the opportunity to actually move to the homeland of my culture until after college does make me stand out a bit sometimes, too. Especially when people ask why I moved away from an ostensibly wealthier country, which makes me feel weird every time.
In All Systems Red, Martha Wells hides a delicate, nuanced, character-driven story under a veneer of robot fights and space murder — and the
There are subtexts to be read into Murderbot — that its experience is a coming-out narrative, that it mirrors the lives of trans people, immigrants, those on the autism spectrum or anyone else who feels the need to hide some essential part of themselves from a population that either threatens or can't possibly understand them. Or both. And I get all of that because every one of those reads is right.
It's the wonder of the character — that something so alien can be so human. That everyone who has ever had to hide in a crowded room, avert their eyes from power, cocoon themselves in media for comfort or lie to survive can relate. It's powerful to see that on the page. It's moving to ride around in the head of something that is so strong and so vulnerable, so murder-y and so frightened, all at the same time.
It's so fucking wild that people will say that a fictional species can't work as a metaphor for real world marginalized people because they have real tangible differences, either physical or mental, from humans. Like, I've seen this argument both from progressives saying it's problematic to ever do, and reactionaries defending things like lotr or warhammer40k. And, not only is it the most blue curtained thing I've ever seen, like probably as close as saying "I've seen authors who use subtext and they're cowards" that you'll get, but it's an argument that fails due to the simple fact that people who have actual physical and mental difference exist and their rights are still worth defending.
Like, a lot of people literally just meant, "this metaphor for honophobia/racism can't work because I'd also have to be agaisnt ablism too" and I hate to break it to you but you have to be agaisnt ablism to be agaisnt homophobia and racism in real life. When you say a metaphor for bigotry isn't valid because of tangible physical or mental differences, you're revealing that you aren't actually agaisnt eugenics, you just think that certain groups often targeted by eugenics are actually within the category of genetically pure. But I hate to break it to you but some people actually do have bodies and minds that are abnormal, and they don't deserve less rights.
It especially sucks when all the common criticisms of these metaphors end up just embracing eugenics. "This species is ok to commit genocide agaisnt because they don't feel love or empathy" there are people who don't feel those things in real life. "Hemospectrum is bad because lower castes aren't as powerful and have lower lifespans" there are people with less prowess and lower lifespans in real life. "Mutants are a bad metaphor because there's an actual real fear they could overtake us" if you're afraid about a minority having the strength to overtake you, you've already decided their oppression in valid.
I'm personally someone who relates a lot to various fictional monsters, as someone whose marginalization makes me feel like an outsider to humanity. A lot of my favorite media uses metaphorr to discuss marginalization, Worm, Undertale, Shape of Water, Attack on Titan, Babylon5, etc. And I feel like it sucks that people dissmiss the ability for these stories to be meaningful commentaries on oppression because they're still stuck in the same Twitter arguments about dnd that they've been having for the past six years.
It's been a fact of my entire life that despite some of my privileges, I will always be unpopular either through the sheer existence of being a neurodivergent transgender person or having takes seen as unusual or oppositional (e.g., anti-AI use). It is through Luciferianism that I find power through the oppression and continue to fight on behalf of myself and those who need justice. I am so tired of being the only one who talks sense, but at least I can say I spoke up today.
