Starfields is one of the biggest games of 2023 – but it’s joined other recent games like Baldurs Gate 3 in being boycotted by conservatives because of the way it interacts with gender.
Starfields is one of the biggest games of 2023 – but it’s joined other recent games like Baldurs Gate 3 in being boycotted by conservatives because of the way it interacts with gender.
Objection. It’s obviously a huge genre, but there is certainly conservatism to be found there. I point to the xenophobia of Lovecraft as an example and the tropes of teenager slashers where “slutty” women die and “pure” women live, and Black people tend to not live long.
Never look up the name of Lovecraft’s cat. Dude was every kind of The Other-phobic there WAS.
Honestly, the “cosmic horror” or the mere fear of the unknown kind of plays into that as well.
One could argue there’s something inherently racist in sci-fi horror that depicts aliens as monsters when in fact they might just simply be different intelligent lifeforms with their own set of needs…
There might be sometimes problems among intelligent lifeforms to properly understand / communicate, or conflicts in our goals. But painting everything alien/unknown as inherently scary is kind of racist, even if in some situations it might be written in our instincts to not trust that which is unfamiliar.
I wasn’t even talking about his horror, to be honest. The man himself was a hot mess of being afraid of everyone different. As well as being oddly picky about who he applied it to - he was extremely antisemitic but married a Jewish woman. He hated gay people but one of his best friends was gay. It was like he hated the idea of Others but was ok with an very few individuals on a very personal level.
As for what you’ve brought up, that’s often, I think, why SF can be used to explore racism or themes of racism. By making a complete alien The Other, you can look at and explore ideas that would nowadays get folks screaming “WOKE!!!” if you tried to explore it with races of people.