oh my god, you have no idea how much I've wanted to talk about my perpetual irritation at racism, and general oppression narratives in fantasy and sci-fi media https://twitter.com/Loudwindow/status/1387814778182135808

I don't have coherent thoughts on this, so don't expect this to be a good thread. This is mostly just going to be me ranting and raving about stories I love with frustrating oppression narratives, where I'll try to extract someone underlying patterns, or something idk

ok, so uh, fullmetal alchemist brotherhood... we gonna talk about that?

like, we know scar did nothing wrong right? And that ACAB includes ed and fucking definitely includes this bitch

I don't care if he's hot, he's a fucking nazi

like there is so much to U N P A C K here it's hard to even know where to start

Major Armstrong is a coward for not wanting to participate in genocide? Miles is right for not actually doing a damn thing to help his people? Scar is wrong for killing soldiers who participated in genocide? what?!

can't believe they pushed a "change the system from within" thing and people actually were like "so true king, what an inspiration". Fuck Miles. all my homies hate Miles

this sort of represents a general pattern in oppression stories in media: oppression bad, but fighting that oppression in a violent way worse, cycle of hatred, violence bullshit, reform from within good and so on and so on

It's liberal bullshit. Like, in the story, Miles accomplishes fucking nothing, yet he's still paraded around as the person who's right

and don't get me fucking started on Ed's "i don't see color" bullshit. Fuck off.

I can't believe they showed that as being a moral response. Overall it was just so absurd. Y'all want me to cry over genocide cop Hughes? No thanks. Fuck that crakkker

FMAB would have benefited a lot from not pulling this equivocational bullshit and showing the reality that characters like Hawkeye and Mustang are Nazi murderers worthy of scorn

but hey, atleast fmab actually shows oppression and doesn't turn the person who fights against it into a whiny, unlikeable, randomly murdering caricature of what conservatives think of black radicals as.

Hey, have y'all ever heard of RWBY?

this is probably the 2nd worst oppression narrative I have ever seen in my life. Not only is it poorly written, it is also immoral

so firstly, they do an abyssmal job of showing the oppression of the Faunas. Like, the only practical examples we see in the first three volumes are a kid who bullies everyone bullying a bunny girl and weiss says some neocon shit that is never actually addressed

since every oppression narrative in America written by huwites only has black people as a point of reference, of course, the struggle is framed as an unnuanced battle between peaceful moderates and violent extremists, serving as standards for vulgar outlooks and disagreements...

between MLK jr and Malcolm x + early nonviolent civil rights groups and the later emergence of radical black power organizations such as the black panther party.

I mean, the bad guy extremist group is literally fucking called "the white fang".

Like, jesus christ, white people, if you're going to caricature some real history for your oppression narratives, please stop abusing black people and native americans

There is essentially nothing nuanced about adam. he's just a bad person. Our Huey p newton/malcolm x stand in is just a whiny over grown teenager perpetually coping about losing his groomed gay catgirl waifu

Like, If you have the chance to write an oppression narrative, why go this route? Why would you never actually show the systemic oppression? Why are you so focused on showing the evils of extreme responses to oppression, instead of showing the evils of oppression itself?

seems kinda sus

I think these patterns are the usual way oppression narratives are addressed in media, with the exception of stories that are explicitly about overcoming oppression.

Like, Black panther falls into this pattern aswell

caricaturing black nationalism, "extremes bad", reform good, etc

The only two stories with anti-oppression narratives I'm completely satisfied with are 1. Gundam Iron blooded orphans and 2. Shinsekai yori

to discuss why I think these stories are so good, I will lay out my thoughts on what I see as the general form of the oppression narrative and why they can be very compelling or very dangerous

So, in my opinion there are two forms of oppression narratives: 1. those written from the pov of the oppressed aka liberation narratives.

and 2. (the one I want to focus on) oppression narratives written from the perspective of an unoppressed person in an effectively racist society. aka, oppression stories made for white people

I find this second kind particularly interesting because they show how, usually progressive, white or otherwise majority population people think about the oppression they see around them.

Of course, this is not unique to race. Lord knows how many homophobia stories are written by and for straight people. Racial ones, or similar, are just the usual pattern