#also its sort of a weird extra layer that i portrayed this character for years also

[krawdad]

It's bittersweet being able to actually see this test. I remember reading about it and lamenting that I would never get to see it.

There it is. It can be shared and viewed by anybody.

[nerobombs]

Writing Oppression

(Want more? Check out my Writing tag!)

Hope you’re not sick of the Stormblood-induced rants yet, because here’s another one.

I’m sure there’s many Domans, Xaela, and Ala Mhigans getting ready to get back at those darn Garleans and settle into their newly liberated homes. So I’m sure a lot of the player stories that come out of Stormblood will be surrounding that: themes of oppression, of returning home with new experiences, the idea of institutionalised power and how it can be wielded, and so on.

Well, maybe, anyway.

To preface this, my demographic is not what you might call “disenfranchised”. None of the places I’ve lived in or visited are particularly rife with genuine oppression--which I suspect will change when my North Korean visa finally gets approved and America hits its third year of a Cheeto Benito presidency (ooh, spicy political commentary!)--so I’ll admit that I’m approaching this topic more in theory and from logical examination than from experience. 

I’ve definitely consumed media wherein oppression is depicted however, and more often than not such things end up depicted more cartoonishly than anything else. You know, really weird and unintuitive racial slurs, mustache-twirling commissars, goose stepping secret police, and so on. 

I’d like to avoid that. Oppression in fiction can be a fascinating topic and an environment that provides for a lot of intrigue.

And if you’re worried that this post is going to contain some ol’ SJW bullshit then, well, it’s not.

So if you’re looking to approach the topic of Garlemald’s occupation in your storyline, you may want to read further.

1). Internalisation is a genuine factor to consider.

In short, when you get told something often enough, you’ll probably start believing it regardless of whether or not you cognitively recognise it as false.

For a historical example, a “colonial mentality” is a form of internalised oppression where the colonised people feel themselves to be inferior to their imperialist colonisers. The nuances are complex--thoughts can range from “Well they managed to take over half the world and we didn’t so we must be worse people” or “our economy is so much better now with our new overlords”, and so on--but the principle is relatively simple. This sort of thing happened a lot with the spread of the Spanish Empire and the rule of the conquistadors, particularly with places like the Philippines.

It happens a lot in marketing too: women are told they’re not thin and beautiful enough, men are told they’re not manly and successful enough, and both of these things lead to self-esteem issues. Same mechanism, for the most part.

Weirdly enough, this is something I almost never see portrayed in fiction with oppressed societies. It’s a kind of society-level Stockholm Syndrome. Certainly there will be Domans or Ala Mhigans or Xaela who truly believe that they are inferior to Garleans and that Garlemald is something to aspire to, and breaking such an internalisation takes a lot of work, simply because the information is everywhere.

So when you’re considering why oppressed citizenry might side with their oppressors, consider internalisation. Consider the effect of seeing and hearing “Be grateful to your conquerors for they are better and wiser” day in, day out.

2). Bigotry and intelligence are not mutually exclusive.

Or to put it another way: people can genuinely believe racist shit regardless of their status, upbringing, or intellect.

Let’s write a character, Garlic McGarlemald the Garlean. For all intents and purposes he is kind, fair, and intelligent. He’s a university professor, donates to the poor, loves his wife and children, and also sincerely believes that all Xaela are savage horsefuckers who cut off their enemy’s heads in order to consume their soul.

Wait, what?

One of the pitfalls of writing an oppressive or racist society is the depiction. A lot of these stories depict all oppressive racists as universally dumb, drooling ignoramuses who spend all day teaching their children to play “Lynch the Minority” and “Spell the Slur”. And, well, okay, there are certainly people like that. 

But in a truly oppressive society, the dumb racists are not the dangerous ones: the really dangerous ones are people like Garlic McGarlemald who is, for the most part, an ordinary person perfectly capable of critical thinking, yet still inexplicably believes in this shit for reasons no party can really rationalise.

And if that doesn’t seem logical in the slightest, it’s not. But it’s certainly realistic.

People do actually believe in stuff like that. You had scientists in the 19th century seeking “natural, evolutionary” reasons as to why other races were inferior to whites. You had logicians, biologists, and anthropologists huddling around and wondering why whites were so much awesome-er than all those other dirtfarmer races. It was something that was just believed. Maybe it was because it was a cultural cornerstone or it was merely a result of internalisation, but people who by all rights could be considered intelligent and capable believed that stuff.

And while we’re on the subject...

“But my bigot character doesn’t really believe in that stuff, of course he’s smart enough to know that’s all bollocks,” you might say. Garlic McGarlemald is just under social pressure to pretend he believes this stuff, that’s all!

Well, that’s not really valid. For one, from a writing perspective, that kind of argument is a total cop-out; it’s a lazy way to keep your character “clean” for fear of being controversial. For two, lip service has absolutely zero value in this context: unless Garlic McGarlemald is actually willing to take action, he’s still a bigot. A passive and well-meaning bigot, perhaps, but still a bigot. Not only is he a bigot, but he is a hypocrite too, because he refuses to jeopardise the racist and bigoted system that he himself benefits from. 

And this is where the “with us or against us” mentality sort of comes from: if your character is part of the oppressors, then he/she is an oppressor unless they’re actively working against it. Being passively racist is still racist, so sayeth the oppressed, because institutionalised power is still power.

3). Prejudice can have layers.

Consider the “double jeopardy hypothesis” which proposes that, for example, a Asian-American woman is not only subject to racism and sexism, but to the combined effects of both simultaneously. And if she falls into the LBTQ camp (or however many letters that camp seems to have these days), then she’s going through triple jeopardy because heterosexism piles on like a big smelly heterosexist frog.

I say that it’s a hypothesis (and from a scientific standpoint it still is) but this isn’t particularly beyond the stretch of logic.

Let’s say your Xaela meets Garlic McGarlemald. Now obviously, Garlic McGarlemald hates your Xaela. But he doesn’t hate your Xaela just because your Xaela is a Xaela: Mr. Garlic hates your Xaela because they talk funny, dress in rags, have a weird pagan religion and because they’re bisexual. 

Would Garlic McGarlemald hate a Garlean who was the same thing? Well, we don’t know. But the point I’m trying to make here is that an oppressive society will use everything, and I mean everything it can weaponise against the people they’re trying to oppress.

To go further, Garleans might dislike that Domans speak a weird language, they also hate Domans because they eat raw fish (barbarians!), force their children to kneel on bamboo mats (monsters!), and refuse to export Mother 3 to the United States, in addition to taking eight years to finish a new Persona game (complete heathens, I say!). 

See what I mean?

 4). People who belong to the oppressor group can have nice qualities.

If you’ll harken back to my intro paragraph, I don’t like it when oppressors are depicted as universally revolting mustache-twirling Nazis with no redeeming qualities.

Like I said, Garlic McGarlemald can be considered a nice guy, excepting the racism. People who are among the oppressors in an oppressive society aren’t universally bad. After all, for a lot of them it’s not particularly their fault that they were raised in a society that encouraged such bigotry. And internalisation happens with things like racism too: even when they become educated, they seek new reasons to justify their bigotry because it’s all they were raised to know. 

There is a nauseating amount of self-righteousness that comes with depicting all racists and bigots as unrepentant monsters who hit so many branches of the stupid tree that they’re in danger of accidentally swallowing their own extra chromosome. 

So don’t do that. If you’re going to write your oppressors, at least write some of them as mostly well-meaning.

5). Avoid tokenism.

Or, to put it in a more wordy way: either judge every group within your story as a group, or judge every group within your story as individuals.

Let’s say that Garlic McGarlemald is actually not a nice man, and he drinks alcohol and beats his wife.

Edgy, isn’t it?

Now, when being written by a not-so-good writer, Garlic McGarlemald won’t place any stigma upon his group, because he is part of the oppressive Garleans. It’s not that all Garleans are drunken wifebeaters, it’s just that Garlic McGarlemald specifically has that problem.

Meanwhile, Xaela Xaelason accidentally trips and breaks a bottle, therefore all Xaela are clumsy!

No. That can’t fly. And the reason why that can’t fly is because it very quickly descends into becoming preachy.

This happens a lot with poorly written fantasy novels: there is a single named character who is gay or has dark skin, and that single character ends up representing the author’s entire views on gays or black people.

So when you’re writing something like an oppressive society, multiple characters are important. You have to be willing to do the work to portray each side--oppressors and the oppressed--as having complex people who aren’t easily categorised. 

Don’t insert a Token Doman or a Token Good Garlean or a Token Evil Xaela and then use that character to make blanket statements within your story. Because that’s just lazy writing.

6). Oppression is hard to escape.

Whether you’re one of the oppressors attempting to open your worldview or you’re one of the oppressed trying not to fall down the same slippery slope, oppression isn’t an easy thing to “win” against.

There’s no magic argument or book that suddenly allows one to instantly widen their acceptance of race, religion, language, sex, sexual orientation, etc. Similarly, there is no Garden of Eden free of prejudice.

If you’re planning to tackle oppression as a theme, be prepared to be conscious of it, for as long as the theme is relevant. You can’t have Xaela Xaelason make it to the land of his people and decide that Prejudice Doesn’t Exist. No, Xaela Xaelason would be judged based on the fact that he was born in a city and doesn’t know any Xaela customs or traditions. He’d be judged for not staunchly supporting the tribal religion. He’s among other Xaela, and there will be prejudice there, too.

It’s a double-sided magnet, and it has some powerful pull. Be aware of that.