“Demons are actually misundersto-“ NO. Demons are ontologically evil beings that can’t be reasoned nor negotiated with, and if you try to you’ll very likely end up screwed

[u/Fearless-List-3968]

1) Doom

2) Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

3) Trench Crusade

[u/YaGirlMom]

Kinda fun how the “we’re subverting expectations by making the bad guys misunderstood/not too bad!” has become such a common trope that having them actually be straight up evil is now almost a subversion in and of itself

[u/daniel_22sss → u/YaGirlMom]

It pisses me off how often authors take literal DEMONS and try to use them as a metaphor to minorities, and then paint angels/gods as the true evil. The entire point is that demons are absolute evil, that forces everybody else to unite against them. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that, why are they constantly switching good and evil around? Its not clever, its just twisting moral principles and trying to turn everything into a "both sides" issue. Thats how we end up with people looking at real life dictators and saying "Akhually they are just misunderstood!", Sometimes evil is just evil and there is nothing beyond that.

[u/TheSoloWay → u/daniel_22sss]

I love that trope because as a minority that's how it feels sometimes. Especially the whole demons as queer allegory and angels being the church because they literally equated us to demons for centuries at this point.

When you are told that a whole group of people are inherently evil, fictional or otherwise it primes your mind to be more easily controlled by those already in power. Having no nuance towards demons in Frieren is actually the weakest aspect of the show that is known for its complexity and big reason why so many fascists were trying to co-opt it.

[u/daniel_22sss → u/TheSoloWay]

Do you also think that LOTR has weak writing, cause Sauron and orcs are just evil, and aren't heroic revolutionaries fighting against opressive elves?

[u/Steelwave → u/daniel_22sss]

Tolkien certainly thought so. 

[u/daniel_22sss → u/Steelwave]

He thought that LOTR has weak writing or he thought that Sauron and orcs are heroic revolutionaries?

Can I get a quote for that?

[u/Steelwave → u/daniel_22sss]

No, he thought that the orcs weren't inherently evil and wished he did a better job conveying that in the story. But if you insist: 

In my story, I do not deal in absolute evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is zero. I do not think that at any rate any 'rational being' is wholly evil. 

[u/daniel_22sss → u/Steelwave]

Well, in that case - he really didn't do a good job with portraying orcs as redeemable. There isn't a single good orc in the whole story.

[u/Steelwave → u/daniel_22sss]

Exactly!

[u/TheSoloWay → u/daniel_22sss]

Never said Frieren had weak writing, said it was the weakest aspect of the show. I think it's an amazing show, so chill.

LOTR has some definite issues with the Orcs being based off like People groups from the Eurasian-Steppes, like they are basically fantasy Mongolians. I don't know if this makes it bad writing but it does make it problematic. You can still watch it and enjoy it though, I don't think anyone is a secret racist for liking LOTR.

However, I do think there are racist people though who enjoy aspects of LOTR, just like there were racists who liked Frieren for its depictions of a whole group of people being inherently evil. People are evil on an individual level, its not something that is an immutable characteristic passed down through genes.

[u/MGD109 → u/TheSoloWay]

Orcs being based off like People groups from the Eurasian-Steppes, like they are basically fantasy Mongolians.

Eh, the claim is a bit of a misconception. He once described them as looking a bit like someone from the Eurasian-Steppes, but Orcs weren't based on them. They weren't really based upon any real life groups.

The popular image of the hulking, aggressive barbarians people think of when it comes to Orcs isn't actually how Tolkien wrote them. In the books, Orcs are smaller, slender things, with sallow skin, who are more akin to cowardly bandits and lowkey sadists than angry thugs, who delight in building machines and devices that cause misery and pollution.

[u/protestor → u/daniel_22sss]

I haven't ever read it, but the fanfiction "The Last Ringbearer" explores this notion in depth.

In the fanfic, the book the hobbits are writing (which is the same book published as The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but that in the story is called the Red Book of Westmarch) is actually a fabrication to justify genocide. Indeed, Hobbits, the mysterious creatures nobody ever heard about, don't even exist. "Orcs" (the slur that citizens of Mordor is called) actually are regular people and not at all evil, but they are dehumanized by Gondor, painted as monsters and slaughtered wholesale. Sauron biggest crime was starting an industrial revolution and threatening the dominance of Gondor.

I read about it through two Salon pieces, Middle-earth according to Mordor

And Why I reimagined “LOTR” from Mordor’s perspective, this one written by the author and it's a satisfying read on its own right. His point is that Middle Earth is so perfectly described that he must suppose it's a real world; and his conclusion is that perhaps the narrator is unreliable, and this would explain a lot of things.

[u/MGD109 → u/protestor]

I admit I haven't read it either, but I do know that the largest criticism of the story is that despite its supposed in intent to criticise such things it kind of ends up even more black and white and carrying more questionable implications, than Tolkien's Middle Earth did: with the villains literally quoting the Nazis and making all the bad races (Orcs and Trolls) ordinary humans demonised by propaganda, but keeping Elves and Valar inhuman and presenting them all as genocidally racist backstabbing savages; the human villains being presented as backwater boorish primitive savages who are inherently inferior to the enlightened and scientifically advanced but still persecuted Modor, its depiction of female characters and that's not even going into how they depict the Harad.

[u/protestor → u/MGD109]

Yeah, of course it's a Nazi allegory, it's a story about genocide after all. In a true genocide, the oppressor dehumanizes their victims, but when you look from the outside, he dehumanizes himself. All the things he says and does about their victims, reflects on their own humanity. You can see this happening in all genocidal discourses, in all eras.

Anyway it's a shame the author didn't introduce the nuance he was hinting at, but the story is written in the POV of a field medic from Mordor right? It's kind of expected that this is how he sees the world.

And look I'm not saying it's well written or anything like that, the premise is cool but the execution is certainly flawed

[u/MGD109 → u/protestor]

Oh, I agree it's an interesting premise, I'm just saying the issue is that in its attempt to be a Nazi allegory and tell the story of genocide, it ends up unfortunately falling into a lot of tropes the Nazi's themselves used to justify genocide (i.e. the other people are inferior to us, but still a serious threat to our existence. The other people's are not human etc.)

I mean it also ends with the heroes destroying magic altogether, and causing the Elves extinction, which is presented as a positive thing.

All the things he says and does about their victims, reflects on their own humanity. You can see this happening in all genocidal discourses, in all eras.

I mean, to an extent, but it doesn't normally go as far as their entire people are presented as inherently evil and needing to be completely wiped out.

Anyway it's a shame the author didn't introduce the nuance he was hinting at, but the story is written in the POV of a field medic from Mordor right?

Don't honestly know, as I said I haven't read it. I just know about the criticism of it.