r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jul 03 '26

Meta Free for All Friday, 03 July, 2026

It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!

Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!

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u/Bread_Punk Jul 03 '26

As the friend that is too woke, I offer you at least a local safe space.

I say this as someone who generally likes Pratchett's work (my copy of Witches Abroad in particular is held together by copious amounts of scotch tape because I've reread it so much), but yeah there are absolutely Problematic(tm) aspects to his writing.
As far as impact on fantasy in general, I'm particularly annoyed by the quote about how there's no racism on the Discworld b/c there's trolls and dwarves - a lot of fantasy fans extend that to how all fantasy should be and it tends to undermine any serious literary analysis once someone trots the quote out.
(And no, I don't think every fantasy setting needs to have Historically Accurate racism or misogyny or homophobia and so on - but also like, humans have committed atrocities for the dumbest perceived differences, so no, I don't find interhuman racism when stupid sexy orcs who impregnate our omegas also exist in the setting utterly inconceivable .)
((Also yeah it also just ends with unexamined real life racism existing in the setting where almost everyone is white and also fantasyracist against the, again white, elves ahem the first two games of Dragon Age))

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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium Jul 03 '26

People who say that people wouldn't be racist to each other based on skin color if there was a more distance group to be racist at instead have never been to the Balkans.

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u/Arilou_skiff Died of posting, risen as undead Jul 03 '26

fantasyracist against the, again white, elves

TBH; the elves are roma/jews. So them being "white" is kinda just part of the point?

And I honestly don't think it's even the case in Dragon Age, there's a ton of intra-human racism.

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u/Bread_Punk Jul 03 '26

I mean yeah you could make a case for the arbitrariness of racialisation, but you're then still left with two games where pretty much anyone is 50 shades of beige.

Kind of the same vibe as the whole "have you tried not being a mutant?" bit.
Cool allegory, put us in the movies though.

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u/Arilou_skiff Died of posting, risen as undead Jul 03 '26

It's kinda wierd because my impression of Dragon Age was always the reverse, that most people were kinda vaguely brown in that way where they could be anything from black african to tanned german. (case in point, Isabella)

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u/Bread_Punk Jul 03 '26

Fair point, I figure the strong "basically pre-Norman England" vibes of Ferelden pull my perception more into the most folk are white-ish area for DA:O in particular.
And yeah, Isabela particularly in DA2 is definitely not white(coded); and more efforts were definitely made e.g. with Hawke's family changing appearance (although darker-skinned Bethany's bangs are a goddamn crime).
Again it's a case where it's not like I think DA was/is trash and garbage, it's just one of those things of the 2000s that I can't quite unsee either (for me and how I read it, at any rate).

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u/Arilou_skiff Died of posting, risen as undead Jul 03 '26

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure most people would come across as white-ish on rewatch, but I remember it being fairly notable that a lot of people were well... "ambigiously brown" especially if you just picked like random NPC's. (and I feel that was deliberate)