i can’t believe this exists
They are, not that that is going to stop the same usual nerds from getting big mad about it being fascist slop or whatever
I want to read some Dungeons and Dragons shit where the characters make use of real world physics intersecting with in universe magic to Do Cool Shit. Goblin Slayer has that, and does a good fucking job of it. Connecting a teleportation scroll to the bottom of the ocean to use the water pressure like a laser? Cool. Using flour as a fuel air bomb? Hahaha cool. Sorry certain people are too fucking obsessed with their hatred of media and media tropes to appreciate it because they think the only Good Media would have the main characters idk building communism with the goblins
I almost want to write some parody shit where I basically take one of the posts criticizing “the settler colonialism of [whatever isekai Nerds Mad About]” and transpose everything to being about, idk, Ghostbusters. Are the ghost busters not a proto fascist escapist stand in for the viewer? Are the faceless, ‘evil’ ghosts not merely stand ins for the colonized indigenous, encouraging the viewer to Do a Genocide? Idk i think it’s a good bit. You can’t enjoy Ghostbusters anymore, sorry sweaty
Waitwaitwait hold on a second.
So, first of all- you’re free to consume problematic media. Reading Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries doesn’t automatically turn you into a Nazi, otherwise we’d have a lot of right wing political graduate students. The only danger these books pose are to those who uncritically accept the author’s ideas, and I’m sure there’ll be no problems on that front given the general media literacy of people in the anglosphere. If you think there’s cool stuff in the show by all means enjoy it.
But Goblin Slayer was written for someone, by someone, to communicate something.
Why are the goblins cunning enough to set traps and ambush people, but too stupid to engage in diplomacy or have their own culture? Hmmmmm, I dunno, my dude Umberto Eco has something to say about that. “[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” I dunno, seems pretty sus to me…
Why does it open with graphic rape? Oh haha those whacky Japanese and their strange cultural perversions, that’s it, it’s totally not that fear of sexual assault has a long history of being used to justify racism. It’s not as if historically minorities have been lynched on trumped up charges of sexual assault. It must be because the goblins are ontologically evil, the author’s not trying to draw some equivalence or something.
If the goblins pose that much of a danger to people, why do the powers that be leave them alone? Why isn’t there an organized response by official to deal with them? Why do the powers that be actively suppress information about goblins? Can’t possibly be anything to do with conspiracy theories about how the the media in the real world suppresses the real crime statistics that show minorities in a bad light, right? Can’t possibly be so that the big, strong MC has to take things into his own hands, go all ‘lone wolf’ and enact all that cool improvised violence, right? Gotta be a real big damn hero. Oh here comes Eco again: “in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
The answer to the above questions, of course, is because the author wrote it like that. So the next thing we need to ask is why. Who could this story possibly be for? I hope I gave sufficient inferences through the sarcasm.
When people criticize art, they aren’t attacking you as a person, they’re attacking the ideas presented in the texts. I’m not trying to wokescold people into enjoying only Good Communist Approved Media. Me, personally, I call shit like Goblin Slayer out because I’m the fucking minority in question who racists will call a goblin and say deserves to be genocided, “just like in my le ebin animays”. Because the spread of and acceptance of these ideas in the wider culture without pushback is just one more drop in the bucket towards fascism, so I’ll point out all the ways in which a show like Goblin Slayer promotes far-right ideas and talking points in the vain, pointless hope that people who watched the show and didn’t realize it actually think about what the show is trying to say, and maybe they realize how those messages can be dangerous because too many people are uncritical of the media they consume.
Ask yourself: why do racists 4chan shitheads stan this show so hard?
P.S. Ghostbusters? Really? The movie about how Reagan era deregulation is good actually, where the villain is the EPA and attempting to enforce environmental regulations is what causes the most problems?
I admire Goblin Slayer on how militant he is even after success in vanquishing his enemies, he never underestimates his opponents.
(w/ Japanese entertainment as context) I also appreciate many right-wing shows(mostly in form). My fave band even said some anticommunist talking points out of context, didn’t even expect it. My appreciation mostly ends at form though. They’re just fun to watch/fun to listen to.
Critiquing them is even another form of enjoyment! And it’s fun to do. Try watching and critiquing Shin Godzilla, for example. Not all entertainment has to affirm your politics for it to be fun(This is a problem especially in watching art by problematic artists. Learn to separate them already).
Watching and dissecting their themes can be even used as a tool to sharpen your own political alignment.
I love Shin Godzilla! One of Anno’s best, most politically charged works. His take on US Imperialism was really interesting.
Not all entertainment has to affirm your politics for it to be fun
Of course. What I’m taking issue with the person I’m replying to is their insistence that there aren’t any politics present in the text we were discussing.
Edit: Also, it gets a bit harder to Death of the Author when you’re the one on the receiving end of the author’s political violence. Still possible, but still.
I spend my time to engage in good faith and this is all you got? tl;dr?
Fuck it, here’s the tl;dr: why do racists 4chan shitheads stan this show so hard?
Goblin Slayer has that, and does a good fucking job of it.
I’ve read a bit of the manga and, uh, no it does not
More importantly, you can have you creative violence without a highly racialized narrative of heroic genocide and sexualized rape. There is no need to be so defensive about the story because you think the mechanics of their gas chambers are creative.
