How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

@Kazuya: The entire setting is just dodgy, Kazuya. Heck, you don't have to go that far. The entire thing with the goblins is dumb and I'm not talking about the rapey stuff.

The author clearly base the Goblin Slayer on Guts with his loner persona and the “So, he did all this (i.e. slaying goblins and suffering manpain) alone all this time?” spiel that other characters do to him. It’s just that the reason behind all that is much dumber here than Berserk.

I mean, seriously, there is something hilarious with all the author’s effort to make goblins dangerous so the Goblin Slayer becomes more awesome for doing his job while others fail and at the same time also make the goblins underestimated or not taken seriously so the Goblin Slayer can always be this misunderstood and underestimated loner, and I guess to make sure no other adventurers do his job. There can only be one Goblin Slayer, after all.

Look, it's just ridiculous that not even adventurers, but the damn city guards and the military think the goblins are beneath them when the damn things can take down villages, towns, and even cities with enough time and preparation.

Even Warhammer Fantasy with all of its bleakness and dourness has a proper city guard and military that fight off greenskins, skavens, and so on to protect the Empire and its citizens. I mean when your setting is dumber than the setting of Warhammer, don't you think it's just going too far?

And this is just the goblins.

I don't write grimdark, but yeah, you don't need rape to make things dark.

So, a classical. Everyone is incompetent but the MC even when dealing with mooks? That's cute

Edited by KazuyaProta on Oct 8th 2018 at 11:41:52 AM

The use of rape in that series is meant to make the goblins a Hate Sink. It is a distasteful and lazy trope...but it does usually work. Want your audience to realize someone is bad? Make them a rapist! Especially if they are ugly and inhuman and the victims are attractive! Most of the audience will indeed come to hate the bad guys.

That's pretty much the usual defense that I see. I agree with you, is effective but Lazy and distasteful.

The bad thing is that I'm not really that disgusted with the core concept. A monster-slayer who have deshumanized himself so much that he haven't see his own face in years chasing weak but extremely common monsters? Is not really bad.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Oct 8th 2018 at 11:44:13 AM

In fact as I already told you, rape carrie a conotation of dirtiness which is why men have acused other men of being rapist to create fear mongering, just look how white supremacist said about blacks.

"Even Warhammer Fantasy with all of its bleakness and dourness has a proper city guard and military that fight off greenskins, skavens, and so on to protect the Empire and its citizens. I mean when your setting is dumber than the setting of Warhammer, don't you think it's just going too far?

"

Just a thing here: the empire dosent know about skaven(or rather, the underempire) and the only human who get contact with them is rat catcher, who fight with a small but vicious dog.

Edited by unknowing on Oct 8th 2018 at 12:50:41 PM

You mean cute dogs

Kinda, is a gag in warhammer roleplay which REALLY put the grim in grimdark as your chararter are poor most(all) the time, one of the job you can opp is that, rat catcher who eventually will eventually face the skaven.

Their job description always said they have a small but vicious dog.

GS's setting is that it's a literal tabletop game setting. The gods are a pair of tabletop players. The setting is what it is because one god, Truth, is an edgelord Killer Game Master who likes it when horrible things happen to the setting. The other player, Illusion, is a nice person but a horribly bad player. She critical fumbles so many rolls, much to the adventurers' misfortune.

The first episode's events are actually due to one of her rolls going badly for Priestess.

GS has that too. Problem is, it's a city guard. No soldiers are spared to protect the helpless frontier villages who are the most frequent victims of goblin attacks.

Edited by M84 on Oct 9th 2018 at 12:58:39 AM

I know the Skavens are supposed to be unknown to most people (somehow). I just include it because later the Goblin Slayer and his party are going to the underground sewer of a holy city to fight goblins like those rat-catchers because no one else want to go down there (It's beneath them as usual).

Yup, in a world where monsters may (lol) lurk in an absurdly spacious underground sewer, there is no rat-catcher. Brilliant!

Edited by SteamKnight on Oct 9th 2018 at 12:00:45 AM

GS actually notes in that instance that it's really unusual for goblins to be in a place like that. It turns out that they were there on behest of an evil cult.

If it does seem like the setting is contrived to make goblins a persistent threat...well, it is. It even has an in-universe explanation for it: Truth likes having them around as disposable cannon fodder for his game campaigns.

Edited by M84 on Oct 9th 2018 at 1:02:15 AM

Yeah the skaven being unknown is one of those "ughhh?" things of the setting which explanation range from: skaven murder anyone who know the truth, people thinking skaven are just another class of beastmen or thinking is a minor problem.

One could argue that the upper echelons being ignorant or dismissive of a problem mostly faced by poor people is awfully realistic.

Like I said before, rape and other form of sexual violence are really hard to pull of, while violent itself can.

I mean look game like assasin creed, again were you face what can be consider a progresive murder cult....yeah, wrap your head about that one, the assasin are always in the right because the suport the little men, making their use of blatant political assesination justified.

Violence can be see as heroic.

@M84: I know that in-universe justification and explanation, I just think that it's a bad one.

Which is why people can find Warhammer 40K Orks funny and almost endearing despite (or because) of their brutal violent natures and people farms and slave labour while being disgusted by GS's Goblins. The Orks don't rape people.

The Dark Eldar do rape people, but people don't seem to have a problem with that...probably because Dark Eldar are supposed to be hot.

I actually blame Berserk for series like GS's use of rape. Berserk is really guilty of using rape as a shorthand for evilbadguy.

Bottom line: There's a reason we have the Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil and Rape as Drama tropes. If we're going to condemn GS's use of these tropes, we'd have to condemn a lot of other works for it too. Not that I'm saying we shouldn't.

Edited by M84 on Oct 9th 2018 at 1:15:45 AM

Because the setting is very sexless in general, dark eldar rape? maybe but the fluff dont mention so out of sight=out of mind.

The most glaring example is slaanesh, who is pretty much the god of rule 34 and yet the fluf have pretty much go in their way to NO mention that part of him/her/it.

In fact, the mockery WH 40 K got for is edginess is not so much other games got like werewolf or vampire or....white wolf in general.

Edited by unknowing on Oct 8th 2018 at 1:21:47 PM

@M84: Trust me. I mock Berserk.

A lot.

There are two great myths about the Skaven. The first is that they do not exist. The second is that anybody truly believes in the first.

The Empire's elites aren't ignorant about the Skaven's existence - heck, one former emperor was known as Mandred Skavenslaver because he fought back a Skaven invasion and later got assassinated by them - but they're trying to keep the general population in the dark about their existence.

Why? To avoid hysteria. Beastman are horrible creatures, but still a controllable threat because everyone knows where they live. Same with the Greenskins, Norscans and most other threats the people of the Empire face.

Meanwhile, the Skaven rule over one massive empire stretching from one end of the world to the other, with their tunnel system giving them direct access to a lot of places.

Not only are the Skaven pure Paranoia Fuel, their actual numbers mean they could easily overrun the Empire.

This is why the Imperial population is kept in the dark - because the realisation that uncountable numbers of Chaos-aligned ratmen could pop up at any place without them knowing beforehand might actually lead to a breakdown in public order.

The Skaven actually also try to keep themselves hidden for the most part because they're a) cowards and b) not as united as outsiders might think they are.

Other areas of the world are much more aware of them as well - Miragliano, one of the Tilean city-states, is waging full-on war against the Skaven, as their capital of Skavenblight is right next to them. Same with the dwarves.

Long story short: The Empire's upper echelons do know about the Skaven - they just keep it under wraps to prevent a general panic.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Oct 8th 2018 at 7:24:41 PM

Yeah, I think Berserk is an interesting dark fantasy story with gorgeous art, but it also has a shitload of issues. And those issues are just bad...

Warhammer is first and foremost a war game, so I think it's obvious why they are not focusing on problematic stuff that can cause controversies or other unwanted accidents.

Edited by SteamKnight on Oct 9th 2018 at 12:28:15 AM

Or more cynically, stuff that would make it harder to market to a younger customer base.

Berserk was, for better or for worse, a strong influence on a lot of works that followed it. Including Goblin Slayer.

Edited by M84 on Oct 9th 2018 at 1:28:10 AM

Mind you, the Skaven apparently were the ones who ended the world.

Which is still is like, "Wait what?"

Destroying the world really surprised me.

Consider the sheer level of war, the horriify weapon they used or that the primarly human faction are facist against satanist, is surprising how little amount of controversy they cause.

Again I will said their sexless nature(just like star war) allow it to pass with litte controversy.

Unfortunately, I think it's for worse, though. Most (I want to say all, considering I haven't find it but just to be safe.) of the works that ape Berserk seem to either only think rapey stuff is the main reason Berserk works or try to one up Berserk in a wrong, wrong way. <sigh...>

I think it depends on how you want to perceive and enjoy a series

Like Akame Ga Kill is one series I can’t respect artistically for a serious story, the enjoyment is of disgust at its EDGE, badass fights, MEMES, and B-Movje schlock status

This is a thing a lof us dosent like to talk to much but in general, morality in a story will be always slave to is entretaint value.

Why I said this? because sometimes what it punch the audience is what is label evil, that is why rape is a efective tactic: is the equivalent of a jumpscare.