Talk:Aliens Made Them Do It

"Object to a perceived racism" is terrible phrasing, but I was on very pointy tenterhooks writing that part. I think it's still offensive, but am no longer sure to whom. --LC 04:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Is the objection to how alien cultures appear in fanfic, or to how they appear in canon (or both)? Kass 20:10, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's something I wrote in a locked post, back in Oct '07-- "So you guys know the SGA trope where the team is captured/menaced/chased by Horrid Savage Spear-Chucking Pegasus Tribes, right? .... They live in muddy huts and don't have shoes, but they'll use their superpowerful magic to make sure Our Heroes can be enlightened at the end of the story... And they have freaky sexual customs and are totally irrational and angry and violent and flip out at people for looking at them the wrong way. You know, that trope that's in every third story you read. Those stupid, ignorant, violent Pegasus tribes with their shamans and witchdoctors and hoodoos and grass skirts and spears and cannibalism." -- I was mostly annoyed by this trope because it was *not* supported by canon.

The overwhelming majority of Pegasus societies in *canon* are medieval/Victorian (Poisoning the Well, The Tower, Irresistible, The Brotherhood) or similar to/even more scientifically advanced than modern Western society (Terraneans, Satedans, Genii, the societies in "The Long Goodbye" and "Condemned," the Travellers, etc.) We never saw any society of "primitives" (unless a society made up only of children, or one where an Ancient goddess who provides for all your needs, counts, but I think those societies are clearly unique-- canon shows us that they were caused to be that way by seriously unique circumstances.)

But at the time that I ranted, the overwhelming majority of Pegasus societies in fanfiction, especially in AMTDI stories, were faceless mobs of "primitive" "savages" with all the stereotypical attributes of such-- grass skirts, spears, straw/mud huts-- and Our Heroes saw nothing wrong in vocally denigrating their "stupid" culture in the most insensitive terms-- condemning their dumb, ignorant "superstitious" religions, their violent, animalistic tendencies, etc.-- despite the fact nothing like that had ever been shown in canon, and in fact *wasn't* ever shown in canon, at least until 4x07 "Missing," and again, the society of looters seemed to be more the exception than the rule, if Keller's reaction is anything to go by.

.... tl;dr, long rant is long. -- Liviapenn 23:48, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The racism part was changed to "SGA fans" and since my post is cited as one of the sources, I'm against that addition. It's true that I wrote the meta in reaction to SGA, but since then I've seen the same primitive tribe trope in Star Trek fic, which is even weirder there, and yet you still get randomly attacking "natives" without proper motivation whether for h/c or amtdi purposes. So frankly the racism is crossfandom imo.--RatCreature 22:29, 17 July 2010 (UTC)