(no subject)

[palominocorn]

The fact that Aloy is a white (conventionally attractive, skinny, able-bodied, young) woman who goes around disparaging tradition and culture and wrecking people's religions in the name of saving the world all while carrying around a (justified in universe) complex about her own genetic superiority, it, uh.

It bad.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Yeah there was a compelling kernel of her falling back into bad habits at the start, but god, it just keeps going. Like to be clear, I don't think Aloy's treatment of the Utaru is supposed to be sympathetic, she's meant to be kind of frustrating and running extremely high on emotions and putting way too much on herself, but that doesn't excuse how fucking bad it is. The first game had this same issue and it got fixed not at all.

[palominocorn]

Something something scientific atheism as an evangelical religion?

[yvannairie]

Yeah but like. Horizon is not made by an American studio, is the thing. The racism is actually very European sort of ignorance of native history and disregard for the after-effects of colonisation. So it confuses me that the very bitter anti-religion that Aloy presents is even there.

Maybe they were going for her being unlikeable and frustrating until. Later. But, like, if that's what they were going for, they did a little too good of a job of it :/

[palominocorn]

Huh. To me the fact that it came from a western European studio made sense? The Netherlands have a long and ugly history of colonialism and their population is majority nonreligious.

Here in the US the dominant religion is evangelical Christianity (like 80% I think) - as loud and obnoxious as the atheists here get, we're actually not the dominant group by a long shot. It makes for a different cultural context even when you're in non-explicitly religious spaces.

[yvannairie]

... huh. That. Like I associate that kind of dismissive highhanded atheism with post-Christian American atheists I guess? That's not what our atheists are like, our atheists are all tired.

[palominocorn]

Oh don't get me wrong there are plenty of those around, but they're a minority compared to the Christians.

Like "replace Jesus with some combination of technology, money, or hobbies" is IME a very common ideology among atheists. But the US would not be the kind of hellhole it is without a massive evangelical population.