I see the conversation here has dug very deep into this anime game’s writing, but I want to add that wood stoves rule. Aside from the indoor pollution they’re just nice, but they’re better for a cabin than a whole ass house. I come from a small town where some houses still had them, and yeah, they’re treated like a fireplace because it’s too much work to use all the time.
Always interesting when a JRPG tries to tackle nuanced subjects because they never quite nail it, but at least they give it a try. The talk about tractors is interesting to me because these things are so relative. Tractors make your job easier and farmers are all about that shit. It’s hard work! Yet, a generation of tractor using farmers might be opposed to a newer fancier and more automated machine because a lot of people inherently resist change. It’s more about first exposure, really.
It’s one of those things where it’s not inherently fascist by itself, but used by fascists to justify policing stuff they dislike.
I think there’s also a distinction between it and nostalgia. Reminiscing about your time in high school is different from yearning for a version of the past that never existed.
yes I know, it takes more precision to make sense. When I think of the gold old days when my neighborhood was diverse and working class before it got gentrified and full of assholes then thats another story. I will say that I could see estelle from trails in the sky voting for trump. Pretty sure she did.
I think Estelle is more of a lower case C, royalist Tory voter that would vote for David Cameron. Her dad is a super duper bonkers legendary swordsman that commanded the entire army after an invasion into their country, and she basically lives in the Cotswolds which is the part of the South West of England that Hot Fuzz is set in but with an additional degree of rurality and poshness.
That said, given the original point. There are plenty of references throughout the games about how orbal technology is perceived. By and large there’s an openness to adopting the technology which I think is more in service of moving the plot(s) along and for introducing new mechanics as in-game time passes and different continents conduct their own research. The only exceptions that I can recall are the aforementioned farming and harbour communities and a region of the Cold Steel games populated by what is essentially an amalgamation of Roma, Gypsy, Travellers and (insert indigenous communities here) where it’s less opposed and more unheard of. Much like real life, different people have differing degrees of adoption - at a base level, some characters use orbal weapons, others don’t and again, I think that general acceptance is more in service of moving the story along.
That said, I do disagree that the games have a negative view of welfare. All those games have you running errands the gamut of society, with a general emphasis on helping the most vulnerable and notably with the intent of helping communities. There’s an entirely different conversation around whether you ultimately “do for” or “do to” society but fundamentally the games are pro collectivist society.
That said, there’s also a lot of pro-royalists in this series albeit for the literal Kings and Queens. The wider upper class society is highly portrayed as being individualistic with capital P political ambitions. Though I suppose there’s a general administration of royalty in these games because there’s no real backdrop of colonialism and the royal families are heads of government and have actual impact on people’s lives. There’s plenty of people who are anti-royalist too and there’s whole other stories on national republics and other self-governing communities.
Great idea for a thread, and has spurred me into getting around to the later games but I daresay that Falcom tries to say so much in these games that the nuance is rare and they never really stick the landing but I have to admit that they give a go of things.
You have the advantage here of not being deep in the mire of false consciousness and being ideologically principled enough to have to contend with reality as it was, rather than handwave things away by making reference to some kind of selective if not outright constructed cultural and social memory.
However on the other hand your memory of a neighbourhood being more diverse before gentrification might be more of a (not rare but still an) exception that proves the rule, or at least it speaks to the specific time period of when you were living/growing up there. I’m thinking of the like handful-of-decades long cycles of ebb and flow of white people in and out of urban areas in different formations over the last century or so. As I understand it a lot of places that are or were, for example, ethnic enclaves and diverse neighbourhoods often became that way because of white flight from those areas in the post-war era, or the Great Depression, or whatever. Harlem is a great example of this phenomenon but I would bet a lot of neighbourhoods in New York City have similar stories.
And on the other other hand it’s certainly the case that urban areas in North America were and are still deeply segregated by ethnicity and race, even after the alleged end of institutionalized segregation. And on the other other other hand let’s not even get into American suburbs which were all but created as a kind of legendary paradise on Earth within the mythology of the white race lol
Contemporarily there are major issues centered on the ‘right-to-repair’ specifically for farmers. I don’t know all the details, but basically farmers buying new tractors, combines, etc have to deal with more digital integration and computer control. My grandfather kept his 1930s John Deere Model A tractor because he knew how to fix it and parts could be obtained/modified continuously. Farmers now want to similarly fix the tools they own, but are locked out by implement manufacturers. I believe some states in the US have had to make it not illegal for farmers to jailbreak their tractors. Wild stuff.
Yeah I’ve heard a bit about this. John Deere added DRM to their tractors and required farmers to go through their authorized repair services but the problem is that if machinery breaks down on a farm, you need to fix it now. They’d lose tons of money during harvest because of this predatory system. All because they’re not “allowed” to fix their own stuff. Absolutely bonkers.
I feel very strongly about right-to-repair and it’s absurd we even need to have the conversation (collectively, I mean.)
Just a couple months ago I fixed my headphones that died abruptly. All I had to do was open them up and plug a connector back in because they used the wrong part. Someone else would have spent another $150. Did the same with my Xbox Elite Series 2 controller. Saved myself another $150 by replacing the battery and sticks myself.
Stuff like this sure makes me pine for the good old days where things were built to last and weren’t designed to make repair as difficult as possible.
I think you’re spot on with Estelle, although I do she’s a bit more liberal than we’re giving her credit for.
Alright, but this is really a key point for me. The work bracers do is not welfare or charity. It’s a paid service. The Bracer Guild is literally privatized law enforcement. There is no police in Liberl, only the Royal Army and the Bracer Guild.
At best bracers are a self-organizing community service, but in the end it’s only available for a price. The only thing the Liberlian government seems to be preoccupied with is matters of national security. Even the local orphanage is privately run! It seems like as long as the government secures the borders and don’t bother people, everything is fine and dandy.
If there’s one running theme in these games, it’s that they have a massive boner for monarchies. The entire plot in this game is about reestablishing the Queen as the rightful ruler. According to the game, isn’t that there’s a single person in power, but simply that the wrong person might be in charge. The guy who attempts a military coup is proven to have been right, both in his motivation and goals. When you break it down, the only issue seemed to be that he was using a secret police.
I think you’re right that a lot of these things probably aren’t intentional and that Falcom is just trying to say too much at once, but I’m just so annoyed that they willingly or not end up with these weird political implications in an otherwise wholesome game.
