The main topic for these notes will be Racism.
Oh yeah. It's that time to talk about the thing that has existed since the caveman Grogg noticed that Throgg had CONED NIPPLES, INSTEAD SPHERICAL ONES.
"Disgusting," said Nero.
Oh man. Let's assume that whoever is reading this understands that racism is wrong(yes? please?) and let's move on from there, lol.
I am also totally prepared to get very angry messages once I make my opinions on this issue known, lol, so that's nice.
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Colonialism
Throughout the story of GALACTIC racism is discussed, but mainly in the sphere of Colonialism. This was again, another very easy topic for me to write about because the effects of colonialism are so obvious, hundreds of years later and people don't even know how or why, they assume its always been that way, but no, no it has not.
Also, my parents come from a country that was a former British colony, it hasn't even been independent for one hundred years, and the stuff they say and believe thanks to colonialism is insane. I just use the words they say for a lot scenes.
Which is worrying, BUT ANYWAY.
In Volume One, Mary Jane calls the Ionadians nothing but slavers and colonizers, and its true, they enslaved various planets and Earth for two centuries. Why should she believe the words of people that saw them as nothing but disposible pieces on a chess board? In the first Volume they're mentioned rarely, but they still affect them.
In the extra chapters, Lush explains that racism is an active choice. Levi and Ace are racist, don't believe that they are, yet they balk at the words of people in the alternate universe who are so racist in a comical way against shape-shifters, that they think they've gone almost three hundred years into the past, when Ace says "Why did you send me to 2050?"
And its a funny joke to anyone who has read up to that point, because why would anyone be racist against people with freckles? Thats absolutely ridiculous.
And that's my point.
That racism is stupid and ridiculous.
In the first original chapters of Volume One, that space pirates were stupid, the stupid kind of racist that no one can take seriously. I didn't write it very well, so I took it out. The entire point of people with freckles being a subjugated minority is that none of them are subjugated in our own real society( I hope not) and the very idea is just stupid.
Because racism is fucking stupid and illogical.
In Volume One and a Half, its explained in the chapter Freckles that the Empire came and made everyone believe that people with freckles are evil, with a lot of propaganda. This is after they killed almost all royal lines on planet Earth, and various races and religous groups that said they were descendents of the gods. This makes perfect sense to the Empire, because in the eigth realm, there are people who are descendents of the gods, and the current rulers stole their kingdom! IT MAKES SENSE!
But once the Empire leaves no one knows why people hate those with freckles, why they killed them all, and they agree that it is a normal part of society, and move on. Why should they question something when everyone who is alive lives in this new world where there are filthy freckle fuckers?
The sweet delicious irony is that none of them think they're racist because Earth has very little racial tensions. An entire alien race fighting you makes people stop seeing racial lines, and instead they turn together against the Ionadians.
Therefore Ace doesn't think he's racist, no one else does until they're confronted with it much later on when they visit different planets, with cultures and beings outside their comfort zones.
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Persecution Complex
Ace and Nero are Ionadians, and they have no problem with Earthians nor Paradisians because they've spent years around them. Instead they worry more about if they fit in more with everyone else because they're immigrants.
When Ace and Nero cut their hair, their metaphorical and emotional shields, the world is not as nice to them as before.
Forthright hated Ace because he came to the wrong conclusion that he was a murderer, or a sociopath, a drug smuggler, etc. Its a very normal conclusion to come to because Forthrigh only knows a few things.
1. There is a man who looks like Ace that is married to a man who is a high ranking member in a drug cartel.
2. The previous Captain was corrupt, and he favored Ace.
3. Ace is having an affair with Levi, whose family will do anything to get what they want, even if its illegal or immoral.
4. At the scene of Ahana M. Hori's murder, the DNA matches up with Ace, so this further solidifies his belief that Ace is a murderer and dangerous.
When Forthright learns that Ace is a Ionadian when his hair is cut, all of a sudden his beliefs are resolute.
Forthright has lived on Earth and Paradis, both colonized and attacked by the Empire, therefore he hates all of them. His only idea of them is from government propaganda and history books, generalizing an entire race of people based on the actions of their government. He tells Mary Jane about the affair not because they're cheating, but because he doesn't believe that Ionadians are good people.
Forthright's limited world view is a result of colonialism, and he will never even know.
When some people learn that Ace and Levi are having an affair, they support Mary Jane, and tell her she should ruin Ace's life. Not because he's bisexual or doing something immoral, but because he's a Ionadian. It's upsetting and confusing for her because they hate him for all the wrong reasons. It's even more confusing for her because Mary Jane's father, David, is Jewish. The words and attitudes they have are things she only read about and was told by her parents, and to see it still happening its strange, and she doesn't know how to deal with it.
The same people who were subjugated don't think they can have prejudices or a victim complex against others because someone hurt me, why can't I hurt them?
The descendents of people who commited crimes didn't do anything but are punished for something they never did, and even when they are directly hurt by the same perpetrators, such as Ace's family being killed during a war, or Nero being sold, they still don't understand.
This is a very obvious parallel to the real world.
My parents come from a former British colony, and of the group we encompass, we make up three percent of the population, yet we control most of the law and government roles. My parents, part of this group, grew up wealthy in a country with no middle class, where most of the people were poor.
My mother grew up in this country, wealthy and educated, but because her country was colonized by England she sees each and every British person as nothing but a "filthy colonizer." Her entire group benefited from the fact that they adopted British mannerisms, my mother reaped the benefits of this, yet she still thinks she is persecuted when her group uses their roles to persecute others.
The lack of self-awareness is so strong in people of the same group that my mother comes from, that many of them have told me when they immigrated to the USA, they could not understand that everyone thought they were poor. My mother was furious when someone asked her if she knew what a television was when she grew up wealthy. Then they continue to think they are better than other ethnicities and groups of the same nation, and then they continue to believe they are better than African Americans because they came from a poorer nation, came to America with nothing, but "we are doing so well why aren't you doing well?"
They think that because their ancestors were enslaved that once the subjugators leave that everything will be fine, but that's not the case. Each country, real or fantasy, has its own specific issues, and just because their colonizers leave doesn't mean everything is solved.
A new group of people is now at the top but believe they aren't because someone else hurt them before.
If you don't want someone judging you and treating your entire race as a monolith with one unified opinion, why do it to them?
Yet Ace and Nero are judged for something they cannot control, just like in real life. They cannot understand why people call them "white", because they are from a place where that is not a concept. They're seen as scary when doing completely normal actions, because the government has used propaganda to get people to believe that the simple act of the other going about their daily lives is a threat to the status quo.
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Problems Once Dad Leaves
In this case "Dad" is the colonizer that left, lol.
Dad went out for some milk, never came back, took the dog, and now your country has a failing infrastructure and they raped your land and people, stealing all its resources.
The previous section makes it sound as if I am blaming all ills onto former colonized nations but truth and reality are so nuanced.
Yes, so many nations have hurt others through their horrible actions which can never be fixed, no matter how many precious artifacts are returned or foreign aid is given. There are so many problems that happens when" Dad " leaves, and to me its like the aftermath of a creepy, abusive relationship.
A) Newly Defined Society and Hierarchy
In the chapter Freckles, it's quickly mentioned in one sentence that most of the leaders of Earth are descendants of the viceroyalty that controlled Earth when it was colonized. This is pretty true to life. A lot of the people in former colonized nations that have money are descendants of those same people, or descendants of natives that married those people.
A very glaring characteristic of Ace and Friends ™, is that most of them are upper middle class or wealthy. People are pretty aware Levi is insanely rich but he fits in quite well with everyone else, its mentioned a few times that most of the students at the Academy are rich, yet the astrals are, by definition and by expectations, should be weak and looked down upon.
Most of the people around Ace's age are the descendants of women who were sexually assaulted when the Empire invaded, so long ago, in fact, Levi's great-grandmother is one of those women.
Yet they're rich.
A new hierarchy is defined by astrals, who are and by definition mixed race aliens. In reality, many colonies gave perks to those who were of mixed race, and they could own slaves, run businesses, own property, etc. They are, by definition 'one of the good ones'.
God, that phrase felt disgusting to type out.
All of Ace's friends are astrals, he is surrounded in a bubble of wealthy idiots. Not in the sense of intellect but awareness of life outside their own little clubs. Ace doesn't care that someone else doesn't have an ability, he's quite indifferent, but hasn't anyone noticed the other characters don't hang around people without powers? Astrals are a minority, there aren't a lot of them, so again its super wierd they don't have <<
Having an ability is so connected to status, wealth, and power, that Levi fears if people learn that he doesn't have an ability, he will lose all three, WHICH IS A VALID FEAR!
Ace doesn't talk to anyone who is <<
Former colonized nations are plenty of proof that wealth is the true divider of people.
All the astrals hang around each other because most of them are rich, not because they're racist against <<
Billy in Vol 1. mentions how they all think they're so great with the flashy lights and money.
And its true, they do.
But they don't think this is wrong because they're 'one of the good ones'," the astrals fought the Empire, we should be rewarded with wealth."
Thus, it all feeds back into the Persecution Complex.
B.Disorganization
So Dad left and the golden children, 'one of the good ones', are all in charge, and now nobody knows what to do, standing in the middle of a field, naked, with their dick in their hands.
Usually when colonizers leave, they take a ton of stuff with them, either out of spite or in a last ditch effort to take whatever they want. While they occupy a foreign land, they'll only maintain places that help them gain more wealth. So, when the Empire leaves, Earth is basically the equivalency of a developing nation compared to other planets.
They still use telephones instead of more advanced technology, there's a hyperway where cars fly, but many people still drive on the ground. Nothing is fixed, nothing is organized, the government goes along with whatever laws that gets them entrance into the Galactic Union...and then stops, lol.
When Mary Sue attempts to turn off the shield in volume one using the computer, the system is so fucking old, that its an obscure dead language, which in the future is English, lol.
Whenever there is an emergency the government reacts instead of being proactive. In Vol 1.5 the government is completely aware of the supernatural... yet have no contingency plans on what to do if they become dangerous.
The politicians are focused on money, use the fear of people with freckles to control the populace, even though most of them were killed in the world's weirdest genocide, and again everyone is so disorganized and brainwashed that the problem isn't the lack of disorganization, nor government corruption!
"It's the colonizers who have been gone for an entire century! Not us!"
Yeah, "Dad" left, everything is worse, but the new upper class (Stepdad), is just as bad.
"Stepdad" promises everything is better, but he's another entity that will steal the people's resources by pointing at their subjugators that have left, still looting the treasury. By the time anyone wises up to what's going on, so many institutions that protect people from corruption have been wittled away to uselessness or taken out entirely, and that's if they existed to begin with.
Many people look at developing nations and don't understand why they don't just "get their stuff together."
So imagine if your abusive dad left, your stepdad comes in and makes many promises, manipulates you into believing everything is better, and continues the same abuse.
Same shit, different day.
The good thing about reality is that plenty of developing nations have wised up to this nonsense long ago and aren't taking any of it anymore.
Good on them.
Will that happen in my story?
For real, I am leaning towards a no, but I'm sure I might change my mind later on.