Is it me or are the Imperials Getting Darker?
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This is a presentation I gave at the Pop Culture Association about White Nationalists engaging the Nordicism-based The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
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Is it me or are the Imperials Getting Darker?
- 1. Is it me or are the imperials getting darker? RACE AND THE ELDER SCROLLS: SKYRIM @NICK_LALONE
- 2. Games and Culture are the same thing @NICK_LALONE
- 3. @NICK_LALONE
- 6. White researcher s will have to admit something about themselve s @NICK_LALONE
- 7. Ok, ok, wait Epistemologies of Ignorance We’re ok with racism being somewhere else White Nationalists are not an “Other” @NICK_LALONE
- 8. The Aryans: Study of Indo- European Origins “This is the truth underlying the panegyrics of the Germanists: the Nordics' superiority in physique fitted them to be the vehicles of a superior language.” ~Gordon Childe (1926) @NICK_LALONE
- 9. Skyrim – Origin “Indeed, the history of the Nords is the history of humans in Tamriel; all the human races, with the exception of the Redguards, are descended from Nordic stock.” ~Imperial Geographical Society @NICK_LALONE
- 10. The Redguard “When I started writing Redguard I really thought about how unique the black people of Tamriel were.” ~Michael Kirkbride @NICK_LALONE
- 11. Stormfront on The Redguard “Even though TES has its own version, the Redguard,…When was the last time you saw Negroes creating self-sufficient communities in the wild?...The only creatures in Skyrim that resemble Negroes are the trolls.” @NICK_LALONE
- 12. On Redguard Features “In previous games they looked African...Now they look like dark- skinned Europeans…with maybe an Arab Twist.” @NICK_LALONE
- 13. The Empire “The Imperial Race's presets are a mix of mestizo's and mulattoes, with few whites. The empire opposes racism.” @NICK_LALONE
- 14. On Criticism of the Game Itself “there is already complaining that the Stormcloaks... Rebels under the command of the new High King fighting for an independent Skyrim.... Are racist and Nord Supremacist. :rofl Considering you can join them with any character race... That is idiotic.” @NICK_LALONE
- 15. ZOG and the Aldmeri Dominion “Now these Thalmor....do they sound like a certain group of supremacists who want to undermine a certain other group, attempted to cheapen their God and want to set themselves up as the most powerful by having this other group destroy themselves......” @NICK_LALONE
- 16. The Coming Culture War “A Redguard in a questline…hinting that a possible future alliance between Nords and Redguards is strongly hinted. This parallels with real world politics in that blacks (Redguards) should ally with White Nationalists (Nords) to defeat the zionist/jewish stranglehold (Altmer)” @NICK_LALONE
- 17. What’s the Point? We have never resolved the social hierarchy that created racism in the first place. If we can re-assemble whiteness, we can engage that foundation again. Not from the inclusion of minority groups, but how the majority group is changing. @NICK_LALONE
Editor's Notes
- Hi, I am nicklalone, I am from Pennsylvania State University’s Information Science and Technology. This is an (uneasy) marriage between computer science and social science meant to do its best to bridge the worlds between technologies and humans. My specialty or my role inside of this realm is essentially as a rhetoric specialist. In particular, I am interested in social change as it is shown in the products produced by computer scientists and designers of the virtual realm. This is a topic that has been studied nearly ad nauseum at this point. We see that there is a problem but what does that problem mean? How can we really discuss it?
- Because games and culture are formed of the same stuff, we should expect to really see a lot of similarities. We should expect games to reflect society and often we do. For example, we have been at war for nearly 13 years now. War dominates video gaming. Violence, because of the war, is commonplace and we see this a lot inside of games. Hypersexualized men and women exist inside of these games because our advertising and entertainment media shove this at us from all angles. So, talking about video games should be easy since they have such an analogue to society, right?
- But we don’t. What ends up happening instead is that we talk about this dichotomy. Those who see games as a waste of time and those who see games as the only thing to talk about. Despite the various layers of meaning inside of games and how those layers refer to culture, we end up only talking about games as a waste (effect of violent games, games as the demise of guys, hardcore gaming, etc), or that games are the only thing that matter. This comes down to game studies. Game studies, as a whole, rests on the insider status. There are very few games researchers who actually communicate with the public writ large. Gentile and Ferguson are essentially it and they have legislation or have been used in legislation.
- So, our topic of study is slightly askew because of the current status of play in culture. In essence, video games are a battleground
- Because the white ethnicity is difficult to see, we often have to engage those who pretend not to be racist. The white nationalist presents a sharper lense through which we can see white culture and its changes over time inside of a white dominated entertainment medium.
- Trolls run around being violent and orcs who have very savage cultures.
- Thomas Henry Huxley’s (1870) “On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind” stated that the “Xanthochroi, or fair whites” (406) were the prototypical humans of the people of central Europe. This work was followed up with a slow rise in the frequency and importance of work searching for the area the Xanthochroi, or Aryans, came from (Huxley, 1870; Gregor, 1961). Scholars debated this location for a number of decades through the size of skulls, color of skin, and how advanced their cultures were (Peschel 1876; Beddoe 1885). This debate then took a different turn before being co-opted by German social scientists. The work of Gordon Childe (1926) paved the way for the anti-semitic views of pre-World War II Nazi Germany (Sherratt, 1989). In his view, the Nordic people, much like the historical origin of the Nord in Skyrim (Lore:Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition/Skyrim), stated that the Aryan race came from elsewhere.
- Even within the white factions this discussion exists.Opposition: Imperials are not mestizo or mulatto.. The Imperials are Latin (true Latin... Like Romans).Mulatto is a term used to refer to a person who is born from one white parent and one black parentMestizo is a term traditionally used in Spain and Spanish-speaking America to mean a person of combined European and Native American descent
- More importantly, Childe (1926) concluded that while it was important that the first Aryans were Nords, it was more important that they were superior physically because it combined with the Germanic tribe’s superior language (212). Language is also important to the Nord of Skyrim who, being the first humans, conversed with the Dragons who gave them some of their language in order to strengthen them (Skyrim:Dragon Language: Myth no More). The historical basis for the Nords of Skyrim seems obvious. Like history, the Aryans were thought of as invaders from somewhere else who brought language and physical strength with them. Because of the events of antiquity, the Nords in Skyrim are further seen as a prototype for other humans (CHIM – Michael Kirkbride Posts). While based on antiquity, the expression of the Nord in Skyrim is limited by the technology used to express these ideas via programming language and ultimately, as an amalgamation of processes called a video game.
- We painted it a new color.