Animated Atrocities 182 || Extra Credits - Orcs Must Die!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2025
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Edited by Kota
Today we take a look at the animated web series, Extra Credits for the third time. In the first episode, "Designing Ethical Web Series" • Animated Atrocites 165... we took a look at how they've shifted from consumer-focused advocacy to defending more shady corporate practices such as loot boxes. In the second episode, "Political and Hypocritical" • Animated Atrocities 16... we took a look at the controversial idea of "all media is political," and the places that logic leads.
In this episode we explore one particular episode; where they try to explain why having evil races in a piece of fiction is problematic. They do not do a good job.
![Animated Atrocities 173 || Pickle Rick [Rick & Morty]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/J6teufYk2V4/mqdefault.jpg)
What people don’t get it is that by his own admission, Tolkien HATED real world allegory in fiction. So it’s unlikely he would create an entire race deliberately meant to be an allegory for real world races. Orcs are actually based on goblins and ogres
@@mattnorton102 Tolkien was actually pretty anti racist, at least by the standards of his time. Even so, what particularly about Orcs as they’re presented in Tolkien’s mythos makes you think they’re a stand in for minorities, especially when Tolkien’s admitted inspiration for them is goblins and ogres?
He also had a moral crisis in painting an entire race as inherently evil. Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and a tenet of the religion is that nobody is beyond salvation; by strict interpretation, him depicting a race of intelligent beings as otherwise would have been *blasphemous*. In the end he settled on the idea that Sauron had twisted them into the state they were and led them down the path of evil, and that nobody's completely sure what an orc would even be like without LOTR-Satan's influence.
@@Kazmahu You could make the case that that’s even more evidence that Tolkien was (at least not maliciously) racist. In keeping with the Legendarium’s heavy Christian themes Orcs can be interpreted-as people who fell into sin, in contrast with the morally pure elves. As a result, in the Legendarium, it makes more sense to me to look at Orcs not as an inherently evil race which can be correlated to real world races but as a stand in for the effects of sin on the soul. Tolkien was a lot more interested in theology, philosophy, and history than the contemporary politics of his day
@@Kazmahu to be clear, I think Tolkien’s choice to portray evil as manifested in a particular race was not a great decision, and one that definitely hasn’t aged well but it definitely doesn’t reflect Tolkien’s own views on race and racism
@Stephen O'Brien I dunno, force of habit I guess? I’m an American after all, and Tolkien was English so they would’ve been minorities to him too
As the Mario RPGs revealed, the Goombas actually aren’t all evil, but the ones who work for Bowser do so because they legitimately think Bowser is awesome, not because they’re forced into it due to Toads discriminating against them or some crap like that. Getting stomped flat also doesn’t actually kill them, it just makes them unable to battle.
Of course, Mario barely runs into any of the friendly Goombas on his adventures because the friendly ones don’t actively go after him in order to kill him.
I remember the Monstro Town in Mario RPG, where we meet a Goomba that left the army to start a family, and Bowser was totally supportive
Captain Goomba is hilarious
I would join Bowser because he’s awesome.
"Mario barely runs into any of the friendly Goombas on his adventures because the friendly ones don’t actively go after him in order to kill him."
This is an important point of distinction that I think goes back to a strawman they use in the Nazi video as well (about how you should assume any Nazi who isn't explicitly pointed out to be under duress or pressed into service should be assumed immoral).
In a game where your premise is fighting against evil to save something or someone, it's logical that characters you meet in a confrontational manner are probably going to be aligned with that evil as the most common scenario (and thus your assumed default one).
Matpat definitely didn't understand that in his infamous Mario is Mental theory.
I just noticed that "If they have no choice are they evil?" came from the same people as "Every German soldier was a Nazi even if you try to justify that they didn't have a choice".
Because genuine evil is useful to the revolution. They don't hate Nazis for being evil, they hate National Socialists dor dissenting from THEIR communism.
The peak of hypocrisy,everyone!
Imagine thinking:
1. Orcs are always depicted as the bad guys.
2. Orcs are equivalent to a certain human group.
3. Tolkien's political views are to be measured by your standards.
The funny thing about Tolkien's work is that ORCS ARE ELVES WHO LOST THEIR WAY.
Those infamously perfect Elves, who inspired a generation of Tolkien-ripoff writers to try and make their own "better" orcs?
Always had the capacity to be Orcs.
@@LuigiTheMetal64 nah. There are settings where orcs are not depicted as evil.
Especially in thise where you can use them as player characters, and monster girl settings.
In my opinion, if you're the one comparing black people to orcs, chances are _you_ are probably the one with a low opinion of black people.
@@IsabellaCataldo exactly!
If I recall, orcs that weren't explicitly made through the mud were elves once or something
the whole equivocation extra credits kinda tried to make is significantly weakened by what's actually in the Lord of the Rings
It sucks because Extra Credits dumb brand of politics makes all progressivism look bad, which really sucks for people who are serious about it.
I think another important point regarding Extra Credits' argument is just how elitist it is. They're essentially advocating for every game to be a grand RPG where all the player's choices matter. AAA publishers would likely be able to do this, although it would also likely encourage a lot of crunch, which is something we do NOT need more of in this industry. Meanwhile, unless implementing a system like this is the entire point of the game, most indie studios wouldn't be able to do it and have much of a game left afterward. Yes, I know he brings up the example of games where you just mow down enemies, but he kind of treats them like an afterthought, and I kind of got the impression that he wants those to be the exception, not the rule.
And even when acknowledging such games he still requires thoroughly detailed justification for mowing down said enemies, which is just putting in unnecessary work.
Even complex games like those use mobs who are just obstacles. Robots, skeletons, turrets.
It's not even an elitist problem. Some games, even AAA budget games are very simple in their nature, shoehorning complex choices will only hurt the concept.
sometimes not evrything has to be about story not evrything has to be a undertale esc thing were you control the fate of evrything somtimes someone might want to have fun with the gamplay
Amen, DaFawlfulizer.
I really hate the "I interpreted that piece of fiction as allegorical so I'm insisting that it was intended to be and canonically is allegorical" attitude that so many people have. No one allows fiction to just be fiction anymore because they're too busy trying to use it as an excuse to step onto their soapbox. Not everything has or has to have political or social commentary. Not everything has to have a moral. Not everything has to be 100% reflective or representative of our world and society. Some things can just be fun. And some things can be deep and thought-provoking without being 100% reflective or representative of our world and society. There are themes outside of political or social commentary, after all.
Exactly; people just want to tell the story they want to.
I think you thinking about the “Death of the Author” debate, which exclusively discounts the original attention of the author.
@@willhiggins9563 Death of the Author is a fine enough concept on paper to get your own meaning out of a work... but as soon as "taking your own meaning" starts _back-applying_ it to the author themselves, _that's_ when it crosses the line into horsecrap. If you take Death of the Author, then that means you can't make assumptions _about_ the author either.
Unfortunately without doing so they can't soapbox so it's not allowed.
@@GreatFox42 They weren’t talking about Tolkien. They seemed to mostly be referring to DnD orcs, who have a different backstory.
@@willhiggins9563 Death of the Author is really only part of what I'm addressing here. The whole of my comment about how people are expecting media to feed into and validate their own viewpoints and trying to stamp their viewpoints onto said media when it's not there. If the viewpoint won't adhere, they cry that it's problematic. People's interactions with media have turned into a soapbox to step up on more than an appreciation of the actual media. As an example - I literally saw someone give a child's dinosaur book - a 30-some page book - a negative review for not being diverse enough - even though all of the characters were dinosaurs. The review had nothing to do with the book itself - just with whether it met the reviewer's specific social expectation.
"Join us when we learn something more comforting. Like Nihilism"
Had me chuckle ngl
Extra Credits saw the reaction to Stop Normalizing Nazis and decided “Let’s do that again” and normal people are like “how many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man?!”
I guess they just love the young people
Yeah, I read the comments under the video in question. They basically screamed ‘WE DIDN’T WATCH PAST THR FIRST MINUTE’. It wasn’t a video about racism, morality or Philosophy. It was about how the planet of hates trope can hurt how a player engages with a game.
@@willhiggins9563 Except that they don`t even know the difference between "evil" and "antagonist".
@@aureliodeprimus8018 They seemed to define evil clear enough?
@@willhiggins9563 Ok, why the question mark on that sentence? It makes you look unsure about your own point.
And their definition of "evil" is in many cases closer to the definition of "antagonist" Which is the entire problem with their point. "Evil" is a completely subjective term that means a different thing to every different person. "Antagonistic" on the other hand is very clearly defined: "In opposition to someone."
I play a half-orc in D&D. Why? Because to me, saving a world that hates your existence is the most heroic thing a person could do. I find the story of a character living their life and trying to stick to their principles despite the world being so harsh to them interesting and inspiring. I made this character to play with the themes of free will and personal responsibility. I also enjoy underdogs. That is what makes playing monstrous races appealing to me.
Sanitizing fictional races or species to the point that they all fit the exact same mold is boring. What is even the point of having different races or species then?
I know I have been saying this a lot, but it always frustrates me in media when good guy races and bad guy races are divided purely by how human they look. You're only allowed to be good if you look like a human. If you look like anything else, you have to be a badguy.
When I was a kid, I loved the game Star Ocean the 2nd story. It is now a game I just cannot go back to Because it wasted so much potential. A story about a human going to different planets to help out different species should be super interesting. Instead, every single good species is nothing more than a space human. Nedians are humans with pointy ears. Tetregenians are humans with a third eye. Leon's race is your standard human with cat ears. Expellians are... just plain humans. In addition, the franchise has the stupidest reason for this that basically destroys any immersion the entire franchise has. (It's all a simulation). So nothing is at stake. If the game itself can't even pretend it's real, how am I supposed to pretend it's real?
One of these days, I would love to see someone make a better version of the star ocean franchise. That idea just had so much potential and it went to waste.
@@baalfgames5318 I agree. I feel like this is a recurring problem in stuff where they're too scared to being creative with designing aliens so they just look like boring humans.
Fully agree, starter
"What is more impressive? Being Inherently good, or overcoming your evil nature through great effort?"
- Charles Martine, Voice actor of Mario and Parthunax.
@@ethanhinton4549 Funny you should mention that and bring up Parthanax, since he's kinda an example of the latter.
The term "race" is one of those words that had a different definition in the past, and was indeed interchangable with species. Even Darwin used it in his book On the Origin of Species citing "favored races" when referring to natural selection. So when you see the term "race" used in a fantasy setting most of the time it's using that older definition, or perhaps is a conscious decision of the denizens of that world, them preferring to use "race" instead of "species" when referring to what they acknowledge as people. In that world referring to an elf as another species might be taken as a slur on par with calling a black person a beast in our society.
That last part is how I tend to think of it, myself.
Species are characterised by being unable to produce fertile offspring with those belonging to a different species, for example horses and donkeys can produce mules but since mules are infertile horses and donkeys are considered different species. So unless every half-elf, and half-orc is infertile elves, orcs, and humans have to be the same Humanoid species.
@@uanime1 while you ARE correct, you have to remember the rules of biological evolution don't necessarily work in a fantasy world. Also, though EXTREMELY rare it is possible for two different species to produce fertile offspring, one such example is the wolphin, which is born from the mating of a bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale. Wolphins are still capable of having offspring, unlike mules, even if their parents are recognized as two different species.
also remember the phenomenon of a "ring species" where animals (such as salamanders or birds) are able to populate an area around the border of some unlivable space, and neighboring populations can breed with each other, but the two ends of the ring can't, showing how fuzzy the category of "species" can be.
@@wakeangel2001
"also remember the phenomenon of a "ring species" where animals (such as salamanders or birds) are able to populate an area around the border of some unlivable space, and neighboring populations can breed with each other, but the two ends of the ring can't, showing how fuzzy the category of "species" can be."
Even in "ring species" a species can only breed with a few nearby species. Though it would be fascinating to see this concept in DnD to show which species can interbreed.
@@llamawalrushybrid That's a good real world example, I think I heard somewhere that the Neanderthals had speciated to the point where their males couldn't get sapien females pregnant but sapien males could get neanderthal females pregnant, I think they even found a couple skeletons that showed a blending of sapien and neander features showing hybrids DID happen, and some modern people still have a few neanderthal genes
I never thought that Enter would make a 3 part series on something that wasn't even animated, but here we are.
We never asked for this, we never wanted this, but here we are.
Just kidding I like this video and I think I did the quote wrong.
*sideballs technocracy*
Uhhhhhh....
It is somewhat animated, and atrocious.
@@KnightofChaosDeck True
I guess its more of an illustrated slideshow
I’m filled with boiling anger at this Tolkien crap. Orcs were based off the hun stereotype of Germans at the time. Some German commander told his troops to act like the Huns. That got turned around on them and people started calling German soldiers Huns. Keep in mind, Tolkien was a WW1 soldier. Do you see where this came from now. Basic knowledge of the time will tell you that they’re spewing bullshit
In addition, they were also influenced by the story of Beowulf, The word ‘orc’ derives from a term for a malicious spirit so the name was more in reference to that. Tolkien’s perspective of evil was as a corruptive force, the one ring for example and of course the fact orcs were created by Melkor torturing elves and corrupting them. But yeah the argument extra credits are giving are absolutely terrible
Oh, really? Nice.
@@lordinquisitor6233 So in other-words Tokens Orcs were basically the result of the bad guys practicing eugenics on elves to create a hideously deformed slave race of solders....
@@minnion2871 Well, Lord of the Rings was written after WWII so that makes sense.
@@minnion2871 Yes actually.
Tolkien himself even disliked the idea that all of them are evil, so I'm gonna hazard a guess that in Tolkien's mind there were at least a few who weren't evil in spite of all that.
Slimes and goombas do make choices though, and that's "I'm going to try to kill you." When I play 3D mario games, the enemies are very clear that they want to attack me. I actually like to challenge myself with "I will not kill an enemy unless they initiate it" whenever I play a 3D mario game. Guess what happens EVERY time I'm in their line of sight, "hey it's Mario, I'm going to try to kill him." The hammer bro wasn't just randomly throwing hammers at me, he was specifically aiming for me, and at that point it's my life or his.
The Mario RPGs also revealed that all the enemies working for Bowser do so by choice. Of course, Mario doesn’t run into their friendly counterparts as much because, well, they aren’t trying to to run into him as much.
@@rainpooper7088 Yeah, I remembered the Mario RPGs after posting this, and how the story is "I work for Bowser by choice, and not everyone in this species is bad because your team members are those enemy species and the villages you go to are those species."
legend of zelda ocarina of time, I play pretty much the opposite. I will go out of my way to just go back into temples I've fully cleared, even having killed all gold skulltulas, and just start killing everything I see, even enemies who haven't caught sight of me yet. I'll go out of my way to kill everything in a room, and run back and do it again just for fun.
I might be a little nuts
In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, you have a goomba and a koopa troopa as team members, and several others as npc's. In the Mario Party series, you're helped out by Donkey Kong, who started as an antagonist, but has become a frequent ally. You can use context cues to figure things out, and there's nothing stopping you from changing pre-existing rules either.
“My world is a whole hell of a lot better than yours” I dunno, just hearing you say this sentence makes me happy. I don’t know where you are in your mental state, but, from that sentence, I’m thinking and hoping things have gotten a lot better for you. Maybe I’m just looking too deeply into a one-off comment, but I really do hope things are going good for you.
I think it’s because Mr. Enter doesn’t see the world as he makers of Extra Credits seem to, though I do also hope things are going well for Mr. Enter.
He sounds better rested
Friendly reminder that not every piece of media has to be Citizen Kane levels of nuanced!
1. If that was the case. Media would be boring as hell.
2. Some things are meant to be fun. For every Citizen Kane, there's a The Day The Earth Stood Still.
And 3. While it's good to be critical about the media you consume. Sometimes it's just good to chill and not overthink it.
Thanks to this Extra Credits video, I have seen the error of my ways. The next time I play Breath of the Wild, I'll think twice before carpet bombing a Moblin camp with bomb arrows. Sure, Moblins may be spawns of Ganon that hurt and try to kill any Hylian that walks passed them but...
They didn't ask for this.
They didn't choose this.
Yet there they are.
Fuck moblins. They killed my horse
@Jinxed Swashbuckler yes!
Just wait till they respawn on the next Blood Moon.
See? Alive and restored, guilt-free.
They're fine.
It's funny, because the WoW Orcs that he seems to be drawing are actually NOT the bad guys of the WoW universe. They were once, but it was because they were mind controlled, and even Garosh Hellscream was ousted for being exactly the kind of thing the Horde DIDN'T want to be stereotyped as, and was largely hated by the player base because of it.
Not directly mind controlled, deceived and manipulated would be more accurate. And the fanbase was basically 50/50 split on Garrosh. Some liked his more war-like approach, others thought it went too much against the established lore at that point.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 Not exactly.
It's more that people liked that he was brought in to re-enforce PVP mechanics by putting lore behind it, but even then, they kinda agree that it setback what had been A LOT of plot development towards an eventual Alliance/Horde Unity against the true evils of Azaroth.
@@caslaBBalsac Fair point, the WoW community is usually very hard to read. Also, was Azeroths name a typo, or do i see a fellow Lovecraftian?^^
@@aureliodeprimus8018 You're thinking AzaTHoth I believe(no doubt the inspiration for the name, given C'Thun and Yog Sauron), but yeah, it's been a while so I probably just forgot it was spelled with an e.
@@caslaBBalsac Purely out of curiosity, would you happen to play Alliance?
Because most Allies have the viewpoint you do, while the Horde is fairly split on Garrosh from what I've seen.
Extra Credits are a prime example of the terrible Robin D'Angelo brand of liberal identity politics
PLEASE everyone do NOT conflate this with all progressive or left leaning political values, despite what some dipshits on Twitter might say, WE HATE THIS SHIT
It makes everyone want to avoid politics and progressivism, and that's really sad.
"The word is 'Malevolent'!"
THANK YOU for drawing attention to that! I think you're the only TH-camr I've seen draw any attention to that at all.
The guys at Extra Credits don`t even understand the difference between "evil" and "antagonistic". If you want to create a story, you usually need to write from one perspective or the other, if you try to play "Omnicient Chronist watching everything from outside", people grow very bored very quickly. A story will always need a pro- and antagonistic element to it.
It seems like some people nowadays don't want anything antagonistic in their fiction.
It also seems like some people don't actually know what the hell they want.
@@WarmLusamine Its a fascinating subject, since the reason I hear all the time is "not every villain has to be one-note evil". Part of the reason this is so prevalent is coming from a good place, and its because people want to write better and more interesting characters. Is that not a good thing? To want to write a character who is more complex than just "muahahahaha I'm evil and I like to snap the necks of puppies lol"?
That said, I do see the merit of making flatly evil villains too.
@@WarmLusamine that is true, nobody knows what the fuck they want
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 It really depends on the story you are trying to tell. The fun part is, that the old (and by that i mean at the very beginning of the channel old) Extra Credits team actually knew that. They specifically made the distinction between "mechanical villains" (Bowser, Dr. Wily, Gruntilda etc.) and "narrative villains" (Sephiroth, Dhoulmagus etc.) and why both sides have their merits.
I think that when working with narrative villians rather than purely mechanical ones, villians work best when they are an ideologically mirror of the protagonist. A perfect example of this is Batman and the Joker. Batman is the ultimate embodiment of societal order, thinking that all of the world's problems will be solved as soon as all the bad guys are behind bars. Joker is the incarnation of societal anarchy, believing that any attempt to impose order in an inherently chaotic universe is just a bad joke.
"Manevolent" sounds like one of those feminist putting-"man"-in-a-word-because-man-bad-isms.
Grammar mistake or freudian slip? You make the call!
It's a Twitterism.
Nah I think they just mixed the word up with the word Benevolent
@@Houndoomgirl77
What word? Manevolent isn't a word.
The idea of linking Orcs to Minorities in a way to say "having evil races in your games is bad" makes no sense seeing as Orcs, in almost any iteration, are not indicative of any race whatsoever. The only time I've seen it be used directly as a metaphor for Minorities of any kind was in that really bad Modern Fantasy cop drama Blight, and that was more for a botched message on racial inequality or racism.
EDIT: OK, so apparently the Orcs in that movie were more a metaphor specifically about Black People in Bright (which was the actual film name. Slipped my mind, the spelling.) Even then it doesn't work as there are still Black people in the film world. And yes, the allegory still fails because it paints everyone involved in the allegory as too, if you'll Pardon the unintentional pun, "Black and White."
From what I've seen, orcs were analogous to the barbarian tribes the Romans fought and only turned into a more Aboriginal group after Warcraft 3.
Yeah, warcraft actually did leaned down on assigning minorities to different fantasy races
@@jadedheartsz Yeah very well, when Will Smith, a cop, kills a Fairy and says "Today Fairy Lives Don't Matter". And not to forget they basically say "The Orcs are Black People. Look at all them in the ghetto and being gangsta stereotypes".
When a film has a police officer kill a Sentient Creature and it be treated like killing a mouse, the movie is bad.
@Stephen O'Brien I thought it was Minorities in general, not just POC's.
@Stephen O'Brien Because America.
I love how DnD actually has like Tieflings, who are basically what these people think orcs are
"Potentially good and nice people who just happen to be depicted as evil, and if they are evil it is because leaning into the stereotype"
Especially given they are not predisposed to any alignment and are all over the place, just like Humans.
Lawful Good Paladin Tieflings are probably somewhat common, at least in areas like Baldur's Gate.
It's kind of scary seeing the fact that extra credits has so much presence and still is able to run such a channel that promotes these kinda misinformed ideas
Being fair, this video and the other infamous one got ratio'd hard, so while they have the reach at least not all their garbage is met with acceptance.
Extra Credits began as a genuine project, fully on the player`s side. Sadly they went corporate 5-6 years ago and the quality suffered as a result.
@@aureliodeprimus8018a lot of the Og people also left by now and they then just switch to history full time
Doesn't the whole "a fictional species shouldn't be evil" fall apart when even a childish set of actual logic is used? Like Doom: The demons are from Hell, so even if they aren't monsters, they're slaves to Satan (You know, evil as an entity) regardless. Or how about zombies: Mindless walking dead who can't think, and only operate on base instinct, if not *just* mindless hunger.
Yes. Even orks in things like Tolkien or Warhammer. There are reasons why they are evil. In Tolkien: Corrupted and made into slaves of a evil entity. Similar to a necromancer controlling a army of skeletons. They more represent sin and corruption. A good ork is no longer a ork. If he is able to fight the corruption, he becomes purified.
In Warhammer, both, the orks are man made... alien made weapons. They were created to grow thru fighthing. They can propagate in any environment by realising spores. Have genetic memory of weapon building and medicine. Every part of them is a weapon. They feed on agression. Even become more powerfull as they congreate. They are weapons. Send in the universe to fight a war against vampire star gods and undead robots.
I also like that in then image of slimes he chose you can see human remains in there. Yes. They are not evil. (sarc) Pro tip to adventurers. If you see a creature with human remains around it, it's dangerous and antagonistic.
@@dancorneanu9144 The Slime example also amuses me because it underlines why their real life parallel is incredibly questionable. In a game, there is a higher power (the development team) who can say definitively what the state and morality of every element in the world is (or at least is intended to be), and by nature of programming and limited pre-made Narrative assets, they CAN'T be anything that wasn't programmed in. Real life you don't have an authority that can tell you with certainty what is going on inside the head of every member of a species (the best you get is their word or a psychologist, and even then those are just educated hypotheses).
Assuming a developer's game is badly designed based on a lack of moral choices in the context of certain enemy species would be predicated on the developer wanting that context to include moral choices in the first place; just because Mass Effect wants you to consider the morality of the Geth or the Asari or the Krogan (I haven't played ME but I'm just pulling out species names to have examples for highlighting my point) doesn't mean its entire morality system is null because the Reapers are treated as a strictly evil/antagonistic Species in the same story. And this is just an example for a game that brings morality into the equation as a malleable consideration to begin with, rather than fixed good and evil parties as was common in stories from Platformers to RPGs (I don't think anyone's shedding tears for the Sinspawn in FFX).
@@austinreed7343 Yes, but those undead are more "revenant" than "zombie". Case in point, Resident Evil and Fallout: If you try to argue that a T-virus zombie or feral ghoul is anything other than a walking set of teeth and hunger, you're a fool. Meanwhile, undead like Rottytops are just non-living humans, and have all their mental facilities.
The difference boils down to the brain, pretty much. After all, Papyrus looks akin to a Doom II revenant, but the two are worlds apart in how they're actually capable of acting.
I actually remember a certain scene from the original Powerpuff Girls cartoon, where the girls tried to emulate their favorite comic book heroes and so always came late to fight the giant monsters. Then one of the monsters picks them up, asks them what is wrong and explains that among the monsters, coming to the town and fighting the Powerpuff Girls is considered a rite of passage.
@@austinreed7343 Well, we also have the undead in WoW. Their eyes look quite dead as well, and they do have the racial spell "Cannibalize", but they have the same brain capacity as humans, and they aren't just brainless walking stomachs.
“Everything is political” yes, and so was the shit I took this morning
I once asked them if things in outer space are political. One can see how that went.
McCarthy was right
Hey, it was more coherent than most debates.
@@LuigiTheMetal64 "All art/media is political" is a reductive statement. All media is capable of being political, but involves explicit intent. What is the politics of Baby by Justin Bieber? What is the politics of Teletubbies? And can you say without sounding as dumb as Alex Jones?
@@johnh.mcsaxx3637 “the pure ideology of the planet Jupiter and its moons”
I’m guessing Matt was trying to say malevolent, but just combined malevolent and benevolent into one word. How no one caught that in editing, I will never know
I wonder if he was thinking, "Wait...'balevolent'? No, that doesn't seem right, better stick to 'manevolent'."
QUALITY PRODUCTION
XD
"Goodness" in warhammer is entirely subjective, as many times without the "evil" actions the Human, Eldar, and Tau races ((the three races you could most easily classify individuals as good or evil, as the other sentient species are more or less what we would consider evil by default)) undertake are a necessity or else their entire species would go extinct or be subjugated by one of the other more unilaterally "evil" races. In short morality in 40k is more easily judged on intent rather than actions.
Are Tyranids evil?
Sure devouring everything in the galaxy isn't good, but can something be deemed evil if it doesn't know better?
@@andrewgreeb916 well, I'll readily admit that applying morality to Orks and Tryanids is kinda silly considering they're both entirely driven by instinct, but that also means they cant be good either if they cant be evil, so I still don't think they belong among the three races I listed
@@andrewgreeb916 The Tyranids are actually considered neutral. Since they are basically just a hive mind trying to feed and grow itself.
As a Lizardman fan, I confess that what I see to be ultimately a force of good...it ain't perfect. The Lizardmen are a generally good culture IMO, but they are brutal, and they have their hiccups on the moral compass.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 "If it ain't in the plan, it ain't worth it for the Slan" Lizardmen.
You can MAKE anything political. Doesn’t mean that everything IS political.
It bugs me that people wanna use media as ammo for something it wasn’t made for. Some media is meant to be political, people should talk about that instead of making up shit about other media.
Reminds me of that one Doobus Goobus video.
I always tell people to tell me whats political about Tetris, or Hungry hungry cattepillar.
And anything they say i just tell them "buddy, all of that goes into such a logical conclusion, you might as well join flat earthers at this point"
7:28 A friend and I actually did read James' two "Orcs are racist Asian stereotypes" blog posts and he actually DOES mention Genghis Khan-or as he writes, "Chinggis Khan."
James practically simps for Genghis Khan and says that his conquest wasn't that bad because a) "hey, other conquering armies did the same atrocities, so you can't say Genghis Khan was *especially* bad!" and b) Genghis Khan's army "shared and learned"-more like "culturally appropriated"-from the lands they conquered.
It's also important to note that James is like 1/4 "Filipinx" and complains that biracial people spend 75% of their time feeling like they do not fit into either of their parents races. For context, I am a full-blooded Filipino living in the Philippines. I pointed out to my friend that if James didn't use nonsense like "Filipinx"-which has an *even greater backlash* among native Filipinos than "Latinx" has among Latino Americans-other Filipinos wouldn't be so quick to distance themselves from James by calling him a "Westernized Fil-Am."
He's a historical simp.
Huh.
That's a new one.
"Filipinx"
that's a word these people use
fucking kill me
whilst genghis khans battle tactics weren't notably war criminaly his rulership was adn even he wasn't or above the average he stilled a larger percent of the human population than the black plague
It honestly sounds more like the name for a Winx Club transformation than an actual ethnicity.
You should definitively talk about the things you want to talk about and enjoy talking about, however there isn't anything wrong with trying to stay relevant. This video and videos like this in general are part of an important discussion and there can never be enough on the side of reason. Bringing awareness to this ideological poison and debunking its talking points will hopefully contribute to getting things "back on track" so we can enjoy good media in the future once again... if by then any franchise is still left standing.
What I'm trying to say is that I appreciate and enjoy this content as well next to other reviews.
Usually I like to think that races in role-playing games like DnD represent different aspects of the human experience. We're not orcs but we can relate to how they operate, we all have friends that overthink relatively simple problems. Everybody always says that you can't solve all your problems with brute strength but not enough people remind you that there are some that you totally can.
I do dislike the overall message mat is stating,
All species in all worlds need complicated social structures, no species may lean towards a certain moral alignment, and every game based in these worlds should give you the choice on whether to take a friendly or violent approach.
Nothing can be simple, he even says "complicate the worlds we create," like that is good for all fictional worlds.
I agree that making an entire species malevolent is simple and a bit easy, but it is in no way a bad decision, especially if that's not the focus of the author.
Besides. You could also make a malevolent species lawful neutral after they are freed from an evil influence. If the story makes sense.
I don't see his problem
I'll say that it is just very basic & flat to have one group/faction/fantasy race be one-dimensionally bad. Not all stories need complex morality but we should appreciate those ones that adds the extra world building and realism towards making things a little more depthy & complex.
I posted a comment on this comment here, which I didn't intend to do... I was reading through here and forgot to back out of it before posting. Apologies, mate.
@@pickyphysicsstudent201 Really depends on what you'd call a faction. If you're just thinking about races with human level intelligence and free will, then you might be thinking a bit too narrowly there, as hivemind bug races and zombies should technically count. In most stories they're one dimensional when it comes to moral complexity, usually made interesting by how they work and how the more morally complex factions are motivated by their actions.
I do agree you need some morally grey factions, but to say morally simple factions are bad inherently is restrictive on story telling.
I know you don't believe all morally simple factions are bad, I still want to make the point regardless, sorry.
@@pickyphysicsstudent201 i feel like most worlds where there is a "just bad" group of people have at least one outliar, a single character or group even that is neutral or friendly to show that they're not all bad by default
for example, i remember playing battlechasers: nightwar where there's this lycelot wolfman race and pretty much all of them are hostile, except one who tells you about the tribe society they live in and how things are usually resolved by battle
From the Mongolian Empire example, from my experience most enemy factions you will face in a game are part of a military.
Even Goombas are part of Bowser’s forces.
That Kirby scenario was amazing! I do feel bad for killing the Waddle Dee’s because they’re so cute, until I remember that they respawn so there’s practically an infinite amount of them.
infinite waddles!
"Next time you Play Chess, do not just eliminate other Chess pieces, just becaus the game tells you they are the enemy. This concept clearly takes away the Players urgency for social Play and diplomacy and is a bad thing!" Extra credits, ca 2024
Now, I actually DO dislike when races (species) in fiction are all evil. But more because it's kind of a strain on my suspension of disbelief. But if given the right reasoning, like being made by an evil god solely to create chaos, it becomes easier to swallow. And in fantasy you can pull next to any card you want. But the important thing is I don't assume everything a writer does reflects somehow on the real world. Like, two stories I want to write feature fictional species where the females are highly prized by slave traffickers. In one story it's because of how hard it is to take them prisoner, and in one it's for the beauty. What am I saying about what race (race) doing that?
I mean if you look at DnD they all are made by evil gods.
Orcs Gruumsh
Drow Lolth
Goblins Maglubiate
Yuan-ti evil snake gods
Hello if you go to lord of the rings the Uruks are a products of orcs raping human women and they were corrupted by Sauron.
Look at all of Warhammer as they all got a reason to be as evil and dickish. Well Orks are just built different and are basically massive fugus sooo yeah.
@@WhyYouMadBoi Oh I know most versions do justify it, or at least some of the bigger ones, just saying if you don't justify it it can be a bit distracting to me. But just a bit.
@@SuperSwordman1 True I understand that sometimes it does get stupid. Really I think its mainly to the "biological weapon" sort like xenomorphs really I don't like all that much
Sorry but not everyone likes humanizing the creatures that are going to be brutalized and gutted in there story.
That's sound logic you have, personally you have to have a given reason as to why a thing in fiction happens or exsists. Without it, you have no point and it'll be to much.
For example, my own story has the both monsters and demons acting like regular everyday people with everyday lives. I did this to have more interesting people living in my world, yet I don't have them under a "morality" like EC is "trying to teach us". Don't need it, plus makes building a character a lot more straight forward (in a sense) since I don't have to think "is this right?"
I am honestly surprised that his depiction of people who "wear signifiers that say 'I'm evil!'" wasn't literally just some people with red baseball caps on.
True, although it's very noticeable that they go out of their way to diversify all the humanlike characters they make... except those evil ones. Those are all white men.
A coincidence, I'm sure :P
Funny considering most of them are white.
Uhoh. This is gonna get real stupid real fast. First five seconds into the Extra Credits video comparing orcs to black old ladies made me question my sanity...
I take you didn’t watch past the first minute?
@@willhiggins9563 I'm criticizing Extra Credits, not Mr Enters take throughout the vid.
@@Scentillia389 He's an EC apologist. Don't listen to the bullcrap he spouts.
@@Scentillia389 And I was talking about the Extra Credits video too.
Can't wait to see someone try to make the argument, "Not all demons are bad."
tbf some people do like to write demon characters who aren't entirely evil.
hell the easiest example I can think of is Girlfriend from Friday Night Funkin'
People have. Did you see all of the people who were offended over the mortally challenged joke in Doom Eternal?
I mean... Helluva Boss exists.
I think the idea for a story of a demon who wants to do good and turn into an angel would be a great idea for a story.
Well, there is the idea of a "punch-clock-villain": bad guys' or minions that just do their job but maybe are not that good at it.
It's a popular trope in cartoons and such, but it's not very useful to make that argument in a game...
William Golding was wrong. There was a real life LotF that happened in the 60s and 70s. These three kids were stranded on an uninhabited island for 12 years. You know what they did? They started a garden, played games, made instruments, took care of one who broke his leg, and survived for 12 fucking years.
Mhm. Lord of the Flies is very much oriented in favour of Hobbes rather than Rousseau.
@@MrJoeyWheeler Fair point, and I will add that these kids were friends who ran away together, while the kids in LotF were almost all strangers to each other. I think the bond of friendship being forged before their hardship helped. After all, they wanted to keep each other alive.
they were all friends before being stranded on the island and came from a rural community, witch meant all of them had basic survival skills.
"Should Link be a female character?"
You know, this reminds me of something I overheard from Clownfish TV talking about He-Man. The term "hand-me-down character". Maybe instead of making a sex swapped Link, try making an interesting character who isn't tied to being a variant of an existing male character. Or *just use Zelda as a playable lead.*
Regarding determinism, it's just not worrying about. It is how it is, whether it's accurate or not. There are more important things to deal with.
Shame about Topic of the Week. It was good, though The Lottery didn't really fit.
I actually wouldn't mind a game were you play as Zelda instead of Link
What I find hilarious about the people who say that characters should have their genders changed to be more inclusive in many cases are the same ones who find female versions of male characters such as Mrs. PAC man offensive. In all fairness to them, Link is a character you can at least make somewhat of an argument regarding a female version considering there's been dozens of Links and some of them do differ slightly in peronality. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say one of the Links in the timeline was female, but we don't _need_ a female Link. It could be an interesting spin on the character to have one incarnation be female, but it's not a necessity like some folks say it is.
@@bulbasaur4369 Wand of Gamelon :B
@@fernandobanda5734 We don't talk about that dumpster fire of a game :P
@@austinreed7343 I don't follow.
I am SO GLAD that you caught the "menevolent" thing. So it wasn't just bugging me!
QUALITY PRODUCTION
XD
If you care this much about a single mispronounced word then you need to get some real problems.
@@snowbeast4463 Ooh, hang on, nobody help me, I got this....
"You need to get some real problems." -> Shut up.
"OMG, you didn't have to write a novel about how much you hate [insert group that was tertiarily mentioned in my comment]s, get a life." -> Also shut up.
I _knew_ it was worth learning to speak fluent shut-up-ese! Such a nuanced language...
"We shouldn't make monsters evil because blah blah blah" that's the thing, the reason we use monsters in the first place is for the EXACT REASON the video was trying to argue against. We know using stereotypes is bad, so that's why we put monsters there instead.
@Stephen O'Brien Because they can promote harmful attitudes towards certain people. Even positive stereotypes like claiming that all Asians are good at math can give the wrong impressions. In other words, stereotypes degrade individuality.
@@jlev1028 Well I think you can use stereotypes positively. You just have to be self aware about them
For example when Howard in the big bang theory makes jokes about Jewish stereotypes you know he is making fun of the stereotype and that he isn't saying all Jews really share the characteristics he mocks
Do you know what game had you playing as a morally evil character? Spec Ops: The Line. The game has you commit multiple war crimes, get your only friends killed and basically doom an already struggling city because of one man's desperation to live out his fantasy of being a hero and needing a villain to justify his actions. That 'villain' being the guy who was leading the city, albeit as a military dictatorship, and who ultimately took his own life out of shame for the questionable decisions he had to make to keep as many people alive as possible. The people you've doomed in your quest.
And you wanna know what happens at the end? The game gives you the option to walk away from it all or to continue on this fantasy quest and get more people killed. If you choose to walk away, the hallucination of said villain tells the player character that he shouldn't be too hard on himself since he gets to go home again. The game's "good" ending has him affirm that he can't undo everything that's happened, but rather than take his own life too, he'll live on and take full responsibility for his actions, however difficult as it may be.
Tell me, Matt, how is that NOT deep storytelling? How is that less evocative and less rewarding? It's an object lesson about letting your own idea of what's right and moral blind you to the real world, but also offers the opportunity for even someone who's made truly terrible decisions to still be capable of living on and changing for the better. I think a lot more people should take that to heart.
First off, the moment Extra Credits released the episode critiqued here I said to myself: “Please Mr. Enter, make another video about EC “.
It is sad that EC has fallen this far. And it is even sadder that public discourse is losing the even-handed arguments in favor of extremes.
Extremism has speciated human ideology if you ask me.
I've always thought of it like they have basic, commonplace culture that generally runs against the morals and values of a majority of other cultures of other sentient races in the game.
So let's say an RPG has 10 races and 7 of those races see War as a bad thing, but the Orcs as a culture love to start wars because they like the idea of gaining honor through combat. They would be considered an evil race because in general they prefer to do things that the majority of races see as bad. The Orcs themselves don't see it as bad, but a majority of playable races do.
Sure, you can play an orc who doesn't like War but they will be seen as an oddity rather than representative of Orcs in general.
Or those Orcs we're created by a deity that wanted agents to stur up war and so created them with a propensity for violence and war.
A further way to establish a race as unlikeable, is for them to have "good" members crop up among them sometimes, and be killed by that race as inferior or contaminated, or treated as outcasts. There's always a dissenting voice, how a culture deals with that voice says a lot.
similarly, them treating war as something objectively evil speaks more to the moral framework of the reader rather than the character or the author. from their perspective humans are an evil race because they refuse to accept honorable defeat, and are deceitful. Unlike diplomacy and magic honorable war typically leads to a definitive outcome with minor collateral damage.
This is a related point: even if a race isn't inherently evil, culture can be, and it's going to be incredibly hard for most orcs to contradict the majority culture. Their culture pressures them into doing evil because their tradition says that war is good, making it difficult for them to do good.
It’s a good day when Enter trashes on Extra Credits for their utter incompetence.
And good riddance for that
Thank you so much for bringing up Doom when he tried to argue "you have to give people a little more than they are just evil!"
No... no you don't! Because Doom is incredibly. The last 2 especially were great games and I didn't need a moral question of the horrific distorted demons were evil or not. I carved a bloody path through them and loved the lore. No moral pounder, no questioning of their motives, and I had fun.
To give Matt a tiny bit of credit, I assume he's talking about liches in regards to undead stereotypes; the idea that immortality seekers are always amoral and powered by stolen souls or black magic has always bothered me, especially when science fiction depicts it as a technological discovery, or Chinese mythology depicts it as a journey of religious enlightenment.
who am I kidding he didn't put that much thought into it.
The only time I remember a lich being a "good guy" in a game was Might and Magic... 7 or 8, I can't remember which one. Then again they might not even be liches
What Extra Credits thinks:
Orcs = Minorities
What Mr. Enter thinks:
Extra Credits arguements are nothing but 💩.
Mr. Enter, kudos on trying to see from their perspective, regardless of how nonsensical it is.
Those who shout the loudest that they are not racist often have the most beliefs that are in fact racist
"Tolkein was racist!"
"Tolkein was woke!"
Aren't they basically the same thing at this point?
El yes.
No, no they aren't. They can be, but the term woke has been so thoroughly overused it means absolutely nothing anymore.
What people seem to think is woke is either just the terrible form of Robin D'Angelo liberal wokeism, which I agree is terrible and can even be racist, or just all progressivism, which is not racist.
@@UnorthodoxIndividual The anti-SJW shit has tainted the internet and our society for ages now. Being woke or progressive is literally not a bad thing. Being feminist is not bad thing, but because of the anti-SJW crowd shitting out their hatred and manipulation, people keep thinking that being woke or progressive is bad.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 tell me about it, it's really frustrating to see for real progressives who take this shit seriously. People like Robin D'Angelo and Extra Credits always do more harm then good when they try to talk about these issues, and it's infuriating that they have to much reach and presence within the discourse
@@SergioLeonardoCornejo "el" is in Spanish?
Tbh I find the whole "orcs" debate in Fantasy/RPG/etc to be really dumb. If the worldbuilding is good, different types of humanoids/creatures should have different cultures and skills; don't put real life identity politics into it.
Extra credits, because thinking through the implications of your proposed idea is hard!
It’s best to not open the Pandora Box that is Funimation. Not only did they screw over Vic, but the dub changes and VAs are a video mini series in of itself.
Just Stop already made a video explaining all of the controversies, atrocious shit they’ve done, and the shitty business proceeders they do or have done already, so I’m just glad that Mr.Enter didn’t make a video on Funimation because it’s just beating a dead horse at this point in time.
@@mattnorton102 They were made out of spite and jealousy. There was no smoke. They all lied.
I kinda do want to see Enter cover that honestly.
@@mattnorton102 All the allegations have been combed through with a fine comb. First off, Hanleia and Marzgurl, were talking about Monica Rial’s ex. Not Vic. But after being jealous of Vic for years, they went with it. The amount of people accusing someone makes no difference if it’s still false. You can lie to yourself to feel better, but we all know with no reports or anything, for almost 3 years, Vic is innocent.
@@captainobvious9526 He literally lost the court case
i find the picture of a hijabi girl making clay statues to be hilarious, considering that in islam creating statues is forbidden.
it's not even a debated point, most if not all muslims believe that statue creation is forbidden, only making toys is fine.
I don't think all evil groups in games need to have a "tragic backstory" to "make you sympathetic to the villain's cause" frankly I think that can work in some things but it won't always work and a lot of "tragic backstories" are laughably bad. That and "everything is based on something real and is always projection" is also nonsense. Then again these are the people who will tell you that "all media is political" some things can have a message, but it doesn't necessarily have to be political. Sonic the Hedgehog has an environmental message but it never rubs your nose in it and calls you stupid.
“And then you have Hydra, which is based off of choice-“
Bucky:
Can't believe I've been watching you since 2014. Its always a pleasure to watch your arguments and styles evolve!
"You can't hurt something because you don't what it might do"
Alright, I'll make sure to talk to the person holding a gun up to someone else's head without Assuming he's planning to use it. I wasn't taught that growing up, but your saying I Should.
I like that he used slimes, and in the image those things had human remains in them. He was trying to portrail them as good. Pro tip: if something is eating humans, than that thing is dangerous and antagonistic.
I would not want to play a session with the guy who wrote the video. Not only he dosen't know the setting, but I every encounter he would get killed, dragging the entire party with him. By the third time he would run into a basic enemy, I would go "Fuck it" and tie him up and leave him in a cuboard or dungeon. Is not worth it.
I remember watching your vids back then in 2014, you still got the hang of it.
Much love, brother
"Everything is political" I think is one of those things that was thought up by philosophers, then an HR department or a blogger heard the phrase and butchered it's meaning.
It's supposed to mean "everything we do is informed, consciously or unconsciously, by a set of values, norms, and assumptions we, individually have." What it's been taken to mean is "everything is directly related to the hot button topics in the News right now."
Despite only making up 13% of the realm's people, orcs commit 50% of plunders.
@Jinxed Swashbuckler except very few orcs make it to geriatric so it's more like 6.8%
Also more elves are killed by paladins despite the fact that orcs have higher interaction rates with paladins.
Don't even get me started on my views of the Kobold Mafia.
@@Bacony_Cakes if you talk about the kobold mafia you might get your name on a list!
@@stachman9531 No, no, it's fine. They trust me. I pay my protection money.
I unironically love that this video end up as a primer on fallacies
the thing i realized about the orc argument is, weren't ALL humans like that at one point? like yeah white man on top now but didn't tribes of all kinds exist in Europe? to attribute the characteristics of orcs exclusively to native Americans or black people is to ignore the fact that we all descended from people that lived like that at some point in time. it's actually quite racist
I mean if you want to get technical, there's a few tribes that still DO exist in Europe that aren't white (Or at least, not entirely.).
The Steppe Tribes are still around to a degree, and the Siberian Tribes most notably the Sami who reside in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia (Also the United States to an extent.).
@@ShadowWolfRising my point was that people who say "orcs are a racist allegory of x because they have such and such traits" fail to take note of the fact that what can be considered white people had periods in their people's existence where they were just as barbaric as orcs and any other group of humans that are randomly associated with orcs.
@@_Sage967_ Oh yeah, we talking the Goths, Gauls, Germanic Tribes, and Celts.
Like that Celtic Tribe the Galatians that used to be in Anatolia.
I love how Mat uses "destroying a house" as an example of an evil act. I guess demolition is evil because it's the act of destroying a house.
0:42
Uh, I actually looked it up and “manevolent” is a combination of the words benevolent and malevolent, referring to a character similar to Doctor Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, apt to change from a good person to an evil person.
Though it’s probably just a coincidence that it’s almost an actual term, since it doesn’t seem to fit that video. At least the two people who read this comment will learn something.
yay
@@alecrutz956 yay
If I'm the third guy to read your comment, does that mean I've learned nothing?
@@mariic2 yes
@@ntfoperative9432 Dammit.
It's weird that they perceive orcs as minorities, when every depiction I've seen has them with lower class British accents.
"Isn't it awful that dwarves in general are stronger than humans?"
Man, I got bad news for you Enter. There is actually a subset of people that argue this. And they go even further, "There's nothing wrong with giving your halfling the stats of a half-dragon! Who says halflings can't be 8 feet tall and breathe fire? Fuckin' racists, that's who."
My gnome bard identifies as a half-ogre, and if my DM won't give me five feet of reach with my starting dagger, i'm gonna be pissed
Adding to the pitbull example: These dogs were, indeed, selectively bred to be fighters...but it was mostly done illegally by dogfighters to get the most aggressive, bloodthirsty dogs possible. Pitbulls bred by trustworthy hands are those lovable goofballs you hear about, but rescue pitbulls need a lot of love and care to grow out of the dogfighting instinct that was bred and trained into them. In other words, the reason pit bulls went from nanny dogs to blindly aggressive pests is because of a bunch of bastards compensating for small penises with big, mistreated dogs.
Not agreeing or disagreeing with Mr. Enter's point. Just adding to the fallacy of the pitbull example.
Pitbulls were never "nanny dogs", they've been historically bred for animal bloodsports from day 1, so they're naturally going to have violent and unpredictable tendencies. Not to say that these can't be overcome through training, and diluted through selective breeding over time, or that each one will always be 100% dangerous, of course they can be perfectly fine pets, but people should be aware of their history, tendencies and capabilities before adopting them, and should be more responsible owners than we are currently seeing.
Honestly, what he said just pisses me off. "No, we have to focus on the EEEEEBIL side of Pitbulls." Just, after his PSAs video, I have been losing more and more respect for Mr. Enter. His Rick and Morty review was just "OMG! STORY ABOUT SPERM MONSTERS AND GIANT INSEST BABY! BOJACK HORSEMAN > RICK AND MORTY!" And I am saying this as someone that doesn't even like Rick and Morty.
Them showing the pitbull puppy made me immediately imagine EC singing "How ba-ah-ah-ad can I be? Just look at me petting this puppy!"
In D&D, I usually play "evil" races who turned out to be pretty decent folks because they had a positive upbringing. In the last game I played, my dark elf fighter and his human warlock buddy teamed up with a couple of homebrew harpies in order to find a creature that invades peoples minds while they sleep and gives them nightmares. We eventually found the creature and were very close to killing it when my character heard the creature start begging for its life in his ancestral language Undercommon. My character starts trying to talk with the creature and it spun a tale so convincing that he forced a cease to the fighting in order to try to find a peaceful resolution. Well the creature was playing him for a damn fool and, in the end, the creature got away to keep feasting on dreams and my character was now marked as an enemy by the harpys. Even though he was trying to do the right thing, sometimes the right thing isn't always good enough and even good people will make bad decisions sometimes.
Another example was from a game where I played a half orc celestial warlock. The party was doing their tournament arc through a magical arcade when we stumbled across one of our missing party member's hooked up into a game system. A couple party members tried to break away from our guide to rush to him but I and another party member picked them up and kept going. Our thoughts at the time was that we didn't know that much about where we were or what sort of defenses were in place. We needed more time and rushing in like idiots would not help save our friend any faster. Besides, we knew where he was now so we could always come back later. Well, that didn't happen. See after we were crowned champions of the arena, my character got so caught up in all the positive attention that she started casting prestidigitation fireworks to show off to the crowd. I had to roll for disadvantage and got caught in a strong charm spell. It took me so long to finally roll a save to break out that the party members that had still been active had already saved the missing party member and then lost him again at the last moment. I admit, I was way more violent against the dungeon boss then I had with other bosses. My characters self esteem took a hard nose dive after that quest and she never did forgive herself for allowing her ego to get in the way of being there for her friends when they really needed her.
In life you're going to make mistakes sometimes and some of those mistakes are going to result from trying to do the right thing. Even in fantasy, the world is crap and sometimes all you can do is try your best. If you mess up, strive to do better and make it right.
Also anyone who says that species=race is an idiot. The first time I heard someone say how orcs were created to be caricatures of black people I seriously had to double take because that was some serious racist crap right there. Who looks at an orc and thinks "Well that thing clearly looks like someone of African decent"? Like, what the hell people?
They're complicating this topic way more than it's even remotely worth it. Beyond the stuff like saying orcs are minorities because they're bad, they ignore simple stuff like "If they attack you, you have no general reason to avoid fighting back". Hell, random encounters in RPGs happen because YOU WERE AMBUSHED, and in Final Fantasy IX you got a whole sidequest involving friendly creatures that you weren't supposed to fight but to help, AKA THE GAME LETS YOU KNOW BY SIMPLE ACTIONS IF YOU SHOULD BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF SOMEONE OR NOT.
>Oh but what if it has a reason to do this?
The enemy doesn't care, it's trying to harm or even kill you, is their problem if they get beaten!
He also made the choice to show slimes and tried to portrail them as non dangerous and frendly. Those things had human remains in them. He just contradicted himself.
The same with the tornado destroying a house. I don't care that the tornado has no will. I care that it's comiting a bad act. Destroying a house. If I'm capable to stop it, I will.
Ah yes, it is totally impossible that different kind of life forms could have different moral alignments based on their own traits. A species with a very long life-span will surely have the exact same alignments as one with a very shot life-span, because no one bases their own morals of their own circumstance, right?
In fantasy I could easily create a species that requires mat to survive and one that cannot digest meat and I think it would be reasonable to assume that those have different takes on the worth of animal-lives!
My thoughts exactly.
Really bums me out when a fantasy game has all this lore about the different playable species and then, besides two to three points throughout the entire game, everyone treats your character the exact same even if you look like some weird abomination.
It's why I love Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines for putting effort in making each bloodline entirely different.
Also species will totally have different inalienable traits based on the environment their species evolved in. A species that lives in the canopy would on average be more acrobatic than one that evolved in an arid wasteland for the sake of navigation, and the wasteland species in turn would on average be more physically strong than the arboreal one due to a greater need to fight for resources.
@@Lobsterwithinternet while not race based, dragons dogma charather size seems important since taller characters can get to tall areas BUT there is goblin tunnels that it seems smaller characters can use.
@@swampdonkey1567 Heck pretty sure vampires need to drink blood to not die.... Which is why they tend to be evil(at least from the perspective of the races they feed on), because they are "Biologically?" driven to harm others.
@@minnion2871 Which could be an interesting thing to cover in a game. “Most of these guys are just trying to survive, but then there are these guys here who are just a bunch of murderers and criminals”.
It's fairly certain that Matt didn't write anything in the episode. He's just reads the scripts. Dan didn't even write most of the episodes back in the day. James used to be the main writer, but he jumped ship a few years ago because apparently he too saw the way things were going.
Wait, really now? Dang, when even HE considered jumping ship, you know that it was time for Extra Credits to die, & never be seen again!
I'm pretty sure James also had quite a few terrible allegations at the time to help him jumping ship too, but yes. Dan went and formed Extra Frames and it's far better for actual game design and general gaming antics.
@@gratuitouslurking8610 I dropped off EC after James had a pretty shit-act towards TotalBiscuit/The Cynical Brit during the latter's battle with cancer, posting accusations about his ethics and transparency as a content creator at a time when TB was receiving Chemotherapy and was assumed unable to reply from the Hospital. I had bee on and off with their content but that was the point where I had extreme contempt for one of the main creative forces, on a matter that definitely related to the content they were peddling (and thus couldn't even muster a "separate Art and Artist" defense).
@@papershadow Lord above I miss TB, I can only imagine how he'd react the insanity that has been the last few years.
We REALLY would have benefited by him being around for all this.
Matt is a puppet
Just another aside, Extra Credit also believes in guilt by association
A huge problem with these kinds of arguments is the dangerous and overt misusage of "Death of the author". These kinds of people just ascribe intent to authors out of nowhere just to fit their narratives
"All elves good"
Fëanor: Allow me to to introduce myself.
Using the Necrons shows they have no knowledge of proper 40k lore
Like, bruh, they are trying to go on a genocidal campaign like everyone else, da fuck you mean "I'll decide that"
Every time someone brings up "free will", I am left to wonder just what they actually mean by that. Because never once have I seen a satisfying definition that matches how people tend to talk about the concept.
For DnD, if I encounter a tribe of kobolds somewhere in a mountain and they attack my party, I will mercilessly slaughter them. If I encounter kobolds in a town as like a shopkeeper or something, and they're just a person living there with no signs of wanting to attack me, I will treat them like any other NPC in that town.
what really makes me laugh at this is while they are talking on and on about not judging a fictional species and not picturing them as evil or violent, when they then draw a picture of a slime with human bones and a skull inside it implying that slime has killed someone I just find that funny
Man extra credits really went down hill after all the original people left.
There's a Dorkly video called "Social Justice RPG", and it basically takes the piss out of this very concept. It's a pretty fun watch if you've never seen it.
I’m trying to understand the need for entertainment to have the same or upstanding morals as some people in order for them to enjoy it. I don’t expect all media to make people comfortable, safe or satisfied. Trying to find or make up something problematic about a medium only muddies up any conversation they wanted to have.
"The traditional idea is that they stay secluded in the woods because they don't want to deal with your fucking bullshit."
Wow, today I learned that I'm an elf.
As a Warhammer 40K player, I absolutely love the 'Purge the Xenos' philosophy of the IMperium of Mankind example he uses.
While completely ignoring the fact that in the WH40K setting nearly every non-human sapient species wants to at best enslave humanity and at worst exterminate humanity.
Tau: Join our cult, For the Greater Good! (The lesser of the Xenos 'evils' )
Orks: Their entire culture as is programed into their biology by the Old Ones that made them revolves around conflict. To them humans are just one more thing to smash into paste.
Craftworld Eldar: View themselves as superior to every other species in the galaxy and won't hesitate to kill humans if it suits their interest, and will do so with extreme predjudice if the humans happen to be on one of their Maiden Worlds.
Drukhari//Dark Eldar: Eldar that have taken to torturing other species to prolong their lives and keep Slaanesh from consuming their souls. Something they take great joy in doing.
Necrons: Like Eldar they view themselves as being superior to every other species. They see everythign in the galaxy as belonging to them and will kill anything on their property. If the humans are lucky the Necron in question will be nice and take pity upon them, turning them into slaves instead of dead meat.
Tyranids: A species from outside the galaxy whose sole purpose is to consume all biomass. Not technically evil in of itself like natural disasters, but it's hard not to think negatively about it when untold swarms are eating your planet, your friends, your family, and you.
Gene-Stealer Cults: Cults dedicated to the Tyranids, enough said.
Now I know this is a very brief overview but it shows the point that fromthe Imperium's perspective 'Purge the Xenos' is very much a neccessity to survival. Sure there may be friendly xenos out there, but when most things actively want you dead, can you really take that chance?
I've actually had a hard time getting into 40k. Not the lore mind you, but the fandom. I get that there are really chill 40k players out there, but for some reason, whenever I try to get into it, I encounter some guy that takes it too far. Like I just decided to just look up lore on the factions, and the first youtube video I encountered had a black person joke when talking about the salamanders. Also, who can forget the infamous image of the X president as the emperor. Do you have any resources I can check out that are less problematic?
@@kylejohnson423 Understandable, there's all kind of players and lore-junkies out there. I'm fortunate enough to have a causal-ish local group where at worst our resident lore expert will do is roll his eyes and shake his head at some notion or suggestion. As for less problematic? That.. depends entirely on what you consider to be problematic. Wolf Lord Rho and Baldemort are generally really great. When he sticks to doing lore videos and avoids various side tangents, Arch can be decent, though he does have a particular reputation.
"Manevolent"
Mr. Enter: The word is Malevolent!
Also Mr. Enter: "General Iroh, as opposed to ADMIRABLE Iroh." (Supposed to be Admiral)
Well that's different. It wasn't a typo in his script. That was him just messing up an army rank. A spesific term
@@ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΗΣΛΑΧΑΝΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ Also he wasn`t stating wrong things. Uncle Iroh is admirable.^^
@@ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΗΣΛΑΧΑΝΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ A mistake that I think he made multiple times.
@@baalfgames5318 According to the wiki his rank is a general though. I just checked
Every time I play Pokémon I sit for hours questioning if I should stuff this monster in a ball the size of my hand. No wait I don't because its a video game
And in terms of the books, the wood elf king in the Hobbit locked up a bunch of dwarves because they bruised his precious little ego. Elves are typically seen as unlikable snobs in lot of modern fantasy for reasons like that so the idea that everyone thinks they're good only applies if you've never played D&D or read the Hobbit at all
I prefer to think elves aren't good, rather they prefer to be seen as good
@@andrewgreeb916 Personally I like the idea of it depending on elven society. Reclusive wood elves sticking to themselves and not getting involved unless given good reason to, snooty high elves looking down on everyone else, and normal elves just kinda doin their own thing like Neera from Baldurs Gate. (She's a half-elf granted but, still)
It's astounding that Extra Credits continue to be so smug and condescending while being so wrong and being so out of touch with fiction, reality and their own self awareness.
KILL THE ORK
*SLAY THE ORK*
*_DESTROY THE ORK_*
- Matt probably
"Orcs" are like human weeds and are to be exterminated
-the dip shit EC writer
I always liked the planet of the hats tropes. makes things easier to understand for the audience and allows the writer to create unique characters that don't conform to their planet's hat. Like Worf from Star Trek being raised by humans on earth. That's a very simple tweak that gives Worf options that other Klingons don't get, experiences that they can't have, and stories they can't tell or even understand. The values he picked up from his parents, and from star fleet later in life, often directly clash with his values as a Klingon. Which makes for a very interesting character.
13:46 In fact, in one of my favorite anime shows, Elves are actually seen as rather villainous and use a lot of technology that's about 500 years ahead of the time.
If memory serves, elves have been depicted as antagonistic if not straight up evil in most of the most anime that came out in recent years. At least if there was an actual antagonistic force at all.
@@GameBreaker1055
The main character even comments on how odd it is that the elves aren't all natural and happy-go-lucky like in most fantasy properties.
@@DementedDuskull And it's really only the elf leader guy who is the evil one, and the other elves are being misled by him.
Hey, maybe all the Silent Hill creature just wanted to be our friends the whole time!
After all, A buff man dragging a massive knife and wearing a massive pyramid mask clearly means us no harm whatsoever.
Extra Credits comparing Blacks and Asians to Orcs is like saying that "Hur-dee-dur"! Link killing a Moblin means it's whites/men mistreating blacks/women, however these types of monsters were in fact Ganon's Forces who've already taken over Hyrule in Breath of the Wild! Lord, I had enough of this 'mysogony' bs used with the recognizable fantasy franchise Lord of the Rings, nor other media that's not related to *REALITY.* Very ironic with this video, and Twitter purity, dammit.
I love that like the people who say orcs are black people number one never read Tolkien and second realize that fantasy races are not actual races but species.
Also if you look at a black person and think "Hmm he looks like an orc" you're the racist.
You know, its really funny they brought up LOTR, because if you think about it, the Uruk-hai is a great example of a race born into evil that really didnt have a choice if you think about it.
which is also funny because it falls into the pitbull example in a small way.
also great video, i really did enjoy this one
A game has an example of Orcs being all bad guys, but later being a normal race to play as that aren't all evil
The Elder Scrolls, Orcs used to be mostly just be enemies you fight, then in Daggerfall you can side with them and get them recognized as citizens of the empire.
Just uhhh. Don't ask which of the six endings is canon, that actually brings up more questions than answers