this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Thought it took place in DE's equivalent of Europe... not Amerikkka too (The Coalition reminds me of NATO)
The isola where the game is set was colonized by their Western European isola stand-in. Measurehead's ethnic background is indigenous to the isola where the game is set, though on a different continent / set of islands. He is black-coded and the isola was "French"-colonized so there may be further parallels to French -colonized Africa. But at the same time, Measurehead is from Revachol, he is not actually from the Semenese Islands. His identity and positions are a reflection of his experience in Revachol.
The only piece missing is that I don't think the game said much about indigenous people of the continent where the game is set. It may not be an analog of the US in that way or maybe their genocide is just intentionally memory-holed, much like it is in the US. Could be basically anywhere settler-colonized or maybe it is mentioned but is easy to miss. But they speak French-ish. DE isn't purely 1:1 of course, but the major description of Revachol is as a French settler colony that grew to prominence and became cosmopolitan, had a failed revolution that was put down by the "French"-led Western European imperialist alliance, and is now degrading under imperialist exploitation that is playing out in forms like the suppression of a longshoremen strike.
Le Caillou was settled twice before white settlers arrived, but the first culture there died out during the neolithic without leaving much of a trace and the Semenese only settled there temporarily and left for other parts of the archipelago "thousands of years" before Occidental settlers got there (the ingame source for the latter part is Measurehead, so maybe we should take that with a grain of salt). Revachol practiced settler colonialism during the Souzerainity and competed with the Occidental colonizer nations it had spawned from until the turn of the century revolution kicked off and ended the monarchy and its enjoyment of exploiting other parts of the world for apricots and magenta cocaine. But Le Caillou wasn't violently colonized itself until the Moralintern invaded and slaughtered every communard they could find.
Yes absolutely. I do think that the "this huge habitable continent had nobody living on it when we came here" is a bit much, though. I guess it could be an oversight but I would also suspect it is a bit of poetry to have an untrustworthy narrative about how nobody knows if any indigenous people were there when settlers arrived, and maybe it was empty, just waiting to be colonized.
tbh i have no idea how huge the island of Le Caillou is. Joyce calls it "a pebble", but she also claims that the entire island is able to sustain 200 million people, and Revachol is a metropolis with an "80 km radius" (that's slightly larger than LA, even if we assume that radius doesn't apply equally in all directions).
But yes, it seems unlikely that something that large wasn't settled permanently for thousands of years when it's part of an island continent with several ancient seafaring cultures.
You just made me realize the white coded characters speak in British or American accents, whereas the non-white characters speak in French accents.
I've never thought about this before and I have no idea if it was even intentional
One can't simply memory-hole someone if they have a recent history of indigenous resistance from them, a la Amerikkka (read: cowboy vs native shenanigans in pop culture)
Ultimately, I'm just gonna pretend Revachol is more similar to England, as a secondary influence for Revachol, than Amerikkka, because England was a historically made ancient proto-settler society (not colonial necessarily) by Germanic people of Saxon, who displaced out the native Celt and Britons
Vesper is already the stand-in for England and it is in the Western Europe stand-in isola along with Sur-La-Clef.
Oh, well, in that case, oof... fine, it's the stand-in for Amerikkka
. Now, that I think of it, why is it revolutionary in the place? I mean, usually, in settler colonies, especially of 380 years ago
They usually pacify the proletariat by giving them the potential to be petty-bourgeois settler-colonial propetarians, through expropriation and disenfranchisement of the indigenous, but I haven't heard of such 'liberatarian' movement in there, unlike a la Australia, Argentina, or Amerikkka
By the way, why historically is there an Occidental monarch there? I don't see it as indigenous to the pre-colonial era nor welcome in such a settler colony
Edit: maybe a bit of Cuba's experience mixed in?
I'm not totally convinced Revachol is in their world's Amerikkka either, ha. It just has some overlaps in that it is a settler colony and has a major cosmopolitan metropolis and is a locus for Disco and blue jeans so on. It is probably a mixture of things.
The lack of mentioning an indigenous people in Le Caillou is consistent with this. Their mythology holds that it did not have people living on it when settlers arrived. Allegedly people lived there long before they arrived, using "primitive" tools. It is possinle that this is an unreliable narration.
If there were really no people, though, that might have different dynamics. Kicking the can down the road with land would be there, providing that petty bourgeois character, but it would not require genocidal racism.
Though I think it makes very little sense that there would have been no people living there already. I think it is more likely that the authors are being poetic by treating it like an afterthought, a possibility, something that maybe happened but nobody remembers. It could be an oversight but I bet not.
Revachol existed as a parallel to revolutionary France (and other European countries) for the purposes of much of the narrative. Monarchists being deposed with liberals carrying out their own revolution and capitalist restoration. The order isn't an exact parallel but the monarchist vs. liberal vs. commie opposition is maintained.
Regarding the monarchy he was technically a suzerain, beholden to the Occidental interests. But as Revachol grew in power, the suzerain pushed for independence. Communist revolution against the suzerain succeeded but the Occidental imperialists used the opportunity for capitalist restoration and to imperialize Revachol by bombing and killing the communists.
Haha this is a fun discussion. In this response, if I don't quote something it probably means I agree.
It has an Anglo subdivision (Vesper), a French/Belgian one (Sur La Clef), a Netherlands one (Oranje), and Germanic ones (Koenigstein, Gottwald) too! It's "the West". Occidental means "of the West"!
Hilariously, Graad is its own separate Isola, like a separate world almost. This mirrors the Western European division of itself from everyone else and how it thinks of them. Like the Zizek meme (RIP bozo) of the river dividing the good West from the uncivilized masses to the East. It is basically all of Eastern Europe. If Yugo-Graad is Yugoslavia, then Graad is Slavia, the land of Slavs.
Safre has (at least) proper nouns with Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Indonesian analogs and a People's Republic of Samara. It also had an opium war from the Occident. They call Siifay an " apricot suzeraintu" (Banana Republic) so I do think there is some mixing of the Latin American experience in there. I think it at least corresponds to East and Southeast Asia minus Korea and Japan, who are the "Seolites". This roughly lines up with Westerners' differentiation between white Asians and brown Asians.
So the story goes! I think this may be a commentary on how genocided indigenous people are considered, in that they are not. The US is full of "untamed natural lands" settler mythologies.
Yes although I think he is black-coded with heritage from the Semenine Islands. DE has them practicing an analog of voodoo, of being forced to become sugar plantation producers, etc. He is Revacholian and his racism is an expression of his treatment in a very racist place and reading books about Aeropagites (sp?).