Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

[Lurina]

God damnit, and now we've introduced The G Word into this. This is exactly what I was referring to. I hate when people try to drag this in (and yes, I do regret using it myself for this in the past), because it does exactly what I was talking about, it breaks and warps the discussion into something that the subject matter was never intended to even remotely resemble.

Genocide is a very real crime and concept. It is, perhaps, the greatest of real crimes, not just in terms of scale, but in terms of the scars that current, living populations still bear. As a result, it holds not just a dictionary and 'criminal court' definition, but a very real cultural one, bearing very deep meaning and representing real, still-extant wounds. Hell, the term itself is part of that legacy; it was coined because there wasn't even a word to describe what happened to the Armenian people or in the Holocaust, no crime existing to charge them of.

Applying it to fake, insane fantasy nonsense like the Sundering or the Calamities does nothing but cheapen and damage both the term and every single person and concept involved in the discussion, including the word itself.

For a while on these forums, I avoided the use of the term "genocide" for these exact reasons, and would say "mass-murder" or "exterminate" instead. Because I agree with you - using it about something that happened in a video game is dumb and honestly pretty tasteless. I'd even go further and say that it's probably inappropriate to use even when talking about more grounded events in the setting, because even when it's playing with more serious themes, this is - again - a game for teenagers. It's a cartoon and doesn't ever merit truly serious language, and you can't really pick and choose based on what vibes right to you. (Like I've said in the past, I don't see the distinction you make between what happens to the Ancients feeling like allegorical mythology versus something like Sil'Dih; if anything, the stuff with the Ancients feels less like mythology since we actually went to Elpis and got to know them - but that's just to illustrate that this is often a matter of opinion.)

But it's another horse has bolted situation. After a while, I noticed the word had become so normalized in talking about the Rejoinings and about Garlemald that it just felt awkward not to use it. Like, if we've already escalated to that degree, all not saying it accomplishes is to make it seem like you're trying to asymmetrically soften how something which happened in the game's plot came across to you. At that point, your choice is to either disengage, or to escalate yourself.

I think a lot of this discourse becomes self-perpetuating. Group A feels grossed out by message the game seems to trying to send with the Ancients, and expresses that how they were exterminated felt wrong. Group B responds defensively by saying it was for the best and insinuating they're supporting something even worse in-universe. Group A gets defensive itself and is drawn into the diagetic argument, where the two made-up factions are compared in increasingly hostile terms. Emet is like a real-world fascist. Venat was doing eugenics. Once the argument has become "exactly how bad were the crimes of these fictional groups", rather than looking at Endwalker and Shadowbringers as pieces of writing, it's inevitable that we'll start talking about the story more and more like it's real life, until the conversation is distorted into something really stupid and completely divorced from what anyone actually cares about.

[Brinne]

But it's another horse has bolted situation. After a while, I noticed the word had become so normalized in talking about the Rejoinings and about Garlemald that it just felt awkward not to use it. Like, if we've already escalated to that degree, all not saying it accomplishes is to make it seem like you're trying to asymmetrically soften how something which happened in the game's plot came across to you. At that point, your choice is to either disengage, or to escalate yourself.

Yeah, agreed with this. I’ve always wished terms and specific references to genocide and IRL racism never entered the fandom lexicon in these discussions about fantasy ghost wizards versus a giant rock woman who literally chopped up their people to make a new species, but, unfortunately, the boat had sailed so far already by the point of 5.0 discourse alone that it was on the other side of the galaxy, and carrying piles of dead horses upon it to boot.

I don’t think this game for teenagers is particularly subtle when it actually is trying to allude to things like relatable racism and imperialism. Garlemald is pretty clear cut, whatever your opinions on the quality of how that was done. The Ascians are obviously framed differently in general terms of “mass murder” (relatable mass murder, at that, that the protagonists largely say they would probably also do in their position, because all things stripped down the Ascian conflict once developed was meant to simply be an all-around tragic, limited resources, Kill or Be Killed situation.)

Since the boat is somewhere in deep space, I sort of resignedly just try to at least go for consistency. If the Rejoinings are genocide, so is the Sundering, and vice versa. That all being said, of course it’s worth considering when in the heat of dumb fandom arguments people trip and fall into using historically really, really troubled and loaded rhetoric, even if unintentionally. As Cleretic said, at that point it’s probably worth taking a long step back and centering yourself.

EDIT: Also, as Roselin just pointed out, at least one edition of the game is now on the record for using “genocide” to describe Ancient-related nonsense (regarding a character obviously meant to draw comparisons to Venat, whether you think that’s by contrast, similarity, or both), so the boat has officially crossed galaxies by now and is in the great beyond for real.