Shadows & Silver IRC Channel

Sherincall put up an IRC channel for us: #shadowsandsilver on irc.nwn2source.net. While we'll primarily be using it for dev chats, random folks are welcome to join and talk about the project, too. We hope to see some of the folks who are interested in the project popping up soon.

Further thoughts: race as a literary device

I went to the theater this weekend after stumbling upon a movie review by an author for whose views I have tremendous respect. The film in question: District 9. I never saw any advertisements for this film, nor even heard about it before reading the review. But once I'd finished the article I was determined to see it and was not disappointed.

I'll not go into a plot synopsis here (Latham details it much better than I could); suffice it to say, though, District 9 is a film about racism. I was awed at how, as I watched the persecution of aliens during its run, I was constantly reminded of the horrors of our own history. It was not so long ago that we treated our fellow human beings this way. In some ways, we still do.

One particular scene that struck me was when Wikus, an agent of a private military chosen to serve eviction notices to the aliens living in District 9, discovers a shack full of Prawn eggs. He details what an exciting find it is, then proceeds to kill the eggs, burning down the shack around it, laughing as he hears the screams of the prawn larva. As I watched that scene, I admit, I almost cried. And then I began to wonder: why was it so powerful to see the slaughter of something so repulsive, so emphatically inhuman?

The purpose of non-human life in good fiction is solely to reflect humanity in a distilled form. Whether it's the alien wretches of District 9 showing us the poor and destitute of Africa or the etherial elves of Tolkien showing us the beauty and potential of a race in harmony with the earth, we are always looking into a mirror. When we see the friendship of Legolas and Gimli, we see the reconciliation of the traditional and the mystical. When we see the journey of Frodo we see the cost of goodness. When we hear the cries of the alien larva, we hear the cries of children of the genocides in Rwanda and Uganda.

We see both the beautiful and the wretched reflected in the depictions of non-humans in fiction. We want to embrace some and ignore the rest, like Ebenezer Scrooge, happy to see the merry-making, but begging the Ghost of Christmas Present to remove Ingorance and Want from our sight. But it's essential that we look at both and not forsake one for the other. Humanity is a beautiful thing, but it is also a terrible one. It is only in seeing ourselves in the mirror that we can examine who we truly are and how we might grow. Good fiction will constantly hold that mirror up.