Current Events > Evil Armies should be a thing of the past.

(+) Yeah! (+)

There's plenty of controversy regarding guns in media accessible to young people or just media portrayals of guns in general. But something that I feel is far worse is the "Skull Army invades Peaceland" narrative which actively encourages generalizations. And most often in stories aimed at young and impressionable minds.

It's one thing to hate war itself. I don't blame you. But the "good army, bad army" narrative is a harmful oversimplification. To date, there has never been an army for which every single person drafted has been evil. No attempts at indoctrination have a 100% accuracy rate.

Don't get me wrong. When an army is collectively fighting for a bad cause, you have to resist that. And if someone with a gun is coming for you, you have to defend yourself. But the notion that an entire nation, or an entire army can be invariably comprised of "bad guys," needs to go.

(Yes, this would sadly lead to more "you're a bad person for defending yourself" cutscenes in video games.)

I mean what exactly are you looking for?

Whats an example of where this trope was used straight and what would you have done differently?

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counterpoint: there arent any good armies

half-jokes aside, youre right that its all too easy for people to view countries as monoliths and assume every person there is part of the problem

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It's hard not to draw parallels between an evil army and nazis. Even Star Wars does this. There are other ways to express military fascism in media than simply imitating Nazi Germany. It's still stong as imagery but as far as comics, games and film go, it's starting to lose it's flavor.

Oddly enough, media tends to focus on the uniforms and military might rather than exploring some of the more heinous actions that historical nazis are famous for. It just seems like they know it's a sensitive parallel to make but they just do it anyway and tread lightly.

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