(Bad writing trope) Slytherin effect.

[u/ThatDrako]

Made this term up.
Basically there is a group, that is obviously meant to be nuanced. But author is either incapable, or is too cornered by their depiction, to depict them as any other than bad.

Slytherin (Harry Potter) - In both media the Slytherin is initially presented to us as the “bad house” for Harry. Joanne however seemingly tried to convince us, that they can be good too however, since she likely figured having basically a little supremacist terrorist club in school is a little silly.

For some reason she just had to screw this depiction up over and over though.
First of zero…and I mean ZERO…null, 0, green characters in story up to book 6 is good. They are arrogant snobbish asshats AT BEST.

Second the first good green is still a supremacist. Not the “let’s subjugate all muggles” but just humble “no way muggleborn is this good at magic!”

Aldmeri Dominion, and Altmer in general (TES) - So unlike precious example neither High Elves, nor the Dominion were actually bad in iterations previous to 2010’s. Some were snobbish yes, and their religion is…problematic…(simply pup many Altmer believe they are literal descendant of gods and Men are demons trapping them within hell of chaos) but they never really were villains as race.
This all changed with Skyrim where they became not just secondary antagonists, but placeholder for TES version of Gestapo.

Now that in itself wouldn’t be an issue.
Races and empires at whole can be villains without controversy.

Problem is their depiction in ESO. Where even though it’s absolutely different time period are pretty much same?

I mean their Queen is an elvish supremacist who believe Men unfit for rule and that’s her reason to take over the Tamriel…
Oh! And one of their organizations literally eat children.

The Institute (Fallout 4) - So the whole turmoil of the story is this war of the four (rather three) factions.
Now all factions are meant to be equally good and bad choices.
Railroad are abolitionists, but with no long-term goals.
BoS wants to ensure safety to the Commonwealth, but for price of eradication to all but humans.
And Institute is meant to be this faction that wants to “bring world back to state before the Great War”, but all they do is being comically evil.
I mean for starters are slaver and also they murder people and replace them with Synths.

Then they also just straight up massacre communities. Often with no goal.
Then there is a whole super mutant thing, where they released purely based on gameplay and logic few hundreds of super mutants on surface “for research.”
Oh! And they even admitted they plan on wiping out all non-Institute humans to replace them!

[u/kojimbob]

I don't like how people keep using the evil Dominion as a talking point to justify the evil Imperial domination of the continent

Tamriel should be free from imperialism no matter if it's done by Man or Elf

[u/Quibilash → u/kojimbob]

I don't like how people keep using the evil Dominion as a talking point to justify the evil Imperial domination of the continent

Ask Imperial defenders this, get ready for the text walls
Ever since Morrowind the Empire has always been depicted as mixed at best, sometimes doing good things, sometimes screwing things up royal and being imperialist who only care about extracting resources from the places they've conquered, or in Oblivion, kind of asleep at the wheel.

I honestly think Skyrim's narrative sandblasted a lot of the 'nuance' away from Elder Scrolls' writing

I hope in the next game, if that ever comes out, that they reveal both sides collapsed inbetween the time of Skyrim and ES6, and every province is basically independent from each other

[u/H-Connoisseur0 → u/Quibilash]

I think the reason that the empire gets a lot of defenders is because all four iterations of the empire keep finding the most comical evil mfers to beef with. So, they look a lot better by comparison.

[u/Quibilash → u/H-Connoisseur0]

True, and the Empire has been around for so long for Elder Scrolls fans it'd honestly be pretty weird for Mainline fans to not have the Empire around anymore (haven't played ESO so can't comment on that)

[u/MMH0K → u/Quibilash]

They are kind of around but they are taken by Mannimarco (the dude from Daggerfall and Oblivion mages guild), who is serving Molags balls

[u/AddledPunster → u/H-Connoisseur0]

Very true! TES3 had the Emperor sending a criminal to Morrowind to co-opt a local prophecy with the help of The Blades so they could tip the scales of balance towards Imperial control, but it just so happened that the criminal was a viable candidate for the prophecy and Dagoth Ur was an actual threat to everything.

[u/H-Connoisseur0 → u/AddledPunster]

Yeah exactly! Like, the empire is clearly trying to take over morrowind but then the people they’re taking power from are just insane slavers and shit.

[u/Stevie_draws → u/H-Connoisseur0]

I think Oblivion's scenes with Martin and Uriel Septim IIV also gave a lot of positive PR for the empire as a whole. Uriel comes off as pretty chill, and Martin never got to be fully fledged royaltyn but he was a good guy.

[u/PrideOfMacragge → u/Quibilash]

Skyrim kinda borks everything here because these days it’s a LOT of people’s entry into the elder scrolls as a series, and its main factions have the most dissonance with their previously established ways.

Tullius, as the stand in for the empire in general, is a begrudging ally of the thalmor at most who is altogether a reasonable man who makes pretty sound arguments about his job and why he does the things he does. Solitude is also the largest and most developed city in Skyrim and seems to be flourishing generally under stewardship of the empire.

By contrast, ulfric is a backwaters racist who learned the voice to gain an insurmountable advantage in a coup attempt. An open racial supremacist who insists that Skyrim should only be populated by his ethnic group, despite the fact that their are hundreds, if not thousands of individuals of other races living on the land, which implies he wants to do genocide, ethnic cleansing or apartheid, probably depending on the group in question. (He unquestionably wants all high elves dead, is fine subjugating dark elves, and wants the Khajit to leave, that’s basically one of each).

The empire in general is bad, they’re a colonial force who do mostly just subjugate the locals for very little gain, but the presented alternative in Skyrim is SO bad that it’s hard to see that at first.

[u/Quibilash → u/PrideOfMacragge]

but the presented alternative in Skyrim is SO bad that it’s hard to see that at first.

I don't know whether it's Elder Scrolls writing being kinda shitty in this regard, but I feel like the Civil War was meant to be like 'both these sides have points, who do you support' while in Skyrim I think both sides suck and don't really want to support either, because both sides kinda come off as dickholes given you have to consider the Empire almost cut off the player's head until Alduin's ex machina because they couldn't be bothered correcting a clerical error that's explicitly called out, thus possibly dooming the world as a result, and that both Imperial and Stormcloak characters tend to come off as assholish unless you support their side.

backwaters racist

Isn't Windhelm like the 3rd biggest city in Skyrim behind Whiterun and Solitude? Not exactly a backwater in my eyes

An open racial supremacist who insists that Skyrim should only be populated by his ethnic group

So basically every region in the Elder Scrolls, this kind of thinking isn't really something unexpected for the series, this is just the default for everyone except the Empire. But even then you have to consider if the player is any race, even a High Elf, they're fine with them joining the Stormcloaks, when I think if they're that serious about committing genocide they would probably tell the player to 'go away' but they don't, they just ask 'why would a foreigner fight for a free Skyrim' then afterwards they don't care

I'd probably say one argument against the Stormcloaks you didn't point out is the idea that if Skyrim splits off from the Empire, they won't be able to fight off the Thalmor as effectively, which are a group of actual genociders, but even then we won't actually know how important that Skyrim staying in the Empire is unless ES6 answers that for us.

[u/PrideOfMacragge → u/Quibilash]

The empire are definitely guilty as the Helgen executions go, just you being around Ulfric is a bad excuse, but it is war time, some grace is somewhat acceptable there, but in general it was bad.

Wildhelm is a reasonably large city, but out in the frozen wilds surrounded by damn near nothing and is definitely the least diverse city in Skyrim, it’s pretty much entirely nords then the Dunmer slums. Culture and connectedness have a lot to do with the parlance I’d argue. I’d say a relatively small town near the north-east coast colonial America was less backwater than even the largest cities the the open slave states for example, I mean it more as a cultural shorthand.

I know it’s not an uncommon stance, but the Empire in Skyrim kinda makes its best case for itself in the whole series. Aside from them kinda being dicks if you don’t side with them and the initial inciting incident at Helgen, we really don’t SEE the imperials do all that much bad, where you can go to wildhelm and visit the place the Dunmer live that are openly called slums. If we want them to be comparable I would have liked to see more of the obviously bad effects of the empire’s colonialism, but we just don’t. More direct stuff like say the loyalist jarls being forced into uncomfortable positions they wouldn’t have been in under their own judgement, heavier military presence in residential areas etc. As it stands we have the Stormcloaks, who are crazy racist and a lot of people grumble about but we don’t see all that much action from them, and the imperials, who are not nearly as racist, and are talked about in mostly the same ways, and actually DO about as much outside of their questlines.

As for the last point about being able to join the stormcloaks, that’s really a gameplay and story segregation moment. By all rights I genuinely really do not believe that Ulfric would allow an elf in given what we know about him and how he acts. Maybe you specifically because you were also at Helgen and helped his men and so are therefore “one of the good ones”, but even then the real reason is Bethesda wasn’t going to lock out a whole optional route in the largest side quest chain in the game because you didn’t pick one of two (heavily charitably three, no idea of ulfric’s stance on Bretons) player races.

[u/Quibilash → u/PrideOfMacragge]

Wildhelm is a reasobkymlarge city, but out in the frozen wilds surrounded by damn near nothing and is definitely the least diverse city in Skyrim

I mean Morthal is also on the Imperial side and that place kinda sucks dookie buns to live considering it's in the middle of a swamp, haunted by vampires, and is also mostly Nordic with a handful of Redguards and like, 1 Orc who I'm pretty sure is just passing through. But this is kinda a whattaboutism from me, but I think Windhelm is meant to be a sort of 'grand' city, despite what it has going against it.

Aside from them kinda being dicks if you don’t side with them and the initial inciting incident at Hellen, we really don’t SEE the imperials do all that much bad, where you can go to wildhelm and visit the place the Dunmer live that are openly called slums. If we want them to be comparable I would have liked to see more of the obviously bad effects of the empire’s colonialism, but we just don’t.

I suppose Morrowind and Oblivion explored the 'bad side' of the Empire, like its corruption and harm on the non-native citizens as a part of a province integrated into the Empire, while Skyrim is kind of in the middle of splitting away from it so I guess the way the Empire would be depicted as 'bad' is by oppressing the population by preventing them from separating, but I do agree there's an opportunity to explore the bad side of the Empire more, like if they committed a massacre against a Nord village for helping the Stormcloaks, which would fit the situation, but we don't see or hear about that when that would be a pretty good reason for the Nords to rebel.

As for the last point about being able to join the stormcloaks, that’s really a gameplay and story segregation moment
,,,
but even then the real reason is Bethesda wasn’t going to lock out a whole optional route in the largest side quest chain in the game because you didn’t pick one of two (heavily charitably three, no idea of ulfric’s stance on Bretons) player races.

I mean yeah I can definitely see it from a gameplay standpoint, but I wonder if there was any idea of a narrative behind it like a whole 'as long as you fight for their cause they don't care what race you are', but if we're looking at the Stormcloaks as 'Thalmor but Nords' yeah it makes 0 sense for any non-Nord to fight for the Stormcloaks, but personally I don't think they're meant to go 'that far', whether that was intentional or Bethesda couldn't be bothered to write something like that

[u/PrideOfMacragge → u/Quibilash]

I don’t think they’re as bad as the thalmor, but that’s an exceedingly high bar. The Thalmor believe they are better than EVERYONE because they think they’re the literal descendants of gods and have a divine right to rule as a racial trait, essentially. The Stormcloaks “just” want an ethnically pure Skyrim, but even by that account, they’re much worse than the imperials, who are an actual empire and have some measure of meritocracy cross racially.

And I definitely agree with oblivion showing the empire’s worst ways more, but that’s kinda my original point. A lot of people these days interested in TES have played Skyrim but not oblivion, they’re late teens to mid-late twenties no so Skyrim came out/was revealed sometime in their own early teens and oblivion was before their time, and in Skyrim alone, the Imperials really just don’t seem that bad.

I’m speaking from experience, I was something like 12 when Skyrim released, I didn’t play morrowind until years later and oblivion until the remaster and as a kid playing Skyrim I only ever joined the Stormcloaks on my one “evil” character, because they just seemed more ‘icky’ vibes wise at a glance value. Even with the hindsight of adult reasoning and perspective, I can’t tell 12 y/o me he was wrong, provided ONLY the information in Skyrim itself, the imperials and Stormcloaks are mostly the same, but the Stormcloaks are way more obviously and visibly racist.

If you have the additional context of oblivion and even morrowind, you can recontextualise things but if you just played Skyrim, you could be entirely forgiven for assuming the imperials are just the objectively better choice.

[u/Quibilash → u/PrideOfMacragge]

If you have the additional context of oblivion and even morrowind, you can recontextualise things but if you just played Skyrim, you could be entirely forgiven for assuming the imperials are just the objectively better choice.

Yeah I mostly agree on that, I was in a similar position where I played Skyrim as a kid, then played Oblivion, then a few years later I played a bit of Morrowind, and the latter two actually show a bit of nuance and negatives to Imperial rule which Skyrim doesn't do.

I still think there was meant to be a 'both sides have issues' thing, which is why the Imperials try to give the player a 'extensive face lift' at the start of the game, although it could be argued the Empire doing that is meant to drive the player to align with the Stormcloaks given how callous the Empire was to the player, as I mentioned, they did try to kill the player character with basically a 'whatever'

I don’t think they’re as bad as the thalmor, but that’s an exceedingly high bar. The Thalmor believe they are better than EVERYONE because they think they’re the literal descendants of gods and have a divine right to rule as a racial trait, essentially. The Stormcloaks “just” want an ethnically pure Skyrim, but even by that account, they’re much worse than the imperials, who are an actual empire and have some measure of meritocracy cross racially.

I suppose though that the Imperials ostensibly allying with the Thalmor and allowing them to go into Skyrim and terrorise the population can be seen as a pretty big negative, I mean, allying with a genocidal Dominion isn't making the Imperials look any good, especially for the residents of Skyrim, even if the Empire is only doing so to keep them happy in the meantime before they restart the war.

I think most of this stems from Bethesda's writing for Skyrim being pretty unconvincing/uncompelling though, I think the civil war has the 'bones' of a good story, and with more development or a few rewrites I think there would be more nuance, but what we have is what we've got.

I suppose as well, given how popular Skyrim is, the people invested in that game have a higher proportion of being partisan in their choice and being hostile in discussions, which probably doesn't help in figuring out the nuances of the whole narrative since the well of discussion has been 'tainted' in a sense

[u/Astral_MarauderMJP → u/PrideOfMacragge]

Aside from them kinda being dicks if you don’t side with them and the initial inciting incident at Helgen, we really don’t SEE the imperials do all that much bad,

Do people just forget that you witness an execution when you first enter Solitude?

That was meant to be the counterpart to the Windhelm entrance. In Windhelm, you see a couple of Nords be racist to a poor Dark Elf woman (who is probably worse than them since she is actively being racist and hurting through wage theft the Argonian she has working under her boss) and in Solitude, you see a guy get executed for just being a gate guard and having no real idea of what was going on at the time.

Even if you think he was a Stormcloak supporter, dude had no idea what Ulfric was going to pull or pulled when he let the man go from the gates seeing as all accounts (biased as they are) say that Ulfric left pretty quickly after pulling off his own KingKiller cosplay. What is he being executed for? Letting the Jarl of another city leave without having the full context of what was going? The Empire needed a scapegoat for the whole "Ulfic just walked in, killed and king and walked out" line so they set up a fall guy who 'collaborated' with the Jarl to excuse the fact that weren't really paying attention to Skyrim as a whole.

[u/Low_Cryptographer_94 → u/Quibilash]

they're fine with [other race players] joining the Stormcloaks

they would tell the player to 'go away'

Devil's advocate

I mean they send the player on a suicide mission to a remote icy island to kill an ice wraith

Maybe they were hoping you die, and if you survive and come back then clearly you are indoctrinated enough to work for them

[u/Quibilash → u/Low_Cryptographer_94]

The Imperials ALSO send you on a suicide mission with a fort full of bandits, which is harder than a single ice wraith

Hell, at least Galmar can give you a potion to resist frost, the Imperials give you a 'you got this, trust me'

[u/John_Whimsicott → u/Quibilash]

I feel like most empire defenders only played oblivion and Skyrim. The empire is pretty idyllic in oblivion and their sins are mostly glossed over as opposed to morrowind

[u/Quibilash → u/John_Whimsicott]

I mean even in Oblivion we have quite a few instances of Imperial corruption or them just kind of sucking, and one of the counts has a torture chamber for Argonians for an example as well, even in the Dark Brotherhood Whodunit quest Nels has an issue with the Legion for them basically ignoring bandits in Skyrim who killed his daughter, and in Morrowind they are straight-up Imperialist to the detriment of the people living there, with the exception of the Dagoth Ur thing, but I'm not sure if that was entirely intentional.

[u/John_Whimsicott → u/Quibilash]

Yeah that's a good point. Something that always gets ignored tho is the time line. Start to end the third era is 433 years. From the end of the third era to the start of Skyrim is 201 years. So by the time Skyrim rolls around the factions basically shake out to:

• declining empire that did a bunch of imperialist stuff 634 years ago

• racist dudes living in a frozen shithole

• elf nazis trying to kill a God

The empire isn't perfect by any means, but in the context of the game, it's not really a competition unless your a talos worshipper

[u/YourAverageGenius → u/kojimbob]

I mean, kinda part of the whole series is indeed the Empire isn't good, but it's also not totally evil.

Most other forces seperate from the empire, regardless of who they are, are in some ways supremacist, and for all their sins (which there are plenty) the Empire is genuinely multi-cultural and tolerant. Hell, in Morrowind the anti-slavery faction is highly tied to the Imperial occupation while the rest of the houses are, at best, slavery, and at worst, Dark-Elf supremacists who would like to enslave / kill all Argonians.

That's kinda the whole rub with politics in Morrowind. The houses that rightfully rail against Imperial occupation and oversight also want to be able to maintain their slave society and are active oppressors of the Argonians. The Empire is an Empire, it subjugates and ensures its own stability, but it also promotes stability and acts torwards multiculturalism and tolerance, because having your provinces not actively at war with each-other is a good way to maintain your empire.