"Zootopia is constantly asking its characters to look past species stereotypes, and not to use species-ist language or repeat hurtful assumptions. This all seems clever and noble until you realise that all the stereotypes about various animals are to come extent true, in particular the most basic one carnivores eat herbivores because it’s in their nature”
Some Warnings;
This is me going full schitzo-autist on a funny animal movie from 2016, AT LENGTH.
None of my commentary is aimed directly at modern headlines or intra-group relationships, but the parallels are obvious and are absolutely necessary to the film itself, so its impossible to talk about it in detail without mirroring some of that stuff.
So BE WARNED, this is what you are in for. If you don't want to read about that then stop reading!
That's the problem with every setting that's narratively trying to be about racism but at the same time ontologically validates it by making a fantasy ethnic group inherently monstrous. I think the only real way around that is either to just not do the "some fantasy ethnic groups are just ontologically monsters" thing and instead use baseline, normal humans carrying out pogroms as the real monsters (like Shadowrun or BNA), or to just throw away any pretense at having a point like Beastars did where it's just openly a mess of incoherent coding based on the author being horny for Scar from The Lion King.
Me and my endless rewrites of what 40k would look like if I were in charge of the writing team.
Note because it took me a bit: this is a link to a long rambling blog post, not just a screenshot
I didn't read it though because I refuse to learn whether the
is bad or notUgh thank you with the new design I constantly miss that things are links
While I enjoyed the movie when it came out, the more I thought about it after that, the more fucked up it was that the stereotypes were presented as essential natural truths, from the sloths at the DMV to the wolves getting preoccupied with a "howl" (that part was funny and still is, even if I feel bad about it
) to the giant population sign in Bunnybarrow with the rapidly increasing count. 
It's one of those fundamental issues when trying to insert social commentary into a piece of media, it can either all be goofy or it can try and make a real world point, and if it makes a real world point you gotta just put it in the real world or as close to a 1-1 analogue of it.
I remember when I first found out about the shock collars I was all "oh ok that makes sense" and then they like, just didn't have them and suddenly the story just stopped holding up
To it's credit, at least Beastars really tried to focus on the fact that "hey, its gonna be real fucked up if a huge chunk of society is fundamentally built to eat other people."
Or at least the early parts, apparently later it goes really weird? Theres a batman horse?
I didn't know Patrick Stewart was a commie, that's super neat.
I love their gaming stuff. Veins of the Earth is amazing and I've been trying to find a good excuse to drop the derr0 on my players since I read the post in 2014.
