(Shadowrun 3e) Shadows of North America

 Man, I have seriously spent the last two weeks compulsively doomscrolling. To the point where I was reading approximately 3-4 pages of Shadows of North America per day. Which is a shame, because I could really have used the escapism that comes from reading about a utopian future where the CDC is privatized, but allowed to remain functional as an independent non-profit research organization, because seriously, the megacorporations are monsters, but they live on this planet too and it's to no one's benefit that deadly pandemics be allowed to spread without any attempt at monitoring or mitigation. 

Okay, the corporate support for an independent CDC was part of a scheme to weaken the WHO, but still . . . a world where the ultra rich need to provide a viable alternative if they want to sabotage the WHO . . . sigh.

Nah, I'm not about to wax poetic about how Shadowrun's cyberpunk universe is actually better than our grim reality. Because it's not, not really. UCAS President Kyle Haeffner is pushing an executive action that would restore full citizenship to 300,000 "provisional citizens" and that's sort of the opposite of our current trajectory, but what it really means is that their government destroyed the 14th amendment a generation ago. They've already experienced the low point that we're hurtling towards.

To the degree that cyberpunk seems preferable to reality, it's only because reality does not need to have a coherent narrative, whereas in fiction, every detail is included for a reason. For example, the book is making a thematic point about the bizarre pettiness of authoritarian nationalism when it tells us that Aztlan tried to unilaterally rename the Gulf of Mexico. 

And while I could worry at my anxieties by searching for parallels between the text and real life, that would be dramatically missing the point. Shadows of North America dabbles at social commentary, but it's mostly just a fantasy. Magic happened. Elves and Orks and Dragons appeared. Now North America has 13 countries instead of two. 

Which isn't to say the book lacks a political point of view, or that this point of view isn't worth examining, just that the fantastic elements are doing a lot of heavy lifting here. This future is not a natural, organic transition from present trends. There was a break in the normal flow of history. The Native Americans used magic to defeat the US and Canadian governments and this magic was so decisive that said governments abandoned millions of citizens, vital infrastructure, entire watersheds, mineral resources, and military equipment up to and including nuclear submarines. And then, afterwards, the US and Canada merged into a single nation, despite no one in the real world actually wanting this merger to take place (with one extremely dumb exception). 

Now, I don't want to make the mistake of thinking of this as a plot hole. There's a part of me that thinks that no government would ever surrender the headwaters of the Missouri and Arkansas rivers. Just from a realpolitik perspective, the government(s) you surrendered them to would have an unbelievable leverage. Stopping a hostile power from being able to unilaterally dictate land-use policy for your central agricultural region is something that is, from a security and sovereignty perspective, worth sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives. It's hard to imagine a magical ritual that's more destructive than that.

BUT, imagine it we must, because that's the premise of the book. Whatever the Great Ghost Dance was, it was more frightening than the prospect of mass famine as a weapon of war, more expensive than 10 million square kilometers of land, and more of a humanitarian disaster than the forced displacement of millions of people. And if it sometimes seems like the Ghost Dance, as described, was less severe than that, then I think we just have to imagine the Ghost Dance was worse than it was described.

This discussion is not just about justifying my suspension of disbelief, however. It's also a prelude to my main takeaway re: this book's editorial point of view. The glib version: decolonization won't make people any less terrible.

On the one hand, there is a certain cynical wisdom to this. We are all made of the same stuff and power is a hell of a drug. There is no reason to think that redrawing a few borders will automatically liberate people from racial and ethnic chauvinism, capitalist greed, or imperialist ambition. 

On the other hand - c'mon, what are you thinking, FASA, really? You're depicting the Tsimshian and the Tlingit as ruthless authoritarians who treat the Haida as second-class citizens, corruptly allow the Mitsuhama corporation to despoil their ancestral homelands, and who launched an unprovoked war against the Salish using a deadly biological weapon. Also, you claim that the fictional, future versions of these people will perform the ritual murder of slaves at their Potlach ceremonies.

And that last thing, in particular, is a good example of the dangers of doing research without actually engaging your empathy or awareness of context. Because there are documented occasions of that sort of thing happening, historically. And I imagine, that if you're reading a book about the cultural practices of the Tlingit people, it's a situation that will fix itself to your memory. But to have it happen again, in 2062, you have to ignore pretty much everything that happened to the Tlingit and Tsimshian in the intervening centuries. You have to assume, basically, that the white government of Canada was holding them back and that as soon as they were freed from the yoke of colonialist domination, they reverted to their true "barbaric" nature. It's gross, and irresponsible worldbuilding. Maybe even active slander.

I'm pretty sure that the motive was just "let's translate this stuff we read in an anthropological text into sci-fi terms," but I strongly doubt the objectivity of the source (it describes Potlatch as "a contest between materialistic families to see who could destroy the most wealth" which is a big yikes from me). And the choice to make these particular people act in this particular way struck me as uncomfortably racialized.

My main point of evidence - the Confederation of American States. Look, Oklahoma was a territory and Missouri stayed with the Union, but even with those additions, the roster of successionist states tells a very specific story. Thoroughly unconvincing narrative ass-pulls aside ("The easiest way to start a fight down here is to call someone a Confederate rather than a Confederationist" - yeah, sure), these guys are very clearly recreating the Confederacy. And yet, "The days of General Lee, chattel slavery, and cotton plantations is long past."

Now, I think we can all agree that this is an extremely necessary bit of grace, but I want you to focus on the sigh of relief you felt when you learned this wasn't going to be as bad as it could have been. Why didn't the Tlingit and the Tsimshian get a similar experience?

In the book's defense (though I want you to know in advance that this is meant to be the sort of weak, tenuous defense that sets up a criticism later on) it is laboring under something I choose to call "The World of Darkness Problem." If you're deliberately setting out to create a bleak, cynical world, then on some level inclusion means finding bleak and cynical takes on the people you're including.

And if you enjoy the overall work, I don't think you necessarily want your representation to be an exception to the mood. "Sorry, Tlingit, you're not allowed to be rat bastards because we think you're too precious for that. Villain-core is for white people only." Like, being bad is part of the fun. I know, as a bisexual man, my Vampire: the Masquerade characters are always one or two poor choices away from being offensively stereotypical sex freaks. It's something I take pains to tamp down, but I get the appeal.

The reason I call it "The World of Darkness Problem" is because it's extremely difficult to do the fun kind of villain-core on someone else's behalf. Particularly for a marginalized group, there is an expression of badness that reflects the group's repressed frustrations and may enable catharsis via a villainous character, and there is an expression of badness that reflects the dominant group's hurtful beliefs about the people they oppress, thereby validating that oppression in the eyes of bigots. Are you a skillful enough writer to thread the needle? Probably not.

There is not a doubt in my mind that there are some Lakota roleplayers out there who would relish the opportunity to play xenophobic border patrol special forces that hunt down and terrorize white mages who trespass in the Black Hills. Now, imagine meeting these people and saying to their face, "Before you drop in and make a mistake that gets you scalped, scan these notes on the major shadow players."

I mean, damn.

I remember, approximately 20 years ago, when I first got this book, the premise intrigued me. There was a sense I had that the land did not have to (and probably shouldn't have) given rise to America, and that there were other nations that could have grown out of this soil, if not for the interference of the Europeans. And so, a new map of the continent, one where the borders surrounded indigenous names, was something I was eager to see. Looking back, I was racist enough that I framed it as "what would the Sioux or the Ute or the Pueblo Indians look like if they founded modern states." But I think, as Eurocentric as I was, both my curiosity and FASA's wildly out of pocket worldbuilding were premised on a benign idea - that these people should have been given a chance.

Where Shadows of North America loses me is that Shadowrun's apparent answer to "what would they have done if they got the chance" is apparently "they'd have screwed it up, just like everyone else in this cyberpunk universe." I don't think that's something the writers have earned.

Ukss Contribution: This is a tough one for me, because I don't think this book is malicious. But it is sloppy and careless, and I don't think there's a level of naivety that excuses you from promulgating racial caricatures. I was a bit offended on behalf the Tsimshian and Tlingit, but even then I'm sure the process was just "one of these Native American Nations has to be really dysfunctional, for balance" and they just drew the short straw.

I think, a year ago, I'd have let this one pass with just a finger wag, but part of the doomscrolling that so delayed this post was the Trump administration's attack on Native American citizenship, and it really doesn't feel good being lenient, given the circumstances.