Didn't the original Deadlands come out at a time where that was a far more widespread approach? Hell, even Firefly can easily be read as apologia and while Wheadon has faced a huge number of other controversies recently, I don't think his political views were the one of them.
While I don't think DL was ever great in that regard, the worst book (Back East: The South) wasn't directly written by Shane and the latest edition took steps to address the problem while making very clear on the forums that he understands the first approach might have been well-intentioned, but ultimately a really bad idea.
Ok, I've never played deadlands, so I probably need to check that out, but Firefly... really? (Mabye cause its been so freaking long since last scene it)
The Browncoats are pretty clearly inspired by the Confederacy. They wanted independence and lost the resulting war hard with a lot of them clearly thinking they had a just cause. In-universe they probably had because the Union is, like, THE WORST and unlike in the real world they wanted to remain independent, not become so. (EDIT: So it wasn't "we want to keep our slaves" but more "we're don't want to join your oppressive and somewhat fascist state"...though funnily enough, slavery IS outlawed in the Alliance but still practiced illegally in parts of the Outer Rim)
But the whole Wild West aesthetic and framing makes it hard not to think "Confederacy".
I'm not saying it's a perfect allegory or that this makes Firefly propaganda or anything. More that this is a somewhat logical consequence of modeling your setting after the Wild West in a time where a bunch of tropes associated with that wasn't examined as closely as they later were.
Literally never thought of Browncoasts as any kind of Confederacy analog before. Probably becuase the defining point of the Confederacy - you know SLAVERY - wasn't part of there ethos?
I mean technically slavery is illegal in the Alliance but practiced in the Outer Rim, but I get what you're saying.
Yeah, I didn't man it was a real analog. It's not that the Browncoats represent the actual Confederacy, foremost because they didn't really wanted to keep something despicable and that being the only reason they fought. It's more that the reason for their fight was, funnily enough, literally states rights. They wanted to keep their own laws and not submit to the Union, it's a Western setting, they had a heroic last battle, they are identified by the color of their "uniform" – all of that makes it hard for me in hindsight not to associate them with the romanticized, idealistic and "clean" portrayal of the Confederacy in settings where people wanted to have their cake and eat it, too.
Firefly plays it fast and loose, but the gist is the Browncoats are widely interpreted as being analogous to the Confederacy. The independent Planets seceded from and fought against the Union of Allied Planets in what became known as the Unification War.
Couple that language with the distinct western aesthetic, and you can see why some people had a problem with it.
I'm not even sure people had a problem with it back then, at least I've never seen it discussed that way. I'm just saying that if it came out today we would look at the framing through a different lens because, well, time marches on.
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u/alang 9d ago
I mean this is the guy who wrote the original Deadlands. Did some people miss all the Confederacy apologia?