like the thing about sargon in arknights is that hypegryph fucked up right from the getgo, lumping all of africa AND the middle east AND also some of mexico into an imperial power that is, in regards to the minoan conflict, unambiguously the aggressor. if you're on boards with arknights thesis that empire and genocide is bad then sargon is just... the villain. so they made the CONCEPT of africa and the middle east a villain on par with the british, russian, and american empires. like i'm not opposed to the ottomans as villains, they were a big fuckin' empire, but like... we needed MORE diversity representing africa and the middle east.
but even acknowledging that clusterfuck i really don't think we should lump varkaris in with patrizion and skybox? patrizion and skybox's racism is because they are actively involved in supporting racist and colonial regimes. it's not RACISM to hate an occupying imperial force and it kinda makes it harder to talk about racism in any depth (particularly wrt actually FIXING the harm caused by it) if you just sand it down to "hating people from another country". varkaris is just the PRODUCT of existing racism in the writing; he is not in himself any more racist than Titi or Pallas. the NARRATIVE supports racism through the justification of a european man's hatred for Every Arab And African On Terra; but the hatred is not in itself a depiction of racism because of the power dynamics at play.
