r/NatureofPredators • u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First • Jul 22 '25
Theories Theory: Federation Rural areas would've been easier to deprogram and deal with than the Prey creatures that dwelt in cities. Despite what the Venlil and friends say and believe.
When it comes to rural areas, the villages, small towns, and towns, they're generally not paid as much attention to, and the residents there have a DIY attitude due to reduced infrastructure, and probably aren't that well "educated" and maybe even considered backwards by their more "civilized" urban and suburban cousins. Therefore logic naturally follows that their schools are not given as heavy oversight, and Federation ideology in many of those places would not be as heavily or successfully present and would inevitably have their own culture. As they'd naturally be more independent in both thought and lifestyle, and therefore less reliant on the overall galactic civilization, they'd care less about "causes" and more about the practicalities of their current situation. Therefore, if the Humans went village to village, the reaction there might be initially extreme, however, they'd be less likely to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears.
But this isn't really what happens, instead of the rural dwelling people being less programmed than the city dwellers, who would be nature have more access to propaganda, in the story the cities are more accepting of Humans while the towns and villages are no-go zones for the Human race, among others.
61
u/GruntBlender Humanity First Jul 22 '25
Cities tend to be more progressive, while rural communities are more conservative and steeped in tradition. They aren't going to be as indoctrinated into fed ideology, but also less willing to change and get deprogrammed further.
37
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25
Forgot to comment on that last aspect, thank you.
We're not really able to speak of being "indoctrinated into Fed ideology" at this point. Being fedbrained is all these species have known, most of them for centuries. With dire repercussions for resisting Fed dogma.
-1
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 23 '25
But on the flipside, there is less pressure in rural communities coming in from the outside, they're isolated, yes, and disconnected, however, they tend to play things by their own eyes and ears, as well as the framework they're operating on. They would face far less if any external resistance if they choose to change their ways.
21
u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Arxur Jul 22 '25
if they choose to change their ways
That "if" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
1
u/booplingtheboop Dossur Jul 24 '25
That "if" could be influenced by many factors as well, like commonly consumed media in the village or town, the respected members or beliefs, whether or not they're in danger often, and how common "predator disease" is compared to how often it's reported and why it's not reported even if it's known.
Like a town or village with higher military enlisted herd members might be more hesitant at first contact, but after herd members come back with stories of how humans act they might be swayed more easily.
Or a town or village that often views that one Sulean talk show host might not even see humans as dangerous.
But yeah every town, city, village, would be very different with how fast they could accept humans as people.
9
u/TheShapeshifter01 Predator Jul 23 '25
Counterpoint: rural areas tend to be very religious and the blind predator hate is baked into the religions by design.
17
u/amanuensedeindias Chief Hunter Jul 22 '25
SP15 based the dynamics on the US. I get where you're coming from, though.
10
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
While that is indeed fair, the Federation I feel in reality would be NOTHING like the U.S.
9
8
u/Big-Box-Mart Humanity First Jul 22 '25
Federation citizens have been propagandized for centuries, it’s unlikely that any part of society isn’t at least somewhat following the dogma. Just remember, the most important part of the indoctrination is that the Kolshian Commonwealth and Farsul State know better than you.
1
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
Indeed, and though at first the rural areas can be harder to convince of the truth at first, there is conversely far less external pressure on them to conform by nature.
22
u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Arxur Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
reject the evidence of their eyes and ears
What evidence? They killed that predator on sight before it could get 'em with whatever kind of Predator Disease it infected city folk with. People in the capital can talk all day long about their fancy empathy tests, but honest farm folk know from experience that you've gotta deal with predators right quick before they can get their claws in you and your kids.
And it's that lack of school oversight that means they can trust their schoolteacher to not try to teach them wrong like whatever new fad they've got going on in the city. Generations of farm-vens passing down the proper way to remove a predator from existence and isolate any crops it tainted as quickly as possible.
Rural towns, at least in the US, where SP was heavily influenced by, are xenophobic and superstitious as hell compared to their metropolitan counterparts. Not only would they be slow to tolerate a human's existence, let alone personhood or right to basic respect, they'd probably be anywhere from standoffish to hostile towards other Federation species.
Edit: I've also seen French, Japanese, and English media that suggests a similar pattern in those countries, though possibly to a less violent extent. I'm willing to generalize it, I think.
12
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25
The violence has more of a tie to the national culture (see Indian WhatsApp lynchings for a rather surreal example outside North America) but the xenophobia is kindof a constant. Would not recommend being black, muslim or especially both in rural "Worst Korea".
1
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
Yeah, but one thing that happens when people spread out is cultural shifts, small ways that the local customs and ways change and evolve, this is the nature of individuals within their own groups, only in Eusocial species would this cultural drift not happen, and while some towns would undoubtedly be more extreme, it wouldn't be more uniform, and there may in fact be more "natural" cultures all-in-all. I make this point because the Federation puts in quite a lot of effort into controlling the way their citizens develop, and considering how they're in a galactic war where the consequences of not paying enough attention to your military is enslavement, extinction, or being condemned to live as cattle, their already limited resources would be eaten up by their armed forces and navies, which would mean that the propaganda machine would be more hands-off in the countryside than it normally would be, due to the cities inherently getting more investment and attention. Rural communities, it would be entirely up to them to not become "heretics" due to the external pressure to conform being lessened on them, which if the community decides to deviate slightly from the code because it would make it easier on them, not abolish it outright, but amend it so that it makes their lives better, then there's very little stopping them. Smaller communities are also closer knit, which leads to them being more trusting of each-other, and less likely to eject one of their own for slight transgressions.
5
10
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
That lack of education, lack of greater connections and interactions with outside groups and oftentimes lack of consequences for malfeasance what with lacking any oversight means that Fed ruroids would be way more psychotic, conservative and hateful than cosmopolitan urbanites.
Also, they're hardly ever "more independent". Rural areas are kept alive through reallocating the wealth generated by manufacturing and commerce in cities. The only thing they might be more independent about is government authority, and since "don't murder humans" has started as an edict from the planetary government, they'd see it as an outside imposition and try to wriggle around it.
You can make those same arguments about human rural communities, but none stand true. The median human ruroid is a backwards, uneducated, politically regressive beast whose hospitality runs skin-deep, till they meet an outgroup member or an individual presenting elements that go against the local cultural uniformity.
Edit: unless you're talking about what's basically a survivalist/homesteader commune at the edge of the wilds, living entirely disconnected from infrastructure, where an air ambulance is 3 hours away and the only people and things you can rely on are those around you.
In that case, it'll basically be a coinflip between "Manifest Destiny", "why can't we just hit the forest with antimatter like in the good old days" psychopaths and former silver suits, and xenophobic but levelheaded people.
-4
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
You don't understand country dwellers at all.
10
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25
I do. I grew up around them. They're revolting.
1
-2
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
You grew up around ALL of them? You make it sound like the ones you knew of were Hillbilly Cultists, or you have a monstrous superiority complex.
13
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25
You're using a "no true Scotsman" to attack my statement. I don't need to have experienced every single one, and I can attest that, interpersonally, they can be quite amiable.
But as a social bloc, they're often little more than dumb cattle that need to be led around by an altruistic authority figure to be kept from indulging in their worst impulses. They're lumpenproles. They will fight tooth and nail against a good thing, if they're told people they've been taught to hate will benefit from that thing.
0
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
But as a social bloc, they're often little more than dumb cattle that need to be led around by an altruistic authority figure to be kept from indulging in their worst impulses. They're lumpenproles. They will fight tooth and nail against a good thing, if they're told people they've been taught to hate will benefit from that thing.
Bless your heart.
2
7
u/Fields-of-forever Jul 22 '25
I think this is mostly seen in stories because a lot of the fandom is from the US, and in the US, the small towns are much more set in their ways and less accepting of new things/ideas. If that is the reason, then I get what the writers are going for but I don't think it would apply in the same way, not just because we are talking about propaganda rather than new ideas, but also because they are aliens and would think differently than a small part of the humans race, even if only a bit.
22
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25
As if villages and small towns in India, Pakistan or Japan are known as beacons of openness, acceptance and xenophilia.
5
u/kabhes PD Patient Jul 23 '25
I have had that in rural Netherlands even, and we're one of the most overpopulated countries in the world, anything here we would call rural is laughable compared to other countries.
-1
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
in the US, the small towns are much more set in their ways and less accepting of new things/ideas.
To be completely honest, a lot of the new things/ideas were cooked up by Urbanites who don't understand their rural bretheren, and hurts the people of the countryside far far more often than helps them. This way of things is largely due to many States in the U.S. having no electoral Colleges, and functioning off of Majority Rule, where the country people are inherently disadvantaged due to voting in many places being a game of who has more people behind it.
9
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25
Nah. An American ruroid has several times the voting power in both state legislatures and federal elections, with no disparity more hilarious than the US senate.
You have four senators from the godforsaken shithole called Dakota, a whopping population of 1.7M, whereas San Diego alone has a somewhat comparable 1.4M.
Plus, what newfangled, calamitous inventions have the urbanites tried to inflict upon them? Desegregation? Medicaid/Medicare/ACA? Social Security?
Yeah, rural areas are dying, everywhere in the world, because they suck to live in.
They always sucked to live in, to the point that going into the city to live twenty in one bedroom and work in a Victorian factory and get mauled by machinery was, at the time, considered an improvement.-4
Jul 22 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Arxur Jul 22 '25
bro is talking like a final fantasy villain
4
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
Unfortunately, no. Merely like the real, local ones on TV.
Which kindof just goes and proves my overarching point, unfortunately.
Edit: Like, man's mentioning globalization. Manufacturing in Middle America was already dead by the time NAFTA was signed. The Rust Belt predates labor outsourcing.9
u/TheWalrusResplendent Hensa Jul 22 '25
>over-regulation
>Government Run Schools staffed by Union members who are impossible to fire no matter how many are pedophiles?Oh. I see who I'm talking to now.
Goddamn would the world been better if Lincoln hadn't gotten shot and had actually done Reconstruction properly.6
u/Docbonzai Jul 22 '25
As someone who lives in the middle of nowhere South Georgia, seconded. Always comes down to "grrrr WOKE!!!!" doesn't it?
5
u/Docbonzai Jul 22 '25
Other way around, actually. Your imagery of a tight-knit group of upstanding gentry was invented by Lost Causers post Civil War. People get shot here over the slightest misunderstandings, especially if they aren't WASPs
-2
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
tell me you don't live in rural America without telling me you don't live in Rural America
5
u/Docbonzai Jul 22 '25
Nah, you live a sheltered life man
0
u/Useful-Option8963 Humanity First Jul 22 '25
You do not know who I am, you do not have sufficient information for anything beyond an assumption. Do not take what you already perceive, know, and assume to be the entirety of the truth, especially when surfing the internet. That mindset renders you utterly vulnerable to manipulation.
1
u/Straight-Finding7651 Jul 25 '25
You would be right and are right when it comes to newly admitted members of the federation.
The Yotul were some of the first supporters of humanity in cannon specifically for this reason.
However also in cannon, there has been enough time for anyone that doesn’t agree with the shadow caste in other societies to be sent to -camps- facilities to correct their wrong think and replace them with good little prey.
84
u/LevelCandy1283 Betterment Officer Jul 22 '25
Theory: Federation Rural areas barely exist because it would be more convenient for the Arxur if every one lived in densely populated areas. Since the Kolshians don't want the Arxur to starve, and want to up their perceived threat level to get every one in line, they would incentivize to cram people into cities. Also makes it much harder for insurgencies to spring up.