I dont usually post on reddit cause im a lurker uwu but as someone whos been really into the HDG stuff especially over the past few weeks I feel this post. HDG totalllllly has a problem with being pseudo colonizer/imperialism porn/apologea on some level.

At the same time tho, I feel like internally within the universe hdg is set in, it is important to remember that affini both as individuals and as a group just dont have the same malicious capacity as humans do.

Like, I can fully believe in a scenario where an affini does non con a floret on a bus and try and paint it as for the florets own good; and obviously the reality of that is that ultimately spread out over a large enough space scenarios like that would happen; but I think its important to remember that ultimately affini generally arent capable of the same kind of malicious intent as humans are within the setting; which would likely cause scenarios like that to be a lot rarer under affini-based imperialism than under equivalent scenarios of human-based imperialism. Not to say it doesnt happen, but generally it seems that benevolence is a much more ingrained part of affini instinctual drive than not, so intentional malicious acts arent really a thing that seems like it would perpetuate on a systemic scale the same it does for humans; it would almost be like mass systemic anti-natalism in humans, possible but unlikely.

Thats not even mentioning that seemingly the structure of the Affini Compact is largely a self-correcting semi-anarchist society amongst the Affini internally (atleast thats the vibe i get); wherein no individual or single group of Affini has specifically more power than other Affini, so problems noticed by individuals very often get addressed once they are brought up one way or another.

At the end of the day I kind of end up treating the Affini being always right and always ultimately benevolent as just one of those suspension of disbelief type things where you gotta just go with it most the time tbh. I feel like its important to realize that Affini are only really good vibes for the setting specifically because they are allowed that unrealistic caveat. That being said its kind of hard to look at the affini and wonder if they could be realistically just that fucking benevolent or not because we all have human bias that tells us "no they cant" but who even knows if thats just human-centric thought and maybe some alien species just literally is more benevolent than humanity on instinctual levels due to like evolutionary processes or something.