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People Farms: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}
{{quote|'''Morpheus''': The machines had found...all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, Neo... endless fields... where human beings are no longer 'born.' We are grown.|''[[The Matrix]]''}}
Want to show that the bad guys (or possibly the [[Alien Invasion]]) are really, truly ''[[Complete Monster|evil?]]'' Want them to cross the [[Moral Event Horizon]] without having to do much work? Want them to just terrify everybody into oblivion? Easy! Just state—or really heavily imply—that they breed humans like livestock, or keep them like animals in vast '''People Farms'''. Their purpose needn't be specified. [[To Serve Man|Eating us?]] Harvesting [[Our Souls Are Different|our souls?]] [[Baby Factory|Being bred]] for our skills in magic? [[Human Resources]]? Because they [[Rule 34|like to watch]]? Doesn't matter. Just the implication is enough to [[Squick]] people.
While it's true that humans are just another species of animal on this [[Insignificant Little Blue Planet]], we tend to think ourselves above mere ''animals''—among other things, we believe that all of us have an inherent right to freedom, safety from imprisonment without due cause, or abuse both physical and emotional. '''People Farms''' play to lots of [[Primal Fear]]s and [[Squick]]s at once—fear of imprisonment, enslavement, death (if we get treated to a [[Deadly Euphemism|culling]] of unfit stock), rape (if there's a "breeding program" going on, which participants have no choice in), and the general sense of being controlled. If it's our fellow humans doing this, you can be certain that their contempt for their fellow men is absolute. If it's an alien race, you know they obviously didn't get the memo that [[Humans Are Special]]. Of course, other sapient species can be substituted for humans, provided that they're sympathetic.
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* ''Never Let Me Go'' by Kazuo Ishiguro is another work with clones-as-organ-donors. The protagonists get to live a semi-normal life before it's time for their donations (thanks to {{spoiler|being raised at an experimental school whose owners are trying to prove that clones have souls}}), but it's implied that most clones aren't so lucky.
* The short story "A Distant Sound of Hammers" takes place in a post-[[Zombie Apocalypse]] world where zombies are so widespread (and church-promoted!) that normal humans are treated as animals and kept in pens inside gigantic slaughterhouses to be kept for food production.
* A downright horrifying example in the ''[[Sword of Truth]]''. Confessors, when they take mates, lose control of their powers during sex and confess their mates. Those Confessed mates have to ''kill'' any sons they've begotten, because, as ugly as this whole situation is, Male Confessors are the next best thing to an Eldritch Horror (though the series has some of those too).
** What the Sisters of the Light might have been doing with Taminura. YMMV whether it was intentional or merely a nice side-effect of their incompetent policies on raising wizards.
* Warren Rochelle's ''[[The Wild Boy]]'', where humans were bred and kept like dogs to breed them for empathic abilities.
* In ''Kur of [[Gor]]'' the Kur (an alien race) have bred humans for food so much that they almost could be considered another species. The food-humans are penned and are barely sentient, more like two-footed cattle. Even so, many Kur don't like the taste of human, preferring tarsk ([[Call a Smeerp a Rabbit|pig]]) or verr (goat).
* In the novels "''In Death Ground''" and "''The Shiva Option''" by David Weber and Steven White the invading aliens are a classic example of this trope.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* In ''[[Cthulhu Tech]]'' the Rapine Storm hasn't much use for the asian human masses that it conquers,
* The [[New World of Darkness]]'s UK has the Blood Farm, run by a mortal businessman with absolutely no morals and extensive knowledge of the country's vampire communities. He keeps his operation stocked with asylum seekers, who are brought in, kept in horrendous conditions, and slowly bled dry. It's implied that elder vampires use the Farm as a lesson to neonates. If they're queasy about having to attack people for blood, they'll be set up with packages from the Blood Farm for a few months... and then the elders spare no detail in telling them where it comes from.
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* [[Evil Overlord|Demon King]] Gil from ''[[Rance III]]'' had some because the power of the [[Chosen One]] is inversely proportional to the amount of people alive. She had to keep the human population up, so that the [[Chosen One]] would have no chance.
* The Desians in ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' keep "Human Ranches." The protagonist's [[Doomed Hometown]] is so doomed because his best friend befriends an old lady from the ranch, and brings her food—and the rule around town is, [[Town with a Dark Secret|you don't mention the Human Ranches and they won't mention you]]. {{spoiler|The people are used to make the [[Power Gem|ability-enhancing exspheres]] the Desians - and the protagonists - use}}
* One of the nastiest sidequests in ''
** The [[Mind Screw]] conclusion leaves open the possibility that the conspiracy really ''was'' delusional paranoia, and that killing the gnome and his 'agent' marks your own descent into the same insanity. Even so, the [[Gray and Gray Morality]] dampens the horror of it—even if it is true, half-ogre bodyguards tend to be better treated, better educated, and achieve social status that no other half-ogres have access to. And it's suggested that stopping the violent and homicidal persecution of gnomes excused the callous abduction and rape of women early in the foundation of the program.
* In the video game ''[[Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds]]'' (based on the music based on [[The War of the Worlds (novel)||the book]]) this is required for various applications in the war machines the aliens use. When playing as the aliens you actually have to BUILD human farms to draw the proper amount of blood. It isn't implied that they're killed, and in fact since you * are* basically the supreme overlord of the attacking aliens, you could basically say "They're not being killed to draw it out. They're just being...
* The Combine Empire from ''[[Half-Life (series)|Half-Life]]'' transforms a large
* The batarians in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' have some of these, though they're never actually seen. Liberating one and seeing what happened there was enough to turn a model soldier into a stumbling drunk.
** {{spoiler|The [[Eldritch Abomination|Reapers]] have them beat, though. The batarians have a few worlds. The Reapers use the ''entire galaxy''.}}
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* A sort-of example that's distressing nonetheless: In nineteenth-century America, some owners of slaves would rape their female slaves, then sell the children. Still, others would hire out other people to rape their slaves ''for'' them, then do the same. Extremely rare but true was the practice of "breeding" slaves on farms. This troper almost had a bout of [[Post-Historical Trauma]] upon finding this out.
** It's a full example. While households or agriculture-oriented plantations in the United States and Brazil only produced slaves as a side business (if perhaps a very enthusiastic and profitable side business), after the importation of slaves was made illegal in the US there were actual full
** It wasn't that uncommon to marry field slaves to each other based on size and strength, so that good laboring genes wouldn't be wasted on producing children of merely average work potential—or, if not taking that much of an active role, then at least claim veto power over any couples that formed naturally between slaves if the owner had other plans for them. Post Historical Trauma indeed.
** [[Chris Rock|"What effect did this have? Can you say National Football League?"]]
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