I don't find orcs to be a colonialist trope. I think the vast majority of people probably think that is pretty crazy.
Including the vast majority in Kenya, Iran and India?
Including the vast majority of Indigenous Australians, Native Americans and Maoris?
I was recently talking to a friend who was born in South Asia but now lives in Australia. She was expressing shock at the ignorance of British colonialism in Australia (itself an offshoot of British colonialism) compared to the country where she was educated.
When I speak to East Africans, they are not unfamiliar with concepts and imagery of colonialism. It might surprise you, but when they talk about Hollywood stars they focus almost exclusively, and quite unselfconsciously, on Black actors.
I haven't done any sort of systematic survey on any of this - it's not really my field of study - but my anecdotal experience makes me think that your "vast majority" may be located within a rather particular sample of humanity.
Seem to recall discussion of the table and of chainmail bikini type art.
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I am saying people are being a bit puritanical about this stuff in my mind. I think the obvious humor and playfulness is being missed.
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All I am saying is we may want to chill out a bit and realize how some of this stuff is built on layered assumptions that come from pretty deep academic arguments
Frankly, I don't think it requires deep academic argument to note the character of a book that has nothing to say about sex, and frankly almost nothing to say about
women, except that cities and towns all have their fair share of Wanton Wenches et al waiting for (one assumes male) adventurers to do them.
That's playful in the same sense that a Playboy centrefold is playful. I mean, maybe it is, but it's a rather distinctive sort of playfulness, and surelyt it's no great surprise that not everyone sees it quite that way. And of course that latter thought is only compounded by the male rape fantasies found in some of those early White Dwarf adventures that were being discussed upthread.
Is it really puritanical to suggest that RPGing might engage sex and sexuality other than by fantasising about prostitutes who are
really into it?