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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8530197" data-attributes="member: 22779">Thank you and I most certainly am not taking anything you said personally.  Been very even handed.  ((I'm rather guilty of not being very good at not sounding accusatory - which is why I try to add disclaimers when I remember. ))Well, frankly, I'm not really sure a "creative solution" is needed to be honest.  Other than, "don't do this anymore."  Sure, it's a bit blasé and a bit boring, but, it gets to the point and moves us forward.  Don't depict orcs using the same language that was used to describe minorities.  Don't depict humanoids as monolithically evil.  It's more a "hey, y'know this stuff that's been done in the genre so often that it's not even questioned?  Yeah, don't do that."  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I know that's not really terribly exciting, but, I don't think we need exciting really.  The fact that speculative fiction as a genre has finally realized that for most of its history, it's been a cesspit of bigotry is really the main step here.  Sure?  Who cares?Does it somehow justify the racism and bigotry of the genre because Romans did it?  I mean, I'm certainly not going to look to the Romans for a source of morality.  Again, it's not the problem that orcs are evil.  Or orcs have negative characteristics.  After all, LOTS of creatures in D&D are evil and it's not a problem.  It's that the language used to describe orcs is directly parallel with the language that was, and still is in some parts, to describe black people and various other minorities.  It's not really all that complicated.  If, upon reading the description of a fantasy race, you can then turn to some Jim Crow era text and the descriptions are nearly word for word identical - don't do that.I'm frankly not sure how much more clear it needs to be.</blockquote>

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