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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8349866" data-attributes="member: 6796468">So... The Thermian Argument is misplaced at best for 4 core reasons and dozens of more minor ones.1) Flesh as we know it doesn't have a myriad of different colors across the spectrum. Feathers, Scales, Chitin, and Hair can have an array of different colors due to the way different chemical compounds suspended in a thin piece of keratin can reflect and refract light, but having those chemicals in flesh to a density that alters the tone of flesh is either damaging or extremely unusual in the requirements to get it to stay a given color. Take Sjorgen's Syndrome or "Papa Smurf" Syndrome. Dry mucosal tissues and eyes, nerve damage, swollen glands, brain fog, dental issues, and chronic coughing. Meanwhile Lycopenemia, orange-red skin from ingesting too much red foods, requires a constant continued intake of red foods to keep your skin that unusual color but has no long term side effects except looking weird. If a creature has Flesh as we understand it (Skin, dermal tissues, fat, muscle, blood) it's gonna be somewhere on a scale from albino to hypermelanistic with very few outlying options caused primarily by environmental interactions.2) Unless your D&D world has a drastically different surface environment than Earth (And pretty much every D&D Setting is just Earth with Different Geography) where humans, dogs, monkeys, deer, and foxes have "Evolved" in the same way as on Earth, there's no significant environmental expectation for Purple six-armed elves with a single eye in their forehead. 3) The Gods are generally the ones creating all the player races rather than actual evolution. Which, y'know, -explains- why the worlds are all earth-like and have dogs and foxes and otters and bears and stuff.4) You're trying to use a discussion of Alien Life to discount the possibility of players enjoying an environment where they have representations of themselves in a fantasy setting. Like. Maybe you enjoy a situation where you can flick on a TV Screen or pop open a Fantasy Novel and be abjectly certain that SOMEONE on that screen or in that narrative is gonna look like or be like you in enough ways for you to envision yourself in that role, but it ain't that way for the rest of us most of the time. And using infantilizing speech such as "This seems to me to be kind of silly. Why do we have an emotional stake in peoples that are imaginary?" is just the cherry on top for the dismissive ice-cream sundae.People crave representation. That's all. Enjoy your settings where you get into ridiculously wild crazy stuff. Lots of people will. But that's massively irrelevant to the actual question of people wanting to play characters who are like themselves.</blockquote>

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