NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7868804" data-attributes="member: 996">Prior to the rigid, history-revising Victorians inventing immemorial traditions and standards, English simply lacked standard usage, everything varied with social-class, region, even individual.  We're not returning to that lack of standards, we are changing the standard.  So there is no reversion or resurgence going on:  that would be abandoning standards.  Frankly, English is a pretty nonsensical language, and trading the minor nonsense of using one word for both masculine and indefinite gender in a language comparatively light on gendering, for the minor nonsense of singular/plural disagreement in a language that is otherwise a little more consistent that way (with the prominent, closely-related exception of 'you,' for instance), is not going to make it meaningfully easier for kids growing up to learn to use formally, or ESL students to pick up.But, the crusade to change the standard has not been strictly between two political camps, nor even several.  Simple resistance to change has also been a factor.So I'll stand by my opinion that the 3e approach, which left resistance to change out of the issue by following extant usage in an inclusive way, was a little stroke of genius.I rather like 'one,' that way.  Of course, I also liked passive voice, and got dinged for that a lot in my college writing.  <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937.png" title="Person shrugging    :person_shrugging:" data-shortname=":person_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />Except when there's edition warring, of course, then it's a hotbed of partisan bickering.Because it's not that simple.  If a company chooses a representation disfavored by the majority of their current customer base, that association could lose them business.  So choosing to take that risk, is a political act, as is choosing not to take it.  Of course, as societal mores shift, a given representation can become less of a risk, and, finally, eschewing it can become a risk. When Star Trek presented a somewhat more diverse crew in 1966, that was a bit of a risk.  53 years later, that same level of diversity might be seen as desultory and inadequate.So, even as a political act, a given depiction might be driven by cynical corporate calculus, or by genuine belief in the issue.  (And if the former, there will almost certainly be a press release claiming the latter.)D&D hasn't exactly been in the forefront.  The ERA still looked like it might yet be ratified when D&D capped female fighters' % strength.  Ember made it onto the cover of a D&D supplement the decade after Dante appeared on the cover of the core Mage: the Ascension book.  5e got props for casually referencing a gay marriage the decade after Modern Family put such a couple front & center.Maybe it's nerd culture, or maybe it's the natural conservatism of an already-market-leader, but the bar for inclusivity applied to the world's premier TTRPG seems pretty forgiving.</blockquote>

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