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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 6046934" data-attributes="member: 9626">Well, let me give it a shot. *cracks knuckles.*The drow demonstrate something bout nerds that I really like. As a general rule, we don't do universally evil races. It seems like as soon as some popular media says, "This race is evil. Absolutely evil in every circumstances. No exceptions," the first thing we do is ask "so what are the GOOD ones like?" Admittedly, they tend to be more about the "sexy" races, like vampires, demons, and the abovementioned drow. But they're just as interested in other species. Sith, orcs, klingons, ogres, killer robots, you name it. Hell, google "friendly dalek" and see what you get.I'm not sure why that is. Maybe geeks, used to stereotypes aimed at them, tend to reject those in others. Or maybe studying the culture and histories of other worlds requires analysis of their own world, where similar stereotypes never tend to work out well.Either way, toss us the drow, and we get Driz'zt and his various clones, the good drow goddess Elistrae, webcomics like Drow Tales, and hell, Yocchi. We turned a capital E Evil race into a fascinating species of dueling political forces and groups, some sympathetic, some not.And then Laws pisses all over it. He practically recites the big book of villain cliches, with the human sacrifices, them being evil even before birth (I like to call that thing Fetal Kombat,) the whole nine yards. He even tried to squelch the common moral issues before the could come up. Like the really creepy party where he gave the A-OK, or even encouraged, the murder of drow children!But this image of the drow doesn't even make sense within the damn rules! For one, drow are portrayed as being intelligent, more so than the average human, but this treats them as practically mindless fanatics. On that note, check their alignment. Usually neutral evil. Does that alignment describe a race of slavish, fanatical devotees to a chaotic evil god? No. The more logical expression of that concept would be a group of cutting, self-interested parties, likely of the scheming Machiavellian sort, reluctantly forced to put up with Lolth and her cultists as a dominant but not ruling faction within their society. Which fits; there are plenty of other drow gods for them to align with, and most of them didn't get them into this mess in the first place.And that's before the elephant in the room. Let's face it: the drow makes us look bad. Even geek-friendly media, like Dr. McNinja or Community, rips on us for them, and that's just the costumes. The drow are not only the only well-known dark skinned race in Dungeons and Dragons, but arguably the only matriarchal. And we had to turn them into a race inherently evil at birth with children you can massacre without hesitation. It's just ... ick. And makes me a little grateful we often make drow with gray, blue, purple, or red skin.The bottom line is, we're better than this. We ask these questions, about what to do with the helpless of ostenably evil races. We respect the virtues of even evil races. And we make them as heroes and show how evil can be redeemed. We turn the one dimensional into something with depth, with internal conflict, often with their own bloody languages. There is no excuse for something this regressive and utterly pointless, except if Law really was being satirical.</blockquote>

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