Thomas Shey
Legend
I didn't say the structure itself was a problem. It's an entirely different argument whether using colonialist story structures but removing problematic racial elements remains problematic.
My point was that Orcs may allow the possibility of continuing to use a lot of those story structures without the problematic racial elements - however, because those story structures remain recognisable, sometimes the racial elements start to sneak back in.
It gets into a really complicated issue, because if you remove the problematic elements, it looks a lot like apologism (and, in fact, is at a distance indistinguishable from stories that valorized the practice when it was at its peak). At some points with some things you just have to accept that some things that are fun can be a bad look if you press on them at all or are sensitive to them, and either except that or let them go.