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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8494163" data-attributes="member: 58172">• "A tall human tribesman strides through a blizzard, draped in fur and hefting his axe."The above feels like Germania.• "Many of the lands of the Sword Coast and the North are savage, where day-to-day survival is a struggle. Such lands breed hardy tribes and fierce warriors, such as the Reghed and Uthgardt barbarians of the North and the seafaring Northlanders of the Moonshae Isles and the northernmost reaches of the Sword Coast."This characterization too feels like "Germania", albeit according to the historical racist academic fiction that misrepresented while appropriating from the Nordic ethnicities. On rereading the rest of the citations, maybe it expands beyond Germania. But then the Barbarian descriptions come across as troubling for other reasons.• "A half-orc snarls at the latest challenger to her authority over their savage tribe, ready to break his neck with her bare hands as she did to the last six rivals."Above, the mention of "orc" as a generic primitive seems to trigger a new incarnation of the old unconscious "tribe=savage" racist trope.• "People of towns and cities take pride in how their civilized ways set them apart from animals, as if denying one's own nature was a mark of superiority."The uncivilized ethnicities are "animals", or at least not "set apart from animals"."To a barbarian, though, civilization is no virtue, but a sign of weakness. The strong embrace their animal nature-keen instincts, primal physicality, and ferocious rage."The uncivilized are less human and actually want to be animals. (This is complicated because certain animistic cultures have animalistic spiritual traditions. Nevertheless, the overall conclusion that these cultures are understood as nonhuman is problematic.)• "They thrive in the wilds of their homelands: the tundra, jungle, or grasslands where their tribes live and hunt."The "tundra" feels like a vague misrepresentation of Nordics, as if all Nordics are Berserkar. (As if all Nordics live in the Arctic Circle.) I dont think anyone perceives the Inuit to be rage-fighters.The "jungle" feels like a vague misrepresentation of African nations as savages.The "grasslands" could be various regions in Africa, America, and Eurasia.Mainly, a racist tradition that equates "savage" "primitive" peoples with sub-human rage-fighting is the problem.</blockquote>

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