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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marandahir" data-source="post: 8556168" data-attributes="member: 6803643">I guess the point I'd bounce off from Faolyn's example above is that overfocusing on bad things targeting a specific demographic or gender, even by bad people IN NARRATIVE, can end up reinforcing the bad thing in real life. Abuse and discrimination on the basis of gender and sexuality is a lot trickier for D&D to tackle than racism because fantasy races give a milieu of distance from the real world issue while still being abundantly apparent that enslaving dwarves and breeding them to fight in your gladiatorial arenas is bad and slavery as a concept is bad. It's not an easy topic to explore and probably the most difficult one to tackle within a Dark Sun adaptation. But it's still miles away easier to gracefully deal with than sexual violence is, since gender and sexuality in D&D largely reflects that of our real world, even if historic and present gender dynamics and abuses and predispositions are swept aside for a more neutral and equal approach in most D&D settings. The legacy of the chainmail bikini still carries a lot of problems here, and so a Domain focused on a sexual predator is just as bad as Prince Xizor using his pheremones to manipulate Leia back in Shadows of the Empire. It's not something you want to bring forward into the new editions, even if characters like Kilgrave in Jessica Jones strikes some intense horrors for viewers and certainly for Jessica herself.The difference between Xizor and Jessica Jones is that JJ the show, even if based on a male-written comic book, was strongly female-written and avoids the male gaze stuff like the plague. It doesn't devolve into sexist fantasies because it's about overcoming this horror. It's hard to do that same justice in D&D in a way that isn't demeaning or immediately present for the players at the table because they've all got genders too (we're not all elves or hobgoblins or centaurs, though, so fantasy racism is a WEE bit easier). Sexism is perhaps just a little too close for comfort, and toes the line between fiction and reality, when roleplaying should stay on the side of the fiction.</blockquote>

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