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Message: <blockquote data-quote="transmission89" data-source="post: 8328992" data-attributes="member: 6688441">(Emphasis mine). Excellent, glad you agree with my point that it’s what we bring to it, the subjectivity, not an innate problem with an orc itself.On a less glib note, of course, you’re right, there are bad actors in the hobby, just as there are bad actors in any community. Thankfully, the D&D community as a whole has always represented the most  progressive, welcoming values within the context of any time period’s wider society.To answer your post and the constant language association posts, I can think of no better response than this, which was posted on Reddit on a similar discussion a year ago:“And what you're ignoring, is the reality that a similarity of form, or sharing of an intellectual ancestor is not criteria for apt comparison. There's two things wrong with the case as you've made it.1.) The European cultural black mark of eugenics and race science (is not remotely unique to Europe, but that's a side conversation) does in fact share rhetorical structure with some facets of the way DnD has organized the players of it's world.You must ask yourself though, is that a product of some shadowy specter of racism looming over the cultural products of the West to this day, or is a more apt description that: The particular techniques of organization and codification of patterns and traits into recognizable characters, and employing those as the fundamental structure for understanding the world a ubiquitous and effective technique for conveying information in a manner which is both readily extrapolated from its containing vessel and convenient for reflection of the context in which it is set?I'm certainly inclined to believe the latter, and that the creations of characters and caricatures alike to embody ideas and perceptions about the world is something not in the least unique to race science, and stretching back across all societies in all stories, in fact it is precisely the fundamental substrate of storytelling to create parties within the stories which embody an idea, and it is stories, especially ones told in this manner, which form the bedrock of all human thought, understanding, wisdom, and culture.Though not to downplay the contribution of race science in our perceptions on this manner. While absolutely bankrupt on both the moral and scientific fronts, it is absolutely stunning in the manner with which it equipped European culture with the tools to create as figments of fantasy entire peoples and thus by extensions, histories, lores, traditions, and cultures all their own. It was precisely this revolution of storytelling which cultivated the fertile soil for a retelling of the great European mythos into the vast and encompassing universe of Tolkein and Greyhawk alike even to distant fantasies like Star Trek.You're certainly correct, that the structure of the Canon does in fact hearken back to the race scientists of the eugenics era. It does evoke much of the same tones, but you've failed at the level of analysis. It's not the Canon which sustains the skeletons of our past, from which we may excavate long entombed and dangerous ways of thinking. Instead, it was the race scientists who relied on precisely the same strategies of drama and narrative to pedal their swill to a population yet uninnoculated against the spectacular and revolutionary techniques which would eventually blossom into sweeping lores and worlds that compose Western storytelling today.2.) The argument was [against the idea of orcs being “problematic” ] was never "it's just fantasy bro" the argument, is, and always should be, "the fantasy encodes a much richer message than your crude reduction" which it does.Stories and myths are the great repositories of wisdom and lore across time. They teach, warn, deceive, and enrich all across the world every day, as they have from our earliest dawnings tens of thousands of years ago. In Harry Potter, Olivander describes the work of Voldemort as great, great but terrible.I think is a disgraceful and baldfaced lie, or at the very least blunder of stupendous ignorance to read from a single story one potential untruth in the hands of a spinster and use that as a cudgel with which to beat down the value of any wisdom which may otherwise be extricated or refined. It is even more absurd and shameful, to dismiss an entire canon on the same premise, especially a Canon which has served as the fertile and nurturing bossum of so many great works cultural and personal, in the time it has existed.”And again, I’m going to capitalise this because I don’t want it being missed:THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT D&D DOESNT BENEFIT FROM A WIDER PERSPECTIVE OF AUTHORS FROM ALL ETHNICITIES AND WALKS OF LIFE. A DIVERSE SET OF PEOPLES BRINGS A DIVERSE SET OF IDEAS AND PERSPECTIVES THAT CAN ONLY ENRICH THE FANTASY GAME THAT WE KNOW AND LOVE.</blockquote>

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