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<blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 8508986" data-attributes="member: 7030755">The trope of the Arab slaver is centuries-old.&nbsp; It was ubiquitous in 19th century European culture, used as an indication of their &quot;barbarism,&quot; and as a justification for European intervention and colonialism.&nbsp; It was a way for British, French, and other empires to claim the moral high ground and present themselves as more &quot;civilized&quot; than the places they were colonizing (the irony was lost on them).&nbsp; As I mentioned above, the harem held particular fascination for Europeans.&nbsp; These tropes find their way into pulp literature and fantasy and continue to do so.&nbsp; For example, think of the slavers bay in game of thrones.It's very possible to use tropes without fully meaning to or being able to totally account for their presence.&nbsp; I don't just mean racist tropes, but any number of different kinds of stock figures and genre conventions.&nbsp; Someone who's never read/watched LotR or played dnd will still, somehow, have an idea of what an &quot;elf&quot; or &quot;dwarf&quot; is like that is strikingly similar to modern fantasy conventions, for example.&nbsp; Dnd has certainly become like that--it incorporates and changes all of these creatures and stories from a grab bag of world mythology until their actual origins are forgotten or obscured.&nbsp; That's fine actually, but analysis can delve into their origins without making any claims about what various authors of the MM intended or not.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Malmuria, post: 8508986, member: 7030755"] The trope of the Arab slaver is centuries-old. It was ubiquitous in 19th century European culture, used as an indication of their "barbarism," and as a justification for European intervention and colonialism. It was a way for British, French, and other empires to claim the moral high ground and present themselves as more "civilized" than the places they were colonizing (the irony was lost on them). As I mentioned above, the [I]harem[/I] held particular fascination for Europeans. These tropes find their way into pulp literature and fantasy and continue to do so. For example, think of the slavers bay in game of thrones. It's very possible to use tropes without fully meaning to or being able to totally account for their presence. I don't just mean racist tropes, but any number of different kinds of stock figures and genre conventions. Someone who's never read/watched LotR or played dnd will still, somehow, have an idea of what an "elf" or "dwarf" is like that is strikingly similar to modern fantasy conventions, for example. Dnd has certainly become like that--it incorporates and changes all of these creatures and stories from a grab bag of world mythology until their actual origins are forgotten or obscured. That's fine actually, but analysis can delve into their origins without making any claims about what various authors of the MM intended or not. [/QUOTE]

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