To bring it back on topic, that's why so many people don't want a new Dark Sun release to deny itself. When continuing an existing IP, no one wants a new entry that feels embarrassed by its own history. A trim here, a tuck there, sure. But it still needs to be an example of why we wanted it to come back and that means celebrating the material. Not bad mouthing what came before. It's a fine line.
This. I feel this is one of the best takes I've seen in this thread so far. It sums up well enough the problem people have with the idea of a Dark Sun book that would be mishandled or possibly excessively sanitized for corporate or otherwise spurious reasons, said in a way that's possibly better than how the people with those fears express those feelings.
I think another element that exacerbate this issue is the fact that Dark Sun always tried to stand out and be different from the rest of the settings. It developed a unique identity as the setting that wanted to turn the cliché fantasy tropes on their heads, and while even I think that's probably a little exaggerated and it's more like it just gave an edgier turn to some races, the fact that its major inspirations seem to be the Barsoom cycle, the grittier takes no sword and sorcery and possibly Mad Max but fantasy-fied, definitely makes Dark Sun stand out as very different from your "typical" D&D high fantasy, kitchen sink setting.
Starting to alter anything that's strongly characteristic of the setting is likely to be immediately felt as a move toward homogenizing it and sanitizing it, which the fans of the setting reasonably despise.
It doesn't help that, to this day, all the supposed controversies just feel very fake and forced.
On slavery, it's interesting that the discussion seems to be just between people who think WotC will get rid of it even though it's foundational for the setting in order to sanitize it, and people who think it won't be removed because WotC is fine with slavery in other settings. Neither side thinks that the concept is inherently a problem, while the hypothetical third side that's actively demanding for all references to slavery to be dropped from fiction due to their offensiveness are nowhere to be seen.
It's not just forum discussions either, because this got discussed by major youtubers, and you could scour hundreds of comments, and the people who want slavery gone just don't show up. I remember that some years ago Paizo had some issue because someone wrote a letter to them complaining about slavery being so frequent in their settings and they decided to quit mentioning it, but that's about it. I honestly think that the discussion is based entirely on a nothingburger that only very few strongly opinionated people have, or used to have, because every niche opinion has at least a small group of fans, but barely anyone at all really thinks that there's an inherent problem with portraying societies where slavery is systemic and endemic.
The cannibal halflings (who technically aren't even cannibals) are a reach, and the controversy there relies on taking the most uncharitable interpretations for them by associating them with unrelated racial stereotypes from a century ago. The controversy on the Muls relies on deliberately misunderstanding what's being told in Dark Sun, because the fact that their name resembles "mules", as in sterile half-breeds, is well fitting with their nature as a slave race that was artificially created by the Sorcerer-Kings in order to have physically strong slaves for labour and warfare through eugenics, and that's a bad thing because the Sorcerer-Kings are evil, tyrannical, genociding bastards so awful that the Muls aren't even on the top 10 of worst things they've done. Evil is depicted as evil, and Dark Sun being a mature (with a strong edgy streak) setting is not dancing around the stuff. The point of Muls is how this people, born from the violence of their creators, react and reinvent themselves in a hostile world, preferably by rebelling and killing their oppressors. I also recall some people arguing that nomadic Elves could be interpreted as Roma, which... Really doesn't make sense to me? Not all nomads are Roma, and historically settled societies always distrusted nomadic people in general because of how poorly controllable and unpredictable they were, getting a reputation as barbarians, raiders and people outside of "civilization". This has nothing to do with the Roma in particular, it's just nomadism in general when it clashes and lives next to settled peoples.
Some people argue that some taming of the setting is necessary because of the current demographic that plays D&D, which is something I also doubt. D&D is mainstream nowadays, and mainstream audiences aren't overly sensitive or consider strong themes to be distateful, quite the opposite. Warhammer wouldn't be at the top of its popularity right now if that were the case, nor many videogames.
The concern to me seems to have to do less with the reality of the mainstream audiences' tastes (who I think are actually quite apathetic, usually unaware that there are even strong arguments in the hardcore fanbase, and just buy whatever has enough brand recognition for them), and more a fictional idea born out of some shareholder's meeting where they tried to triangulate what would sell the most among the largest audience imaginable, usually resulting in something completing alienated from reality.
Anyhow, here's hoping that the (apparently) coming Dark Sun book is of decent quality. In any case, I already figured out that, if the upcoming book ends up being really bad, it ultimately won't matter since the main resources for the setting will remain the 2E material, it's not like the 5E book can scrap those out of existence with a really lame take on the setting. If the new book is decent then all the better, even if it doesn't match the originals it will still be an entry point for new fans who will get exploring the old stuff. And if it's really, really good, not that I expect it, I guess I'll be pleasantly surprised.
