>Be John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
>Sign up to fight in WWI and come back as a man changed and haunted by war
>Write a Fantasy series based loosely on your Christian Beliefs, Your Experiences in the War, and your raging boner for language that’s so fucking good and in-depth that it codified the Fantasy Genre TO THIS DAY
>Write a scathing letter to the Nazis that you WISH that you were Jewish and that their ideology of Racial Superiority is Morally repugnant when they contact you to proclaim you an “Honorary Aryan”
>Borrow from various myths and legends all around the world, and create Orcs based on a quirk of language that goes all the way back to fucking BEOWULF.
>Characterize them all as evil servants of a Dark Sorcerer based on your experiences fighting German Infantry, who were very much NOT Black people
>Decades after your death, Mediocre Fake Nerd White Men who want to play White Savior declare you a racist for this, and use the characterization of Orcs as Primitive, Savage, Crude and Murderous as a sign that what you secretly intended them to be a metaphor for Black people.
>This despite the aforementioned hatred of racism being common knowledge
>This despite many, MANY people pointing out how drawing such a conclusion on a completely fictional race of typically tusked, green-skinned, pig-nosed monsters is actually pretty fucking racist because you’re saying that Black people are all Violent Savages
>Woke Mediocre Fake Nerd White Men ignore this and keep trying to rewrite history in an even more egregious version than what happened to Lovecraft (Since you were never racist to begin with), all to shill their subpar products or otherwise fish for clout
If there was ever a reason that proved Social Media was a mistake, Progressivism is a Cult, and that fandom gatekeeping was actually good, it’s fucking this. Holy shit someone please kill Twitter.
You. You get it.
Woke people will just straight up admit they think all black people are violent bloodthirsty savages, and still have the nerve to accuse everyone else of being the racists.
A heavy uno reverse moment 😳😳
“Orcs are fictional so the people who write them can do so without resorting to the kind of language that is frequently used to dehumanize black and brown people.”
Bro really went and told on himself huh.
It’s actually kind of surprising me how long it took for me to realize how hollow the “every time you complain about Orc Racism you’re actually being racist against black people” gotcha is.
Like, nowhere did anybody say “wow, I can’t believe they literally just described black people in this write-up for the orcs” or anything similar to it (except you guys). The criticism was in the language used, and how it’s similar to the stuff people say when dehumanizing black people. I’ve seen the way certain racists talk about black people, like they’re basically proto-humans with an incapability to form culture and a predisposition towards “savagery”, and the chains of (white “western”) society are the only things stopping them from tipping over and unleashing their repressed natural rage or whatever. But you’ll note I didn’t say “this is what black people are Actually”, I said “this is how /pol/lutants and pseudointellectual phrenologists frequently describe black people”. And what that guy Actually said was “there’s an alarming frequency of parallels and comparison one can make between the /pol/lutant screed and this excerpt from a D&D manual”, which is a pretty valid discussion to hold because if a book reads like you jacked off onto the pages using the pages of Mein Kampf like lubricant, and afterwards you swapped out every reference to a real-world minority with a fictional species, you are doing something wrong. It’s basically the argument that racism is a little more than an endpoint, and actually encompasses a style of thinking or “logic” that causes one to come to said endpoints. And all trying to argue “wow Renardie really ripped the mask off here” does is display a basic fundamental incapability to read sentences and possibly comprehend language.
Also, bringing up Tolkien is a bruh moment. Don’t get me wrong, my man was a based anti-racist, and he was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of “all orcs are predisposed to evil”, so much so that he expressed in his various letters that he not only wished he could make it more apparent that the orcs weren’t “naturally evil” but were essentially thralls to Sauron, but I think he also said somewhere the orcs can go to heaven. But this is all beside the point, because that screencap was taken from a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition manual. And because this is D&D, you’d want to bring up Gary Gygax, who was a biological essentialist, and, uhh.
Also this entire discussion fails to address the underlying issue with D&D. And that issue is, that “here is an Evil species and their Evil culture also objective Evil exists” is really fucking boring, and if want to Not Be unimaginative or display Effort in your worldbuilding you can grow beyond “here is a race and this is its Hat”. You can be better.
I’m not reading that shit, you’re wrong on the basis that Orcs aren’t fucking real and people who aren’t terminally online with psychosis and a constant need to virtue signal understand it doesn’t fucking matter. It literally does not fucking matter you pretentious shithead, and I’m fully blaming you for turning Belles–rose into an unhinged lunatic, please go touch grass and find a crowbar to pry your head from your ass.
I however will @renardtrickster
Like, nowhere did anybody say “wow, I can’t believe they literally just described black people in this write-up for the orcs” or anything similar to it (except you guys). The criticism was in the language used, and how it’s similar to the stuff people say when dehumanizing black people. I’ve seen the way certain racists talk about black people, like they’re basically proto-humans with an incapability to form culture and a predisposition towards “savagery”, and the chains of (white “western”) society are the only things stopping them from tipping over and unleashing their repressed natural rage or whatever.
Yeah, everyone already knows that. The problem is exactly the scenario you are describing. It was used to describe black people in real life. Because in real life that’s not how people work. But this is describing fictional creatures, not even a different race most of the time. A different species all together.
And given that orcs have no other stated similarities to black people and their origin was based on GERMANS, there is no reason to think that they are based on black people or indicative of what thee creators think of black people.
But you’ll note I didn’t say “this is what black people are Actually”, I said “this is how /pol/lutants and pseudointellectual phrenologists frequently describe black people”. And what that guy Actually said was “there’s an alarming frequency of parallels and comparison one can make between the /pol/lutant screed and this excerpt from a D&D manual”, which is a pretty valid discussion to hold because if a book reads like you jacked off onto the pages using the pages of Mein Kampf like lubricant, and afterwards you swapped out every reference to a real-world minority with a fictional species, you are doing something wrong.
Except that here, this is fantasy. A fantasy with no shown real world comparisons or intent to draw parallels. Even though they use similar narratives for orcs that racists use for minorities (which is why you see similarities)- they are meant to be for a fantasy with no connection to the real world. You are not meant to translate this to real life. Doing so is outside the creator’s intent and thus all on you.
Which…yeah. That’s why people are calling you racist. The creator has done nothing to indicate this is connected to the real world. This is all on you. You looked at a common narrative about generic evil races in a fantasy and instead of seeing it as the narrative tool it is- you instead have implied you cannot separate it from people using it in the real world. Which either implies a very great level of stupidity or acceptance of the real world. And you speak too coherently to be that stupid.
It’s basically the argument that racism is a little more than an endpoint, and actually encompasses a style of thinking or “logic” that causes one to come to said endpoints. And all trying to argue “wow Renardie really ripped the mask off here” does is display a basic fundamental incapability to read sentences and possibly comprehend language.
No, it’s as I said It’s a common narrative used in fiction (see also: any monster in any mythology) that was used in the real world against minorities. Your inability to see this implies you’re either incredibly stupid (too coherent to be so) or you believe it in some way.
Also, bringing up Tolkien is a bruh moment. Don’t get me wrong, my man was a based anti-racist, and he was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of “all orcs are predisposed to evil”, so much so that he expressed in his various letters that he not only wished he could make it more apparent that the orcs weren’t “naturally evil” but were essentially thralls to Sauron, but I think he also said somewhere the orcs can go to heaven. But this is all beside the point, because that screencap was taken from a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition manual. And because this is D&D, you’d want to bring up Gary Gygax, who was a biological essentialist, and, uhh.
So essentially ‘you’re wrong because I said so’.
Also bringing up Gary Gygax is pretty suspicious without a proper quote (a tweet doesn’t count) and doesns’t even matter for Fifth edition. Why? He was DEAD for six years by that point (Died in 06, 5e came out in 14).
Also this entire discussion fails to address the underlying issue with D&D. And that issue is, that “here is an Evil species and their Evil culture also objective Evil exists” is really fucking boring, and if want to Not Be unimaginative or display Effort in your worldbuilding you can grow beyond “here is a race and this is its Hat”. You can be better.
Or you can work around the limitations. Like…every piece of fiction ever created.
Nice cop out. You still failed and still look like you cannot separate the racist use of the narrative from the narrative.
I kinda want to touch on that last part that kob put. The Work around the Limitations bit because it’s something that’s been a pattern I’ve kinda been seeing in the new age/”SJW” crowd.
They don’t want to.
What I mean is that most the time they’re complaining about stuff that can either be home-brewed, redone, rewritten, and just outright dropped at their tables. But they don’t want to it seems. More than anything it seems like;
A) They aren’t imaginative/creative enough to come up with anything in the book
B) Are such sticklers to the rules they will follow what is laid out before them to the letter.
So they either want the in print permission to do things because they can’t come up with ideas on their own, or they want to be the ones writing the rules so they don’t break them or aren’t at fault for doing it. It’s not MY fault for making orcs act this way, it’s in the write up, blame the game. It’s not MY fault for not letting you be a smart orc, look at the standard portrayal, here’s the barbarian handbook.
It’s just a strange stance to take when the rules are there for you to use a foundation and change…. basically anything and everything.
