Callia

It’s pretty well known that half-orc’s were created in D&D to serve as a playable version of orcs, having the appearance and power without the monstrous nature of their orcish progenitors. I don’t think I need to spell the… unfortunate implications that brings to the surface of a race of “barbaric bloodthirsty savages” so “savage and innately evil” that they only way they curb their evil nature and become “civilized” is with the blood of “noble, enlightened beings”…. Is this ringing any alarm bells yet? Not to mention how they’re often overwhelmingly the either products of rape or civilized folk “degrading themselves” to mix with orcish tribes. Outside of the horrifically racist picture that paints, theirs also from a narrative/game design angle creates an identity crisis where the developers seemingly can’t decide if orcs should be monsters or people and instead of the deep introspection that JRR Tolkien had as a result of his creation of orcs and if an entire species of mortal beings could truly be innately evil, instead just half-ass a solution and create “half-orc’s” and ask players and GM’s to never think of the implications that divide brings.

I’d say either make orcs into genuine monsters, engines of death and destruction that are unplayable. Or make them playable as fully realized people species, you can even mix and match like in the case of Warhammer and Shadow of the Demon Lord. Where orcs are playable and fully sapient, yet do have violent cultures or horrific practices… just so long as they’re not the only ones doing heinous shit. My favorite example of these being Forbidden lands, Warhammer and Shadow of the Demon Lord because of that reason! In these dark/ grimdark fanatsy realms everyone is a violent lunatic with their own horrible practices going on. FL and SotDL in particular while they are even treated quite sympathetically by the narrative, as in both worlds their a former slave race used and abused for bloodshed by their masters only recently freed from bondage and trying to survive their apocalyptic worlds. In Warhammer their the Comic relief faction, and entire species of ultra violent, reality warping fungi-boi’s bio-engineering as living weapons meant to wage endless war that outlived their makers and where never given an “off switch”… and their antics are genuinely some of the funniest things across the entire Warhammer franchise, only being rivaled by the skaven.

For all of my Solo-plays and WorldBuilding stuff for these games I generally either replace half-orcs with true orcs and give them full scale cultures and people status. Their cultures still having questionable or violent practices but no less so than humans/ elves/ dwarves and so on as flawed mortal beings. Instead engineering my half-breeding system where you can have a half-anything. Or have orcs as true monsters, murderous creatures created as canon fodder for some evil dark lord, lacking any sapience or free will of their own following their programming as living weapons to pillage and destroy even in the absence of their original creators, who never cared enough to give their monsterous living weapons things like “higher thought” or “and off switch”.

Yes, things like that are exactly why my own stories have orcs and goblins as just normal people. I'm not writing a ttrpg myself, though I love to play them when I have the chance, but this is a problem across all fantasy media. Writers want the black and white good vs evil, which i get! It's a fun heroic tale to write or play in. But it often leads to this problem of "therefore there must be a group of people who are all evil withiut exception" and even the modification of "well maybe they're not all evil but they're still violent because of their culture" is not a great long term solution, or at least it's going to be difficult to do well without still sliding into the same issues as before but this time a little watered down.

Since I'm not writing any ttrpgs or epic hero quest stories, I've found my own writing has more room for nuance because I'm not working in a set up that requires a large good vs evil battle of any kind. But even in that set up, I think there's more nuance to be had in exploring the fact that people are morally neutral by default, and good vs evil groups don't exist because of inherent traits of biology or even cultural pressure alone. Good vs evil happens because people choose sides. Cultural and political pressure play a role here, but it's still a choice. Certain evil leaders may use propaganda to lure in more people of a specific group, but they won't get everyone in that group. Etc.

In other words, mix it up! There can be good and evil orcs at the same time, merely because they have taken different paths in life. Same goes for any other fictional people.

like all transandrobros, it's not just that you don't believe you benefit from transmisogyny, it's that you literally believe trans women have male privilege! later on that same ask you say you are a victim of medical malpractice and you believe trans women aren't because they weren't afab! like let's maybe calm down a little, JKR.

He is literally doing that in that screenshotted section, pointing to hypothetical trans women who aren't in the same socioeconomic demographic as him, and thus have access to resources he doesnt. If we looked at the trans women in his socioeconomic class we'd see them fairing worse and facing more discrimination on average.

This isn't about individual people. Is there a trans woman out there who makes more money than him, who has access to resources and support networks that he doesnt? Obviously. But this is an issue of systemic oppression. We are taking about averages. What resources and opportunities the average trans woman and trans man have at their disposal. What different obstacles, bigotry, and systemic forms of oppression are faced by the average trans woman and trans man.

And there is actual scientific data to back this all up. Literally the same exact data that backs up systemic misogyny: the wage gap.

We absolutely cannot let them dismiss this. That is literally the same thing that cis MRAs do with the wage gap between cis men and cis women. This is literally the exact same thing!