Things that might have happened

i would still argue that fantasy racism is a real issue. it's just not the "oh no, this character doesn't like elves!" thing. (especially because elves are very often white-coded!)

i'm not sure if this was on your blog or someone else's, but a few weeks back there was a post about a game called "don't kill them all". already a bad start. to be VERY brief about it - a half-elf, half-Orc girl (who is heavily coded to be mixed - for instance, she has locs in her hairstyle) who is raised by elves comes to the land of her Orc side of the family (heavily Black-coded, which is why i'm capitalizing Orc) and has to basically "civilize" them, because they are "blinded by their constant destructive urges". the game centers around sending the Orcs on missions and "managing" them in order to not have them all max out their "rage meters" (by taking damage, losing resources, etc). if you fail the level, well, "Orcs don't die, they rage!" they stomp their feet, akin to a young child throwing a tantrum, and scream to "kill them all!" if you win the level, you get a "progress report" with lines such as "good work, not killing and breaking everything!"

for fuck's sake, the website's tagline for the game is "a turn-based strategy and base-building game in which you teach Orcs to feel".

i don't seriously think i need to explain why this is racist as hell, right? especially because the company developing the game (in Quebec) has zero Black employees on staff, as far as i can tell through the staff picture in their press kit.

Orcs/Orks more generally are often Black-coded and are simultaneously depicted as "brutes" and "evil". even as far back as their origins, in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings works and letters, Orcs were described in incredibly racist terms. one of Tolkien's "dilemmas" was that he allowed the Orcs to speak and to discern good from evil - therefore, it was now unclear whether slaughtering them was permissible. Orcs in D&D are similarly eyebrow-raising at best with "boosted Intimidation and reduced Intelligence stats".

so yeah - fantasy racism is real. just not the one people think.

and it's on creators of fantasy worlds and races to take care that their Black-coded races aren't perpetuating racist stereotypes.

I actually disabled reblogs on that post ages ago because I felt like people were focusing too hard on one specific game and one specific dev team when really this is a problem in basically any fantasy universe where race is a thing. Don't Kill Them All is *especially* racist (which, I mean, it's Quebec, what are you going to expect?), but it's built on stereotypes and jokes and memes that we all allow to persist. They thought it was fine because a lot of ostensibly leftist fantasy nerds also think it's fine.

You know what's a perennial Tumblr darling? Baldur's Gate 3. Half-orcs don't just have the inherent intimidation modifier; their heads also constantly lean forward, giving them a pseudo-hunchback, so that they're always looking down scarily at everything. There are no recruitable half-orcs; one of the few significant half-orc characters is working with the comically evil Kethric and has cornrows. The game loves to discuss how racism and xenophobia is affecting refugees - like the white-coded tiefling refugees you meet from the first act onward - but it also treats all goblins, bugbears and ogres as universally cruel and primitive and gross, to the point where treating them all as equally disposable is the correct option. The only one you can really negotiate with is an ogre who happened to eat a magical item that makes him 'intelligent' and 'civilized'. Oh, and the drow, whom you can try to negotiate with and even potentially recruit because she's a white woman of normal height with a skin condition. You can't kill tiefling children; you *can* kill goblin children and beloved bear-fucker Halsin will murder two of them for the crime of being annoying to an animal. The line between how the game treats the 'civilized' vs 'uncivilized' races is stark and vicious. Game of the fucking year. Hundreds and hundreds of people on this site cooing over Astarion or Karlach.

(Not even getting into how the game and fandom treat the only recruitable non-white character)

I watched Orc City become a meme off of how dehumanizing and poorly-written the opening sequence of a fantasy book was - only for those making fun of it to start coming up with jokes even more dehumanizing.

Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.

- m/f ship between a nonblack man & a Black woman

- it's either canon (e.g. mel/jayce arcane) or entirely plausible (e.g. prism or coupé/robert dispatch)

- fanbase overwhelmingly pairs nb man off with another nb man and disengages from the Black woman character, shunting her into a background wise & sassy caretaker role (for which there is a name) or leaving her out of fanworks entirely

- fans who do this ^ claim it is an expression of love and admiration for the Black woman character, actually, bc the nb man (who may be her canonical partner) "can't handle all that" (he may be perfectly competent and engaged; she may be totally low maintenance; it has no bearing), she's just too wonderful (too much) and out of his league (lacking in flaws and interiority and fan appeal)

Basically, Mr grifter announced that he might be getting into the collecting side of yugioh, which would lead to the scalping hell that now plagues the Pokémon and One Piece TCGs

As a joke, MBTYugioh gave them pointers on what to “invest in”, recommending some of the WORST shit products that this game released in the years

He then followed up with a tongue-in-cheek, clearly trolling video recommending shit like Legendary Duelists sets, Duelist of Deep and Synchro Storm, and the Platinum cards, and exclusive COINS before ending the video with “Don’t invest in yugioh. You will lose money due to this game’s reprint policies”

Like, it was very obvious for anyone with half-a-brain cell and is familiar with Yugioh that the video is a joke

BUT a bunch of scalping bots took the video at face value and bought out these doodoo, worthless products immediately after his fuckass video came out

You must unlearn this.

You must accept that all people will be annoying at some point or another in their lives, maybe all of their lives, and that this is okay. It is okay for strangers on the bus, it is okay for children in the grocery store, it is okay for people on social media, and it is okay for you.

Skirt go spin! <3