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Part 1

Part 2

But I feel I should make clear that D&D the game itself is not exactly at fault here: like, okay, it is sort of at fault in the sense that it is a game of fantasy killing people with swords and magic. And it is easier for people to accept the killing with people with swords and magic part when they can imagine that their characters are at least to a degree justified. That is sort of just built into the game (and the game has built into its lore varying levels of making the fantasy of killing certain types of guy justifiable).

But D&D is not at fault for making people go "okay so it's bad when you kill orcs simply because they're orcs. It's better when you kill people who are bandits, who are a class of evil criminals where killing them is actually wholesome and sensible." Like, yeah, most people probably don't think about it that deeply, but the reason people don't think about it that deeply is ultimately ideological.

And you can do the same trick with racism, right? Just skip the part about how these people are Objectively Evil and instead focus on how some other polity habitually raids yours and commits atrocities, without focusing on how they're basically normal people who also hug their children, and you have something that looks more like actual racism than D&D orcs while also being a totally sensible narrative from the inside view. (That said, even from the inside view, these games tend to rely on the enemies being much less concerned with self-preservation than they would be in real life, to spare you the indignity of having to decide whether you should be mopping up routed soldiers.)

There's also a third level of this that just inverts the arrangements, so it's like "you're the orcs, and the humans are super evil" -- or you're peasant guerrillas trying to defend against rapacious knights, or honest criminals fighting a corrupt empire, or whatever -- and I think this is bad in basically the same way, even if it's less appreciated by the sort of problematic-media critical-theory leftist who worries a lot about the prior forms, because structurally it's identical. If you want to tell a story about slave revolts to emphasize that you approve of slave revolts that's probably okay, but if you want to tell that story to indulge in morally pure violence against faceless hordes led by campy supervillains, the underlying issues remain.

I can try!

I don’t mean this in a judgy way; vice doesn’t first and foremost make you a “bad person” in the way tumblr means it (a hateable person)—but it does kind of make you bad at being a person. vice is an entrenched habit which prevents you from realizing happiness and fulfillment, and cowardice absolutely does this.

it seems like people are starting to catch on to the fact that if your fears are preventing you from ever having joys, then you have given your fears too much power. Mr. Woodhouse from Emma is a great example of this kind of character. his fears have completely prevented him from living a full life and regularly prevent him from enjoying even the small pleasures he has left. and crucially, this isn’t just something he’s done to himself. his cowardice also causes suffering for those around him, both in small ways (subjecting Emma to painful social moments) and in large (almost costing Emma her happiness with Knightley). if your fears have enclosed you into a progressively smaller and smaller box in your quest to feel perfectly safe (even and especially from things that objectively are no threat to your safety), then I think you have a real responsibility to try to face your fears and heal whatever is making you believe that they were worth losing everything. you have this responsibility because you were born to be a full human being, not a caged animal.

but there’s also another sense in which cowardice is a vice. if you possess every other virtue, if your system of values is perfect and just, but you crumble when under pressure, then you do not fully possess those virtues and you’re not able to live up to your own values. all virtues depend on each other; everyone has areas that they’re more naturally gifted in or they’ve practiced more, but you cannot completely leave out one virtue without cancelling out the ones you do have. courage is especially universal, because it is all other virtues practiced under fire. if you cannot be kind or you cannot practice justice as soon as it is difficult, then you’re not very kind or just at all.

this isn’t to say that we can’t be understanding and compassionate towards someone who caves or freezes in a moment of fear, and it certainly isn’t to say that there can’t be mercy after the fact. but it is to say that we have to be able to recognize the entrenched habit of the person who consistently prioritizes their own comfort and their own safety over everything else—especially when the safety being prioritized is a “feeling” of safety not based in reality or a social safety related to reputation, instead of a real threat on their life. if your fears prevent you from living out your convictions, then your convictions are pretty worthless. if there’s nothing you love more than your own skin, then you can’t love anything very much.