It seems... odd? To want real-world racism in there. Sure, fantasy can use other species as metaphors for racism... ok? What's the problem? Metaphors are indeed a thing.
Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because — what with trolls and dwarfs and so on — speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.
I suppose you could have a game where there's active racism between blacks and whites, etc, but if you could join the KKK the game would probably just get banned. If you just want a game where you fight against racists, I dunno, go play one of the billion WW2 shooters where you fight Nazis or something.
Three problems that I can think of.
Firstly, the underlying context is usually different. Compare, say, Arcanum - there is a whole lot of racism against orcs and half-orcs, but the issue gets muddled by the fact that they're almost universally born of rape and also that they're not just ethnically and physically different, they also represent the common working underclass in an industrial revolution, and thus get shat on on two different levels. This is interesting and fun, but ultimately unhelpful in understanding and addressing the troubles of real-world racism -
not that it absolutely has to be.
Secondly, in fantasy the world itself, background and all, is arrayed in a way that makes sense to the author - this is not necessarily reflective of the real world. In fact, it very often is not, since the author dictates the very foundations of the world according to their whim. This would mean that the world itself is tilted according to the author's own viewpoints fundamentally rather than superficially as in most works of non-speculative fiction. For instance, Discworld is fundamentally a product of Terry Pratchett, and reflects him in a great many ways in a way that the real world presumably does not (though it would be cool if it would, I think).
Thirdly, with Arcanum once again as the example, the racism is greatly prevalent, but everybody involved is pretty much a white person. Even the half-orcs. Looking at this, you go "well, it's just white people fighting each other, that's that problem solved right there emotionally and ethically". It takes the concept of racism without taking any of its real-world sting, because white people fighting each other isn't actually anything much to talk about whether some of them are pointy-eared or tusked or what have you. It lacks that visceral touch, I would say, doesn't touch upon anything
real - it's sort of the theoretical approach, where you look at the issue and go "well, there's no problem here, is there" and pat yourself on the back for a job well done in exploring the concept of racism. It doesn't matter if that same train of logic is technically correct in the real world, because people are genuinely the same the world over. The fact is the issue has been defanged in a big way, and you haven't actually confronted the real world issue in the process.
Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily, since it lets you play with racial hatred in a fashion you probably couldn't get away with in, say, To Kill A Mockingbird or something. It just means that fantasy's not terribly socially relevant overall. And from there, fantasy games are not socially relevant, or progressive, either.
no
and by that i mean... hell no???
malacath is not even remotely one of the more evil daedra
I meant D&D 5e orcs and Gruumsh in that example. Malacath is a pretty nice fellow overall, all things considered.
Anyway, that's enough derailing from me. Posting in emotion threads is a weakness I must purge from myself.
Author
Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14944664 times)