Someone legitimately tell me, why were the Christians of the 90s right? They were right that there is a certain portion of the population that can’t understand the difference between reality and fiction, that can’t understand fiction cannot harm people, that dangerous and evil ideas written in fiction won’t cause someone to perform said fictitious acts.
I am speaking of course about the way DnD and now Pathfinder are going, censoring vast swathes of the lore and settings to satisfy a mentally deranged, yet vocal minority, this minority saw evil, inhuman races such as orcs and stated without a hint of irony that they’re representations for black people, now they’ve neutered every evil race in DnD, mindflayers aren’t allowed to be a part of a collective Hive Mind, beholders aren’t allowed to be xenophobic, paranoid and racist, and so on, as much as I despised 5th edition, Volo’s guide to monsters was a great piece of lore, harkening back to other pieces of lore, like when 40k or Warhammer Fantasy used to release tome after tome of lore, now a majority of what was written in Volo’s guide is gone, unless you owned a physical copy you won’t be able to get the old, now “problematic” lore.
Paizo bent the knee to 1 freelancer they hired, some mentally deranged loon who got offended that there were rules for 1 city in the entire setting where you can buy a slave, now slavery has been retconned out of the entirety of Pathfinder, no in world explanation, no, just 1 douche was outraged so an entire aspect of the setting gets Thanos snapped, I get it, slavery bad, and I agree, however an absence of slavery isn’t even the norm in reality, I understand you moral busibodies don’t read much or look out the window of your ivory towers, but a majority of the globe still actively practices slavery, unless you live in the west slavery is still very much alive and far worse than before, so why are you robbing the players the ability to play an adventure where they get to stop the slave trade?
Hell, Pathfinder isn’t even realistic in their setting with slavery, only the most evil societies practice slavery there, so what do you freaks have against villains owning slaves? I’ve said this before to other moral busibodies on this site trying to police DnD, stop trying to reduce being evil to being a Saturday morning cartoon villain, God, it’s like they’ve never read history, never understood that even the most evil people in our history had redeeming qualities, Genghis Khan killed 40 million, practiced cannibalism and raped so much a majority of Asia has his DNA, but he created a stable silk road, allowed everyone under his protection to practice any religion they wished without fear of persecution, fostered an environment that nurtured the dining etiquette of ancient China, yet he is still a man who did evil things, a villain can perpetuate the slave trade, even strengthen it, and they can still be written well enough that they won’t be black and white, realistic fictional writing needs both the good and bad of reality, if you can’t handle the bad then you need to fuck off.
I really resent being treated like a toddler who needs to be spoonfed behaviors that are appropriate bc it’s just assumed that I will repeat any modeled behavior
Like I’m sorry y’all DON’T have morals but I’m fine actually and I’ll take my fucked up fiction with an extra side of inhuman atrocities
Which is why should I ever publish a story covering dark themes, I’m ignoring the hell out of these people. God in Heaven forbid villains behave like, yaknow, VILLAINS. They’re supposed to be detestable! It’s totally cool to have a villain with nuance like OP said, but there’s this idea that there’s some things even a villain “shouldn’t” do. FRICK THAT. Villains should be allowed to do what even mainstream people consider reprehensible. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT. We’re supposed to hate them at the end of the day. We live in this bizarre age of making villains “lovable” and “quirky” and “unproblematic”, but at that point they’re just edgy antiheroes.
Also, people who say stuff like “orcs are black people” reveal their racist mindset when they say stupid ish like that.
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