Because I'm pretty sure that if I had been the one to suggest this, I'd have been accused by the entire Outrage Brigade of being homophobic. Or Anti-LGBT, or whatever.
And the Brigade might have a point. It's not exactly enlightened to decide that if there's one race that is gender-nonbinary it's the one consistently depicted as the most stereotypically effeminate. And let's face it, popular depictions of elves (D&D and in most modern fantasy) is of them as a girly-boys already.
I'm betting that the person who made this policy up is not in fact an LGBT person. It's either a totally straight white male desperate to ingratiate himself by pleasing his new leftist masters. And indeed, the lead designer on this is known soyboy Jeremy Crawford, who recently got humiliated coming at me claiming "I did not know him" about my time working on 5e, wherein I pointed out in return that he did not know me because I was working directly with his boss, and he was too low on the totem pole for me to ever interact with him.
But it could also have been written by someone in his staff (I'm assuming he still has one or two people actually lower ranked than he is). And in that case I wouldn't be surprised if it's a woman (straight and probably also white) who is pretending that this is about Social Justice but is really about the well known fact that women (especially of a certain social class) fantasize about male homosexuality (so much so that most of the erotic gay literature in the world is sold to straight women, not gay men), and the notion of gender-shifting for these fangirl 'fag-hags' plays right into THEIR shipping and crossgender fantasies, with the concern for inclusion being cover for that.
And if you aren't convinced that this whole thing is a perfect case study of a meaningless gesture that also has the effect of unintentionally revealing prejudices about LGBT folk, let me make it plainer: It wasn't the Dwarves who can change gender. Or the orcs, or ogres. It wasn't the ugly or manly races. Nope.
It was the prettyboy-race of swishy forest twinks.
Doesn't that seem like an inherently problematic and toxic assumption about LGBT? And if it had been me who thought of it, and not WoTC, they'd all be saying its homophobic.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Poker + H&H's Chestnut
You missed the funniest part : the reason drows hate elves (and are chaotic evil) is now that drows are transphobic.
ReplyDeleteWell of course they are. But wait, aren't the Drow a Feminist Matriarchy?!
DeleteNo, they are reverse-chauvinists, the worst kind of chauvinists. ;-)
DeleteDrows are complete assholes. For any way to express one's assholery, they will revel in it, wave their flag there and spin a tale in which they're the victim and whatever they do is justified.
Drows are pure assholery and that's why using them as a vehicle for real-world issues is at best moronic...
Well, I can't argue with you there.
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ReplyDeleteI wouldn't agree with this and think it serves no purpose to say something like this.
DeleteThey are not "genderfluid" according to the Ctrl Left terminoloy, though. They actually change sex, grow different genitalia, change their body structure. They preach that gender has nothing to do with biology. So I predict that someone, somewhere will soon be offended by this. And once you open your doors to these people they WILL demand that your product is all about their politics, all the time.
ReplyDeleteDM: What do you do?
ReplyDeletePlayer: "It" checks for secret doors
DM: Roll your die
Player: "4"
DM: It finds none
I have, of course, been waiting 46 years and with baited breath for this breakthrough. The final tranquility was worth it all.
Look, just like I have no problem with anyone BEING what they want to be, I have no problem with anyone playing their character the way they want to play them, with the single caveat of it being contextual to the campaign.
ReplyDeleteIn Dark Albion, for example, we had one PC who was gay (his player was actually a -straight, as far as I know- woman); and in my Wild West campaign we have a PC who's gay (played by a -straight, as far as I know- man, an in no ways played for laughs of any kind). In both cases they were excellent characters, playing within the context of historical gaming where being who they were created all kinds of challenges that the players made excellent use of.
I do think it's very silly, however, when this sort of thing comes out as Top-Down Virtue-Signalling from game designers or publishers.
And shit, I say that as someone who very openly presented "transgender" (actually, third-gendered, in the context of the culture) characters as a totally viable and explicit option in Arrows of Indra. But I think how I handled it there is very different from the way it was handled here. Here, with the elves, it's just silly.
Should've been dwarves.
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