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James Russell Lowell would be very proud.
At a time when all the old venerable New England liberal publications descended into a swamp of woke blogging, The Atlantic maintained some of its respectability. It still published plenty of garbage, not least of which came from whiny racist and Hamas fanboy Ta-Nehisi Coates, but at least it avoided going down the sewer of woke pop culture warfare.
Until now.
Behold what the old publication of Holmes and Longfellow now amounts to
Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to Be Racist – The fantastical roots of “scientific racism”
In the game, as in the books, certain characters’ fundamental traits were determined by their “race.” A dwarf couldn’t do magic; an orc was dumb and violent; an elf couldn’t be ugly. Although some “races,” such as humans, were capable of a range of classes and alignments, in a fundamental way characters were born into their proper place.
Finally, The Atlantic has taken a stance against the uh… pernicious idea that orcs are dumb and violent and dwarves (dwarfs?) can’t do magic in a basement game.
If you don’t think this can get dumber, I’ve got bad news for you.
In June 2020, during the protests following the murder of George Floyd, the D&D development team acknowledged in a blog post that some earlier versions of the game offered portrayals of fantasy creatures that were “painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated.”
Elves. George Floyd. Who can even tell the difference anymore?
Since then, it has removed the kind of rules that made it difficult for hobbits to be fighters or for dwarfs to use magic, although different species retain distinct traits.
Stunning and brave. Not since Hillary Clinton ran for president, has there been anything as historic as this.
What’s the justification for this nonsense? That playing different races in Dungeons & Dragons convinces people that racial differences are real. And then George Floyd can’t breathe. Because he wasn’t allowed to use magic.
But is this really about changing the world by changing D&D or about politicizing anything fictional so that it imposes a narrative on even the most escapist pursuits? Anyone who has seen woke culture warfare knows the answer.
This is stupid, petty and trivial which is exactly what the Left is now. A maliciously petty movement obsessed with power over everything because it’s incapable of achieving any of its stated goals, only destroying everything, which is its unstated goal.
But at least George Floyd can use magic now.
Whine, whine whine that’s all they ever do their never satisfied always Whine, Whine Whine
Or maybe–with Hillary and Kamala–it’s “wine, wine, wine.”
With some shots of vodka on the side.
Not that I mind vodka but I’m not a public figure and I don’t lie about my foibles.
The name of The Atlantic is misleading, its content is clearly left coast. This literary analysis imposes trans ideology on the prior definitions of fictitious creatures. Any creature can identify as any other. Being able to tell how they differ is racist. The guilt lies in the original sin of the writer.
Thou shalt not notice.
It was originally New England liberals, but NE liberalism infected the whole country and then went woke
Well, the Least Coast content of the Atlantic is apparent but boy, does its tranny promo irritate ordinary Americans like us.
Is it only me or has anyone else noticed the left & whole woke cultural revolution has been getting dumb & dumber? Next they’ll be saying that Rock Trolls are a racist stereotype
they probably are
Quite the double narrative going on here, Daniel! Do you think Jeff Ketziot will even see this blog point? They never pay a price for their incessant treason, it’s always everyone else who pays—often in blood.
They forgot to add in interracial marriage and transism.
oh they did that a while back
Dungeons & Dragons is set to introduce a new feature for elves that will allow characters to change their gender once per day.
WTF? I always knew elves were gay.
I knew you wouldn’t like my first comment. Putting Jeffrey Goldberg in ketziot to guard seasoned PLO field commanders was among the dumbest of the many dumb and self-defeating things Israelis do. Most Israelis—not you, of course—are talking Morlocks: technically highly competent, but blind to the larger picture. They never. learn.
If you make dwarves use magic etc., then what is the point of having them? There is no distinctness. What the &D team said was that they basically made demi-humans as humans but gave them a faint patina to make them special.
I did not like level limits on demi-humans, But since they could multi-class, if you did not, then no one would play a human the demi-humans would be.
But over tine house rules by the game makers became official and changed things. Even if it did not people play with house rules all the time and it eventually became OSR. there is o D7 d anymore it is D&D’s. Pick your flavor
About limitations. It is like engineering trade offs. If you give dwarves extra strength and constitution plus a resistance to poison as well as infravision, you have to take something away or else they become super human and no one plays humans.
You get ability creep anyway. Like dark elves getting 10 free spells. If you did not limit them in some way you just get a terrible Monty Haul” campaign.
The point is to make everything the same. Harrison Bergeron style. Equity means no one gets any kind of advantage or difference because that’s unfair.
If you read Tolkein, you learn in his mythical world that orcs were made from elves and trolls were made from ents. So orcs are not naturally mean and nasty. They were tortured and their self perpetuating society made them that way so long as there is a ring wraith, Sauron, or evil dude to keep that society going,
Basically Morgoth, the head evil guy twisted them. If Morgoth were real and on Earth, he would naturally be the head of the DNC.
If you play MERP (I have not), you will find out there are plenty of evil humans and elves. Just chalk full of them.
Tolkien was writing about good and evil. We’re dealing with people to whom those are just words, not internal challenges, and who overlay a Marxist framework so that everything is about groups, not choices.
It would have been nice if they had dd more research that reaching out to the Wizards of the Coast which part of Hasbro get a “corporate” comment,
D& D co-creator Gygax may be dead, but Arneson and others are still very much alive. But they were not contacted.
D& D grew out chainmail, which was a medieval table top war game. It is how you pass the time when weather is crap in Wisconsin during the long winter months. But even that gets boring. So since they they had castles and medieval armor they decided what if we brought in dragons and other stuff to spice it up. That is it
But Atlantic makes it into secret dog whistles, because of course they did.
Gygax’s son is alive. But the purpose of this was to do a hit piece with comments from various ‘queer’ people.
WTF? You guys have gone way off the nerdometer for me to understand.
D&D people get bored much as people who eat out every week and have to try the new restaurant so that the6y do not suffer from ennui or boredom.
What people who play D&D do is branch out. They will culturally appropriate (In the Atlantic’s eyes) samurai.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Adventures
They will do pre-historic. they will due Babylonian. They will do Aztec. I have not seen one on Indian mythology, but I am sure one is out there. They will do D&D characters meet dinosaurs. I have not seen one based in sub Saharan Africa. Either, I forgot or I have not run into one.
Your typical game will run anything based off of sci-fi or fantasy book or movie. for at least one spin.
You will not see much if at all about Crusaders campaigns, the point of the game is escapism and novelty not controversy or muckraking like what a journalist does.
Tolkien was writing about many things, such as his take on the devastating effects of WWI and the changing European class structure, the passing on of the Elves being reminiscent of the eclipse of the aristocracy, although he famously did not deal in direct allegory, and so the elves are also reminiscent of other things, like OxBridge dons e.g. as well as old pagan mythology etc. Tolkien also presents his ideas regarding human redemption which were obviously ultimately very Christian. He seemed to be trying to show how an age of Old English style paganism gave way to a Christian age which would give rise to a messianic age. Related to something Daniel Greenfield mentioned in one of his replies above, this is portrayed by Tolkien as resulting from a struggle of good vs evil. I respectfully disagree with Tolkien’s theology. But regardless, he was an eminently serious and thoughtful person who left behind a truly interesting body of genuine literature, about which one could write volumes.
J.K. Rowling, while a talented writer, in her Harry Potter saga presented a fundamentally sillier world-view. Her only excuse is that she was writing for a younger target audience. I have never bothered to read her later works. But her excuse of catering to adolescents only covers part of it. She ironically came just short of making Dumbledore a tranny, as he was essentially a gay transvestite. She also rather feminized Harry Potter. Of course, as we all know the story goes, it turned out that the full on tranny garbage was a bridge too far for her. I’ll take her word on the goblin thing. On the other hand, who knows but that that whole controversy may have helped inspire the nonsense in the Atlantic. Rowling played with fire and found she didn’t like getting burned. How many idiots need to be mugged before there are enough conservatives to turn wokeism into a regrettable blip on the historical radar?
(to be continued)
(continued from above)
D and D has always been a pathetic bore for nerds. It’s the sort of thing middle schoolers played while reminiscing about summer camps whose sole existence was to give their parents a vacation. Personally, I listened to Allan Sherman. I did know one guy who in college still had his dice and still played…with himself…unless you counted his Ewok teddy bear. Maybe the Lefty players ended up seeing their own distorted reflections in their giant, overpriced, polished disdyakis triacontahedrons and saw svelte elves looking back at them? When they looked at us mere humans, they saw deplorables.
And at the bottom of the pile, below 0 on the sentience dial, we have the Woke-Intelligentsia. These low-lives have the thoughtfulness of a stoned teenager with a strong case of covid-mask-asphyxiation of the brain. When bronies have more heart, purpose and maturity than you, it is long past time to take a u-turn in life.
J.K. Rowling came about during the phase when great writing and literature was no longer comprehensible or taught in public schools. The reading lists were full of books like “I Am the Cheese” and other soulless, dystopian rot. There was little to stir the imagination, and so books about magic and fantasy began to sell very well.
It truly is entertaining witnessing what liberals declare as racist. At the College Fix website are postings “72 things higher ed declared racist in 2023” and “103 things higher ed declared racist in 2024..” My favorites are “the outdoors.” and “math.”
“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” Thomas Sowell.
Emerson, Thoreau, Harriet Beaches Stowe, and the whole gaggle of those New England Puritans ruined this country.
I played D&D in the late 70s while in the Army. The LeftTwats would have been targets
The Liberal Seven Dwarves. SOBY, SNIFFY, WHINY, SNIVLY, CTY BABY, SOFTY, & SNOWFLAKE
The D&D development team shall henceforth be known as Dorks, with no magical powers, no intellectual powers, no physical powers, and no ability to not ruin popular games in the name of political correctness.