Edrein wrote on May 7
th, 2023 at 9:40am:
You know that for every trans player that feels like they're finally represented by this, there will be at least four clowns making a bearded lady for shits and giggles.
I would say more like 1 "feels represented" for every 10 or 20 shitclowns.
THe majority of the trans population already feels plenty "represented" just by being able to play as their preferred gender
Edrein wrote on May 7
th, 2023 at 9:40am:
I'd only really have a gripe if I was on a RP server to be honest. There I'd find my immersion somewhat broken by the update as a whole. From a Tolkien nerd point of view; the addition of these 'ethnic' targeted options are a bit of a squint and stretch at the source material to appeal to wider demographics with a game that has been steadily dying since around 2010. Though from a lore standpoint, bearded dwarf females is ironically lore appropriate. Humans and I assume elves are just wrong on so many levels.
I think its primarily the reader's fault for assuming everyone in the Tolkienverse is white. And the casting director's fault for casting them that way.
There's an oft-overlooked concept in writing called "the law of conservation of detail" that says if something's not important to the plot, you don't include it. Meaning that if 3 of the 13 dwarves in the fellowship are black and 2 of them are Jewish, but it doesn't come up in the plot ever, then you don't include it. They're still black and/or Jewish, it just wasn't relevant to the story about slaying a dragon.
This same concept holds true for a lot of fantasy(and really just fiction in general). The writer's not going to take the time to painstakingly describe every incidental single character's ethnicity. If you read Tolkien(or any book that didn't explicitly say so) and assumed every character was white, that makes you the racist.
This of course brings us to the annoying "woke" shit going on that has me not watching most new movies and TV. According to the Law of Conservation of Detail, we can assume there's plenty of gay or trans characters out there, but because their gay or trans-ness was not incidental to the plot, it simply doesn't come up. So all the woke-ass shitheads are cramming gay and trans subplots into every single thing in order to jam this down our throats.
And its not that I'm offended, I'm just not interested.
Either they're doing something important to the plot and screaming "I'm GAY!" to make a statement(in which case why bother? You're just wasting screen time); or their gayness is somehow intrinsic to the plot, in which case the story has now become queer-fiction. Not being part of the target demographic for queer-fiction, I don't have any interest.
Either way, I don't need it.