Ridding Your Games of Insane, Stupid Bigots
Really quick: if you want something similar to Dungeons & Dragons, but which focuses on fun, usability, and quality—yet isn't grossly overpriced—as opposed to social justice progressive politics, propaganda, and irrational, obsessive hatred over mere disagreements and arbitrary thought crime violations, check out Dungeons & Delvers.
You know what you’re getting into based on the title alone: so-called social justice-addled gibberish. It’s less a thesis, more a glimpse into the mental abyss of a mentally-ill narcissist, an ugly human(oid) with fake pronouns and a stock string of predictable labels exhibited in a feeble attempt to convince you that one Fay Onyx (curious if that’s her real name) is an interesting, intelligent, and good person.
Which of course means she is none of those things. She is Jane-Every-NPC, with a boilerplate bio and exaggerated—if not wholly invented—credentials to match. You can read her article here for complete context and proof that someone actually typed out these words. There's also a trigger warning by another name for the especially sensitive snowflakes, because like Critical Race Theory SJWs love rebranding words in a blatant bid at concealing intent.
And, as we’ll see, SJWs also love controlling you, whether by implied or overt threats, but especially by convincing you to think and act in accordance to their utterly inconsistent, evil, and destructive doctrine, under the pretense that doing so makes you a "good" person.
“People create monsters that reflect the fears of their society, including fears about disability.”
This failed premise is merely a reflection of Fay’s uncloseted, shamelessly flaunted racism and sexism, and other assorted bigotries. SJWs can’t help but at best casually glance at everything through the arbitrary, biased, irrational lens of dogmatic intolerance. It’s what they are programmed to do: hate, with no consistency, purpose, or goal. Tear everything down, and erect boorish, cheap simulacra and pretend that they are deserving of anything resembling applause.
No one looks at a vampire and associates it in any way with society at large, or even a disability. Not even necessarily anemia. Some might utilize that concept, as a way to explain it from a more modern sense (which is why one should reject modernity), but that is neither commonplace, nor has anything to do with its origins or overall base concept.
What of therianthropes? I suppose through sufficient and misleading mental gymnastics one could argue that they represent furries, except they weren’t created to satisfy a fetish. I could see more of a case for the mentally-ill that somehow believe they are cats or dogs (or, and I’m not sure which is sillier, possessing the soul of one).
Except that a true therianthrope would be able to change its shape, instead of merely desperately trying to convince fellow Tumblrinas that they are anything but insane. From a modern sense (reject modernity) I suppose you could still base them conceptually off of mental illness, albeit without any basis in fear (or actual ability to transform), or “society”.
So, they still don’t apply.
You can get slightly more obscure with the kelpie, a shapeshifting, mostly malicious lake-dwelling spirit. Not sure how it could possibly tie into society or disability, but to the intellectually and ethically deficient, the sort that social justice rhetoric appeals to the most, you could pull it off with enough distortion and lies. Just look hard and long enough, and there’s bound to be a deliberate misinterpretation permitting the tenuous association of one or more -ists or -isms to it.
But, it seems that most monsters not specifically created for games, were created to explain phenomena, excuse various events, or even to prevent children from doing something stupid. Or to simply tell an entertaining and/or exaggerated story. For the rest? Well, they were made for players to interact with, to fight, hide from, flee from, or even negotiate. Depends on the monster and desired outcome.
Personally, I create, reskin, and re-imagine monsters all the time. Take the prismatic spider:
It's a floating, crystalline...well, it’s not exactly a creature. Something between an animal and mineral, I suppose, possessing something resembling viral intelligence (so, quite stupid). It inhabits a place analogous of the Plane of Air, feeding off of sunlight and absorbing color from other pseudo-living things it comes across (represented by Charisma drain).
It attacks by extruding scintillating whips of hardened light, and can periodically emit prismatic bursts of light (similar to the prismatic spray spell).
Nothing about it is inspired by fears derived from either society or disability. I was simply writing a bestiary for the Plane of Air, and wanted to do something more interesting than standard Dungeons & Dragons fare, such as bird people, winged people, airborne aquatic life, and various motile clouds. The prismatic spray came about because it absorbs colors, is crystalline: a light-based attack just made sense, like a prism.
I’ve never thought hey, a retarded person, that’ll somehow make for a compelling adversary: bog-standard human with an Intelligence of 3 or less. Though, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if an SJW “designer” did precisely that, just before patting themselves on the back and calling it a day. You know, for being so inclusive.
This isn’t to say that you can’t base a monster off of various fears of society or disability, or that no one has (at least in part), but it is preposterous to the point of being a blatant, deliberate lie to assert that it’s the standard.
“To understand why monsters with humanlike minds (sapient monsters) shouldn’t be described as having “low intelligence...”
Here Fay reaches waaay back to point to racism, conjuring up banal buzzwords like conquest, slavery, and white supremacy. She provides no context, because it wouldn’t avail her non-argument, she's just desperately hoping you'll simply read the “bad” words and either do nothing or agree. The former because you're too cowardly or lazy to protest, the latter because you're just as intellectually bankrupt as she is, and are therefore unable to comprehend how monumentally retarded her statements are.
Either way is fine: empty validation is all she wants. And money.
She makes claims without evidence, framework, or nuance, such as orcs, goblins, and ogres all being “descendants” of apparently...colonialism and slavery. Of course. But then, what isn’t nowadays? Nevermind that ogres—and ogre-like monsters—are found throughout the world in mythology, with an uncertain origin.
In several older stories featuring ogres, they are depicted as essentially human in all respects but perhaps size. Where's the racism there? The slavery? Colonialism? What about the Japanese oni? A cyclops can perhaps be categorized as an ogre, and it's only real difference is the single eye. It suffers no disadvantage, so if anything this would be an example of...well, if a made up word like ableism is bad, I guess you’d have to go with the reverse: disableism. Anti-ableism? Either works. It’s all made up jargon intended to shutdown dissent, anyway.
But it's because of this that you aren't “allowed” to depict these fantasy races that only a racist would conflate with real people (whether or not they possess even superficial similarities), as stupid or primitive. You’re “allowed” to use other words that mean the same thing, as long as Fay, a shiftless, immoral hypocrite approves of them, of course. Be sure to check in regularly with her, as her list is subject to arbitrary change at any time, for any reason.
Ideally you'd hire her, paying her far more than she's worth, which is anything at all, to keep you updated, even though most of her time would be likely frittered away on Twitter. Plus she'd probably just throw you under the bus anyway should an opportunity present itself.
No normal human being that possesses even a sliver of compassion looks at a retarded person in a vacuum and thinks, what a horrible monster. A sub-human deserving of exile if not death. Sure, some retards behave despicably, and can be obnoxious or at the least annoying, but no sane, rational, empathetic person sits down and seriously believes that they all deserve to die for that reason alone.
That’s what a psychopath does.
Fay claims that “alt-right” boogie-persons use orcs as standins for blacks, when in reality that's what liberals do. Liberals look at orcs, an inherently evil, monstrous, savage, and—most importantly—fictional race, and somehow arrive at the conclusion that, whelp, given their description and behavior, they’re obviously just blacks-in-grey-skin.
Now personally I’ve never seen a black person with gray skin, having freshly emerged from a cave and be-decked in crudely stitched animal hides and patchwork medieval armor, go on a murderous rampage to.kill, steal, and destroy, and I’m guessing Fay hasn’t either, so I have no clue how she confuses the two. Well, actually, I do: psychotic, idiotic racism.
“This is nothing less than a toxic stereotype of what it means to have a cognitive or developmental disability.”
(This is in regards to the ogre's Legendary Stupidity paragraph.)
No, it's a stereotype of ogres. A fictional monster. You know—or, possibly don’t—like orcs, goblins, gnolls, all of them. Don’t like it? Don’t like people saying that an imaginary monster is retarded, and you’re so racist you can’t help but conflate them with some other race? Change it. Or stop playing (or pretending that you play). Or get some help. I know I’d love to see how that goes down, telling a therapist that you think blacks are orcs.
“The worst part of these toxic descriptions is that they exist to create monsters that heroes can kill without guilt – no questions needed.”
The worst part is that you are so deranged and lazy, your life so entitled, that you not only had to invent a problem, find something to pretend to be outraged about so as to give your life some fleeting semblance of purpose, so that people would notice you and think you're a good person, a champion for the downtrodden and marginalized, that this was the best you could do. Imagined ableism in an imaginary game.
And the main reason people kill imaginary monsters in imaginary games without guilt, is because like your pronouns they aren't real. They aren't really living, breathing creatures. They have whatever personality, hopes, dreams, and ambitions that the GM decides they should have, and when the game is over they are forgotten.
“Any ogre or hill giant can be killed on sight, allowing the story to skip straight to dramatic action scenes.”
Ogres and hill giants “can be killed on sight”, so that you can skip to a “dramatic action scene”, as if the battle against an ogre or hill giant couldn't possibly be “dramatic”. No, you just casually kill it, instantly I suppose, and with no description, and immediately move on to another fight where you...well, I suppose kill something else on sight.
Of course, Fay at least pretends to play 5th Edition, so I can see where there would be a dramatic dearth: characters have plenty of hit points, easily recovered. Death is difficult to come by (and might require the player to fill out a consent form in triplicate), and encounters are expected to be intricately balance so as not to provide meaningful challenge.
Not that I expect NPCs to fight anything. From Fay’s warped perspective that would be murder, and cut into what I can only assume is the majority of the game, where they constantly remind everyone of their new, imaginary genders and pronouins, awkwardly pretend to have personalities and original thoughts, and muddle through highly fetishized sexual roleplay.
“In the fiction of the game, killing these monsters makes the world a better place...”
Yes, assuming you go by default flavor, where they are destructive and evil. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not real life, anyway. They aren't real creatures, and they don't represent anyone, regardless of how many times you unabashed, delusional racists insist otherwise.
“...but that’s genocide.”
Another meaningless and deliberately misapplied buzzword, thrown out purely for shock value. As with the afore-exploited racism, slavery, and colonialism, Fay wants you to see genocide, gasp, and then buy into whatever plagiarized rhetoric she’s repeating. Because genocide is bad, right? And Fay says this is genocide—without any explanation or evidence, of course—so this must also be bad, right? And you don’t want to be bad, so just blindly, submissively listen and believe.
Right?
Wrong.
Not because Fay is an uncloseted racist, but because no one or thing is actually dying. There’s no set population in decline. It’s a fantasy game, where you can have as many or few of a given creature as you want. You don’t even have to determine the population, ever (I can’t recall a time where I ever have, unless the monster was unique): there could be effectively infinite orcs. A never ending stream for you to throw at the party whenever you please.
It’s genocide in the sense that throwing away a plastic miniature is murder, or erasing a battlemat is destruction of property. Which is to say it’s not, because imaginary things aren't real. They don't have rights. Seriously, take this social justice retardation to court. File a lawsuit, if for no other reason than to see how loudly you are laughed out of the building.
Someone should establish a new mental disorder (if there isn’t already), where you actually believe that imaginary ideas are real things. Like how some people believe that their arm isn’t really their arm, or that they should be blind or otherwise crippled.
Of course that would mean that the person wouldn’t dare play any games (yay), for fear of murdering “living” creatures, and destroying entire worlds and universes whenever they got bored and stopped thinking about it...but then I’d expect a sociopath like Fay to do so for that specific reason.
“The justification that hill giants are an “evil race” doesn’t help, because the concept of an “evil race” originated in the stereotypes and violence of the real world.”
No, they're by default evil so that you can have a clear, easily identifiable source of bad guys to fight, so players can go, ah, yes, orcs, the bad guys (because they are). Let’s kill them and take their stuff (assuming they have stuff worth taking), and/or stop them from accomplishing whatever evil deeds they are attempting to commit.
And they only remain so because the DM understandably doesn’t feel the need to change it. It’s a game, after all, and humans enjoy various types of conflict beyond compelling others to comply with invented pronouns. He could just as easily declare otherwise, and tell players, “Hey, heads up, in this world orcs are like this.” Like how it works in, say, Eberron.
But their nature isn’t even an issue, and easily justified in a number of ways: they’re created by an evil god or wizard, anthropomorphized representation of chaos and/or evil, manifested from the shadowed recesses of creation, places untouched by the light of God, etc. This is fine, because they aren’t real. It’s a game. Something normal people play for fun.
The only meaningful monsters threatening anyone in real life are SJWs. You are the bad guys, which explains your feigned revulsion. You see yourself in orcs, ogres, and goblins, monsters that normal, everyday people, who play games for fun and are capable of kindness, happiness, and love, slaughter with glee...and then forget about because, you know (or should know), fantasy monsters aren’t real, and most gamers have actual lives, as well as other hobbies and responsibilities to attend to.
“Another way that ableism comes up is the depiction of ugly monsters as “deformed,” “twisted,” “misshapen,” and “unnatural.””
Fay doesn't like that ugly monsters are accurately described, as people that are deformed or misshapen can and often are considered ugly. I'm guessing Fay is a very ugly person, not just inside, but out. Many people become SJWs due to an absence of positive traits, which is why they resort to destroying everything else, and trying to convince everyone that bad is good, ugly is pretty, stupid is smart, fat is healthy, boys are girls, etc.
There are voids in their...hearts, souls, whatever you want to call it, and they think they are entitled to have others fill it for them, and when that obviously doesn’t happen they get angry.
“These depictions use ableist descriptions of disabled traits, such as hunchbacks and atypical limbs, in an attempt to create revulsion in their audience.”
Translation: you are irrationally angry that people find certain characteristics such as symmetry generally unappealing. Unsurprising. SJWs are so obviously envious, threatened, and offended by anything and everything actually beautiful (even if it stems from an illustration), so attempt to destroy beauty wherever it can be found.
As mentioned above, they want you to think that ugly is beautiful, and beautiful things are somehow bad. This is where they throw out more buzzwords like sexist and male-gaze, even though neither applies. Just see the words, gasp, and then agree with Fay so no one thinks you are somehow evil for the crime of appreciating beauty, for being normal, really.
“In the 5th Edition Monster Manual, there is no better example of this than the description of the fomorians.”
This is the closest Fay comes to actually having a point (though she still fails): their deformed bodies reflect their vile demeanors.
What Fay doesn’t tell you, is that it’s a result of a curse, but since I’m aware that it’s a game, make believe, I don’t immediately assume that an ugly person is evil and was cursed to appear that way because of their actions and personality. People are complex, and I assume they have their ups and downs, but I’ve never seen someone and thought that they are a wholly reprehensible being, evil to the core, with no redeeming qualities, just because they were ugly.
I will say that I do notice...trends, you could call them, with genuinely terrible people and certain physical traits, namely hair style and color, though to be fair bios listing pronouns, sexuality, and/or gender (especially when it's invented) seems to be a far more accurate indicator. Try being normal for a change. Or at least more normal. Baby steps. Connect with people, genuinely care about them. Get a job.
Anyway, how many monsters are even deformed in the Monster Manual? There’s the fomorians and...what else? Perhaps I’m missing something, but I did a keyword search and, well, they’re it. So Fay is in a self righteous fuss over a single monster. This was all she could find to pretend to be outraged over, to farm clicks and attention to feed her pitiable ego.
“Blind monsters are by far the most common monsters with sensory disabilities.”
As with the so-called deluge of malformed monster, singular, Fay is being disingenuous, though to be fair slightly less so. But, as usual she isn't giving you context, because that disables (heh) her flimsy narrative.
That's fine, I’ll do yet more work on her behalf (white savior to the rescue), presenting you with the entire list of monsters out of the first Monster Manual that are immune to the Blinded condition and have Blindsight, implying that they are inherently, constantly blind (but suffer no meaningful penalties):
- Animated Objects
- Blights (needle, twig, and vine)
- Crawling Claw
- Fungi
- Grell
- Grimlock
- Helmed horror
- Intellect devourer
- Quaggoth spore servant
- Oozes
- Shambling mound
In case you're an SJW/NPC that doesn't actually play games, let me clarify: these are mostly things that don't have any eyes. And the only ones that are humanoid are some of the blights, grimlock, and quaggoth spore servant, though blights are plants.
“Despite having an easily recognizable disability, blind monsters are regularly played for laughs, where they stumble around like a sighted person with a blindfold on.”
Given that all blind monsters possess some sort of unusual sense that allows them to essentially function normally (Blindsense/Blindsight), this is either an outright lie—which wouldn't surprise me given that SJWs always lie—or projection, with Fay going out of her way to run these sorts of monsters contrary to what the rules say, bumbling around and grasping about at the air, all so that she can vicariously mock the blind that she apparently so intensely despises.
“An interesting example is the three gray witches from Greek mythology who share one eye between the three of them.”
What a reach. The graeae aren’t D&D monsters. I’ve never even used them, or anything resembling them, I don’t know anyone who has, and I don’t know anyone who knows anyone that has, so why resort to them as some sort of meaningful example? Why not use an actual D&D monster, like the grimlock? Is it because they essentially function as someone that can see, thereby disproving your flimsy, wholly unrelated narrative?
This isn’t just complaining about the presentation of something in one TV show, because another completely unrelated TV show does so in a way you don’t approve of, this is whining because the other completely unrelated show might not present something in a way you approve (depends on which Greek legend you read), while the TV show you’re talking about actually does, but you’re going on the internet to lie about it, anyway.
But, to address your whining: the graeae aren’t human. Why would you assume they can adapt to anything? Being able to see is better than being blind: why wouldn’t they beg for Perseus to return their eye? You claim that they are portrayed as comedic and pathetic: which version(s) of the story are you referring to, as there are many tellings and re-tellings? I want to see the exact text, and then compare it with other descriptions.
But then, why does it matter? Why does a Greek legend matter for a completely unrelated game? Dungeons & Dragons isn’t by default particularly faithful to any Greek legends, or most any legend. This is why gorgons are called medusas, minotaurs and hydras can be found and killed in abundance, kobolds are little dragon people, ghouls are undead, Tiamat is a five-headed dragon, and none of the angels are correctly named, and they’re all just winged humanoids.
Finally, why do you keep using the word stigma? Initially I might have figured you were just doing so for shock value, but now I can only assume malice. So, why do you perceive being blind as a mark of shame, or discredit? Why do you feel blind people should be ashamed of themselves? Presuming there’s some other reason besides being a psychopath, of course.
“Below is a checklist you can use as a starting point for finding and examining a monster’s disabled traits. Keep in mind that some of these traits, like “insanity,” are inherently stigmatizing, while others can be neutral or stigmatizing depending on the context.”
Only a sociopath like yourself would consider someone being mentally ill or deformed to be a reason for them to be ashamed of, as opposed to a cause of concern or remorse. But that requires caring about someone besides yourself.
The entire list is just arbitrary, harmless, commonplace terms and descriptors that Fay doesn’t want you to use, like deformed, lumbering, and psychopath. It’s purely self-censorship, control. Like all SJWs she’s a would-be autocrat who not only wants to constrain your thoughts and actions, she wants you to do so willingly, automatically, and impose her cancerous lies upon others.
Nothing would make her happier, assuming anything else could possibly make her happy in the first place, knowing that you actually obeyed her absurd guidelines, creating content and living your life by rules that she herself would violate and change on a whim.
“For example, depicting a blind monster “comically” stumbling around is ableist, but accurately depicting a blind monster is fine.”
If it’s comical, it’s funny. You might not think so, but then your type are offended by everything anyway, so who cares? I’d go out of my way to depict this, but most inherently blind monsters are objects and oozes, so it wouldn’t make sense.
And when Fay says “accurate depicting a blind monster”, what she means is, it’s fine if you depict it precisely how she wants you to...unless she doesn’t like you for whatever reason, in which case you’re still bad, and she’ll throw the Buzzword Book at you, round up a Cancel Culture mob. The usual routine.
How about this: I’ll meet you in the middle, and just have newly blinded creatures bumble around like fools.
“To create disabled monsters that are respectful representations, disability needs to be treated as a neutral trait.”
Disabilities are bad. No one wants to be, say, deaf or blind (unless you are insane), and normalizing it is equally bad. As is convincing someone that they are better off disabled, or to embrace it and make it their entire identity, like how you guys try to use sexuality as a substitute for personality.
Mind you, just because disabilities are bad, doesn’t mean the person is bad, or worthless, or deserving of death. I’m not like you, Fay. Most people aren’t, thankfully.
“Designing Monsters Without Ableism…”
Here Fay links to a pair of studies about “racial essentialism” that at best, assuming they have any validity—and I’m not convinced they do—pertain to real life. Dungeons & Dragons isn’t real life. This is why you don’t get arrested for killing imaginary people and monsters, or stealing imaginary objects. You also don’t get taxed on imaginary treasure. In real life, I mean.
She demands that you stop using “evil races”, because this will somehow stop racism and ableism in real life. It’s so simple, so obvious: all of those KKK members and genuine Nazis? Why, they’re just being influenced by inherent racial alignments!
Utterly preposterous. It’s like the Satanic Panic, but somehow sillier and stupider. No, yeah, get WotC to revamp all their books to remove alignments and most racial features. That’ll get rid of racism world-wide. Curious what edition of Dungeons & Dragons they were playing hundreds if not thousands of years ago. Maybe that’s the RPG holy grail lazy designers are seeking, -10th Edition, so they can finally crank out their “perfect” fantasy heartbreaker.
Fay also wants you to stop using the term race, just because. Nothing new, there. I’m going to keep using it, because there’s absolutely no downside, plus it pisses off NPCs. Win-win.
She pushes for the abolishment of universal racial traits and features that she perceives to be rooted purely in culture, and not, say, an instinctive tendency. This would make sense if these fantasy races were essentially human, with wholly human origins and minds. This isn’t inherently the case, not even fantasy humans necessarily have real-world human origins and minds.
Again, it's about control over your thoughts and actions, not making the world a better place. You can comply, neuter your creativity to appease a hypocritical, powerless, psychopathic narcissist who will still judge you entirely on whether she approves of you, specifically your race, gender, sexuality, and your political stance. Also on whether she thinks you are smarter, more creative, and more financially successful than she is.
Why bother appeasing someone that will at best temporarily tolerate you, until you violate some unspoken, ever-changing law? Create whatever monsters you want, however you want. It’s just a game. They aren’t real. So ignore everything Fay says, or do the opposite to piss her off, as well as other NPCS. You're going to anyway, given enough time.
Also, gatekeep your table. Gatekeep your store, if possible. SJWs don’t buy anything or contribute positively to the industry or hobby in general, anyway. Too busy engaging in all that capitalism they pretend to hate, wasting their parents’ money on hair dye and overpriced products, and telling you that you’re subconsciously evil because you’re white and straight.
There's also a different take on the grimlock (still noteworthy for being blind), and a sort of "open game" take on mind flayers, which are more than capable of driving people mad.
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