The Source of My Annoyance

[kent_allard_jr]

I feel bad that I don't update this journal more often. Hell, I feel bad for not doing much at all these days. Occasionally, though, I feel compelled to write something. Sometimes it's out of pride, other times it's out of annoyance.

In my last entry I wrote about designing a fantasy campaign based, loosely, on sub-Saharan African cultures and

Comments

[kent_allard_jr]

Oh, there'd be plenty of diversity in a place like Rome, although even there you'd be talking, largely, of different shades of white folks. And yeah, there would be an occasional Ibn Battuta / Marco Polo far traveler like your African woman. And it's not as if I would object to such characters; players introduce them all the time into my D&D campaigns and I'm fine with them.

Here's my fundamental take, to give you some idea where I'm coming from: I don't like prigs and scolds, and I dislike them as much on the left as on the right. The reason I get so angry at the left-wing prigs is that my friends RT them with admiration and say "go get 'em girl!" I don't see them as people who are making the world a better place; I seem them as self-appointed, self-righteous bullies. And I feel obligated to defend their targets, if I can see a reason to defend them. (Obviously, some actions really are indefensible, and some folks deserve to get ripped.)

So I'm inclined, most of the time, to give creators the benefit of the doubt, even when I'm not a fan of their work. So yes, I'm happy to see more ethnic diversity in fiction, but to enforce this as some kind of requirement, and demand that every rural village look like a Captain Planet posse, really rubs me the wrong way.

[agrumer]

OK, but the problem with that (well, a problem) is that you wind up defending the worldbuilding abilities of JK Rowling, whose worldbuilding has always sucked.