I'm seeing discourse about racism within fantasy coding especially as it concerns Orcs and Tolkein's writing, so I want to signpost people to Lindsay Ellis' video essay on Why Bright the movie is Bad, and listen to her discuss racial coding in fantasy

Give it a watch and retweet - basically when you have a fantasy series that's written during a historical period of vast oppressive colonialism then a writer is going to reproduce those attitudes in their writing. Whether they want to or not.

We didn't have critical race theory in the early 20th century, and coding will generally always find it's way into fantasy and Scifi. Even the Khajit race in Skyrim is... uh kinda iffy as it pertains to Romani representation

We live in a racist society caused by structural inequality and the vast majority of the fantasy media we consume here in the west is created by white writers who have blind spots and ignorance and that manifests as racism within coding and the worldbuilding

Coding is a neutral term here, it simply means when someone takes real-world traits and/or stereotypes and applies it to fiction to create a recognisable narrative shorthand. Coding exists everywhere in fiction and it often doesn't have authorial intent. It's neither good or bad.

When coding gets bad is when it's used in such a way that it creates lazy and even downright problematic implications for the worldbuilding. We have the Ferengi, the goblins in Harry Potter and Watto from SW1 which have troubling anti-semitic stereotypes

Jar Jar Binks could be read as a racial caricature of a black Caribbean man and even the Dalish Elves in the Dragon Age series have uhhh.... many issues with regard to borrowing elements from the oppression and culture of American Indigenous cultures

especially with how they're generally treated within the narrative the games (the comics have handled this far better)

Coding isn't uniformly bad, but it's something that writers and creators have to be aware of, especially when you're writing from a position of social privilege, regardless of who you are

Writing complex and diverse characters/worldbuilding isn't going to improve unless we have things like diverse writing rooms, sensitivity readers, and are open to seeking criticism from differing viewpoints with humility.

TL;DR Think about what you're writing and be open to feedback. Also, like, don't create a fantasy race with the express purpose of foisting all the worse stereotypes you can think of just to other them - that's a generally a good place to start

Addenum: I want to clarify that this thread is intended to speak about a systemic issue in the fantasy/scifi genre rather than call out any individual piece of media.