It's maybe not a great indicator that a runner for one of the world's biggest fantasy franchises apparently doesn't know even the basics of the history of fantasy, but (since I've written and given some work on this) a *thread* https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1254520395564109824

Tolkien is responsible for the modern use of orcs (though it's a middle english spelling of ogre, which is where Tolkien got it); there's a fairly standard reading of Tolkien's orcs as black, which is understandable. It's also incorrect.

There are two features that lead critics to the commentary: (1) physiological description of the orcs, which includes Tolkien's literal reference to them as having "dark skin as if burnt" and (2) references to race mixing (Treebeard's speech on Eisengard) and breeding for muscle.

So, why say this is incorrect? Well... because Tolkien himself refers to the orcs as explicitly designed to be "Mongoloid." (See letter #210 in Carpenter's collection of Tolkien's correspondence.) Tolkien also says that he characterized the orcs to be repulsive to Europeans.

Tolkien wasn't a dummy, and there's lots of discussion of his intention in designing and characterizing various nations. There are also commentaries on the fact that representing the killing as defensible on the basis of being "non-human" is not great.

Since it looks like Grummz wants to talk about this, I guess we should ground the moral claim here. Is it racist for fantasy and science fiction worlds to make use of racist tropes in characterizing non-human races?

The answer is [at a minimum] "sometimes." Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons, none of them remotely complicated. (1) In general, it's not good to do things that engage in apologetics for genocide, even if recast as xenocide.

That's the standard moral critique of Tolkien on race. (2) Use of certain historical racial stereotypes frequently also includes reassertion of other implicit racial stereotypes. This concern gets raised sometimes in the literature re: Tolkien, but *especially* re: Star Trek.

e.g. Ferengi intentionally make use of a range of Jewish stereotypes, but also wind up adopting a bunch of other implicit (esp. physical) stereotypes in fleshing out the characters.

One could fairly easily run a case study of this in the Blizzard Warcraft franchises, including Kern's, but the reality is that the Warcraft franchises (some of which I quite like, though not WoW so much) have kinda just leaned into this to the point of treating it as camp.

Historically, one could run the ostensible racism of early iterations in Warcraft, DnD, MtG, etc. as just parasitic on the inheritance of Tolkien. My own inclination is that's probably the right view, though some franchises (MtG) have actively tried to address these issues.

Mutatis mutandis for sexism; is the trope of the bound female alien sexist? There's inclinations to argue re: Princess Leia, but there's no reason to think non-human-but-humanoid women cast disproportionately as slaves, scantily clad, etc. are different (e.g. Twi-leks).

Which gets us to argument (3), and the one that I think is most damning of Kern inter alia. Making art involves deliberation about how to do things, how to build out your world, and active selection of the traits of characters, races, genders, etc.

On this point, I think Kern is an almost preposterously silly example, not because his work carries with it the racist, sexist, etc. biases of history and contemporary culture, though they do. But because they illustrate a lack of self- and social awareness.

Sidebar: In addition to not being very smart, Kern is also a moral coward and pretty silly. And being referred to as a "soy sipper" by a guy like Kern is pretty funny, since I'm classically/conventionally masculine and he's... not.

But let's return to (3). Kern's suggestion is that he's being "anti-PC" as a matter of thoughtful and intentional adoption of policy, but the reality is that his base model is just the same boring stuff. What does that say? Well, minimally, he's into the mainstream aesthetic.

We could do a whole separate thread on the silliness of "stop oppressing me!" while indulging in the most boring, mainstream aesthetic choices that have being floating around with only slight variations since before we were born.

But Kern's deficiencies here are just a function of his creative failures. Guy's whole career is cribbing fantasy tropes built by other people totally uncritically, so he has to be defensive of the historical racist, sexist, etc. content rather than... being a better creator.