Again, problems in representation are often less important than the way in which folks handle talking about the representation. Growth is possible. And I’ve laid out the way that such growth is possible in my other thread. So I don’t know who knows Daniel but talk to him please? https://twitter.com/ammourazz/status/1320063656437207041

Because it’s possible to accept critique as critique without doing a wholesale retreat into complete defensiveness—and to understand the terms of engagement as being ones of conflicting understandings of representation always under the specter of colonial discourse in RPGs.

And like in this case, from my perspective, I am not dismissing the way in which defenders have sought to show versions of this character in a different light. Like that’s fine. But ALSO there are multiple perspectives, all of which can be read onto this single representation.

So again like there is no truth of the matter — there is only competing representations and some of those representations are being claimed as harmful. It’s not to discredit one representation over another but to make space for all possible representations and then address them.

Here’s the other thread where I lay out the terms of the debate as I see them https://twitter.com/kazumiochin/status/1320026789020749824

Basically, I feel like I’ve provided the framework for allowing Daniel to bow out gracefully and to apologize for producing a character reliant upon tropes of immutable difference, even if those tropes can be taken up in multiple ways. So yeah.

Okay here’s a rewrite! Let’s turn this character into a traveling mercenary

6 Tales of other places
3 Strange weaponry
2 Souvenirs
1 Overconfidence
1 Charm

I feel like this is very much in the spirit of the character no? But here we see the same character with dignity imo

This character is also very much positioned as emerging from difference. But their entire being is not dictated by their difference, and in fact, it is their very difference that allows for them to speak of tales of other places — they get to tell their own story

So again, I think the problem lies in very minute details, and the possibility of rendering those details as racist caricature because the colonial heritage of D&D has for so long asked us to render all difference as immutable in terms of race, culture, and even biology.