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By Nelson Schneider - 10/08/23 at 08:02 PM CT
Sometimes the immortal Corporate Persons whose lobbying makes the world such a shitty place to live seem to have memories far shorter than their lifespans. Just 10 months ago, at the beginning of 2023, Wizards of the Coast – the subsidiary of Hasbro and devourer of the late TSR which currently controls the Dungeons & Dragons Intellectual Property – got itself into deep dookie by attempting to change all the rules by which third-parties could create official content for the… “World’s Most Popular Role-Playing Game” in the name of control, greed, and censorship, not necessarily in that order. Naturally, those of us who have been paying attention even slightly saw Wizards’ early 2023 debacle as the fulfilment of a variety of promises/threats they made in the name of promoting Woke Ideology.
Sadly, Corporate Persons really seem to have a collective learning disability to go along with their goldfish-caliber long-term memories. Thus, it comes as no surprise that – believing they’re out from under the D&D community’s Lens of Scrutiny (which should totally be a real magic item) – Wizards of the Coast is at it again, sanitizing their gaming properties of “offensive” content. It seems that the legacy of D&D as a game and lifestyle that thumbed its nose at the Satanic Panic of the Fundamentalist Christian Right in the ‘80s (even as the Corporate Person in charge at the time Bowdlerized out all of the demonic and occult references) has evaporated, as Wizards of the Coast transforms into the very thing the gaming audience has always held in contempt.
Across both D&D and Magic: The Gathering, Wizards of the Coast is implementing a new policy expunging real-world religious terminology from the games, beginning with ‘Witch,’ and quickly moving onto ‘Druid’ and ‘Shaman,’ with an endless slippery slope of concepts set for consideration by Wizards’ new stable of Sensitivity Readers. Yes, apparently ‘Witch’ is a real-world religious identity… yet they generally refer to themselves as Wiccans, not Witches and/or Warlocks (naturally, the Third-Wave Feminist Sensitivity Readers don’t care about the masculine-coded version of the term).
Personally, I’m offended that “Wizards” of the Coast insists on using rank terminology from the Ku Klux Klan in their corporate logo. When I think of “Wizards,” I think of white men in hoods calling themselves “Wizards,” “Grand Wizards,” “Imperial Wizards,” and “Grand Imperial Wizards,” not fictional spellcasters like Gandalf the Gray. And since Racism and X-phobia are the WORST crimes conceivable, “Grand Imperial Wizards of the Coast” need to further expunge their games of all mention of “Cyclops,” “Nighthawk,” “Turk,” “Magi,” “Ensign,” “Monk,” “Ghoul,” and “Guard,” since those are also KKK terms.
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See how quickly such stupidity spirals out of control? These endless purity tests and attempts at sanitizing language to protect everyone from nothing are exhausting. I’m sure the infinitesimal number of modern day Druids and Shamen (and even Witches who call themselves Witches) are perfectly happy to have representation in pop culture, despite being highly marginalized groups. Busybody thought police and Sensitivity Readers need to stop, take a step back, and learn when to leave well enough alone.
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