Stop with the inclusivity! Only FAN GATEKEEPING can save our favorite nerd passions – from D&D to Star Wars

The inclusivity experiment has failed and it’s time to admit that gatekeeping served a purpose. Let’s bring it back!

If you missed the online discourse surrounding ‘fantasy racism’ this week, in which case you are in the most enviable of positions, the short version is that orcs are now racist caricatures and Dungeons & Dragons should be altered.

Yes, society’s seemingly most miserable are at it again and, as has become the norm, they’re looking to ruin everyone’s fun by barging in and uprooting a game that is already decades old.

At first glance it may just appear as if a bunch of internet woke-scolds with zero influence are whining, so why bother paying them notice, but if recent history is any indication, corporations are listening to the tantrum-throwing toddlers and, as a massive nerd myself, I’m sick of seeing my ‘culture’ getting decimated.

Throughout the past few years, the media built and consumed by nerds has been tarnished and morphed beyond recognition, all to suit a very vocal minority who have zero respect for what came before. Magic: The Gathering allowed tournament rules to be altered so a ‘non-binary’ human could write political messages on their cards that targeted the artist of said cards. This of course followed massive online outrage after the company originally remained steadfast and said ‘no.’

Star Trek, a series known for its deeper philosophical messaging, is now lazy modern-day agitprop that’s core messaging breaks down into… The Federation are actually the bad guys because ‘Orange Man Bad’ and, Fascism, or something. Please clap for how deep we are!

Meanwhile, other beloved franchises such as Star Wars are being handed off to directors who clearly despise its core fans. And this is only scratching the surface as video games, tabletop card and board games, television series, comics, and film, are being constricted to conform to a modern-day crowd that’ll turn on it on a dime, all because the white female to black female ratio is off by .02 percent.

All the while, the people who helped such properties get to where they are, and who stuck with them through all the many ups and downs, they’re left at the wayside and called bigots because they disagree that D&D is a colonialist fantasy.

I wish I was being hyperbolic, but consider Vampire: The Masquerade. This is a tabletop game where you play as creatures of the night that battle their own moral conundrums. Dark eroticism is a main theme, and players can give in to the dark side and partake in some truly foul activities. As an RPG, it allows players to role-play as something completely different from our day-to-day lives. That is its purpose.

Yet, as is to be expected, the fragile humans made of glass shattered at its existence and when a new fifth edition was announced a handful of years ago, the outrage machine was flipped on, and changes were forced by a woke media going out of its way to create intentionally bad PR. It went so far that the studio behind it was gutted and production handed off to another team, all because they chose to address controversial modern-day issues. Spelled out further, a game where you can drain the blood of babies and gruesomely kill anything, was attacked for ‘controversial passages’ in its rulebook. It now carries with it ‘content warnings.’

This is where the inclusivity experiment must end. Everything cannot be made for everyone, no matter how much some people try. Popular media with decades of history should not be trashed just so individuals who didn’t even like it in the first place can feel at home. And since most companies don’t have the balls to stand up to internet outrage, it’s up to long-term fans to shut down those who want to forcefully enact change. So, for as much backlash as the woke crowd is already receiving, they need to get even more of it. These people don’t deserve to feel welcome in our hobbies. There is no place for them here.

On the same hand, I don’t belong in theirs. If they create a new property built around stopping orc racism and snagging the land back from colonizers using the power of rainbows and hugs, who am I to barge in and demand they include more death and murder? That would be a game that caters to them, and they deserve to have that, just as we deserve to have our D&D with orcs as they have always been.

Gatekeeping. It’s for the best.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.