Lately, we’ve seen DnD and Pathfinder move away from some of the more blatant signifiers, like renaming “race” into “species” and “ancestry,” and in the case of Pathfinder, having systems in place to mix ancestries in a character build. DnD has decoupled good and evil from species, and pathfinder has done away with good and evil entirely ( keeping a vestige of it present for things like demons and angels).
Race is almost alwys tied to a language and a culture, with, say, kobolds having the same certain cultural signifiers all over the world. To an extent, this makes semse because different peoples in these games can have different physical abilities, or have different origins entirely, which would naturally lead to them developing along different lines – If one people can breathe underwater and another was born from a volcano by a specific god’s decree, that would inform how these cultures behave.
Is it possible to have a fantasy along these lines with a materialist underpinning, or is this very idea of inborn powers anathema to that sort of approach?
Including the alien who:
Is introduced in the movie and, when asked if he is intelligent and he replies with “I can talk”, the white saviours respond saying that just because you can talk doesn’t mean that you are intelligent.
Whose life is saved and who then swears to become the white saviours’ slave.
Whose language is only missing the word “Massa”, because that would be a little too on the nose although it wouldn’t be out of place whatsoever.
I’d argue that he’s a caticaturised European Jew:
Big, hooked nose ✅
Scruffy facial hair ✅
Happy merchant grasping hands ✅
Slimy businessman ✅
No scruples ✅
Always trying to profiteer from other people’s needs ✅
Wears a small hat on his head ✅
Covetous ✅
Responsible for slavery and debt-bondage of people ✅
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