Who Said That?

Oh, yeah!  That’s right, it was me – I said that.  I told you D5D was totally gay, but some of you didn’t believe me.  Well, here it is in black and digital white from those paragons of upright honesty and integrity*, Kotaku:

“Wizards of the Coast is making D&D more gay.” [Emphasis mine.]

Strahd never looked more intimidating.

Once again, it’s left to old E. Reagan Wright to spell this out for you lot.  All the weak kneed surrender monkey conservatives out there are falling all over themselves trying to explain themselves and why they aren’t really X-ophobes, they just don’t see why WotC had to do this because blah, blah, blah, me so reasonable massah Antifa, please don’ dox po’ little ol’ me, I’s not agin’ they gay, I’s just wants to plays mah Dungeons and Dragons without the gay – not that there’s anything wrong with the gay – at mah table.

Bear in mind, this little announcement is not a change in direction.  As Kotaku hastens to admit, “Every adventure since Curse of Strahd has included one or several queer characters.”  WizAIDS of the Coast didn’t make this announcement because of any desire to actually DO anything, they just wanted to let everyone know that they are good people, please do not Antifa our offices.

This – like the toppling of (a select few) historical statues** – is not about increased representation or “having people in the games that look like me”.

Seriously? D&D needs more in-game characters like this?  Gygax wept.

This isn’t about making sure the left wing crazy cakes feel better about gender swapping a few NPCs so that their fantasy game can include the fantasy of a stable and healthy gay marriage.  This is about making sure that people who aren’t left wing crazy cakes know exactly who is in charge here.  This isn’t about allowing some gay into some tables, this is about ensuring the gay at every table.  Even yours.

Now, they will readily admit that it’s easy enough for you, in the privacy of your mom’s basement, to gender swap gay couples to make them normal again.  For now.  “Weaving queer plotlines into D&Dgames is not hard to do,” the Kotaku article admits.  But when it comes to any sort of organized public play, your hands are tied.  You will choke on this tabletop dildo and you will like it or you will be considered anathem – forcing normal people out of the hobby is the only way to ensure its growth.

Hey, it worked great for Marvel!

Oh.

The other common refrain that nobody has an answer to (until now) comes from the bleating left, “Why not?”

There’s a little thing called opportunity costs.  Everything is limited.  Time, money, energy, everything.  When you spend time and energy focusing on one thing, you cannot spend that time and energy focusing on something else.  Marvel is learning to their financial chagrin that focusing their time and energy on diversity means taking time and energy away from things like characterization, plot, story structure, art quality, proofreading, PROOFREADING for God’s sake!  Those are all kind of important things for stories, and Marvel has taken eggs out of those baskets*** to throw them all into the diversity basket, and the results are obvious.  Both subjectively in the quality of the works they sell and objectively in the sales figures.

And this is the future WotC has chosen.

They are converging at a stellar rate.  The mission of foisting their bizarro world views onto the general public is far more important to the leaders at Wizards of the Left Coast than listening to fans, increasing market share, increasing sales, and chasing after the almighty dollar.  They’ll get away with it for a while – heck, Paizo is still in business – because this sort of *ahem* business *ahem* decision takes a while to metastasize into full blown diagnosable cancer.

And as usual, as is the way of sinful behavior everywhere, those responsible for contracting the easily avoidable social disease that is leftism will scurry about like rats blaming everything under the sun EXCEPT for their own obviously terrible decision making skills.  They’ll blame external market forces.  Changes in publishing.  Pressure from “upstairs”.  Anything, ANYTHING! but their own short sighted stupidity.

And as usual their response will be to double down.  They’ll redouble their efforts to appeal to a smaller and smaller user base through increased visible signalling, more rainbow flags, more condemnations of badfans, and stricter control over organized play space.

It’s a death spiral for the official brand, and one they cannot escape.  Wizards grabbed the urine-bottle throwing tiger by the tale, and they cannot now hope to let go or else they will be eaten alive by the very people they so desperately seek to placate.  They don’t know that this is a game they cannot win.  They don’t know that sooner or later some bush league locust woman will view the WotC scalp as the perfect trophy with which to adorn her wall.  (And it will be a woman.)  She will view taking down the house that Gygax built as a prime stepping stone to a bigger and better organization to destroy on her way to a fabulous life of middle management in her middle-age surrounded by a middling number of cats.

I bear no ill will towards Wizards of the Coast.  This whole situation doesn’t anger me at all.  Instead, I feel a profound sense of loss and pity.  Watching a loved one die of an easily preventable communicable disease is never pleasant.  But recognizing the self-inflicted nature of the death is important if one is to avoid falling into a similar trap.

Are you watching, Goodman Games?  Frog God Games?  Learn the steps of prevention and inoculate yourselves now – before it’s too late!

 

*Satire, ladies and gentlement.  I can haz it.

** MLK opposed gay marriage – that’s a hanging offense these days.  And yet, his statues go unmolested.

*** Those milkshakes aren’t going to pay for themselves, people.