Underneath my yellow skin

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Too sensitive or just sensitive enough?

So. I’ve been big into D&D lately–trying to find good groups to watch. It started with the Oxventure crew with Johnny Chiodini as their DM, and it’s expanded since then. I have at least two issues with this, and I’ll start with the more general problem and then go to the more specific one.

There are not enough women of color in these groups. And there are definitely not enough women DM’ing.

Side Note:  This is a problem in general with gaming, but especially in the UK. They are really good with having women on their teams, but people of color, especially women? Not so much. It’s really annoying and discouraging because I prefer their style in general, but it’s started to bug me more and more.

I found one group that is all women and more than one woman of color, but unfortunately, I could not gel with the group. The DMs are also players, which made it very confusing, and one of the other women played a lecherous man who was really fucking annoying. Like, I wanted to punch him (the character) in the face annoying. So I fell off that pretty quickly. I gave it another shot, but I just couldn’t with the asshole character.

Which leads me to my problem with the D&D groups in general. I tried to watch the Dicebreaker one, but I absolutely loathed one of the characters. It didn’t help that I don’t care for the person in general, but his character is such a relenting asshole and a big bully. The way he was browbeating a woman (NPC) was really uncomfortable to me, and even though it also has one of the most adorable characters ever (Tim the Gobbo), I won’t be watching again. Not only because of this one character, but because of how the group treated the ‘animals’ (dinosaurs) in the two episodes. Especially the character I hate.

This actually ties into my issues with the Oxventure group, which I’ve started to dread more and more. Why? Because they seem to take more and more glee in being cruel to animals. Merilwen is an elf druid who specifically loves the animals. The others have treated it as a pain in their collective behinds since the beginning, but it was ok because it seemed like an inside joke. In the last four or five adventures, however, it seems much more malicious. Like they take glee in it. And while they’re always ribbing each other, it seems meaner than the way they treat the other members.

In the last adventure, Merilwen’s beloved (and passed) wild cat friend, Simon, showed up again as a hat on a hunter who used dark magic to make the animals go to him rather than have to go collect them. It was really disturbing, and while it was awesome to see Merilwen get scary mad, it really turned me off. In the comments, several people issued similar sentiments. One person even asked if Ellen (the person) had pissed off Johnny (the DM). Someone else noted that in the year, Dob found his sister; Corazon got some closure with his father and got the family mansion; Prudence got Frisky and The Darkness, pet grimoires; and Eggbert got a measure of atonement. Granted, he also lost a kidney, but still. What did Merilwen get? Her dearest friend being disrespected in such a horribly cruel way.


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