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Notes -
I don’t know how else you’d handle magic creatures or aliens. They’re not the same species. Orcs are specifically not humans, and neither are elves. Klingons aren’t humans. And as such saying that an Orc or a Klingon doesn’t act like a Southern California PMC half wit isn’t quite the same as being a racist.
The things that make me uncomfortable in those settings is less that Orcs act differently than humans, it’s that all orcs have the exact same culture and belief system and nobody rejects it or questions it. Humans are certainly one species, but we are different and have different opinions and cultures and religions. Or maybe I just wonder what a hippy orc would be like.
Per your second paragraph, on the sci-fi end, this is why I think DS9 was one of the best Star Trek series — the stationary setting, longer story arcs, and (particularly in later seasons) less reliance on Negative Space Wedgie or Strange New Life of the Week stories (though there's still quite a bit) allowed it to get further away from the "planet of hats." We get Bajoran political and religious disputes, Ferengi feminists, Cardassian dissidents of various stripes, and even a Klingon restauranteur who played a concertina-like instrument as he serenaded his customers. And as for D&D specifically, this isn't nearly the issue that some critics make it out to be, as Samueldays touches on in his reply to that Tumblr post.
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