For me the easiest tell is the up front, unprompted, and unsolicited declaration of nonpoliticalness. When someone takes the time and expends the breath to announce how nonpolitical they are, what follows is almost always a rant about how everything/everyone else is too political these days, and that of course leads into something between status quo advocacy and outright reactionary/regressive sentiments for some fabled time before those wicked politics were visible to the nonpolitical ranter. 
People that are hostile to service workers. Some just want to take some ideological stand against tipping when the service worker doesn’t really have a choice and needs those tips to survive in the current unjust system in a way where ideological purity gestures toward that service worker just look like being a greedy and sanctimonious asshole. The worst of such people will actually declare, shamelessly, that they believe that service workers don’t deserve a living wage. The implications of that are 
worthy.
I may get shit for this, but I’ll say it anyway: this hair and beard combo, seen on living people. 
I have yet to meet anyone in person with that look that wasn’t a chud.
(If one of you is a comrade with that look, I am sorry in advance for the prejudice and if I ever meet you in person I will atone by buying you a drink or something.)
Insisting that there is nothing questionable about works of science fiction/fantasy that have inherently evil races that it’s morally right to exterminate and saying you’re just being a sensitive snowflake if you find the concept off-putting
Bonus points if they use the Thermian argument when you point out the similarities to colonialist and fascist ideology, as if the creator didn’t make a conscious choice to write the story that way
The Iron Dream pointed out how gross this concept was way back in the 70s and that really should’ve been the end of it
“But I need enemies that the protagonists can kill without getting into messy moral quandaries” that’s what fascists, imperialists, and slavers are for
Good one. The people that say they miss D&D “before all the politics” and especially ones that cite Gygax’s reign as the good old days are 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨
I remember back when D&D removed racial alignments. The
tears were delicious.
The alignment system probably has a direct throughline with the emergence of the political compass type reactionaries. It’s always been bad and ought to be removed entirely.
Ah but your paladin is now in a contrived situation that requires oathbreaking either way
Also that fucking kobold self-insert a backer put into one of the pathfinder games.
Which character was this? Worst thing I remember was that quest in Kingmaker with the edgy human pirate self-insert character.
I’m also relieved that Baldur’s Gate 3 dropped the alignment system for a CRPG. It’s always been so annoying to have the computer hard-track an “alignment meter,” and now I can relax and focus on what my character would want to do.
Crinukh (AKA Kreia with scales).
Fortunately, I barely remember that one. It at least didn’t have a quest that fucked the strategy layer of the game until you completed it.
Could you talk to your God’s tech support for something like that?
In lore? Kinda, Paladins can be redeemed. In game, it’s up to the DM (who would also be the one who contrived the situation to begin with).
I would be mega salt about needing to be redeemed if I didn’t have a choice but to break my oath.
I’ve never encountered a table that bad before, but I’ve heard stories. With the amount of online games now, I think players are a lot less pressured to deal with toxic stuff like that.
I haven’t had to think about my ‘local’ brick-and-mortar for 15 years and I’d like to keep it that way
Remember the rage over that time WotC published a wheelchair accessible dungeon a few years back? I specifically remember a lot of
explaining how a wheelchair bound wizard should actually just waste spell slots on Fly whenever he wants to move around or simply cast Wish to restore the function of his legs gg ez.
On the subject of D&D I find paladins kinda sus. I have both seen first hand or heard about way too many fash types who flock to that class because they want to be epic Lawful Good doesn’t mean Lawful Nice “nits make lice” Gygaxian genociders of designated evil races while having divine backing and being the in-universe embodiment of good morals.
I wanna commit
every time some nerdass reactionary motherfucker says
“if you’re reading [evil species] as a stand in for minorities I think you’re the real racist
”
GAAAAAH you disingenuous fucks! I don’t have the fucking mental fortitude to try to explain why this entire history racial coding and othering of minorities makes it a little gross when somebody says they think it’s cool to exterminate all the goblins/orcs/kobolds/etc. because it’s all pretend make believe!
It’s not even hard to make a designated group of villains! These orcs are a marauding mercenary band, these kobolds sabotage mountain passes to rob and murder travelers. That’s all you need! The race essentialism just ruins a setting for me unless they’re like, actual demons from hell or cthulhu squids (even then I’m partial to an occasional chill devil or squid). Writing the antagonists, regardless of species or origin, as people makes for media that is so much more compelling.
I didn’t even need the moral reason, the fact that it’s incredibly lazy writing is enough to anger me
Doublepost but
From the Wikipedia summary:
hmmm . . .
Ah shit I forgot about that part. Big L for the author there but it’s a good book otherwise
I think we have at least two of them on this board who are really defensive about the validity of Justified Genocide ™ in Goblin Slayer.
We have, yeah.
I remember one such cryptofascist weeb claiming, Thermian Argument and all, that “according to the setting’s lore, the goblins are not conscious or sapient! They’re more like a fungus that requires sexual violence on non-goblins to reproduce! That makes genociding them cool and good and funny actually!”
Tell me about it
Anything, everything, so the treat enjoyer can get off and not feel uncomfortable about what they just got off to.
Goblin Slayer is the second sussiest isekai after Shield Hero
I think it’s much sussier because it has sexual violence throughout along with the genocide business. Shield Hero is sexist but surprisingly close to the (disgusting) average for such fiction once you get past that first episode (which is fucked up pandering to red pillers). Like, idk, think about the typical isekai and it’s astonishingly objectifying, to the point that it really feels like the MC views women in the fantasy world as truly being NPCs who mainly exist in reference to his sexuality, or maybe the MC is a Good Guy ™ but the shot composition and animation framecount demonstrate that the viewer is not meant to have nearly so noble an attitude.
On the other hand, there’s the pseudo-isekai Redo of Healer and the actual isekai Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World, both of which are much worse but also essentially soft porn and therefore less likely to be discussed publicly.
Shield Hero is especially bad because its sexism is so close to (the incel’s fantasy of) the real world. The titular hero has his life ruined by the dreaded False Rape Accusation and then fixes all his problems by finding (buying) a tradwife (underage slave)
The expanded universe of that incel fantasy setting has a moment where (CW: gore, rape, murder)
spoiler
the False Rape Accuser is raped to death while being dismembered in front of a cheering crowd.
Wow, I knew about the part where she gets renamed slurs but not that geez
I can never bring myself to make a work that’s not morally ambiguous. I don’t even like playing a morally upstanding MC as a good thing. My impulse was to exercise him of it with complex situations. I’ll write pieces of shit (e.g. I like to use collateral damage to get back at people I don’t like), but it’s because they’re pieces of shit for one reason or another (see: not their inherited nature).
I thought about trying to write a morally simple novel and couldn’t bring myself to do it. Best I can do is “these capitalists need to be stopped”
Somewhere out there is a race of alien mosquitoes. They are inherently evil; even if it isn’t their fault.
whattabout alien outdoor ca[REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED]