Near the end of last year, cosplayer, singer, and tabletop enthusiast Ginny Di uploaded a video titled “Why You Should Build Your D&D Character ‘Wrong’,” a 10-minute discussion about exploring unconventional character creation and playstyles—which she’d personally been heavily discouraged from, despite enjoying them immensely.
The video added fuel to the ongoing conversations around gatekeeping in nerd spaces, coming from both fan communities and the companies that market to them, which have generally aimed to expand and diversify what fandoms look like.
Gatekeeping is a tired, boring phenomenon whereby a fanbase dreams up an imagined complexity and reverence for the thing they enjoy, and weaponizes it condescendingly toward their new or casual peers to make them feel out of place in those spaces.
Motivated by the same momentary rush of power that fuels bullies, gatekeeping hurts both the communities it infects and the industries that create and refine the things they love. When tolerated, gatekeeping prevents the growth or evolution of a fanbase, guaranteeing its slow death from within.
As Di discusses in her video, the D&D old guard is stereotypically known for tearing apart anything that doesn’t resemble the motifs that have come to exemplify their subculture. A wood elf ranger is a perfect combination, so anything less is a kind of error, let alone abominations like an orc wizard.
