One of my friends that I got into the game recently pointed out something I never realized in my ten years playing this game. The Leprechaun is kinda racist. Maybe a change is needed?
No. You are reading into this way too much in my opinion. This is a mythical creature and has nothing to do with anything else. Are dragons, faeries, unicorns, cyclops etc. a problem as well?
I'm assuming that you are referring/worried about the Notre Dame Football team and their use of a Leprechaun as a mascot. That's not the issue. It's their use of the moniker "fighting Irish". Is using that moniker for a football team a problem? Perhaps, but that discussion is completely tangential to the one you propose.
In the Spiral, Leprechauns hail from Avalon and have nothing to do with any real world countries.
No. You are reading into this way too much in my opinion. This is a mythical creature and has nothing to do with anything else. Are dragons, faeries, unicorns, cyclops etc. a problem as well?
I'm assuming that you are referring/worried about the Notre Dame Football team and their use of a Leprechaun as a mascot. That's not the issue. It's their use of the moniker "fighting Irish". Is using that moniker for a football team a problem? Perhaps, but that discussion is completely tangential to the one you propose.
In the Spiral, Leprechauns hail from Avalon and have nothing to do with any real world countries.
I'm not going to give my opinion on if Leprechauns in Wizard101 are racist or not, but I will address this comment:
"In the Spiral, Leprechauns hail from Avalon and have nothing to do with any real world countries."
This is not true in the slightest. Leprechauns are literally creatures from Irish folklore. There is no "In the Spiral, they exist in a different way" because the Spiral is a fictional world created by a company in the real world. Leprechauns in the Spiral are still based on Leprechauns from Irish folklore.
So, if someone says that the Leprechauns in Wizard101 are racist, it might be best to listen to them and address the situation instead of simply saying "No," to them. This degrades people who attempt to call out racism. If someone says something is racist, it's your responsibility to listen to what they are saying, not tell them they are wrong, especially if you are not the race being targeted.
I'm not going to give my opinion on if Leprechauns in Wizard101 are racist or not, but I will address this comment:
"In the Spiral, Leprechauns hail from Avalon and have nothing to do with any real world countries."
This is not true in the slightest. Leprechauns are literally creatures from Irish folklore. There is no "In the Spiral, they exist in a different way" because the Spiral is a fictional world created by a company in the real world. Leprechauns in the Spiral are still based on Leprechauns from Irish folklore.
So, if someone says that the Leprechauns in Wizard101 are racist, it might be best to listen to them and address the situation instead of simply saying "No," to them. This degrades people who attempt to call out racism. If someone says something is racist, it's your responsibility to listen to what they are saying, not tell them they are wrong, especially if you are not the race being targeted.
To be fair the OP didn't really elaborate on why Leprechaun might be racist. They just said "Leprechaun is racist" and left it at that. I'd assume they are referring to the spell version's Irish-sounding gibberish. All creatures that "speak" in spell animations do so in that gibberish, it's just that the Leprechaun's gibberish has a distinct Irish accent.
So that begs the question "Are accents racist?". To that I would say they can be racist but are not inherently racist. Most NPCs in the game speak in some sort of accent especially in worlds like Marleybone, Mooshu, Dragonspyre, and Zafaria. And even the actual Leprechaun NPC in Avalon speaks with an Irish accent. None of these accents including the leprechaun's strike me as being so overly exaggerated or mocking that they would be considered racist. And if leprechauns in the Spiral do speak with an Irish accent then why wouldn't a leprechaun "speaking" during the spell animation also have an Irish accent?
And what are the alternatives? Could the Irish inflection be toned down somehow? OP didn't elaborate on potential solutions either, just "change it maybe". Well change what exactly? The accent? Should the leprechaun not speak at all? Replace the gibberish with actual words? And of course this is still all just postulation on my part. The previous response thought maybe OP was referring to a leprechaun itself as being racist whereas I think it might have just been the accent. Neither of us actually know what OP was referring to, though, because OP didn't elaborate on that at all.
So, sure, we should all be willing to listen to people with an open mind if they think something in the game might be offensive. But on the flip side people need to provide little more than just pointing and saying "that's racist!" and adding nothing else. That's not really a whole lot to go off of which is why some people may respond with just "No it isn't."
