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OwlFancier posted:If you're looking for it it's easily read but as I say I never really got the impression that Tolkien was racist, just that his books can be read somewhat that way if you want them to. It's been an awful long time since I reread LOTR, but IIRC there's plenty of "swarthier Men = more evil/fallen" stuff. And then there's orcs. They're subhuman creatures, crude degraded versions of Men (or was it Elves? I forget) created by a Devil-like figure. The very worst of the Orcs possess the darkest skin. Despite being foul and corrupted, Orcs are threateningly superior in many ways: fiendishly strong, animalistic, avaricious, fast-breeding menaces to all that is good. They lust after and resent the status of higher races. The only solution to the Orc problem which any good guy contemplates is indiscriminate slaughter. Peace talks, negotiations? Impossible.. Our Heroes cheerily wade in Orc blood, competing to rack up the highest possible body count without ever expressing any guilt or remorse, because why would they??? Orcs are vermin and deserve their fate. If you don't notice the congruences with an awful lot of racist tropes, I don't know what to say. I don't think Tolkien was consciously going for racism here, but once you notice it you can't help but be disquieted by the fact that these fairly racist ideas are objective truths in his fantasy world. By the way you guys who are trying to rehabilitate Lovecraft by talking about his Jewish wife? Yeah, about that... HP Lovecraft, in 1928 posted:Smith, to my mind, is a direct exponent of the newer-immigration element—the decadent & unassimilable hordes from Southern Europe & the East whose presence in large numbers is a direct & profound menace to the continued growth of the Nordic-American nation we know. Some people may like the idea of a mongrel America like the late Roman Empire, but I for one prefer to die in the same America that I was born in. Therefore, I’m against any candidate who talks of letting down the bars to stunted brachycephalic South-Italians & rat-faced half-Mongoloid Russian & Polish Jews, & all that cursed scum! You in the Middle West can’t conceive of the extent of the menace. You ought to see a typical Eastern city crowd—swart, aberrant physiognomies, & gestures & jabbering born of alien instincts. He'd been married to her for several years at that point. There have always been racists who befriended, married, and/or hosed individual members of the classes they hated -- and, from the other end, people who put up with bigoted lovers because attraction is weird. Not to mention the many cases where a power imbalance keeps someone in a relationship that has ceased to be good. This is why "I have $MINORITY friends/spouse, I can't be racist!" is always bullshit. The marriage didn't even last more than a few years, by the way, and I can't imagine that this kind of attitude had nothing to do with it. I mentioned power imbalances, but in this case, despite the time and place, she didn't need him, he needed her. Lovecraft was a lazy failure of a man who wouldn't go outside of the house during the day and could not find or hold decent jobs, so she had to support him. From afar, because he wouldn't move to the city where she found work. Another amusing detail is that although she moved on and remarried, technically they were never divorced. Lovecraft promised to file the papers, but never did so, and she didn't find out until much later.
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Jan 8, 2016 12:45
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Someone saying 'Nordic-American nation' is actually refreshing compared to the modern 'Judeo-Christian nation'. Refreshing in the way that at least they're being honest that they're a racist and not trying to pretend that they give a poo poo about the Jews.
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Jan 8, 2016 12:53
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rudatron posted:You've got to be really, really careful when using psychological disorders if you're not actually a trained psychiatrist, there's nothing more embarrassing than someone self-diagnosing, or diagnosing others, like you're talking about their star sign or blood type or whatever. BaurusJA posted:Not empty quotin'. First I agree that you've got to be careful and I'm avoiding any discussion of specific people. I'm not going to speculate on what makes Yudowsky or someone else tick because even with training, someone's online persona still isn't enough to go on because it's such a limited part of their lives. And absolutely I'm in no position to treat anybody. The most I can say is that anybody who feels miserable and that my description fits them would probably be helped by seeing a therapist because it's certainly helped me. But this often degenerates into some sort of taboo that only the priests of psychology can proclaim the curse of the gods and anybody else doing so invites their wrath. I am personally quite familiar with the stigma against mental illness and the difficulty of figuring out what's troubling someone suffering from it. Quite often it's not just one disorder and someone might have elements of another showing up. People won't admit to symptoms out of shame or fear that it might make them look dangerous. Even trained psychiatrists are in debate over the validity of the current set of recognized personality disorders. Frankly that sentiment doesn't help. All it's doing is enforcing this idea that there's a line with crazy people behavior on one side and sane people behavior on the other side and it's polite to talk about people on one side in terms that are impolite for the other. In theory those of us stuck on the crazy side aren't worse than anybody else but saying someone's acting that way encourages stigmatization. Mental health issues are difficult precisely because there isn't such a line, uncomfortable as that may be to many.
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Jan 8, 2016 13:43
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rudatron posted:I don't think DE is simply a manifestation of frustration or When Nihilism Goes Wrong. That period you describe in your own life OwlFancier sounds more like the angst of just growing up. But I think if there is a correct response to Nihilism it's got to be self-actualization, or at the very least a reorientation towards a subjective humanism. I dunno, maybe I was just lucky in that I personally didn't spend much time being a nihilist, despite being atheist from a very, very young age. I'd actually like you to talk more about it, if you don't mind. What would you like to know? quote:Regardless, I think nihilism is too simplistic an answer. As is frustration, everyone grows up wanting to be an astronaut, yet everyone else grows up out of it. That's all a bit odd to me, I wasn't raised religious and didn't understand what a conscience was until I was a good bit older, so having difficulty with guilt like that is sort of a strange idea. I mean specific guilt yeah that's a thing and generally my response to it would be to make amends, but this kind of generalized guilt that you need a philosophy to overcome is kind of weird. I can't say I think I do enough bad in my life to need that, I've never really wanted to. I guess maybe if you have very warped desires centred around profoundly unethical things? But I would surely expect them to notice that being terrible to women and angry about gays/jews/foreigners/black people/whatever is not really making them happy. None of the people who post their youtube videos of them sitting surrounded by skulls and rationing out their jim beam seem very happy with their lives. I just don't get it, it seems like a really specific and exhibitionist kind of anxiety and depression if it's as you describe. Generally I would only be able to cultivate that if I did it quietly.
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Jan 8, 2016 14:05
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I don't think it's a generalized guilt, though I should have elaborated on what it would be in reference to - they know they are unpopular and, worse, despised, for multiple reasons - their racism, sexism, general misanthrophy and bigotry. But they have no intellectual recourse (because there is none). Sure, they say a lot of words to convince you, but do you think they believe that poo poo? They can't, not in their heart of hearts, and it nags them. They will alternate between despising themselves and trying their best to convince you that they're hot poo poo. It's a show, meant for you, but also them. But they still truly think racially, with bigotry, and what they want more than anything is to say that that voice of reason inside their head, their conscience, their (potential) compassion - go away, let me be horrible & nasty in peace! That is who they are. They lack the self-awareness for acceptance, but have the arrogance to reject outside help in abundance. Don't feel bad for them, nothing you can do will save them. My question for you, specifically is: Why couldn't you find an acceptable answer to nihilism, other than be just refusing to think about it? There are a lot of directions you could have gone, but you just pulled a holding pattern until you stopped caring? That, I find strange. If you find your response getting to long, PM it to me to so you're not live-journaling the thread, I'd like to know. I think it's valid to talk ideas about their ideology, or their thinking (it's literally what I did up there /\/\/\), I don't think it's valid to use technical, specific psychiatric terms to do so. So say that they're wrapped up in grandiose fantasies or whatever, fine, that's easier to talk about, but don't be pulling out the DSM and trawling through it for hits. rudatron fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 14:50
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I guess it's just weird because my response to that would be to think "Maybe I could be less racist?" If some idea you hold isn't doing you or anyone else any good, why not change it? It's real hard to see where they'd get the reinforcement of its utility from because they're so public about it. That's why I mean I could only do it quietly, it's a lot easier to hold self-defeating ideas if you don't talk to people about them. Personally as to the nihilism question, I've always been nihilist for as long as I can remember, I remember asking my mum how she dealt with waking up every day knowing you're dying. She got defensive about it and told me to stop thinking about it, not too helpful. So I spent most of my childhood trying to figure out how you stop thinking about it and never had much luck. My problem was mostly that I kept looking for some inherent value, some objective truth that I could hang onto, and nothing ever stuck, couldn't get away with religion because it seemed too self-deluding, I couldn't keep up the pretense. Empiricism is certainly useful but it doesn't give you any comfort. Eventually I think over the course of my life I got to the point where I came to accept the lack of any concrete foundation for a belief system, and then embraced it. I can't really explain how it happened because it sort of just did, in the background, over time, while I was busy worrying about other things. Nowadays I still have the constant reminder of mortality and the certain, everpresent knowledge that nothing means anything and everything will be more or less the same in the end regardless of what any of us do. But I don't see a point in being mopey about it. It is what it is and whether you like it or not it's happening, so try to be happy, because that's far more pleasant. Once I stopped looking for objective value I started seeing subjective value as more important too. All beliefs are founded on nothing but that just means that if one is valid, so are all. Of course many may not stand up to empirical scrutiny which I still have a fondness for, but there's no one Absolute Truth that invalidates all other beliefs, so there's no need to worry that much. I guess that's what makes it hard for me to really understand the viewpoint of stuff like DE, partly because it seems so ardent, as though it's the answer to truly fundamental questions of life, to which I would argue there is no satisfactory answer. And also it's just such a weird viewpoint to take. It's so specific and brash and seems to be centered very heavily around being in conflict with the rest of the world, which just does not seem like the kind of thing I would want as someone in a position of deep personal doubt. I already felt in conflict with the world because of it being kind of lovely. I don't think I could handle my coping philosophy requiring me to be utterly despised by a large portion of the world and to revolve around ranting to people about all the subhuman plebs who are ruining everything. It doesn't seem like it does a very good job of satisfying either immediate tangible contentment or long term philosophical contentment. I get that there may be some aspect of martyrdom to it but just how people manage to keep up that degree of belligerence for so long is beyond me. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 15:25
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BobHoward posted:It's been an awful long time since I reread LOTR, but IIRC there's plenty of "swarthier Men = more evil/fallen" stuff. And then there's orcs. They're subhuman creatures, crude degraded versions of Men (or was it Elves? I forget) created by a Devil-like figure. The very worst of the Orcs possess the darkest skin. Despite being foul and corrupted, Orcs are threateningly superior in many ways: fiendishly strong, animalistic, avaricious, fast-breeding menaces to all that is good. They lust after and resent the status of higher races. The only solution to the Orc problem which any good guy contemplates is indiscriminate slaughter. Peace talks, negotiations? Impossible.. Our Heroes cheerily wade in Orc blood, competing to rack up the highest possible body count without ever expressing any guilt or remorse, because why would they??? Orcs are vermin and deserve their fate. Tolkien is interesting in this regard. Things like Sam's monologue over the dead soldier from the south, Eowen's subplot, and Tolkien's continued problem with the depiction of orcs give me the sense that he was somewhat aware of his racial/gender biases and trying to confront them on some level. Ultimately his work doesn't really escape the prejudice of his time (rascism, sexism, classism), but it's interesting to see his attempts at wrestling with them.
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Jan 8, 2016 15:28
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Darth Walrus posted:I'm asking because while this isn't a formal academic discussion, most of us are making a token effort to back up what we're saying with links and examples, while he seems to be pulling some really weird stuff out of his rear end that doesn't match with anything else any of us are familiar with and stating it as objective fact. Like, where does the idea that fascism, a twentieth-century ideology with relatively shallow roots that's built around iconoclasm and deliberately mythologised distortions of the past, is an integral component of political thought as a whole even come from? I think thats actually pretty fair. I jumped into this discussion way late. He is ignoring the very recent development of fascism as a very non-homogeneous ideology that has, as you said, very shallow roots that maybe, mmmaaayybe start in the late 19th century. Plus there are so many flavors of the thing we call fascism that just naming it probably does no good. I misinterpreted what you meant by sourcing I think.
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Jan 8, 2016 15:42
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OwlFancier posted:My problem was mostly that I kept looking for some inherent value, some objective truth that I could hang onto, and nothing ever stuck, couldn't get away with religion because it seemed too self-deluding, I couldn't keep up the pretense. Empiricism is certainly useful but it doesn't give you any comfort. Eventually I think over the course of my life I got to the point where I came to accept the lack of any concrete foundation for a belief system, and then embraced it. DE types seem to have taken a base version of the Kierkegaardian route; faced with an absence of meaning, instead they take a leap of faith to concrete views, which must then be defended lest they suffer a suicide of the soul. Or get called wrong on the internet.
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Jan 8, 2016 15:48
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1337JiveTurkey posted:Frankly that sentiment doesn't help. All it's doing is enforcing this idea that there's a line with crazy people behavior on one side and sane people behavior on the other side and it's polite to talk about people on one side in terms that are impolite for the other. In theory those of us stuck on the crazy side aren't worse than anybody else but saying someone's acting that way encourages stigmatization. Mental health issues are difficult precisely because there isn't such a line, uncomfortable as that may be to many. I was sort of making that point by generally appealing to what "good psychologists" do as a short hand for this more mobile type of thinking that appreciated the vagaries and constructedness of mental disorders. Its a delicate subject that Im glad we can address here in long form. There arent many sites where one can have these sorts of discussions.
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Jan 8, 2016 15:51
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Guavanaut posted:Sounds like absurdism, which is an interesting philosophy. Have you read any Camus? I don't think I've read any formal philosophy. Absurdism seems related but not quite it, as I don't reject the possibility of objective meaning as much as I've just never been able to find any and find the search kind of exhausting. I'm not very familiar with Kierkegaard but I would have thought that maybe he might have desired more that people take visceral joy in living as they choose, because that emotion is important to your wellbeing, than in the inherent need to really pick a stance and start beating everyone else around the head with it because doing that in itself is important.
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Jan 8, 2016 16:05
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Yeah, I don't think they're doing anything that Kierkegaard himself would approve of, I was just contrasting that against your more absurdist leaning outlook. One is "In the absence of finding any absolute meaning, you can either kill yourself, make poo poo up, or accept that you're not likely to find anything and have a good life without absolute values" which sounds close to what you said. The other is "In the absence of finding any absolute meaning, you can either kill yourself, suffer a suicide of the mind/soul through lack of absolute values, or take a leap of faith and gain value through that" which sounds more like what silicon valley nerds devoid of absolute values are doing by creating this DE mess. They probably consider themselves closer to sophomoric interpretations of Nietzsche, those sorts usually do.
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Jan 8, 2016 16:22
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But you don't need objective value or absolute truth, nor does subjective value necessarily lead to relativistic equivocation between all values - you just accept that your values are yours, which you will act on, and then encourage others to hold because that makes you feel good. Fear death? Try and live longer, and enjoy the moment. If meaning is that important to you, loving make that poo poo up, it's what everyone else does anyway, whether they recognize it or not - or better, abandon meaning as meaningful and live as you are and will be. But you have no reason to stick with nihilsm or, rather, stick with the assumption that meaning matters at all (and that for it to matter you must derive if from pure mathematics or whatever). Like everyone seems to confuse subjective with personal opinion about objective, and objective with social facts (common sense/scientific consensus). Your Opinion gets Countered by Objective Fact, ergo Objective is, like, stronger than Subjective. If you can't find an Objective meaning, you might get Countered! Oh No! But actually, they're totally different things - purely subjective statements are without truth value, purely objective statements have a well defined truth, 'objective' is not a stronger form of 'subjective'. rudatron fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 16:27
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I guess that makes the Dark Enlightenment somebody's idea of an ideal religion. Moderately terrifying.
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Jan 8, 2016 16:27
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Moldbug does. In the attempt to neutralize the political, he's made his views pseudoreligious in nature. At least that's how it comes out in his writings. The enemy? The Cathedral. (Although I'm sure some NRx sects would rather call it The Mosque or The Synagogue  )His origin of modern progressivism? They descend from Unitarians, who descend from Protestants. It's an unbroken chain, modern secular liberals are cultural Christians, and all progressive movements are Unitarian in nature. There is some truth in the assertion that the Enlightenment was intertwined with the effects of the Reformation, but he treats it as an unbroken chain of religious descent moving ever left, essentially buying into the myth of Whig History that he should despise but turning it on its head.
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Jan 8, 2016 16:37
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More like good old traditional fascism, your enemies are whatever kinds of thing are convenient for the current argument. An all powerful cabal of groups united by their intent to destroy your race? Sure. A very small segment of a single branch of a single strand of a religion? When you need to point how narrowminded they are. Clownish buffoons who just don't know what you know? Those too
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Jan 8, 2016 17:30
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OwlFancier posted:I guess that makes the Dark Enlightenment somebody's idea of an ideal religion. well most of them go for either hardcore evangelicalism/santorum Catholicism (kain and a few others) or atheism.
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Jan 8, 2016 17:31
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I'm not saying I could do much better, but the current attempts ITT to "understand the psychology of HBD etc" are bad. Or rather, they're not really attempts to do that in the first place. For that, one would have to either try and see it from the inside - gah! - show some empathy with them; or look at some actual sociological data. Numbers may become involved even. And there's plenty of actual science and numbers around on viewing various right wing groups as pathological, because of course, science is liberal and social scientists are particularly liberal and write books about how voting sexism is literally insanity all the time.
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Jan 8, 2016 17:40
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Guavanaut posted:Moldbug does. In the attempt to neutralize the political, he's made his views pseudoreligious in nature. At least that's how it comes out in his writings. I always thought it was weird he called it The Cathedral, since the move away from Catholicism is supposed to be the start of Prog evil. Coulda at least called it The Kirk or something.
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Jan 8, 2016 18:17
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Guavanaut posted:Someone saying 'Nordic-American nation' is actually refreshing compared to the modern 'Judeo-Christian nation'. Refreshing in the way that at least they're being honest that they're a racist and not trying to pretend that they give a poo poo about the Jews. The really funny thing about the dork cross pollination with nazis and European far rightists is the worship of Nordics which was never a thing in America. Famously, sociologist thorstein Veblen got kicked out of the ivy leagues due to his "dusky" Scandinavian heritage.
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Jan 8, 2016 20:42
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BobHoward posted:It's been an awful long time since I reread LOTR, but IIRC there's plenty of "swarthier Men = more evil/fallen" stuff. And then there's orcs. They're subhuman creatures, crude degraded versions of Men (or was it Elves? I forget) created by a Devil-like figure. The very worst of the Orcs possess the darkest skin. Despite being foul and corrupted, Orcs are threateningly superior in many ways: fiendishly strong, animalistic, avaricious, fast-breeding menaces to all that is good. They lust after and resent the status of higher races. The only solution to the Orc problem which any good guy contemplates is indiscriminate slaughter. Peace talks, negotiations? Impossible.. Our Heroes cheerily wade in Orc blood, competing to rack up the highest possible body count without ever expressing any guilt or remorse, because why would they??? Orcs are vermin and deserve their fate. One of the issues with writing the kind of story that Tolkien wrote is you need villains but you need villains that aren't sympathetic. It's also a fantasy world so it doesn't necessarily need to ape the real world. So how do you create villainous villains that you can't negotiate with? Create something like orcs. That's a long, long trope of not just fantasy but fiction in general. "These things are mean and nasty and you can only fight them." It doesn't necessarily mean the writer is racist. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. edit: Now that I think about it I realize why DE likes these stories so much; they clearly delineate the world into "good things" and "bad things." Humans, elves, hobbits, and dwarves are good. Orcs are bad. That's the way of things. What these guys want to do is separate the real world into that clear delineation as well. Which is unfortunate as reality is...a lot more complicated. Fictional worlds are simpler because it makes for good storytelling. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 20:42
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The Vosgian Beast posted:I always thought it was weird he called it The Cathedral, since the move away from Catholicism is supposed to be the start of Prog evil. It's worth noting that the more cretinous alt-right types you find on /pol/ and the like do call it "the synagogue".
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Jan 8, 2016 22:44
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GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:It's worth noting that the more cretinous alt-right types you find on /pol/ and the like do call it "the synagogue". Well at least they're calling it after something founded by the presumed culprits. These people should LOVE cathedrals.
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Jan 9, 2016 01:32
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Now that I think about it I realize why DE likes these stories so much; they clearly delineate the world into "good things" and "bad things." Humans, elves, hobbits, and dwarves are good. Orcs are bad. That's the way of things. What these guys want to do is separate the real world into that clear delineation as well. Which is unfortunate as reality is...a lot more complicated. Fictional worlds are simpler because it makes for good storytelling. That's not surprising, since racism is all about constructing a simplified worldview in order to justify otherwise morally questionable actions and attitudes. In that context, it make sense to question the presence of a species like the orc, since while fighting a truly mindless, beast-like foe would be justified, we're prone to casting each other as such. Motto fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 04:11
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Peven Stan posted:The really funny thing about the dork cross pollination with nazis and European far rightists is the worship of Nordics which was never a thing in America. Famously, sociologist thorstein Veblen got kicked out of the ivy leagues due to his "dusky" Scandinavian heritage. Skyrim was fun.
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Jan 9, 2016 04:37
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ToxicSlurpee posted:So how do you create villainous villains that you can't negotiate with? Create something like orcs. That's a long, long trope of not just fantasy but fiction in general. "These things are mean and nasty and you can only fight them." It doesn't necessarily mean the writer is racist. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe this is why these DE types seem to have such grognard-ish tastes in their fantasy entertainment - Blizzard and Bethesda's ongoing de-badification of orcs must feel like betrayal, to these guys.
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Jan 9, 2016 04:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the issues with writing the kind of story that Tolkien wrote is you need villains but you need villains that aren't sympathetic. It's also a fantasy world so it doesn't necessarily need to ape the real world. Tolkein had a solution to this, though - he was a devout Christian who believed in free will, so the easy way for him to make an unsympathetic villain was someone who deliberately chose evil, like Saruman, Sauron, and Morgoth. This is why he hated the orcs as a villain-concept - they had literally been made to be inherently evil, and lacked that opportunity to choose. It was, again, the unfortunate consequence of pastiching older stories by much more enthusiastically racist authors (hi again, Wagner), and not being able to come up with a good alternative that wouldn't betray a tradition that he loved despite its flaws. You see it a lot in more recent literature with Lovecraft's disciples, who tend to wrestle with finding ways to capture the dark magic of his cosmic horror while removing the bug-eyed bigotry that's one of its most important inspirations.
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Jan 9, 2016 05:05
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quote:Aspects of the neo-reactionist political project (which has been linked to Thiel) seem palpably to run along the same lines, to me: a childish vision of liberation denuded of any actual social responsibility, or any ability to think clearly about the welfare of others. Representative democracy has some problems, but to wholly reject it in favor of autocracy seems a little like the perspective of a small child unwilling to share its toys or lose its comforts. And so, we have projects like Seasteading, where you get to live basically in Waterworld and never have to do what your parents tell you to do, or Alcor, where you never have to really say goodbye to anyone you love. http://www.theawl.com/2016/01/the-origin-of-tech-species
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Jan 9, 2016 09:02
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Dapper_Swindler posted:well most of them go for either hardcore evangelicalism/santorum Catholicism (kain and a few others) or atheism. Orthodox Christianity is increasingly popular in the alt-right. Never heard of an evangelic neoreactionary, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out.
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Jan 9, 2016 09:40
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Orthodox Christianity is increasingly popular in the alt-right. Never heard of an evangelic neoreactionary, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out. its mostly an american thing. its not many mostly wannabe kane. Jeedy Jay posted:Maybe this is why these DE types seem to have such grognard-ish tastes in their fantasy entertainment - Blizzard and Bethesda's ongoing de-badification of orcs must feel like betrayal, to these guys. haven't orcs in elder scrolls always just been a race. like in universe, they have a stigma (warrior race, tribal) and they face bigotry, personally, i like complex villians, (game of thrones, man in high castle, breaking bad, a decent amount of video games, i guess kylo renn,) but i am fine with simple ones as long as they work.
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Jan 9, 2016 15:27
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Cingulate posted:I'm not saying I could do much better, but the current attempts ITT to "understand the psychology of HBD etc" are bad. Or rather, they're not really attempts to do that in the first place. For that, one would have to either try and see it from the inside - gah! - show some empathy with them; or look at some actual sociological data. Numbers may become involved even. ok, I'll bite: Empathy how, exactly? Would you mean in terms of "Imagining being white while walking downtown in the middle of the night"? Please post an example of sociological data you deem valid for this thread.
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Jan 9, 2016 20:41
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Dapper_Swindler posted:its mostly an american thing. its not many mostly wannabe kane. TES lore is really funny to dig into because very obviously some upper middle class kids D&D campaign in the 80s with a ton of racial stereotyping. They've been trying to make it a little less obvious but from time to time the source material pokes through.
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Jan 9, 2016 21:54
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Xae posted:TES lore is really funny to dig into because very obviously some upper middle class kids D&D campaign in the 80s with a ton of racial stereotyping. If I recall correctly the redguards in the original games had some... pretty  racial stat modifiers.Redguards being TES black people.
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Jan 9, 2016 21:57
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They had a positive ability modifier to athletics and a negative ability modifier to speech in Oblivion.
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Jan 9, 2016 21:58
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Lady Naga posted:They had a positive ability modifier to athletics and a negative ability modifier to speech in Oblivion. I think in daggerfall or arena it was buffs to physical stats and negatives to intelligence.
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Jan 9, 2016 22:01
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OwlFancier posted:I think in daggerfall or arena it was buffs to physical stats and negatives to intelligence. I was wrong (there aren't racial bonuses to secondary skills). Redguards have bonuses to Strength and Endurance and penalties to Intelligence, Willpower and Personality. It's also gender split, so female Redguards don't have the Personality penalty but don't get the Strength bonus. And to be entirely fair, Nords also have a penalty to Intelligence, Willpower and Personality.
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Jan 9, 2016 22:04
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OwlFancier posted:If I recall correctly the redguards in the original games had some... pretty This is why I prefer the NPC races that are just lizardmen or catpeople.
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Jan 9, 2016 22:29
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The Vosgian Beast posted:This is why I prefer the NPC races that are just lizardmen or catpeople. The catpeople are very much supposed to be Roma (they're nomadic peoples who are also dirty, shifty thieves and they speak funny).
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Jan 9, 2016 22:32
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Lady Naga posted:The catpeople are very much supposed to be Roma (they're nomadic peoples who are also dirty, shifty thieves and they speak funny). GODDAMNIT
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Jan 9, 2016 22:36
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| # ? May 27, 2024 09:32 |
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Lady Naga posted:The catpeople are very much supposed to be Roma (they're nomadic peoples who are also dirty, shifty thieves and they speak funny). They're actually kind of specifically interesting from this standpoint because they're basically a stereotype of Roma... except they're treated as completely awesome dudes who are basically The Best Race, and one of them is even a dev's (comedy) self-insert. They also worship cocaine.
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Jan 9, 2016 22:37
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