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Darth Walrus posted: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. Little point of trivia re: Tolkien, the giant eagles who rescue Gandalf and the hobbits are similar in this regard - they raised all kinds of questions about why the Dwarves or the Fellowship didn't just fly to their destinations to perform tasks of worldwide import in a frantic race against time. The answer to those questions is "Tolkien realized he'd written himself into a corner and used them as a blatant Deus Ex Machina; he actually didn't like them either and wished he could have done something better." With Lovecraft, it's easier to deal with the racism by focusing on the larger fear that consumed him, one that's arguably even more central to cosmic horror - the fear of one's own insignificance in the face of an indifferent universe, of realizing that your heritage and your greatest works are utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. It's the fear of realizing that you're not the center of the universe and never were, and just how laughably-arrogant you were to ever think otherwise. Lovecraft and these idiots in the thread title feared the decline of the white race, yes, but underpinning that is terror at the subconscious realization that the very concept of race is an arbitrary little cluster of boxes with little to no bearing on reality and everything they grew up believing is a comforting, self-serving lie to make them feel significance in a cosmos that couldn't give less of a poo poo.
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Jan 9, 2016 22:45
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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 also the settings worst drug addicts and considered a slave race.
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Jan 9, 2016 22:45
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LORD OF BUTT posted: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. I always interpreted Moon Sugar as more like opium than cocaine because of the cultural signifiers Closer to topic, do DE types consider the Stormcloaks heroes or hate Skyrim's writers for making a nativist faction that they feel makes them look bad? EDIT: Thesaurasaurus posted:With Lovecraft, it's easier to deal with the racism by focusing on the larger fear that consumed him, one that's arguably even more central to cosmic horror - the fear of one's own insignificance in the face of an indifferent universe, of realizing that your heritage and your greatest works are utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. It's the fear of realizing that you're not the center of the universe and never were, and just how laughably-arrogant you were to ever think otherwise. Lovecraft and these idiots in the thread title feared the decline of the white race, yes, but underpinning that is terror at the subconscious realization that the very concept of race is an arbitrary little cluster of boxes with little to no bearing on reality and everything they grew up believing is a comforting, self-serving lie to make them feel significance in a cosmos that couldn't give less of a poo poo. I want to frame this statement DarklyDreaming fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 22:46
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LORD OF BUTT posted: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 23:07
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Quite a lot of this stuff is pretty much LARPing FATAL.
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Jan 9, 2016 23:15
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How do they check against anal diameter in the LARP version?
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Jan 9, 2016 23:18
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DarklyDreaming posted:I always interpreted Moon Sugar as more like opium than cocaine because of the cultural signifiers Nah. Moon Sugar is totally cocaine. Skooma is the opium. They even have Skooma dens. Edit: Huh. I looked it up and skooma is distilled from Moon Sugar. Congrats, you're nerdier than I am. djw175 fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 23:36
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Back to the original thread premise. A lot of arguments the red pill crowd use are based on a underlying flawed assumption, these arguments are then regurgitated by supports and because they make sense if you don't think about them too hard, and present themselves as some reaffirming(even if subconsciously) and hidden knowledge that most of the world (or they believe that most of the world) rejects not because it is flawed logic but because they just haven't thought about it, or are willfully ignorant. They then reaffirm their belief by viewing bad or straw man arguments. just what I've seen.
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Jan 9, 2016 23:48
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OwlFancier posted:If I recall correctly the redguards in the original games had some... pretty None that weren't shared by other militarized cultures like Nords or Orcs.
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Jan 9, 2016 23:49
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racial stat modifiers.
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Thesaurasaurus posted:Little point of trivia re: Tolkien, the giant eagles who rescue Gandalf and the hobbits are similar in this regard - they raised all kinds of questions about why the Dwarves or the Fellowship didn't just fly to their destinations to perform tasks of worldwide import in a frantic race against time. The answer to those questions is "Tolkien realized he'd written himself into a corner and used them as a blatant Deus Ex Machina; he actually didn't like them either and wished he could have done something better." Easy. The Fellowship was supposed to sneak under Sauron's radar. He would have seen the eagles coming from a mile away, and would have sent out poo poo to deal with them, not the least of it being those things the Nazgul rode. Plus the Eagles are sentient, and doing a solid for Gandalf is one thing, but going on a mission where at least some of them are guaranteed dead is another. 
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Jan 10, 2016 00:20
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Easy. The Fellowship was supposed to sneak under Sauron's radar. He would have seen the eagles coming from a mile away, and would have sent out poo poo to deal with them, not the least of it being those things the Nazgul rode. Plus the Eagles are sentient, and doing a solid for Gandalf is one thing, but going on a mission where at least some of them are guaranteed dead is another. IIRC the Eagles had a dwindling population. And, as you say, helping their old buddy gandalf in a one bird extraction mission is one thing, taking a whole cohort of Eagles to their near-certain doom--with no substantial guarentee of destroying the ring --is quite another
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Jan 10, 2016 00:30
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Easy. The Fellowship was supposed to sneak under Sauron's radar. He would have seen the eagles coming from a mile away, and would have sent out poo poo to deal with them, not the least of it being those things the Nazgul rode. Plus the Eagles are sentient, and doing a solid for Gandalf is one thing, but going on a mission where at least some of them are guaranteed dead is another. Also, they're eagles and not loving jetliners standing by to ferry people across a continent. Look how far they actually go on the Eagles on the map. I've always hated the "hurf duff eagles" thing; it's dumb tenth grade study hall pedantry repeated by those weird nerdy kids who thought they were smart because they liked nerdy things but for some reason never ended up leaving their home town.
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Jan 10, 2016 00:36
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kind of a silly argument to have in response to someone saying "tolkein was not happy with the eagles and wished he could have written something better"
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Jan 10, 2016 01:00
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Samog posted:kind of a silly argument to have in response to someone saying "tolkein was not happy with the eagles and wished he could have written something better" I kinda tried to hold it back with the smiley to let people know it was too nerdy to really talk about.
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Jan 10, 2016 01:25
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Race Realists posted: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"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy posted:Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position Race Realists posted:Please post an example of sociological data you deem valid for this thread.
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Jan 10, 2016 01:30
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Why the hell are we talking about TES?
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Jan 10, 2016 03:09
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Crowsbeak posted:Why the hell are we talking about TES? Earlier installments gave black people a bonus to athletics and a penalty to intelligence.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:11
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I remember a /pol/ or NRx style DnD race sheet that gave Jewish races bonuses to cunning action with penalties to strength or something too.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:23
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Crowsbeak posted:Why the hell are we talking about TES? It's a pretty direct line from HBD types to there, because they both come from the question of why so much stuff in nerd culture has racist undercurrents.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:23
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Crowsbeak posted:Why the hell are we talking about TES? The series has been around for basically ever and the internet just loves modding horrible things into it. It's kind of tied to Reddit madness and DE pretty strongly. Plus like was said it has some things that are pretty obviously racist in origin.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:52
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Guavanaut posted:I remember a /pol/ or NRx style DnD race sheet that gave Jewish races bonuses to cunning action with penalties to strength or something too. Maybe you're thinking of another thing but a couple years ago I read a hilarious review/putdown of a tabletop RPG straight-up called Racial Holy War. Unfortunately, I can't find it, instead only getting some 4chan wiki that references it, and now I have the terms "racial holy war" and "rahowa" in my search history, so I have just self-owned
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Jan 10, 2016 04:01
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There was an LF thread whose title or main point or whatever was to the effect of "In D&D race works the way racists say it does" that was pretty great.
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Jan 10, 2016 04:04
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OwlFancier posted:If I recall correctly the redguards in the original games had some... pretty Tbh I've always had problems with D&D's "race" system mainly because of poo poo like this. It's become the de facto system for virtually all RPGs and it's lazy, hackish and has the potential to be incredibly offensive. I'd much rather it be a species thing where different species genuinely do have different abilities rather than the current stuff where "black" races get +1 to speed or some other stupid poo poo.
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Jan 10, 2016 05:00
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It makes more sense in DnD because you are literally dealing with different species, except apparently they can also gently caress each other, but functionally orcs and elves and dwarves are different species, and when you start getting some of the weirder stuff like half-dragons and shardminds and stuff it makes more sense still. But in TES redguards are literally just black people. They have different species in the game with the elves and that but there's also a bunch of human phenotypes which they treat a bit weirdly. More of a problem with TES's application of it than anything.
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Jan 10, 2016 05:03
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OwlFancier posted:It makes more sense in DnD because you are literally dealing with different species, except apparently they can also gently caress each other, but functionally orcs and elves and dwarves are different species, and when you start getting some of the weirder stuff like half-dragons and shardminds and stuff it makes more sense still. TES has like 3 and half "races for humans. nords (vicking nordic dudes) Imperials(my favorite) redguard(blacks and middleeast) and bretons(half elves who can do stuff) I am pretty sure all of the "race" stuff goes back to D&D
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Jan 10, 2016 05:08
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Cingulate posted:In the sense of I must ask, how is this any different from what I just said? BornAPoorBlkChild fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Jan 10, 2016 |
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Jan 10, 2016 05:15
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Ddraig posted:Tbh I've always had problems with D&D's "race" system mainly because of poo poo like this. It's become the de facto system for virtually all RPGs and it's lazy, hackish and has the potential to be incredibly offensive. The issue though is that sometimes that reflects real-world racism. Big, hairy things with dark skin that are strong and dumb has...some rather nasty real world connotations. At least if you have something like green orcs you can be like "they're just kind of human-shaped but pretty different from us" and base their traits on their environment or the meddling of some god then it's like "OK no big deal." It gets kind of touchy sometimes and isn't always directly inspired by real world racism. Then there is FATAL which literally has a magic item that makes you very good with money but gives you a huge nose.
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Jan 10, 2016 05:35
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It would probably help if fantasy and fantasy games had a lot more sentient races than just 'humanoids of different physiques/colors'. Where are the hipster-cuttlefish? Though that may not solve the problem, because it brings up another issue - fantasy worlds of any kind (including sci-fi) embed current social stereotypes and ideology within them, and kind of inescapably so. Both because that's easier to make, but also because that makes it kind of more compelling; if fiction cannot connect with the audience, they'll just ignore it.
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Jan 10, 2016 06:25
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rudatron posted:It would probably help if fantasy and fantasy games had a lot more sentient races than just 'humanoids of different physiques/colors'. Where are the hipster-cuttlefish? Though that may not solve the problem, because it brings up another issue - fantasy worlds of any kind (including sci-fi) embed current social stereotypes and ideology within them, and kind of inescapably so. Both because that's easier to make, but also because that makes it kind of more compelling; if fiction cannot connect with the audience, they'll just ignore it. i always thought mass effect did a pretty good job with species and alien design. some of them might fit certain groups vaguely. (quarians = roma or diaspora era jews) (batarians = north korea) but most are there own thing.
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Jan 10, 2016 06:31
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Suitaru posted:Maybe you're thinking of another thing but a couple years ago I read a hilarious review/putdown of a tabletop RPG straight-up called Racial Holy War. Unfortunately, I can't find it, instead only getting some 4chan wiki that references it, and now I have the terms "racial holy war" and "rahowa" in my search history, so I have just self-owned I remember that review, I think! I have a WaybackMachine link to the site--or at least, a site--with a review, but it's not working because of robots.txt, last I tried it (right now). I do remember that the combat was literally unplayably broken, because the weapons had no chance-to-hit or something. It also had a hilariously simplistic "intimidation" mechanic that would send your Aryan heroes running and screaming from, say, a daycare full of Latino toddlers or a nursing home with a higher-than-average Jewish population. It wasn't a good game by any metric, is what I'm saying. Here's the link, btw: http://web.archive.org/web/20030205122306/http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/ SatansOnion fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Jan 10, 2016 |
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Jan 10, 2016 06:39
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rudatron posted:It would probably help if fantasy and fantasy games had a lot more sentient races than just 'humanoids of different physiques/colors'. Where are the hipster-cuttlefish? Though that may not solve the problem, because it brings up another issue - fantasy worlds of any kind (including sci-fi) embed current social stereotypes and ideology within them, and kind of inescapably so. Both because that's easier to make, but also because that makes it kind of more compelling; if fiction cannot connect with the audience, they'll just ignore it. Another thing about storytelling is that a story where everybody just gets along and nothing ever goes wrong is boring. You kind of need conflict and struggle to make a story compelling. Of course one thing you can do (this is why Drizzt is so popular as a character) is totally subvert everything. Like OK, so Drow are evil as hell and they turned black. What if there was a good Drow who became an amazing hero? Then you start exploring things like societal pressure; there are social reasons the Drow are dicks aside from the fantasy world reasons. Granted another side of it is you hear things like "dark people are stained by the sins of their ancestors." Sometimes a fantasy world is just "OK that isn't just a myth it literally happened. How different does that make things?" Another issue is how do you make a sentient race appear strange to the reader without making the reader automatically assume they're inferior? Just because something is different doesn't necessarily mean it's bad but that's where xenophobia often comes from. The view is that if those people weren't so awful they'd be more enlightened. All societies eventually progress to the way we act and we are the best.
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Jan 10, 2016 07:09
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Drow besides being rather racist, also never made sense to me. If the had spent millennia underground shouldn't they be pale as gently caress? Know sunlight would mean they would probably not have melanin wouldn't it? So they would look like Elric. (Interestingly I would argue the first Dark Elves in literature are the Melniboneans from Elric, and Elric would fit the description to a tee).
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Jan 10, 2016 07:55
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Crowsbeak posted:Drow besides being rather racist, also never made sense to me. If the had spent millennia underground shouldn't they be pale as gently caress? Know sunlight would mean they would probably not have melanin wouldn't it? So they would look like Elric. (Interestingly I would argue the first Dark Elves in literature are the Melniboneans from Elric, and Elric would fit the description to a tee). Technically yes they should have lost their color but then it's a fantasy world so it doesn't necessarily follow the same rules. I don't think it's ever explained why Drow are black other than "dark" being used as a common descriptor for the nasty races. Granted that also goes into old folklore that has roots in fear of the night. Trolls, monsters, elves, etc. that live in dark places and are dark so they're hard to see at night are a very common trope in folklore and literature in general. Doesn't have much to do with racism, in that case; it probably has to do with predators hunting humans in the dark before fancy things like electrical lights got invented and the fact that humans as well tend to be lovely to each other more when nobody can see what's going on. So it turned into "be careful when you're in a place you can't see anything because something might try to hurt you." Sometimes it's racism. Sometimes it's just camouflage. In the case of D&D creatures stuff that lives underground can generally see in the dark so they aren't prone to putting lights up. It's a good survival mechanism on their part to be dark because then they can see you but you can't see them.
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Jan 10, 2016 08:07
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This is from a few pages back but:Darth Walrus posted:breaking with tradition is a core element of fascist philosophy. I'm not saying you're completely wrong, just that fascism's attitude toward tradition seems rather complicated. EDIT: Guavanaut posted:I remember a /pol/ or NRx style DnD race sheet that gave Jewish races bonuses to cunning action with penalties to strength or something too. Polybius91 fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Jan 10, 2016 |
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Jan 10, 2016 10:21
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Race Realists posted:I must ask, how is this any different from what I just said? Because if yes, you're really loving terrible at empathy. (Or at least with empathy with racists on the internet I guess.)
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Jan 10, 2016 13:36
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Polybius91 posted:Perhaps you're thinking of this? quote:Seriously, this game is INCREDIBLY unbalanced. They might as well call it, "Pick Jew and win!" OwlFancier posted:It makes more sense in DnD because you are literally dealing with different species, except apparently they can also gently caress each other, but functionally orcs and elves and dwarves are different species, and when you start getting some of the weirder stuff like half-dragons and shardminds and stuff it makes more sense still.
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Jan 10, 2016 13:45
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Technically yes they should have lost their color but then it's a fantasy world so it doesn't necessarily follow the same rules. I don't think it's ever explained why Drow are black other than "dark" being used as a common descriptor for the nasty races. Granted that also goes into old folklore that has roots in fear of the night. Trolls, monsters, elves, etc. that live in dark places and are dark so they're hard to see at night are a very common trope in folklore and literature in general. Doesn't have much to do with racism, in that case; it probably has to do with predators hunting humans in the dark before fancy things like electrical lights got invented and the fact that humans as well tend to be lovely to each other more when nobody can see what's going on. So it turned into "be careful when you're in a place you can't see anything because something might try to hurt you." They did explain why Drow have black skin. First they were cursed for their sins, then they miscegenated with demons. That's not even getting into Mystara's weirdly anti-Semitic underground elves.
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Jan 10, 2016 14:01
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"lol look at these idiot nerds who are inappropriately preoccupied with race what losers" *pontificates about racial injustice in role-playing computer games*
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Jan 10, 2016 15:34
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The Drow are weird. I used to be a D&D nerd and it always seemed to me that they were specifically designed to push the buttons of reactionary nerds given that virtually everything they're associated with is considered detrimental to the 'traditional' way of doing things. They're known for their miscegenation (often with demons or other 'impure' races), are a matriarchal society where men are literally considered chattel and often build societies where non-Drow are considered slaves and have absolutely no rights. They also have incredibly high birth rates, which is another  thing.Smudgie Buggler posted:"lol look at these idiot nerds who are inappropriately preoccupied with race what losers" Glad to see that you too believe that culture doesn't exist and that man is a self-contained entity entirely dependant on themselves. Where did you learn this? College?
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Jan 10, 2016 16:20
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Ddraig posted:.Glad to see that you too believe that culture doesn't exist and that man is a self-contained entity entirely dependant on themselves. Where did you learn this? College? That would be Matt & Trey University
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