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Ominous Jazz posted:Django is the best Tarantino movie It's fourth at most. Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill were far superior masterpieces.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 20:35 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:04 |
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The only good elf is one whose god was eaten and poo poo out by another god thereby transforming all of that first god's followers into orcs. Inglourious Basterds is the only good Tarantino movie
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 20:37 |
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remusclaw posted:This Yeah I think people might of misunderstood what her point was. Basically, nobody is compelled to defend their position against every idiot who comes their way, nor do you need to participate in every argument you come across (the classic White Guy problem). That said, don't make it your goal to shut down discussion between others just because you, personally, don't want to be involved.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 20:38 |
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Hey, when I want to play a game about aliens enslaving all of humanity, people are down. But when I want to play a game about aliens raping all of humanity, people look askance. What's the deal with that???
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 21:58 |
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Jimbozig posted:Hey, when I want to play a game about aliens enslaving all of humanity, people are down. But when I want to play a game about aliens raping all of humanity, people look askance. What's the deal with that??? Hurr,
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 22:01 |
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Bar Crow posted:In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. Inclusion of these crimes in your games are handled by a special squad of arguements called the shut up about rape you creep.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 22:38 |
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Lichtenstein posted:hi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_AeIq3CUdA
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 22:50 |
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I'm going to talk about how and why I dislike elves. Elves are boring because they're perfect. They live their ridiculously long lives in their perfect little tree cities and they're so good and twee it drives me crazy how you can even write a story about them! Tolkien influenced modern depictions of elves so heavily people barely remember that they used to be tiny folk that drank milk and played pranks by moonlight. It's all so frustrating.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:09 |
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Kwyndig posted:I'm going to talk about how and why I dislike elves. Elves are boring because they're perfect. They live their ridiculously long lives in their perfect little tree cities and they're so good and twee it drives me crazy how you can even write a story about them! Tolkien influenced modern depictions of elves so heavily people barely remember that they used to be tiny folk that drank milk and played pranks by moonlight. http://kissmanga.com/Manga/Elf-san-wa-Yaserarenai/Ch-001--Appointment-001--Forest-Elf?id=340497 Elves are win, actually. Also, elves have only been tiny since the Victorian period. Norse Alfar are slightly smaller than people, British elves and sidhe are the same height as people. It's only when the Victorians decided on genocide-by-tweeness to eliminate elves from the world that they went all Cottingley.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:22 |
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Kwyndig posted:I'm going to talk about how and why I dislike elves. Elves are boring because they're perfect. They live their ridiculously long lives in their perfect little tree cities and they're so good and twee it drives me crazy how you can even write a story about them! Tolkien influenced modern depictions of elves so heavily people barely remember that they used to be tiny folk that drank milk and played pranks by moonlight. Okay, but this doesn't describe Tolkien elves at all.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:37 |
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Schrodinger's Elves
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:38 |
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:41 |
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Elves are cool when a setting leverages their inhumanity and long-life spans to make them different than skinny humans with pointy ears, imo. Mostly they're lame.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:42 |
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Lemon-Lime posted:Okay, but this doesn't describe Tolkien elves at all. Yeah, if you want something hosed up in a potentially world-endingly cataclysmic way, get an Tolkien elf to make it a pet cause. Especially Feanor. loving Feanor, man. To combine threads If you convinced Feanor to end slavery and went away for six months you'd come back to entire nations in chains and everything on fire.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:44 |
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Waldenbooks and B Dalton, now that takes me back. My local Waldenbooks never stocked RPGs though, back in the day.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:44 |
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:Elves are cool when a setting leverages their inhumanity and long-life spans to make them different than skinny humans with pointy ears, imo. Mostly they're lame. Yeah, this was basically what I was going to post. I feel like way too many settings write elves as pretty post-scarcity humans with no meaningful societal conflict/tension besides war with their conveniently color-coded evil selves; settings where "dark elves" are an alternate philosophical/societal approach and not an actual subspecies are a bit better, but still don't always end up interesting. Elven dystopias -- or, at least, elven societies that look dystopic to other races and to the outcast elves who end up as PC fodder -- are the way to go, in my opinion.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:54 |
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Antivehicular posted:Yeah, this was basically what I was going to post. I feel like way too many settings write elves as pretty post-scarcity humans with no meaningful societal conflict/tension besides war with their conveniently color-coded evil selves; settings where "dark elves" are an alternate philosophical/societal approach and not an actual subspecies are a bit better, but still don't always end up interesting. Elven dystopias -- or, at least, elven societies that look dystopic to other races and to the outcast elves who end up as PC fodder -- are the way to go, in my opinion. Why? Isn't this just reified xenophobia, presenting the status quo of humans as the only way to exist that doesn't turn into a nightmare?
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 23:58 |
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The secret is that all of the different kinds of elves are really the same. You get bored when you're immortal, gotta spice it up by radically changing your lifestyle, appearance, and attitude every four centuries or so. No other race has ever picked up on this because how would you?
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:01 |
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Ominous Jazz posted:You don't need to do this goddammit Yeah, agreed. Sorry thread. Just for the record, I was (ineptly) making a juxtaposition to highlight that some topics can't be easily handled responsibly in elfgames, not literally asking why rapegames bad. But in retrospect I hosed up and it read very, very wrong.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:06 |
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Brainiac Five posted:Why? Isn't this just reified xenophobia, presenting the status quo of humans as the only way to exist that doesn't turn into a nightmare? Well what is that terrifying otherness that makes us re-imagine our place in the universe other than reified xenophobia? It's not like we have actual alien beings to compare ourselves too. Whether we ought or not, we don't look at the depths of the ocean and all the creatures there and say, "What godless universe wrought such terror!" The closest we have to the other, the plants and animals we live with on this planet, we either classify as food, pet, too dangerous to pet, too ugly to pet, too wet to pet, etc... We anthropomorphize the other we do have access to and we otherize human beings. Even the truly alien things we like to imagine are born from the twisted minds of authors we love are not truly alien, we extrapolate from Earth life, because from where else can we? remusclaw fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Mar 10, 2017 |
# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:12 |
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remusclaw posted:Well what is that terrifying otherness that makes us re-imagine our place in the universe other than reified xenophobia? It's not like we have actual alien beings to compare ourselves too. Whether we ought or not, we don't look at the depths of the ocean and all the creatures there and say, "What godless universe wrought such terror!" The closest we have to other, the plants animals we live with on this planet, we either classify as food, pet, too dangerous to pet, too ugly to pet, too wet to pet, etc... We anthropomorphize the other we do have access to and we otherize human beings. Even the truly alien things we like to imagine are born from the twisted minds of authors we love are not truly alien, we extrapolate from Earth life, because from where else can we? Uh, fear isn't the only kind of transcendental experience, my dude.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:22 |
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Elves just strike me as usually just being Superior Huu-mans, like either they're enlightened immortals on a mountain or noble savages in a forest, but they feel like nothing more than a specific fantasy of an idealized humanity to me. Their immortality is about the only thing that significantly sets them apart, but the potential ramifications of it are usually just handwaved away.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:28 |
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Brainiac Five posted:Uh, fear isn't the only kind of transcendental experience, my dude. Well my head was in Lovecraft land when writing that post for reasons I cannot ascertain, especially as I was responding to a discussion about Elves. That said, I think I have a point about otherness as it has to do with life forms. Alien Rope Burn posted:Elves just strike me as usually just being Superior Huu-mans, like either they're enlightened immortals on a mountain or noble savages in a forest, but they feel like nothing more than a specific fantasy of an idealized humanity to me. Their immortality is about the only thing that significantly sets them apart, but the potential ramifications of it are usually just handwaved away. Fantasy races always end up being forehead aliens or animals, regardless of the shape they take. The prior uses the alien as a stand in for other cultures or subcultures and the latter obviously. What is the titular "Alien" aside from a combination of traits seen in some of the less cuddly animals we share this space with? The Dwarf as the working class bloke is constantly at odds with the stuffy Elves who live uptown. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Mar 10, 2017 |
# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:30 |
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A lot of people accidentally start roleplaying as humans who happen to live in the same world as elves when they start talking about elves as fictional constructs.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:34 |
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Kwyndig posted:I'm going to talk about how and why I dislike elves. Elves are boring because they're perfect. They live their ridiculously long lives in their perfect little tree cities and they're so good and twee it drives me crazy how you can even write a story about them! Tolkien influenced modern depictions of elves so heavily people barely remember that they used to be tiny folk that drank milk and played pranks by moonlight.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:34 |
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Elves are a race of humanoid beings that average about 6'5 for men and 6'2 for women. They are notable for their pointed ears, pale skin, and long live spans. The average elven life expediency is 900 years with the oldest record elf living 1500 years. Men live slightly longer than women by about an extra decade on average. They are many elven cultures in the world as could be expected of any sapient species. The most prominent is the Elven Confederacy. Originally a union of 5 large city-states, the Confederacy has since created a unified self-identity for their citizens though each city-state retains right to self governance. Due to the long lifespans, elves and elven governments often take the long view and this is rather apparent in the Elven Confederacy. They have managed to form one of the strongest economic, cultural, and military powerhouses on the planet. Their exterior success hides strong civil turmoil. The long lived nature of elves leads to a near suffocating effect of the old leading the young. Not rare in any sapient culture, but extra prevalent in their own. Ideas that would fall to the waste side in a human culture after one or two generations preserve for one thousand years in elven culture. As such, their leaders tend to hold regressive social views and enact laws that directly contrast the interests and values of the average Elven citizen. As eleves stay hale and hardy for so long, yet reproduce at the human average rate, there is crushing economic turmoil for the young who simply cannot find work within their own nation. Even simple ideas like modernizing the military fall to wayside as some military general still prefer to use outdated equipment, spells, and tactics due to personal preference, often leading to scorn from their subordinates who feel this unnecessarily endangers their lives in battle. This generation gap is so severe that many outside observers expect outright violence to form within the Confederacy in the coming years and many, including other small Elven nations who have managed to avoid such turmoil due to their smaller nature, seek to take advantage of this and reap the riches of a nation divided by itself. Many nations are already seeing an increase in Elven immigrants from the Elven Confederacy from those who either fear the coming war or simply cannot advance or thrive in their home nation. Initially tolerated, the propaganda from anti-elf forces in many nations, who often rally against the offensive and inaccurate stereotype of an aloof smug Elf cruelly taking employment and wealth away from "good and honest" citizens, has lead to strong policies restricting Elven Confederates immigration and discriminating against Elves in society regardless of national origin. The later development should not be surprising as those full of hate towards an imagined "other" often do not make nuance or distinction when acting out. The irony that Elves from other nations supported the initials policies is not lost on the casual observer or the Elves themselves. Another stereotype of elves is that their are more naturally attuned to the mystic arts. This however is, like most stereotypes, both incorrect and rather offensive. Its origin lies in old anti-Elf propaganda from the first contact between Human and Elves where Elves were often depicted as drunkards and evil wizards who would steal babies in the night to convert into more of their own. While the average citizen of many nations would find the full explanation horrid and offensive, many still hold on to the overall stereotype of them being mystically attuned as fact unaware of its origins. Anti-Elf factions often take advantage of this soft-bigotry to convert new members and recruit has been higher than even in many nations thanks to the increased immigration from the Elven Confederacy. Outisde of the Elven Confederacy, other notable Elven nations are the Democratic Republic of Arcadia, the People's Union of the South East Desert, and the Followers of the Ideal Man. The last of these notable nations, if the name is confusing, is a theocracy which shares its name with a subsect of one of the most populous Elven Faith, the Followers of the Sky. An important thing to remember when meeting elves is to remember that, like all sapient, they are people. They have emotions, thoughts, and needs like any other sapient species. A disconcerting difference many do experience is that, due to their long lives, they can often view time as shorter than it is for other species and generally fear aging less than other species. As a final notice, the terms "Dagger Ears", "Knife Ears" or the like are very offensive slurs that are believed to either originate from one of the human or dwarven cultures of the world. It has spread rather far and is generally viewed as socially reprehensible. Its usage has, in private circles, increased in recent years due to the rice in Anti-Elf factions. A development considered troubling by many though sadly ignored by the average citizen of most nations. -- I can't tell if what I just wrote is offensive or not and I'm not sure why I wrote it.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:36 |
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Ferrinus posted:A lot of people accidentally start roleplaying as humans who happen to live in the same world as elves when they start talking about elves as fictional constructs. I'm always consciously roleplaying as an aasimar in a realistic aboleth suit when I talk about elves.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:51 |
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Yes, I will agree with this. I also think the concept of gnomes is racist.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 00:57 |
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Kwyndig posted:Yes, I will agree with this. It would be nice if gnomes could be racist against the Swiss instead of what they are now.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 01:01 |
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Elves just strike me as usually just being Superior Huu-mans, like either they're enlightened immortals on a mountain or noble savages in a forest, but they feel like nothing more than a specific fantasy of an idealized humanity to me. Their immortality is about the only thing that significantly sets them apart, but the potential ramifications of it are usually just handwaved away. Has literally no one read the Silmarillion, or something.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 01:16 |
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Brainiac Five posted:Why? Isn't this just reified xenophobia, presenting the status quo of humans as the only way to exist that doesn't turn into a nightmare? Well, I'm talking specifically about a D&D-style murderhobo game, where a major if sometimes unintentional part of the game is that "adventurers" are functionally an outcast group whose only function in society is doing dirty but necessary work at its outskirts. In that context, every race's society needs to have a way to produce outcasts/adventurers/PCs, and perfect-world elves don't offer very many satisfying ways to do that. The society doesn't need to be dystopic from the inside; it just needs to have interesting enough hooks for its malcontents to allow a variety of answers to "so why did you leave?" If the game premise allows for characters to be functional parts of their societies, perfect-world elves play fine, although you should still make the perfect world at least a little imperfect to stave off boredom. Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Mar 10, 2017 |
# ? Mar 10, 2017 01:16 |
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Lemon-Lime posted:Has literally no one read the Silmarillion, or something. I'm willing to bet relatively few. I certainly haven't.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 01:42 |
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Dark Sun elves are the best elves because they're basically thieving rear end in a top hat cats, which is wholly appropriate for a long-lived race that looks down on others as being lesser beings.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 01:42 |
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm willing to bet relatively few. They probably should, because Tolkien elves are good.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 01:43 |
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Slimnoid posted:thieving rear end in a top hat cats
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 01:44 |
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Brainiac Five posted:It would be nice if gnomes could be racist against the Swiss instead of what they are now. i feel like eberron gnomes are racist against some mid-tier 18th century european power but my colonized eyes can't distinguish between them enough to figure out which one
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 01:56 |
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fool_of_sound posted:Yeah I kinda take issue with the idea that when and how certain evils should be depicted is an 'unnecessary intellectual exercise'. The unnecessary bit was dragging the thread down to the comparative evils of rape vs slavery to "play devil's advocate", not really the discussion of the depiction of slavery in media or writing, just to be clear.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 02:14 |
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Brother Entropy posted:i feel like eberron gnomes are racist against some mid-tier 18th century european power but my colonized eyes can't distinguish between them enough to figure out which one *throws dart at map of Europe post-peace of Westphalia* Looks like they're Lithuanians.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 02:31 |
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Yawgmoth posted:Why did you write cats three times? It has the same effect as writing buffalo eight times.
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 02:33 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:04 |
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No it is elves who are the real oppressors, upholding their singular notion of the status quo!
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# ? Mar 10, 2017 02:38 |