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it's a balrog, it's fire and shadow all the way down
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Oct 18, 2023 22:48
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:if you REALLY wanted to start a nerd fight a much more fruitful question is "how many balrogs were there" Er, loads? They were practically foot-soldiers at the start, if I understand right. I don't think it goes against Tolkein's shtick that people were just built different back in the days the Elves and Humans first laid siege to Angmar, and that a couple elves or so could totally go toe-to-toe with a Durin's Bane-style Balrog.
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Oct 18, 2023 22:51
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LashLightning posted:Er, loads? They were practically foot-soldiers at the start, if I understand right. I don't think it goes against Tolkein's shtick that people were just built different back in the days the Elves and Humans first laid siege to Angmar, and that a couple elves or so could totally go toe-to-toe with a Durin's Bane-style Balrog. i ain't weighing in on this one but IIRC there's another place where he says there were only ever seven
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Oct 18, 2023 22:52
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Ultimately most of that dated adventure fiction was about the idea of going to far off lands full of different people in different societies, and while this media is ultimately highlighting the differences, that is often in the service of trying to create the image of a cosmopolitan society. Exoticism enhances the underlying moral if the people can ultimately get along. Maybe there's still stories where people explore their racist feelings with the names for things crossed out, but there are at least as many, if not more stories that are all allegories for how ultimately it's fine for people to be different. I feel like some more modern attempts at fantasy and sci-fi end up feeling somewhat flat when they don't try to create differences between people, and they all feel like they're the aggressively the same despite having different appearances. These are concepts designed to explore the human experience through allegory, and something is lost when people try not to engage with the fact that people are different.
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Oct 18, 2023 22:55
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i ain't weighing in on this one but IIRC there's another place where he says there were only ever seven nonsense, there were about 4 million
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Oct 18, 2023 22:59
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LashLightning posted:Er, loads? They were practically foot-soldiers at the start, if I understand right. I don't think it goes against Tolkein's shtick that people were just built different back in the days the Elves and Humans first laid siege to Angmar, and that a couple elves or so could totally go toe-to-toe with a Durin's Bane-style Balrog. their numbers changed during the years and wasn't set down permanently, it was kinda like orcs' origins are orcs soulless beasts serving the dark lord, or are they descendants of tortured elves? if they are from elves, do they then have elf souls, free will and afterlife?
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Oct 18, 2023 23:03
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Balrogs are also a subset of the Maiar, spirits who generally seem able to take on different forms though with a tendency to stick to those that suit them. Maybe the wings do or don't exist at whim. (Never mind that this shape-changing power can be broken and limited, as happened with Sauron. And also apparently there's a reference to balrogs riding dragons during an ancient battle and some being unseated, falling to the earth which they wouldn't necessarily have had to do if they had wings.)
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Oct 18, 2023 23:07
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Orcs are just elves that fight for the other guy.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:19
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How many aliens/nonhuman races could be replaced with humans of the same coded culture without losing anything significant? Like, if your setting has dwarves who are basically just Fantasy Scots, you might as well eliminate the middleman and have Fantasy Scots in your setting. Same with Orcs who are Fantasy Huns: just use people with a Hunnish culture and put the extra effort elsewhere. One thing Tolkien did was make his elves categorically different in terms of their immortality and the way that immortality informs their history and outlook and relations with other races. It would be very hard to replace Tolkien's elves with human societies and not lose something. Tuxedo Catfish posted:if you REALLY wanted to start a nerd fight a much more fruitful question is "how many balrogs were there" A trick question because the correct plural is "balroggen". And a group is called "a simmering of balroggen". It's all true, no need to look up.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:58
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Mechanical Ape posted:How many aliens/nonhuman races could be replaced with humans of the same coded culture without losing anything significant? Like, if your setting has dwarves who are basically just Fantasy Scots, you might as well eliminate the middleman and have Fantasy Scots in your setting. Same with Orcs who are Fantasy Huns: just use people with a Hunnish culture and put the extra effort elsewhere. To bringing this back to Conan, for all Robert E Howard's original stories have some truly odious and racist poo poo in them, they're mostly consistent in that the different races are still (some variation of) the same base human animal. It's not hard to make the argument that D&D style fantasy races are a step down for not only laundering the racism but making it more factual to the setting.
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Oct 19, 2023 01:00
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SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like some more modern attempts at fantasy and sci-fi end up feeling somewhat flat when they don't try to create differences between people, and they all feel like they're the aggressively the same despite having different appearances. These are concepts designed to explore the human experience through allegory, and something is lost when people try not to engage with the fact that people are different. Does the book about the spiders and SHODAN count as modern? I recently read the sequel about octopi and they were certainly alien too, but it didn't really capture the wondersense of the spiders. If we're permitted to go non-modern, there's always Stanislaw Lem.
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Oct 19, 2023 04:21
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disposablewords posted:Balrogs are also a subset of the Maiar, spirits who generally seem able to take on different forms though with a tendency to stick to those that suit them. Maybe the wings do or don't exist at whim. It can be rather hard to arrest a fall if you like say get shot off a dragons back with a ballista bolt through a wing.
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Oct 19, 2023 13:00
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Schwarzwald posted:Orcs are just elves that fight for the other guy. Basically, they were the Resistenza Italiana.
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Oct 19, 2023 18:33
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From Imladris they crossed the Misty Mountains by many passes and marched down the River Anduin, and so came at last upon the host of Sauron on Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, which lies before the gate of the Black Land. All living things were divided in that day, and some of every kind, even of beasts and birds, were found in either host, save the Elves only.
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Oct 19, 2023 18:41
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girl dick energy posted:My favorite LotR theory is that "the Eagles" were a Gondorian censorship/propaganda, and everything done by "The Eagles" was actually done by factions of orcs who were fighting against Sauron. It was only after the war was over that their contributions got swept under the rug in order to make a clean, politically-convenient narrative. But then how did Gandalf get off of Orthanc?
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Oct 19, 2023 18:45
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Randalor posted:But then how did Gandalf get off of Orthanc? Dude, he's a wizard. He cast Featherfall.
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Oct 19, 2023 18:58
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girl dick energy posted:My favorite LotR theory is that "the Eagles" were a Gondorian censorship/propaganda, and everything done by "The Eagles" was actually done by factions of orcs who were fighting against Sauron. It was only after the war was over that their contributions got swept under the rug in order to make a clean, politically-convenient narrative. Okay, that rules.
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Oct 19, 2023 19:27
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Randalor posted:But then how did Gandalf get off of Orthanc? it's not a fan theory i've heard before, but it seems easy to say that some orcs in the resistance movement smuggled him out
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Oct 19, 2023 19:43
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Randalor posted:But then how did Gandalf get off of Orthanc? Easy- how did we know he was trapped up there? Who were the witnesses?
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Oct 21, 2023 14:56
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Hegemony with a 4th player to be the State is loads of more fun and creates some really interesting dynamics. Being the Middle class is hilarious because you have both this tendency to punch down because the Working class keeps getting all the free poo poo from the state but you're also side-eyeing the capitalist class because they keep poaching your best workers before you can employ them yourself. Mechanical Ape posted:How many aliens/nonhuman races could be replaced with humans of the same coded culture without losing anything significant? Like, if your setting has dwarves who are basically just Fantasy Scots, you might as well eliminate the middleman and have Fantasy Scots in your setting. Same with Orcs who are Fantasy Huns: just use people with a Hunnish culture and put the extra effort elsewhere. Simple, they're actually Space Humans with sufficiently advanced anti-aging technology. :science101:
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Oct 22, 2023 00:12
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Dwarves as fantasy Scots is a bit of a weird one for me as a Scot because I don’t really see “stereotype of Scottish people” in your stereotypical dwarf. They’re commonly portrayed with Scottish accents and sometimes have Scottish names and occasionally have a bagpipe joke thrown in, sure, but that’s kind of it? Like, your stereotypical Dwarf is short, strong, drinks a lot of beer, lives underground and is obsessed with gold. The only parts of that that really fit a Scottish stereotype are “drinks a lot” and “obsessed with gold” and tbh that’s almost quaint because Scots being misers is some 18th century poo poo I don’t think anyone considers stereotypical of Scots any more, and if you were reaching for a stereotype of modern Scots, implying we’re stereotypical for drinking beer again misses the mark so hard it’s kind of cute. Basically, if you switch out the accents and tone down the Scottishness of the names there’s very little that culturally connects dwarves to Scotland, I think.
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Oct 22, 2023 11:40
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Dwarves are ashkenazim. My dude JRR Tolkien literally wrote in his letters "the dwarves are jews. I based their language on hebrew. They love gold and hiding away from regular society, because they are the jews."
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Oct 22, 2023 11:44
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Reveilled posted:Dwarves as fantasy Scots is a bit of a weird one for me as a Scot because I don’t really see “stereotype of Scottish people” in your stereotypical dwarf. They’re commonly portrayed with Scottish accents and sometimes have Scottish names and occasionally have a bagpipe joke thrown in, sure, but that’s kind of it? Like, your stereotypical Dwarf is short, strong, drinks a lot of beer, lives underground and is obsessed with gold. The only parts of that that really fit a Scottish stereotype are “drinks a lot” and “obsessed with gold” and tbh that’s almost quaint because Scots being misers is some 18th century poo poo I don’t think anyone considers stereotypical of Scots any more, and if you were reaching for a stereotype of modern Scots, implying we’re stereotypical for drinking beer again misses the mark so hard it’s kind of cute. As with many, many things in D&D, "Scots dwarves" can be traced directly back to Poul Anderson's novel Three Hearts and Three Lions, which was a particular favorite of Gary Gygax. It also gave us the green, rubbery, regenerating troll, Law and Chaos as alignments, and IIRC several elements of the D&D paladin class. From there it spread via D&D fiction (both Flint from Dragonlance and... umm... whoever Drizzt's dwarf buddy was in those books have vaguely Scottish accents) and to other fantasy works like Warcraft. Curiously, I don't recall Warhammer ever really going in on the Scots dwarf stereotype, but other than reading one Gotrek & Felix novel I'm not super familiar with Warhammer fiction, so I could very easily be wrong. As for why Poul Anderson wrote a dwarf with a Scottish accent, I have no idea.
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Oct 22, 2023 12:06
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GimpInBlack posted:Curiously, I don't recall Warhammer ever really going in on the Scots dwarf stereotype, but other than reading one Gotrek & Felix novel I'm not super familiar with Warhammer fiction, so I could very easily be wrong. It definitely happens from fans and a couple cases, but in Total War Warhammer they notably prefer Yorkshire over Scottish ones.
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Oct 22, 2023 12:19
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I think Warhammer Dwarves were always more Yorkshire. They are, in part, exaggerated takes on miners and pit closures that were going on in the 70s and 80s up that way.
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Oct 22, 2023 12:23
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Dwarves are ashkenazim. My dude JRR Tolkien literally wrote in his letters "the dwarves are jews. I based their language on hebrew. They love gold and hiding away from regular society, because they are the jews." Wagner’s dwarves in the Ring are also Jews. But you can see why people wouldn’t want to bring the hoariest of antisemitic stereotypes into their games, hence Scots, I guess? That doesn’t make sense to me either, so my dwarves are modeled on another stoic northern people: good hearted, a little laconic, who hide more than they show. They are, of course, Minnesotans.
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Oct 22, 2023 12:29
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Zombie Dachshund posted:Wagner’s dwarves in the Ring are also Jews. But you can see why people wouldn’t want to bring the hoariest of antisemitic stereotypes into their games, hence Scots, I guess? That doesn’t make sense to me either, so my dwarves are modeled on another stoic northern people: good hearted, a little laconic, who hide more than they show. They are, of course, Minnesotans. Mountain Home Companion.
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Oct 22, 2023 12:30
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ohhh, you been delvin' too deep, yah? That'll getcha
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Oct 22, 2023 12:43
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Anyone worth a drat who listens to System Mastery knows Dwarves are Italian-American New Yorkers.
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Oct 22, 2023 13:48
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Hostile V posted:Anyone worth a drat who listens to System Mastery knows Dwarves are Italian-American New Yorkers. I made mine Texans because that's the only silly accent I can do. All my dwarf men sounds like Alex Jones
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Oct 22, 2023 13:57
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Hostile V posted:Anyone worth a drat who listens to System Mastery knows Dwarves are Italian-American New Yorkers. Which dovetails nicely with Eberron making them Italian merchant republics except in the mountains.
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Oct 22, 2023 15:37
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I’m running a campaign set in an alt-history Europe and my dwarves - cantankerous, money-obsessed, and concerned with lineage, status, and beard-grooming are clearly Dutch. I made the Scots elves because angry elves with bagpipes amuses the hell out of me
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Oct 22, 2023 20:39
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I think the whole Scottish thing just came from taking the palette of British accents to use a different voice for a different people. I'm not sure it even really predates Peter Jackson's movie. It's not like Rankin-Bass felt the need to make the dwarves scottish for their movie.Edgar Allen Ho posted:Dwarves are ashkenazim. My dude JRR Tolkien literally wrote in his letters "the dwarves are jews. I based their language on hebrew. They love gold and hiding away from regular society, because they are the jews." Also the fact that most dwarves don't have proper last names, the use of the 'kh' sound, the dwarven holidays that are disconnected from the standard Middle Earth calendar so they have to be calculated separately, and the fact that most dwarves throughout Middle Earth are scattered in a diaspora after the demise of their former lands, having to live embedded within a foreign culture but still preserving their own linguistic traditions.
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Oct 22, 2023 22:39
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think the whole Scottish thing just came from taking the palette of British accents to use a different voice for a different people. I'm not sure it even really predates Peter Jackson's movie. It's not like Rankin-Bass felt the need to make the dwarves scottish for their movie.
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Oct 22, 2023 23:25
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Paranoia continues to complete with the British government for who can reach the bottom of the technocratic hellscape first. It's so convenient that you can just look up British proposals/news and have material to directly parody or use outright.
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Oct 23, 2023 14:33
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The whole real-world aspect of Tolkien's fantasy races gets a lot blurrier when you poke deeper into the lore, and there's all this stuff about individual peoples and clans within the "races". There's tons of differentiated branches of Elves and Men and Dwarves, and histories of them moving about and often even developing into new groups in the process. Occasionally there's physical traits noted, but more often than not, there aren't. Sometimes there's stuff about groups of people where it refers to all the people living in an area, but like with real history, there's a lot more focus on ruling classes. There are often explicitly times when groups kinda just show up and the lore about them is "nobody really knows when they came about, here's a couple ideas". A lot of the lore in Lord of the Rings about groups of people is just about Tolkien using fiction to toy around with his academic ideas about how groups of people moving around work.
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Oct 29, 2023 21:09
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As always, the big differentiator between Tolkien and his reactionary grotesque imitators & hangers-on is that Tolkien really did like to think. He was curious and he was open-minded, even if he was starting on the back-foot compared to today from the cultural upbring he received. Legendarily self-critical. Modern race science ghouls cling to the lore of stat blocks and bell curves in order to avoid thinking.
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Oct 29, 2023 21:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:q DoctorWhat posted:As always, the big differentiator between Tolkien and his reactionary grotesque imitators & hangers-on is that Tolkien really did like to think. The biggest tell that Tolkien was just geeking out about linguistics and was more open minded than you'd expect for a shellshocked Catholic really into languages to be and not, you know, an antisemitic rear end in a top hat was that when Nazi Germany publishers reached out about translating his books. They asked him if he had any jewish heritage, Tolkien read between the lines, and he went 'unfortunately i am not that lucky also kindly gently caress off and don't translate my works'. It's akin to Pratchett's take on them which, while coming later than Tolkien, still had them being insular, 'loving' Gold (although they typically just tell it that to get it to sleep with them), and practicing their own culture in the middle of a cultural melting pot. But they were still people first and the only people who thought otherwise were huge flaming assholes. citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 30, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 00:05
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Josef bugman posted:I think Warhammer Dwarves were always more Yorkshire. They are, in part, exaggerated takes on miners and pit closures that were going on in the 70s and 80s up that way. this tracks with the orks being lead by margaret thatcher (although i think that's in the other warhammer)
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Nov 12, 2023 03:28
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ungulateman posted:this tracks with the orks being lead by margaret thatcher (although i think that's in the other warhammer) Yeah, pretty sure the equivalent famous orc in fantasy just beat up the Chaos super champion and walked off afterwards after humiliating him that way (though I think they retconned that away, the cowards).
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Nov 12, 2023 18:57
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