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dailyadventureprompts · 2 years

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I don’t know if this is valid as it’s not an adventure request, but DMs were closed so it wasn’t possible to check in advance.

What is your position on campaigns/adventures that are very direct parallels to colonialism? Somewhat broad question but I’m curious where you stand on the subject, especially since opposing ‘foreign explorers use violence to extract wealth from less developed peoples’ is about as mainstream as D&D gets.

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Heavy Topics: Colonialism

I find this question so interesting because for a long long time d&d was a game that was (at least tangentially) very pro-colonialism what with the scientific racism built into the lore about how the lesser monstrous races should be culled, curtailed, or corrected. People thinking that Anticolonialism is a hallmark of the game means that somewhere along the way there’s been some kind of seachange, either in the playerbase or the greater culture and it’s happened over the course of my fairly short d&d playing lifespan.

I’m going to go into lots of detail on this below the cut, but TLDR: While D&D has never specifically endorsed colonialism, the game used to have driving factors that were direct holdovers from the imperialist tradition: a dynamic of inherent superiority for those peoples deemed “good” Just like in our own history, these drives were seen as heroic but seem to have rapidly fallen out of fashion leaving an uncomfortable gap at the heart of the hobby.

As for adventures that involve colonialism, they’re fine, just do your research and make sure you’re not glorifying or tacitly endorsing genocide. A lot of great stories can be told against the backdrop of mass exploitation, just be extra cautious if you’re going to try and directly reference/evoke something that happened in our own world.

First, Lets talk about supremacy: In the earliest days of d&d, the world was divided into two sides, law and chaos, with law taking on everything that could be considered good and nurturing, and chaos taking on all that was wicked and destructive. It was this meme, but literal:

ALT

I don’t think I need to tell anyone this, but that sort of ideology is the worldview of an oppressor, one who thinks their own nation/religion/ethnicity is right and chosen and all others are inferior. It’s also the same sort of cartoonish black/white morality you see in today’s fundamentalists: my enemies can’t just be wrong, they have to be doing the most evil things I can imagine ranging from being authoritarians to practicing human sacrifice and being in league with the literal devil. That’s why the argument “(depiction of monster fantasy race X) isn’t racist, (X) are literally embodied evil and thus its ok to kill them” should never hold any water because it’s the exact same narrative that’s been trotted out over and over to justify IRL genocides on various scales.

The old monster manuals used to go out of their way to talk about how various species of monstrous humanoids ( which is totally not a synonym for “lesser races btw) spoil their environment just from living within it, that they make nothing of real value, no art no tools, and what weapons they have are either crude constructs or stolen from their betters. The obvious connection here is that the players should feel no qualms about walking into their lands and putting them to the sword so that “real” people can make use of those lands, or at least to stop their encroachment on the party’s own territory. And here we get to the root of the issue: in trying to create a world in which it is ALWAYS right for our heroes to slaughter their way through hundreds of enemies, the evolving mythology of d&d over nearly 50 years adopted the exact same talking points used by the villains of our world whenever they felt like they had slaughter their way through hundreds of other human beings to get what they wanted. As one of those people who others would slaughter in the pursuit of a “pure” world, I have a big problem with that.

Surprisingly, grey morality leads to way less implicit hate crimes: If two cultures are going to war it’s not because one side is evil and the other is good, It’s because that’s what people in a resource-scarce environments have always done, especially when they were desperate or their leaders saw a chance to acquire more power. I can look at the reign of one history’s greatest warlords: Genghis Khan and say “I think him executing whole cities and making pyramids out of their skulls was an atrocity” without thinking the people of the Mongolian steppe have and always will be servants of the dark lord Baphomet, demon prince of slaughter. If we abandon the justifications built into the game to make killing always a good thing, what we end up with is a diverse gaggle of fantasy species that can be played off against one another when building a setting. Sure, some of these groups may HATE eachother and even commit unforgivable acts against one another, but by removing the lore based condemnations of one group we end up creating a world where that hate and those unforgivable acts aren’t implicitly justified.

Art

#dnd #dungeons and dragons #adventure #5e homebrew #homebrew adventure #heavy topics #racism #colonization #writing #writing advice #DM advice #dm tips #dm tip

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purplecowbell · 1 year

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Are We Writing Fantasy Species Correctly?

Let me paint a picture that may be familiar to the average fantasy fan. In a world with only one distinct human culture, the humans are surrounded on all sides by the other races. The Elves are living in their forests and are snooty, or wise, or druidic hermits. The Dwarves live in the mountains as either warriors, or miners, or crafters. Goblins are either greedy, or envious, or dirty kleptomaniacs. The evil Orc raiding parties terrorize all the kingdoms. What is this world supposed to represent?

Many accuse that many fantasy and science fiction races are racist. Often they do have merit. Indeed, some depict other sentient humanoid beings as being biologically evil or have their culture taken directly from racist propaganda. But some critics argue that most depictions of “races” as being inherently racist are due to them being bio essentialist in nature. But how else can there be different species? If there is no change in biology, there can’t be fantastical races or species. There can be differences in biology, but what many fantasy writers fail to consider is that the use of species isn’t racist because they don’t depict one race as evil, but because the lines between races become biological certainties rather than social constructs.

For as long as fantasy and fantastical stories have existed, human-shaped creatures have been metaphors for something else. Greek Gods were metaphors for forces of nature, ghosts were representatives of an unresolved past, and fairies were (among many things) landmarks for the contemporary norms. But when writers try to make fantastical races that cast a shadow and bleed like anyone, the metaphor no longer becomes one of greater laws and trends but instead about people and populations. And to look at the history of this trend in fantasy we have to examine the grandfather that crystalized the genre: J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Origin

Tolkien, in his grand epic, drew from what many fantasy writers at the time drew from: religion and myth. He borrowed heavily from Norse mythology and their heroic tales for his protagonists, but also a dividing line between the Good races and the Evil ones (yes, he did borrow a stark line between Good and Evil, that is an assumption of cosmology and how species might work that is not assumed). But then he had those forces fight in a haunting depiction of the horrors of war he personally experienced. Many points he made about war were valid or outright correct: he values not the weapons but what they fight for, one must fight for what’s right and push through despairing times, and that the horrors of war irrevocably change people. But the problem with these metaphors, both the cosmological structure and the metaphors of war, is that they do not mix with each other without some worrying implications. Trying to make a realistic war using unrealistic people on one side says something (whether he means to or not) about real wars. World War 1 did not occur between literal angels and demons; it happened between people. The people he fought were not biologically more evil than him, and the enemy had their own civilians who weren’t responsible for the actions of their country. And the people he fought with weren’t biologically determined to be on the right side. Tolkien did not set the story during the Third Age’s civil war, with humans fighting humans, what actually happened in WW 1. He set it during a war with a clean and solid line between the countries, cultures, and races. All the good Kingdoms of Men, Elves, and Dwarves fought bravely against Sauron and his nation of soldiers. I’m not saying he did this in bad faith, but I think too many people haven’t noticed the nuance and repeated the foundation of fantastical races without improving.

The Result

You see it all the time in fantasy, with too many examples to count. How many times have you seen a world where there’s only one human nation surrounded by nations consisting of only one race each? Or, failing that, how many times have you seen a world where all human nations are specifically European and only other species have vastly different cultures? They’re in young adult novels, comic books, cookie-cutter fantasy manga, and most predominantly, it’s seen in games, both video and tabletop roleplaying. It’s especially concerning that it’s seen in engaging media like video games or TTRPGs (table top role playing games). I understand why, often the decision is economic or due to laziness. If every species can be a part of every country, then you need one model for each species for each country, much more efficient if each country has only one species, but those economic decisions negatively impact amateur creative ones. TTRPGs are a method of play that encourages — and sometimes requires — people to start making their own worlds and write their own stories. If everyone gets into the practice of imagining worlds with these divisions, they may not break out of it as they create stories outside of the system. Now I’m not saying all writers are making stories where one species is Good and one is Evil, that’s not as common nowadays. But defining nations and cultures by species makes a metaphor about real life whether the author intends for it to or not. What it does is establish the social construct of race into a biological fact without any distinction of nuance. Worse is when the non-human races are given traits that justify their own oppression. But I’m not addressing those that want to justify racism, I’m addressing well-meaning people who want to avoid this trend that fantasy can’t seem to move past.

The Solutions

There are three solutions we have for this trend: and none of them require writing a comprehensive epic covering every aspect of the world and race. The first is to represent our real world races as humans. By having more representation, the writer proves they understand all humans aren’t biologically separated. This gives a lot more breathing room for the use of nations and cultures of other species. This solution is best for those that want to explore the other species as actually alien as opposed to “weird” humans. By actively recognizing the actual diversity of humanity, one’s perception of humanity and its hypothetical relationship with another species is better solidified as being truly something other than human.

The second option is to narrow your lens of focus without cutting reference to others. A lot of simple fantasy does narrow its focus down to one kingdom, but the problem is that they narrow it down to the point of cutting off contact, relations, or even reference to other countries and races to the point that readers may assume they’re the only countries in this world. There’s a difference between setting a story in New York City and setting it in a New York City with the only reference to other places are the evil Lizardfolk that resemble rural stereotypes. You can narrow the lens while including the existence of trade routes, treaties, or other intercultural relations.

And the final option is to not have it matter. But you can’t just not care, you have to commit to not caring. You have to make all fantasy “races” literally have no cultural differences or divisions at all. For this option you can make elves, orcs, goblins, and dwarves not different species, but just a type of human mutation that some people have (for the last example they literally exist in real life). Goblins don’t have to be vermin representing corruption on two legs, they can just be humans who happen to be short and have a green skin disorder due to random alchemical mutations that have passed down. There isn’t a “nation of elves” separate from The Kingdom of Men; there just happen to be businessmen, or rednecks, or fast food workers in Urban Fantasy America that check “elvish” on their medical files for blood transfusions. Think of them more like the My Hero Academia “quirks” or just have it as an aesthetic for readers, players, and other contributors to have fun with.

To my fellow sympathetic writers, don’t fall into the trap of putting too much focus on making diverse cultures and personalities for each of the species. It’s good, the “Planet of Hats” trope is boring for most of us, but it distracts from the problem. If the only representation of a religion, ethnicity, or culture is found in another species, the work is still suggesting they’re somehow biologically separate from humans, otherwise known as “normal” people. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to write Jewish Elves or Taoist Orcs, go for it, the exploration of the self through reflection of the other is great. But putting those traits only into the biological “other,” might send the wrong message. Don’t forget those differences are within each other too.

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#fantasy #fiction #writing #writing advice #writeblr #fiction blogging #worldbuilding

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rjalker · 11 months

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Flying Orcs

Believe it or not, there’s actually one species in this setting with powers to match the Raksura. These are the Fell, and they’re our big villains. They can do almost everything the Raksura can do, which is good. It would be a pretty short story otherwise. Unfortunately, the Fell are an inherently evil species, a trope I really thought high fantasy was growing out of.

The Fell aren’t just a group that does bad things. The book is very clear that being evil is in their nature. They’re compared to parasites: feeding off of others and never creating anything for themselves. Except in this case, “feeding” means that they literally eat their enemies. They also constantly stink, which is about the most visceral way to signal that they’re bad.

We’ve explained the problem with this trope before, but the short version is that when stories cast an entire species or race as evil, it reinforces real-life ideas about how certain people are inherently bad. It’s also just hard to believe. The Fell are so cartoonishly destructive that it’s difficult to see how they could have evolved that way, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we learn in later books that an evil god made them that way just because.

On the bright side, the Fell aren’t obviously coded as people of color the way orcs often are, so in that way, they aren’t quite as bad as what Tolkien got up to.* But on the less bright side, their big evil plan is that they want to “breed” with the Raksura to produce powerful offspring.

Oh boy. So now we have an evil species whose main goal is to rape the good guys. I know I said the Fell aren’t obviously POC coded, but that sounds an awful lot like what white supremacists say about anyone with darker skin than them. It also casts the heroes as not just trying to stop rape, but also being disgusted at the idea of any mixing between Fell and Raksura. Gotta keep the bloodlines pure, I guess!

Magical Caste Systems

In the midst of harshing on the Fell, we shouldn’t forget that the Raksura are also loaded with toxic tropes. One of those is their magically enforced caste system. You see, until now I’ve only been describing one type of Raksura called Aeriat.* There’s a second type called Arbora, and they form the Raksura’s labor class. The Aeriat are always the leaders, while the Arbora do the work.

That might sound like an unjust system ripe for overthrow, but instead the book assures us it’s a good system that the Arbora are very happy with. The Arbora don’t have wings, you see, so they’re just less capable than the Aeriat and need their protection. The narration even tries to tell us that it’s the Arbora who are really in charge since the Aeriat don’t want to upset them.

Live link, archived link.

this person missed the part where all Fell have black scales, because she just couldn't resist having Black = evil. So then consorts like Moon get mixed up for "the bad ones".

#Rjalker reads The Books of the Raksura #biological essentialism #how not to write #Martha Wells critical #Martha Wells biological essentialism #The Books of the Raksura bigotry #The Books of the Raksura biological essentialism #The Books of the Raksura racism #The Cloud Roads

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honourablejester · 3 years

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On the topic of ‘fantasy settings you’d like to see more of’:

Subterranean settings. Very specifically, non-dystopian subterranean settings. So many times in fantasy, underground is for dead or evil things, and in science fiction it’s for grim, post-apocalyptic survival stories. And I get it, I do. There’s no light underground, or very little and mostly artificial, and the list of natural hazards in RL mining/caving/drilling is stupendous. For anyone with claustrophobia, fear of the dark, fear of drowning, fear of being unable to breathe, etc, etc, etc, below ground is basically fear central. I have several of those fears myself, so I absolutely get this. There’s a reason the land of the dead in a lot of mythologies was underground.

But. Fantasy. As in magic. As in wonder. And Jules Verne’s ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ was one of the first books I ever read out of the library. The idea of vast caverns and hollow earths, of great subterranean seas and cities and civilisations, really caught me.

There’s a lot you can do with a subterranean setting that is not darkness, slavery, death, blighted monsters crawling towards the surface, gateways into hell, etc. I know there are reasons for the associations. Underground is the realm of darkness, greed, suffocation. A lot of the big fantasy stories have tended towards a post-apocalyptic underground at best. Moria fell to the Balrog. The Deep Roads are where the Blight lives. The Underdark is aberration-and-slaver central. Dwarves, in particular, often seem to be a mid-apocalyptic race, clinging to their bastions of civilisation against the darkness, on the verge of being driven onto the surface. Below the surface, on any fantasy map, is where ‘Here Be Monsters’ tends to be written in huge, jagged letters. Because it’s hostile underground, RL or Fantasy. It always has been.

But. But the imagery you can have. Travelling down into the darkness to find wonders. Vast crystal caverns. Vertical civilisations, great cities built tier on tier around huge caves and shafts. Artificial suns. Bioluminescence. Giant fungal forests. Underground oceans. If you’ve ever watched those nature documentaries on extremophiles, the blind ghost fish with the lovely fins climbing lightless waterfalls. Pale, ethereal, sightless beings.

I have to say, even though it is post-apocalyptic, and the pale sightless beings were actually monsters in it, Blackreach in Skyrim at least had the awe and wonder down. This vast cavern full of majestic ruins, vast ghostly bioluminescent mushrooms, the golden glow of an artificial sun, the crystal chiming of nirnroot plants …

Underground can be a place of discovery. Wonder. Awe. Exploration. Community. Civilisation. I just would like to see some fantasy settings where that’s the bit that’s emphasised. Not the danger, not that everything down here is trying to kill you, not that living in darkness inherently makes you evil, not that the hell-portal is just down the incline there, but …

That there are wonders down here. There are living, thriving civilisations. There are beautiful, alien beings like nothing you’ve seen before. There are benign powers. There are ways to view things that are different: three-dimensional, sightless, lightless, but no less benign or valid.

Show me a dwarven city at the height of its power and prosperity, the roof of its cavern glowing in the light of its tiered suns. Show me ghostly spider people that act as the benign sages and weavers and oracles. Show me a subterranean Venice on the shores of a ghostly, lightless ocean, where bioluminescent mermaids come to trade. Show me a vast crystal cavern and the earth spirits that call it home. Show me the breath-takingly huge cavern sprawling outwards down an incline, an impossibly huge city carved tier on tier into its walls.

Show me the trade networks, gems and ores, yes, but also luminescent spider silks, strange crops grown under artificial suns, the million and one strange uses for fungus, two hundred different types of street food. Witch glass, magic, fertiliser (anyone who’s ever watched the David Attenborough cave documentary will remember the humungous mound of bat guano). Bioluminescent inks. Plant matter, bone, fossilised coal. A thriving trade in ornamental fungus for home decoration. Street stalls selling incredibly eldritch subterranean crustaceans onna stick. Street stalls offering the most delectable silicates for rock-eating species.

Show me life. Twenty six different species coming to trade hubs arranged at certain depths. Haggling. Universities. Water breathers. Methane breathers. Forty different variations on commercially available breathing charms and/or bubble helmets. A trade pidgin evolving using primarily sign languages, because the range of available vocal chords is a bit on the extreme side. Communication via light, or touch, or heat, or telepathy. There’s so many things you can do.

I’m not saying it can’t be dark and dangerous. It is still underground. I’m not even saying it can’t be horrifying. I adore Sunless Sea, after all, a game where the entire premise is an underground victorian ocean full of eldritch everything. Just … maybe don’t make it unrelentingly grim? Have some life down there. Some wonder. Some intrigue. Some cheer.

So much of fantasy underground is apocalyptic, dystopian or evil. Maybe just throw something a bit more, you know, interesting down there once in a while? Something that is not a long endless grind for survival against unrelenting horror. Make it so that people live down here, and are happy, and not because they’re torturing people for funsies, but because this is where they live and they’re fond of it, proud of it, have made a good life from it. Have it be a place people might want to visit. Put some wonders down there. Some joys.

… Possibly I just want less grimdark, post-apocalyptic fantasy in general, really. But yeah.

More wondrous fantasy undergrounds, please!

#random #fantasy #worldbuilding #subterranean #long post #more cheer please #and huge shiny caves

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valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn · 2 years

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I don't think the Jotunns are inherently bad or evil in the mcu. They definitely aren't in mythology. I know Marvel comics tend to very. But in the MCU we know so little about their history and culture I don't think it's fair to label the as any worse than any other race or species.

Honestly I don't think any race of people of the MCU are bad not even the Kree. Yes even if all but one kree we've seen have been portrayed as antagonistic I think Mar'Vell isn't the exception I think she proves that the Kree are just a society of regularly people living under a crappy corrupt government. The individuals themselves capable of both being good and and bad

I don't know if I agree. They don't need to outright call them villains, if the only thing you say about them is that they once tried to conquer Earth then the benevolent and self-righteous Asgardians showed up to protect the humans from them... there's little room for interpretation there. Especially when you frame Loki as an outsider on Asgard, you have a bunch of characters doubting him and expressing their distrust of him only to reveal him as one of those beings who tried to attack Earth a while ago.

It all ties up nicely into Jotuns are bad -> Loki can't be trusted and is not a good guy -> oh look he's one of them.

You can of course dispute that idea if you allow the Jotuns to express themselves, something like what the Skrulls had in Captain Marvel with Talos telling Carol what the Kree had done to them. Why not add a scene where Laufey can openly talk about the war with Odin (so we have both sides of the story and not just one) and what it meant for Jotunheim to have their Casket taken from them for centuries? We never hear their part. It's what you say, we know very little about them and what we know isn't good.

#Loki #Jotunheim

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crossdressingdeath · 2 years

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Tbh, I think Crimson Flower works a lot better as a first route when you don't know anything about the lore and stuff, but the minute you play the other routes, it just falls apart very easily. Granted even without knowledge of the other routes, I'm not sure how someone would look at Edelgard's racist rhetoric towards the Nabateans and be okay with it.

Yeah, Edelgard's basically like "They're not human so they should die" which is uh... they clearly have human-level intelligence and look almost exactly like humans and act exactly like humans (albeit humans who live a very long time and so have a different perspective than a teenager) and there's no evidence that they as a species are inherently given to evil and Fire Emblem has a long tradition of sympathetic and heroic non-human races including the manaketes which the Nabateans are clearly based on, so I'm gonna need a bit more justification than "they're not human" for why the entire species should be wiped out.

I see what you're saying, but the issue is if you play Crimson Flower first there's a good chance that you're going to be looking at all the other routes through the lens of "Edelgard is right and everyone else should just surrender and let her steal rule steal their land from them because the Church is bad and that means everyone's land should go to Edelgard for reasons because Edelgard said so". Which yes, will be the case for all the routes, but as I said in the other post in the other routes you're given enough information in that route to be able to tell consistently when the route's lord is being unreliable. You get more elements of the story once you've played all the routes, but you don't need all that context if you're just trying to figure out if the route's lord is lying or not. If you're just asking "Hm, is Claude lying about this plot point" in Verdant Wind or "Is Dimitri just being Early Part Two Dimitri or does this make sense with the information he has access to" in Azure Moon, you don't need to play any other routes to figure it out. Meanwhile Crimson Flower either outright misleads a player who hasn't played any other route or makes it clear that Edelgard just refused to pay attention to any information that contradicted her own preexisting beliefs, which is... honestly most of the information you get even on Crimson Flowers, but I will admit that Crimson Flower had some excellent writing and Edelgard is quite persuasive if you're on her route.

Now, I'm going to be entirely fair here: the concept of playing Crimson Flower first and then realizing over the course of the other three routes that Edelgard is actively lying, either to herself or just to everyone around her, to make her warmongering imperialist power grab look heroic and not like... well, a warmongering imperialist power grab? It is genuinely fantastic. Edelgard talks a good game and it's easy to get sucked into what she's saying if you haven't played any of the other routes and so don't know better. There's a lot of applicability in people get suckered into doing something terrible because the person in charge is really good at both controlling the flow of information and talking people into seeing their way as the only way. Personally the writing isn't quite tight enough that I think that's what they were going for (I mean, it is way too obvious that Edelgard's lying through her teeth), but there's a strong story there. The main issue... honestly is that social media is full of people with no reading comprehension who miss the fact that everything about this story screams that we're not supposed to buy Edelgard's insistence that she's in the right or side with her when there's a discrepancy in the narratives across the routes (hint, the fact that every route except hers agrees is a bit of a giveaway). So I guess the issue is less with the writing than it is with the fact that certain subsets of fandom are the epitome of "lowest common denominator"...

#fire emblem three houses #edelgard critical #asks #anon

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aces-to-apples · 3 years

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Your Reputation Precedes You

A response to “On Fandom Racism (and That Conlang People Are Talking About)” because lmao that cowardly bitch just hates getting feedback from people that she can’t then harass into oblivion

i.e. God I Wish I Could Use The Tag Fandom Wank Without The Titty Police Nerfing My Post

To be frank, I'm not here because I think you or any of your little cronies are going to change your minds. If the 'name' wasn't a giveaway, your group of ~likeminded individuals~ have quite the reputation for espousing ableist, antisemitic, and, yes, racist views under wafer-thin the veneer of "calling out racism." I think we both know that what you're actually doing is using the relative anonymity of the internet and progressive language to abuse, harass, and bully fans that you personally disagree with. You and your group are toxic, hateful, and utterly pathetic, using many peoples' genuine desire to avoid accidentally causing harm and twisting it into this horrid parade of submissiveness to You, The One And Only Arbiter Of Truth And Justice In Fandom. Never mind that you have derided autistic people as lacking compassion and empathy, that you've used racist colonizer dogwhistles to describe a fictional culture based heavily on real live Maori culture, that you've mocked the idea of characters having PTSD, or that vital mental health services are anything more than "talking about your feelings with friends uwu." Let's just ignore that you have ridiculed the idea of adults in positions of power exerting that power over children in harmful and abusive ways, that creating transformative fan-content that doesn't adhere to the spirit of canon or wishes of the original author garners derision and hatefulness from you, and that you've used classic abuser tactics in order to gaslight people in your orbit into behaving more submissively towards you in order to avoid more verbal abuse.

Let's toss all of that crucial context aside in favor of only what you've written here.

What you've written here is nearly 3,000 entire words based on, at best—though, admittedly, based on your previous behavior, I am actually not willing to extend to you an iota of good faith—fallacious reasoning. You posit that a constructed language, to be used by a fictional religious group located in an entirely different galaxy than our own, is othering, racist in general, and anti-Asian specifically. This appears based in several suppositions, the first being that a language unknown by the reader will, by nature, cause the reader to feel alienated from the characters and therefore less sympathetic, empathetic, and caring towards the characters. That idea is patently ridiculous and, I believe, says far more about your ability to connect to a character speaking an unfamiliar language than any kind of overarching truth about media and the human condition. New things are interesting; new things are fun; the human brain is wired from birth to be fascinated with new things, to want to take them apart, find out how they work, and enjoy both the process and the results.

The second supposition this fallacy is based upon appears to be that to move away from the blatant Orientalism of Star Wars is inherently anti-Asian. While I find it... frankly, a little bit sad that you cling so viciously to the Orientalist, appropriative roots of Star Wars as some form of genuine representation, that's really none of my business. If you feel that a Muslim-coded character bombing a temple and becoming a terrorist and a Sith, a white woman wearing Mongolian wedding garb, a species of decadent slug-like gangsters smoking out of hookahs and keeping attractive young women chained at their feet (as it were), a species of greedy money-grubbers with exaggerated features and offensively stereotypical "Asian" accents, and an indigenous people wearing modesty garb based on the Bedu people and treated by most characters as well as the narrative as mindless animals deserving of murder and genocide are appropriate representation of the many, varied, and beautiful cultures around the world upon which they were "based," then that is very much your business. Until you pull shit like this. Until you accuse other fans, who wish to move away from such offensive coding and stereotypes, of erasing Asian culture from Star Wars. Then it becomes everyone's business, especially when you are targeting a loving and enthusiastic group of fans who are pouring their hearts and souls into creating an inventive and non-appropriative alternative to canon.

Which leads into the third supposition, that a patently racist, misogynistic white man in the 1970s, and then again in the 1990s, intended his universe to be an accurate and respectful portrayal of the various cultures he stole from. I understand that for your group of toxic bullies, the term "Death of the Author" holds no real meaning, but the simple fact of the matter is that George Lucas based his white-centered space adventure on Samurai movies while removing the cultural context that gave them any meaning, because he liked the idea of swords and noble warriors in space. He based the Force and the Jedi Order on belief systems such as Taoism and Buddhism, but only on the surface, without putting any real effort into into portraying them earnestly or accurately. He consistently disrespected both characters of color and characters coded to be a certain race, ethnicity, culture, or religion, and likewise disrespected and stole from the cultures upon which he based them. He was, and continues to be, a racist white man who wrote a racist story. His universe has Orientalism baked into its every facet, and the idea that fans who wish to move away from this and interrogate and transform the text into something better than what it is are racist is not only laughable, but incredibly disingenuous and insidious.

As I said, I am not writing this to change your mind, because I truly believe that you already know that "cOnLaNgS aRe RaCiSt" is a ridiculous statement. The way you've comported yourself in fandom spaces thus far has shown to me that you are nothing more than a bully who knows that the anti-racist movement in fandom can be co-opted for your benefit. If you tout your Asian heritage and use the right language, make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white guilt and white ignorance, you can have dozens of people falling at your feet, begging for forgiveness, for absolution. And I think that gives you a thrill. So, no, none of this will change your mind because none of this is genuinely about racism—it's about power, it's about control, it's about fandom being the only space where you have some.

So I'm writing this for the creators of this wonderful conlang, which has been crafted by multiple people including people of color, who don't deserve this nonsensical vitriol, and for the fans reading this manipulative hate-fest, wondering if they really are Evil Racists because they don't participate in fandom the way you think they should.

Here it is: fandom has a lot of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism, etc. baked into it. Unfortunately, such is the nature of living and growing up in societies and cultures that have the same. The important thing is to independently educate yourself on those issues and think critically about them—not "think critically" as in "to criticize" them, but to analyze, evaluate, pick apart, examine, and reconstruct them again in order to come to a well thought-out conclusion. Read this well-articulated attack on a group of fans who have always welcomed feedback and participation, are open about their backgrounds, their strengths and weaknesses, and wonder who is actually being genuine.

Is it the open and enthusiastic group who ask for the participation of others in this labor of love? Or is it the ringleader of a group of well-known bullies who have manipulated, gaslit, and then subsequently love-bomb people who did not simply roll over at the slightest hint of dominance? The ones who spent hours upon hours tearing apart, mocking, deriding, and falsely accusing authors of fanworks and metatextual works of various bigotries and -isms, knowing that those evaluations were spurious and meant only to cause harm, not genuine examinations of the works themselves or even presumed authorial intent. The ones who made their own, quote-unquote, community so negative and toxic that even after the departure of a large portion of them, including this author in particular, that community still has a reputation for being hateful, toxic, and full of mean-spirited harassers who will never look critically about their own behavior but only ever point fingers at others. The ones who are so very determined to cause misery wherever they go that as soon as their usual victims are no longer immediately available, they will turn on each other at the slightest hint of weakness.

This entire piece of (fan)work is misinformed at the most generous, disingenuous at the most objective, and downright spiteful when we get right into it. The creators of Dai Bendu, along with various other works, series, and fan events that these people personally dislike, have been targeted because it is so much easier to harass, bully, and use progressive language as a weapon against them, than it is to put any effort into making fandom spaces more informed, more positive, more respectful.

As someone rather eloquently put it, community is not a fucking spectator sport. You want a better community, you gotta work at it. And conversely, what you put into your community is what you'll get out of it. This author and their friends have put a lot of hate into their communities, and now they're toxic cesspools that people stay well away from, for fear of contracting some terrible form of harassment poisoning.

Congrats, Ri, you've gotten just what you wanted: adoring crowds listening to you spout your absolutely heinous personal views purely to live out some kind of power fantasy, and the rest of us staying well away, because fuck knows nothing kind, helpful, or in good faith has ever come from Virdant or her echo-chamber of petty, spiteful assholes.

No love, bad night.

P.S. Everyone actually in the Dai Bendu server knows your ass got kicked because you didn’t say shit for a full thirty days and ignored the announcement that inactive members would be culled. You ain’t cute pretending like it’s because you were ~*~Silenced~*~ after ~*~Valiantly~*~ attempting to call out racism. We see you.

#fandom bullshit #fandom racism #fandom harassment #fandom ableism #fandom antisemitism #fandom misogyny #by apples

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fitzefitcher · 3 years

Note

You think human paladins monopolizing their class identity is bad? At least the Zandalari, Draenei and Blood Elves still have some of their own influence in the class. I was in Drustvar with friends and it got pointed out that all these guys are technically druids, and one thing led to another. Once the NEs get their purple hands on druidism they strip the class's fantasy of any other cultural influence. Heck that is why Tauren Sunwalkers are even a thing, because their teachings turned their backs on half of the Tauren's culture of balance. Look at Moonglade, look at the druid order hall, the druid artifact weapons. Is there a "Talons of Gonk" feral artifact skin that replaces the cat with a raptor? NO. Damn Night Elves gentrify Druids to the point that other races that play the class don't feel like it is really part of their culture.

while I think how nelf druidism is presented in game could definitely be taken as the last vestiges of kaldorei imperialism rearing its ugly head (bc like it or not, even with azshara gone, even with the highborne gone, that sort of cultural bedrock of superiority does not go away overnight, and clearly hasn't; look how they treat the other denizens of kalimdor, i.e., tauren, furbolg, centaur, trolls, etc., at best like they're inherently better than them and so have to teach them to "live better" or at worst like they're little more than beasts, look at how badly they react to being told that they evolved from trolls, look at how their solution to every environmental problem is to just Throw A Forest On It even though the land has evolved past it and hasn't been that sort of biome in literal millenia) I don't honestly think a lot of it is intentional or deliberate? at least not on the nelves' part; this feels more like blizzard's approach to most things, which is to say, inherently imperialistic, bc we live in a world shaped and molded and broken by imperialism and colonialism, and it's part of every facet of how we live and grow and breathe. that being said, I don't think blizzard intended for this, either; them intending for this would imply that like. they actually thought it through, and. I have a hard time believing blizzard as a collective has ever thoroughly thought anything through to the end in their lives lmao

it's why the drustvar are Bad Bad Evil Natives with their Bad Evil Pagan Gods, and it was Good and Right that the kul tiran colonists killed them en masse until only the "good ones" remained, it's why the kyrians are designed to, without a single trace of irony, strip down and wash out any of their potential individuality and cultural identity, it's why the titans are portrayed as Good and Right for Taming the Wildness of Primordial Azeroth and putting their own Civilized Perfect People on the planet, and why it was Good for them to cull the old gods (who up until like. I wanna say legion? were heavily implied to be like, archaic nature gods that were inherently a part of the planet, and then, Nope, suddenly they're Evil Space Invaders) and to cull the old gods' creatures, who are by all accounts the native denizens of azeroth, it's why all the non-titan-created sentient species on azeroth are Stupid, Lesser Beastmen that Just So Happen to be coded as BIPOC, like, I could go on forever w examples like this lmao

anyway, I really feel u w the whole "nelves act like they fucking own druidism" thing, bc like. boy I sure am getting tired of the whole There Is Only One Kind Of Priest, And It's Human Of The Church Of Holy Light (troll hexpriest who? forsaken shadow priest? I don't know her)

#ask tag #warcraft

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terramythos · 3 years

Text

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 21 of 26

Title: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers #4) (2021)

Author: Becky Chambers

Genre/Tags: Science Fiction, Third-Person, Female Protagonists

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 8/15/2021

Date Finished: 8/22/2021

Gora is an unremarkable planet. It has no natural life and few resources to speak of. In fact, its only use is its proximity to more interesting places. Over the years, it’s become a waystation, notable only as a temporary stop for travelers as they wait for their spot in the wormhole queue.

The Five-Hop One-Stop is a small, family-owned rest stop on Gora. Three travelers— a marginalized nomad, a military contractor, and an exiled artist-- lay over at the Five-Hop awaiting the next stage of their journeys. But everything goes horribly wrong when repair work on an orbital satellite causes a cascade event, destroying the planet’s communications. Now stranded on Gora with debris raining down from the sky, the travelers and hosts must live with each other while cut off from the rest of the galaxy. As they learn more about one another, each is forced to confront their personal struggles… and challenge their perspective on life.

Speaker had a word for how she felt right then: errekere. A moment of vulnerable understanding between strangers. It did not translate into Klip, but it was a feeling she knew well from gatherings among her people. There was no need being expressed here, no barter or haggling or problems that required the assistance of a Speaker, but errekere was what she felt all the same. She’d never felt it with an alien before. She embraced the new experience.

Content warnings and spoilers below the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Non-graphic sexual content, child endangerment, ableism (if you squint; it’s not malicious), references to warfare, discussions of intergenerational trauma re: colonization (not the scifi kind), prejudice and xenophobia, recreational drug use.

I’ve had a mixed experience with Wayfarers, which is unusual for me. I can’t remember the last series I read that fluctuated so much in terms of personal enjoyment and (in my opinion) quality. People as a whole seem to enjoy this series more than me, hence the multitude of awards and glowing reviews. I liked book two, A Closed and Common Orbit, because of the focused narrative and dedicated development of two lead characters. But the first and third books suffered from an overly large cast and reliance on generic archetypes. When a series is built on character development and plot is a secondary concern at best, those characters have to be outstanding. And to me, they usually weren’t.

But in this fourth and final book, I felt that Chambers finally hit her stride. On a surface level, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within has striking similarity to book three, Record of a Spaceborn Few. Both are virtually plotless novels which do deep dives into a cast of characters. What sets The Galaxy apart is its execution. All three leads have unique and compelling personal conflicts. An underutilized strength of the series is its creative aliens; something Chambers takes advantage of here with a fully alien cast. Finally, this book hinges upon interaction between the three leads, something sorely missing from the previous book.

In these reviews I often seem critical of ensemble casts. But when done well, I actually prefer them to singular narratives. The main hurdle is having consistently interesting characters across the board. When there’s one or two characters I prefer over the others, I usually struggle with the novel. There’s an inherent sense of disappointment when leaving a favored character’s POV. For me this affects my overall enjoyment of the story. But when I like all of the characters or they all have something interesting going on, ensemble casts are great. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is successful in this regard because I thoroughly enjoyed all three perspective characters. In no particular order…

Speaker is an Akarak, a birdlike scavenger species introduced as sympathetic antagonists in the first book. Going in, we know their home planet was colonized by the Harmagians, which has caused irreparable harm to their culture. Robbed of their homeworld and forced into the margins of GC society, the Akarak are nomadic, and many of them rely on banditry in order to survive. We have seen very little of them besides that. The Galaxy expands their lore a lot; their short lifespans, their incompatible biology with other sapients, and the resulting generational trauma from centuries of colonial exploitation. Speaker’s arc in particular is about dealing with the prejudice she encounters daily, adjusting to acceptance after being othered for so long, seeing things from a new perspective, and persistent worry for her twin sister Tracker, who she’s been separated from due to the events on Gora.

The Aeluon Pei is actually a recurring character; she’s Ashby’s love interest from the first book. Here we get a more intimate view of her as a person. In particular, she struggles with living a double life. She works a prestigious yet dangerous job among her people, running cargo into critical warzones. But her affair with Ashby (a Human) is a huge cultural taboo among the Aeluons. If her colleagues discovered her romantic relationship, her life as a cargo runner would be over. The double life is wearing on her, because she loves both aspects of her life, but knows that it can’t go on like this forever. To make matters worse, she goes into “shimmer”, a once-in-a-lifetime fertility period, during the events on Gora. This adds a layer to her struggle; does she do her duty to her species and produce a child, or does she pursue what she really wants?

Finally, there’s Roveg, a Quelin. Like the Akarak, Quelin haven’t received a whole lot of development in the series. In the first book, they’re portrayed as a xenophobic insectoid race, and their role is unambiguously antagonistic. Roveg is the polar opposite of that. He’s something of a renaissance man; an appreciator of fine art and dining, who designs artistic sims by profession. He delights in meeting aliens, befriending them, and learning everything there is to know about them. His arc centers around his exile from Quelin society and all the hidden pains associated with that. Chief among these is a mysterious meeting he has to make— which the Gora disaster obviously complicates.

Complementing the three leads are the Five-Hop’s hosts; a Laru mother and child named Ouloo and Tupo. Similar to the Akarak and Quelin, we haven’t seen many of the Laru (who I always picture as fuzzy dog-giraffe hybrids). Ouloo struggles to be a kind and accommodating host in the wake of disaster. She’s also forced to confront her own prejudices, especially regarding Speaker, the first Akarak she’s ever met. The two initially have a lot of tension, but grow to be great friends over the course of the novel. Her child Tupo is a nonbinary character using xe/xyr pronouns throughout the novel. Xe’s basically a Laru teenager, and super endearing. I love xyr natural curiosity and naiveté. Definitely the “heart” of the group.

Interaction between these characters is the bread and butter of this novel. There’s very little action; instead it focuses on their differing perspectives and life experiences. It’s a gradual build as the characters grow more familiar with one another. The epilogue is brilliant, because we see the long-term effect of these characters meeting. Despite interpersonal conflict in the story, Speaker inspires Pei to make a specific decision. From this decision, Pei realizes she can help Roveg with his meeting. As a result of this, Roveg is inspired to help Speaker based on one of their earlier conversations. His help fundamentally alters Speaker’s perspective on life— and there’s an implication it will reach beyond that, to the Akarak as a whole. It’s a cascade effect, but rather than the disastrous version that happened on Gora, it’s a positive social change for the leads. That’s the kind of literary parallel that really fires me up.

I do have a few criticisms of this novel, minor and otherwise. The first is, I wish the tension between Speaker and Pei was more strongly built throughout. While I’m glad the novel isn’t all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to the character interactions, their conflict goes from an idea in the back of one’s mind to an explosive event. This is something of a nitpick because it’s otherwise well executed. I especially like that despite their interpersonal problems, they work together in the climactic events of the novel without sacrificing their respective principles.

My other criticism is a series-wide observation. Wayfarers is optimistic to a fault. As such, it’s pretty rare that we see true evil or even bad behavior in this series. On one hand, it’s nice to read something where the characters are people who want the best for everyone. But there’s a lot of dissonance here, because there are MASSIVE social problems with the GC at large. For example, we see the effects of xenophobia, war, slavery, and colonialism, but the ones who perpetuate these issues are faceless. If Chambers wants to portray good characters, that’s fine, but it strikes me as odd to build complex social issues into your society, yet exclusively portray groups of morally good people. Why would a society full of such nice, helpful groups also marginalize the Akarak, or create an entire caste of slave clones to sort through their junk? This approach comes off as a desire for nuance without committing to it.

This trend continues through the final book. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is clearly a COVID-19 response novel (“we’re all in this together”!)— but everyone is blameless, and the government response is reasonable and timely. That’s just not how it worked in real life. So many people were (and still are!) selfish in response to COVID, often outright endangering others. Practically every government botched their response for the sake of money, leading to mass death worldwide. If Wayfarers has similar social issues to the real world, why would the response to a disaster be any different? It’s an ongoing contradiction; the Wayfarers society is simultaneously utopian and flawed, and it’s hard for me to suspend my disbelief.

As an individual novel, though, I really enjoyed The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Like all the other books in the Wayfarers series, it’s a standalone and can be read on its own. My experience with this series has been up and down; I recommend the second and fourth books, but I’d skip one and three if I ever do a reread. There are things to like about Wayfarers in terms of worldbuilding and the creative ideas behind all the different aliens. Characterization is hit or miss, but the hits are great, and this book in particular knocked it out of the park. Chambers’ prose improves a lot over the series, and it’s nice to see how she develops as a writer. As I’ve mentioned, Wayfarers has gotten lots of positive feedback, so it’s possible you will enjoy it more than I did. But I’m looking forward to reading something new.

#taylor reads #2021 reading challenge #9/10

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autolenaphilia · 3 years

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The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

A photograph of Conan Doyle (as Challenger) and friends, dressed up as the expedition in the novel, and published with the novel in its original serialization in the Strand Magazine.

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in 1912, is one of the most influential adventure novels ever. It had its predecessors in Victorian fiction, such as Verne’s Journey to The Centre of the Earth and Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, both are actually referenced to in the text as a homage. But The Lost World is still one of the models for stories about adventure in general and dinosaurs in particular. You can see traces of its influence in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar stories, the Indiana Jones movies and the Jurassic Park books and movies (the second book and movie were both titled “The Lost World” in reference to Conan Doyle).

It is about the discovery of an almost inaccessible plateau in the South American Amazon, “The Lost World” of the title. The hot-blooded English zoologist Professor Challenger is the first to bring back news of it to the Western world. He argues that on the plateau, creatures long thought exist still live, including dinosaurs. Challenger organizes an expedition from London to explore the plateau further. It consists of the journalist Edward Malone, who is also the narrator of the book, Lord John Roxton, a hunter and adventurer and Professor Summerlee, a rival scientist to Challenger.

The book is undoubtedly a fun and exciting read. The story about venturing into the unknown, encountering dangers and finding supposedly extinct creatures like dinosaurs is well-told and exciting. The use of a first person narrator, Malone, writing down the adventure as it happens adds a sense of suspense and immediacy to the story.

The sense of fun is added to by the humour of the book. The adventure elements of the book exist in union with strong elements of comedy. The book, for all its influence on the subsequent genre, came late to the era of imperial victorian/edwardian adventure fiction. And there is an element of parody to it’s awareness of the genre’s conventions. Professor Challenger is a strange character, and the book pokes fun at his self-centredness, self importance, mood swings and general eccentricity in behaviour and appearance. It also takes six entire chapters out of this 16 chapter novel before the adventurous journey begins. And this beginning part of the book, set in London, besides introducing the plot and characters, is primarily comedic.

There is of course an inherent difficulty in such switches of moods between suspenseful adventure and comedy, but the narrative manages it well.

Certainly, the portrayal of dinosaurs is outdated in many ways, although the strength of the storytelling is able to overcome any such problems. The differences to our modern understanding of dinosaurs, both pop cultural and scientific, are still interesting. For example the large carnivorous dinosaur that threatens the heroes is either an “allosaurus” or “megalosaurus” (neither Challenger or Summerlee are quite sure), when that role in a modern work would naturally be filled by a T-Rex.

But the dinosaur science is sadly not the only thing that is outdated. Being an adventure novel from 1912, the underlying ideology of the book is clearly colonialist and influenced by the racist thought dominant at the time. The time period merely explains, not excuses it. The very premise of the book rests on the far from innocent ideology of the white “explorer” and “discoverer”.

It is telling that Challenger and his doomed American predecessor Maple White are viewed as the “discovers” of the plateau solely because they are the first white men to stumble upon it. They later discover a tribe of “indians” had not only discovered the plateau first but even settled it, but this is treated as of lesser importance than Challenger’s discovery of it.

The racism is on display in the depiction of the book’s human villains, who are described as “half-breeds”. It is not stated but implied their mixed-race origins led to their villainy. It is most evident in the “apemen” the explorers find on the plateau. They are a “missing link” between apes and modern humans. They are explicitly stated to be entirely non-human for unclear reasons, a purely evil and repugnant species, fit only for extermination and slavery. The ape-men might not be intended as analogues for a racial other, as their non-human nature stands in contrast to the people of colour in the book, but the effect is still present.

The treatment of people of colour is complicated, because it is not uniformly negative. The black assistant Zambo is treated sympathetically, as is the “indians” the explorers find on the plateau. But the portrayals rest on stereotypes, the loyal black servant and the primitive native tribe. And it is always dependent on those sympathetic people of colour being subservient in varying degrees to the white heroes. The Indian tribe is the closest the book gets to a complex portrayal, as their members have differences of opinion and the possibility of them turning on the white heroes is always a possibility, without that marking them as evil.

The duality between “civilized” and “barbaric” is also undercut in ironic ways sometimes. In fighting the apemen, the white heroes gets involved in a “primitive” darwinian struggle for survival and even the narrator is taken back by his own bloodlust. When they leave, there is also the sense that their discovery will lead to the western exploitation of this untouched wilderness, destroying it.

The book’s comedic elements resurface when Professor Challenger is also shown to have a near-doppelganger in the form of the leader of the apemen, which enables him to get on a friendly footing with their leader. This revelation is foreshadowed by the contradictions in Challenger’s character, who seems to combine both the aspects of civilization and the “barbaric” or animalistic in one person. He is an intelligent scientist, but can also be a hairy, violent and emotional brute. Challenger is not a very sympathetic character, despite his heroic traits, but these contradictions make him interesting.

Another factor is that the novel also bears traces of Conan Doyle’s own stance against the worst crimes of imperialism. The character of Lord John Roxton is influenced by Roger Casement, who was Conan Doyle’s friend and ally against the abuses in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold’s rule. Casement later reported on human rights abuses against virtually enslaved native workers on rubber plantations in Peru. This influenced Roxton’s backstory in the novel, where he is said to have waged a veritable war against a similar (or perhaps even identical) situation in Peru.

The Lost World is highly worth reading for anyone who looking for a fun adventure novel. Of course the reader’s enjoyment is predicated on them being able to look past it being a deeply imperialist text. But if you are able to do so, you’ll find a highly entertaining story in its pages. Those who like me love the Sherlock Holmes stories will find the immense writing and storytelling skills of Arthur Conan Doyle fully evident in this book.

I read the Oxford World Classics edition of the book, which I highly recommend chiefly for its annotations, created by Ian Duncan. They explain a lot of obscure words and references to contemporary political and cultural events and other novels that I would otherwise have missed. The introduction by Duncan should really have been placed as an afterword (it is best read after the reader has read the novel), but is good at explaining the historical context and ideological underpinnings of the novel. The Oxford edition was really helpful in my writing this review.

#the lost world #arthur conan doyle

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the-light-finds-its-way · 3 years

Text

Magnus Thorbjorn

Guardians name: Magnus Thorbjorn

Age: Roughly 34 when resurrected, currently unknown

Race: Awoken

Call signs/alias: Peacebroker, Traveler’s Favored, Evocate General

Pronouns: He/him

Class: Titan

Preferred subclass(es): Solar

Ghost’s name: Einar

Their Vanguard: Zavala, Ikora, Cayde-6

Fireteam name: Harbingers of Destiny

Fireteam teammates: Magnus, Dominus Ghaul, Anthem-99, Velliks, Gadrax, Kahun

Favorite legendary weapon: Steelfeather Repeater

Favorite exotic weapon: Ace of Spades

Favorite exotic armor: Crest of Alpha Lupi

Favorite ornament armor set: Empyrean Titan

Favorite weapon ornament: Glee Barrage

What stats do they focus on: Resilience, Recovery, Strength

Are they offense, defence, or support: Offense

Do they prefer being close, mid, or long range: Mid range

Do they lean more “Element of Surprise” or “Upfront and Aggressive”: Upfront and aggressive

Strikes, Gambit, or Crucible: Strikes and Crucible evenly

Who was their mentor(if they had one. If it is a character you created, tell us about them!): Ikora and Zavala

Who are they mentoring(if they are. If it is a character you created, tell us about them!): Dominus Ghaul

What ship do they have: Saint’s Invocation

What is their Sparrow: Praxic Finery

Favorite Ghost shell: In Memoriam

Favorite shader: Circadian Chill /Virtified Chronology

Favorite color: Blue

Favorite food: Pizza

Favorite piece of Pre-Collapse tech(if they’ve seen any): None, Magnus hasn’t really seen any

Favorite Pre-Collapse music(if they’ve heard any): Anything from Twilight Force

Favorite place in The Last City(if it’s a place you created, give a little description!): The Hollow Cairn. This is a place where many once-invading species have attacked throughout history, and it has sunken into the ground since due to the massive destruction created over centuries. However, the place has since become a point of unity for everyone, with communities of Hive, Cabal, Humans, Eliksni, etc. all building shelters within the crater and living together. It’s a bustling district, and only because Magnus sacrificed so much of himself and his efforts to unify everyone.

Favorite NPC(s): Zavala, Ikora, Cayde-6, Saint-14, Banshee-44, Eris Morn, Mithrax, Spider, Failsafe, Devrim Kay, Suraya Hawthorne, Sjur Eido

Favorite patrol location: Anywhere on the Tangled Shore

5 things your Guardian likes(can be anything): Diplomacy, metal music, leading, sleeping, using the Hammer of Sol

Least favorite food: Steak

Least favorite shader: Lilac Bombast

Least favorite patrol location: Braytech Futurescape on Mars

Least favorite Pre-Collapse tech(if they’ve seen any): N/A

Least favorite NPC(s): Oryx, Savathun, Mara Sov, Lakshmi-2

Least favorite weapon ornament: Jade Countenance

Least favorite ornament armor set: Pandemonic (skeletal Titan) set

Least favorite legendary weapon: Literally any fusion rifle ever

Least favorite exotic weapon: Telesto

Least favorite exotic armor: One-Eyed Mask

5 things your Guardian dislikes(this can be anything): Dishonesty, disloyalty, feeling hopeless, giving up, loss

Your Guardian has to rest. What is their living space like: It’s well-managed, with a LOT of collectibles from all around the galaxy in display cases, organized on shelves and wall hangers, and on tables. Magnus loves to collect trinkets that have meaning to him.

Does your Guardian have any casual wear?(Y'all remember Polyvore? The website URSTYLE works very similar if that helps!):

What hobbies and/or skills does you Guardian have: Writing and reciting poetry, learning languages (speaks English, Ulurent, Eliksni all fluently), fighting, crafting armor, singing

What would your Guardian’s lore book be called: Broken Broker

Where was your Guardian reborn?(If you created the location, give us a little description!): Sector 25 in The Last City

What were they wearing when they were reborn: Scorched black cotton hoodie, worn-out black jeans, beat-up sneakers

What was their reaction to being reborn: FIGHT, AND DEFEND THE PEOPLE!!!

What was their reaction to their first rez: Sheer confusion, then immediate duty

After being reborn, did they meet friendlies first or hostiles: Both. He met Vex who were attacking and rampaging The Last City, but fought them and was then met by Zavala who’d come to handle the situation, only to see a new Guardian had already done this. Zavala saw the distress on Magnus’s face at this, and assured him over and over again.

Who was the first other Guardian they met?(Same thing! If you made them, give a little description!): Zavala

Did your Guardian get reborn with, or find, any indication of their past life? If so what do they have/found: Magnus has no indication of his past life, and knows nothing about it. He assumes he wasn’t Reefborn, but he partially wonders if he was just because of his vehement hatred for Mara Sov. Magnus can’t find anything on who he was, nor does he really care to know.

How did your Guardian get their name(if they didn’t rez with past life momentos): He knew/remembered it, and also Einar addressed him by “Magnus” when he was first revived and woke up.

Going back to your Guardian’s lore book, what would be some some quotes or passages from their book: Two passages are actually readable at my Ao3, dawnbreakerdystopia! Most of the lorebook passages would recount the tales of Magnus’s efforts to join the warring species of the galaxy together in unity, and would likely use the Hammer of Sol which he wields as a metaphor, leading those who read them to wonder if Magnus actually wielded it (he does). The passages would also recount the daring exploits he’s done to protect his friends, family, the training he put Ghaul through to be a strong and independent Guardian, and overall they’d just be written like poetic legends.

Does your Guardian have a significant other: Cayde-6, and they’re married.

Did your Guardian go explore first before going to The Last City? If so, where to: Magnus never explored until he was resurrected.

What was their reaction to first seeing The Last City: This place needs defenders.

Is your Guardian a part of a clan: Not officially. He’s sort of a part of every group regardless of whether he chooses to be or not. Life finds a way to drag him into them all.

Does your Guardian’s clan have a back story? If so, what is it?(if you want to or able to share): N/A

If your Guardian would have a quote as a flavor text for a weapon and/or piece of armor, what would they be: “I’ve got a thousand years on me, and for each year, a million lives. I can’t bear to sacrifice any one but my own.”

If your Guardian has had any interactions with any civilians (The Last City/The Farm), Eliksni, Cabal, Vex, Hive, Taken, Scorn, Rouge Lightbearers, or Iron Lords/War Lords(if your Guardian is an Old Light) tell us about it!: Magnus has unified Cabal and Humankind, mostly, because he was brought by the Traveler to Ghaul who was resurrected as a Guardian himself. He’s had plenty of rough encounters with them, but nowadays, they accept him as their Evocate General, and bend to his every command (Magnus NEVER abuses this). Magnus has had very few positive interactions with Hive, as Savathun and Oryx have constantly tried to seduce him with Darkness and ruin him. He struggles to trust Hive, but knows that there is good in everything just as there is bad, nothing is inherently evil, and thus, he has to and does accept Hive who are willing to be his allies. Magnus’s interactions with Eliksni have always been positive, and he’s always gotten along with them. Scorn and Vex, he has yet to meet any who’d be willing to work with him. Magnus personally hates the Vex entirely, but still holds out the belief that there is at least one out there who’s good and friendly.

Does your Guardian have any unconventional allies or connections(By Vanguard standards): PLENTY!!!! Ghaul, Spider, being Evocate General of Cabal, you name it.

How does your Guardian feel about themselves or others using Stasis: Magnus is against himself using it. He understands that others can make use of the power, but he HATES the Darkness, and would never trust a single thing from it, let alone a “gift” which would inevitably corrupt him, not to mention bring him nearer to it which he refuses to do.

Did they run The Last Wish raid? How did they react to seeing a live Ahamkara a.k.a Riven: Magnus has not run this raid yet.

Did they run The Deep Stone Crypt raid? How did they react to the Crypt and seeing Exo Eliskni: Magnus has not run this raid yet, either.

Is your Guardian from D1? How did they react to seeing Taniks alive once again: He’s not from D1

Where did they go and what did they do during The Red War: Magnus followed the main story, and was the only Lightbearer, thus he spearheaded the entire operation and literally held the fate of every single life on his shoulders and his alone. He fought, nonstop, and never gave up or slowed down.

Here are some characters that are either polarizing or have created a strong enough mass emotion within the community. What opinion does your Guardian hold on each of them(These are only a handful of characters!)>>>

Osiris, First Warlock Vanguard, originally exiled: Magnus looks up to Osiris for his wisdom, only a little, though, and he’d never tell Osiris this. Both of them know it, though, and words are not necessary to convey their mutual respect.

Eris Morn, Bane of the Swarm: He loves her, he wants to help her at all costs, and he knows to never pity Eris, or try protecting her without asking if she needs protection first, as she’s highly capable and strong-willed.

Cayde-6, Sixth Hunter Vanguard: Magnus is fucking head over HEELS for him, and would lay his life on the line for Cayde. He was devastated beyond words when Uldren killed him, but came to understand that it was the Darkness’s doing, not Uldren’s. And thus, he forgave him.

Ikora Rey, Second Warlock Vanguard: Mom. She’s just straight-up his mom.

Commander Zavala, Second Titan Vanguard: Mentor, dad-like friend, always reliable.

Saint-14, legendary Titan, First Titan Vanguard: Extreme respect, love, honors him deeply, aspires to be like him, MUST PROTECT!!!

Lord Saladin, Iron Banner handler, One of the last remaining Iron Lords: Indifferent. Magnus entirely disagrees with and somewhat hates what the Iron Lords did, but he senses good in Saladin and sees it as well. He holds onto that good, as he does for everything and everyone.

Lord Shaxx, Crucible handler, Hero of Twilight Gap, living megaphone: FRIEND!!! Always a good motivator, always reliable, selfless af which Magnus respects, and Magnus aspires to be so much like him. Is also slightly intimidated by Shaxx.

The Crow, New Light, Ex-Enforcer to The Spider: Friend, must be protected, is a new person and not Uldren, is capable of great things and must be guided to do just that. Magnus sees Crow follows his heart, and that’s more than enough for him to know this man is on the right path.

The Spider, The Shore’s Only Law, founder of “House” Spider: DAD!!! Spider adopted Magnus after (reluctantly at first) he went to Spider with a bounty from the Vanguard saying to kill him. Magnus knew this had to be a setup, it was, and Spider was immediately thankful, and then began calling Magnus his son. Both of them trust each other with everything and anything, and Magnus knows Spider is a good man at heart.

Uldren Sov, Prince of the Reef, Master of Crows: No. Don’t trust him, he’s misguided as FUCK!

Mara Sov, Queen of the Reef, Queen of the Awoken, Ex-Kell of Wolves: FUCK! YOU!!! Magnus would throw her off the throne and take it himself if he wasn’t so busy being Evocate General. He’d imprison her until her natural death. The things Mara has done, to the Awoken, the galaxy, and her brother, are unforgiveable, and she MUST pay for that.

Variks, the Loyal, founder of House Judgement: A friend, an ally, someone Magnus can rely on. He values Variks, even if he made mistakes in the past, but Magnus is a firm believer in destiny, and thus thinks Variks’s actions have been done for a reason which is to bring the world to the present it’s at.

Mithrax, the Forsaken, Kell of Light, founder of House Light: Absolutely reliable, always a good friend, Magnus will drop everything and go help protect Mithrax or aid him in his endeavors if he’s able. Magnus loves him as a close friend, and is deeply bound to House Light.

The Exo Stranger/Elizabeth “Elsie” Bray, Granddaughter of Clovis I and Sister to Ana Bray: Can be trusted, must be trusted, and Magnus also takes pity on her for what she went through both in the future, and by the hands of Clovis Bray.

Eramis, of House Salvation, Kell of Darkness: FUCK NOPE, don’t trust, avoid at all costs.

Empress Caiatl of the Cabal Imperial Empire: An ally and definitely trustable. Her motives are questionable, but Magnus understands where she’s coming from, and therefore believes she can be a great companion with some compromise.

Taniks the Scarred, the Perfected, the Abomination, the Shadow Thief: Nooooooooooooo get away get away get away GET AWAY!!!

The Darkness is fast approaching. How is your Guardian handling it: A N X I E T Y! !! !!!! ! !! But Magnus is taking action, fighting it head-on and never backing down for even a moment. He refuses to let the Darkness take hold, and aims to destroy it entirely once and for all.

And finally, does your Guardian have any advice for any New Lights: “The Darkness is a lie, but the Light is true. Nobody can see in the shadows of night, so it’s your duty as a Guardian to eclipse the world in endless sun, and create a world everyone can see within and beyond.”

#my guardians #long post

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Doctor Who: Why Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Needs an ‘Everybody Lives!’ Moment

https://ift.tt/39pw5MX

Doctor Who! The children’s own show that adults adore.

Doctor Who, as a format, requires an intrinsic joyfulness in its stories to be so adored. If adventures become too continually grim, or not sufficiently fun, then ultimately there’ll be a tipping point where it becomes implausible for the story to continue. Why, ultimately, would the character keep travelling if they weren’t enjoying it? And even if they did, would this be something that would sustain a family audience?

It’s not that you can’t have darkness in Doctor Who, it’s just that it can’t be sustained and eventually something has to give. As such, there’s an inherent optimism in a lot of Doctor Who, even in episodes where it isn’t high in the mix. For the show to make sense, there has to be some hope that wrongs can be righted.

For example: even though William Hartnell’s Doctor starts off trying break his own programme by getting rid of Ian and Barbara as quickly as possible, the show quickly settles into “a great spirit of adventure”; the Second Doctor comforting a grieving Victoria by pointing out that “nobody else in the universe can do what we’re doing” followed by the Doctor letting Victoria leave the TARDIS because it’s the best thing for her. In both cases, the gesture is one of compassion. The Fourth Doctor refers to Sarah Jane Smith as his best friend and she only leaves because he has to go somewhere she can’t (His home planet of Gallifrey, something that on original broadcast had more dramatic weight as he’d only visited it once before in the series and then been forced into regeneration and exile).

When Russell T. Davies relaunched the show in 2005, the unspoken idea became explicit. “Can I just say: travelling with you…I love it,” says Rose Tyler, who – despite portentous trailer statements – survived her travels. In episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures Russell T. Davies expanded on the Tenth Doctor’s victory lap in ‘The End of Time‘ to make it more celebratory, giving past companions happy endings (some in stark contrast to their grim fates in Nineties’ spin-off media). The departures of Rose and Donna are tragic, but the journeys to get there are framed in terms of joy and excitement.

The next showrunner, Steven Moffat, preferred happy endings. Companions had previously been married off (Susan, Vicki, Jo, Leela, Peri) as they left the show. Amy Pond got married and stayed, travelling with her husband. This was a leap forward, but unfortunately the following series’ pregnancy storyline was handled poorly and attempts to deal with its repercussions were not successful either. Clara, the next companion, dared to be like the Doctor but unlike Donna managed to both die and have a happy ending.

Moffat enjoyed Immortal LGBT+ Women Having Adventures in Space so much that he used it again for Bill Potts in Series 10. An important aspect of both characters’ storylines is that they suffer a terrible fate, but the version of Doctor Who in which companions die is rejected in favour of one where they get what they live happily ever after. Moffat, a comedy writer to his core, was unwilling to make Doctor Who a story where travelling on the TARDIS left you in a worse place. Davies also tried to give his companions happy endings of sorts to ameliorate their loss.

If we look at the populist peaks of the show, Doctor Who has never been overwhelmingly cynical. Whenever it’s been taken in a darker direction it usually rejects that approach in favour of a lighter balance. In Season 21 the show put its characters through a series of almost unrelenting grimness (‘The Awakening’, the story where a demonic entity attempts to get an entire village to slaughter each other is the light and fluffy one) culminating in the Fifth Doctor’s heroic regeneration story ‘The Caves of Androzani’– voted the best Doctor Who story in several polls – where the Doctor goes to extreme lengths to save his companion and distances himself from the violence that surrounds him.

And then in the next story ‘The Twin Dilemma’, the Sixth Doctor strangles his companion.

Why Doctor Who can’t sustain dark storytelling

By Andrew Blair

Doctor Who : Revolution of the Daleks to Air on New Year’s Day, Trailer is Here

By Louisa Mellor

Taking ‘Grimdark’ storytelling to mean stories in which violence and misery is perpetuated throughout the story universe in a seemingly never-ending cycle, that period in the show’s history is a perfect example of it. Why diminish one of the finest stories ever by immediately negating the heroism involved? Why would you have the main character reject the violence that he’d become a part of only to immediately embrace it again? Among the many problems it means we have a Doctor/companion relationship that seems grim at best. Why would you keep travelling with someone who strangled you, refused to apologise and then continually harangues and shouts at you? I don’t watch Doctor Who to see the companion trapped in an abusive relationship. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that the ratings went down as the production team systematically removed as much hope from the show as possible, ridding it of that great spirit of adventure. After ‘The Twin Dilemma’,the show was put on hiatus, and ultimately cancelled.

Which brings me to the current version of the show.

I don’t think Jodie Whittaker is miscast or that the current version of the show is woke nonsense – which is a relief because I think using the phrase ‘woke nonsense’ unironically is quite the red flag. I think that the enthusiasm Jodie Whittaker has for the part hasn’t been used well, because we currently have a Doctor who is great at showing unabashed joy travelling the universe, but whose stories lean towards grimdark and don’t give her anything approaching ‘Everybody lives!’

One of the most lauded episodes in Series 11 is ‘Rosa’, which was co-written by Malorie Blackman and showrunner Chris Chibnall. In it, the TARDIS crew see Rosa Parks in the run-up to her being arrested for violating segregation laws, and need to stop Krasko – a mass murderer from the future – interfering in this event and stopping it from happening.

The inclusion of Krasko makes an interesting and depressing point in this story, and I’d be fascinated to know the villain’s development in the writing process. For what we have here is a story about an important act of defiance that changed human history, and is celebrated for its impact, alongside an acknowledgement that there will still be racists in the future. In fact, there will be racists who murder 2,000 people in the future. Racism and its associated violence is not, the episode says, going to go away.

In isolation this might seem like optimism tempered with caution, but since Chris Chibnall became showrunner, edgy, provocative ideas have crept in and given stories a cynical edge. Small moments have a cumulative effect, such as Epzo’s story about his mother in ‘The Ghost Monument’, Robertson surviving ‘Arachnids in the UK’ without learning any moral lessons and indeed likely to cause more suffering, ‘Kerblam!’ ending with the system that blew up an innocent woman being allowed to continue (while closing the warehouse for four weeks and offering employees two weeks’ holiday pay), Daniel Barton escaping freely in ‘Spyfall’ while the Doctor wipes the memories of someone doomed to die, ‘Orphan 55’ shows us the unavoidable destruction of the human race, as does ‘Ascension of the Cybermen’. Under Moffat, we had some episodes ending with cynical quips that left a bad taste in the mouth, but under Chibnall the bad taste is there before the outro quip.

Series 11 showed us a joyful Doctor in a nasty universe, and the latter regularly overwhelms the former, but at least ended with Graham and Ryan clearly rejecting murder as a solution. Series 12 was less focussed on real-world evils, and uses them on the fringes of its storytelling (with the Doctor now seemingly embroiled in the universe’s cynicism, using Nazis to imprison a Master now played by a British Indian actor), but we’re still getting real issues reflected back at us along with the message that the Doctorcannot sort this, which is based on the false assumption that this is what Doctor Who is for.

I hope that this is building towards a reversal, that the Thirteenth Doctor gets her Androzani moment where she gets to take a stand against everything that she’s seen. However, we have now had a fully grimdark finale as the lasting impression of Doctor Who for nine months. ‘The Timeless Children’ has proven controversial for its approach to continuity; as well as the retcon of the Doctor’s history this was a ‘Twin Dilemma’(also the last story in its season) to ‘The Day of the Doctor’s Androzani. The heroism is now nullified. When we watch ‘The Day of the Doctor’and the day is saved at the end of the story, now we know all the Doctor has done is defer those deaths (those two billion children’s deaths) and the cycle of violence will continue. At the end of ‘The Timeless Children’the following is presented to us as the good guys winning:

The heroine cannot bring herself to destroy the animated corpses of her entire species, so Joe from Derry Girls has to do it for her. An entire planet now a lifeless husk. The main character’s centuries of trauma are revealed. Their best friend is now a genocidal maniac.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

This is Doctor Who in 2020: violent, cynical, cyclical. A mirror when it should be a window. If Series 13 repeats these trends then I fear history may repeat itself once more. But then, what is Doctor Who mostly about if not seeing a cycle of oppression and then breaking it?

The post Doctor Who: Why Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Needs an ‘Everybody Lives!’ Moment appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/39z4Rn4

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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bogariel-frogariel · 4 years

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The Bad Kids Visit Middle Earth Part 2

Part 2 of my fics. You can find it on ao3 as well, just look it up.

Aragorn tensed as Legolas' head spun around. The elf's heightened senses ensured that he was almost always the first of the Fellowship to become aware of anyone approaching.

"Legolas! What do you sense?" he asked.

Legolas frowned. "The trees are too thick to see them properly. But they do not look or sound like orcs, and the trees are telling me that they do not bring harm."

"How many?"

"Five… no six. I think it is the party that Mithrandir told us about."

Aragorn nodded, and then looked around at the party. The hobbits had not noticed their exchange, but both Boromir and Gimli's hands had drifted to their weapons, though Gimli was scowling thunderously at them as they spoke in elvish.

Gandalf was sitting on a moss covered rock, leaning back against a tree trunk as he smoked his pipe grumpily. The wizard had been even more grumpy than usual in the last day but Aragorn did not have time to be watching over him. Honestly, he should have been just about the only member of the Fellowship that Aragorn didn't have to worry about.

Everyone else was so young.

He knew, in standard human years, he was not much older than Boromir, possibly younger, but he still had the vaster experience between the two of them. He had seen much more battle than the son of the Steward probably ever would, and he knew he must accommodate Boromir's complicated feelings towards himself, for they were more than justified.

Gimli was the other of a similar age to him if dwarvish years were translated into human ones. At just over a decade shy of one hundred and fifty years old, Gimli was in his prime. However, he had also spent much of his life protected within Erebor, ever since the dwarves returned there nearly eighty years ago. And, of course, Aragorn would need to manage the animosity that he held towards other species, particularly elves, an attitude of suspiciousness that had been deeply ingrained in him since birth. Only the hobbits seemed to get exemption from his prickly moods.

Speaking of the hobbits, they were who Aragorn was most worried about. Though halflings lived almost as short a lives as Men, their youths stretched long, with almost half their lives taken up by youthful inexperience. It came from living in such a sheltered and peaceful place as the Shire, an environment that had done nothing to prepare any of them for the horrors to come.

And then there was Aragorn's dearest friend, Legolas. He perhaps had closer friends in his foster brothers at Imladris, but Legolas was one of the few beings that Aragorn could trust completely. Every time they met, it was as if they had never left each other, and he truly enjoyed the other's company. However, if Aragorn and Gimli were of an age approaching thirty when their respective species were compared to Men, then Legolas was barely over nineteen. The elf was centuries old, having reached his physical maturity at the same rate as humans, and his majority within elven society at the end of his first one hundred years of life, but he was still some three centuries under a thousand years old, and he knew that all elves were not truly viewed as adults until they had seen their first millennia.

It took much time for elves to overcome their inexperience within the world, their slowed ageing also slowing the latter of their youth years, so from the age of seventeen to one thousand, they would largely remain unchanged, and then mature slightly more rapidly for another hundred years before they remained in the unearthly beauty of their immortality for the rest of their unending lives.

It had been one of the reasons that Aragorn had ultimately decided to branch out from his elven family; he knew they would be unable to truly treat him as an adult until he had gone off on his own and collected some experience outside their watchful gazes. He did not blame them for their stifling protectiveness, it was in their nature.

So, in a way, despite physically being the second oldest in the Fellowship, he was also the youngest. Not that his foolish friend would ever let anyone other than Mithrandir and Aragorn ever discover that.

At least, they would be getting help now.

Mithrandir had explained to them that the gods themselves had sent them a gift, reached out and borrowed warriors from another world to aid them in their quest.

He had warned them of what to expect: that the gods had been unable to send anyone of too significant a power, lest the secrecy of their quest be jeopardised, which was why the newcomers would be unable to physically interact with the ring, or any other weapon of Sauron other than his minions. (That, at least, was a positive in Aragorn's eyes, for he would not have to worry about them falling prey to the Ring's power.)

They had one directive only: to help them defeat Sauron's forces within Middle Earth, and then they would be returning to their own home.

Eventually, the group emerged from the tree line, and Aragorn couldn't stop the slight frown that pulled at his lips.

Mithrandir had told them that they were from another realm, one beyond the reaches of even the gods, and that in their realm, different races lived together freely as there were no inherently evil races. He had warned them that three of their new companions would be of races that they would find rather distressing, but that they weren't like the orcs and goblins that the Fellowship knew of. They were… good somehow.

Only the Fellowship and those who could practice magic would see their true forms, to all others the goblin would look like a hobbit, the half-orc (the thought of one of those made Aragorn shudder) would appear as an exceptionally tall human, and the… devil would look like a normal elf. Not that Aragorn had any idea what a devil was, but Mithrandir had seemed far too annoyed to bare trivial questions that would interrupt the rather clipped warnings he was giving them about their new allies.

However, Mithrandir had been right, the goblin and half-orc (which he immediately knew were the shortest and tallest of the group respectively, the colour of their skin and unique body shapes) looked nothing like any orc or goblin that Aragorn had seen. There was a complete lack of the cloying darkness that seemed to surround them. Aragorn could not sense the energy as well as elves, but after so many years surrounded by elven magic, and the residual power in his blood gave him some ability to feel them. And none of the people in front of him were setting off any of his senses.

So, Aragorn smiled and stepped forward.

"Greetings, friends," he said, with as much warmth and confidence as he could muster.

The blond elven girl and the girl that would have also appeared elven if it weren't for her light pink skin and the black horns protruding from her hair (Aragorn the slightly shorter girl must have been the… devil that Mithrandir spoke of) stepped forward.

"Hello," the elf replied with a smile.

"We’re happy to join you on your quest," the devil said, grinning openly.

"We are grateful to have you," Aragorn returned, dipping his head respectfully. "I am Aragorn…"

He went on to introduce the rest of the Fellowship, each of them giving a small gesture to call attention to themselves as Aragorn said their names.

"… and the… esteemed wizard to my right is mostly commonly known as Gandalf the Grey," Aragorn finished.

"Well met," the elven girl said before also giving a more formal greeting in elvish.

"I'm Adaine Abernant," she introduced.

"And I'm Fig Faeth," the devil chimed in.

The dark skinned boy nodded as he introduced himself. "My name is Fabian Seacaster."

The goblin also nodded. "I'm Riz Gukgak."

The tall one gave an awkward wave. "Uhh… Gorgug Thisltespring."

Finally, the human girl lifted one of the hands off her huge staff that was curled at the top and gave a more confident wave. "My name is Kristen Applebees."

Aragorn was about to ask more questions about their skills but Legolas suddenly shifted behind him and when Aragorn looked at him, he had his bow in hand.

"There is something very large approaching," he explained, reaching back to grab an arrow.

Master Seacaster clapped his hands together. "Ahh, that is just my animal companion… the Hangman."

"Please don't shoot him," Miss Faeth requested. "He won't hurt anyone here."

"Well, unless they attack Fabian," Miss Applebees said only to be elbowed in the leg by Master Gukgak.

"He won't hurt anyone unless Fabian orders him to," Adaine assured them. "And Fabian won't order them to hurt anyone. Right Fabian?"

Master Seacaster, who was looking off into the forest, in the same direction that Legolas was glaring in, shook himself and glanced back at the female elf.

"What?" he asked, blinking. "Oh yes. Of course, I won't ask him to attack anyone here. He's only roaming around the forest to scout for danger."

Before anyone could say anything else, a black mass burst from the tree line, zipping straight to Master Seacaster's side and coming to an abrupt stop.

Now that it was no longer a blur of movement, Aragorn could see that the figure was a great, hulking hound, as big as any warg that Aragorn had ever encountered. The hound as leaning up against Master Seacaster, its tail wagging as the boy patted it's head.

"Yes, hello, Hangman," the boy said, grinning more brightly than he had been previously. "What did you find?"

The new group nodded along at the hound's huff, as if they could understand it.

"Well," Miss Applebees said. "That's good news. There's nothing in the forest that's going to try and kill us."

"What would you like to do?" Adaine asked. "We have been instructed to follow your directives whenever possible."

Aragorn contemplated this for a few moments before he answered, "We're less than three hours from the forest borders and then we'll be on open plains until we hit the next ridge of mountains. We will walk for an hour before we make camp again. Tomorrow will be a long day."

From tomorrow, there would be no more hiding in forests along the mountains, they would need to find rock formations to camp under. Soon they would need to choose what path we would take.

Everyone acknowledged Aragorn with a nod.

"We can help you make you break camp, if you would like?" Adaine asked.

Aragorn shook his head. "We should be ready to travel in five minutes. Take the time to rest."

Miss Faeth smiled at him. "Thank you! Adaine made us get up really early."

Adaine glared at her. "You agreed to get up at that time. It's not my fault it was my job to get you all up."

Miss Faeth rolled her eyes and all of the newcomers drifted towards each other, forming a circle around the Hound as they quietly talked amongst each other. When Aragorn glanced at them half way though his sweep of the camp to make sure they didn't leave anything behind, he saw various bits of food in all their hands.

The newcomers easily dispersed themselves as the party walked. As usual, Legolas scouted far ahead in front of them for their next campsite, though Master Gukgak walked off to the side of them, almost disappearing into the trees. Master Damian and the Hangman flanked the hobbits, who walked at the centre of their party and Master Thistlespring and Miss Faeth reinforced the rear, where Boromir and Gimli were walking, whilst Adaine and Miss Applebees walked along only a few metres behind Aragorn and Mithrandir, murmuring quietly between each other.

True to form, after an hour, Legolas returned to them, informing them of a suitable clearing not far off, with a few birds in his hands that they could cook up for dinner.

Sam perked up at the sight, bustling forward and taking it from the elf with a hesitant 'thank you' before he started preparing them and Miss Applebees wandered off with him whilst Master Thistlespring and Master Seacaster went into the forest with Bormoir and Merry and Pippin to start collecting firewood.

As usual, everyone else went about their own business, setting out their bed rolls and tending to their personal gear as they whiled away the hour or so until dinner would be ready. Aragorn asked Legolas to stand watch, for he knew that the elf preferred that activity, as he was uncomfortable speaking with large groups of unknown people.

The young elf would need to learn to become friendly with the group, but Aragorn didn't want to push his friend. Hopefully, with another elf here, everyone would open up. The Hangman paced a circle around the camp, apparently joining the elf in his watch.

Adaine walked over to Aragorn just as he was trying to decide what job to assign himself.

"How would you like to assign overnight watches?" she asked.

"Am I correct in assuming that you only need half as much rest as the others in this group?" Aragorn questioned and the elleth nodded.

"You are. I was thinking that Legolas and I could take alternating shifts each night, with someone else also up to cover blind spots," she suggested. "If that is what you want to, of course."

Aragorn smiled and nodded. "That sounds reasonable. And good for the whole company. It should ensure that everyone gets as much rest as possible. We usually don't have the hobbits stand watch, as they are all rather young and they need to conserve their strength. Besides, none of them have seen proper combat before, and would not know what to look for whilst on watch."

Adaine frowned at that but did not argue. Instead, she was distracted by Miss Applebees coming up to her and grabbing her arm.

"We need you down by the fire, Adaine," she said. "Sam's wants a few ingredients for the soup he's making us. And I want to braid your hair before it gets too dark. We probably won't have time tomorrow and it might get in the way on open plains."

Aragorn's eyes widened at that statement. For elves, hair braiding required an incredible amount of trust. It was not a duty given out lightly. Aragorn himself, had only ever been given the privilege a few times, and that was with elves that he had spent his whole life with. However, Adaine just smiled, nodding goodbye to Aragorn and allowing herself to be led over to a rock that had been dragged over to a fire that was already blazing healthily.

As he watched the human started braiding a complicated design into the elf's hair, as the blonde pulled items out of a pouch at her waste, producing potatoes and herbs seemingly from mid-air, much to the delight of Samwise.

Aragorn couldn't help but marvel at the scene.

These new folk were strange indeed. However, they had a strong bond of trust that would not be broken easily, and they would truly help the Fellowship in their endeavours.

#dimension 20: fantasy high #fantasy high #adaine abernant #dimension 20 fanfiction #lord of the rings #adaine #dimension 20 #legolas #aragorn #gandalf #my fics #the bad kids visit middle earth

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botslayer · 4 years

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Fantasy and Scifi “Racism,” an opinion piece:

This whole thing is gonna be a slurry of politics, hot takes, nerd shit, some pictures to make it not a snooze fest on the eyes, and me asking the lot of ya to consider both sides of an argument. If you have a problem with any of that, please leave. All that said, let's get on with it: Let’s take three gentlemen for an example. One is from Poland. One is from Angola, one is from South Korea. What does that tell us about them? We can infer averages. For example, The average Polish man’s height is about five feet, ten and a half inches, so the Polish gentleman’s height might be in that ballpark. A very well known Korean dish is Kimchi, so it is moderately safe to assume the Korean man has, at some point, eaten it. Two of Angola’s largest provinces happen to be “Moxico” and “Cuandocubango” and one of it’s most populated is called “Huambo” So it would be a moderately safe bet to assume the man from Angola is from one of those areas. Their countries/continents of origin don’t directly tell us much though. Hell, we could be dealing with a Polish little person, a Korean who has bafflingly never had kimchi and an Angolan from Lunda Sul. We also don’t know about their outlooks, their lives, mental conditions they might have. Hell, we may not know what race these guys are. There’s a slim chance the Angolan Gentleman is Chinese (1.4% of the country’s population) Or that the Polish guy is ethnically German. We just don’t know. What we do know for a fact is that they’re all human men. They have (most likely) similar psychology, anatomy, dietary need to not starve to death or dehydrate, etc. And that’s about it. Now let’s take a sample from three fictional species off the top of my head: Starting with a Furon from Destroy all humans.

Now, Furons are pretty much universally shorter and physically weaker than humans, so it is safe to assume our single Furon has these qualities. He's also likely a psychic as that's a common attribute of his people. Also common would be the perception of humans as cattle, his possession of advanced force field technology is also pretty much a guarantee. Outliers exist and all that but something worth mentioning: This Furon is a Furon. In other news: The sky is blue, yeah? The problem is though: The Furons are very much not humans. And there aren't too many "races" in that equation, either. Just the populace of the Furon Homeworld. It's also worth noting that we don't actually know what Furons eat, their water intake any of that. We know only so many details but with just those, it's obvious that Furons and humans are too damn different. For species two, let's look at Mind Flayers from DnD.

Mind Flayers, otherwise known as "Illithids," are generally humanoid creatures born through a process known as "Ceramorphosis." See, Illithids are anatomically asexual, as in, they self inseminate and produce eggs from their mouths. They put the eggs in with an entity called "The Elder brain" which is a conglomerate of other Illithid brains, the tadpoles eat one another or get eaten by the brain for about ten years before being selected and implanted into a sentient creature (Humans, elves, etc) From there, the tadpole eats the brain of that creature, replacing it with its own and slowly altering their anatomy until you get a malevolent microcthulhu with potent psychic powers and the need to eat one entire human-level brain every month. Mindflayers start their lives as parasites that literally consume your entire sense of self and mutate you into an unrecognizable husk with a cephalopod for a face. And they have the gall to consider humans lesser? How bloody dare... an entirely separate species of sentient creatures come to that conclusion. For our last example, let's talk about a species from a setting best described as Technomystical: The Skakdi from Bionicle.

For those who don't know what that species is, The Piraka from the 2006 toyline are all examples of Skakdi. Now, Skakdi look, and they are, absolutely brutal. For example, the species was beset by an army of large and lethal creatures called "Zyglak" after becoming what they are today, the lot of them being mutants. The Zyglak were completely wiped out. Skakdi are savage in the best of ways. They aren't just beasts, they're berserkers with the powers of the elements, however, it does require two of them to activate such powers. Thing is though, they're all like that. The entire species has been mutated from what it once was into a legion that knows little else other than slaughter and subjugation of others... Generally speaking, at least. The problem with all three of these species, or "Races" (As I do NOT prefer to call it), and in fact most species from almost all settings is that they're a monolith. Illithids, for example, generally all follow the same societal structure, living in large groups wherever they can under the "guidance" (as in "Hivemind link") of elder brains, some strike out on their own, but for the most part, they live under elder brains, no matter where in the world they are. There aren't competing Illithid Nations or sub-species with things that makes them distinctly Korean or Aztec inspired unless the DM adds those things. And even then, when settings do that, say, Warhammer, there are some groups that are a national proxy (The Empire is Germany, Bretonnia is France, etc) and then some proxies are just an entire species. (See the Lizard Men, who went from Native American-coded to Aztec over the course of some years.) Adding to these things is a slight elephant in the room. Alignment systems. See, humans in games like DnD can be anything from neutral evil to chaotic good, true neutral to lawful evil, etc. But then some species are stuck as inherently good or evil or inherently lawful or chaotic. The problem with saying that about a sentient species is that it smacks a bit of actual, real racism/racist ideas. The idea that this group of beings that just lives differently to the rest of us is inherently almost anything is clearly bad, right? Well... Maybe if we didn't do that IRL, that would feel more genuine. The hell am I on about?

We, as humans, understand that other species of everything from primates to insects are naturally more aggressive, more gentle, more poisonous, more endowed with certain senses, etc. All except for other groups of humans. Because save for pigments of skin, general height, and elements of culture, pretty much all human groups are the same. That said: Point me to the the race of humans more naturally endowed with psychic powers. Or the human race that can only go on by implanting itself in other humans and slowly making people lose their minds until only they take over said body.

I can show you examples of animals doing the whole “Eating you from the inside out” thing. But not humans. Hell, even cannibals have to get a cut off of ya first. But that’s just how beings like Mind Flayers operate. I can show you examples of more aggressive insectoid life vs ones that just want to be left alone. Generally speaking, a wasp is more aggressive than a ladybug. But that’s because they evolved differently to one another. Like Mind Flayers have from elves. Or like Furons have from Blisk. Or like The Skakdi had from Matoran, even before being mutants. Does that make them (wasps) “Evil” though? Well... No. The problem is that wasps took on the various scary attributes they did because that was the hand nature played for them. A wasp does not choose to start life by eating it’s way out of a living tarantula and then spending the rest of it angrily defending whatever it considers to be it’s “territory” only to lay another one of its kind into another tarantula, that’s just what the little bastards do without thinking because that’s how they adapted to the world. I would say though that Furons are evil. They view an entire species they consider intelligent (Even “Loosely”) as cattle to harvest DNA from and otherwise use as playthings, killing them en masse just for shits and giggles. Mindflayers, I would say much the same of unless they willingly find violent/genuinely harmful examples of intelligent life that will do the world no good and then eat only them. But no, these freaks bred an entire species of creatures to have massive brains and be super passive just to make eating their brains easier. That’s pretty damn evil.

(Pictured above, an Oortling from Forgotten Realms 2e) Creatures like the Krill from Seth Macfarlane’s “The Orville” believe all other sentient species are lesser than them. The galaxy is for them and them alone to conquer and do with as they please. Such is the Will of their god Avis. They started stabbing a human head live in front of other Krill in an episode as part of their religious practices. But then the species has some nuance. This fundamentalism and extremism is how they cope with being so damn small in the face of an uncaring, unfeeling void. So are the Krill evil? No. They’re afraid.

Coming back to the Skakdi, They started out as relatively peaceful until a creature from the Makuta species showed up and mutated the lot of them into the magabadasses they are now. All of them now have, fighting skill equal to, if not greater than most Toa, and even elemental powers. But they aren’t all evil. They’re just aggressive, angry, and furthermore, also probably hurting. A peaceful existence was just taken from these poor bastards, all they know now is conflict with one another. So are the Skakdi evil? No. Some of them might be but it ain’t because they’re Skakdi.

See, Skakdi and Krill are important things to remember here because they, while still being monolithic as cultures, have a little more depth than just the myriad ways in which they’re evil bastards. But Mind Flayers? Not really. Not unless the DM adds that. Furons? I mean... Sometimes they become friends or mate with humans but not usually. And what of the big old elephant in the room? The Orcs of D&D? Orcs as a species were recently described as only having limited capacities for things like empathy... If raised outside the violent and chaotic madness that is living with other orcs.

This is the thing that sparked this post, so I will now, at the near end, address it specifically: People find the wording here to be reminiscent of things actual racist propaganda and ideas perpetuated about pretty much specifically black people as I understand it. Which, I genuinely wouldn’t know. I never really grew up around that stuff and I do my best to avoid racists/racism in my day-to-day. But to me? This just makes a depressing kind of sense. The species that evolved/was made or whatever to be this big, hulking set of warrior badasses. has a limited ability to understand what it is to be the other guy. Seems legit. Especially when you remember that even if Orcs are just another group of primates, they aren’t human and would likely have psychological differences to humans.

This is a baby chimpanzee. Look at it. It’s cute. You want one, don’t you? Well... That’s not advised, honestly. Chimps can be fucking monsters. Don’t know what I mean? A. I’m surprised. B. Just google “Chimpanzee attacks” if you have the stomach for it. Not all Chimps will do it, but chimps can and do, do it. Some Chimps hunt monkeys for food in their territory. It’s royally fucked up, but its a thing they do. And you know how different human DNA is to theirs? About 1%. I personally don’t see anything wrong with saying “An entire species is evil” in any setting other than that being shallow as fuck. I also personally don’t see anything wrong with suggesting that a species has limited empathy because honestly...? Just look at nature and even humans. Fantasy and Scifi often entertain the idea of “What if we are not the only living things smart/naturally equipped enough to build a society?” But the sad reality is if we weren’t? Most other species wouldn’t act a damn thing like humans, most other species probably wouldn’t give a shit about us, and a large number, even if they can and do act like us in some ways, will not in all ways. So, to bring this ramble to something resembling a conclusive point: Fantasy/Scifi “Racism” (As in just being prejudiced, although it should just be Xenophobia, IMO) is way more understandable and even more easily believable than the real thing because we stopped talking humans the second we brought in the crazy dudes with octopus heads. Or who are just naturally, by virtue of their species (not “race”) psychic. And even if it was just between groups that didn’t exist, nature proves that it would most definitely happen. But those are just my thoughts, anybody wanna weigh in? I’m all ears.

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