Something I think a lot of fantasy roleplaying fans don’t pick up on is that the reason many games’ depictions of orcs and other “monstrous races” get criticised for being racist isn’t just because they’re dark-skinned and evil.
I mean, yes, there’s that, but it’s also that a lot of the tropes that are associated with orcs and such in fantasy RPGs are literally eugenicist rhetoric – and, more specifically, anti-Black eugenicist rhetoric – with the serial numbers lightly sanded off.
Like, you ever notice how common the following elements are?
Being capable of using complex tool and weapons, but relying on raiding and pillaging to obtain them, not because they’re incapable of making them, but because they’re simply too
congenitally
lazy to do so
Having an intrinsic drive to despoil and corrupt the fruits of civilisation, and in particular, taking pleasure in destroying beautiful things specifically because they’re beautiful
Being treated as childishly superstitious for believing in evil spirits, even though such treatment makes no sense from a worldbuilding perspective because they live in a fantasy setting and evil ghosts are objectively real
Reproducing rapidly and reaching sexual maturity quickly, typically at an age when a human would still be a child, with great emphasis placed on the danger of them “outbreeding” civilised peoples if left unchecked
Lusting for the women of other species, resulting in all manner of twisted half-breeds; “heroic” members of their kind are typically drawn from these half-breeds, who must struggle constantly with their base natures
Seriously, a lot of this stuff is copied and pasted directly from 19th Century eugenicist screeds about the intrinsic inferiority of the Black race – they basically just scratched out the n-word and wrote in “orc”.
(And no, you can’t pass it off as folks imitating Tolkien without realising what they were doing. While Tolkien’s orcs undeniably employ racist imagery and stereotypes, there it’s mostly anti-East Asian stuff, not anti-Black stuff. The incorporation of explicitly anti-Black tropes into fantasy fiction’s depiction of orcs is a more recent development, and at least some of the folks doing it absolutely knew what they were up to.)
I wish I could remember the name of the actress who went ballistic after being told that, at 35, she was too old to play the love interest for the 55-year-old lead.
It was Maggie Gyllenhall. And I stand corrected, she was 37.
I’ve repeatedly seen British people make fun of American food for apparently always being either “too sweet or too salty” but our cuisine is still pretty mild compared to a lot of other countries, and having repeatedly tried British food, I’m pretty sure the term you’re looking for is “having any flavor at all.”
Britain invaded over half the world for spices and then decided they didn’t like any of them
when ur wife missed out on her prom in high school so u put together a whole night and hire a photographer and even though u feel ridiculous shes so happy ud do it all over again of you had to
Hozier and Florence Welch are just pseudonyms Hades and Persephone have taken on after haven taken music lessons from Orpheus for a couple thousand years and deciding going into the music industry and gaining “fans” would be a modern equivalent form of the worship that previously sustained them thanks for coming to my ted talk
I wanna destroy the culture of “women have to wear makeup to be considered presentable” and replace it with “makeup is a fun accessory that allows u to have horribly fake purple lips and green eyelids if u want yee haw who wants some glitter on their nose” who’s with me on this
Based in Tokyo, Japanese designer monde has created a new category of art and design—bookshelf dioramas. His wood inserts transform ordinary bookshelves into something magical and bring the feel of a Japanese back alley into your home.
Inspired by Tokyo, his work carefully mirrors the dizzying feeling of wandering the city’s back alleys. Monde has been working on the project for two years, using different materials to create the look and feel of the city. He’s even added lights to some models, which give a soft glow that emanates from the bookshelf. This newer model is also sized perfectly to sit between paperback novels.
why DO teenage girls go through a witch/occult phase? I had tarot cards and a spellbook and I knew a group of girls who messed with ouija boards and another who had ghost hunting equipment. “oh yeah Cindy’s just going through that girly phase where she tries to raise the dead.”
theory - we want power and know our culture doesn’t want to give us any?
Addendum: witches are one of the few cultural figures of female empowerment that don’t derive their power from their relationship to a man.
Galaxy brain: all women have suppressed magic inside them waiting to be unleashed
