I don't hate Moorcock, but he has always seemed like an intolerant shithead (when he's not busy being crazy or whatever the fuck else). He didn't have the opportunity to 'cancel' anyone, and now he's irrelevant, and if he gets kicked off Facebook nobody cares other than some folks into Elric erotica or whatever. I'm not so sure he wouldn't do that type of thing if he got the chance, but he's not in that position, he's in the 'getting kicked off Facebook for reason nobody knows' position.

I think what links him to the new breed of leftist scold is the trashing of iconic characters, in this case, his own character. Like, every book that I read after the Elric ones, was, some kind of crapping on Elric. That was kind of alternated with milking Elric with other diluted versions of Elric.

So he seems SJW'ish in the sense that as an artist, he has very little to contribute in terms of being an actual artist, in his case, presumably a fiction writer, but lots of stuff to contribute in terms of 'deconstruction' and telling everybody else how they're wrong and racist and....whatever.

Quote from: yancy on May 24, 2021, 08:24:56 AM
I don't hate Moorcock, but he has always seemed like an intolerant shithead (when he's not busy being crazy or whatever the fuck else). He didn't have the opportunity to 'cancel' anyone, and now he's irrelevant, and if he gets kicked off Facebook nobody cares other than some folks into Elric erotica or whatever. I'm not so sure he wouldn't do that type of thing if he got the chance, but he's not in that position, he's in the 'getting kicked off Facebook for reason nobody knows' position.

I think what links him to the new breed of leftist scold is the trashing of iconic characters, in this case, his own character. Like, every book that I read after the Elric ones, was, some kind of crapping on Elric. That was kind of alternated with milking Elric with other diluted versions of Elric.

So he seems SJW'ish in the sense that as an artist, he has very little to contribute in terms of being an actual artist, in his case, presumably a fiction writer, but lots of stuff to contribute in terms of 'deconstruction' and telling everybody else how they're wrong and racist and....whatever.

I really miss Harlan Ellison at times like this.

Moorcock is not a cancel culture junkie in the modern sense, no. I consider him a progenitor of the current mob mentality though. And a person that subverts for the sole sake of subversion, which in my mind is always a hateful reason for creation.
Same reason I can't stand George "What's his tax policy" Martin.

Anyway, I think I have said all I have said on the guy.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on May 24, 2021, 10:09:17 AM
Moorcock is not a cancel culture junkie in the modern sense, no. I consider him a progenitor of the current mob mentality though. And a person that subverts for the sole sake of subversion, which in my mind is always a hateful reason for creation.
Same reason I can't stand George "What's his tax policy" Martin.

Anyway, I think I have said all I have said on the guy.

Did Martin even explore tax policy in ASOIAF?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 24, 2021, 10:40:09 AMDid Martin even explore tax policy in ASOIAF?

No |:(

Nor did he go into all the nonsensical worldbuilding elements he added. I get the distinct impression the man is just waiting to die so he doesn't have to wrap up his story because he realized it's leading to a deeply unsatisfying conclusion. While the TV show botched the execution, I don't really believe that he has any real good ideas behind it all.

That's the problem with making stories based on hate and contrarianism. Subverting and tearing down is easy. Building up is hard.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on May 24, 2021, 11:34:43 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 24, 2021, 10:40:09 AMDid Martin even explore tax policy in ASOIAF?

No |:(

Nor did he go into all the nonsensical worldbuilding elements he added. I get the distinct impression the man is just waiting to die so he doesn't have to wrap up his story because he realized it's leading to a deeply unsatisfying conclusion. While the TV show botched the execution, I don't really believe that he has any real good ideas behind it all.

That's the problem with making stories based on hate and contrarianism. Subverting and tearing down is easy. Building up is hard.

That's why I restrict myself to writing short stories.

One thing I will say about Moorcock and Martin. They actually made their own stuff instead of trying to infiltrate and "improve" existing properties.

I saw an ad for the new Drow today and I must admit that I do like the thought of adding some extra Drow into the mix.

Now Forgotten Realms will have extra evil Snow Drow and evil Jungle Drow to add to the mix of the usual Drow suspects.

Soon I will have my 88 different types of Elves.....soon.

drow's a good possibility but this is a golden opportunity for james mendez hodes to turn his orc complaints into a real magnum opus, feels like a dark horse contender

I always found it strange that the Fantasy race that's least likely to have this kind of subdivision, since Elves are almost always described as extremely long-lived and few in number, somehow also has hundreds of different subpopulations. No one ever seems to sit down and think that if you're describing a subrace of a subrace of a subrace that you might actually be talking about a group of ~100 and that you don't really need to have a unique race or race template for every single Elf.

Quote from: Zelen on May 25, 2021, 12:56:35 AM
I always found it strange that the Fantasy race that's least likely to have this kind of subdivision, since Elves are almost always described as extremely long-lived and few in number, somehow also has hundreds of different subpopulations.

A neat idea I heard is that Elves naturally soak in their environments. Put elves in a swamp and in a few generations you get swamp elves. Same stuff with Deserts or even underwater. They are not so much a sub-species as a regional variant.

As such they could interbreed without distilling the species, as its dependant on location, not bloodline.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on May 25, 2021, 01:15:27 AM
A neat idea I heard is that Elves naturally soak in their environments. Put elves in a swamp and in a few generations you get swamp elves. Same stuff with Deserts or even underwater. They are not so much a sub-species as a regional variant.

As such they could interbreed without distilling the species, as its dependant on location, not bloodline.

I'd love if the core Elf race just had a flexible environment feature and we could dispense with the millions of Elf subtypes. But we all know the people who want infinite Elves won't stop there.

There's basically only three kinds of elves: high elves, wood elves, and dark elves. Everything else is just a variation on that.

Drow have always been problematic (in the Pre-woke sense as in "causes problems") because they trigger something in the Western mind that I like to call for lack of a better term, the "White Knight Effect."

You can write a character who is male.  Describe them as ugly, handsome or beautiful, doesn't matter.  Your players will jump on a male BBEG while he's down and chop him into pieces the size of croutons without a second thought.   They will do this no matter how sympathetic the character is.  No matter how much he might have reasons for what he does. Your players recognize that anyone willing to do the things that a BBEG is capable of doing is simply too dangerous.

Make the villain an attractive woman, however and you instantly short circuit all reasoning.  No matter how vile and sociopathic this evil woman has proven herself to be, your players will tie themselves in knots to justify letting her go at best or at worst actually justifying and excusing her evil acts.  The default Drow mold: and exotic society dominated by scantily clad, dark-skinned exotic women, hits all of the White Knight buttons like a godsdamned jackhammer.

I got a wonderful demonstration of this effect firsthand in my Cyberpunk RED campaign.  My PCs were tasked with hunting a serial killer whose "work" had ended up on the XBD market.  One of the strongest leads the PCs had was this XBD of the killer's crimes. So they went to hunt down a BD seller who was rumored to have a recording of one of the serial killer's crimes.   They found the dealer to be a fat, greasy creep living out of the back of a van.  The PCs were only to happy to torture him to find out who sold him the BD.  The source of these BDs turned out to be a team of 2 sisters who had stolen trophy BDs from the killer and were editing and selling them.  Now my PCs had been only too happy to brutally murder the man, they literally mag-dumped a 10mm SMG into his chest and point-blank range.  However, the instant the criminals were young attractive women suddenly it was a moral issue.  You can't do nasty things to women, that's wrong.  Now that attractive women are involved suddenly we have to be better.

As tempting as it is to blame SJWs for this, the White Knight effect absolutely pre-dates the SJW invasion of nerd media.  This has been a specfically American hang up for a long time.  The multi-decade obsession with "redeeming" Drow and Succubi should be proof enough of this as is the contrasting treatment of men vs women villains in most media.

If SJWs can be blamed for anything, it's massively accelerating this trend. Just check out "Cruella" a movie that attempts to justify the actions of a woman who wanted to make a fur coat by skinning puppies if you need proof.

This is very much an artifact of Anglosphere culture.  I've recently been on a Manga and Eurocomics kick: reading Berserk, the Incal, the Metabarons and Pepe Moreno's Rebel.  Japanese and Spaniards do not have the same hangups, it seems.

Quote from: Torque2100 on May 25, 2021, 09:08:44 AM
Drow have always been problematic (in the Pre-woke sense as in "causes problems") because they trigger something in the Western mind that I like to call for lack of a better term, the "White Knight Effect."

You can write a character who is male.  Describe them as ugly, handsome or beautiful, doesn't matter.  Your players will jump on a male BBEG while he's down and chop him into pieces the size of croutons without a second thought.   They will do this no matter how sympathetic the character is.  No matter how much he might have reasons for what he does. Your players recognize that anyone willing to do the things that a BBEG is capable of doing is simply too dangerous.

Make the villain an attractive woman, however and you instantly short circuit all reasoning.  No matter how vile and sociopathic this evil woman has proven herself to be, your players will tie themselves in knots to justify letting her go at best or at worst actually justifying and excusing her evil acts.  The default Drow mold: and exotic society dominated by scantily clad, dark-skinned exotic women, hits all of the White Knight buttons like a godsdamned jackhammer.

I got a wonderful demonstration of this effect firsthand in my Cyberpunk RED campaign.  My PCs were tasked with hunting a serial killer whose "work" had ended up on the XBD market.  One of the strongest leads the PCs had was this XBD of the killer's crimes. So they went to hunt down a BD seller who was rumored to have a recording of one of the serial killer's crimes.   They found the dealer to be a fat, greasy creep living out of the back of a van.  The PCs were only to happy to torture him to find out who sold him the BD.  The source of these BDs turned out to be a team of 2 sisters who had stolen trophy BDs from the killer and were editing and selling them.  Now my PCs had been only too happy to brutally murder the man, they literally mag-dumped a 10mm SMG into his chest and point-blank range.  However, the instant the criminals were young attractive women suddenly it was a moral issue.  You can't do nasty things to women, that's wrong.  Now that attractive women are involved suddenly we have to be better.

As tempting as it is to blame SJWs for this, the White Knight effect absolutely pre-dates the SJW invasion of nerd media.  This has been a specfically American hang up for a long time.  The multi-decade obsession with "redeeming" Drow and Succubi should be proof enough of this as is the contrasting treatment of men vs women villains in most media.

If SJWs can be blamed for anything, it's massively accelerating this trend. Just check out "Cruella" a movie that attempts to justify the actions of a woman who wanted to make a fur coat by skinning puppies if you need proof.

This is very much an artifact of Anglosphere culture.  I've recently been on a Manga and Eurocomics kick: reading Berserk, the Incal, the Metabarons and Pepe Moreno's Rebel.  Japanese and Spaniards do not have the same hangups, it seems.

Hm. I was going to argue this, but then I remembered how some films (Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle) play off that as well. It can be very jarring to find out the pretty girl is as lethal as any cobra or grizzly bear.

I think it's a weird outgrowth of the old chivalric notions, coupled with leftover 1950's and before thoughts on how women were not expected to perform the same tasks as men.