• Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I love how Elder Scrolls treats the fantasy races. Real grim danky and full of racism and dark shit all over.

    I love being in Morrowind and being called names because I’m a giant walking lizard where cat folk and lizard folks used to be slaves. Lean into that shit Bethesda. Gimme dat race war.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      9 months ago

      Except the problem is that Bethesda writes really flat, unconvincing racists. In fact, I’d go as far as to argue weakly portrayed racists in media like Bethesda’s are part of why racists are always like “I’m not racist!” because they’re comparing themselves to absurdly over the top tropes of badly written racism.

      • Thassodar@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        You want Disco Elysium level racists in all your games? Because they got that right.

        • camr_on@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Maybe not all games, but a 3d open-world RPG written by the Disco writers would be utterly amazing

            • camr_on@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Hahaha only a few thousand hours. You just reminded me that it’s been too long since I’ve done a playthrough so thank you, I’m off to add a few more

              • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                9 months ago

                If it’s been more than a few years, you’ll be blown away by recent mods. There’s been a bit of a modding Renaissance.

                • camr_on@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Music to my ears. I’m hoping to get a modded playthrough working on the steam deck. I did a TTW playthrough a couple years ago and it was great

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I need a Khajiit Measurehead

          KHAJIIT HAS CRANIOMETRIC PERFECTION AND ADVICE ON RACIAL THEORIES IF YOU HAVE COIN.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        9 months ago

        They do now for sure. Morrowind at least was a lot harsher. It wasn’t just racists. There were groups who still practiced race-based chattel slavery. Now they are mostly too scared to even mention it as a possibility.

        (Although I would argue Starfield is pretty racist in it’s creation. A large portion of black characters have African accents. This is long after colonization, and theoretically there would have been lots of race/nationality mixing after leaving earth. Sure, some places may retain or even strengthen their accents, but it probably wouldn’t be race based anymore, or at least not the same as in modern day earth. It’s so uncreative and uninteresting, and seemingly racist in its portrayal. I’m not sure if I’m the only one who noticed this, but it aggravated me.)

        • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          It’s not just Africans. It doesn’t make sense that Indian/Hispanic/Russian/American accents exist either. Earth ceased to exist hundreds of years ago, and there are no homogenous cultures anymore (except the va’ruun, their accent makes sense). In Bethesdas effort to be inclusive they treated accents like they’re a racial attribute rather than cultural. In reality there would be a UC accent, a freestar accent, etc but the accents depicted in game would be long extinct.

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            9 months ago

            I disagree on the accents not existing at all. For example, The Expanse does it well. The belters have a distinct working class Irish accent, but there’s nothing there to do with race really. Accents can be used to show where groups come from, but for scifi to work things need to actually be thought about.

            • wolfshadowheart@slrpnk.net
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              9 months ago

              Yeah, I had no issues with the accents so much as who had which. Except for the Engineer Pilot NPCs who always had illfitting voice lines to their NPC look

      • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        One of my favourite examples of a “weak” racist is Ulfric Stormcloak in skyrim. You telling me the Jarl of Windhelm and the leader of the pro nord movement continues to tolerate the grey quarter within his walls? Especially given it is implied most nords are racist, and especially the windhelm ones, it seems it would be an obvious political move to evict/raze/kill off the grey quarter.

        Of course this could be seen as a bit extreme but it seems weird to me that the city hosting the leadership of the nord rebellion is more racially diverse than some of the other nordic settlements.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Used to be?

      Looks like some n’wah forgot to lock his shed and now all the farm tools have run off.

  • Jknaraa@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Night Elves in Warcraft 3: Murderous xenophobic amazons.

    Night Elves in World of Warcraft: Bubbly hippie chicks.

  • Eagle0600@yiffit.net
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    9 months ago

    Dwarf Fortress elves are basically Bosmer from the Elder Scrolls, basically anti-vegans. They will eat the bodies of their fallen enemies, but won’t bear any harm coming to a plant.

  • Pleb@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    Meanwile Forest Knife-Ears in Warhammer:

    Setting foot in our forest? Bad move!

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Also that feel when you save the Fantasy Holy Roman Empires future Emperor because reasons.

        Seriously the biggest flex Karl Franz ever did was encounter the wood elves as a child and not get fed to the trees. Add on the fact that they showed him respect as a child and the elector counts shouldve put him on the throne instantly.

      • Pleb@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        Those are 40k.
        And DElfs aren’t Forest Knife-Ears.

        But yes, those are even worse.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          9 months ago

          Eldar means elf, we know this because Tolkien invented the term and said it means elf.

          While Drukhari and Druchii have a different history, and Games Workshop mostly retconned the idea that the WHFB world existed somewhere in 40k, I have fairly little doubt you could find a WHFB Dark Elf calling themselves Eldar somewhere, at least in a “Eldar is the elven word” kind of way, and culturally they’re pretty similar in theme. At least in the “BDSM reaver and slaver Elves that don’t believe in consent” kind of way.

          Tl;Dr Dark Eldar works for WHFB just fine, because they stole half their ideas and terms from Tolkien anyways. The rest they stole from Moorcock.

          • Pleb@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            Sure Dark Eldar works for Fantasy too, GW stole pretty much everything about Warhammer and cobbled it together. But still, the common nomenclature is DEldar for 40k (although I think they got some copryrightable name a few years ago) and DElfs for WHFB.

  • milliams@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.

    Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies