We just got the Canadian Future Party, and even though I'm pretty left leaning (both financially and socially), it gives me some faith for conservatives here.
The Canadian Future Party (CFP; French: Parti avenir canadien, PAC) is a minor federal political party in Canada that was officially launched in 2024. It describes itself as being politically centrist, campaigning on a fiscally conservative and socially liberal platform.
That made me audibly groan, along with this:
Allowing the private sector to take a larger role in society with government oversight
Simplifying the tax code to close loopholes in cooperation with the provinces and territories
Ending corporate subsidies and supply management where a return on investment cannot be delivered
I'm happy to be proven wrong, but this seems like a recipe for laissez-faire capitalism that will eventually end in a collective shrug, a few golden parachutes, and a recession. Canada does not need more centrism.
Translation:
Allowing the private sector to take a larger role in society with government oversight
Privatise profits, socialise losses
Simplifying the tax code to close loopholes in cooperation with the provinces and territories
Lower overall taxes, austerity
Ending corporate subsidies and supply management where a return on investment cannot be delivered
End climate-protecting subsidies
Point #3 also includes closing government owned entities like the post office.
Right, and I also forgot privatising things like water and then let them shut off water for poor people who cannot pay like in Chile.
thank you for translating these from corpo
Their platform made me roll my eyes a bit, the only fiscal conservative that makes sense is when you tax billionaires out of existence. Fiscal conservatism that taxes the poor and doesn’t give them benefits is more neocon bullshit
Ubisoft has proven otherwise
It absolutily isn't. Get your head out of the sand.
No point fighting.
Just remember its the same people that don't understand a scholarship only for "people of color" is by definition racist. If a "white people" only scholarship is racist so is the one for people of color.
Are you pretending to misunderstand because you're a racist, or do you actually misunderstand because you're an idiot?
Please explain to me why a group of people gets a specific scholarship made for them soley based on their skin color?
Research has shown that students from Black minority and ethnic (BME) backgrounds are less likely than white students to achieve a first or upper second class degree, despite high level entry qualifications. Deep rooted inequalities and systemic racism contribute to this. Furthermore, this can lead to differences in employment outcomes between white and BME students long after graduation.
Imagine we have a student from a disadvantaged background. They win a place at university and they receive the tuition fee loan and maintenance loan from student finance. In the majority of cases, these loans will not cover their living costs and this is why 67% of students now have to work part-time while they study. If you cannot rely on the bank of Mum & Dad, the pressure of studying and working to cover your costs such as food, books, equipment, travel and accommodation can take its toll on your studies. 79% of students now say they worry about money constantly.
Of course, scholarships do not have to be exclusively offered to BME students. They can also be used to achieve other diversity targets, such as attracting women into STEM or disadvantaged students in to the professions.
Deep rooted inequalities and systemic racism contribute to this.
Please explain the current inequalities black and ethic minorities face. If this a major point of the article, it needs to be defined and example needs to be given.
Furthermore, this can lead to differences in employment outcomes between white and BME students long after graduation.
Well, yes if you don't finish collage that's going to affect employment long term.
In the majority of cases, these loans will not cover their living costs and this is why 67% of students now have to work part-time while they study
That issue is not limited to people of color, whites have the same problem. The student debt issue is another problem, but its fucked up for everyone.
If you cannot rely on the bank of Mum & Dad,
Why does it seem like it is assumed every white person has generations of generational wealth built up? A lot whites, don't have parental banks either. Who's helping them?
Fundamentaly a scholoship that says "must be black to apply" is excluding a large group of people solely based on skin color. A poor white kid and a poor black could grow up in the same house and both are going to end up in a mountain of debt, but one of them gets a little more help because they happen to have a different skin color.
Please explain the current inequalities black and ethic minorities face.
I wish I could also thank you for a proper reply, but it really seems like you're taking the piss. If you don't even understand that racism is a thing, then it's not really worth the effort of trying to explain any of this to you.
I apologize, that question was certainly poorly thought out and too aggressive. I'm purposely challenging our differences, and I did push too far with that one, being that the answer is obvious. We're definitely going too far into this on a skyrim shitpost meme (suprised the thread hasn't been nuked yet), but I shall continue the discourse.
My point is that legally speaking, whites and blacks have equal rights and the same opportunities available. In fact, we're creating all kinds of aid systems specifically to help them.
So what I'm trying to pry at, is to find what in the current system is failing them.
Another point I've been pressing, is that skin color alone should not be the basis for aid. If some one needs help, help them. No need to ask about race, sex, ancenstory, religion, hair color, etc. - just help them.
Yes our nation's ancestors have treated blacks beyond horribly, the more recent ones have begun to right that. Unfortuanly it is an extremely slow process to beat the predjuduce out of a few hundred million people. Considering the progress over the last 200 years, massive improvements have been made, with alot of it made in the past 60. It now up to us, the current generation to continue the progress foward.
However, many black families are still stuck where they were in the 1970s. Clearly the current systems are not helping, despite all the aid given to them.
It is my opion, they are being helped in a way that doesn't encourage actaully finical independance. This could be part of why they're still lagging so far behind some other miniorties, such as Asians. I went into it a few comments ago, but its basically "why work harder for less, when I can live off government aid." Asian/Ellis Island era European immigrants didn't have the same aid, and 80 years later Asians are among the most successful groups, or at least average.
To me it's like we're saying "here have just enough money so you'll shut up and stay where you are. If you save up good, maybe your grandkids can go to collage - which is what we are seeing now. (By the way don't get sick or your whole savings will disappear)."
If our government really wanted to help, they'd fund the schools, clear out the gangs, help people fix up their homes so maybe they sell for good price, tear down all the condemed buildings to build better community housing or something for jobs. And lastly, to bring us back my original scolorship comment, fix the fucked up student loan system that fucks over all american equally.
whites and blacks have equal rights and the same opportunities available
untrue
skin color alone should not be the basis for aid. If some one needs help, help them.
There is actually a lot more extra help granted to white people especially the well off than will ever go to black people. There is a higher proportion of white people in Harvard now who wouldn't have made it purely on merit than any other race. In a less shitty environment maybe being colorblind would actually make sense. In actuality it decreases fairness.
Clearly the current systems are not helping, despite all the aid given to them.
The actual aid that is available to families is largely a joke
why work harder for less, when I can live off government aid
You actually largely can't you would end up living with the hobos on the cardboard if you without any disability decided not to bust your fucking ass.
Asian/Ellis Island era European immigrants didn’t have the same aid, and 80 years later Asians are among the most successful groups, or at least average.
80 years ago isn't today. 80 years ago jobs that paid 50k didn't require 100K in debt while houses cost $400k.
You are basically a KKK member without a hood.
untrue
You took this out of context and have yet to provide a single example.
I said by law we all have equal rights and opportunities.
In reality, that is obviously not the case, but not do to laws.
There is actually a lot more extra help granted to white people especially the well off than will ever go to black people.
Where the fuck is my extra help? The well off created the systems to keep them well off, and the rest of us get to stay poor. Unless you can change that, we're all fucked.
There is a higher proportion of white people in Harvard now who wouldn't have made it purely on merit than any other race.
I'd like to compare that to the number of rejected black students as well. Looking at Harvard's site, the number of black students accepted to Harvard is sigifinatly less than white students.
Partially due to the fact theres a significantly higher white population in the nation, unless that difference goes away, statiscally we will never see an equal amount of white people and black people in the same "space". I wasn't able to find the diversity statitics for applications, I'd love to see how that compares to the admitted students.
I won't fault Harvard if more whites get in because that how numbers work. To be clear, that's from a purly statistical point of view. If anyone gets accepted/rejected specficaly because of their skin color, that's is a problem.
You actually largely can't you would end up living with the hobos on the cardboard if you without any disability decided not to bust your fucking ass. / 80 years ago jobs that paid 50k didn't require 100K in debt while houses cost $400k.
We all bust our asses and people still can't go to collage without loans or buy a house, that's not a race specific issue.
You are basically a KKK member without a hood.
Why would you make light of the atrocities made by the KKK? The KKK were murdering blacks out of pure hatred. Not once in any of my comments did I suggest any kind of violence. If your arguments reduce into insane accusations, how am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?
Racism is a thing among individuals, but its not baked into our laws like it used to be. Individuals do treat poc poorly, and that is not good. Those that do deserve punishment.
Name one inequality that make a poc "less equal" than others? They both can go to school, they get the same jobs, they hold elected postions, they can even become president.
You are confusing racism with bigotry.
Racism is the system. Bigotry is the individual.
Sure. People of that skin about 15 million people for 400 year built this country without being able to reap any rewards for their contributions. Then I took another 80-99 years to give those people equal rights that we still struggle with today. By the time they became equal everything was owned and they were already cast into poverty. Until we see equal outcomes from people of that skin color as the average majority they deserve as much help as we can give them. Honestly they deserve reparations. But instead they only get scholarships until the college population equals that of the racial makeup of this country. Oh yeah they qualify for college just they wouldn't get accepted because the institution is racist or with out the help the kids will have to potentially put their family at risk with huge loans.
First, think you for a proper reply.
By the time they became equal everything was owned and they were already cast into poverty.
What about all the immigrant families from the 1900s? By the time they moved over "everything" was owned and they too were cast into poverty. There seems to be a belief that if your skin color is white, you are immeditatly have generational weatth, when that simply is not true.
Honestly they deserve reparations.
How do you figure that out? There're blacks finding on out one of their grandparents decended form slaves owners. Do they have to pay reparations, do they get half reparations? What about an immigrant who moved from Europe 20 years ago, do they pay reparations too? How about the Asians who were forced into internment camps during ww2, (they seem to doing alright after 80 years). Unfortunatly, I don't see any way to figure out "who deserves what". Frankly, if a child isn't responsible for their parents crimes, why are whites being asked to take responsibitly for their great-great-great-great grandparents crimes? I will say, current communities (mostly the poor urban ones) deserves a lot of reparations from the politioms that are failing them, not the average white Joe.
They deserve as much help as we can give them.
The gov. needs to fix how we are giving people help. It seems that current help doesn't actually encourage independent finical success. They way the aid is handed out based on income, a lot of people find they get less money than if they did work or got a raise. Let's say the gov gives you 1k a month, you make federal min wage $7.25, work 40hrs and make $290 a week. Your total for the month(4weeks) is $2160 (pre-tax). That's a fair amount. Let's say get a raise, to $10, that $400 a week, but because your making more your aid also decreases. You're making $440 more, it seems fair to drop your aid to $700 a month, so now your taking home $2300. That's a nice increase, until you account for taxes. That aid isn't taxed like wages, if at all. A lot of times, after taxes, an increase in wage and decrease in aid results in less going to the bank. Who is going to work for a better job, if they can just keep getting their free aid and make more money?
they qualify for college just they wouldn't get accepted because the institution is racist
Stop asking about physical characteristics on the application, and even if some old white racists is in charge of it, they won't know. Acception is based on merits, if certain communities are denied more often because they do not meet the merit based requirments, we need to look at the way underfunded primary education/childhood not the university.
With out the help the kids will have to potentially put their family at risk with huge loans.
That's a problem across all races, not just blacks or disadvantaged one. My parents didn't even qualify for the the family loans because their income was too low, yet I didn't qualify for any income based scholarships, my skin was the wrong color for those ones. Just got some financial aid, a mountain of debt and a few small merit based scholarships.
The reality is: if you don't understand why providing "white" scholarships is very different from providing "people of color" scholarships, then you don't have a full understanding of how Racism manifests in America. This is a fundamental thing you will need to work to better understand before a discussion of this topic can be useful.
Nevertheless, you are correct that not every white person in America take advantage of generational wealth, but this is besides the point. The fact is Black Americans have been in this country for 400 years and the community is still disproportionately impoverished, whereas there are a lot of European/Asian immigrants who have been here for much less time and they are much better off. You kind of make this observation in your response, but missed the implications it has on how Racism rewards certain demographics.
Woke basically applies to the bigots just realizing and getting worked up by things that had existed for decades. Either they've been dozing off for decades or have been "woken" up to it by propaganda with political undertones, and neither speaks highly of their mental faculties.
Although the thing about The Elder Scrolls in general is that it doesn't hand hold you, so you are free to be a racist bigot and not realize it. They don't force realization onto the player, you can happily adopt and become a tool of the point they are trying to criticize, you can willfully remain as ignorant as you would be in real life. In contrast to Starfield, where all companions are like the borg, of one mind telling you or nudging you into what you should have actually done.
Unfortunately what I really think is happening/happened with "woke hate" is manipulation for political gain as you mentioned with propaganda.
These people couldn't care less before, other than the religious zealots that would crusade against anything "gay." The political right (I really believe this started in earnest in the US) found a pressure point to use that puts them in direct opposition to what their political adversary aims to achieve (acceptance of all people for who they are). As it stands in the US the right operates almost entirely based off of "whatever the left aims for, make it appear evil. Always oppose all that they do." as opposed to having specific goals of their own other than "shower the wealthy with benefits, remove all barriers to retaining the entirety of profits."
Steve Bannon recently aimed their manipulation at what he described as "rootless white men" through the lense of gaming and societys affect on games/movies. Ever since that started there's been an "explosion" of "this game woke?" discussions in Steam discussion fourms and in regard to movies. Before this manipulation these people just wouldn't care and if anything you'd just see the odd person here or there complain about 2 guys kissing in a specific scene or something. They are made to be even more angry now because they're made to believe it's an affront to them and an attempt to manipulate them and society... Which is "funny" because they are being manipulated, just not by gaming/movie media.
Yeah the real reason they're doing this cultural stuff is that they need a distraction from the fact that their material/economic platform is becoming more and more unpopular every year. So the anti woke/anti immigration frenzy must continue
Dem politicians should point this out more, but their economic program isn't very popular either. I miss Bernie :(
I think what the image is trying to say is no one gives a shit that plays elder scrolls about this sorta thing because it's a Fantasy game. No one needs to boot up a video game to be reminded how unfair and shitty our world is. We go to the game and escape that ( hopefully).
It's not like fiction (including Fantasy) is often used as a means to do social commentary. ^^`
No, you go to the game to play a power fantasy regardless of how unfair and shitty that fantasy world clearly is because of how your status or your skills help you surpass it. The Elder Scrolls goes that extra step to give you the choice to contribute or fight that unfair and shitty to such an extent that people mod it in when the choice is not given, and the player does not even have to be aware of it.
People play videogames for the control, replayability, and often the narrative (which honestly was never The Elder Scroll's strength), not necessarily to escape the world's problems, problems which some games embrace. At a more basic level, games just need to provide gameplay and a player just needs to explore it.
There's no shortage of games where you play as a jackass in a shitty unfair world. GTA comes to mind.
whoosh
Small correction but pelinal was a time traveling cyborg, but being gay is close
According to MK, he was written to be gay, but higher-ups had him make his relationship with Huna ambiguous.
Huna dies at the hands of the Ayleids
Pelinal goes on what is arguably the greatest slaughter ever perpetrated by one single being in the full history of the gd universe, culminating in not just the overthrow but freaking extinction of the Ayleid race
Haha, that video was precisely what inspired my post. You can FEEL the unbridled wrath emanating from him.
Also: REMAAAAAAAN!
I'd buy that
But how many times and on how many platforms?
All of them
Todd Howard wants to know your location
What about a politician who sexually harasses an employee and making that employee read their erotic interspecies fan fiction.
Hey, don't talk shit about The Lusty Argonian Maid, it's a classic!
Aye, I could do that.
"Hey kid, ya wanna be Hortator?" - Harvey Weinstein voice
Isn't all Daedric Prince genderless? They just assume the form they like, some are just a pile of tentacle.
In a literal sense, yes. But they present themselves as male or female usually. So it's still appropriate to refer to Boethia as "genderfluid" because they send to switch it up.
I guess that makes most of them gendered but sexless? I mean, sexless in a biological sense, particularly given that they're not biological beings, but it's also funny to imply that Vaermina simply never gets laid
They're literally all-powerful gods that reign over their own worlds that are quite possibly the same size as, if not bigger than Nirn. They don't play by our rules. I don't think we can apply our conventions of sex and biology to them lol.
As I said: they can be whatever the fuck they want.
Hey, that's funny, that's verbatim what I say about trans folks too!
Well, at least the last bit, although I'm not ruling out the former on a case by case basis.
They’re literally all-powerful gods that reign over their own worlds
Kind of but not really. Their "worlds" are just their true bodies. They are all-powerful in the sense that you are all-powerful compared to the bacteria living in your gut, which is to say that they're not really. They have entirely finite power even within and over their own domains.
See: the Champion of Cyrodiil (in addition to teams of entirely normal people) invading Dagon's Oblivion gates and shutting them down. An all-powerful god would simply vaporize you the moment you tried to oppose him in his domain. Or forcibly convert you into a warrior of his armies. Or instantly transform all your bones into breadsticks and laugh as you cronched into a pile on the floor--but don't worry, he decided not to give you permission to die. Enjoy being a breadcrumb puddle.
that are quite possibly the same size as, if not bigger than Nirn.
Kind of a misunderstanding of the cosmology. Nirn is a finite round planet floating in (something equivalent to) space. The planes of Oblivion are infinite planes forced into the rough appearance of round planets by mortals whose minds can't comprehend infinity. They're not comparable to Nirn because they aren't even a similar type of cosmic structure, they only appear similar through the very limited eyes of mortals.
I don’t think we can apply our conventions of sex and biology to them lol.
This is definitely true though. I'm personally in the school of thought that Daedric Princes aren't really people the way that, for example, the Tribunal's components are, or for a real world example the way the Greek gods are. The Daedric Princes are concepts personified, or maybe even concepts forced into an anthropomorphic shape by uncomprehending mortal eyes, the same way the Planes of Oblivion will appear like finite round planets from afar.
Mehrunes Dagon isn't, I would argue, a guy who likes to destroy things. Mehrunes Dagon is destruction. He's not a bad guy because he's not a guy at all. Mehrunes Dagon enacts destruction and change the same way a hurricane does--not purposefully, not with malice, not even consciously in the same way a human can. Mehrunes Dagon simply, the same way you or I breathe, destroys.
That isn't to say that they are all the concept of their spheres. Hypothetically destroying Mehrunes Dagon wouldn't remove the concept of destruction from the universe. But Mehrunes Dagon is the being representing--made of, perhaps--that concept as it exists in the foundation of the universe.
The universe which I might add is a song, dreamt by the unimaginable and inconceivable higher-dimensional godhead. But that's a topic for nerds nerdier than I.
Fair points! I was being somewhat hyperbolic. Compared to us, they are all-powerful, but, they are not in the grand scheme.
I couldn't remember if the planes were infinite or not. But I knew they were at least their own worlds under the Daedra's dominion.
One thing I do remember though is that Mehruns Dagon was actually created in Nirn by some of the Magna Ge before they peaced out. They created him because the Kalpa Nirn was in was being ruled over by an incredibly cruel and tyrannical race with no hope of change, so theh created the very embodiment of change, but realized too late they didn't "install any brakes" so to speak.
And his name is John Cena Mahruns Dagon. So you're right, he isn't evil, it's just in his nature to make things change. I don't remember how he finally ended up banished from Nirn, but that's why he believes Nirn is his by right, cause he was created there.
You sure have Fudged Muppets in the past
No I'm just a nerd who reads a lot
I actually can't stand fudgemuppet, dude takes 40 mins to say what could (and should) be said in 5
As an ES lore noob, I quite enjoyed their videos a few years back. I guess they could have shortened their videos a lot but explaining all the interconnectedness between characters and events and stuff I liked a lot.
Do you just read wikis or are there actually books to read about TES lore?
While there are a couple of novels, I have not read them. I asked one of the guys responsible for the core worldbuilding about them once, and he said he couldn't get past the galley proofs so... not a high recommendation lmao
I learned from the source. The in-game texts. 99% of the lore you can find in the wikis is whatever random person's subjective interpretation of those in-game texts. It's better to read through them directly and come to your own conclusions.
Does that include ESO?
It is assumed that a daedric prince can become a female with fully functional female anatomy, should they choose.
Vivec, anticipated by Mephala, actually both birthed and sired things. For the daedra specifically, Molag Bhaal impregnated vivec to birth monsters.
Somebody has been hitting the moon sugar a little too hard.
I have stock if you have coin...
Morrowind is a basically the thesis of Things Fall Apart in video game form, with a good deal of Dune. It’s an examination of colonialism. Every detail of that game is dripping with politics. The Dunmer are racist and engage in horrific chattel slavery - but does that mean it is right for the Empire to colonize them and take their resources? There’s substantial evidence that your character is a spook sent to “fulfill” an indigenous prophecy to tighten the Empire’s control - is that morally right?
There’s also a hermaphrodite male presenting god who has had hundreds of children with something quite close to the Devil.
This is literally the first time I have seen Things Fall Apart mentioned since high school, 20yrs ago.
Good book, kinda got ruined by the typical over analysation of a HS English class though.
Good, now make it gayer!
Bro, same for Star Trek
Let's hear it for badly written caricatures of racists that are so over-the-top that they allow real racists to say to themselves "I'm not actually a racist, because I'm not extreme as this flimsy caricature of a racist, which is what racists are really like."
I hate the idea that we have to write more well-developed racists just to get racists to recognize that they're, you know, fucking racist, but god damn it, it needs to happen. Skryim is just one of many offenders, video games alone are just one of many offenders as well. Really its the whole US media landscape that has nothing but flimsy, weak caricatures of racists. I personally think these weak caricatures are part and parcel to why it's hard to get racists to have self-reflection because we're not actually doing the hard work of writing realistic racist characters who don't start so extreme. Becoming a virulently violent racist takes time and doesn't happen overnight, and those events that lead to it fall under the umbrella of what's often called "character development."
/end unrelated rant
Worth noting that whenever the subject comes up, people will defend the Stormcloaks, praising Ulfric's fight for the province's right to self-govern and-
Wait.
Write a well rounded racist character and you get racists rooting for that character. Racists will never self reflect when they see a well written racist character. It’s like how there are men who don’t see that the characters in Fight Club and Joker are bad people, and rather see themselves in them.
like the cops who identify with punisher, they're literally not getting it.
Rooting for bad people in fiction is a fine way to process that part of your own self with no actual risks or consequences. If doing that turns people bad, then playing role-playing games turns people into satan worshippers.
I miss the time when people realized that fiction, even if possibly metaphoric, is ultimately not real.
In short, exactly how it was and how it should be.
🎶 🎵 How it is, and of course how it could be. 🎵 🎶
Dagoth Ur is woke as fuck and he will awaken all you sleepers.
They all racist AF, except for Bosmer. They think everyone is equally tasty.
I miss TrueSTL
We can do better. TrueSTL had a lot of "joking" real racism IMO.
I remember there being jokes that seemed like they were drawing parallels between TES racism and IRL racism (like how the Dunmer like calling non-dunmer "N'wah", which sounds suspiciously like "n-word" if you slur the words as you say them) or making fun of racism in the series. I don't remember TrueSTL using jokes to actually make fun of IRL minorities though.
I could be wrong, it's been a while, but I don't remember seeing anything that came off as being intentionally malicious. I will also concede, however, that there were definitely things that might come off that way to a passerby with no TES lore knowledge.
That's true, I just interpret "huh yuk I can mean the N word with this one weird trick" as racism. When the orcs are loud and boorish, that's fine. When they love fried chicken and watermelon, it's clearly a proxy.
Yeah, yanno I think that's a fair interpretation. I don't fully agree with it, but I can see your logic. I will say that, now that you mention the orc thing, I think I seeing something like that once and I think I remember the OP getting a warning for it being too real (I have a vague memory of seeing something like that and thinking, "okay, that's too far, that's not funny anymore" and then seeing a mod warning in the comments). It seemed like most of the users knew where the line was and tried to avoid stepping over it, but again, it's been a while since I last bothered to look at Reddit (at least a year I think, maybe two), so I could be misremembering or things could have changed, etc.
"They would have made it woke" is the dumbest fuckin attitude to take
I have been mistaken in this case
Sounds like you gotta brush up on your elder scrolls lore my dude. You completely missed the joke that TES was always "woke".
I suspected but you never know
My bad
Dude, you gotta check out elder scrolls lore, it's fucking wild. The world runs on clockwork, vivec gave molag bal sloppy toppy while his toppy was sloppy (he was headless), the lizards lick trees to become argonians which are wifi-enabled (the Hist trees can remotely control argonians, which meant shit got real during the Oblivion Crisis and Mehrunes Dagon, a fucking daedric prince pissed himself in fear when he tried to invade the Black Marsh), there are like, 72 1/2 forms of khajiit, it's heavily suggested that the elder scrolls is a post-apocalyptic fantasy game...
Also, every race in the elder scrolls has had a space program. The khajiit space program was literally just them standing on each other's shoulders to reach space.
Oh yeah. And the dragon breaks. When time and space just kinda fuck up and every possible outcome happens at the same time before settling onto a single thread (in-universe explanation for why there's one canon ending to each game despite players being able to get other endings; each game takes place during a dragon break).
Sloppy toppy while his toppy was sloppy is an inspired use of the English language. You deserve an honorary degree
it's heavily suggested that the elder scrolls is a post-apocalyptic fantasy game
I distinctly recall a conversation I had on reddit in which I irritated several Fallout fans by insisting that the Elder Scrolls is simply Europe in the world of Fallout and that the Chinese stealth suits were 100% chameleon enchanted gear from TES IV
If you want more post-apocalyptic fantasy, Mistborn and Stormlight Archive book series both technically fit
Also, every race in the elder scrolls has had a space program. The khajiit space program was literally just them standing on each other's shoulders to reach space.
Are there any pictures of this? I can't stop laughing at the image in my head. This is phenomenal world building.
There might be fan art, but I doubt there's anything official. Besides how little attention anything Elsweyr generally gets (even the first ESO expansion into Elsweyr mostly had the khajiit as secondary characters), it originated in an unofficial source. Michael Kirkbride (a lead writer for Morrowind and several other important bits of Elder Scrolls stuff) wrote The Pocket Guide to the Empire, 2nd Edition with the input of community members. The Pocket Guide 1st edition came with the manual of Redguard, and the 3rd edition came with Oblivion. The 3rd edition contains a few references to the 2nd edition, which at the time had not actually been written, so Kirkbride decided to fill the gap. The relevant section, with explanatory notes from me that you can ignore if you know that stuff already, is:
So Mane ^1 saw that Khajiit was fighting itself more than usual and donned the hairs of his many littermates and his clan and his guards until he could bear no more and then palanquin-raced throughout the lands to repeat these words: “Woah-ho now, mad cat. You fight and fight but if you will give Mane just one moment, he will show something far better, for the Mane has had many hours and fine sugar to think this over. Come now, Palatiit ^2 ; come now, Ne Quiniit ^3 . Together, just this once, Khajiit will stand tall as Alkosh ^4 , cat upon cat upon cat. And in doing so, it will climb to the moon as it has been told so many times.”
Khajiit saw reason in these words and so it climbed and climbed, cat upon cat, for a hundred days. Much sugar ^5 was brought there to support the climbers and in the end Khajiit climbed high, so very high that it was in fact closer to Jo’Segunda ^6 than to Nirni ^7 below. At that moment, little Alfiq ^8 fell upwards and from there on Khajiit helped Khajiit up, which was down, until all were gathered there. This is where Khajiit intends to stay from now on, for who could know strife when walking sugar and not sand?
1 - The Mane is the religious leader of the khajiit
2 - Pa'alatiin, or Pellitine, is the southern half of Elsweyr. Elsweyr is the region that the khajiit are from, and had only recently been united when the 2nd edition was written in-universe
3 - Ne Quin'al or Anequine is the northern half of Elsweyr
4 - Alkosh is the khajiiti interpretation or version of the god of time and top god of most pantheons, generally known as Akatosh to the empire and therefore in most game material
5 - Moon sugar is a narcotic with great religious significance in khajiiti society. If you've come across skooma in the games, it is the heroin to moon sugar's opium
6 - Jo'Segunda, or Secunda, is one of the two moons
7 - Nirni, or Nirn, is the planet that Tamriel and the games are set on
8 - An alfiq is a type of khajiit that physically resembles a housecat but which is every bit as sapient as any other khajiit. You can actually meet several in ESO, but sadly cannot play as one. The Legends card "Frazzled Alfiq" is probably my all time favourite piece of official Elder Scrolls art
Anyway Kirkbride's unofficial stuff is not "canon", for whatever that's worth, but due to his significance to the setting and the fact that his writing is usually interesting, people often accept it as such. The story does not end there, though! The developers of ESO have a series called Loremaster's Archive, which is an in-character lore Q&A series. In "Moon Bishop Hunal Answers Your Questions", someone asked about the "cat upon cat" story.
"Our scribes are currently working on the transcription of the 'Ri'datta-ssabavezi.' In this story, your people are climbing 'cat upon cat' and finally reach Jone, where they founded something called 'Lleswer.' But we failed to understand the meaning of this. Some at the Guild suggest it has to be taken literally, but it seems impossible. Am I right?" – Iszara the Restless, Singer of the Scenarist Guild
Moon Bishop Hunal says, "It is the nature of myth to be true and yet at the same time mere allegory. Are you 'right'? In this context, the question is without meaning. But do not be offended, hairless one. Many stories are puzzles with more than one solution."
So, canon? Maybe, maybe not. But it got a nod, and people like it.
Damn, and I thought I knew my TES lore.
Sadly, afaik, there are no official images of it. As Skua noted, it's not exactly canon, but to my knowledge there isn't actually anything that contradicts it. As such, I think most lore nerds take it as fact. Also because, as Skua said, it's way more interesting for the Khajiit to have had a space program where they stood on each other's shoulders than not.
Also, Bethesda has severely neglected the Argonians and Khajiit, so people take whatever Argonian or Khajiit lore they can get. I think they're "too furry" for Bethesda or something.
Admittedly, a Black Marsh TES would be difficult to do without it being an Argonian-only spin-off because, iirc, Argonians violently eject anyone trying to enter the marsh.
Meanwhile, a game set in Elsweyr would require a lot of effort due to all the different skeletons and character models they'd have to create. They'd probably double or triple the number of character models simply due to all the different forms of Khajiit (there are 17 forms, ranging from having the appearance of a basic house cat to being almost identical to Mer (elves) or Men (Redguard, imperial, etc)), with significantly more work if they tried to make them all playable with full armor sets.
the marsh is also near impossible to live in unless you are argonian
Or Decimus Scotti.
The mental image I have of the Argonians all turnt on hist sap, invading Oblivion, making Daedra Lords piss themselves, and closing their own gates, makes me happy.
That's almost literally how it went down, except the Argonians weren't tripping, the Hist trees are literally psychic and recalled all the Hist-born Argonians to the Black Marsh. They somehow knew the Oblivion Crisis was about to occur, and recalled every single Hist-born Argonian in Tamriel so that they'd be waiting at the gates the moment they appeared.
The Hist trees are also speculated to be the oldest living beings on Tamriel, if not Nirn entirely.
The Hist trees recognize Sithis as the OG creator. (If I understand correctly) To put it another way, while other races worship Aedra and/or Daedra, the Hist trees basically worship the void itself.
The Hist-born Argonians are able to use a wholly unique form of magic called Hist-magic which operates under its own, separate rules. This scares the elves.
Comments are closed because: In 2020 this was made for my when subscribers and based exclusively on the writing of MK in its most unedited form. Whoever else stumbled onto this later bearing a delusion it was made for them (e.g. fans of a Baltimore computer game corporation) were never meant as a target audience. Do not sub.
What?
Even worse, imagine how woke the books of Karl May (not to be confused with Karl Marx) the most successful German author of all time that were originally published in book form in the 1890s [sic] would be if they came out today:
And so many more incredibly woke things, like trash talking Christians that don’t respect all other humans and do evil shit…
By all modern shithead alt-righters, Skyrim is "ultra woke": It promotes ultimate equality and the ability to be anything you want to be, and freely become someone else later.
Or maaaaaybe people who use "woke" unironically just lack the brain capacity to comprehend even a game like Skyrim. 🤷
So like, are you saying the fascists aren't bad guys?
No they didn't?
If I'm not getting whooshed from you playing the act:
The joke is that everything in the meme is already in the established TES canon. But capital G Gamers™ (which I hate that those assholes made that word negative), being media illiterate and being "anti woke", often don't see what their loved games contain, even if they complain about those things.
Whoops I got wooooshed
I've never played Skyrim lol
I wish all representation was done as well as when it was done out of creative choice rather than trying to win progressiveness points
I'm still taking that over no representation at all 🤷♀️
Seriously though, representation as a background noise is - imho - one of the most potent tools for normalisation.
And the persons who did good representation haven't disappeared. They're still doing the lord's work.
Background noise isn't an issue for me, if there isn't an unnatural amount of attention being drawn and the pace of the story isn't interrupted that's just adding interest
The problem lies for me when said character isn't fleshed out in other ways and their only defining trait is that they're x, or that they don't give them any character flaws because they're too afraid to offend that group. Results in a character that doesn't feel natural to the story
I see your point and don't disagree exactly.... but....
I will say it is odd that I hear this kind of criticism of flat gay/female/minority/etc characters but for some reason never hear complaints about the equally-flatly written comic relief characters, or best friend characters, or sage characters, etc. Video games and other stories frequently contain flat characters that are used more as props for the protagonist or other characters to react and respond to, yet complaints about these characters seem to only pop up when said characters happen to represent an under-represented demographic.
The issue is the intention behind it, if the intention is comic relief they might not add much to the plot, but generally are still relevant in some way and make the film more entertaining
I'm not a huge fan of poorly fleshed out characters in general if they've got any amount of screen time
If they haven't got much screen time and aren't fleshed out it's even worse if the one defining character trait they have is that they're gay, black, trans, etc etc
Imagine if some adventurers go into a tavern, they talk to the generic hooded loner on their own in the corner, they give the adventurers the quest as usual and then for some reason mention that they're vegan or something, no relevance to the story and it becomes kinda obvious to the viewer that they were only given that character trait to check a box
Kaos is one of the good examples I've seen recently sorry if I already mentioned it, there's a trans character in the underworld who was part of a female only Amazon tribe and was thrown out and eventually killed for transitioning to male, but they don't even mention any of that until he's already been well established for a couple of episodes and they do it in enough detail that it doesn't feel forced
I'm all for representation in media I should clarify I just want it to be done well, there are a fair few good examples but also a good number of bad ones
That's fair and I see your point, even basically agree with it. That said, I still wonder sort of what standards we're holding for "good" characters and how realistic that is. And I want to make a brief caveat that I don't know you and can't speak to your personal opinions so I will be making some generalizations about the topic in general; I apologize if it feels like I am unfairly lumping you in with anyone and promise that is not my intention. It is clear to me you aren't a right wing chud screaming about DEI but rather you're a very decent person looking for fleshed-out representation that isn't shallow or driven by stereotypes.
Okay, caveats out of the way now, here's the thing: I have a gay friend who is very proud of their community and themselves for being who they are despite any social pressures. This friend frequently goes out wearing full-blown rainbow attire, speaks with the affectation of their community, and they will absolutely inform you of their orientation upon their first meeting. Of course my friend has vastly more depth than just their community affiliation, but that affiliation is definitely going to be the largest and most prominent quality you associate with them, especially if you never move beyond acquaintanceship to friendship.
If my friend was in a video game, they would absolutely be described as flat or tokenism. But they are a real person. Even if you're thinking to yourself right now "well frankly it sounds like your friend is lacking in depth in real life," (I'd disagree, but go with the argument none the less, please), the fact is they still exist. There are people who define themselves by their identifiers first. So I don't think the mere inclusion of these "flat" representations are inherently problematic.
I don't think a flat character of an under-represented demographic is harmful in the way that a bad or stereotypical representation is. I think there is still benefit in the normalization of lesser-represented groups in media, even if those representations aren't the deepest or most compelling characters. A gay shopkeeper who is flamboyant and one-note still helps normalize the idea of gay people in normal aspects of life.
But of course we can't settle for these characters as the whole piece of representation. We have to still demand deep and complex under-represented characters, especially in lead or primary roles. I just personally don't think the flatter characters are inherently problematic or detrimental to those goal. If anything, I think they're almost kind of tangential or non-sequitur to the topic. The point isn't to complain about flat under-represented characters and discourage their inclusion, the point is to demand good and complex under-represented characters regardless of the inclusion of these flat other representations.
I'm very sorry for the novel I wrote, my brain is crazy today and I couldn't make it more concise in this moment.
Also I have no yet watched Kaos so I can't comment on the representation in that show, but it does sound compelling from what you describe.
Also also, in case it's not clear, I don't think we're arguing; I think we probably agree with each other about 90% of the way here.
Does seem that way
I'm not sure real people can be compared to fictional in that way, as your friend has infinitely more character because he's a real person
If you were to ask your friend what his favourite food is, or what his opinion on pineapple on pizza is, or what he has for a desktop wallpaper he'd have answers for all of those questions or a reason he doesn't have an answer
If you were to take one of these hollow characters I'm talking about and ask them that question the answer would just be made up on the spot
If your friend showed up in a TV show for 5 minutes just as himself in a situation he would realistically be in I can guarantee he'd feel real and natural because he is a real person with a history
It's kinda weird to try to include representation without it feeling shoe horned. The world of TES (of any fictional world) is entirely hand-created. There are no accidents, all of it is intentional.
This means that, no matter how it's done, any character deviating from the "norm" was consciously chosen to be so. These things that need representation (disabilities, gender identity, sexuality, race, etc) are all things people don't get to choose, so there's an inherent disconnect between the hand crafted world choosing to include diversity, and the real world necessarily having diversity because of chaos.
Following this thread, there's never been a case of inclusivity, or exclusivity, that isn't shoehorned in. It's always been entirely the will of the author to include or exclude these representations. With that in mind, I think it's only a good thing to see more diverse authors bringing more diverse worlds and characters into existence.
It only feels shoe horned when they don't write the character well.
There are a lot of cases where the person isn't allowed to have any flaws or character development because they're too scared to make them look bad in any way, which also means none of their achievements feel earned. Ohers where they just don't care enough to waste screen time on things that aren't highlighting whatever group they're a part of
Have been a fair few shows I've seen where they've done it right, recently Kaos had a trans character who actually felt like a human being instead of a token "hey look we have a trans person"
The recent doctor who special is one of the bad examples, most of the time the woman in a wheelchair is onscreen it's because they're drawing attention to the wheelchair (oh no, a ladder, oh no a set of stairs etc etc) and not to develop her character in any way besides that
That's kind of a weird argument. I always took "shoe-horned" to imply that it is pressed into something by force where it doesn't quite fit. So, in my mind just because something is intentional doesn't mean it is shoe-horned.
Creative works always come from the authors lived experiences. The reason why we often find representation of minorities missing in media, is because these minorities don't get to work on them. If there would be more diverse teams working on something we would naturally see more of their diverse experiences represented.
However, for this to be the case a lot would have to change in our society. It is way easier to just keep things more or less as they were and let people without minority experiences write and add minority characters. These, in turn, feel off, feel shoe-horned in, because they aren't based off of lived experiences. They are just there to check a box.
Conversely, the reason why it feels like we used to have better (though less) diverse representations in media is because these actually came from people who had these experiences.
Eh, I think we just have different perspectives on things being short horned. In my view, anything that isn't critical information to the story, it's shoehorned in. If you tell me the main characters favorite food is pasta, and then don't do anything with it, it's shoe horned in. If you tell me a character is gay, and then don't do anything they couldn't have done the same with a straight character, changing a couple of pronouns, it's shoehorned in.
To be clear though, I don't think this is a bad thing. A story with only critical information will... Well, it'll work, but it'll be bland. Same if you make all of your characters blond, blue eyed, straight white men. Adding these details tends to be what makes us remember and identify with a character. That doesn't make it any more strictly relevant to the story. Most characters people would view as "diverse" - even the ones people like - fall into this category, i think.
I think a better argument is, if these traits ARE shoehorned in, their alternative "normal" traits would be as well. If you go out of your way to state a character is straight, it's just as shoehorned if everything else is equivalent. Do THOSE characters inspire the same ire? If not, we should examine the why of that specifically.
Yeah, I can see our difference in how we defined what's shoe-horned in. And I get that you're not saying diversity in media is bad. However, respectfully, I don't think your definition of shoe-horned makes a lot of sense if you think it through. Is the music shoe-horned in, because it's not critical to the plot? You said yourself that adding information that isn't critical to the plot is necessary or the movie will be bland. If it's necessary to the movie, wouldn't you agree that it is critical? It may not be for the plot, but it is for the movie. Movies aren't just plot. A lot of great movies (Nomadland, Patterson, Dazed and Confused, Coffee and Cigarettes, The Straight Story, ...) don't have a lot of plot or tell a great story. Instead they focus on the characters and the mood.
I think your example with the "blond, blue eyed, straight white men" betrays your perspective. This isn't describing the default human being. Most people on earth aren't like that. But it is the de facto default in western media. Why is it that? Because for a long time it was white men who made the decisions. Now that it has become a norm, everything that deviates needs a justification. And that's kinda fucked up, isn't it?
So, I think the question isn't, why don't "normal" character traits get the same hate as "alternate" traits? The question is, who defines what is normal?
I mean, movies have existed without sound at all, so yes, I'd classify music as typically not essential, unless the movie is ~about music~. Same with the movies you listed, they're about the character growth and development, not a bigger plotline (I assume,I actually haven't seen them).
In order to tell an effective narrative, certain pieces MUST be there. These are the story. Anything else is fluff, filler, not essential. You can play around with all of that, get something that looks and feels different, but is the same basic story. Remakes and AU style things do that all the time.
As far as the blond, blue eyed thing - I didn't say it was describing the default human. It's describing the default within American pop culture. The default movie hero is, and I'm spitballing here, a 30s-40s straight white dude. And, like or not, American pop culture is world pop culture. America largely defines the trends in pop culture worldwide. I don't think this is a good thing, for the record, but it's also not a crazy statement.
Specifying a 'racist conservative' is redundant.
We just got the Canadian Future Party, and even though I'm pretty left leaning (both financially and socially), it gives me some faith for conservatives here.
That made me audibly groan, along with this:
I'm happy to be proven wrong, but this seems like a recipe for laissez-faire capitalism that will eventually end in a collective shrug, a few golden parachutes, and a recession. Canada does not need more centrism.
Translation:
Privatise profits, socialise losses
Lower overall taxes, austerity
End climate-protecting subsidies
Point #3 also includes closing government owned entities like the post office.
Right, and I also forgot privatising things like water and then let them shut off water for poor people who cannot pay like in Chile.
thank you for translating these from corpo
Their platform made me roll my eyes a bit, the only fiscal conservative that makes sense is when you tax billionaires out of existence. Fiscal conservatism that taxes the poor and doesn’t give them benefits is more neocon bullshit
Ubisoft has proven otherwise
It absolutily isn't. Get your head out of the sand.
No point fighting. Just remember its the same people that don't understand a scholarship only for "people of color" is by definition racist. If a "white people" only scholarship is racist so is the one for people of color.
Are you pretending to misunderstand because you're a racist, or do you actually misunderstand because you're an idiot?
Please explain to me why a group of people gets a specific scholarship made for them soley based on their skin color?
https://www.thescholarshiphub.org.uk/scholarships-diversity-inclusion-initiative/
Thank you for a proper replay.
Please explain the current inequalities black and ethic minorities face. If this a major point of the article, it needs to be defined and example needs to be given.
Well, yes if you don't finish collage that's going to affect employment long term.
That issue is not limited to people of color, whites have the same problem. The student debt issue is another problem, but its fucked up for everyone.
Why does it seem like it is assumed every white person has generations of generational wealth built up? A lot whites, don't have parental banks either. Who's helping them?
Fundamentaly a scholoship that says "must be black to apply" is excluding a large group of people solely based on skin color. A poor white kid and a poor black could grow up in the same house and both are going to end up in a mountain of debt, but one of them gets a little more help because they happen to have a different skin color.
I wish I could also thank you for a proper reply, but it really seems like you're taking the piss. If you don't even understand that racism is a thing, then it's not really worth the effort of trying to explain any of this to you.
I apologize, that question was certainly poorly thought out and too aggressive. I'm purposely challenging our differences, and I did push too far with that one, being that the answer is obvious. We're definitely going too far into this on a skyrim shitpost meme (suprised the thread hasn't been nuked yet), but I shall continue the discourse.
My point is that legally speaking, whites and blacks have equal rights and the same opportunities available. In fact, we're creating all kinds of aid systems specifically to help them. So what I'm trying to pry at, is to find what in the current system is failing them.
Another point I've been pressing, is that skin color alone should not be the basis for aid. If some one needs help, help them. No need to ask about race, sex, ancenstory, religion, hair color, etc. - just help them.
Yes our nation's ancestors have treated blacks beyond horribly, the more recent ones have begun to right that. Unfortuanly it is an extremely slow process to beat the predjuduce out of a few hundred million people. Considering the progress over the last 200 years, massive improvements have been made, with alot of it made in the past 60. It now up to us, the current generation to continue the progress foward. However, many black families are still stuck where they were in the 1970s. Clearly the current systems are not helping, despite all the aid given to them.
It is my opion, they are being helped in a way that doesn't encourage actaully finical independance. This could be part of why they're still lagging so far behind some other miniorties, such as Asians. I went into it a few comments ago, but its basically "why work harder for less, when I can live off government aid." Asian/Ellis Island era European immigrants didn't have the same aid, and 80 years later Asians are among the most successful groups, or at least average.
To me it's like we're saying "here have just enough money so you'll shut up and stay where you are. If you save up good, maybe your grandkids can go to collage - which is what we are seeing now. (By the way don't get sick or your whole savings will disappear)."
If our government really wanted to help, they'd fund the schools, clear out the gangs, help people fix up their homes so maybe they sell for good price, tear down all the condemed buildings to build better community housing or something for jobs. And lastly, to bring us back my original scolorship comment, fix the fucked up student loan system that fucks over all american equally.
untrue
There is actually a lot more extra help granted to white people especially the well off than will ever go to black people. There is a higher proportion of white people in Harvard now who wouldn't have made it purely on merit than any other race. In a less shitty environment maybe being colorblind would actually make sense. In actuality it decreases fairness.
The actual aid that is available to families is largely a joke
You actually largely can't you would end up living with the hobos on the cardboard if you without any disability decided not to bust your fucking ass.
80 years ago isn't today. 80 years ago jobs that paid 50k didn't require 100K in debt while houses cost $400k.
You are basically a KKK member without a hood.
You took this out of context and have yet to provide a single example. I said by law we all have equal rights and opportunities. In reality, that is obviously not the case, but not do to laws.
Where the fuck is my extra help? The well off created the systems to keep them well off, and the rest of us get to stay poor. Unless you can change that, we're all fucked.
I'd like to compare that to the number of rejected black students as well. Looking at Harvard's site, the number of black students accepted to Harvard is sigifinatly less than white students. Partially due to the fact theres a significantly higher white population in the nation, unless that difference goes away, statiscally we will never see an equal amount of white people and black people in the same "space". I wasn't able to find the diversity statitics for applications, I'd love to see how that compares to the admitted students. I won't fault Harvard if more whites get in because that how numbers work. To be clear, that's from a purly statistical point of view. If anyone gets accepted/rejected specficaly because of their skin color, that's is a problem.
We all bust our asses and people still can't go to collage without loans or buy a house, that's not a race specific issue.
Why would you make light of the atrocities made by the KKK? The KKK were murdering blacks out of pure hatred. Not once in any of my comments did I suggest any kind of violence. If your arguments reduce into insane accusations, how am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?
Racism is a thing among individuals, but its not baked into our laws like it used to be. Individuals do treat poc poorly, and that is not good. Those that do deserve punishment.
Name one inequality that make a poc "less equal" than others? They both can go to school, they get the same jobs, they hold elected postions, they can even become president.
You are confusing racism with bigotry.
Racism is the system. Bigotry is the individual.
Sure. People of that skin about 15 million people for 400 year built this country without being able to reap any rewards for their contributions. Then I took another 80-99 years to give those people equal rights that we still struggle with today. By the time they became equal everything was owned and they were already cast into poverty. Until we see equal outcomes from people of that skin color as the average majority they deserve as much help as we can give them. Honestly they deserve reparations. But instead they only get scholarships until the college population equals that of the racial makeup of this country. Oh yeah they qualify for college just they wouldn't get accepted because the institution is racist or with out the help the kids will have to potentially put their family at risk with huge loans.
First, think you for a proper reply.
What about all the immigrant families from the 1900s? By the time they moved over "everything" was owned and they too were cast into poverty. There seems to be a belief that if your skin color is white, you are immeditatly have generational weatth, when that simply is not true.
How do you figure that out? There're blacks finding on out one of their grandparents decended form slaves owners. Do they have to pay reparations, do they get half reparations? What about an immigrant who moved from Europe 20 years ago, do they pay reparations too? How about the Asians who were forced into internment camps during ww2, (they seem to doing alright after 80 years). Unfortunatly, I don't see any way to figure out "who deserves what". Frankly, if a child isn't responsible for their parents crimes, why are whites being asked to take responsibitly for their great-great-great-great grandparents crimes? I will say, current communities (mostly the poor urban ones) deserves a lot of reparations from the politioms that are failing them, not the average white Joe.
The gov. needs to fix how we are giving people help. It seems that current help doesn't actually encourage independent finical success. They way the aid is handed out based on income, a lot of people find they get less money than if they did work or got a raise. Let's say the gov gives you 1k a month, you make federal min wage $7.25, work 40hrs and make $290 a week. Your total for the month(4weeks) is $2160 (pre-tax). That's a fair amount. Let's say get a raise, to $10, that $400 a week, but because your making more your aid also decreases. You're making $440 more, it seems fair to drop your aid to $700 a month, so now your taking home $2300. That's a nice increase, until you account for taxes. That aid isn't taxed like wages, if at all. A lot of times, after taxes, an increase in wage and decrease in aid results in less going to the bank. Who is going to work for a better job, if they can just keep getting their free aid and make more money?
Stop asking about physical characteristics on the application, and even if some old white racists is in charge of it, they won't know. Acception is based on merits, if certain communities are denied more often because they do not meet the merit based requirments, we need to look at the way underfunded primary education/childhood not the university.
That's a problem across all races, not just blacks or disadvantaged one. My parents didn't even qualify for the the family loans because their income was too low, yet I didn't qualify for any income based scholarships, my skin was the wrong color for those ones. Just got some financial aid, a mountain of debt and a few small merit based scholarships.
The reality is: if you don't understand why providing "white" scholarships is very different from providing "people of color" scholarships, then you don't have a full understanding of how Racism manifests in America. This is a fundamental thing you will need to work to better understand before a discussion of this topic can be useful.
Nevertheless, you are correct that not every white person in America take advantage of generational wealth, but this is besides the point. The fact is Black Americans have been in this country for 400 years and the community is still disproportionately impoverished, whereas there are a lot of European/Asian immigrants who have been here for much less time and they are much better off. You kind of make this observation in your response, but missed the implications it has on how Racism rewards certain demographics.
Woke basically applies to the bigots just realizing and getting worked up by things that had existed for decades. Either they've been dozing off for decades or have been "woken" up to it by propaganda with political undertones, and neither speaks highly of their mental faculties.
Although the thing about The Elder Scrolls in general is that it doesn't hand hold you, so you are free to be a racist bigot and not realize it. They don't force realization onto the player, you can happily adopt and become a tool of the point they are trying to criticize, you can willfully remain as ignorant as you would be in real life. In contrast to Starfield, where all companions are like the borg, of one mind telling you or nudging you into what you should have actually done.
Unfortunately what I really think is happening/happened with "woke hate" is manipulation for political gain as you mentioned with propaganda.
These people couldn't care less before, other than the religious zealots that would crusade against anything "gay." The political right (I really believe this started in earnest in the US) found a pressure point to use that puts them in direct opposition to what their political adversary aims to achieve (acceptance of all people for who they are). As it stands in the US the right operates almost entirely based off of "whatever the left aims for, make it appear evil. Always oppose all that they do." as opposed to having specific goals of their own other than "shower the wealthy with benefits, remove all barriers to retaining the entirety of profits."
Steve Bannon recently aimed their manipulation at what he described as "rootless white men" through the lense of gaming and societys affect on games/movies. Ever since that started there's been an "explosion" of "this game woke?" discussions in Steam discussion fourms and in regard to movies. Before this manipulation these people just wouldn't care and if anything you'd just see the odd person here or there complain about 2 guys kissing in a specific scene or something. They are made to be even more angry now because they're made to believe it's an affront to them and an attempt to manipulate them and society... Which is "funny" because they are being manipulated, just not by gaming/movie media.
Yeah the real reason they're doing this cultural stuff is that they need a distraction from the fact that their material/economic platform is becoming more and more unpopular every year. So the anti woke/anti immigration frenzy must continue
Dem politicians should point this out more, but their economic program isn't very popular either. I miss Bernie :(
I think what the image is trying to say is no one gives a shit that plays elder scrolls about this sorta thing because it's a Fantasy game. No one needs to boot up a video game to be reminded how unfair and shitty our world is. We go to the game and escape that ( hopefully).
It's not like fiction (including Fantasy) is often used as a means to do social commentary. ^^`
No, you go to the game to play a power fantasy regardless of how unfair and shitty that fantasy world clearly is because of how your status or your skills help you surpass it. The Elder Scrolls goes that extra step to give you the choice to contribute or fight that unfair and shitty to such an extent that people mod it in when the choice is not given, and the player does not even have to be aware of it.
People play videogames for the control, replayability, and often the narrative (which honestly was never The Elder Scroll's strength), not necessarily to escape the world's problems, problems which some games embrace. At a more basic level, games just need to provide gameplay and a player just needs to explore it.
There's no shortage of games where you play as a jackass in a shitty unfair world. GTA comes to mind.
whoosh
Small correction but pelinal was a time traveling cyborg, but being gay is close
According to MK, he was written to be gay, but higher-ups had him make his relationship with Huna ambiguous.
Huna dies at the hands of the Ayleids
Pelinal goes on what is arguably the greatest slaughter ever perpetrated by one single being in the full history of the gd universe, culminating in not just the overthrow but freaking extinction of the Ayleid race
"They were just good friends"
Achilles and Patroclus: "That's our boy"
History will say they were roommates
Great. Now you're just making me rewatch allinall's animated video of Pelinal's slaughter for the 30th time: https://youtu.be/E5ix0_W-ouI?si=-2mGt8TDnU5wbwGO
Haha, that video was precisely what inspired my post. You can FEEL the unbridled wrath emanating from him.
Also: REMAAAAAAAN!
I'd buy that
But how many times and on how many platforms?
All of them
Todd Howard wants to know your location
What about a politician who sexually harasses an employee and making that employee read their erotic interspecies fan fiction.
Hey, don't talk shit about The Lusty Argonian Maid, it's a classic!
Aye, I could do that.
"Hey kid, ya wanna be Hortator?" - Harvey Weinstein voice
Isn't all Daedric Prince genderless? They just assume the form they like, some are just a pile of tentacle.
In a literal sense, yes. But they present themselves as male or female usually. So it's still appropriate to refer to Boethia as "genderfluid" because they send to switch it up.
I guess that makes most of them gendered but sexless? I mean, sexless in a biological sense, particularly given that they're not biological beings, but it's also funny to imply that Vaermina simply never gets laid
They're literally all-powerful gods that reign over their own worlds that are quite possibly the same size as, if not bigger than Nirn. They don't play by our rules. I don't think we can apply our conventions of sex and biology to them lol.
As I said: they can be whatever the fuck they want.
Hey, that's funny, that's verbatim what I say about trans folks too!
Well, at least the last bit, although I'm not ruling out the former on a case by case basis.
Kind of but not really. Their "worlds" are just their true bodies. They are all-powerful in the sense that you are all-powerful compared to the bacteria living in your gut, which is to say that they're not really. They have entirely finite power even within and over their own domains.
See: the Champion of Cyrodiil (in addition to teams of entirely normal people) invading Dagon's Oblivion gates and shutting them down. An all-powerful god would simply vaporize you the moment you tried to oppose him in his domain. Or forcibly convert you into a warrior of his armies. Or instantly transform all your bones into breadsticks and laugh as you cronched into a pile on the floor--but don't worry, he decided not to give you permission to die. Enjoy being a breadcrumb puddle.
Kind of a misunderstanding of the cosmology. Nirn is a finite round planet floating in (something equivalent to) space. The planes of Oblivion are infinite planes forced into the rough appearance of round planets by mortals whose minds can't comprehend infinity. They're not comparable to Nirn because they aren't even a similar type of cosmic structure, they only appear similar through the very limited eyes of mortals.
This is definitely true though. I'm personally in the school of thought that Daedric Princes aren't really people the way that, for example, the Tribunal's components are, or for a real world example the way the Greek gods are. The Daedric Princes are concepts personified, or maybe even concepts forced into an anthropomorphic shape by uncomprehending mortal eyes, the same way the Planes of Oblivion will appear like finite round planets from afar.
Mehrunes Dagon isn't, I would argue, a guy who likes to destroy things. Mehrunes Dagon is destruction. He's not a bad guy because he's not a guy at all. Mehrunes Dagon enacts destruction and change the same way a hurricane does--not purposefully, not with malice, not even consciously in the same way a human can. Mehrunes Dagon simply, the same way you or I breathe, destroys.
That isn't to say that they are all the concept of their spheres. Hypothetically destroying Mehrunes Dagon wouldn't remove the concept of destruction from the universe. But Mehrunes Dagon is the being representing--made of, perhaps--that concept as it exists in the foundation of the universe.
The universe which I might add is a song, dreamt by the unimaginable and inconceivable higher-dimensional godhead. But that's a topic for nerds nerdier than I.
Fair points! I was being somewhat hyperbolic. Compared to us, they are all-powerful, but, they are not in the grand scheme.
I couldn't remember if the planes were infinite or not. But I knew they were at least their own worlds under the Daedra's dominion.
One thing I do remember though is that Mehruns Dagon was actually created in Nirn by some of the Magna Ge before they peaced out. They created him because the Kalpa Nirn was in was being ruled over by an incredibly cruel and tyrannical race with no hope of change, so theh created the very embodiment of change, but realized too late they didn't "install any brakes" so to speak.
And his name is
John CenaMahruns Dagon. So you're right, he isn't evil, it's just in his nature to make things change. I don't remember how he finally ended up banished from Nirn, but that's why he believes Nirn is his by right, cause he was created there.You sure have Fudged Muppets in the past
No I'm just a nerd who reads a lot
I actually can't stand fudgemuppet, dude takes 40 mins to say what could (and should) be said in 5
As an ES lore noob, I quite enjoyed their videos a few years back. I guess they could have shortened their videos a lot but explaining all the interconnectedness between characters and events and stuff I liked a lot.
Do you just read wikis or are there actually books to read about TES lore?
While there are a couple of novels, I have not read them. I asked one of the guys responsible for the core worldbuilding about them once, and he said he couldn't get past the galley proofs so... not a high recommendation lmao
I learned from the source. The in-game texts. 99% of the lore you can find in the wikis is whatever random person's subjective interpretation of those in-game texts. It's better to read through them directly and come to your own conclusions.
Does that include ESO?
It is assumed that a daedric prince can become a female with fully functional female anatomy, should they choose.
Vivec, anticipated by Mephala, actually both birthed and sired things. For the daedra specifically, Molag Bhaal impregnated vivec to birth monsters.
Somebody has been hitting the moon sugar a little too hard.
I have stock if you have coin...
Morrowind is a basically the thesis of Things Fall Apart in video game form, with a good deal of Dune. It’s an examination of colonialism. Every detail of that game is dripping with politics. The Dunmer are racist and engage in horrific chattel slavery - but does that mean it is right for the Empire to colonize them and take their resources? There’s substantial evidence that your character is a spook sent to “fulfill” an indigenous prophecy to tighten the Empire’s control - is that morally right?
There’s also a hermaphrodite male presenting god who has had hundreds of children with something quite close to the Devil.
This is literally the first time I have seen Things Fall Apart mentioned since high school, 20yrs ago.
Good book, kinda got ruined by the typical over analysation of a HS English class though.
Good, now make it gayer!
Bro, same for Star Trek
Let's hear it for badly written caricatures of racists that are so over-the-top that they allow real racists to say to themselves "I'm not actually a racist, because I'm not extreme as this flimsy caricature of a racist, which is what racists are really like."
I hate the idea that we have to write more well-developed racists just to get racists to recognize that they're, you know, fucking racist, but god damn it, it needs to happen. Skryim is just one of many offenders, video games alone are just one of many offenders as well. Really its the whole US media landscape that has nothing but flimsy, weak caricatures of racists. I personally think these weak caricatures are part and parcel to why it's hard to get racists to have self-reflection because we're not actually doing the hard work of writing realistic racist characters who don't start so extreme. Becoming a virulently violent racist takes time and doesn't happen overnight, and those events that lead to it fall under the umbrella of what's often called "character development."
/end unrelated rant
Worth noting that whenever the subject comes up, people will defend the Stormcloaks, praising Ulfric's fight for the province's right to self-govern and-
Wait.
Write a well rounded racist character and you get racists rooting for that character. Racists will never self reflect when they see a well written racist character. It’s like how there are men who don’t see that the characters in Fight Club and Joker are bad people, and rather see themselves in them.
like the cops who identify with punisher, they're literally not getting it.
Rooting for bad people in fiction is a fine way to process that part of your own self with no actual risks or consequences. If doing that turns people bad, then playing role-playing games turns people into satan worshippers.
I miss the time when people realized that fiction, even if possibly metaphoric, is ultimately not real.
In short, exactly how it was and how it should be.
🎶 🎵 How it is, and of course how it could be. 🎵 🎶
Dagoth Ur is woke as fuck and he will awaken all you sleepers.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iR-K2rUP86M
In RL Vivek is the racist one.
They all racist AF, except for Bosmer. They think everyone is equally tasty.
I miss TrueSTL
We can do better. TrueSTL had a lot of "joking" real racism IMO.
I remember there being jokes that seemed like they were drawing parallels between TES racism and IRL racism (like how the Dunmer like calling non-dunmer "N'wah", which sounds suspiciously like "n-word" if you slur the words as you say them) or making fun of racism in the series. I don't remember TrueSTL using jokes to actually make fun of IRL minorities though.
I could be wrong, it's been a while, but I don't remember seeing anything that came off as being intentionally malicious. I will also concede, however, that there were definitely things that might come off that way to a passerby with no TES lore knowledge.
That's true, I just interpret "huh yuk I can mean the N word with this one weird trick" as racism. When the orcs are loud and boorish, that's fine. When they love fried chicken and watermelon, it's clearly a proxy.
Yeah, yanno I think that's a fair interpretation. I don't fully agree with it, but I can see your logic. I will say that, now that you mention the orc thing, I think I seeing something like that once and I think I remember the OP getting a warning for it being too real (I have a vague memory of seeing something like that and thinking, "okay, that's too far, that's not funny anymore" and then seeing a mod warning in the comments). It seemed like most of the users knew where the line was and tried to avoid stepping over it, but again, it's been a while since I last bothered to look at Reddit (at least a year I think, maybe two), so I could be misremembering or things could have changed, etc.
"They would have made it woke" is the dumbest fuckin attitude to take
I have been mistaken in this case
Sounds like you gotta brush up on your elder scrolls lore my dude. You completely missed the joke that TES was always "woke".
I suspected but you never know
My bad
Dude, you gotta check out elder scrolls lore, it's fucking wild. The world runs on clockwork, vivec gave molag bal sloppy toppy while his toppy was sloppy (he was headless), the lizards lick trees to become argonians which are wifi-enabled (the Hist trees can remotely control argonians, which meant shit got real during the Oblivion Crisis and Mehrunes Dagon, a fucking daedric prince pissed himself in fear when he tried to invade the Black Marsh), there are like, 72 1/2 forms of khajiit, it's heavily suggested that the elder scrolls is a post-apocalyptic fantasy game...
Also, every race in the elder scrolls has had a space program. The khajiit space program was literally just them standing on each other's shoulders to reach space.
Oh yeah. And the dragon breaks. When time and space just kinda fuck up and every possible outcome happens at the same time before settling onto a single thread (in-universe explanation for why there's one canon ending to each game despite players being able to get other endings; each game takes place during a dragon break).
Sloppy toppy while his toppy was sloppy is an inspired use of the English language. You deserve an honorary degree
I distinctly recall a conversation I had on reddit in which I irritated several Fallout fans by insisting that the Elder Scrolls is simply Europe in the world of Fallout and that the Chinese stealth suits were 100% chameleon enchanted gear from TES IV
If you want more post-apocalyptic fantasy, Mistborn and Stormlight Archive book series both technically fit
Are there any pictures of this? I can't stop laughing at the image in my head. This is phenomenal world building.
There might be fan art, but I doubt there's anything official. Besides how little attention anything Elsweyr generally gets (even the first ESO expansion into Elsweyr mostly had the khajiit as secondary characters), it originated in an unofficial source. Michael Kirkbride (a lead writer for Morrowind and several other important bits of Elder Scrolls stuff) wrote The Pocket Guide to the Empire, 2nd Edition with the input of community members. The Pocket Guide 1st edition came with the manual of Redguard, and the 3rd edition came with Oblivion. The 3rd edition contains a few references to the 2nd edition, which at the time had not actually been written, so Kirkbride decided to fill the gap. The relevant section, with explanatory notes from me that you can ignore if you know that stuff already, is:
1 - The Mane is the religious leader of the khajiit 2 - Pa'alatiin, or Pellitine, is the southern half of Elsweyr. Elsweyr is the region that the khajiit are from, and had only recently been united when the 2nd edition was written in-universe 3 - Ne Quin'al or Anequine is the northern half of Elsweyr 4 - Alkosh is the khajiiti interpretation or version of the god of time and top god of most pantheons, generally known as Akatosh to the empire and therefore in most game material 5 - Moon sugar is a narcotic with great religious significance in khajiiti society. If you've come across skooma in the games, it is the heroin to moon sugar's opium 6 - Jo'Segunda, or Secunda, is one of the two moons 7 - Nirni, or Nirn, is the planet that Tamriel and the games are set on 8 - An alfiq is a type of khajiit that physically resembles a housecat but which is every bit as sapient as any other khajiit. You can actually meet several in ESO, but sadly cannot play as one. The Legends card "Frazzled Alfiq" is probably my all time favourite piece of official Elder Scrolls art
Anyway Kirkbride's unofficial stuff is not "canon", for whatever that's worth, but due to his significance to the setting and the fact that his writing is usually interesting, people often accept it as such. The story does not end there, though! The developers of ESO have a series called Loremaster's Archive, which is an in-character lore Q&A series. In "Moon Bishop Hunal Answers Your Questions", someone asked about the "cat upon cat" story.
So, canon? Maybe, maybe not. But it got a nod, and people like it.
Damn, and I thought I knew my TES lore.
Sadly, afaik, there are no official images of it. As Skua noted, it's not exactly canon, but to my knowledge there isn't actually anything that contradicts it. As such, I think most lore nerds take it as fact. Also because, as Skua said, it's way more interesting for the Khajiit to have had a space program where they stood on each other's shoulders than not.
Also, Bethesda has severely neglected the Argonians and Khajiit, so people take whatever Argonian or Khajiit lore they can get. I think they're "too furry" for Bethesda or something.
Admittedly, a Black Marsh TES would be difficult to do without it being an Argonian-only spin-off because, iirc, Argonians violently eject anyone trying to enter the marsh.
Meanwhile, a game set in Elsweyr would require a lot of effort due to all the different skeletons and character models they'd have to create. They'd probably double or triple the number of character models simply due to all the different forms of Khajiit (there are 17 forms, ranging from having the appearance of a basic house cat to being almost identical to Mer (elves) or Men (Redguard, imperial, etc)), with significantly more work if they tried to make them all playable with full armor sets.
the marsh is also near impossible to live in unless you are argonian
Or Decimus Scotti.
The mental image I have of the Argonians all turnt on hist sap, invading Oblivion, making Daedra Lords piss themselves, and closing their own gates, makes me happy.
That's almost literally how it went down, except the Argonians weren't tripping, the Hist trees are literally psychic and recalled all the Hist-born Argonians to the Black Marsh. They somehow knew the Oblivion Crisis was about to occur, and recalled every single Hist-born Argonian in Tamriel so that they'd be waiting at the gates the moment they appeared.
The Hist trees are also speculated to be the oldest living beings on Tamriel, if not Nirn entirely.
The Hist trees recognize Sithis as the OG creator. (If I understand correctly) To put it another way, while other races worship Aedra and/or Daedra, the Hist trees basically worship the void itself.
The Hist-born Argonians are able to use a wholly unique form of magic called Hist-magic which operates under its own, separate rules. This scares the elves.
Is the crusader gay?
Yes. Also a cyborg.
The Legend. The Elf Slayer. Pelinal Whitestrake
What?
Even worse, imagine how woke the books of Karl May (not to be confused with Karl Marx) the most successful German author of all time that were originally published in book form in the 1890s [sic] would be if they came out today:
The foreword to the main trilogy would be so spicy that no modern English translation would include it. Like: He would call out the genocide of the native Americans as such and explicitly assign the full guilt for the decline of their cultures to the whites.
He would have the author-self-insert heroes telling people that use the N-word that “Once they scrape you into the ground, your white-skinned body will become straight and exactly as much a stinking carcass as a negro corpse. You will admit that, and now have the goodness to list your other merits!”
He would have trans coded characters being presented in an unambigously positive light.
And so many more incredibly woke things, like trash talking Christians that don’t respect all other humans and do evil shit…
By all modern shithead alt-righters, Skyrim is "ultra woke": It promotes ultimate equality and the ability to be anything you want to be, and freely become someone else later.
Or maaaaaybe people who use "woke" unironically just lack the brain capacity to comprehend even a game like Skyrim. 🤷
So like, are you saying the fascists aren't bad guys?
No they didn't?
If I'm not getting whooshed from you playing the act:
The joke is that everything in the meme is already in the established TES canon. But capital G Gamers™ (which I hate that those assholes made that word negative), being media illiterate and being "anti woke", often don't see what their loved games contain, even if they complain about those things.
Whoops I got wooooshed
I've never played Skyrim lol
I wish all representation was done as well as when it was done out of creative choice rather than trying to win progressiveness points
I'm still taking that over no representation at all 🤷♀️
Seriously though, representation as a background noise is - imho - one of the most potent tools for normalisation.
And the persons who did good representation haven't disappeared. They're still doing the lord's work.
Background noise isn't an issue for me, if there isn't an unnatural amount of attention being drawn and the pace of the story isn't interrupted that's just adding interest
The problem lies for me when said character isn't fleshed out in other ways and their only defining trait is that they're x, or that they don't give them any character flaws because they're too afraid to offend that group. Results in a character that doesn't feel natural to the story
I see your point and don't disagree exactly.... but....
I will say it is odd that I hear this kind of criticism of flat gay/female/minority/etc characters but for some reason never hear complaints about the equally-flatly written comic relief characters, or best friend characters, or sage characters, etc. Video games and other stories frequently contain flat characters that are used more as props for the protagonist or other characters to react and respond to, yet complaints about these characters seem to only pop up when said characters happen to represent an under-represented demographic.
The issue is the intention behind it, if the intention is comic relief they might not add much to the plot, but generally are still relevant in some way and make the film more entertaining
I'm not a huge fan of poorly fleshed out characters in general if they've got any amount of screen time
If they haven't got much screen time and aren't fleshed out it's even worse if the one defining character trait they have is that they're gay, black, trans, etc etc
Imagine if some adventurers go into a tavern, they talk to the generic hooded loner on their own in the corner, they give the adventurers the quest as usual and then for some reason mention that they're vegan or something, no relevance to the story and it becomes kinda obvious to the viewer that they were only given that character trait to check a box
Kaos is one of the good examples I've seen recently sorry if I already mentioned it, there's a trans character in the underworld who was part of a female only Amazon tribe and was thrown out and eventually killed for transitioning to male, but they don't even mention any of that until he's already been well established for a couple of episodes and they do it in enough detail that it doesn't feel forced
I'm all for representation in media I should clarify I just want it to be done well, there are a fair few good examples but also a good number of bad ones
That's fair and I see your point, even basically agree with it. That said, I still wonder sort of what standards we're holding for "good" characters and how realistic that is. And I want to make a brief caveat that I don't know you and can't speak to your personal opinions so I will be making some generalizations about the topic in general; I apologize if it feels like I am unfairly lumping you in with anyone and promise that is not my intention. It is clear to me you aren't a right wing chud screaming about DEI but rather you're a very decent person looking for fleshed-out representation that isn't shallow or driven by stereotypes.
Okay, caveats out of the way now, here's the thing: I have a gay friend who is very proud of their community and themselves for being who they are despite any social pressures. This friend frequently goes out wearing full-blown rainbow attire, speaks with the affectation of their community, and they will absolutely inform you of their orientation upon their first meeting. Of course my friend has vastly more depth than just their community affiliation, but that affiliation is definitely going to be the largest and most prominent quality you associate with them, especially if you never move beyond acquaintanceship to friendship.
If my friend was in a video game, they would absolutely be described as flat or tokenism. But they are a real person. Even if you're thinking to yourself right now "well frankly it sounds like your friend is lacking in depth in real life," (I'd disagree, but go with the argument none the less, please), the fact is they still exist. There are people who define themselves by their identifiers first. So I don't think the mere inclusion of these "flat" representations are inherently problematic.
I don't think a flat character of an under-represented demographic is harmful in the way that a bad or stereotypical representation is. I think there is still benefit in the normalization of lesser-represented groups in media, even if those representations aren't the deepest or most compelling characters. A gay shopkeeper who is flamboyant and one-note still helps normalize the idea of gay people in normal aspects of life.
But of course we can't settle for these characters as the whole piece of representation. We have to still demand deep and complex under-represented characters, especially in lead or primary roles. I just personally don't think the flatter characters are inherently problematic or detrimental to those goal. If anything, I think they're almost kind of tangential or non-sequitur to the topic. The point isn't to complain about flat under-represented characters and discourage their inclusion, the point is to demand good and complex under-represented characters regardless of the inclusion of these flat other representations.
I'm very sorry for the novel I wrote, my brain is crazy today and I couldn't make it more concise in this moment.
Also I have no yet watched Kaos so I can't comment on the representation in that show, but it does sound compelling from what you describe.
Also also, in case it's not clear, I don't think we're arguing; I think we probably agree with each other about 90% of the way here.
Does seem that way
I'm not sure real people can be compared to fictional in that way, as your friend has infinitely more character because he's a real person
If you were to ask your friend what his favourite food is, or what his opinion on pineapple on pizza is, or what he has for a desktop wallpaper he'd have answers for all of those questions or a reason he doesn't have an answer
If you were to take one of these hollow characters I'm talking about and ask them that question the answer would just be made up on the spot
If your friend showed up in a TV show for 5 minutes just as himself in a situation he would realistically be in I can guarantee he'd feel real and natural because he is a real person with a history
It's kinda weird to try to include representation without it feeling shoe horned. The world of TES (of any fictional world) is entirely hand-created. There are no accidents, all of it is intentional.
This means that, no matter how it's done, any character deviating from the "norm" was consciously chosen to be so. These things that need representation (disabilities, gender identity, sexuality, race, etc) are all things people don't get to choose, so there's an inherent disconnect between the hand crafted world choosing to include diversity, and the real world necessarily having diversity because of chaos.
Following this thread, there's never been a case of inclusivity, or exclusivity, that isn't shoehorned in. It's always been entirely the will of the author to include or exclude these representations. With that in mind, I think it's only a good thing to see more diverse authors bringing more diverse worlds and characters into existence.
It only feels shoe horned when they don't write the character well.
There are a lot of cases where the person isn't allowed to have any flaws or character development because they're too scared to make them look bad in any way, which also means none of their achievements feel earned. Ohers where they just don't care enough to waste screen time on things that aren't highlighting whatever group they're a part of
Have been a fair few shows I've seen where they've done it right, recently Kaos had a trans character who actually felt like a human being instead of a token "hey look we have a trans person"
The recent doctor who special is one of the bad examples, most of the time the woman in a wheelchair is onscreen it's because they're drawing attention to the wheelchair (oh no, a ladder, oh no a set of stairs etc etc) and not to develop her character in any way besides that
That's kind of a weird argument. I always took "shoe-horned" to imply that it is pressed into something by force where it doesn't quite fit. So, in my mind just because something is intentional doesn't mean it is shoe-horned.
Creative works always come from the authors lived experiences. The reason why we often find representation of minorities missing in media, is because these minorities don't get to work on them. If there would be more diverse teams working on something we would naturally see more of their diverse experiences represented.
However, for this to be the case a lot would have to change in our society. It is way easier to just keep things more or less as they were and let people without minority experiences write and add minority characters. These, in turn, feel off, feel shoe-horned in, because they aren't based off of lived experiences. They are just there to check a box.
Conversely, the reason why it feels like we used to have better (though less) diverse representations in media is because these actually came from people who had these experiences.
Eh, I think we just have different perspectives on things being short horned. In my view, anything that isn't critical information to the story, it's shoehorned in. If you tell me the main characters favorite food is pasta, and then don't do anything with it, it's shoe horned in. If you tell me a character is gay, and then don't do anything they couldn't have done the same with a straight character, changing a couple of pronouns, it's shoehorned in.
To be clear though, I don't think this is a bad thing. A story with only critical information will... Well, it'll work, but it'll be bland. Same if you make all of your characters blond, blue eyed, straight white men. Adding these details tends to be what makes us remember and identify with a character. That doesn't make it any more strictly relevant to the story. Most characters people would view as "diverse" - even the ones people like - fall into this category, i think.
I think a better argument is, if these traits ARE shoehorned in, their alternative "normal" traits would be as well. If you go out of your way to state a character is straight, it's just as shoehorned if everything else is equivalent. Do THOSE characters inspire the same ire? If not, we should examine the why of that specifically.
Yeah, I can see our difference in how we defined what's shoe-horned in. And I get that you're not saying diversity in media is bad. However, respectfully, I don't think your definition of shoe-horned makes a lot of sense if you think it through. Is the music shoe-horned in, because it's not critical to the plot? You said yourself that adding information that isn't critical to the plot is necessary or the movie will be bland. If it's necessary to the movie, wouldn't you agree that it is critical? It may not be for the plot, but it is for the movie. Movies aren't just plot. A lot of great movies (Nomadland, Patterson, Dazed and Confused, Coffee and Cigarettes, The Straight Story, ...) don't have a lot of plot or tell a great story. Instead they focus on the characters and the mood.
I think your example with the "blond, blue eyed, straight white men" betrays your perspective. This isn't describing the default human being. Most people on earth aren't like that. But it is the de facto default in western media. Why is it that? Because for a long time it was white men who made the decisions. Now that it has become a norm, everything that deviates needs a justification. And that's kinda fucked up, isn't it?
So, I think the question isn't, why don't "normal" character traits get the same hate as "alternate" traits? The question is, who defines what is normal?
I mean, movies have existed without sound at all, so yes, I'd classify music as typically not essential, unless the movie is ~about music~. Same with the movies you listed, they're about the character growth and development, not a bigger plotline (I assume,I actually haven't seen them).
In order to tell an effective narrative, certain pieces MUST be there. These are the story. Anything else is fluff, filler, not essential. You can play around with all of that, get something that looks and feels different, but is the same basic story. Remakes and AU style things do that all the time.
As far as the blond, blue eyed thing - I didn't say it was describing the default human. It's describing the default within American pop culture. The default movie hero is, and I'm spitballing here, a 30s-40s straight white dude. And, like or not, American pop culture is world pop culture. America largely defines the trends in pop culture worldwide. I don't think this is a good thing, for the record, but it's also not a crazy statement.