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but im already crazy so what would happen if i looked upon an eldritch horror
okay so i have a kind of headcanon about this sort of thing: since the concept of the eldritch horror like we tend to think of it was basically devised by Lovecraft and his buddies, who were 99% heterosexual cisgender white dudes with deeply ingrained sexist and racist viewpoints, and HPL in particular suffered from existential dread over humanity not being the center of the universe, fear of sea creatures, and a deep-seated terror over the possibility that there was anything other than milk-white Anglo blood in his ancestry…
…maybe the mind-blowingly horrifying things that these entities reveal or embody are actually things that a lot of us would be okay with. Like, Lovecraft would have considered a polyamorous relationship involving people of diverse ethnic backgrounds and gender identities to be unspeakably disgusting, especially if the people in that relationship enjoyed sushi. By his standards, most of us on Tumblr are already completely warped and corrupted.
AU in which the Deep Ones and the Old Gods actually get on very well with people who aren’t horrendous awful racists and are pretty cool and fun to know and can tell us a lot of very interesting things about earths history and places humanity has never been able to visit :)
This is a good AU I like this
I like Nice Monster AU’s and stories where things which are meant to be scary actually turn out to be interesting and awesome <3
Now you all see why people like me identify with eldritch horrors
I’m reminded here of reading Facts Concerning Arthur Jermyn And His Family. (Spoiler, although given the age of the story I think the statute of limitations is up: Arthur’s bloodline was awful because it turned out they were only a few generations descended from a hyperintelligent white gorilla worshipped as a goddess.) I remember looking at that and going, “That’s a little disquieting, but it’s not reason for insanity and suicide. That’s a slightly odd superhero origin story. Or maybe a supervillain origin story, but either way.”
And that is why I love you, dear.
I need some people to start writing this fiction for publication. Lovecraft’s stuff is a free-for-all, so I say let’s do it!
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via Saladin Ahmed
So tokenism is fine?
If that’s as high as your imagination will allow you to set the bar, I suppose it’ll have to do.
It’s fantasy, folks. The genre practically begs you to think bigger.
thebrayton why not just say “I’m not capable of creating/can’t imagine a complex and realistic character of color.” Because that’s the only line of thought I can think of that would result in your response to these tweets.
"So tokenism is fine" like, are you for real?
Even if you take the “fantasy” out of it and just go with biopics and historical fiction…
These stories are worth telling.
So why should our historical and/or medieval-inspired fantasy worlds be more limited and less diverse than history?
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A clear message via @manveerheir at #MIGS14
— Marie Mejerwall (@mejerwall)
November 11, 2014from @manveerheir’s #MIGS14 talk in Montreal.
(via cypheroftyr)
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☛ Well, THAT explains a lot.
Apparently one of the developers for that game someone asked me about MONTHS ago, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, went on a rant about “Illuminations from medieval Bohemia” and how much being “called racist” hurt his feelings .
I think that what we are…
If someone wants to make a game with only white males in it, they are going to do it. It’s not like we can stop them. I think it’s so great to point out the hypocrisy in the way this post has, though.
If you make a game that excludes everyone or almost everyone who doesn’t look like you or like your ideal person, you can do that. That’s your choice as an artist. Just don’t say, “Oh, I wanted to put other kinds of people but I couldn’t, because, History! ( And because all the whiners still wouldn’t like it anyway, apparently.)” Say, “I made it this way because I wanted to and I appreciate your input but make your own game, this one is mine and I made it the way I wanted it to be.” And then take responsibility for that and don’t make it be “History” (that you made up) that made you not able to include diverse people.
I’m so sick of people who think that freedom of speech/artistic expression means freedom from the consequences of what they choose to express. ”But…but they say mean things about my art!” is not oppression of your artistic license.
Everyone who makes art that they show to other people gets feedback, both positive and negative, constructive and destructive. The wages of casting the fruit of our creativity out into the world is that people will tell us what they think of it. Their opinions of it are their business and what we do with the input is our business.
Getting called a racist because you won’t include people of color in your art and you lie and blame it on “History” instead of taking responsibility for your decisions is not a violation of your free speech.
Now, for instance if you were a scholar of history and you freely shared your hard-won (and expensively acquired and maintained) knowledge and research with anyone who wanted to learn about actual history (as opposed to the big-h History that won’t let totally non-racist game developers include non-white, non-male characters in their games) and delight their senses with the real goings-on of medieval Europe and all the cool kinds of people who were (again, actually, in real history) going in and out and influencing and contributing to European civilizations and what (the people who you think about as) European people thought about them and treated them and (stick with me, this sentence will be over soon) weird internet trolls attacked you verbally and threatened you and called you creepy slurs, that would be an (ACTUAL) oppression of your expression and violation of your free speech.
See the difference?
The bolded: That’s exactly the part that bugs me so much…people like these need to stop blaming history for their own personality flaws.
History has room for all of us.
If a creator’s imagination doesn’t? Well, that is on them, one hundred percent.
Thanks for your commentary.
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☛ Story / Author Recommendation: Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy by Saladin Ahmed
I’m sharing this short story as I think it may be of interest to your followers! I’m also using this to highlight an author of color who I think is super cool.
Saladin Ahmed is an Arab American science fiction and fantasy writer. His first novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, was nominated for a Hugo and won the Locus for best first novel.
The short story is about a real Muslim man trapped in the English allegorical poem, “The Fairie Queen.” I’ve studied the poem in question and, given the hatred of Muslims in England at the time, it puts the poem in a new and much darker light.
Saladin has been going through rough times lately (being a fantasy author doesn’t pay very well, it turns out) so if you like the short story, consider donating to his PayPal (at the bottom of the page) or buying his book (linked above.)
Furthermore, if you’re doing NaNoWriMo and think you really have something special, he offers novel critiques! He has an MFA in Creative Writing and is a college professor (in addition to everything else) so I can guarantee you’ll get your money’s worth.
If you’d like to hear more from Saladin, he has a Tumblr, and also a Twitter.
Support fantasy authors of color!
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![aseantoo submitted to medievalpoc:
John Webber
Portrait of Kaneena, a chief of the Sandwich Islands in the North Pacific
England (1770-1793)
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
[x]
Wikimedia says:
The actual spelling is Kanaina, and he was one of the two chiefs along with Palea (Pareea) who were the first to greet Captain Cook at Kealakekua Bay. Described as fine as “a figure as can be seen. He was about six feet high, had regular and expressive features, with lively dark eyes; his deportment was easy, firm, and graceful.” According to Abraham Fornander he is possibly the person who struck the fatal blow that ended James Cook’s life, he called him Kalanimanokahoowaha. According to another source he was one of the chiefs that died in the fighting.](http://41.media.tumblr.com/fcc9aea520e2f6a6f1bfb9d475a36304/tumblr_neg90hkfNg1ssmm02o1_500.jpg)
aseantoo submitted to medievalpoc:
John Webber
Portrait of Kaneena, a chief of the Sandwich Islands in the North Pacific
England (1770-1793)
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
[x]
Wikimedia says:
The actual spelling is Kanaina, and he was one of the two chiefs along with Palea (Pareea) who were the first to greet Captain Cook at Kealakekua Bay. Described as fine as “a figure as can be seen. He was about six feet high, had regular and expressive features, with lively dark eyes; his deportment was easy, firm, and graceful.” According to Abraham Fornander he is possibly the person who struck the fatal blow that ended James Cook’s life, he called him Kalanimanokahoowaha. According to another source he was one of the chiefs that died in the fighting.
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via Saladin Ahmed
I’m sorry, but this needs to be said.
In rebuttal, Mr. Ahmed, why is it you’re not critical of Middle Eastern, Indian, and Asian entertainment of doing the exact same thing? I consider myself well exposed to Chinese television, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean translated novels, Indian films, and Middle Eastern live-streaming media, and it’s been my perception that often “outside” races/cultures are either flat-out ignored by those entertainment venues, or worse, invariably, framed in a negative light by those filmmakers/musicians/writers/artists. I note you’re not critical of that omission.
Given that, I have to question your motivations, Mr. Ahmed. Are you attempting to highlight all racism in entertainment fairly and across the board by pointing out a single example, or just Caucasian-bashing under the false front of caring about fairness and equality in entertainment across the globe? If it was the former, I would think you’d have given examples of other cultures/races engaging in such behaviour. Since you haven’t, logically I have to assume it’s the latter… which makes you a hypocrite, as you’re guilty of doing exactly the thing you’re finger-wagging against.
Meanwhile, back in actual reality…
Hey, it’s almost as if we live in this ^ context, and pretending as if white people are somehow underrepresented in media is horribly disingenuous and completely ridiculous.
um, great graphs but the person wasn’t talking about Hollywood and English-language media. Where are the graphs for Bollywood or anime, for example?
Yeah, it’s almost as if rzzmg was completely derailing any genuine discussion by removing its context and talking about something else completely, while throwing in some irrelevant garbage about “reverse racism”.
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via Saladin Ahmed
I’m sorry, but this needs to be said.
In rebuttal, Mr. Ahmed, why is it you’re not critical of Middle Eastern, Indian, and Asian entertainment of doing the exact same thing? I consider myself well exposed to Chinese television, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean translated novels, Indian films, and Middle Eastern live-streaming media, and it’s been my perception that often “outside” races/cultures are either flat-out ignored by those entertainment venues, or worse, invariably, framed in a negative light by those filmmakers/musicians/writers/artists. I note you’re not critical of that omission.
Given that, I have to question your motivations, Mr. Ahmed. Are you attempting to highlight all racism in entertainment fairly and across the board by pointing out a single example, or just Caucasian-bashing under the false front of caring about fairness and equality in entertainment across the globe? If it was the former, I would think you’d have given examples of other cultures/races engaging in such behaviour. Since you haven’t, logically I have to assume it’s the latter… which makes you a hypocrite, as you’re guilty of doing exactly the thing you’re finger-wagging against.
Meanwhile, back in actual reality…
Hey, it’s almost as if we live in this ^ context, and pretending as if white people are somehow underrepresented in media is horribly disingenuous and completely ridiculous.
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Jean Valentin
The Fortune Teller
Portugal (c. 1610)
Oil on Canvas, 97 x 131 cm.