• 1 Post
  • 116 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 13th, 2023
  • BearGun@ttrpg.networktoLord of the memes@midwest.social•Elves would neverEnglish
    11·
    2 hours ago

    1. Those are some nice claims, got any sources for them?

    2. If your claims are true, it would be a quite kind depiction of stereotypical jews for the times. Dwarves were a very hardy and highly skilled people, who were quite generous with their craft. Almost the only bad traits they had were because of the incredibly powerful magic rings Sauron gave them, which were designed corrupt them and make them his slaves. They almost fully resisted that corruption, just becoming greedy and isolationist instead.

    3. The story transpires in a world where there are actually good gods that help people and an evil god (Morgoth, and later demigod-ish Sauron) that is trying to corrupt and rule the world. I don’t think the decline of Men is a metaphor for growing secularism (Tolkien was famously a BIG hater of metaphor and allegory as story telling devices) as much as it is a direct consequence of their in-universe growing secularism and the same happening earlier in the world.

    4. “Eastern/Southern men given to evil on brown people” What do you mean? The Eastern/Southern men are the brown people. The reality of it is that the story is one of war, and we’re seeing it told from people on one side of the war. That means we’re gonna get mainly negative views on the other side. Even so, the first time we see a Man of Harad in the books, the first thought we’re given from one of the characters is Sam thinking this about him:

    He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.”

    This is to me a nod towards the Men of Harad (at least, likely all the easterlings) not actually being evil but only being decieved by Sauron (the Deciever).

    In general, Tolkien was born in 1892. He likely wasn’t a paragon of equality, but i also don’t think he portrays any kind of racism or xenophobia if you look past the very surface level of his writings.

  • BearGun@ttrpg.networktoLord of the memes@midwest.social•Elves would neverEnglish
    19·
    19 hours ago

    To be completely fair they lived in a world where there actually were real differences between the races. In our world racism is silly because there aren’t any actually relevant differences between the races, but the differences between elves, men, and dwarves are very real in middle earth. Not enough to pull everyone over a comb (to use a swedish proverb), but at least there’s some substance to it.

  • BearGun@ttrpg.networktoFunny@sh.itjust.works•Clever guy
    4·
    3 days ago

    What you want to do is create an arc between the stick and the line, and not have it transfer to you. A dry stick would do this quite well, since it would be at ground voltage and as such would provoke a short arc without electrocuting yourself. The fence also probably doesn’t have all that much power, likely can’t deliver more than a few amps, so it would be quite safe even.

  • BearGun@ttrpg.networktoWorld News@lemmy.ml•World demands end to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine in landslide UN vote
    25·
    10 days ago

    We used to be “neutral” (even though even then the argument was threadbare at best), but then we went and joined NATO. Can hardly call us neutral now. Even outside of that though, neutrality should not mean you can’t call out countries/organisations for doing horrendous shit like war crimes and genocide.

    We’ve publicly condemned Russia for the invasion of Ukraine (among other things) and i think China for something else (was it about Taiwan or Hong Kong or something? I don’t recall). There’s no real reason not to do the same with Israel outside of not wanting to anger the US.