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so a lot of fantasy settings do the thing where there’s one or two or maybe three human societies, all based on European cultures unless they’re bad guys, and then the non-human cultures are all based on non-European cultures, like orcs will be loosely based on Mongols and there’ll be an animal race with superficial Native American trappings.  And for many reasons this can get really annoying.

But what if we turn it around?  There’s an awful lot to explore if we stick a different angle on it.  I want to see a thing where the human kingdoms are based on, say, imperial Mali around the time of Mansa Musa and the Mughal empire, and then maybe the orcs are based on pre-Roman Gaul, and the marauding beastfolk raiders look like Polish winged hussars, and your secretive-and-xenophobic but wise-and-spiritual elves or whatever are based on all the most alien and unfamiliar bits of medieval Catholicism.

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Elrond in the Undying Lands is much like going to a family reunion. Who is this person and how are we related? She clearly knows because she's hugging me and saying how tall I've gotten, but I have no idea. Please someone use her name so that I can pretend I knew it all along.

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Hi, I'm back on tumblr. (It’s been a very long time! how’s everyone doing here?)

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Sybil, Vetinari, and Leonard, all preteens, solving a citywide mystery together. Have fun y’all. Make the city fear the trio of autistic beans terrorizing them

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Matching couples' shirts, just in case your willowy ingenue boyfriend gets taken away by the undead. A redraw of this post from last year.

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maidens if you are going to flee dramatically from my castle in the middle of the night once i reveal my true nature to you please leave your candelabra on the little ledge by the portcullis we are running out of them

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I think it's an unrecognized practice to allow yourself to outgrow and shed versions of yourself that were more socially successful than who you want or need to be now. Not every new chapter is bigger and bolder and hotter, I think that's a very modern social media "glow up" mindset and doesn't actually have any room for what real transformation looks like. Sometimes we change exactly as we need to and it's not what anyone else was hoping for and that's part of it being important and true.

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are evil dragons really evil, or are they just vitamin D deficient?

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Van Helsing in movie adaptations: Dracula's nemesis

Van Helsing in the book: Dracula's real estate lawyer's wife's girlfriend's fiancé's boyfriend's university professor

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“Vimes and Vetinari exchanged looks. Sometimes Carrot sounded like a civics essay written by a stunned choirboy.”

— Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant

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Sacharissa Crisplock manages to get an exclusive interview with famous inventor Leonard da Quirm, and reveals a shocking truth???

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obligatory college roommates AU cuz do you really ship something if you don't draw them as roommates

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her eyes were the sickly green of the sky before a tornado, and to his horror he discovered she could throw cows around just as easily

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Due to a horrible mix up, Jonathan Teatime has been sent to Dracula’s Castle rather than Jonathan Harker. What follows is a mailing list service that chronicles Teatime’s attempts to slay Dracula by slowly erasing all evidence of vampire lore. People not believing in Dracula doesn’t effect him in any meaningful way, but the sudden lack of respect and appropriate fear from the peasantry does make him very upset.

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No matter how progressive or well-read you are, there are always going to be moments in your life where somebody pushes back against something that's so culturally ingrained you never even considered it before. And you'll say "Huh, it never occurred to me to challenge this but you're right" and that doesn't mean you were "morally toxic" before, it means you're a non-omniscient human capable of growth.