alcis is scribbling

Evolution of Pines (Gravity Falls): Ford finds out Mabel doesn't believe in evolution or gravity, attempts to teach her, and subsequently gets his brain broken by unexpected wisdom from the girl who has canonically sprayed herself in the face with spray paint multiple times

Freddle World Domination (FNAF Security Breach): the Pizzaplex employees have a Discord where they record their sightings of local cryptid child Freddle (Gregory)

You're Pregnant?! (FNAF Security Breach): Glamrock Freddy hides Gregory in his stomach hatch and says he's pregnant to avoid having to open it

Anthony Hate Club (Hazbin Hotel): Husk and Angel are dating, the crew thinks Husk is cheating on him with someone named Anthony, and they create an Anthony Hate Club and hold an intervention, not knowing that Anthony is Angel's true name

How to Commission a Radio Demon Body Pillow (and other assorted things) (Hazbin Hotel): Vox spends way too much money on Alastor-related merchandise. Lucifer thinks he's drawing commissioned art of someone's furry OC. Niffty writes fanfic. Alastor crashes out and decapitates a body pillow of himself

Get Well Soon (HTTYD: Race to the Edge): Hiccup crash-lands in a poisonous thornbush and spends a week having fever hallucinations that the rest of the Edge crew has to deal with. At one point he thinks he's a ship captain, climbs up on the roof, and cries mutiny when they try to get him down

Christ, What Now? (MCU): an entire series of shenanigans, kicking off with "people calling Bruce Banner for medical stuff even though he is NOT that kind of doctor." Highlights include "the universe conspires to ruin all of Bruce's pants," "Steve Rogers has a terrible time doing drug trials," and "Bruce and Tony spend the weekend in a Canadian jail after Bruce consumes enough poppyseed bagels to fail an opioid test and Tony tries to bribe the cop with maple syrup"

(More under the cut because this got long)

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Using something like a streaming service for the same amount of time, is like driving 10 miles to a grocery store.

i would still argue that fantasy racism is a real issue. it's just not the "oh no, this character doesn't like elves!" thing. (especially because elves are very often white-coded!)

i'm not sure if this was on your blog or someone else's, but a few weeks back there was a post about a game called "don't kill them all". already a bad start. to be VERY brief about it - a half-elf, half-Orc girl (who is heavily coded to be mixed - for instance, she has locs in her hairstyle) who is raised by elves comes to the land of her Orc side of the family (heavily Black-coded, which is why i'm capitalizing Orc) and has to basically "civilize" them, because they are "blinded by their constant destructive urges". the game centers around sending the Orcs on missions and "managing" them in order to not have them all max out their "rage meters" (by taking damage, losing resources, etc). if you fail the level, well, "Orcs don't die, they rage!" they stomp their feet, akin to a young child throwing a tantrum, and scream to "kill them all!" if you win the level, you get a "progress report" with lines such as "good work, not killing and breaking everything!"

for fuck's sake, the website's tagline for the game is "a turn-based strategy and base-building game in which you teach Orcs to feel".

i don't seriously think i need to explain why this is racist as hell, right? especially because the company developing the game (in Quebec) has zero Black employees on staff, as far as i can tell through the staff picture in their press kit.

Orcs/Orks more generally are often Black-coded and are simultaneously depicted as "brutes" and "evil". even as far back as their origins, in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings works and letters, Orcs were described in incredibly racist terms. one of Tolkien's "dilemmas" was that he allowed the Orcs to speak and to discern good from evil - therefore, it was now unclear whether slaughtering them was permissible. Orcs in D&D are similarly eyebrow-raising at best with "boosted Intimidation and reduced Intelligence stats".

so yeah - fantasy racism is real. just not the one people think.

and it's on creators of fantasy worlds and races to take care that their Black-coded races aren't perpetuating racist stereotypes.

I actually disabled reblogs on that post ages ago because I felt like people were focusing too hard on one specific game and one specific dev team when really this is a problem in basically any fantasy universe where race is a thing. Don't Kill Them All is *especially* racist (which, I mean, it's Quebec, what are you going to expect?), but it's built on stereotypes and jokes and memes that we all allow to persist. They thought it was fine because a lot of ostensibly leftist fantasy nerds also think it's fine.

You know what's a perennial Tumblr darling? Baldur's Gate 3. Half-orcs don't just have the inherent intimidation modifier; their heads also constantly lean forward, giving them a pseudo-hunchback, so that they're always looking down scarily at everything. There are no recruitable half-orcs; one of the few significant half-orc characters is working with the comically evil Kethric and has cornrows. The game loves to discuss how racism and xenophobia is affecting refugees - like the white-coded tiefling refugees you meet from the first act onward - but it also treats all goblins, bugbears and ogres as universally cruel and primitive and gross, to the point where treating them all as equally disposable is the correct option. The only one you can really negotiate with is an ogre who happened to eat a magical item that makes him 'intelligent' and 'civilized'. Oh, and the drow, whom you can try to negotiate with and even potentially recruit because she's a white woman of normal height with a skin condition. You can't kill tiefling children; you *can* kill goblin children and beloved bear-fucker Halsin will murder two of them for the crime of being annoying to an animal. The line between how the game treats the 'civilized' vs 'uncivilized' races is stark and vicious. Game of the fucking year. Hundreds and hundreds of people on this site cooing over Astarion or Karlach.

(Not even getting into how the game and fandom treat the only recruitable non-white character)

I watched Orc City become a meme off of how dehumanizing and poorly-written the opening sequence of a fantasy book was - only for those making fun of it to start coming up with jokes even more dehumanizing.

don't forget sleeve garters and suspenders

Sleeve garters are just so you can keep your cuffs right where you want them, typically used professionally by people like bartenders, who are wearing dress shirts to do manual labor and don't want their cuffs brushing through spills when they are wiping down the bar etc... but also useful for keeping cuffs exactly the right length for your suit without having to tailor all your shirts, or, if you have several suit coats with slightly different length sleeves, you can always have your dress shirt's cuffs showing that perfect half inch below the suit sleeve or whatever the fashion is for the time

right now it's about 1/2 an inch, but that's the sort of thing, like tie length, that can change a little with fashion trends -- but basically, you never want your shirt cuffs to be doing this

Because that looks SO sloppy, right? Looks like you're wearing your father's shirt under your little brother's jacket

BUT! you do want the cuffs showing, like this

because it makes the suit sleeve look precise and on purpose, or you might push it and show even more if you are wearing nice cuff links

because this clearly still looks purposeful and precise, and shows off your jewelry.

often, fashion dictates taking any opportunity to show your layers -- for example in medieval europe it was fashionable to literally slash expensive outer garments so you could ALSO see some of the expensive clothing underneath, which is how before long you get "slashed" sleeve patterns like this becoming popular among the wealthy

(notice the roughly half inch of sleeve cuff showing at the bottom here as well)

don't forget sleeve garters and suspenders

Sleeve garters are just so you can keep your cuffs right where you want them, typically used professionally by people like bartenders, who are wearing dress shirts to do manual labor and don't want their cuffs brushing through spills when they are wiping down the bar etc... but also useful for keeping cuffs exactly the right length for your suit without having to tailor all your shirts, or, if you have several suit coats with slightly different length sleeves, you can always have your dress shirt's cuffs showing that perfect half inch below the suit sleeve or whatever the fashion is for the time

right now it's about 1/2 an inch, but that's the sort of thing, like tie length, that can change a little with fashion trends -- but basically, you never want your shirt cuffs to be doing this

Because that looks SO sloppy, right? Looks like you're wearing your father's shirt under your little brother's jacket

BUT! you do want the cuffs showing, like this

because it makes the suit sleeve look precise and on purpose, or you might push it and show even more if you are wearing nice cuff links

because this clearly still looks purposeful and precise, and shows off your jewelry.

often, fashion dictates taking any opportunity to show your layers -- for example in medieval europe it was fashionable to literally slash expensive outer garments so you could ALSO see some of the expensive clothing underneath, which is how before long you get "slashed" sleeve patterns like this becoming popular among the wealthy

(notice the roughly half inch of sleeve cuff showing at the bottom here as well)