why

Here it is again. You might want to save it just in case an accident like that happens again

You are stuck as a soldier in this historical war

(this is a magical universe where people who wouldn't usually be able to fight would. so you can all suffer.)

this is valid and i think in Mass Effect specifically they take the parallelism one further and ensure planet names and species names aren't immediately obvious connected (human/Earth actually does have a conceptual relationship; both are related to a word for "ground, earth" in Indo-European, but not the same word). but i don't think this one is entirely tolkien's fault as she posits--or maybe it's just his fault when it comes to (some) fantasy races? like you rarely see Orc or Troll capitalized.

what i think is going on here linguistically is that early science fiction especially established the capitalization because aliens were Inhabitants of Place: the Venusians of Venus, the Martians of Mars, later the Vulcans of Vulcan, and so forth. so at least in the science fiction case the generalized rule isn't what you do with a word for a species of biological organism (human, dolphin, aardvark are all common nouns), it's what you do with a demonym--and demonyms are capitalized because they derive from proper nouns. A German is from Germany, an Egyptian is from Egypt. and similarly designations for other kinds of groups of people are also often capitalized: a Catholic adheres to Catholicism, a Republican votes for the Republican party (but a conservative votes for conservative politicians--no capitalization), etc. this is indeed the argument for capitalizing Black in reference to african-americans: you're not describing a generic attribute in this context, you're referring to a culture, some members of which do not even have especially dark skin.

i think i do prefer not capitalizing species names in SF, but i think it works best when you're also making sure pure not doing the pulpy/retro "the aliens from Android are Andorians" thing. if you aren't, then you can also make a linguistic distinction more easily between (say) an asari born and raised on Earth--an Earthling for sure, though not a human--and a human born and raised on Thessia.

Gather round kids while I explain this manipulation tactic that men perpetually try to use and why it’s bullshit.

If someone is openly showing interest in you by making disparaging or disappointed comments about your age, they’re trying to put you on the defensive. This guy wants me to try to quell his discomfort, to bring up that I’m only a month shy of 20, etc. - he wants me to try to prove myself to him, that I’m mature and adult enough for a man like him.

His goal is to establish a power imbalance right off the bat. If we were to date, I would constantly be on the defensive, constantly striving to be an equal, constantly trying to prove my “adult” credentials. Anything he says or does or wants from this point on that I object to would just be seen as a strike against my age, proof that he was right and that I’m not mature enough for him. This is how SO MANY men pressure younger individuals (primarily women and girls) into situations and relationships they aren’t comfortable with. If he truly thought I was too young for him, he wouldn’t have messaged me. This is a very calculated move, and it’s fucking gross.

This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.

Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny reinterpret this cartoon first published in German magazine Lustige Blätter in 1932: