-Pretentious Quote-

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

elves are frequently white-coded. they are often written as seeing other "races" as lesser, and use the language of real life racism- 'savage', 'children', etc. the narrative often justifies this by giving them a grand, ancient history, innate talents, art, culture, etc that other peoples are shown to lack or simply have less of or are "inferior". they are also usually visually coded with features common to peoples of northern europe; pale skin, long bony faces, downward pointing noses, blonde hair, tall, etc.

thus, some people you find hating on elves are expressing hatred towards white supremacy and a rejection of the idea that there is an Objectively Better race. i think those people are correct in their values and justified in expressing that in a jokey way that engages with the modern fantasy genre.

on the other hand, elves are almost always also coded as feminine. they are naturalists as opposed to industrialists, artisans and intellectuals as opposed to laborers. they are thin, with long head hair and no facial hair. they are emotional, capricious, and impractical. you will often, historically and in modern conservative spaces, straight up see transmisogynistic slurs like "sissy" levied at elves. this almost always goes hand in hand with contrast to dwarves, who are codified as hairy muscular industrialist practical laborers. you even see this in elven wine vs dwarven beer.

i deeply resent when elves are used this way and have a kneejerk reaction whenever i see someone larping as a dwarf who hates elves.

this also touches on the way in which misogyny is used as a shorthand for the bourgeoise! the rugged manly rural farmer in jeans vs the sissy foppish intellectual sex pervert! the way many transmisogynists imagine all trans women as privileged white rich intellectuals that they can Punch Up!

And a lot of them are aware of this (like we are when we make these “humans are space orcs” stories)

Maybe one species enjoys getting bit by something equivalent to mosquitoes. Maybe one actively avoids the hospitable places on their planet because it’s boring without a challenge. You get the gist.

I want to see a bunch of aliens (+humans) sitting around a table talking about how their own species is a bunch of freaks

Best possible addition. This is a top-tier insight

@prokopetz proposed that humans ought to get something special of our own that isn't just "We are the bestest and specialist in some generic way that feels like a vague and unsettling metaphor for American superiority and manifest destiny amidst all the other cultures of the world," and settled on space orcs because "Pursuit predators with freakish endurance" was the ecological niche we occupied during our own evolutionary history up until we started doing the civilization thing. The assumption from the start was that every other sci-fi or fantasy species would each be freaks in their own way, and the point of humans are space orcs was to let us be our own sort of freak, too.

People who expanded on the humans are space orcs stories immediately turned it into a reason to write little stories where humans are the biggest freaks or the only freaks and we are, in fact, the specialest most manifest destinyest je ne sais quoi-laden metaphors for the superiority of American culture over all the other cultures of the world. I hate it I hate it I hate it.

but like…Becky, of course LGBTQ+ people existed before Stonewall. We’ve all existed since the beginning of time. But the movement got a shock to its senses, a jump-start, a rocket-into-space when that glass shattered via Marsha P. Johnson, and when Sylvia Rivera was up on-stage protesting guess who was on the sidelines heckling her?

Without a trans black woman, LGBT+ rights would not exist. Never forget. Never “pay it no mind”.