"mages have made their suffering known but templars never have" is supposed to sound deep but it really is so stupid when you think about it for more than 5 seconds.
obviously it's stupid because it's not true and the "but the oppressors suffer just as much!!!" narrative sucks, but also i get so stuck on the phrasing of "mages have made their suffering known" ...have they? it's worded as though they've been campaigning for their rights instead of getting killed (by us!) in the hinterlands after rebelling against openly abusive circles that everyone knew about and was fine with for centuries. their suffering "being known" helped the chantry in the same way having a group of people to vilify and exploit will help any corrupt institution, so treating it like it's an area where they have some kind of advantage over the templars feels like a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of how oppression works.
Also Templars have absolutely been talking about how much they are suffering in every single game so far. And use it to make the mages' suffering worse every time.
on "maormer" and their origins in māori racial stereotypes
kia ora (hello/good health), i made a post about this a few years back, but i feel the need to update it. this isn't a dig at anyone with maormer ocs, just a post acknowledging racism in the elder scrolls regarding maormer.
basically, a concerning number of people don't know that maormer are based off of māori people, despite it being in the name. we understand that the races in the elder scrolls are heavily based off of real-world races and maormer is a very poignant example for this. like, in this post i point out a depiction of a sacred entity is traced into tes:o for an example of how blatant it is, so if the name isn't enough to convince you, keep reading.
māori are indigenous polynesians with a rich culture, known for our woodwork and carving, weaving, and tā moko (sacred tattooing), among other things. we have a deep respect for the ocean as voyagers.
we fought off pākehā (white colonisers) for quite awhile and thus got treated as uniquely vicious, warhungry, and violent. we did not stigmatise sex, so we were seen as overtly crude and predatory. during the musket wars/genocide, certain iwi (tribes) sided with pākehā and took other māori as slaves. while we had the concept of slavery pre-colonisation, it looked very different to modern day slavery and the slavery practiced by these iwi was taken directly from european influence, not traditional māori customs.
meanwhile, maormer are a race of vicious, tall/large slavers who pillage the mainland, the good people of tamriel. they have "intricate tattoos". they are said to have potentially been a cross between aldmer and the "bestial tribes of pyandonea", implying that there are not only other tribes in pyandonea that are racialised as primitive and inhuman, but that maormer had sex with these "bestial" beings, which is a bit. eugh. they also interbreed with sea giants to make even larger inhuman brutes. there are multiple depictions and theories in the in-game lore that imply maormer are less "human" than the other elf races.
they have "breeding pits" which is not elaborated on but feels pointed at māori displays of open sexuality. māori considered sex just... another thing to do. you would walk past two (or more) people having sex in public, say "oh, they're busy" and go on your way. "breeding pits" is not only dehumanising but weirdly pointed, like i said.
pyandonea and polynesia have the same number of letters. they both even start with a p, lol. pyandonea is described as a tropical jungle, off limits to anyone not indigenous to the continent as the land itself is shielded by a cloud of fog and the flora is known to sink ships. polynesia is a grouping that refers to multiple islands in the pacific, most of which are tropical (māori in particular had to adapt to a uniquely cold climate! we still had vast jungles, however). this reads to me as a continuation of the common trope that land (especially jungles) is something inherently hostile to outsiders (and thus must be tamed by the coloniser; both the land and its savage peoples).
they carve serpent totems that are quite easily proven as directly traced from a specific taniwha drawing from aotearoa:
taniwha represent many things and have many appearances but are generally depicted as serpents, to be clear.
there are a few good maormer but they're the outliers, most of the race is controlled by an evil godking who is analogous to a tohunga. a tohunga is a person skilled in something but is commonly translated to mean "priest" or even "wizard" as they hold sacred knowledge regarding "magic" for lack of a better word. maormer use serpent magic and tame sea serpents in a way analogous to many taniwha stories.
they have several gods including "mother sea" although it is unknown whether or not they're talking about an entity or the ocean itself. there were at least some maormer that followed hermaeus mora and/or molag bal. māori (and all polynesians) revered the ocean and treated it as a living entity. i think it's interesting that the only gods spoken of apart from mother sea are Bad and Evil.
they have weird propaganda pieces implying they're "the chosen people of aldmeris" (see: the book with the same name in tes:o) and that they have pure blood compared to "mongrel" races. māori had a very common theory applied to them, that we were aryan. (and thus related to white people, which means white people are also Technically indigenous to aotearoa, which means they can landgrab. bit of a leap in logic ay). we also are inherently a "mixed" race as we were so heavily colonised by pākehā that all of us now have some form of pākehā blood in us. there is no such thing as a pure blooded māori, not that it matters.
most of their attacks are described as "utter failures" which is fascinating as māori, the race they're based on, were quite proficient at driving off other people. it's like "this race of vicious polynesian stand-ins is Actually terrible at combat despite their constant attacks on the mainland! they can Never succeed!" it feels odd.
there's more that i'll potentially get into in another post, but i hope this was at least educating for some people. if anyone has questions, feel free to ask and i'll get to them!
I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old "the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power" route, but it's almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.
Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren't keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn't one of those "well, it's okay when we do it" deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.
It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.
The Bluminarmour project is trying to raise money for a set of fully fitted armour that I can use for testing historical and fantasy tropes and movement. If you want to see more content about armour, behind the scenes fitting and manufacturing info, or pose references, please consider chipping in if you can!
You've probably answered this a million times before, but I have a question. You've said that your Tinglers are sincere, and I certainly believe that (I haven't read one myself yet due to various personal reasons so I don't feel comfortable making a judgement myself), but like... parts of them/their concept that are funny are often meant to be funny, right? Or am I making an incorrect assumption? Like the titles (they remind me of Japanese light novel titles and I love them very much for that), and the frequent presence of anthropomorphic dinosaurs. (Not that dinosaurs AREN'T hot as hell - they very much are.) I'm autistic too and I admire you a lot for managing to be both successful (in doing what you love) and sincere, something that is pretty hard to do. So I hope this doesn't come off as bad faith. Thanks for receiving my ask :)
it is totally fine to ask buckaroo. i think part of issue is that i am a naturally funny person even when i dont try to be. some of this trot is accidental, and some of it is on purpose. this is pretty common with autistic people i think, because a very effective form of comedy is the 'fish out of water' trot: one person contrasting with the world around them
so if i just honestly talk about the way i see things, as a neurodivergent person, there is going to be comedy. i recognize that. i use it as an artistic tool sometimes. i can learn into it or pull back from it
but all of that said, it is not the purpose of my art. when i write a tingler i never think: this is for someone to laugh at. i simply recognize that they probably will, and i am more than happy to give them that
personally, i dont even really like comedy, it is not at all my preferred genre. just not for me.
every once in a while someone online will post a sort of hot take thats like: 'i just dont think chuck tingles books are funny. why is he still making the same joke?'
and i always kind of get a kick out of that because i think
one: a dont think my books are funny either
two: because im not making a joke
so i guess me and the haters have a lot in common.
anyway, the art that i make is not JUST MINE. it is a collaboration between me AND you in a sort of endless loop. just because im the one who made it, that dosent mean i know what it is any better than someone else. in other words, if you laugh at it, you are not wrong. you are just as correct as i am when i dont laugh
so what is MY reaction to the tingleverse? what are the things i feel when i see my books? i think: that is fun. that is cute. that is clever. that is joyful. that is sweet. that is interesting. that is whimsical.
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
gummygunk
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
ellievsbear
