hypershadicman

[hypershadicman]

my grudge against tom 'inventor of Stunned' killsixbilliondemons continues

[hypershadicman]

[hypershadicman]

[hypershadicman]

by 33.@33_dott

[hypershadicman]

Okay, I completely understand that getting time off work can be a Sisyphean ordeal these days, but every time I run into the whole "only rich people go on vacation" discourse I'm thinking surely I'm not the only one whose childhood experience of "going on vacation" was piling everybody into the car and driving for six hours to pay twenty dollars a day for the privilege of setting up some leaky tents on a fifty-foot-by-fifty-foot patch of dirt next to a mosquito-infested pond in a "private campground" whose only standout features were a. an outdoor miniature golf course that hadn't been maintained in twenty years, and b. a truly breathtaking fire ant population.

[hypershadicman]

[hypershadicman]

I'm asking you because I've seen people ask you similar questions before. Why are kobolds, as a fantasy creature, so nebulous?

Generally when people say orc, goblin, elf, dwarf, werewolf, vampire etc. a person can have a pretty solid idea of what traits that animal will have. I guess because they're usually copying that species from the same similar source works?

What happened to kobolds? I used to know them as a kind of german folklore creature, but then also as a short lizard person, and most recently there's been Dungeon Meshi, which gives the name kobold to anthropomorphic dogs.

Well, the trick is that none of these terms have a standard definition. In folklore, the words "elf", "dwarf", "gnome", "troll", "goblin", "pixie", etc. are used more or less interchangeably – all of these words might refer to the exact same folkloric critter, and conversely, the same word might be used to refer to several completely different folkloric critters, even within the same body of regional folklore, to say nothing of how their usage varies across different regions and over time.

Literally the only reason any of these terms have "standard" definitions in modern popular culture is because one specific piece of media got mega-popular and everybody copied it. For example, Tolkien is responsible not only for the popular media stereotypes of elves and dwarves: he's responsible for popularising the idea that "elf" and "dwarf" are separate kinds of creatures to begin with. Similarly, while Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't solely responsible for cementing the idea of what a vampire is in popular culture, it did standardise what vampire magic can do, and it helped cement the idea that a "vampire" and a "werewolf" are different beasties, which hasn't always been the case.

So the short answer is that there's just never been a mega-popular work about "kobolds" to provide a standard template for the type. Most modern depictions in Anglophone popular culture ultimately point back to the interpretation set forth by Dungeons & Dragons, but D&D itself has gone back and forth on the whether they're tiny dog-people or tiny lizard-people, with the tiny dog-person version being the earlier of the two, so even folks who are directly cribbing from D&D will vary on this point depending on which particular edition they're name-checking.

[hypershadicman]

[hypershadicman]

[hypershadicman]

James Baldwin: “After all, you’re accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it’s obscene.”

[hypershadicman]

It's always fun to see people manage to turn niche interests into serious undertakings, particularly if you've been passingly familiar with their work for a long time. Like, I'll see a post with a username I recognise cross my dash and think "hey, that's the person who used to draw pictures of Patchouli Knowledge with a dick the size of her forearm like a decade ago – I should go see what they're up to these days", and it turns out the answer is "their solo-developed bullet hell shooter about cute android girls is trending 100% positive on Steam".

[hypershadicman]

[hypershadicman]

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[hypershadicman]

every autistic person watching this episode of dungeon meshi:

[hypershadicman]

[hypershadicman]

This meme is inescapable on French insta so I'm posting it here for all to enjoy