Level 8: #20
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Monstrous Misadventures! Updated every Wednesday at noon, EST.
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Can we get Maddie in on this? Someone needs to be smote.
I’m hoping Roxy hits a long fly ball deep into left sinus, sometime.
Mimic seems to think this is a hot stove league….
Between the 1st-panel of this page, & the 2nd-to-last-panel of the previous page, I find myself *very* suspicious of that elf’s “racist/elitist” behavior. It manifested *so* suddenly, & in *so* exaggerated a form, it makes me suspect that she’s covering-up some secret about her team-mate…
…something that would be considered a rules-violation…
…something that would be exposed by an outsider’s medical examination…
…perhaps a non-elf “ringer”, playing on a team that claims to be all-elf…?
Wait, so has Roxy been a half-elf this whole time?? Or is there some other meaning I’m supposed to be getting from that? Maybe it’s a reference to her relationships with non-elves? I don’t get it.
The latter. It’s pretty clearly this setting’s equivalent of getting called an apple, banana/twinkie, oreo, or so on in modern America.
This means absolutely nothing to me. Care to elaborate further?
It means, “you look like one of us, but you aren’t REALLY one of us.” As far as I know, this is just a U.S. thing, but for example, a group of African-Americans “from the streets” might refer to another African-American who grew up in the suburbs, with all the advantages the inner-city kids lacked, as an oreo: black on the outside; white on the inside. A group of Asian-Americans might refer to another Asian-American as a banana (or twinkie): yellow on the outside; white on the inside. And so forth. Putting it mildly, it is not a polite thing to say.
More like you will get called an oreo if you actually study and work hard in school so that you can get out of the projects instead of buying into hood culture (sex, drugs, rap). Because that’s “acting white”. Ask me how I know.
Actually that’s not a U.S. thing . . .
It’s pretty sick. Criticising a fellow minority for not being stereotypical.
Wait, so the suburbs are where “priveliged” people live!? That’s… very different to what I’ve encountered in Australia. Here it seems to be that the poor mostly end up in suburban wasteland sattelite towns. Inner suburbs are for the wealthy, and inner city for folk with steady jobs and living high-rise to avoid a commute.
Australia is a lot smaller than the USA, particularly when ignoring the Outback and other similarly nigh-unlivable places. So it makes a lot of sense that living space would be at a premium for y’all.
Here in Murica, we spent a good solid couple of centuries constantly expanding into new virgin territory (shoving aside the occasional inconvenient indigenous tribes); anytime you wanted to get away from something, you could always move further west into unspoiled territory that you’d have all to yourself. So even after we finally ran out of new frontiers to populate, it’s pretty deeply bred into our national DNA that the ultimate aspirational lifestyle involves having a huge amount of space and privacy. Not having to tolerate inconvenient neighbors is something our bourgeoisie places considerable weight upon, so while not wanting to be completely away from civilization, they very frequently prefer driving for a solid hour to and from work each day, over having anyone too close while they’re at home.
There’s this website called Urban Dictionary that you can search whenever you’re ignorant of a particular piece of slang. You ought to give it a try.
Comes with a big disclaimer though, since anyone can put anything they want on it. If it’s completely made-up, it may not last long, but that’s only if someone actually notices it.
Yeah, but you can expect almost every word on there to have at least one definition that’s a weird sex move…
I’d go with it meaning Roxy’s half-elf. Notice that the baseball elves are noticeably paler, and the captain’s muttering darkly about “sun-tanned” and “freckled”, suggesting those are things which mark Roxy as half-elven.
I’m pretty sure that Roxy is full elf, just raised by humans (and human barbarians no less). We learn back in Level 3 that Robespierre’s clan adopted Roxy as “but a wee elfling.”
Doesn’t necessarily mean she’s not a half elf, they might just not have noticed that she was a half-elf.
That said, it’s probably just the pale girl being rude, especially since we’ve seen other elves that look like Roxanne, such as those elf musicians from the concert…
“Pale elf” could easily be a specific subrace, such as forgotten realms’ Star Elves or Warcraft’s Blood Elves.
Not necessarily; being an outdoorsy elf who’s obviously influenced by human culture could be enough, if those elves are insular or high-and-mighty enough. Imagine some crusty old-boy gentleman looking at a kid who’s a hard-core anime fan, same dynamic 😛
Is it just me, or are elves jerks in every genre?
No that’s about right. Which is why playing Overlord 2 is so satisfying. You get to mercilessly crush or enslave them while wearing a helmet from the same store Sauron shops at.
Nope. Making your elves jerks is the voluntary choice of the writer.
Albeit that writers who are doing parodies are probably limited by the source material.
It does seem as though few writers can resist the temptation. These days, if you’re not using this trope, then you’re probably deconstructing it; it’s almost impossible to portray elves positively without making them obnoxiously perfect Mary Sues, and readers usually despise those, so almost all writers will proactively show the audience “See? You’re right to hate them, because they’re terrible!” Almost nobody plays it straight, for fear of coming across as a pollyanna. (You would think the Brony movement would have had some effect, but somehow it’s easier for modern audiences to take magical sparkle-people if they have hooves instead of pointy ears, I guess? I don’t get it either.)
The Hollow Kingdom trilogy is actually my favorite story involving elves and it does deconstruct the whole “elves being jerks” thing. Basically, the elves are a lot like they are in most fantasies (pretty, magical, etc.) but they have a weakness that has nearly killed off all of them, and some of the survivors have turned nasty due to their desperate situation. In the end, the elves wind up feeling humanized, but different from humans, if that makes sense. Elves are really only in the second and third books, but I highly recommend the whole trilogy. The books deconstruct a lot of other fantasy tropes in a very interesting way too.
Wow, that was quite the tangent I went off on. I’m actually kind of disappointed that this looks like standard racism after people were throwing crazy theories like “they’re all secretly vampires” around. XD
Tolkien’s elves aren’t really jerks. The Mirkwood Silvan are territorial and untrusting, but they aren’t jackasses on the whole (discounting Feanor of course, but that’s Feanor).
Actually, a lot of elves in The Silmarillion are total pricks. But Tolkien was the one established all the “beautiful, perfect, immortal elves” tropes anyway. Before his books, the lines between faeries, goblins, and elves was pretty fuzzy.
From Pratchett’s book Lords and Ladies:
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”
The standing stones aren’t there to keep things in. They’re there to keep the elves out.
The standing stones aren’t there to keep things out. They’re there to keep the elves in.
Something like that…
One of my favourite Pratchett quotes, thanks for reminding me!
Pratchett may never have had much grasp of poetry, but his talent for metaphor, his creativity, and above all his sheer wit, are truly superb.
REAL elves have pointy bums too.
So do porcupines.
Well if anyone can speak up for the roundness of Roxie’s bottom, it’s Mimic.
The Count de Conspiracy just got more evil ideas.
Why would Mimic pretend to be a stove in the middle of a baseball field? Normally he’s a fairly smart guy er creature.
Obviously he was more concerned about Roxy than his disguise.
Actually, I think Mike only drew Mimic as a stove to have another pointy devil’s tail thingy on the same page as the Count of Evil, Intrigue, Doom and 50 shades of desaturated colors [tm]. Why is the count down there, readying to start a civil war, anyway?
Actually, Mimic has clearly already returned to his “normal” treasure-chest form before that guy was even shown.
’cause it looks impressively skulduggery-ish
A stove? They must need him to warm a pitcher…
The Count has that odd pointed shape on his shoulder’s shadow again. Guess this confirms that there’s *something* up with him that isn’t normally visible.
If you’re referring to the shadow-profile on the Count’s LEFT-side (=”our RIGHT-side”, because the Count faces us), I believe that this is the outline of the Count’s hat.
No, it’s not his hat. It’s got that pointy hook arrow thing going on. Don’t know what it’s called. But yeah, it’s definitely not his hat.
We’ve already seen the small creature hanging around his back by the outline of its shadow enough times that there shouldn’t be any doubt it’s constantly hanging around on his back/shadow, is there?
I do still hope the elevs turn out to be vampires, though. Not because I care about being right, but because after a remark like that, I REALLY want to see that female elf have something sharp shoved through her heart (if she has one).
The convenient thing about staking the heart is it works on more than just vampires.
Am I the only one to poke fun at “how round her bottom is”…
I don’t think it’s her bottom that’s being referred to. The phrase “round-heeled” in American slang is an insult meaning that the target is willing to have sex with anybody, for little or no money. Effectively she just told Roxy “You may look like an elf but you’re nothing but a cheap slut”, all in one word.