Thoughts on fantasy and subversion...
Last night while walking and listening to my Elven Lacryment playlist, I found myself thinking about my race of "Dark Elves", the Glenney, and how I can make them different than a common drow. (Note: I'm going to use drow with a lower case D to differentiate from my character Drow Konran.)
There are some fundamental things that the drow do or have that I shamelessly cribbed, such as the dark skin, red eyes, white hair trifecta of evil and awesomeness. The incest (NSFW) , and matriarchel leadership are all in tact too, as well as the scheming, diabolic nature. So really, there's not much difference between, say, my main Glenney girl Aimath (NSFW) and Drizzt's sisters. (Virna was my favorite...)
History Lesson Time!!
The first character ever created for what eventually turned out to be EL was ShadowWolf for a very, very not following the rules game of some excuse for D&D and except for a few things, she hasn't changed much. Mostly it was just her outfit that changed. ShadowWolf is a very dear character to me, one of my key figures and I created her when I was 17 or so. ShadowWolf is 10 years old.
So, understandably, a lot of 'Wolf's history is mired in D&D stock. So how do I change that?
Then over time, I made more elves and fantasy characters, each with their own worlds and pasts and rules. And then I did a little mental "What if X met Y?" and with some heavy hammering out of the dents, Elven Lacryment was born, and I re-shaped some rules based on everything I already knew.
Now I have a handle on 'original' elves and humans, so I'm not worried about them. My problem are the drow and orcs.
If you actually look up, orc in Wikipedia, they're basically public domain it seems, but there's got to be a way to subvert it, right?
And them my mind went to the idea of subversion. How exactly does one subvert something? And how can you subvert orcs any further than they've already been subverted?
To subvert something, the easiest and most obvious way is to do the opposite of the established, but you can't really do that with orcs anymore. There's the warmongering orcs in EL, LoTR or the proud noble race in WoW and Dominic Deegan. Clearly, the orcs in EL are the warmongering ones. I'm a bit lost as to how to make my orcs interesting. You know, other than the whole one-elven-woman-bent-on-genocide thing.
Now back to the Glenney, I have tiny changes to them that differentiates them from drow. They have coloured hilights in their hair for one. There eyes are also different shades of red and the pupils are slitted. I took the sign language away and gave it to another race, too. Finally, they have fangs. I don't recall if D&D drow had fangs. Is this enough? Or is it still painfully derivative?
World building is HARD!
There are some fundamental things that the drow do or have that I shamelessly cribbed, such as the dark skin, red eyes, white hair trifecta of evil and awesomeness. The incest (NSFW) , and matriarchel leadership are all in tact too, as well as the scheming, diabolic nature. So really, there's not much difference between, say, my main Glenney girl Aimath (NSFW) and Drizzt's sisters. (Virna was my favorite...)
History Lesson Time!!
The first character ever created for what eventually turned out to be EL was ShadowWolf for a very, very not following the rules game of some excuse for D&D and except for a few things, she hasn't changed much. Mostly it was just her outfit that changed. ShadowWolf is a very dear character to me, one of my key figures and I created her when I was 17 or so. ShadowWolf is 10 years old.
So, understandably, a lot of 'Wolf's history is mired in D&D stock. So how do I change that?
Then over time, I made more elves and fantasy characters, each with their own worlds and pasts and rules. And then I did a little mental "What if X met Y?" and with some heavy hammering out of the dents, Elven Lacryment was born, and I re-shaped some rules based on everything I already knew.
Now I have a handle on 'original' elves and humans, so I'm not worried about them. My problem are the drow and orcs.
If you actually look up, orc in Wikipedia, they're basically public domain it seems, but there's got to be a way to subvert it, right?
And them my mind went to the idea of subversion. How exactly does one subvert something? And how can you subvert orcs any further than they've already been subverted?
To subvert something, the easiest and most obvious way is to do the opposite of the established, but you can't really do that with orcs anymore. There's the warmongering orcs in EL, LoTR or the proud noble race in WoW and Dominic Deegan. Clearly, the orcs in EL are the warmongering ones. I'm a bit lost as to how to make my orcs interesting. You know, other than the whole one-elven-woman-bent-on-genocide thing.
Now back to the Glenney, I have tiny changes to them that differentiates them from drow. They have coloured hilights in their hair for one. There eyes are also different shades of red and the pupils are slitted. I took the sign language away and gave it to another race, too. Finally, they have fangs. I don't recall if D&D drow had fangs. Is this enough? Or is it still painfully derivative?
World building is HARD!