Things I did not know

[james_davis_nicoll]

Apparently in their current version, the skin of Drow who convert to good becomes lighter coloured while the "blackness of the drow's skin has become a permanent sign of their depravity". The Curse of the Lamanites angle seems to have been introduced by self-confessed Canadian author Lisa Smedman in The Lady Penitent.

Nicked from arielstarshadow

Comments

Re: Wait, can I change my answer?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Ballantine is still Ballantine but Del Rey is their SF imprint. I believe Gor was long gone over to DAW by the time the Del Rey imprint was founded, however.

Re: Wait, can I change my answer?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Ah. I'm not actually losing my brain. Here's an ISFDB record for one from 1991, Del Rey/Ballantine. Older cover though.

Looks like they switched to DAW with volume 7.

Re: Wait, can I change my answer?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll be damned.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Drizzt books ever involved this, though. (I can't say for certain, but one of the big points with the Drizzt books [besides lots of violence] has been that Drizzt still looks like every other drow out there and drow are to be hated and feared and woe is Drizzt.)(There is, of course, still the skeeviness of "black elves = EVIL", but it's slightly less skeevy than "black evil elves who become good become lighter-skinned".)

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

It's called Eberron. How successful they've been at this depiction is debatable, but at least they make the attempt.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

IIRC, she was Lolth first, the name Lloth was Salvatore's shtick. Personally, I think it was a typo that he ran with.

[dinpik.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of the new series, but in the original Dragonlance books, the only 'dark elf' character was called that because he turned away from Good (all elves were Good!) and became evil. His skin was as pale as the rest of the elves'.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that setting had the opposite problem of having all the PC (And some of the monster) races integrated into a single homogeneous monoculture, without considering any of the implications of the differing living requirements of, say, elves and ogres. It also suffered from the stndard "Ethnic Fantasy" flaw of being slavishly devoted to the surface trapping of the source material, while downplaying or outright ignoring any aspects of it that would confuse or squick American readers.

Re: Wait, can I change my answer?

[seawasp]

"Ghost" was a literal "never meant to be published" book that John wrote to get it out of his head. He made the mistake of mentioning it to Jim. Who then insisted on offering money for it and publishing it.

It has since become John's most successful book/series.

This is real irony for you.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she was Lolth first -- I bought Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits when it came out in 1981(?), and she was Lolth.

(You kids get off my lawn)

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

AFAICT, RaceFail shows no signs of slowing down, so I'm hoping it lasts until at least next January so that RaceFail09 can be totally inaccurate.

Then at least there'll be something to laugh about.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Er, maybe "totally" was the wrong word to use there.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

I've asked this else where, but how many of the seemingly self-replicating multitude of awards for SF/F are named for Joseph Campbell, a man who was, despite his many other qualities, something of a white supremicist with very... interesting views on the american civil war?

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought, but that was so long ago, I couldn't remember which came first.

[avram]

None?

John Campbell, on the other hand...

(Yeah, I get 'em mixed up sometimes too.)

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that I always go "Bruce, no, Jo?something, joseph? yeah that sounds right... Joseph Campbell."

And wiki'ing now I see that Joseph Campbell is the campbellian hero guy! Which I'd ironically been blaming on John Campbell...

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I know you meant John. There has been controversy around Joseph; but John was a suppurating racial hemorrhoid of a man, a braying jackass at the edge of acceptable public Northern opinion even for the 1940s. (He finished his degree at Duke, which is also where he encountered the idea that psi powers were scientific. He almost certainly didn't know the new campus was designed by a black man.)

As far as I know, there are just the two: the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, which only has one racist on the jury at present, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Re: Wait, can I change my answer?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I wonder what happened? Not in the sense of actual curiosity, but the sort of wondering one does when one sees a large bloodstain on the sidewalk and the remnants of police tape.

[deor.livejournal.com]

Well, my game world was, and I daresay a few other homemade worlds as well. I didn't even color-code the dragons. But as for the official realms - ick.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I'll be setting up a PayPal link for you folks to buy "White No More" shortly. Comes in nano-gel body scrub as well as refreshing bath spritz form!

(Warning: White No More is not to be taken internally. Several applications may be necessary. White No More will not increase penis length. Do not taunt White No More. Those people have enough problems.)

[graeme-lindsell.livejournal.com]

Drow have always been one of the nastier elements of D&D, the Ethnic Cleansing Game. Black elf = evil, white elf = good. Of course, all the powergamers wanted to play drow because they were mechanically superior.

I was a bit surprised they didn't make 4th edition drow Shadowfell residents in the core cosmology, then you'd have an elvish race native to each of the Feywild, Middle World and Shadowfell. They could have even made them non-evil by default. Can't have that though.

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

Ballantine only reprinted its Gor books until the, um, 1990s, and those are supposedly consensual.

?????

Possibly never has the "FSVO" marker been more needed.

Re: Wait, can I change my answer?

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

Wonder what happened re what? John Norman moving from Del Rey to DAW? The story I heard was that a female editor at Ballantine/Del Rey -- either Betty Ballantine or Judy-Lynn del Rey, I can't remember which at this late date but it was definitely a woman -- was, well, editing Norman/Lange's deathless prose and he was getting more and more tired of it, and enter Don Wollheim, Publisher In Search of a Cash Cow, who offered to print his manuscripts as is, and Norman jumped ship.

(The switch-over came between books 7 and 8, by the way.)

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

It's not my reading, but it seems to be a contentious topic among people who have read Norman much more avidly than I have. Why not err on the side of generosity? (I usually regret this later.)

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

Personally, I find this to be a nice touch. Plenty of real world cultures have stories like this, so putting them into a game world, regardless of whether they fit our modern American sensibilities, makes the setting in question seem more "realistic" to me. YMMV, of course. The fact that they did something like this so half-assedly _does_ offend me, but it's hardly the worst thing they did to the setting for fourth edition.