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Who Is Ellen - 91 - HD (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-04 04:00:02
Imported:
2023-02

Content

Suddenly lore

- At egscomics 

Commentary

For the record, Sorceress George is just as tall as player George, so Nanase's chair is definitely floating (hence why her hair is like that).

Goblins!

I enjoy a lot of things that make use of fantasy and video game RPG tropes. This inevitably means I watch things with their own takes on goblins.

Sometimes, who the goblins are, and why they're an enemy (or NOT an enemy) is actually addressed. Other times, they're just generic cannon fodder enemies, and it is taken as given that it's okay to attack them.

While I don't get on a high horse in response to the latter case, I can't help but wonder what the deal is with those clearly intelligent beings who use tools, and whether they truly are the baddies.

Given that I most commonly encounter this in comedies having fun with fantasy video game tropes, and video game tropes often necessitate generic enemies, this can fairly be seen as thinking too much. The goblins are aggressive generic fantasy enemies, and that's it.

Nonetheless, I do wonder about the goblins, so if I'M going to have goblins as generic enemies, there's at least going to be some backstory to them (even if this is just in the context of a fantasy RPG they're playing).

In this backstory, most goblins likely will be hostile to most player characters, but it's tragic as well. They're intended to be the pawns of a malevolent god, literally created to cause problems for others.

I like to think a number of goblins rejecting this is part of the game world's lore and history. Yeah, their god might have tried to make them all jerks, but even if he succeeded, not every jerk is evil, darn it! Just look at George!

I also like to think that the goblins are a playable race in the game that get bonuses related to smithing and cooking (and alchemy), and that they'd make for really effective crafting builds.

Not that all of this is likely to come up in the comic. I just wanted to have more lore for the goblins than "hey, it's generic bad guys. LET'S GET 'EM!"

Monsters in General

I think "a god did it" is a decent enough explanation for whatever absurd creatures you want to have in a fantasy setting (assuming the gods are actual characters), and can also get around the whole issue of where absurd monsters fit in nature.

The answer is... They don't.

A god was in a mood.

"I have created flying badger rattlesnakes."

"That's REALLY going to mess up the ecosystem. Why'd you make them?"

"Because (BLEEP) the ecosystem!"

Files

Comments

Stephen Gilberg

Another point lifted from Tolkien.

Anonymous

Hearing about all the antisemitic subtext around goblins (especially in a certain well known terf's work) kinda ruined them for me... Except when someone explicitly sets out to subvert the trope.

egscomics
>>101138675

Wait, is that actual Tolkien lore? I know stuff about Orcs from the movies, but not goblins.

Stephen Gilberg
>>101138675

According to The One Wiki to Rule Them All, goblins are the same as Orcs. Just the word used in "The Hobbit."

Thisguy

Combat is one of the primary pillars of most TTRPGS and video games. So its nice not to have to deal with moral and ethical concerns all the time. Having an in-universe explanation for why certain creatures are what they are and why its ok to attack them is fine to me. Though I do count myself as one of those people who can tell reality from fiction, and how I behave in fiction does not reflect how I behave in reality. A lot of people don't seem to think there is a difference.

wargrunt42

Where's Red Cloak when you need him? He'll happily tell you all about the plight of the Goblins, right before he disintegrates you!

Anonymous
>>101138675

Of course Morgoth's motives were a little different than the god in this comic. It also sounds like the god in this comic might have created them from nothing, whereas Morgoth had to breed existing living things (possibly Elves, but Tolkein changed his mind on this a few times, and even in the published Silmarillion it isn't treated as certain) to create his goblins/orcs.

KC
>>101140113

Just don't call him a hypocrite when it comes to caring about goblinkind, even if he kind of is. Then he'll double disintegrate ya!

Anonymous
>>101138821

Yeah, but that's her take on goblins. And they've been around as a thing in folklore for a very, very long time. No need to let someone ruin a perfectly good species of monster that they didn't come up with.

Warren (Stephen) Rose

I recommend the webnovels Pale by wildbow and The Wandering Inn by pirateaba. Both stories have well-fleshed out goblin antagonists and protagonists, generally fighting to revolutionize their culture, for better or worse. Goblins in Pale are chaotic critters that live in the Warrens plane accessible through city sewers and dark tunnels in the woods. Modern Canada setting, so they're very brutal, metal and gross, with specializations in magic drugs and destroying things. They're born from icky bubbles on walls, and may be reincarnated Fae. Bunch of the heroic ones in the main city are trying to build a Night Market and achieve stable culture. Main characters are a trio of young human girls trying to crack the power block of caustic mage families and grant more rights to spirits and wandering critters in general. Goblins in The Wandering Inn are historically beat down and forced to live in small tribes by the dominant cultures. The more powerful a goblin becomes, the more access they get to their ancestral memory. If they get access to memories from X thousand years ago, they have their personality overwritten and go on country-destroying rampages with demigod-level powers - (possibly choosing their targets for abstractly good reasons but always with high civilian casualties). The heroic goblins in the story are working towards achieving equality and respect in civilized areas as well as defusing the Goblin King 'curse'. The main motto of the titular Wandering Inn is "No Killing Goblins" - and it's run by a young woman freshly arrived from Earth who's levelling up as an (Innkeeper).

Warren (Stephen) Rose
>>101140113

This is a reference to the Order of the Stick webcomic by Rich Burlew. The gods definitely created the goblins as walking bits of XP, but there's a new goblin-aspected god in town with Redcloak as his chief priest. Unfortunately Redcloak is serving the main antagonist who frankly stopped caring about anyone's rights or living conditions since he became an undead lich.

Thisguy
>>101140113

Its less that he's serving a Lich (who he's 100% manipulating), and more that he's now has a "I'm always right" mentality, doesn't trust non-goblins, and is beyond the point he can be reasoned with. He also has the distinction, along with Roy, of recognizing how much BS the logic and reasoning is behind the gods and law of the world. Unfortunately, his argument is "You really expect me to believe this convoluted logic which supports your argument?"

Warren (Stephen) Rose
>>101138821

I think that that set of urban goblins are antisemitic because they're hook-nosed, greedy gold-obsessed bankers? Also the first movie gave most of them side lock hairstyles and decked out the bank with Star of David tiles, which were later dropped. Fantasy goblins are less antisemitic in general. Main advice I have is to give them varied hairstyles (if they have hair), different builds and nose shapes, rather than making them cookie cutter clones of each other.

Warren (Stephen) Rose
>>101146920

I mean, both stories also have generic cannon fodder goblins serving those higher up in the pecking order and just trying to get by. The worst (and some of the best) of the Wandering Inn goblins run bandit camps attacking trade caravans. Some of the worst of the Pale goblins are basically child-sized pack-hunting human-shaped velociraptors with zero empathy, while others think it would be really cool and exciting to rule the world and turn all intelligent beings into bloodthirsty cannibals. YMMV.

Narzain

Sidestepping all the fascinating goblin discussion (seriously, you all make some very good points), I just have to say: Sorceress George is pretty darn cute.

James C
>>101138821

Most of the "anti-Semitic" imagery/subtext was added in the movies, and not created by Rowling herself; in the books they are described as short, with round heads, and long fingers/toes, and fond of money… which are all common traits for goblins in European mythology. The only difference being that Rowling's goblins earn their money instead of stealing it. *One* goblin is described as having a "hooked nose"… but almost exactly the same phrasing is used to describe Snape's proboscis. It's a specific personal trait, highlighted in a manner that suggests other goblins don't have the same. Add the fact that they seem to run their culture under a Georgist economic system, and they *written* much closer to having *Russian* subtext. It's like all of the "he's an anti-Semitic caricature!" about Watto when The Phantom Menace came out… resulting in the reveal that he was based on an Italian used-car salesman, not Jewish at all.

James C

The Goblins in "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime" are fairly civilised — and, once the protagonist gets involved, quite cultured too. It leads to severe dissonance — and in some cases jealousy — from humans who are used to thinking of them as "worthless monsters"…

Michael Chui
>>101139187

I mean, I see no problem with people playing racist murderers in fiction. Actors do it all the time. I'm mostly disappointed that the people doing so never seem willing to admit to it, which suggests they're *not* separating reality from fiction as well as you think they are. Their first response is always to justify the racism. It's honestly pretty easy to create a situation where you're always justified in attacking creatures with certain characteristics. In Assassin's Creed, for example, you play an assassin. Murder is what you do. You don't need them to be goblins. You just need them to be in the way. Hell, you have a magic sixth sense that tells you who to kill. And there are any number of games where you play a soldier whose job it is to murder the enemy. It's not hard to justify combat. For some reason, though, you feel that combat is just too morally complex without the racism. What an odd hill to die on.

Some Ed
>>101138821

Saying a fantasy race is discriminatory against a certain group because the fantasy race actually does a thing that the certain group is accused of doing feels a bit off to me. I agree on the detail of the movie appearance, but as James C pointed out, that's the producer and/or director's fault, not the person I cannot believe I'm saying something in defense of. In the case of goblins specifically... it's one of the many ancient words that originally was just a synonym of monster, bugbear, kobold, troll, ... I don't think I remember the full list, but it's astonishing the full breath of variety of description that the various bugaboos have. I think it shows a bit more with the various current depictions of trolls, because you have them ranging from treasure trolls to WoW trolls in popular culture. Outside of popular culture, the big end is more extreme. I'm thinking of one in particular that was within the size range for giant.

Molly McAllister

Nanase really is having a 'failure to discern reality from fantasy' issue here, but coming at it from the opposite side. (possibly complicated by her experience with Magic and Monsters being REALLY REAL THINGS) That response to George reads like, "Did you just drop some eumphamistic white-nationalist BS that I should really call you out on but am too polite to do it here in front of everyone who hasn't even blinked at what you said and this is getting awkward..." Like she's expecting 'Goblin' to be a name for something that actually exists in the 'real' world.

Some Ed
>>101140113

I strongly disbelieve that Xykon stopped caring about anyone else's rights or living conditions when he became a lich. I mean, if he cared about anyone else's rights or living conditions, would he have become a lich? They're kind of known for being that way. Necromancers as a class are known for being that way also, and he by definition had to be a necromancer first. Sure, necromancers *can* care. I'm sure there are some necromancers out there who believe deeply in the importance of people's rights. They aren't working on becoming liches, unless they didn't read that one chapter on what liches are like.

Reed A. Saur

I'm REALLY looking forward to your goblins

Brooks Moses
>>101188439

Remember that she's playing an our-world character who got dumped into that world, so this sort of thing is very in-character for her character.

Molly McAllister
>>101188439

Remember, Nanase is canonically noted for having difficulties with 'Acting'. She's even having difficulty immersing herself in the role of 'You, but slightly different'. Her depiction as herself still sitting at the gaming table while everybody else is 'in-character' is a conceit deliberately intended to remind us of this. Also, who on the North American Continent has never heard of 'Goblins'?

Daryl Sawyer
>>101188439

All that said, the traditional D&D narrative (which was quickly subverted at our table when I was a kid, but still...) very much reads like a cryptic preservation of the worst ideologies of our past.