Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114206What I meant is that Frozen is actually less feminist than The Snow Queen, precisely because it throws the original story aside in favor of an original story that mocks Disney cliches and uses pop-feminism in a cash grab.

Sorry for being all Jumpy. The worldplay used by the left has just got me so mixed up. What the heck does "Feminist" even mean nowadays? In practice, it means to be a damsel in distress just make sure that the men don't point this fact out.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114238It is certainly possible to treat Alignment as being monolithic and on the other hand how many babies can you eat before it cancels out all of the promise keeping that you do?

Baba Yaga is evil with redeeming features. Shes functioned both as an antagonist or protagonist depending on the story. Sometimes both.

If she keeps the promise of letting you have the magic sword to kill the three-headed mega dragon...Well I guess it cancels out someway?
Russian fairytales are pretty rad. Its a mixture of paganistic worldbuilding with Christian underpinnings:

"And then the good christian....PUT THE MONSTER IN A HEADLOCK!"

So yeah, Im a big fan of tropes.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1114271Sorry for being all Jumpy. The worldplay used by the left has just got me so mixed up. What the heck does "Feminist" even mean nowadays?

Current definition of feminist: a person who thinks men and masculinity are inherently evil and oppressive and need to be totally emasculated and subjugated and have their agency stripped and destroyed in order to create a just and fair society.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1114271Baba Yaga is evil with redeeming features. Shes functioned both as an antagonist or protagonist depending on the story. Sometimes both.

If she keeps the promise of letting you have the magic sword to kill the three-headed mega dragon...Well I guess it cancels out someway?
Russian fairytales are pretty rad. Its a mixture of paganistic worldbuilding with Christian underpinnings:

"And then the good christian....PUT THE MONSTER IN A HEADLOCK!"

So yeah, Im a big fan of tropes.

I LOVE Russian fairy tales. So flavorful and interesting. It's a shame so many of the older ones have been lost to time or mangled beyond their original meaning. I draw lots of inspiration from them to create fantasy creatures and villains for my homebrew setting's Russia-inspired nation.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114276I LOVE Russian fairy tales. So flavorful and interesting. It's a shame so many of the older ones have been lost to time or mangled beyond their original meaning.

Well, you find a lot more of them if you're Russian. Being mangled is part of the fun! Gives new flavors to stuff.
Russian Fairytales are one of the only things to survive generally intact under the Soviet Union without too much propaganda.

Russian Fairytales in allot of ways are meant to be passed down through oral tradition. That's why they have so much repetition. Because its meant to loop like a song.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1114278Well, you find a lot more of them if you're Russian.

Yes, this has definitely been a big barrier for me, even with translators! Sad to say some of them, even when I do find and am able to read them, are still beyond my ability to conceptualize without annotation. My cultural understanding is pretty poor I guess, despite my interest.

 

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1114278Russian Fairytales in allot of ways are meant to be passed down through oral tradition.

From my (admittedly hazy) understanding, that is why a lot of the earlier ones were lost over time. Some just never got written down, which is a shame.

Quote from: Pat;1114261That's false. They just need a personality and motivation.

And Baba Yaga eats people, so I don't see how your statement has anything to do with anything I've said.

If I understand you correctly you claim that Alignment stops you from making character distinctions.

If that is what you are saying then you have an incorrect understanding of alignment.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1114271Baba Yaga is evil with redeeming features. Shes functioned both as an antagonist or protagonist depending on the story. Sometimes both.

If she keeps the promise of letting you have the magic sword to kill the three-headed mega dragon...Well I guess it cancels out someway?
Russian fairytales are pretty rad. Its a mixture of paganistic worldbuilding with Christian underpinnings:

"And then the good christian....PUT THE MONSTER IN A HEADLOCK!"

So yeah, Im a big fan of tropes.

I think the reason why Baba Yaga works is that she is such a trope ie that of the Evil Queen or in current terminology Toxic Femininity.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114305I think the reason why Baba Yaga works is that she is such a trope ie that of the Evil Queen or in current terminology Toxic Femininity.

I guess she could be examined as an expression as such (Much more evil crone then queen), but I generally keep away politics from my folk-tales.
The one thing I super regret that SJWs have done to me is impress their mindset onto mine. Everything is polical all the time and there is no space for honest enjoyment.

This is something I feel super bad about, and to a certain extent what they wanted. So when possible I try to get away from it.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114302If I understand you correctly you claim that Alignment stops you from making character distinctions.

I never said or implied that. What I did, twice, is suggest that alignment is correlated with defining villains solely in terms negative traits. Note there's no "stop" in either of those posts. In the first case, I simply stated that the appearance of that phenomenon was linked to the emergence of alignment, and made no claim it was an absolute. And in the second case, I used the word "tendency". Given the subject, the way you inserted absolutes into my posts is kind of ironic.

There's nothing about alignment that forces anyone to attribute only negative or reversed traits to evil characters, but many people do seem to get trapped in that type of dualistic thinking. Evil is not the opposite of good, and creating characters based on that mentality leads to absurd results. Characters, first and foremost, need to have human traits. Even iconic or mythic characters, wreathed in symbolism, just have the traits written large. Evil emerges from those traits. It can be when negative traits become overwhelming, but it's often when good or neutral traits are taken to extremes, or based on the decisions made when good or neutral traits are in conflict. It's not a simple inversion of good.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1114318I guess she could be examined as an expression as such (Much more evil crone then queen), but I generally keep away politics from my folk-tales.
The one thing I super regret that SJWs have done to me is impress their mindset onto mine. Everything is polical all the time and there is no space for honest enjoyment.

You can't really express Baba Yaga in terms of modern politics. She doesn't fit nicely into any of the niches, and any attempts to force her into one diminishes her.

Having an old forest witch with a chicken legged hut in your game is a trope, but Baba Yaga herself isn't a "trope".  Rather she is an instantiation of an archetype, that of the cannibal or devouring feminine crone.  If you want to capture the same archetypal feel you need to invent your own sinister witch like NPC villain.  

This figure may use magic to appear young and beautiful, but must actually be old and ugly.  She is past the age of any sexual desirability or child rearing.  She may pretend to be kind or maternal, but this must be only a cover for her cannibalistic nature.  She is in this way an inversion of feminine virtue who preys upon the most vulnerable. She must exist on the fringes or outskirts of society, but also appear anywhere and move around at will.  She is a unpredictable and universal threat. At the same time, she possesses powerful magic and many magical artifacts.  She could be a resource for the very brave or very stupid PC.

While an inversion of feminine virtue she still IS feminine in a classic and stereotypical sense.  She is not interested in politics usually, except when it affects her ego, or when it can be used as a lever to get what she really wants.  She may also be willing to let PCs travel through her realms unmolested if they do her some small favor of grant her some kind of trinket, but she will remember them and that's probably a very bad thing.  Think of every narcissistic slighted woman you've ever met and you're getting close to the mark.  

Approaching all archetypes should be done in this way.  First figure out what the archetype is all about, then make your fresh version.  This way you avoid superficial copying and the obvious cliched nature of pop culture tropes.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1114318I guess she could be examined as an expression as such (Much more evil crone then queen), but I generally keep away politics from my folk-tales.
The one thing I super regret that SJWs have done to me is impress their mindset onto mine. Everything is polical all the time and there is no space for honest enjoyment.

This is something I feel super bad about, and to a certain extent what they wanted. So when possible I try to get away from it.

Its not really political, the male version is the Tyrant King.  If I was to map the tropes to the DnD Alignment system the Good King (LG), the Tyrant (LE), the Good Queen (CG) and the Evil Queen (CE)

Quote from: Shasarak;1114336Its not really political, the male version is the Tyrant King.  If I was to map the tropes to the DnD Alignment system the Good King (LG), the Tyrant (LE), the Good Queen (CG) and the Evil Queen (CE)

Interesting that masculine/feminine maps to Law/Chaos... paging Dr. Peterson.

Quote from: Brendan;1114337Interesting that masculine/feminine maps to Law/Chaos... paging Dr. Peterson.

But what of Lobsters? :eek:

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114338But what of Lobsters? :eek:

Lobsters use the AD&D druid progression rules.  In order to move up a lobster level you must challenge and defeat a higher level lobster.

QuoteThere are only nine lobsters of level twelve; each has three assistants.  These assistants are the same level for each lobster, but each lobster has higher level assistants according to the relationship between their current experience.  Thus, the twelfth-level Lobster with the least experience (in points) is served by three level-one lobsters, and the one with the most experience is served by three ninth-level lobsters.  The single thirteenth-level Archlobster is served by three initiates of the eighth circle, and the fourteenth-level Great Lobster is served by nine initiates of the ninth circle.  These servitors and protectors are not henchmen; the lobsters may have henchmen in addition to this.

A character may only achieve twelfth-level Lobster if there is a vacancy or he bests one of the nine current Lobsters in spell or hand-to-hand combat.  If the combat is not mortal, the loser drops to the beginning of level eleven, initiate of the ninth circle.  This process is repeated for becoming the thirteenth-level Archlobster (with the loser reverting to Lobster) and the fourteenth-level Great Lobster (with the loser reverting to Archlobster).

Quote from: Brendan;1114339Lobsters use the AD&D druid progression rules.  In order to move up a lobster level you must challenge and defeat a higher level lobster.

A version of the Little Mermaid done using that would be a lot more interesting.