Tolkien’s orcs were bred from captured elves that were intentionally tortured and mutated by the dark magics of what basically amounted to an archdevil, ie. the fallen Valar Morgoth/Melkor.
2 Likes
This is quite true! 
Most people don’t know that.
Wow. This has been a really interesting thread (though admittedly I skimmed some parts that diverged greatly from the original topic). It’s also been quite relevant to me because I’ve been giving a lot of thought to which identifiers are necessary during character creation, and how that fits into a high fantasy setting. Specifically, a high fantasy setting in which you play an immigrant to a fairly typical medieval European fantasy kingdom (though I have been imagining them as largely dark haired/dark eyed/light olive skinned people), and deals with xenophobia (which tends to have racial/classist correlations). I thought perhaps I could just reference geographical areas or relative cardinal directions? Ex: an elf/dwarf/human/halfling from the northern highlands, an elf/human/orc from the eastern desert, an elf/human/orc from the southern jungles, a human/dwarf/halfling from the western plains. Of course, I’ll figure out some proper names for these places so that it would read like “The Catellan Highlands to the north”. This, I would hope, would give the impression of diversity without having clumsy racial equivalents. The reader could then imagine what elves from the southern jungles or humans from the western plains look like all on their own.
WELP time to revive a dead thread, because I’ve got a bit of an iffy one for me.
I’m working on a WiP (obvs), and I’m coming up with descriptors for hair. I’d like to be able to include more African-type hair (think 3C and above) without using terminology that comes off as offensive. I’d prefer to keep to one-word descriptions, just for stylistic purposes on my stats screen, however if I have to use multiple words, I will.
Obviously, nappy is a HUGE no. I’m wondering if kinky is as offensive? I’ve always used it to describe my curls when I’ve gone into humid air (I’ve got 3A-3B** curls, myself, naturally), but I don’t want to even remotely come off as racially insensitive. (I’ve been searching it on google, but some of my results are…less than desirable due to the search terms involved, so)
If that’s a no, what would you suggest?
I’ve seen hair described as kinky in books so maybe it’s okay?
Here’s a resource I’ve used when describing the hair of some of my characters. That blog also has some other suggestions I’ve found helpful on describing skin tones, facial features, and other aspects of a person’s appearance in a respectful, sensitive way.
9 Likes
dude that resource is 10/10. Bookmarking for future reference. Thanks so much! 
2 Likes
I have 3c hair! I think curly, kinky, coily are all OK?