also a good way to go into fantasy society worldbuilding or just worldbuilding in general is just to remember "no animal is inheritly evil, no human is inheritly cruel and deserving of punishment for being alive, and no species is deserving of a death penalty simply for how they look. no matter what."

like. if you have a species that say. is being ruled by an evil overlord and as such rules under a very violent society. however if person of that species is taken outside of this society, they can become a better person and learn from their misdeeds. if a member of the species isn't raised inside the walls of this violent society, they'll turn out just how their parents raise them, not how the society expects them to act.

but if you have a society where the species inside of it is "inheritly" seen as evil or stupid, where even raising a child out of this environment they are still mean no matter what. stop. that does not make sense. that gives off a very weird message. it's way more compelling and thoughtful if you state that its an upbringing, or a society, that makes someone who they are, not that its "inherit." holds up hands. back away from the stage a little. no one is inherently evil no matter what even if you dont like them. and especially even if you dont find them pretty or "cool."

Long Post: Why I Don’t Like The Drow

I’ve been ranting about this to a friend on discord (a lot of points I make will come from him) but I’ve finally figured out what my issue with the drow is outside of inherently evil groups being dumb.

The drow are boring. Drow lore is less of a dive into a unique culture and more of a list of fucked up things they do. Like, I cannot name a single interesting aspect of typical drow society that does not directly involve murder, sexism, or slavery, or Lolth. And even then, most of those things are written about in an incredibly bland fashion with them.

The Drow don’t really have much depth to them, and are just kind of evil for evil’s sake (or “because Lolth said so”). They do slavery, but the only real purpose of doing slavery for them is “because Lolth said so”. It isn’t for cheap labor, it’s to be more evil. They betray each other purely because that’s what evil people do. They’re misandrist, not for any real societal reason, but because Lolth hates men. There’s none of what would make slavery an interesting topic or story element, no justification for why they should be allowed to commit one of the worst injustices possible, no real economic reason for it. They just do it because Lolth says they should, and from a writing perspective it hammers home the fact that they’re evil. They aren’t evil because they enslave and murder, they enslave and murder because they’re evil, if that makes any sense.

Them being written as comically evil as they are also hurts them from a worldbuilding perspective. They’re so reliant on slaves for menial labor that the lower class of their society struggle to get jobs. Drow culture so obsessed with betrayal and dumbass house wars that even when actively under attack from the outside they sabotage each other. They’re so decadent that their buildings are held up with magic and semi regularly collapse when a spell fails. To put it bluntly, drow society feels like one that should have collapsed in a few centuries, which, funnily enough, is way longer than D&D elves live.

Their culture being so monolithic also makes writing anything about them difficult. Every drow antagonist is going to have near identical motivations, methods, and ideologies as every other drow antagonist. Every drow protagonist is going to ultimately feel very similar to Drizzt, because leaving their fucked up society to become a do-gooder is such a common backstory element that they added a whole extra god just for doing that. In fact, you can divide 90% of drow characters from any official materials into these categories:

Manservant

Ambitious male, usually a wizard (5 bucks says he has long hair and a widow’s peak)

Dommy Mommy Warcrime Woman

Drizzt Do’Urden or one of his many duplicates

Self-loathing and/or resentful Drider

And finally, their existence almost purely to be humanoid enemies you can fight at nearly any levels is just kind of lazy. This is a problem that I have with the “evil races” of a lot of fantasy but having a group that’s evil by birth just feels like an excuse to not have to write actual motivations for your antagonists. It’s the difference between “go attack this camp of soldiers because they’re part of the SkullMurder army and their general wants to use our land to build a dread fortress” vs “go attack this camp of soldiers specifically because they’re drow/goblins/orcs/the dreaded peepee-poopoo folk”. Using stuff like this just feels like an excuse to not have to write an actual antagonist since it comes pre-written in the group’s lore. This has the side effect of whenever such a group is the antagonist of the plot, the players or audience know near exactly what to expect. The orc is here to conquer, the goblin is here to steal, and the drow is here to enslave or do some dark ritual.

I’ve legitimately heard people say “well if XYZ can’t be inherently evil anymore, who will we use as bad guys?” It’s very simple: whoever the fuck we want. Write an evil queen, or a scheming wizard, or an underground slave trade network. For God’s sake, anyone can be evil, you don’t need to tie that to a specific ethnic group and write it as “they’re just like that”. Write an actual character for your antagonist.

🩷🤍🧡 HI! HAPPY LESBIAN VISIBILITY WEEK

In celebration I’ve got a little sale going in my Ko-fi shop until Monday :) Discount code LESBOWORLD Enjoy! 🩷🤍🧡

Alright, folks! THE TOOTH OF THE TROLL: A GRETA SMALLTUSK STORY is now available on my Etsy! If you’re a fan of fantasy fiction and/or dungeons and dragons, be sure to pick up this eight-page mini comic and give it a read!

Alright, folks! THE TOOTH OF THE TROLL: A GRETA SMALLTUSK STORY is now available on my Etsy! If you’re a fan of fantasy fiction and/or dungeons and dragons, be sure to pick up this eight-page mini comic and give it a read!

I'm sick of internet negativity, so let's combat it: reblog this and saying something nice/pay a compliment to the prev in the tags.

A creature as ancient as the forest itself...

Cover design for my upcoming eight-page fantasy comic, starring my half-orc girl Greta! It’ll probably be available on my Etsy sometime next week, so keep an eye out for it!

Orcs my large chunky beloveds. Had a few ideas regarding the appearance and culture of orcs, so I finally took the time to draw them out and jot them down. I have more thoughts, namely that the 'orcs are aggressive' misconception comes from a deeply ingrained cultural focus on protecting those you love to preserve community. That and they have stripes as babies kinda like wild hogs but lose them later in life, but I didn't quite have enough of them solidified to make a whole third sheet. Also I wanted them to look more like pigs and wild boars because those are cute.

This is my dungeon meshi oc, she is an orc and based off a truffle pig. She goes into the dungeon to find delicious fungi to eat :) currently picking out her palette!

I finally (got help) slapping Wordpress into shape and Runaway to the Stars is now releasing as a public webcomic! Thank you so much for your support over the years, and sticking with me while I'm slowly chewing my way through this book. I'm very excited to share this story! It'll be updating every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday thanks to the massive Patreon backlog. Patreon will continue to update as I finish pages, which happens on a sporadic non-schedule.

If you experience bugs with the site report them to me. Some things may occasionally break, as coding problems tend to be a very "whack-a-mole" affair; and I'm still getting used to the interface.

A little map I made for the end papers of the 8-page fantasy comic I’m working on right now…

Some more previews from the Greta comic…

I’ve been seeing a lot of Scooby Doo on my dash lately. My friend discovered what he describes as “Shaggy eviscerating an ape”

Some excerpts from a little eight-page comic I’m working on right now, starring a certain half-orc…