Constituent Service by John Scalzi A small novella by John Scalzi. Was debating whether or not to even write about it, it’s more of a snack than a meal. But people like snacks. Scalzi seems to be eschewing serious stuff like Lock In and The Collapsing Empire for humorous science fiction (at least in terms of what he’s producing). I don’t know what the market is like for that genre, but I enjoyed this story. It’s like an episode of a TV show, or maybe a pilot, with some sitcom one-note characters (not a slight–you don’t need heavy character development in comedy) solving a low-stakes mystery. This takes place in…
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A D&D Character: Hercula
I haven’t had any blog ideas for a while so here… have an idea for a D&D character I made. Hercula Female Half-Orc Fighter or Barbarian Hercula simply didn’t die. An orc female is already a pariah. A half-orc, doubly so. Rumor had it her father was a wandering human bard. Did her mother die in childbirth? Killed for mating with a pinkskin and producing a half-breed? No one seems to know. The first time anyone remembers seeing her entering the village was as a young juvenile, covered in her blood and her own filth. But healthy. And smiling. Of course, no one took her in. But even orcs were…
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Are Orcs Racist?
This was a recent hot take on the interwebs, and I love the low-hanging fruit so… I actually have a little expertise in this (as much as one can about a swords & sorcery race that doesn’t exist). I have read the D&D Player’s Guide & Dungeon Master’s Guide cover-to-cover, and written a novella about orcs. So I’ve done my research. I mean, I’m not savvy on the history of orcs in fiction, but I’ve got some stakes as a fiction writer. So the big debate is whether orcs are a stand-in for Black people, either in the tribal African “Shaka Zulu” sense or the “genetic predisposition” sense. There has…
