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All dwarves have beards

133 (41.7%)

Males bearded; females beardless (default setting)

163 (51.1%)

Females bearded; males beardless

14 (4.4%)

All dwarves beardless (horrors!)

9 (2.8%)

Total Members Voted: 319

[Lord Shonus]

Except that the entire reason they faded from Middle Earth was their version of Original Sin, (Feanor's rebellion against the Valar by refusing to hand over the Silmaril's). Even before that they were intended to someday give way to Man.

[Josephus]

If we have to use Tolkien as our source for everything, then why aren't we using Tolkienian Perfecter-than-thou elves?

Nobody's saying it should be based entirely on Tolkien. Just that Tolkien's canon is important to consider. Tolkien also said that only a third of the Dwarven population is female, and that the females rarely travelled.

In other words,we should listen to Tolkien on the parts you want us to listen to, but we shouldn't listen to Tolkien on the parts you don't want us to listen to...

Reminds me so, so very much of so, so many arguments over the Bible...

You realize that that's a valid statement, as Tolkien practically wrote the modern bible of Fantasy?

[Deteramot]

I'd like to say that the Discworld example was not just a one-off joke. Dwarf females being indistinguishable from Males became such a huge part of the Discworld story that it caused a cultural revolution and nearly sparked a war.

That being said, I support Bearded Female Dwarfs not only because of Pratchett and Tolkien but also because dwarfs have always been, to me, rugged individuals of a single apparent gender. Dimorphism is important for things like breeding and mating, but sexual dimorphism doesn't have to be something as huge as beard v. no beard. Dwarfs are all stocky, short and built like a ton of rocks. The female dwarfs would probably have higher amounts of fat in their chests versus their gut, and they might have slimmer faces, but the lack of a beard makes them feel like something entirely different. And the importance of a beard in Dwarven society is, to me, based on what I've experienced in Let's Plays and imagination. Dwarfs have very little culture (at least at present), which leads to a necessary thing to mark dwarfs as dwarfs. It could be said that in DF, height is the major Dwarf marker as opposed to beards, but it just feels wrong to me.

That being said, and as a final note, I feel like DF elves are like Tolkien elves. They act like they're perfect, they have an easy grace, and disagreeing with them tends to lead to trouble. I could be wrong, as I've never read any supplemental material to LoTR, but... yeah.

[Thundrim]

That being said, and as a final note, I feel like DF elves are like Tolkien elves. They act like they're perfect, they have an easy grace, and disagreeing with them tends to lead to trouble. I could be wrong, as I've never read any supplemental material to LoTR, but... yeah.

I love it when the Elves tell you to not chop down more trees in DF, it's a good way to motivate a proper charcoal industry. I hope they still say it in this latest version that is. The last 2010 Fort had only Dwarves as neighbours. More fun to bother Elves, so I need a restart.

Elves should not have beards though, it makes them easier to dislike. Adds to their arrogance somehow.

---
 

[NW_Kohaku]

I'd like to say that the Discworld example was not just a one-off joke. Dwarf females being indistinguishable from Males became such a huge part of the Discworld story that it caused a cultural revolution and nearly sparked a war.

Pratchett didn't really plan out a roadmap for his overarching narrative, though.  Much of what he wrote started as one-off jokes that he then had to explore much more closely, which in turn required his rationalizing one-off jokes into a serious system (or at least one that was more detailed and semi-plausable... if you consider "A Wizard Did It" "plausable").

That being said, I support Bearded Female Dwarfs not only because of Pratchett and Tolkien but also because dwarfs have always been, to me, rugged individuals of a single apparent gender.

This is, again, the crux of the matter - DF dwarves must be like Pratchett or Tolkien dwarves just because that's how you always thought of them.  Even if you argue why there is reason it's possible, there is never any other reason for bearded females besides "Pratchett/Tolkien did it" (and it's very thin reasoning to even say Tolkien did it, at that).

Dimorphism is important for things like breeding and mating, but sexual dimorphism doesn't have to be something as huge as beard v. no beard. ... The female dwarfs would probably have higher amounts of fat in their chests versus their gut

This really gets to part of what I don't like about the ways that female dwarves are so often portrayed...  It's like a combination of a childish gynophobia from Tolkien gets mixed with a pubescent curiosity over sexuality and gets warped into this bizzare form of something that has sexual characteristics of a woman, but in an entirely masculine form, so that it isn't threatening to the male.  Yay, it's a sleezy old man with giant boobies in a chainmail bikini.  It really doesn't help my impression that the only people that argue for bearded females get it from a 8-year-old's impression of dwarves. 

Yes, there are those who go the other way and make "dwarves" that are just short human women (which also have absurdly giant breasts), but I don't see it as being in any way preferable or even less of a sex object.

the lack of a beard makes them feel like something entirely different. And the importance of a beard in Dwarven society is, to me, based on what I've experienced in Let's Plays and imagination. Dwarfs have very little culture (at least at present), which leads to a necessary thing to mark dwarfs as dwarfs. It could be said that in DF, height is the major Dwarf marker as opposed to beards, but it just feels wrong to me.

What about those of us who didn't always assume females had beards?  It's just as easy for me to argue this the other way - I've never seen bearded female dwarves, never considered them, so you're the ones trying to change MY view of female dwarves.

It's also very Planet of Hats to declare the single, definitive thing that marks all things dwarfy is whether there is a beard or not... You seriously can't think of ANY other feature common to dwarves in DF, like perhaps something different about where they live compared to humans that all live in wooden houses, or different about the sort of materials they use to make things, or different about their culture, or different about what they eat, or maybe something very hot and could be applied to any situation to make it better, or maybe some sort of strange project whose size might be characterized as "mega" in some way involving building a Turing machine out of wooden axles and Escherian waterfalls and waterwheels?

That being said, and as a final note, I feel like DF elves are like Tolkien elves. They act like they're perfect, they have an easy grace, and disagreeing with them tends to lead to trouble. I could be wrong, as I've never read any supplemental material to LoTR, but... yeah.

Again, they don't act like they are perfect, they are literally the embodiment of perfection, according to Tolkien's standards.  DF elves are quite clearly part of the reaction against elves that are perfect and magical and beautiful and eternal and have one purple eye and one green eye, but they change colors and sparkle in the sun.

EDIT: fixed some grammar.

[Patchy]

To be honest, this is where bearded dwarf ladies was introduced to me. Until DF, the fact that a dwarf lady might have a beard never really occurred to me. And it wasn't until neverwinter nights that I had ever seen a game even depict a dwarf lady, and they did so without the beards there. So yeah I guess my view of them is coloured by the nwn beardless depiction of them. Just offering up a viewpoint here of someone who has never read discworld or lotr, and paid only a little attention to the movies when various friends dragged me out to the theatres to watch it with them.

[Stove]

see above

So far, your arguments against bearded dwarf-women have consisted almost entirely of weak strawman fallacies and pseudo-freudian ad hominems against everyone in favour of bearded dwarf-women. You've even completely ignored the fact that I proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Tolkien's female dwarves were in fact bearded.
Your only argument in favour of beardless dwarf-women seems to be that...you want dwarf women to be beardless.

something that has sexual characteristics of a woman, but in an entirely masculine form, so that it isn't threatening to the male.

Sexual characteristics of a woman in masculine form isn't threatening to the male? What planet are you from? I can assure you, the people putting beards on dwarf women are much less likely to be sexualising them than those who aren't. I already established this with my point about marketing.

And you're using tvtropes wrong. You seem have implied that tropes are a bad thing. They are not.

Also, I like to think of DF elves as being a lot like Tolkien's elves as perceived by dwarves. Think about it! It makes sense. I guess it just happens that in DF canon, dwarven perception of elves happens to be accurate.

I'm still waiting for someone to come into this thread and yell at us for arguing so passionately about something so ridiculous.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Damn it guys, stop arguing passionately about something so ridiculous. Spend your time arguing on something better like... Um... Geez... You know what? Never mind.

[NW_Kohaku]

So far, your arguments against bearded dwarf-women have consisted almost entirely of weak strawman fallacies and pseudo-freudian ad hominems against everyone in favour of bearded dwarf-women.

Umm... what were YOU reading?  It certainly wasn't what I was writing...

You've even completely ignored the fact that I proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Tolkien's female dwarves were in fact bearded.

Actually, I haven't ignored it, I have said what Tolkien did with his dwarves is entirely irrelevant to what DF should be several times, and in fact, mocked the whole notion with the reference to Tolkienian elves.

Your only argument in favour of beardless dwarf-women seems to be that...you want dwarf women to be beardless.

Actually, that's the entirity of YOUR argument. 

Sexual characteristics of a woman in masculine form isn't threatening to the male? What planet are you from? I can assure you, the people putting beards on dwarf women are much less likely to be sexualising them than those who aren't. I already established this with my point about marketing.

I think this says it pretty well, in the comparison to Wagner: http://plover.net/~bonds/tolkien1.html

And you're using tvtropes wrong. You seem have implied that tropes are a bad thing. They are not.

Oh, wow, classic TVTropes arguments 101... Hey, look: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools  The phrases "Tropes Are Not Good" and "Tropes Are Not Bad" both link to the same page!  How interesting! I wonder why that is?

Also, I like to think of DF elves as being a lot like Tolkien's elves as perceived by dwarves. Think about it! It makes sense. I guess it just happens that in DF canon, dwarven perception of elves happens to be accurate.

Umm... no.  While I haven't read everything Tolkien-related, I'm pretty sure there is never any part in that about how Elves were percieved as a bunch of murderous cannibals, much less as refusing to touch anything leather, or going into genocidal rage over chopping down trees.

I'm still waiting for someone to come into this thread and yell at us for arguing so passionately about something so ridiculous.

They have already made joking comments on it, it just isn't yelling.  Yelling takes passion.  If you have to yell, you do care.

EDIT: Oops, didn't close a quote...

[strongrudder]

Your only argument in favour of beardless dwarf-women seems to be that...you want dwarf women to be beardless.

I assumed the topic was asking for individual opinions, to sample what the community's thoughts on the matter... could be wrong, though. :V

The default within DF itself being that female dwarves are beardless sways me toward that camp when it comes to the DF universe. I do like some of the other ideas that have been tossed around so far, such as having ladybeards run in certain families. Facial hair on humanoid ladytypes is hard for me to visualize, though.

[cameron]

in the silmarillion the elves are certainly not perfect, feanor for one betrays his brother, refuses to give up the silmarills in order to bring light back to the world and leads a rebellion against the valar(sort of god things), the main thing with tolkain elves is that they were generally improved humans except they were still bound to the both the music and middle earth whereas humans were not. elves are stated as confusable with humans though so mot differences would not be great

[Josephus]

Not "perfect" as in "decent people"; "perfect" as in possessed of craft and knowledge far beyond mortal ken. Also, Feanor's will is so powerful that when he dies he self-immolates. No human manages to do that in the course of all the middle-earth mythos.

[Man In Zero G]

This argument is pointless.
By default, dwarf ladies have no beards. This is how Toady envisions them. DF is his creation, so his is the only opinion that really counts. This is what the "DF cannon" is.
But, he also made it moddable so folks who want bearded ladies can have them, because he wants the game to be customizable.

What someone else wrote about dwarves in a completely different setting is irrelevant to Dwarf Fortress. For every instance of bearded dwarf ladies in other fiction, an instance of non-bearded dwarf ladies can equally be pointed out. There is no "right" here. There is only what each individual author decided about his or her own personal version of a fictional creature.

Some people just like arguing.

[cameron]

in that case feanor is a terrible example (im pretty sure he is the only elf that turned to ash as they died too) any-who Tolkien elves liked gems and metal for the most part so its safe to say they are at most loosely influencing.

[NW_Kohaku]

And you're using tvtropes wrong. You seem have implied that tropes are a bad thing. They are not.

Oh, wow, classic TVTropes arguments 101... Hey, look: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools  The phrases "Tropes Are Not Good" and "Tropes Are Not Bad" both link to the same page!  How interesting! I wonder why that is?

Actually, I want to take this back, and address this differently.

First of all, in this, you are (once again) completely mischaracterizing my argument.

I originally said, as part of my argument about how we do not simply cookie-cutter our races directly from Tolkien, and can actually make changes from one fantasy story to another, even if we use the same races, that Tolkien made the race of elves a certain specific way that has become emblematic of elves.  I then said that the Tolkienian version of elves, which are built specifically to idealize a certain way of life, were actually rejected in the eyes of most fantasy readers, and that DF embodies very strongly this rejection, and that, therefore, DF has plenty of precedent in rejecting Tolkienian mythos.

You, however, chose to mischaracterize my argument as "it's a trope, and therefore it was bad simply because it was a trope".  This was very obviously not what I had said (as I had said, it is not the fact that it is a trope that makes something bad, I was just pointing out that what people rejected about Tolkienian elves was so commonplace that the rejection itself is, in fact its own trope), and is only one of several attempts you've made to dismiss real challenges to your assertions by simply completely making up an entirely different issue.