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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

[Thundrim]

It's always fun to see how political correctness during the time of writing move backwards into settings supposed to be medieval more or less. The author must not offend his/her audience, that does not sell well. If it's not humor, bearded ladies shake sensibilities then, that's at least my conclusion. But then again, Dwarves always end up in a minority no matter. So the beard issue is ultimately a storm within a bottle.

--- 

[NW_Kohaku]

What other point?  This is ALL you've talked about.  I even pointed that out last time, and you couldn't come up with anything else.

I have quite clearly stated my other arguments, some of them multiple times. If you're going to play the "LALALA I'M NOT LISTENING" game then I'll consider you to have conceded from the debate!

In other words, you are unable to produce any other argument, and just point to phantom "somethings".  I assume that you have in your hand a list of FIFTY SEVEN members of the Communist Party arguments for bearded dwarven females that you are just keeping from us to spare our little feelings?

I accept your apology.

It's always fun to see how political correctness during the time of writing move backwards into settings supposed to be medieval more or less. The author must not offend his/her audience, that does not sell well. If it's not humor, bearded ladies shake sensibilities then, that's at least my conclusion. But then again, Dwarves always end up in a minority no matter. So the beard issue is ultimately a storm within a bottle.

The issue about Tolkien not having female dwarves at all is not about political correctness, it is about the nature and purpose of his work, and about what he really did have to say about female dwarves, which is that he didn't make any female dwarves because he was scared of them.

[GlyphGryph]

Wow, this is hilarious... watching NW_Kohaku and Stove flail at each other like this, making every effort to ignore every constructive comment in favour of retreading the same tired irrelevant details over and over again. Well, it was hilarious anyways. Now its just boring.

The fact is, there are good reasons either way. There are common standards that say both are correct. Both of you are ultimately reducing it to "This is the way I've always thought about it, so this is the right way. This is the way it was introduced to me, so this is what I want."
So why don't we stop arguing about what it "should" be, and just explain why we want the one we want without making the assumption that the other side is composed of people who are somehow deficient?

Personally, I've never been a big fan of Tolkien and never read any of Discworld dwarf stuff. Still, female dwarves just seem more appropriate to me for a race that otherwise exhibits the bare minimum of sexual dimorphism.

I also think Toady should switch the beard defaults every time he releases a new version, just to keep people on their toes.

[Africa]

Jesus Christ on a donkey

Anyway, I'm still waiting to hear from someone who really has one of the latter two options on the poll enabled, and didn't just vote those as a joke.

[Cotes]

Yep. I knew it. I knew you people would manage to make 10-page debate on this. It was just so darn trivial subject that it could not have avoided following in the footsteps of "Do you think zombies can run?" and "Did Greedo shoot first?". I mean honestly guys...

And if really want an answer to this mess, ask yourself: "Would I classify them as some other fantasy creature than dwarf if their females were bearded/beardless?". I doubt anyone is so stuck up with their hair-fine idea of dwarves that they'd answer "yes". The only conclusion is that there's no "should" on the subject. Either way of writing them works, because they are dwarves regardless.

I also find this very telling of how ridiculously formulated and stagnant high fantasy is. This is supposed to be a genre of as-far-as-your-imagination-takes-you, not of rules written in stone. The idea that you should just copy-paste some common template of how fantasy works is about as ironic as it gets.

[NW_Kohaku]

I also find this very telling of how ridiculously formulated and stagnant high fantasy is. This is supposed to be a genre of as-far-as-your-imagination-takes-you, not of rules written in stone. The idea that you should just copy-paste some common template of how fantasy works is about as ironic as it gets.

Runs on Tropolium, baby!

Wow, this is hilarious... watching NW_Kohaku and Stove flail at each other like this, making every effort to ignore every constructive comment in favour of retreading the same tired irrelevant details over and over again. Well, it was hilarious anyways. Now its just boring.

The fact is, there are good reasons either way. There are common standards that say both are correct. Both of you are ultimately reducing it to "This is the way I've always thought about it, so this is the right way. This is the way it was introduced to me, so this is what I want."
So why don't we stop arguing about what it "should" be, and just explain why we want the one we want without making the assumption that the other side is composed of people who are somehow deficient?

Take care to avoid false equivalencies.  I did go out of my way to discuss such things before I just went into "deconstruct the other guy's argument" mode with Stove.

I remember in Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded", in the discussion of the debate over Global Warming that there was a quote (from who, I unfortunately cannot remember) that said, effectively, "A charlatain can say in one sentence something that takes a scientist three pages of evidence to disprove."  (This in a section on why Al Gore was important in the Global Warming debate, because scientists are essentially not inclined to actually put their arguments into the public debate.)

I explained why I thought female dwarves should not have beards, but I do admit to learning it first that way. 

Still, my argument against Stove is and always was that we shouldn't be declaring that we should remain locked in a notion that all dwarves must be bearded, or, oh, say, steampunk dwarves or grimdark dwarves for that matter.  Therefore, Tolkien is irrelevant, if not something to conscoiusly strive to differentiate oneself from, as Cotes makes a point about.

[Noble Digger]

This thread is a joke, so joke votes seem appropriate.

[NW_Kohaku]

This thread is a joke, so joke votes seem appropriate.

Pretty much.

Few people have the stamina for arguments that I do, and will instead react to the entire issue (especially as this has been a contentious issue for quite some time) through simple rejection.  The easiest way to show that you reject the whole argument entirely is to just hit the "Nobody has beards! or Males don't have beards! I'm taking my ball and going home!" radio button.

[Karnewarrior]

I am very afraid to post here...

What the hell. I'll do it.

To me, Dwarven beards are like penises. Male dwarves like to show theirs off, brag, and all that, but if you see a girl with one, it's disturbing. Of course, all the hair goes onto their bodies, which means that while most male dwarves are hairless on their arms, the chicks look like gorillas.

Also, wouldn't a big honking beard get in the way when breast feeding?

[Josephus]

Jesus christ, man.

Also, I'm pretty sure our DF Dwarven Ladies store their babies in their beards. The babies don't "breastfeed"; they simply survive off the alcohol that dribbles down through said beard.

[Karnewarrior]

I'm actually surprised no-one brought it up that there used to be a half-cannon joke that dwarves put out spores with their beards.

[NW_Kohaku]

Jesus christ, man.

Also, I'm pretty sure our DF Dwarven Ladies store their babies in their beards. The babies don't "breastfeed"; they simply survive off the alcohol that dribbles down through said beard.

Then why do dwarven babies complain about how little alcohol they get as infants?

Also, I wonder how this notion that beards are necessary to carry babies gets into people's heads?  It's not like there aren't examples of non-bearded ladies who can put on harnesses that carry babies for them in the real world, or even among the elves or the like...  After all, elven mothers carry their babies in the same way, so obviously that argument would then follow that elven women are bearded, too, by the same logic.

[Josephus]

Sorry man, it's just /tg/ fanon that dwarven ladies both have beards and socket their babies in them. As to elves...

Well, we've all lodged elves in elves via throwing, I'm sure there's a nonfatal way to do it that the elves have mastered.

[NW_Kohaku]

Sorry man, it's just /tg/ fanon that dwarven ladies both have beards and socket their babies in them.

The problem with /tg/ (or any 4chan) fanon is that it is produced by the same two or three people forcing the meme by shouting it at every chance they get until people just agree with them because everyone who disagreed got bored and left.

... Which is part of why it's important to sit there and counter the shouting for as long as it takes just to ensure there's always at least one voice of dissent.  It looks like holding back the tide with your hands, but creating the capacity for dissent is an easily underestimated effect.

[Josephus]

Sorry man, it's just /tg/ fanon that dwarven ladies both have beards and socket their babies in them.

The problem with /tg/ (or any 4chan) fanon is that it is produced by the same two or three people forcing the meme by shouting it at every chance they get until people just agree with them because everyone who disagreed got bored and left.

Not quite. You know about the mob mentality. I can assert that it is, in fact, great fun to be part of the herd. Never having to think for yourself is a great gift.