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[ChairmanPoo]

If ice is celery, why do Eskimos send their old people out to die? Surely there'd always be some sort of food.

I've heard but I don't know...

[Criptfeind]

Why is the oxygen not included thread locked?

Good question, I didn't do it. But I can undo it. Weird. Maybe I misclicked something, that is probably it, despite not posting I read it a lot. I've unlocked it.

Maybe I should update the title to early access instead of alpha.

[Frumple]

Like. I read a lot of pretty shitty writing. Fairly inured to it, s'endemic to (free) writing in general and punch magic stuff specifically. But... sometimes. Sometimes it gets to me.

This time. I read a paragraph long spiel about how the protag has spent relatively large amounts of effort learning to use a bow. Promptly thereafter we're informed that. He has no bow. He didn't have the money to get a bow previously (previously being a period of months, years). They don't really sell bows to begin with where he's at, despite his paragraph long spiel studded with bits about how bows are pretty awesome for what his world has to deal with. He doesn't know how to make bows.

Who knows how much time spent training to use a bow, when. No bow. No bow access. No bow market. No personal bow manufacturing capability. Somebody didn't think this archery thing through.

You get this painful impression that either the main character is an idiot or the author is. Or both. Both is as possible as this twit's bows were lacking.

_{... any case it's apparently titled Super God Gene. I'm subtitling it like much of comments seem to be: The Story of the Idiot that Didn't Promptly Eat the MacGuffin!Rock.}

[Yoink]

Now I kinda want to read a fantasy novel (by a clever, skilled author) following the adventures of an absolute imbecile.
I mean, plenty of my favourite fantasy novels have main characters who are naive or who might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but an absolute moron could be a fun protagonist, haha.

[Tack]

If ice is celery, why do Eskimos send their old people out to die? Surely there'd always be some sort of food.

But apparently celery is energy-negative. So if you sent someone out into a field of celery they’d still die.

Or... celery blizzard.

[Frumple]

... welp, as asspulls go that was one of the more out there I've encountered in a while. Protag ends up in dire straits, cornered underground by someone casually kicking his ass around. Out of fucking nowhere rando hobo that got like one line of mention a bit earlier walks out of a goddamn lava pool. Apparently he was just chillin' in 500+ degree molten rock because

No, seriously, the old hobo fuck -- naturally an even more powerful shitkicker than the guy that was shitkicking the MC -- was lounging around in a lava pool apparently just for shits and giggles. Forget chekov's shota pegging now we have chekov's half-senile hobo god lava bath.

... I'm going to keep reading, 'cause if I got through colossal shitpiles like long live summons I can get through castle of black iron, but... seriously. I can't tell if this is laziness, incompetence, or intoxication. "Ah ha, I shall solve the corner I've written myself into by having a homeless geriatric crawl out of the pool of superheated lava! Genius!"

[Trekkin]

If ice is celery, why do Eskimos send their old people out to die? Surely there'd always be some sort of food.

They don't. The last recorded case of Eskimo geronticide was eighty years ago and it had been basically unheard of long before that.

The myth that Eskimos put old people on ice floes to die stems from a combination of three things: Eskimo society is relatively anarchic (so cases of outright murder are punished with social censure, which can be hard to see from outside), they have historically had more permissive attitudes toward assisted suicide for many reasons (which, again, can look like murder if you aren't paying attention) and, of course, they're not white, which makes them prime targets for the usual crowd of meddlesome Westerners to assume appalling savagery on their part and rush to civilize them with Bibles and colonialism and so forth.

[wierd]

If ice is celery, why do Eskimos send their old people out to die? Surely there'd always be some sort of food.

They don't. The last recorded case of Eskimo geronticide was eighty years ago and it had been basically unheard of long before that.

The myth that Eskimos put old people on ice floes to die stems from a combination of three things: Eskimo society is relatively anarchic (so cases of outright murder are punished with social censure, which can be hard to see from outside), they have historically had more permissive attitudes toward assisted suicide for many reasons (which, again, can look like murder if you aren't paying attention) and, of course, they're not white, which makes them prime targets for the usual crowd of meddlesome Westerners to assume appalling savagery on their part and rush to civilize them with Bibles and colonialism and so forth.

Now if only we can get people to leave the middle east alone too...

Never have understood the mad-rush so many have to "Civilize!" (ahem--- Culturally genocide)  other cultures. 

Yes. They have different social norms and mores.  That's kinda the F-ing point.

[Hanslanda]

I had a bloody nose in the shower. Good timing at least.

[scriver]

and, of course, they're not white, which makes them prime targets for the usual crowd of meddlesome Westerners to assume appalling savagery on their part and rush to civilize them with Bibles and colonialism and so forth.

Yeah, it's not like any white people have such myths told about them

[wierd]

Actually...

Rewind about 2 millennia.  Gaul.  You know-- France.

Go see if the Romans had anything nice at all to say about them.

[George_Chickens]

Rewind a little over a century and you find common beliefs that the Irish were not full human beings, or at least not actually real Europeans. Ironically, bigotry knows no colours or creeds.

[Teneb]

Actually...

Rewind about 2 millennia.  Gaul.  You know-- France.

Go see if the Romans had anything nice at all to say about them.

As you well know, they are talking about present times.

You could've gone with a more current example like what GC did.

[wierd]

True, but the historical period should not matter.  Functionally, the situations are sufficiently identical that the example shines none the less.

(Urban, cosmopolitan society creates and indulges in ribald fantasy about those "Backward!" "Uncouth!" "Uncivilized!" people that are really only guilty of being "Different."  Go to great lengths to forcibly change their culture.)

[Teneb]

True, but the historical period should not matter.  Functionally, the situations are sufficiently identical that the example shines none the less.

(Urban, cosmopolitan society creates and indulges in ribald fantasy about those "Backward!" "Uncouth!" "Uncivilized!" people that are really only guilty of being "Different."  Go to great lengths to forcibly change their culture.)

To be honest, non-urban societies also engage in vilifying those not of it. The main difference is that they usually have neither the resources nor motivations to go and "civilize" them.