also consider: LOTR but hobbits have Tapeta Lucidum
Boromir gets the fright of his life their first night on the road
Boromir: *glances over his shoulder* ??!!!!???!!
Hobbits:
Hobbits: what
i will never get over that you used an image of raccoons for this purpose because it is incredibly accurate
LOTR au but instead of hobbits literally raccoons
Gandalf: well this raccoon found the ring and has been carrying it around. unfortunately we can’t take it off him or he gets very bite-y. so I figure, the raccoon is the ringbearer now
Elrond: what are those other three raccoons doing here
Gandalf: he brought his buddies. I call this one ‘Merry’
I’ve been saying for some years now that we’re teaching science terribly wrong in schools, and quite possibly the wrongest thing we’re doing is making no distinction between “facts about the universe that we have observed” and “categories and models that we have constructed in order to organize the facts we have observed”.
Essentially, kids are being taught that “cats are mammals” is the same kind of scientific fact as “cats give birth to live young,” and it isn’t. At all.
Which is why we get discussions like the one linked above. Or like the ones about Pluto being declared a dwarf planet instead of a planet, where people assert that the change in nomenclature is because “we understand better now what a planet is” and not because we’ve chosen to narrow the definition to (disputably) better organize our constructed categories of Things In Space. Or, for that matter, like the ones that call out “scientific error” in the Bible by citing references to calling a bat a “bird,” or calling a whale a “fish,” as though the classification system we use today is objective scientific fact instead of constructed model.
Because nobody is teaching kids how to tell the difference, or even that there is a difference.
Some of the stuff @neshtasplace wrote about her orruks got me thinkin’.
Orks are, to a one, sexless fungus. That we call them/they call themselves ‘boyz’ is strictly arbitrary. There’s no reason any given ork wouldn’t be as likely to pick one gender as another. There’s no reason ‘Warboss Grimtoof Elfsmasher’ can’t be a perfectly orky name for a boy, or a gal, or something else even.
If you need an excuse, though, any ork group that got its ass kicked by an army that was led by or predominantly composed of women could easily start calling themselves galz.
They would still look like orks, as the already low humanoid dimorphism is even lower when you’re talking about people in armor. So no orks with boobs (or even ‘boobz’). Depending on the society, I could see the orks deciding that ‘galz’ have long/braided hair or some other arbitrary tertiary characteristic. So they’d start growing a bit of head hair, since orks run on magical thinking and solipsism.
Some possibilities:
Orks who got their asses kicked by howling banshees decide:
Galz have long, flowing, wild hair
LOUD WUNZ RUN FASTA
Orks who got their asses kicked by sylvaneth decide:
Galz have leaves on ‘em
Galz wear lotsa bark for armor
Orks who got their asses kicked by wyches decide:
Galz don’t need armor, galz need knifes
So many knifes
Orks who got their asses kicked by sisters of battle decide:
Galz is ded ‘ard: armor up
Burnas!
Faith? OH! ‘Umie solipsism, I gets it. “FOR DA GORK! (Or possibly Mork)”
Actually this reminds me of a bit I saw on Warseer back in the day:
“
Striking Scorpions are more orky than orks.
they’z green (this is propa)
they’ve got choppas that are choppier (always +1 str) they’ve got sluggas that are shootier (better ap)
dem aspekt boyz got choppy in one hand n’ dakka in the other, but decided that wasn’t enough dakka so they put dakka on their face n’ deyz use this dakka when they gets choppy.
DA skorpion boss can take a power klaw or an ‘uge choppa (that’s choppier than what orkses got, can get more than +2 strength), or a pair of super extra choppy choppas. and since DA scorpion boss is da boss, he’s got his dead choppy power klaw, but thought “iz gotta be shootier too”, and stuck a bit of dakka on.
and their dakka? It shoots choppy disks! Dakka while choppy, choppy shooty dakka, comprehending this would make an ork’s mind implode. Eldar shootas don’t got range like a propa ork shoota though, so that’s an arguable deficiency compared to orks.
brutally kunnin, they’re real slippery and sneaky like kunningly brutal, they do this all in dead ‘ard ‘eavy armor.
sneakin in ‘eavy armor. everybody else is like “we’z gotta strip down to be slippery like”. Beakies do this, umies do this, even orkses do this, but Eldar’s all like “ You’z all stupid, dats why youz monkeys. Iz putting on ‘eavier armor, iz gonna stomp through the jungle all sneaky like and chainsaw you stealthy like cuz Eldar’s da best like dat. And if youz looks at me funny, dakka comes outta my face”
and the Skorpion Big Boss travels around the galaxy lookin’ to scrap, with his extra shooty dakka face that’s twice as shooty which makes him 33% choppier, and he’s got extra ‘eavy armor but it’s extra flashy so he can run in it and be even more kunnin’ and sneaky.”
In peacetime, the ruler grows their hair long. In war, they cut it short.
A ruler with long hair is held in great esteem, for defending the peace.
The traditional declaration of war is for the ruler to send their cut-off hair to the enemy ruler. The statement carries greater weight the longer the hair: to receive long hair says that you have angered one who is slow to anger, that you have incurred a wrath not easily woken.
Violent war-mongering leader frantically and aggressively tries to shave just a LITTLE hair off the top of their head into an envelope.
A faraway king receives a heavy wooden crate filled with a coil of the longest hair he has ever seen.
A despised ruler finds hundreds of pounds of cut-off ponytails at her castle entrance, each one belonging to her own people.
A young emperor refuses to cut their hair and insists on trying to make peace with invaders. The enemy leader steps forward, draws their blade, and cuts the emperor’s hair themselves.
Hellen cuts her hair off and throws it in Cathy’s face at her son’s soccer scrimmage.
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