Dwarves

I think I support Faelivrin here. And more generally, if something confuses the view-point character(s), I don't think it to be bad if the audience also are confused.
 
The last session that was recorded was the final script session. The next one will be the week after Mythmoot (this weekend), if memory serves.

This can be brought up during the next session. If you really want to shake things up, nominate a man to play Telchar, laying out your reasoning there. It would kind of force a discussion on the matter.
 
Also, I'd like point out that the elves, through whom we get these stories, are not particularly well-informed about dwarvish culture. It is altogether possible that they are wrong in believing dwarf women to be indistinguishable from dwarf men. A change on this point does not alter the story or theme thereof to any appreciable degree. While I'm ok with confusing the audience on this point, doing so makes gender-switching Telchar effectively meaningless and not doing so doesn't change much.
 
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The last session that was recorded was the final script session. The next one will be the week after Mythmoot (this weekend), if memory serves.
OK, thank you.

It's not that I want the audience to think female Dwarves don't exist at all, that would be too weird. Nor to make them think Telchar is male, that would indeed defeat the point of her being female.

I'm just saying that breasts and beardlessness aren't the only possible way to ever make it possible to tell them apart on screen. There are other viable options, clothing and dialogue, that would work fine. In Farscape when the alien played by a male actor (with no breasts) says "I am the female of the species" I immediately understood that she was female (and non-human). I didn't think it was hard to understand her line. She was easy to tell apart from the males of her species (also played by male actors) by clothing, hair style, and dialogue.

I don't agree, though, that Tolkien was ambiguous about Dwarf appearance. He didn't say that Dwarf women have never ever been met by outsiders, or that they cover themselves in burkas and nobody knows what they look like. He explicitly said they have been seen by outsiders, and they look and sound identical to males in every trait. It's said in both the Silmarillion (Elf-centric) and the LotR (Men/Hobbit-centric).

I would like to nominate a male actor, although I'm not familiar with any actors at all. I will have to hunt around for pics... kind of at random.
 
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I don't agree, though, that Tolkien was ambiguous about Dwarf appearance. He didn't say that Dwarf women have never ever been met by outsiders, or that they cover themselves in burkas and nobody knows what they look like. He explicitly said they have been seen by outsiders, and they look and sound identical to males in every trait. It's said in both the Silmarillion (Elf-centric) and the LotR (Men/Hobbit-centric).

Did someone say that Tolkien was ambiguous about this point?
 
Just watch7ng tje latest stream, with bres dwarves, which i hadnt seem yet and which i adore.

Dont get me wrong.. i am in no way pro dwarfwomen wearing veils or face shawls... that was a compromise solution which i am not very much for.


Honestly i think female dwarves should be totally indistinguashable by outsiders. Dwarf women should have beards, but not look like transwomen, dont wear makeup or dresses or female connotated stuff...

On the other hand i believe that also dwarf males could as well wear longer clothing, similar to dresses when they do not do heavy work... they could wea long robes or such things too, which would look more female to us. Maybe we could mix it for both sexes a bit more?
 
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A few sketches of ideas i had while listening to the podcast...

I thought what would we excpect these fabled dwarfmasks to look,like? They are called intimidating, but i doubt the dwarves would make masks of demonic look, or if so only to mock their enemies - who are real demons.

So i tried some dwarfmasks who look,like stylised angry dwarf faces...

Roughly based on historical masked helmets from different eras and cultures...

I sort of would like to challenge the square look the designers of the pj movies gave to dwarves... maybe we wouldn't be wrong if wed tried for more round designs? Smaugs hoard has some items that may be dwarf helmets... slightly pointed like their hats and hoods. Maybe also dwarves are not that uniform... everyone is an artist and craftsman at heart... perhaps they look very indiviuzal in terms of clothes and even war gear?

I also tried some shorter beardstyles... aftervall out dwatvesvare for the most part not l8ngbeards, so i guess they also have slightly shortrr beards than durins house and that would reflect also withntheir masks?
 
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Question: what do we have for Dwarvish armor, since we have two new things to design for involving Dwarves: the Dragonguard and the Dragon Helm?
 
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Personally for the dwarves i had originally thought of something vaguely inspired by the varangian guard and scythian helmets... but recently i have not been so sure...
 
Reason is the description of the dragon-guard made me think of historical schandmasken/scold's bridles...

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And yes, of course i know these were not intended for defensive purposes but as instruments of torture... but the dragon-guards bizarre description immediately brought these to my mind...
 
I am strongly in favor of having bearded dwarf women. I'd compare it to how there are long haired men too but the majority of them style their hair very differently from the majority of long haired women. the styles are very distinct and the head hair is always seen together with either a masculine, feminine or androgynous face and understood in that context. I think it would need some acclimating but I honestly don't see the problem with the bearded dwarf-women
 
I did some dwarf drawings, and my thoughts were the following. I wanted to demonstrate that (as people have mentioned) that there are lots of ways to show gender that's not about the mere presence of a beard but about its size, about the dwarf's mannerisms, fashion, stature etc. So I've drawn essentially the same dwarf but with all of their attributes tilting either to male or female. There's differences there too, there are more typically masculine presenting women and more female presenting men. Dwarves just generally produce more beardhair than the other children of illuvatar.

Also if a foreign culture first met dwarves, a bit of confusion would be natural.
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I think something like this would be a good way to go with dwarven women, the faces are still very femenine, even with beards.

Art is done by turner mohan.
 
I think there are many approaches but we should at least discuss it again. It's kinda important to me that if we have bearded dwarf women, it shouldn't appear "timid", or that we have to "compensate" for the beard too much. It would probably take some time to get viewers used to it but in the end I think it should be possible to "teach" them to notice more nuanced ways how to recognise dwarves as they get to know them better. Idk but that doesn't sound like the worst thing story-wise, so the viewers are mirroring the experience of the elves and men that first meet dwarves.

Also of course, there hasn't yet really been agreement on the question of how much men and women differ in dwarves, and what their gender conventions would be. (maybe they look fairly the same in battle/outdoors gear but have different clothes at home? Or not at all, do they look the exact same? My drawing was just an experiment :) I also wanted to point out that it's possible to have nuances within the "masculine" and "feminine" looks, I don't think of those as two monoliths.

Is that something to bring up in the last silmfilm session of this season?
 
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Faelivrin once pointed out in a discussion that dwarf women not only have beards , they look EXACTLY like males.At least to outsiders...

So we probably should't think too much about hearded women, just about dwarves- we could't tell the difference if we knew it.
 
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