> > Disadvantages: Appearance (Hideous) [-16]; Bad Temper (12) [-10]; Odious > > Racial Habit (Will Eat Anything Organic) -2 [-10] > Jeff Wilson replied - > Hideous is more appropriate for individual appearance than racial > appearance. With the horns, hair, and tail, I'd think that a goat man > would be out of the uncanny valley and not creep people out with his > goatlike features, but would rather look apprpriately goatlike for a > being of such heritage.
This raises a point I've often had trouble with, Trouble not mechanically but ethically [so to speak], with racial appearance. If I come from a mixed sapient world where giant insects are food animals, speaking Dragons are the enemy, and Mr Mhrhrg the Minotaur delivers the milk; is a beast headed man going to be perceived to be Horrible, or just foreign? Would "Unnatural Appearance" or "Non-Human" be better descriptors? I mean to say that if racism is the fear of strangers taking your food resources at an exaggerated level based on the appearance of difference. Is horrible appearance a matter of scale? If man has worshiped gods with animal features shouldn't animal featured races be viewed with reverence than horror? If I find a Minotaur horrible, do I feel the same about big Phil's massive physique or my stud bull's horns? I get the idea of arachnid response - the visceral certainty of no kinship with the viewed object; the core of arachnophobia commonality - but is the same true of chimerical races? I suspect there is a bias laid in by Noah's alleged Cull of the mythical animals. :) Perhaps I have discovered my inner fuzzy? :) _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
