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Exactly, by the time the word "gnome" was used in connection with folklore like "little people" or kobolds, they weren't really folklore anymore and had become kitsch decorations.

The name "gnome" was made up by Paracelsus in the 16th century, while trolls have been part of Germanic/Scandinavian myth for at least a couple of thousand years and have attained a distinct folkloristic identity, just like elves, dwarfs, giants and dragons. The orc is closer to the gnome in...

That is exactly what I meant. The original D&D gnome is like a mix of Christmas elves and various creatures from European folklore, like leprechauns and house elves, but I can't think of any antecedents in fantasy literature, and all subsequent appearances are in works that are directly...

Are they? I have the distinct impression that they are a Dungeons & Dragons staple, like the cleric.

I believe Lovecraft considered Jews (at least European Jews) to be white, but disliked orthodox Jewish culture, mainly because it displaced much of ancient European culture with the introduction of Christianity. His wife and his Jewish friends and correspondents were more of the modern, secular...

It's still a game played by people in the mind's eye. A guide sounds more like a set of instructions, like how to assume and play out a fake identity in real life.

It would be a hilarious explanation that meets both arguments halfway. At the same time it leaves you wondering how Lovecraft got along perfectly well with Howard who loved to write stories about Gaelic heroes.

I know it's really bad form, but I can't not say that American celebrities are probably the worst example you can pick if you want a clear family tree. Professions like musician and actor really screams riff-raff.

Some people outside of the US do take a passing interest in your quaint colonial customs, and it's not the only nation to implement similar policies, like South Africa with its pencil tests that led to at least one publicized case where a girl born to white parents was classified as colored and...

I am familiar with the one drop rule, it's on all the hot sauce bottles. And by bastards in the family tree I mean literal gaps with unrecorded fathers or suspect listed fathers. And while on the subject, there was an interesting genetic study in Sweden that checked for genetic continuity in...

The discussion isn't really to determine the exact ancestry of Lovecraft, but his perception of his ancestry. I cannot recall anything in Lovecraft's works that would hint at any fear in that direction, his prejudice is always very external and projected beyond his native New England environment.

Some kind fan has been good enough to put together Lovecraft's family tree. It's not very complicated and it's quite clearly WASP. I won't comment on your lineage, but if you are a dirt-common sod like me, it likely includes any number of bastards and people who slept around, but then again we...

My first roleplaying game featured a giant fantasy metropolis where all the traditional fantasy races and then some were crammed within the city walls and the elves looked down on everyone from their loft spires, the dwarfs lived in a walled enclave and hated outsiders, the humans were...

Then there was/is likely a similar number of people in medieval Prussia, India, Japan and so on who thought that the people on the other hand of the divide were not human. I don't see why this relative minority in the US with said extreme opinion would make slavery there unique.

As I said, that sounds extremely far-fetched for a man from an old colonial family with what I assume must have been a well-documented family tree living in Rhode Island which was 99% white back in those days, but whose parents both died in mental institutions.

Well, there you see what we lose when controversial content is eliminated out of fear of moral panic and things are watered down instead.

I contend that Lovecraft's works are unique because he channeled his anxieties, his fears, his phobias and his prejudices into his writing and created something raw and powerful that later authors who pay homage to him cannot imitate. It's like no matter how many people want to write like...

You can ask ask him yourself if you track him down on the web, but this article should sum it up.

If you want to interpret the typical high fantasy story in that light, I'd say they reflect more on the cultural trauma of brutal invasions like the Muslims in Iberia, the Huns and the Mongols from the East, or the Turks. All the many desperate defences of countless Minas Tiriths replay...

The Jews weren't exactly scattered across Europe and the Mediterranean of their own free will. They were expelled from Israel by the Romans after one rebellion too many. That's why dwarfs usually fill that role since Tolkien drew on themes in Exodus when he wrote about their lost homelands like...