Jawless Dwarves

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**Jawless dwarves** are a dwarven race created by u/djm\_wb.

## History

Jawless dwarves were created by an unknown **Irinaka** (a primordial entropy spirit) during the **age of giants**. They mostly mined and provided weapons and armor to other giants, helping them and the goddesses in the war against the wicked ones.

Supposedly, after they had won the war, they became incredibly cocky and mocked one of the goddesses, which smote the jaw off their face.

They had to abandon their life of mining and were rescued by Horun, who sheltered them in his archives and lenghtened their lifespan. Now, all they do is get baked in the archives. It has to be noted that at this point, humans started to shrink for some reason.

## Culture

They seem to enjoy building stuff, and even after being punished, they're as proud as always, showing off their magnificent beards. Horun has tought them sign language among other things, and they spend the rest of their days helping him in his archives. Despite being mute, they can still make noises.

How they get nourishment is unknown, but it's believed they eat via aromatherapy.

They acted as messengers for Horun, helping spread knowledge to humans. They dislike visitors.

## Critique and Thoughts

The post, while being super popular on the main worldbuilding subreddit, was derided over in r/worldjerking, for a number of reasons:

* pointless subversion
* absurd premise
* pointless tolkienism
* lack of context

### Pointless Subversion

We use this term to describe the usage of common tropes with the addition of lazy twists whose only purpose is that of inflating the writer's own ego. In this case OP used dwarves, one of the most standard races in fiction, but gave them the two undwarflike traits of being *fucking humongous* and not having mouths. In the end, it looks like the author ran out of creative juice and needed a boost to their self-confidence, which he got from a half-assed, half-original idea (this feeling is present all throughout op's replies).

### Pointless Tolkienism

It's basically the above point, but directed more towards the standard fantasy races. If you're trying to be super original and subversive, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD stop using dwarves, elves and orcs. I beg you. It's especially weird because of the fact that it's the only Tolkien inspired element in OP's world.

### Lack of Context

Most of the more coherent context OP provided wasn't actually about the dwarves but about the archives, the goddesses, the Irinaka and other random stuff, which made the post look like it was put together in 5 seconds. At first it didn't even include the fact that they don't eat, which made it super clear not even he had thought about it. There's also quite a bit of unintelligible jargon OP intentionally put to spark interest, but it only serves in making the world more uninteresting than it already is.

### Absurd Premise

So these guys helped the goddesses fight a war against evil, and succeeded. Then, they mocked one of the goddesses, who then deleted their mouths off their face. Then, they started acting as sort of guardians of knowledge, and then they get corrupted by yet another magic spell intended to lift the curse.

So, let's dissect it real quick and why it doesn't make that much sense considering what context OP provided:

1. The dwarves had no reason to mock the goddess. They had already proved to be loyal to them and even worked for them. Yes, they were proud (of what exactly?), but they were also knowledgeable.
2. The goddess had no reason to punish them for simply mocking her. You could argue she did it to set a reminder for the other creatures, to fear her powers, but no. The dwarves are a small, isolated clan that lived underground, so no one probably even realized they were cursed. So did she do it out of fear? Fear of what? She's a goddess, the goddess of speech to say the least. Why couldn't she have destroyed them verbally instead of resorting to curses fit more to a shitty greek god? Why lose such a powerful ally over a dumb insult? To add to this, the goddess of speech actually didn't remove their ability to speak, just their mouth, which means she took away their ability to eat more than their ability to speak, sending them to certain doom. This isn't a punishment, this is genocide. Also, They could very easily develop a new spoken language that only uses throat noises.
3. OP says they became helpers in the archive out of necessity, as Horun saved them from certain death. We never know what was killing them. It's possible it was their inability to eat, to which I have to say. Given their amassed knowledge, they should have probably known ways to counter the curse. A lot of people mentioned magic, prosthetics etc., but they could have just made holes on their throat and feed themselves liquid food. That would have been enough but NO. THEY FEED ON AROMATHERAPY, BUT ONLY MAYBE?! Not even OP knows what they eat. They put their smug points before writing something reasonable. I'm sorry, but while I can stand the rest of the post, this is fucking insulting.
4. OP never specifies how the dwarves act as prometheus figures if they're unable to communicate, nor how they manage to pull that off, as they're supposedly to be scared of strangers.
5. Attempting to lift the curse with magic causes it to get worse, transforming the poor dwarves into abominations. WHY. ARE. THESE. GODS. SUCH. DICKS.

All in all, it wasn't an awful post, nor an awful idea. It had a couple of flaws, and they were *deep* ones, sure. However, it was an extremely confusing post to read through and I don't blame OP for screwing up the execution in the replies.

The ***real*** reason it's here, though, is another one.

## Memes And Worldjerking Controversy

The post was met with a huge amounts of praise and support on r/worldbuilding. With about 5.5k upvotes, it was one of the top posts for a large period of time.

Over in worldjerking, however, It sparked a large amount of mock posts featuring dwarves with missing or exaggerated facial features, memes that are still very much active in worldjerking, such as "my race of punished X". Users mocked OP's ridiculous twists, as it's seen as a cheap tactic often used by pretentious writers and Tolkien wannabes.

A few posts featured edits of the original post, something the r/worldjerking mods didn't like. They rose from their slumber and deleted a bunch of posts, before even adding the rule that prohibits reposts, X-posts and edits of r/worldbuilding posts.

And thus, for fear of complaints from their main sub, the mods deleted a good chunk of good posts, sending the sub into a dark age.

## External Links

* Original Post
* OP seems to really like excessively punishing its own creations.
* But he's a good artist!