You know, that reminds me of a “letter to the editor” I read in a Norwegian issue of Conan about a decade ago, where a reader begged the editor to talk to the translator about alternating some between descriptions; apparently, he was a bit tired of Conan’s bronze-coloured skin, and whatnot.

(Poor Picts, by the way; I sometimes suspect Howard held a personal grudge against them for some reason, as they’re usually the scum of the earth in every universe he made — and all the poor buggers ever did was to be pushed out into the edges of Britain by the Celts, as well as serving as the forefathers of the Scots.)

But hey, it was kinda how most people were back then, so while I despise the ideas they held, I’s not too harsh on any of them, really. Although it’d feel more just, somehow, if they had both waited to off themselves until 1946 or something.

Argh, I feel I kinda want to read some of Howard’s Conan stories, but damn, I’m a bit turned off by the man’s anti-semitism. It’s one of the reasons I’ve avoided Lovecraft (although his racism doesn’t shine through all that much in the five or six short stories of his I’ve read). I’m afraid that if I come across anything too unpalatable, I’d just throw the book into a wall and leave it to rot where I landed, even though the more rational parts of my mind tell me that this scenario is bullshit; I’m much more likely to shrug off their nauseating ignorance, regard it as curiosa, and then read on, slightly amused. Kinda.

Bah.

Good observations, too, by the way.Karsa and Conan are pretty similar, and it’s almost weird to think how much Conan has come to be associated with the “brainless barbarian” stereotype, when one of his primary character traits is that he’s extremely intelligent.

As for Conan, I’ve not read anything not comics about him either, but I have read a lot of comics, and I’d say the character is a lot like Erikson’s Karsa Orlong, only with less of a need for attention. That thought made me want to elaborate, despite it being meaningless off topic dribble, so here I go: They’ve both got the whole “surprisingly intelligent tribesman-warrior with barbarian priorities and values placed in a setting deeming itself more civilized than them” going, and of course, there’s the whole unstoppable-thing. Which is ironic, as I think Karsa is intended to be a break on the barbarian stereotype and not a reminder of the most iconic one out there. (Of course, Conan is in many regards very much a break with his own stereotype too, so)