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Why do we keep using the same races and would people be willing to accept new ones?

I've noticed that across various fantasies created by different people, more or less the same set of magical races is used again and again. IE: elves, dwarfs, orcs, trolls, goblins, some sort of diminutive halfling, etc.
My question is, why is it these same fantasy races are used over and over by different writers? When did somebody establish them as the standard set of fantasy races to be used by all authors?

Also, what is it about them that makes them magical? To me there doesn't seem to be anything magical about Dwarfs, at least in most cases. It is possible that they are not magical in any way and are simply diminutive humans. And while orcs, trolls and goblins are clearly not human, there doesn't seem to be anything about them that ties their existence to the supernatural.

I've been working on my own fantasy novel and in it magical races will mean that certain species of sentience lifeform will have the natural ability to use magic while humans cannot. Sort of like Harry Potter and the difference between wizards and muggles. In some cases their very existence of their species will be tied to magical power.

I'm looking forward to creating my own magical races but at the same time I'm afraid that if I do create entirely new ones, people won't accept them because they are different from the established fantasy races.

Also, I am a big fan of anthropomorphism (Furries) and I plan to base my magical races of humanoids of various animal species. I ran this by my writing teacher once and he was not enthusiastic about the idea at all, in fact he seemed to think it was a bad one, either that or he didn't quite grasp the concept. I think he's said something like, if I have wolf-people in my book then that means I can't have regular wolves in the world I'm creating and so describing their appearance will be much more difficult since I can't use words that the characters don't understand themselves.
 

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
Hello, Eccentric Gentleman.

There are many people here in Mythic Scribes that have created Fantasy races and species of their own. It's true that Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Centaurs and other types of creatures are very popular, but that does not mean that new creations would be rejected by those who read our stories.

Go ahead, create your own species and have a lot of fun writing about them!

I have a strong liking for furry creatures, also. Many of my stories feature giant wolves in one way or another, and my own Fantasy species, the Aylars, have long furry tails and claws. My wolves are always capable of talking, and they feature magical powers of their own.

Some people prefer stories with the classic Fantasy species, but there are also many others seeking to find original creations.
 

Queshire

Auror
There was another thread on here recently about the same topic, in particular this thread: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/world-building/3485-why-use-d-d-races-our-stories.html However since that thread has gone on for 20 pages and ended up going off topic a bit, I don't see any problem with this thread.

Races such as Elves, Dwarves, or Orcs are tropes. They are a certain bundle of related ideas which an author can reasonably expect their reader to be familiar with. When you say "Elf" or "Dwarf" your average reader will automatically come up with a mental image to fit the race. Meanwhile if you call your race something random like Vanna then what mental image are the readers supposed to bring up? How are they supposed to picture their appearance, their cities, their cultures? You need to take time and spend words to explain this to the reader so that they are able to build that mental image, and for some authors those are words and time which could be better spent advancing the story.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Yep, what Queshire said.

Also, those races/creatures are drawn from various mythologies from around the world. Authors can look back at and draw from the long and varied list of myths associated with them, and then do straight up translations or spin things off into their own direction. In either case, the author can use the image associated with the name as a short cut to establish an image of what that creature will look like in the story. Even if say an author's elf looks completely different than a traditional elf, they can contrast their image to the traditional image in order to entrench an picture into the reader's heads.

With that said, there's nothing wrong with creating new races, and I doubt anyone will reject them just because. But the thing is if your creature resembles a traditional one too much, like it's short and lives under a mountain and covets wealth, some readers are going to just say, "Hey, it may be named a Twad, but that's a dwarf."
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
The Golden Bough
The Hero With a Thousand Faces

There are reasons why we find the same sort of creatures in multiple cultures. We find talking animals. We find dragons. We find small, sly people who do mischief in remote places or under cover of darkness. We find big scary monsters that lurk in much the same sort of places. They have different names because of the different languages, but the similarities are remarkable.

People who use orcs and trolls and elves aren't being unoriginal thereby. They are invoking deep-seated archetypes. There is really little difference between that and using the fallen woman or the wisecracking sleuth or the tight-lipped gunslinger. Handled poorly, they are hackneyed stereotypes. Done well, they are memorable tales.

Following the tropes doesn't guarantee triteness. Ignoring the tropes doesn't guarantee breaking new ground. And neither guarantees a good story, alas.

In short, as the others have said: fuggedaboudit. Write what you want to write.
 
As Queshire pointed out, we write about them because we know them. Same as why most of our stories, even fantasy ones, are about human or the very least humanoid. Because we know how we think, how we act.

Also, when you create a whole new race, that is a lot of work to do or else you will get with a "Vanna" who talks like elf, move like elf, lives like elf, is everything a elf but in name. :D
(I've done something similar, I created a different elf, give them new name, features, and because they are similar to elves, I made the world 'elf' a slang when referring to them.)

In short, write down what you want. If you do have a different race, don't be afraid of use. Just beware of the Calling a Rabbit a Smeerp troupe.
 

Aspasia

Sage
Following the tropes doesn't guarantee triteness. Ignoring the tropes doesn't guarantee breaking new ground. And neither guarantees a good story, alas.

I just wanted to say I really like this line, it's very well put.

I often write with a lot of the cliches many people say to avoid. I love high elves, most of my stories have a black-clad assassin or two, it's not unusual for my longer WIPs to have a Chosen One type fighting a Great Evil. Thing is, though, even if I tried, I couldn't make my high elves be the same as Tolkien's. They're my high elves. There's always a twist, or an inversion, or a weird element to the cliches I use. Don't be afraid of using cliches, because your own voice will come through when you write them. Or so I believe :)

As a reader, I don't really mind whether the author has used trope races, or has made up their own races. Using tropes does give me a "template" for what you're trying to portray -- if you say Elf, I'm going to be surprised if they mine under mountains and have thick beards. But remember it is just a template, I don't have a fully-fledged view of the race in your story, and you as the author can't ignore that. Making up a new race, you have to give me everything as I won't have a clue what to expect when they come in. If you make it clear and describe / explain them well, I don't see any difference between using a "standard" race or a completely new one, in terms of reader acceptance.

After all, telling me "NAME was an Elf." doesn't say much really. There are so many types of elves! Should I picture a wild elf, a sea elf, a short mischevious trickster, a Tolkienesque high elf ... ? It DOES tell me NAME is humaoid and probably has at least human-level intelligence, is probably magical, and probably lives for a long time, but the rest depends on your story and your setting! You do have more work if you say "NAME was a Vanna." :D I will at least need a rough sketch of what the heck a "Vanna" is. But really, you need to build your races whether or not you use tropes, if you do it well there really isn't much difference.
 
I'm looking forward to creating my own magical races but at the same time I'm afraid that if I do create entirely new ones, people won't accept them because they are different from the established fantasy races.

If nothing else, I can allay some concerns about that.

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(Courtesy of Slightly Damned)

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(Courtesy of Digger)

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(Courtesy of Monsterkind)

And yes, one of those is technically a fire demon, and yes, another has some similarities to a dwarf, but they're all reshaped and rewritten in new and interesting ways, and they've all acquired a fanbase.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
There are plenty of books with different races from the standard fantasy fare. That said, you can tell an infinite number of excellent stories just using the stock fantasy races, and if that's what you want to write then there is no reason you shouldn't.

Outside of fantasy, broadly defined, think of all the stories that are told with just one race - humans.
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
If you don't want to read fantasy with standard races, here are some writers you might like:

Kameron Hurley (has mostly humans, but has a world powered by bugs, so bugs become like their own main race)
China Mieville (all sorts of weird junk)
Steven Erikson (although his races are essentially standard races but ten times cooler)
Richard K. Morgan (has lizard people but they're a gillion times creepier to me)

I sometimes use standard races, but I find recently I'm coming up with some "sort of" new ones. Mostly they're just Lovecraftian nightmares, giant cats, or celestial-like beings born in litters from a witch's barren womb, but hell, I'm trying. :)

Those are just some off hand. I could probably think of others, but it's late. Basically, if the word "elf" or "orc" evokes bad feelings in you as a reader or writer, seek out writers that go further away from medieval fantasy.
 

Aspasia

Sage
Kameron Hurley (has mostly humans, but has a world powered by bugs, so bugs become like their own main race)

Reminded me of Shadows of the Apt, a series which has a bunch of races based on bugs! You have Beetle people, Mantis people, Spiders, Wasps, Bees, Ants, etc etc ... very creative, and very well done. I love how the author gives each "race" certain characteristics from the insect they're derived from ... yet they're all humanoid. Empire in Black and Gold is the first book. Despite the unusual setup, it didn't take long for me to be as comfortable with, say, Wasps and Spiders as it does for more "standard" fantasy races. And this series uses a LOT of bug races, all different :D.
 
My biggest problem with original races comes from the descriptions people use. It's always either calling a rabbit a smeerp( i.e. they're like elves, but pink with owl eyes, and bat wings for ears so I call them Boondogglers) or it tends to fall into they're anthropomorphic animals.( I didn't want to have a clichéd fantasy setting so instead of Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs I have Cat people, Dog People, and Lizard people). Also a large amount of them tend to wear either a Black Hat or White Hat.(They're Scholars, no Warriors, no Religious Fanatics, cause that's original.)

I'm not saying it can't work, but if you really want to be original, you have to be willing to put in a lot of work.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
Nothing necessarily wrong with using any of the classic races in your story if that's what you really want to do, but their recurrence in the genre might have something to do with its prevailing Eurocentrism. Most fantasy races that we recognize are derived from Northern European traditions with maybe a smattering of Greco-Roman influences (e.g. centaurs). That's all well and good if you prefer the standard European-based settings, but if you would rather borrow races from established mythology outside that mold, you'll do well to look at non-European traditions. Why not experiment with, say, the Congolese wakyambi ("Heaven People") or the Malian tyerkow (skin-shedding blood-drinkers)?

Though come to think of it, if you decide to modify these races in any way as is routinely done with elves and orcs, would people perceive that as cultural appropriation?
 
There does seem to be one huge exception to the northern Europe rule, and that's races that wound up in Dungeons and Dragons. Nagas, kelpies, even rakshasas appeared in D&D, then spread to other works. (There are other vectors--dullahans appeared everywhere for a while after one was a popular character in an anime called Durarara--but D&D is the most prominent I can think of.)

Of course, if you really want to use stuff from all over the globe, Shin Megami Tensei is a good point of inspiration. So many different mythologies, mixed and matched . . .
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
My biggest problem with original races comes from the descriptions people use. It's always either calling a rabbit a smeerp( i.e. they're like elves, but pink with owl eyes, and bat wings for ears so I call them Boondogglers) or it tends to fall into they're anthropomorphic animals.( I didn't want to have a clichéd fantasy setting so instead of Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs I have Cat people, Dog People, and Lizard people). Also a large amount of them tend to wear either a Black Hat or White Hat.(They're Scholars, no Warriors, no Religious Fanatics, cause that's original.)

I'm not saying it can't work, but if you really want to be original, you have to be willing to put in a lot of work.

I struggle to think of any truly original depictions of fantasy races in stories. You're always going to have to pull from reality or myth one way or another. Even the examples I listed above are different versions of things that already exist.

You have to make races that somehow can relate to a human reader. That means giving them characteristics that someone can imagine. They have to have personalities, cultures, physical traits, etc. Almost anything that can be dreamed up can be said to be "unoriginal." I think the key for creating interesting fantasy races is to figure out what makes your version stand out just a bit more.

For example, I'm going to design my version of "cat people."

1. They're all green, have no eyes, and communicate through an elaborate combination of hissing and purring.
2. 1 in every 10,000 cat people has "devil powers" meaning they can summon up devils from the 9th Hell to do their bidding in every day. These devils vary from being diminutive to over nine feet tall, depending on the age of the cat person.
3. Cat people must kill and eat their enemies after a battle. This is part of their religion of worshiping the Giant Hairball. Once the flesh is digested, the hair and bones are spat out and kept inside large shrines inside their homes.
4. Cat people are master politicians in that they never tell the truth about anything. This makes it so the cities and settlements they build collapse every couple of decades. Most cat people are nomadic and cultural leeches, absorbing the dress and mannerisms of those they blend in with.
5. Cat people are very poor at math in general and make horrible merchants.

So this here version of cat people would probably be a lot different from someone else's version of cat people. As long as it's interesting and relevant to the story being told, I don't think it really matters if it's 100 percent original.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
Also, I am a big fan of anthropomorphism (Furries) and I plan to base my magical races of humanoids of various animal species.
This right here. If you wrote a story about a race of magical chickens, I'd read it. Animals are a great fit for this because no one is really expecting them to have civilizations. And don't worry about your writing teacher. There's definitely readers out there who are interested in stranger styles of fantasy. So, like everyone else has mentioned, write your passion. You can make it work.

You *can* have regular wolves in your story and wolf people. Werewolves, for example, are different than the animals. They can co-exist (totally thinking of Skyrim right now where the werewolf character can summon wolves).

Personally, I like my elves and orcs in D&D, video games, and LOTR. I don't normally read fantasy works that have those races in them. Probably because a lot of fantasy literature these days seems repetitive to me. I also write only human races with the exception of faeries, because I couldn't help myself. But there's a lot of "different" stuff out there too, so definitely there's a market for your wolf people.

I think what makes the tropes magical is that they're different from humans. We don't have pointy ears, green skin, or work in mines under mountains (hopefully). The point of the fantasy genre is to alter the realistic. And as everyone else here has said, those tropes make it easier for authors to take readers into a fantasy realm without the extra work of explaining why their ethereal race of people are anything other than elves.

I also love furries. My WIP features a talking bear and the protagonist can communicate with animals. She also has a wolf familiar. So yes, there are many writers here that don't necessarily use tropes. A great word of advice I received the other day was to figure out what kind of writer I want to be in the fantasy genre. What would you like to represent? :)
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
It struck me, reading this thread, that most of the non-European non-human races I know about (trying to get this as specific as possible) are wicked. They're monsters or at least mischievous.

You folks who have wandered off into other continents, what have you found along the lines of, say, High Elves? That is, races (not unique creatures) who are Good, or Wise, or would otherwise fall into the Lawful Good quadrant?
 
You folks who have wandered off into other continents, what have you found along the lines of, say, High Elves? That is, races (not unique creatures) who are Good, or Wise, or would otherwise fall into the Lawful Good quadrant?

Nagas can be nice, depending on the myth, and djinn have the free will to choose between good and evil. Apsaras are also pretty okay, though I don't see those very much.
 
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