EccentricGentleman
Scribe
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.
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.