Fantasy Races: Staples or New Creations?

[TheKillerBs]

There are conflicts between people of non-human species in my world, but those are conflicts about something, not human-style conflict for it's own sake.

But every human conflict in the history of humanity has been about something, not for its own sake. Most of the time, the subject's been land.

 

[DeathtoTrite]

Honestly, I prefer humans only or human dominated.

My rant on elves, dwarves, etc. -- the classics are so classic that if I mention an elf character, dwarf character, etc. a reader will immediately think Legolas/Gimli. Even if I have well developed unique dwarves and elves, their traits get overwhelmed by the reader's mental shortcuts to LOTR. And if made them so unique, like dwarves as supreme mages or elves as industrialists, it seems like 1) why call them elves or dwarves? 2) info-dumping to stress how they aren't Tolkein's elves and 3) unnecessarily hipster.

Unique races, meanwhile, can be harder to relate to and seem to lead to mass-info dumping every time said race eats, sleeps or starts a fire. That said, I like bizarre curiosity races like the Raz'ac in Eragon (when they were mysterious)

 

[Annoyingkid]

Honestly, I prefer humans only or human dominated.

My rant on elves, dwarves, etc. -- the classics are so classic that if I mention an elf character, dwarf character, etc. a reader will immediately think Legolas/Gimli. Even if I have well developed unique dwarves and elves, their traits get overwhelmed by the reader's mental shortcuts to LOTR. And if made them so unique, like dwarves as supreme mages or elves as industrialists, it seems like 1) why call them elves or dwarves? 2) info-dumping to stress how they aren't Tolkein's elves and 3) unnecessarily hipster.

Unique races, meanwhile, can be harder to relate to and seem to lead to mass-info dumping every time said race eats, sleeps or starts a fire. That said, I like bizarre curiosity races like the Raz'ac in Eragon (when they were mysterious)

People don't immediately think of Legolas and Gimli with Dungeons and Dragons elves/dwarves or Warhammer elves/ dwarves.

 

[elemtilas]

More wishful thinking than anything else.

Today's narrative seems to be dominated by people who don't understand math

"The Xs are evil, and we Ys must defend ourselves against them!"

"Actually, there are a lot of Xs who are good and a lot of Ys who are evil. Wouldn't it make more sense for the Xs and Ys who are good to work together to stop the Xs and Ys who are evil?"

"How dare you say that all Xs are good? Do you want them to get away with murdering innocent Ys?"​

Sure. The maths are so much easier when x =/= y, never, nohow, not in a squillion years! Even as a kid reading Tolkien, I wondered "aren't there ány good Orcs at all? There are bad Evles and Men after all..."

Hence, the orc-analogues of The World: many are indeed evil, as they were intended to be, and they delight in the anarchy and wanton destruction they're so good at; but others see beyond that and seek to rise above their base nature. It may not be entirely appropriate to call them "Good", but nor is it appropriate to call them "Evil", even though they have the propensity.

and I want to write about a world where this worldview is acknowledged as being ridiculous, rather than being taken as an objective axiom of all reality.

So much of the pain and suffering in human history has boiled down to one group deciding "As long as Theyâ„¢ are on equal footing with us, Theirâ„¢ existence will be a threat to us, therefor we must either keep Themâ„¢ down or kill Themâ„¢ all just in case Theyâ„¢ decide to kill us first at some unknown future point," and today, we have two "opposite" groups saying exactly the same thing about each other, and the violence is has continued escalating and escalating because neither group realizes that they are both on the same side.

Or at least that they're all proposing the same fundamental raison de combattre.

There are conflicts between people of non-human species in my world, but those are conflicts about something, not human-style conflict for it's own sake.

Well, there áre reasons, even if they don't seem like reasons. Conflict for the sake of conflict probably is a matter of honour or else some long ago feud has simply been perpetuated so long that no one can remember the actual reason for all the fighting.

 

[Simpson17866]

But every human conflict in the history of humanity has been about something, not for its own sake. Most of the time, the subject's been land.

And if we weren't so tribalistic, most of those conflicts would've cooled down more quickly instead of escalating.

Hence, the orc-analogues of The World: many are indeed evil, as they were intended to be, and they delight in the anarchy and wanton destruction they're so good at; but others see beyond that and seek to rise above their base nature. It may not be entirely appropriate to call them "Good", but nor is it appropriate to call them "Evil", even though they have the propensity.

And that sounds to me like a very human way of looking at the world.

When you look at every Planet of Hats that has ever been created for SciFi/Fantasy – Vulcans/Elves are aloof, Klingons/Orcs are militaristic, Ferengi/Goblins are greedy – you'll notice that they all have one thing in common:

They were created by human writers.

The real world is not a universe of Planets of Hats, but when we start exploring the stars and meeting new civilizations, we will think that we are meeting Planets of Hats because that's how we look at each other:

• "Gays are pedophiles!" (In the real world, sexual predators are disproportionately likely to be straight)
• "Blacks are thugs!" (In the real world, white people from bad neighborhoods are more likely to be violent than black people from good neighborhoods)
• "Muslims are terrorists!" (In the real world, over 90% of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims who do not believe in the atrocities that the oppressors believe in)
• "Humans stereotype everybody!" (... I just made myself sad)

Our Hat is that we assign Hats more value than they deserve.

Or at least that they're all proposing the same fundamental raison de combattre.

Well, there áre reasons, even if they don't seem like reasons. Conflict for the sake of conflict probably is a matter of honour or else some long ago feud has simply been perpetuated so long that no one can remember the actual reason for all the fighting.

Even when there are reasons at first, the escalation eventually becomes completely disproportionate.

 

[elemtilas]

And if we weren't so tribalistic, most of those conflicts would've cooled down more quickly instead of escalating.

And that sounds to me like a very human way of looking at the world.

Guilty as charged!

But in defense, they aren't "aliens" living on an alien world, so I don't really need to engage in all the mental gymnastics involved in devising a truly and fundamentally different mindset.

The closest I get to that is with the Daine. While they're subject to the same environment and the same tests of character and spirit, their mindset and reaction base is different. Matters of free will and the primordial Test went differently. They didn't fail, and therefore didn't fall and so are not subject to the same consequences. This makes for a whole load of people that are essentially "good" but are capable of spectacular failure. They often run afoul of Men, whose idea of "good" is really "good for me".

There are others who perhaps are also quite different. I haven't focussed on them, though.

When you look at every Planet of Hats that has ever been created for SciFi/Fantasy – Vulcans/Elves are aloof, Klingons/Orcs are militaristic, Ferengi/Goblins are greedy – you'll notice that they all have one thing in common:

They were created by human writers.

Thus far, we've not encountered any Dolphin or Elephant literature...

The real world is not a universe of Planets of Hats, but when we start exploring the stars and meeting new civilizations, we will think that we are meeting Planets of Hats because that's how we look at each other:

Right. But in our own defense, at least here on Earth, who we're meeting are all humans. And so extrapolation is possible, and the extrapoland turns out to be right. The fatal flaw with applying this logic is expecting it to be true for non-humans.

 

[valiant12]

The real world is not a universe of Planets of Hats, but when we start exploring the stars and meeting new civilizations, we will think that we are meeting Planets of Hats because that's how we look at each other:

Assuming that humanity ever make a contact with other sentient species. Space is big.

"Humans stereotype everybody!" (... I just made myself sad)

I think stereotyping is the norm , not the exeption in nature. The human brain can maintain complex relaishanships with around 100 - 200 people. Realisticly a humanoid creatute like a dwarf or an Orc will have similar brain.

 

[DeathtoTrite]

People don't immediately think of Legolas and Gimli with Dungeons and Dragons elves/dwarves or Warhammer elves/ dwarves.

Really? I have to admit, I definitely do. The elves are arrogant, magic archers who are really old while the dwarfs are short, fierce warriors with awesome steampunk and beards.

 

[Steerpike]

Right. But in our own defense, at least here on Earth, who we're meeting are all humans. And so extrapolation is possible, and the extrapoland turns out to be right. The fatal flaw with applying this logic is expecting it to be true for non-humans.

Likewise, when it comes to non-humans / fantasy races, there is no reason one cannot suppose that such races all share a single, defining trait. It can make just as much sense as the opposite.

 

[skip.knox]

There can and should be common traits that are species-specific. We see it even among humans. There are common (which is not a synonym for universal) traits that lead people not only to distinguish Western from non-Western, but Italian from Norwegian, and indeed north Italian from south Italian.

So it is perfectly all right to say, for example, that humans (in my world) are polytheistic while orcs are monotheistic. That sprites are fascinated, even obsessed, with numbers and numeracy. That elves do not build cities. That among dwarves it's all about clan and canton. Creating a common cultural base is what helps the reader feel that traveling from, say, a gnome village to a human city is actually meaningful.

In fact, learning about cultural quirks is part of the fun of reading fantasy. As for expectations, those vary wildly. As has been observed before, a book is not responsible for the sort of person who reads it. When I read Chinese fantasy, many of the creatures don't resonate with me at all, and even the ones that do (e.g., dragons) behave in ways that are so different, I just have to let the story tell itself and leave my preconceptions behind.

So, I don't worry too much about the stereotypes. I admit that I consciously do not give orcs tusks, nor are my goblins any sort of cousin to orcs. IOW, I do indeed give some thought to the Tolkien-esque stereotypes, if only avoid an unthinking reproduction of them.

 

[Steerpike]

There can and should be common traits that are species-specific. We see it even among humans. There are common (which is not a synonym for universal) traits that lead people not only to distinguish Western from non-Western, but Italian from Norwegian, and indeed north Italian from south Italian.

So it is perfectly all right to say, for example, that humans (in my world) are polytheistic while orcs are monotheistic. That sprites are fascinated, even obsessed, with numbers and numeracy. That elves do not build cities. That among dwarves it's all about clan and canton. Creating a common cultural base is what helps the reader feel that traveling from, say, a gnome village to a human city is actually meaningful.

In fact, learning about cultural quirks is part of the fun of reading fantasy. As for expectations, those vary wildly. As has been observed before, a book is not responsible for the sort of person who reads it. When I read Chinese fantasy, many of the creatures don't resonate with me at all, and even the ones that do (e.g., dragons) behave in ways that are so different, I just have to let the story tell itself and leave my preconceptions behind.

So, I don't worry too much about the stereotypes. I admit that I consciously do not give orcs tusks, nor are my goblins any sort of cousin to orcs. IOW, I do indeed give some thought to the Tolkien-esque stereotypes, if only avoid an unthinking reproduction of them.

Yes.

Or also that a fantasy race may be inherently evil. Of course not every reader or writer is going to like that approach, and it may or may not be useful depending on the type of story one is writing, but there is nothing inherently improper about it when applied to a fantasy setting.

 

[Annoyingkid]

Really? I have to admit, I definitely do. The elves are arrogant, magic archers who are really old while the dwarfs are short, fierce warriors with awesome steampunk and beards.

Tolkien's dwarves don't have steampunk technology. Toklien set the general standard for the look of these races, but tell me, what distinguishes one Tolkien elf from another? Anywhere in the setting? Individual elves and dwarves only take 3 distinguishing actions throughout the entire series.

1) Gimli and Legolas form respect for one another.
2) Gimli and Galadriel ...ditto.
3) Arwen falls in love with Aragorn.

That's it. Cirdan, Glorifindel, Elrond, Celeborn etc, they're all the same character.Because LOTR isn't about elves and dwarves, Tolkien gets away with it. The difference in character between Gloin and Balin? No idea.

So I never understood why Tolkien's elves and dwarves are the standard to which all others are compared. They were incredibly passive, conservative, and really only stood as representations of the passing age of magic and wonder.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

There can and should be common traits that are species-specific. We see it even among humans. There are common (which is not a synonym for universal) traits that lead people not only to distinguish Western from non-Western, but Italian from Norwegian, and indeed north Italian from south Italian.

So it is perfectly all right to say, for example, that humans (in my world) are polytheistic while orcs are monotheistic. That sprites are fascinated, even obsessed, with numbers and numeracy. That elves do not build cities. That among dwarves it's all about clan and canton. Creating a common cultural base is what helps the reader feel that traveling from, say, a gnome village to a human city is actually meaningful.

In fact, learning about cultural quirks is part of the fun of reading fantasy. As for expectations, those vary wildly. As has been observed before, a book is not responsible for the sort of person who reads it. When I read Chinese fantasy, many of the creatures don't resonate with me at all, and even the ones that do (e.g., dragons) behave in ways that are so different, I just have to let the story tell itself and leave my preconceptions behind.

So, I don't worry too much about the stereotypes. I admit that I consciously do not give orcs tusks, nor are my goblins any sort of cousin to orcs. IOW, I do indeed give some thought to the Tolkien-esque stereotypes, if only avoid an unthinking reproduction of them.

You're comparing different human cultures with different fantasy being species, and I find that confusing. Culture =/= species. Unless races in your world happen to be some kind of analog for different human cultures...

I mean, it is okay, I suppose, to say that a fantasy race is mono-cultural, or at least that there isn't much variation. No one can tell you that you can't. But it would seem like fantasy races would have diversity and variation within them just as humans do. That would depend on how much they've spread over the world, diversified, and adapted, of course. If they are mainly confined to one lifestyle, or one area of the world, or for any reason haven't migrated and developed different languages and ways of living, then maybe they might be more mono-cultural.

It would be impossible to create a fantasy race as diverse as humans. There are thousands of languages and people groups worldwide. But that's exactly why I feel like a World of Hats type thing is oversimplification to an extreme degree. It seems like there would be different cultures within races in most cases. Maybe the presence of different races sharing dominion of the world would buffer the spreading and diversification of each individual race.

It's hard to determine these things because the human race is literally our only example of a sentient race we know of, and we are human. So all our races are going to be based somewhat on humans, and all their traits probably will exist somewhere in the human race. The human race encompasses such a broad variety there is no way to create something like, with similar diversity, without them BEING humans, due to us not knowing anything other than humans. So our fantasy races traits are mostly going to just be human traits zoomed in on and augmented or applied to a race.

(I mean, imagination and drawing on, say, animal's traits can get you outside of humans as your only reference. But only so far.)

 

[DeathtoTrite]

Tolkien's dwarves don't have steampunk technology. Toklien set the general standard for the look of these races, but tell me, what distinguishes one Tolkien elf from another? Anywhere in the setting? Individual elves and dwarves only take 3 distinguishing actions throughout the entire series.

1) Gimli and Legolas form respect for one another.
2) Gimli and Galadriel ...ditto.
3) Arwen falls in love with Aragorn.

That's it. Cirdan, Glorifindel, Elrond, Celeborn etc, they're all the same character.Because LOTR isn't about elves and dwarves, Tolkien gets away with it. The difference in character between Gloin and Balin? No idea.

So I never understood why Tolkien's elves and dwarves are the standard to which all others are compared. They were incredibly passive, conservative, and really only stood as representations of the passing age of magic and wonder.

True, Tolkein's dwarfs don't have steampunk. And I agree with how you describe them. And of course, you can do them well. But for me at least, they're difficult to do well.

 

[skip.knox]

>it would seem like fantasy races would have diversity and variation within them just as humans do.
That was the point I was clumsily making, DoTA--that if there were such variations within a single species, there surely ought to be at least that much variation between species and then within each individual species. And then, of course, there's the room for individual variations within that culture and sub-culture.

That's why I did not spec out my nations (elf nation, dwarf nation, et ceteration)--I wanted to leave room for variation and not merely have a heading called Elf. I'm only now, in my current novel, exploring a couple of elf sub-cultures. So, for example, the wagoneers are quite different from fisher elves, but both must clearly be elf and not any flavor of dwarf or human. It's tricky work.

 

[Malik]

You have to ask yourself what purpose the races serve in your story. Why do you have different races, and what is their reason for being in the story at all?

More on this here.

 

[Deleted member 4265]

I don't really care that much but if I had to choose probably original creations. They tend to have more depth because the author can't just rely on our assumptions, they've got to fully flesh out this new race and its culture whereas with the traditional races you can just go "they're elves, they live in trees and think themselves superior, what more do you need to know about them?"

That being said, I'd rather read about elves with a rich cultural heritage than insectoid chipmunk people from an alternate dimension if the only thing you're going to tell me about them is that they're really small and love apple pie.

I don't necessarily mind nonhumans built around a single trait either, for example orcs being a warlike people so long as what that means is explored. You could still create a fairly complex race around that idea. What constitutes a good or honorable warrior could differ across orc nations. What would the religion and gender roles for an inherently violent race be like?

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

>it would seem like fantasy races would have diversity and variation within them just as humans do.
That was the point I was clumsily making, DoTA--that if there were such variations within a single species, there surely ought to be at least that much variation between species and then within each individual species. And then, of course, there's the room for individual variations within that culture and sub-culture.

That's why I did not spec out my nations (elf nation, dwarf nation, et ceteration)--I wanted to leave room for variation and not merely have a heading called Elf. I'm only now, in my current novel, exploring a couple of elf sub-cultures. So, for example, the wagoneers are quite different from fisher elves, but both must clearly be elf and not any flavor of dwarf or human. It's tricky work.

Oopses. Didn't quite get that. My bad.

 

[Aurora]

You have to ask yourself what purpose the races serve in your story. Why do you have different races, and what is their reason for being in the story at all?

More on this here.

Because you want them in there?

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

You have to ask yourself what purpose the races serve in your story. Why do you have different races, and what is their reason for being in the story at all?

More on this here.

Cool blog post. I love long lived or immortal races for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

Is "I think humans with wings are cool, and developing their differing biology, culture, gender roles and society is my idea of fun" a good enough reason? lol.