Traditional Fantasy Races- Pros & Cons

You could do that in pretty much the next sentence by introducing one of them and making off-hand references to physical features... "...her golden eyes swept the frozen wastes..." or such.

Indeed, that. Point is, it is not impossible to be original with creating new races or even using the old ones. So if you are doing any world-building at all, there's just no excuse for creating half a dozen races that are basically copy-pasted from D&D rulebooks or Tolkien's lore or any other place.

Because even minor changes, even if it's taking the already existing things and adjusting them so that they are fine-tuned for the world you will be using them in, is already enough to make them more than that. And at least on a basic level, creating a new race isn't all that hard; at least if you ignore whatever fantasy races already exist and just create what you like, and if the end result is similar to something that already exists you have at least come up with what you have on your own so it's still good.

Though, of course, there are times and places where there's nothing wrong with copy-pasting those. Just not when you are creating a whole different setting for your own story, which generally means whenever you write a full-length fantasy story.

Touchdown

The only time I think TF Rs are truly acceptable is in the case of a fanfic. If the dwarves in the source material are drunken buffoons, then I won't hold it against you if your dwarves are walking stereotypes In that case, my focus is on what you've changed about the story (and whether THAT has been executed "well").

edited 30th Oct '15 8:10:55 PM by nekomoon14

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

"m opinionated because fiction is holy to me. Literally, not figuratively. If I had a religion, writing fiction would be a fundamental aspect of it."

Them let me be blunt: I DONT CARE about it, I like fiction too but Im not pushy about it, and if fiction is your religion you are acting like that guy in classroom who can way to tell people "the way" so take it easy

"If you as a creator disagree with me, you have an obligation to your own work of art to ignore me, no matter how vehement I am in my opinion."

But in this moment or place we are not creators, we are forum user and by that we should a least speak on the same level, get it? good now moving away with the actual points

"Why should I (as a prospective reader) assume that “elf” means “lover of nature” or “wise one with magical powers” or “high and ancient kingdom” when they don’t HAVE TO?"

Becaue they have becoming their most comon tropes used with them, there is thin diferent between cliche and trope you know?

Also even if you do something diferent with Elves becomes a point, after all you are putting your own spin with it.

"I have no idea what you mean by “nice syndrome”, I’m assuming English isn’t your first language?"

Not it is not so sorry about that, what I was trying to said is "niche syndrome" usually when the autor create a 4 race outside the typical it become very clear they "own" and are just...there, D&D have already a lot of races outside the typical one and almost every variation between them but even them the core 4(Elf,Dwarft,Orc, Dragon) remain, even them this atempt to being "original" just fall flat sometimes

About being pretentious is how by moving some tropes and cliches sudenly is being fresh, with the focus in how cleaver he is, that is why I use the term hipster, as someone who is arrogant by how little mainstrain is something.

" basically, it's better to differentiate between fantasy races, and fantasy hats. The former are all well and good, if a bit unoriginal"

the good thing a fantasy race have if their adaptability, just look the damn vampires from annie rice, to vampire the mascarade to twilight there is a lot of diferents between them

"I've always thought it was interesting that elves are always "the best" at whatever they do — magic, craftsmanship, quality-of-life, etc. — but nobody ever does anything with that"

I actually thing the same, if there is anything that share almost all type of elves(nature loves, facist with vestigial kindom, evil one) is who everything they do is....better, they are right now a superior species or the "grampa" of human, for example elves could be excelent villian in biopunk setting since they can be the best use of "beutifull elite"

"Drumvali doesn't exactly roll off the tongue), but whatevs. Notice how I never mentioned Dwarves, Elves, or Orcs, yet still neatly summarised the Drumvali character for new readers."

Dont get me wrong...but for a moment or two I actually think they where Elves or Dwarf

"More seriously, I think that's a pretty interesting culture, but I don't see anything suggesting they're a different species."

That is ANOTHER issue with tradicional fantasy race, usually their specie chararteristic are diferent from their cultutral one so you end with just pretty human wity shinny cities and good magic and that it, is a problem with writing non-human.

"if the end result is similar to something that already exists you have at least come up with what you have on your own so it's still good."

Yes and no, if it look similar people are going to compared them not matter what, in one of my story I make albino with a sword, every was right and dandy...until I read Elric of melinborne, I just faceplam and said "crap"

Its something that happen, convergent ideas between autors

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Yea, at this point I don't really care who thinks I'm pretentious or pushy. The point is, relying on the stereotypes of the TF Rs looks lazy to me. And nobody has given me any reason to think otherwise (like, with an argument other than "that's what elves just ARE"). It's really hard to understand what you're saying, but I think the gist of it is that you think it's okay to use tired old cliches instead of TRYING to be even a little bit different. That's your approach, great, it's not mine. If you're not a creator, then I'm not talking to you; I'm talking to fiction creators about creating fiction.

I don't think it's super difficult to use my little spark of imagination to make up something new or give something old a makeover. I think fantasy fiction is niche because creators in the genre seem to insist on maintaining a status quo of creative laziness. Ultimately, I appreciate works that approach old ideas from a fresh angle; don't tell me what dwarves "mean", tell me what they mean TO YOU (or at least to YOUR SETTING).

edited 31st Oct '15 2:04:48 PM by nekomoon14

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

"It's really hard to understand what you're saying, but I think the gist of it is that you think it's okay to use tired old cliches instead of TRYING to be even a little bit different."

This is a straw man and you know it. We're not okay with using tired old cliches, but the thing is, we don't think TF Rs are necessarily tired old cliches. We're not defending cliches; we don't agree with your assertion that they're actually tired old cliches.

"If you're not a creator, then I'm not talking to you; I'm talking to fiction creators about creating fiction."

This remark here is just generally pretty rude, which is the main problem I think some of us have with a few of your statements.

edited 2nd Nov '15 3:49:22 PM by Lennik

I was about to add a post to say we should keep the hostility down, but this gets at my point better than I could put it.

I don't remember if its been said here before, but please remember that Tropes Are Tools and, just like any other trope, Elves and Dwarves and so on can be used in creative ways. See, for example, my earlier post.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

You're both missing the point. I've explained why I may come off as hostile and condescending, though I'm not trying to be. If you choose to ignore that and focus on my tone instead of the topic at hand, that's not my fault. We're not here to discuss my diction (outside of literature, anyway).

Again, we're discussing Traditional Fantasy Races. Based on the original post, I gathered that we were specifically discussing the common stereotypes associated with the Five Races and Fantasy Axis of Evil. I'm of the opinion that we as creators should attempt to approach these concepts from new angles as often as we can. I understand that these tropes are old(-ish), and I understand that not everyone agrees with me; I'm not some kind of authority on fiction, I just think I am

We can disagree and still have a discussion about it that doesn't revolve around how I say things. Shorthands are shortcuts and shortcuts are laziness and laziness in fiction leads to crappy works in my experience. I've approached fantasy fiction from that mentality, which is why I'm so staunchly opposed to it. There's no reason "elf" MUST mean "skinny hippy" or dwarf HAS TO mean "greedy drunkard".

I'm not saying we shouldn't use elves and dwarves. I'm saying we should use them more creatively. I don't think about tropes when I create fiction; I just tell the stories I want to tell. Can we stay focused on what we're doing here, please?

edited 2nd Nov '15 9:35:01 PM by nekomoon14

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

That was my point – most “fresh takes” on traditional fantasy races just come down to a new invented culture, rather than anything inherent to their biology or psychology. In which case, why even bother making them a different species in the first place?

And more importantly, fictional people do not need to be a different species (or race, or whatever) to be interesting. All they need is clear motives and personality, same as any other individual character.

EDIT: To expand on this point, consider this: the Drumvali character has already been defined. If you read that name, you know what I'm talking about. So from here, I could say the Drumvali looked like anything, and they would still work as a fantasy race. I could say they're 8-foot-tall grey-skinned humanoids with two heads. Or inside-out salamander people. Or tri-bulbous molluscs that see by sound and hear by sight. Anything would work, so long as it didn't contradict the vague-yet-established lore I've already created.

I actually imagined the Drumvali being humans, and looking like sub-Saharan Africans. After all, their original civilization was based in a jungle, and their modern remnants probably wouldn't mingle much with the less stubborn peoples around them, so they'd likely still retain an ebony-black complexion.

It would also make a neat twist on the idea of the frigid northlands always being home to white people, since a lot of other Drumvali-descended peoples would probably still live in the north too, in more fertile and hospitable regions.

I think it's rather telling that your first reaction to my ideas was “these sound like Elves or Dwarves”. Because as we all know, no humans have ever built giant, opulent cities, or clung to their past glories at the expense of their future.

edited 4th Nov '15 4:19:00 PM by Tungsten74

Oh, I completely agree. It's just that I've been getting very strong vibes that "We should avoid tropes at all costs because tropes are completely unoriginal!" (which, as we all know, is impossible and untrue.) So I'm sorry for misunderstanding that.

But I wanna clarify again that the Traditional Fantasy Races can be done in new and creative ways. The only problem with this particular trope is, like we discussed earlier, that the trope has only existed for a short while and everyone pulls from the same source material. Playing With this particular trope is hard to do because nobody pays attention to how it's been played with.

Now as for playing with the biology, it can be done. But after a certain point the Elves and Dwarves and so on stop being... well... Elves and Dwarves and so on. Or at least they stop resembling the shorthand we readers have come to expect.

For example, my own Fantasy world has Elves and Dwarves, which have some very subtle cat- and bear-like qualities. But I can't really do much more with their appearance because otherwise viewers will go "Huh? Why does the elf have whiskers?" So, in my own project, I've expanded the history of those races so that they're related to other races that do resemble cats and bears, because that way my story can have the best of both worlds.^Bragging Oh, and there's a lot of "othering" and dehumanization in-universe and it'll make a great commentary about racism once it's done.

So to restate my point: Yes. You can play with the Traditional Fantasy Races and make them stand out from the others. But if you go too far they stop resembling that trope and look like something completely new. And that requires more Exposition, which means more time spent on "who are these guys?" and less time on "what's the problem these characters are trying to solve?"

And ultimately, with any discussion of tropes, "What are these characters up to?" is way more important than any little quibbling about whether or not we should be using Fantasy Races.

edited 4th Nov '15 4:26:42 PM by AwSamWeston

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

If that's the case, why bother calling them Elves or Dwarves at all? Then you can do anything with their appearance because the reader won't associate them with anything. Copying the name but little else is almost as pointless as copying everything but the name. If they stopped being Elves and Dwarves, why call them that in the first place?

That is precisely the reason why the cliche is so irritating, because averting it is so easy. Even if you start with Tolkien's Elves or Dwarves as a base, all you have to do is subtract some typical traits and/or add in some new ones, and change the name. That is when the Five Races stop being a cliche and start being a trope. The reason why Tungsten's Drumvali are such a good example of a fantasy race is partly because they have a unique name, which is why Tungsten's point about them being capable of having any appearance works so well.

Well, of course they can. Tolkien may have made the trope, but Norse Mythology is its Ur-Example. Tolkien himself was a copy-cat, he took two of the lesser talked about races from the five nonhuman ones and expanded on them in new and creative ways. The problem is not so much that everyone pulls from the same source material (although that is technically true), the problem is that everyone pulls from the wrong source material; they pull from the copy rather than the original. Actually pulling from the original and then fleshing them out your own way is the other way to avoid the cliche.

I don't agree with this at all. Go back to Tolkien; although LOTR does have appendices at the beginning and end of the story, those concern the hobbits and humans, and he has very little exposition in the actual narrative. I don't remember any point in the story where he actually delved into a lengthy explanation of who each race was or where they came from (with the exception of hobbits and Ents, the latter case being a character doing the explaining rather than the narrator), they were just there. (Now The Silmarillion is different; there the exposition is the story.) Instead Tolkien just immersed the audience in his world (to the point of even making references to people or things without explaining what they actually were), something that some writers fail to do.

So the point is, having a new, unique race does not require more exposition.

edited 4th Nov '15 6:50:17 PM by shiro_okami

Home Run

Points to Tungsten74 as well

edited 4th Nov '15 7:30:26 PM by nekomoon14

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

And another point is, if you stop developing the races to fit what you have in mind for for your world, and all just to make them fit the archetypes you chose for them from the list of "traditional fantasy races", you are limiting your story's world to the size of a shoebox.

Because for as long as your reader is at all familiar with what is going on in fantasy stories, they will perceive the races with their own filter anyway. And I do mean it: in a story of mine, I have both a race of elves and a race of dwarves; thing is, they aren't their own races but simply a subset of humans, and the very word ("human") is used to describe them, but until they see the word the readers do assign the words "elf" and "dwarf" to it in many cases and even after the reveal they base their perception of it off of those words. And there really are no more than superficial similarities, those being "they live in a place with many trees, and have pointier ears" and "they mine a lot, and are burlier".

I also have dragons, only instead of being dragons they are actually dragon-shaped projections of what is basically tainted energy of the world onto itself, so kind of like sentient (but impossible to communicate with) self-replicating and regenerating if given time and possible to harm Fiendfyre that can actually put some of the energy it is made of into humans to put them under its thrall and change them into monsters with time.

So yeah, giving your fictional people a fantasy hat is acceptable and reasonable. It's just that you shouldn't dress them in only this hat but in some other garb that represents their uniqueness as a race and as individuals; otherwise you will get booed for presenting fashion that is just perverse, basically, because that's what fashion consisting of only a hat is.

An odd thing happened recently. I was considering what some of our pro-TFR posters were saying and I realized that I've been working under the assumption that everyone who uses the stereotyped TF Rs are being creatively lazy. I realized that a creator might simply be satisfied with D&D-style dwarves (to avoid focusing on those annoying pointy-eared folks) and use them not because "they're recognizable as dwarves" but because "these dwarves are good enough for me". I just felt that it was kindof important to admit that I've had a slight change of heart.

I guess I'm not entirely against the use of stereotypical TF Rs (no matter how played-out they are to me) as long as the creator is being honest with themself (and, more importantly, their audience) about why they're using them. So, good job TFR supporters

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

"What's the point of making them non-humans?"

It implies that races must be human unless it has to be non-human for biological reasons. Which makes me wonder why it's that way.

I imagine a simple reason to have humanlike non-humsnd, is to give them non-human body features. Blue skin, pointy ears, a body mark on the neck, all can be made into easy visual markers of a fantasy race.

It's also easier to handwave any aspects of their culture that wouldn't be feasible for humans, although that's probably retroactive biological reasoning

I just thought up all of that. I may not be right.

I never managed to articulate it but yes, that's exactly why I'm okay with using Traditional Fantasy Races.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

Now, wouldn't it be more interesting to call them all human despite being different species altogether?

Like, you've got humans who are short and stout with long beards, humans who are tall and slim with purple skin and pointy ears, and humans with bright coloured fur, long tails and whiskers.

I think it'd be fun to see something like that. Like, Political Correctness Gone Mad: Fantasy Version.

edited 11th Nov '15 12:52:19 PM by Cid

'Tis what I'm doing in my story, to be honest.

Though they are basically humans with features resembling those you'd find on specimen belonging to certain fantasy races, rather than being elves or dwarves or whatnot that is called human.

And since the major divide is humans/monsters—the latter of which can't be communicated with and seem only interested in causing as much damage as possible—you'd have to be crazy to insist that you are not human.

edited 11th Nov '15 1:17:06 PM by Kazeto