Why have elves?: Is there any point to have fantasy races in my setting.

The more I observe my setting the more I begin to realize a question I've been meaning to ask for quite a while....why have elves. What's the point of having other fantasy races when humans could fill that niche? Not saying there's anything wrong with that but I feel like it's getting harder and harder to really justify why several races co-exist in my world (which is tergatta currently).

Basically, in this setting two sibling gods created the earth. Disputes happens and one of them had to be sealed into the unmaterial realm for the time being. The first were mythical beast that would be the ancestors of the present Mystiks, reincarnating warriors that turn into mythical beast.

Other races soon followed with he is it recent being the huedor, stone golems created for slave labor than rebelled and fleed to the caves where they built a society of their own. The previous races were the echuso, short hamster like people that breed like rabbits and love in burrows. The drumen, quite similar to humans save for their very short tails and slightly pointed wars and they're relatives, the dreydai, car like elves with longer tails that use to enslave the drumen until much later. Lastly, we have satyrs or Yarsati that love in mostly forest and rarely harm people.

With these five races, so they really need to exist in world where islands float on the sky?

"What's the point of having other fantasy races when humans could fill that niche?"

Because they are not human.

Yeah that it, the intersting about having other race is to explore thigng you cant do with humanity, and elves in behivor is just a snooty or cultural posting guy(imagine your typical victorian englishman mix with imperal china and yeah) but the hability to move magic better than anyone else or live longer does change things a bit.

That is necesary? not really is a deliberate choice of the author(you) so it fall on you if they should exist or not.

Well, I figured that it allows you to explore other cultures without Unfortunate Implications.

Generally, the point of non human races is to isolate one culteral tendency among humans and then explore the implications of that.

You can have lots of social commentary without non-human species; I just like having different species, because what point is having different planets/dimensions if every race is either humanoid or a Rubber-Forehead Alien?

Is diferent, having diferent races can work because it make things less anivallious.

It also allow to create diferent sociaty with diferent set of values: for example if a species dosent live more than 30 years, how they will shape their outlook? and you follow from there.

If you don't see the point of having a bunch of humanoid races in your world when ordinary humans would suffice for the purposes of the story, then don't have humanoid races. Either replace them with humans, or go the extra mile and really play up their nonhuman qualities.

Like, think about how being catlike affects the way the Dreydai live. Or the kinds of challenges stone golems have that normal humans wouldn't. Water would probably be very dangerous for them since they'd sink, they wouldn't be able to move very fast, they'd grow moss, and other stuff.

The description of the hamster people as "breeding like rabbits" makes them sound to me like they might be prey animals. Note that species that give birth to a lot of young do that when there is a high chance that their young will get eaten or otherwise die before maturity. Which then raises the question of what's killing so many Echuso- some kind of disease, or maybe dragons or some other kind of large creature? It's true that human women in very poor areas and points in history will have a lot of children in an attempt at having at least one who makes it to adulthood, but that still wouldn't quite fill the same niche as a small rodent-esque people that loses most of its young to predator attacks.

Just some things to think about when you decide what to do.

edited 16th Mar '18 7:13:31 PM by CrystalGlacia

BECAUSE ORLANDO BLOOM WAS YOUNG AND NEEDED THE MONEY.

...

Also because why not. It's an easy way to mark someone as being from a different land, culture, race, people, hemisphere, etc. and then explain the differences later. (With human characters you may need to account for viewer assumptions early - and this is kinda why we've invented so many 'Other' races.)

Look, when making a world, there don't need to be any races other than what you, the author deem necessary. Elves are popular both because they're from actual folklore, an incredibly popular series of books that have had an outsized impact on the fantasy genre, and because of those two things have become an easily recognized shorthand for certain characteristics that current authors can either go whole hog on or play with in their narratives.

So the answer is "because the author wants to have them there." Or "because people have become so used to them that it's basically expected."

But if you're looking for something more definitive than that you're out of luck. There's plenty of fantasy books out there that haven't involved elves at all. Like Game of Thrones, currently incredibly popular. Dinosaur Lords, which delivers what's in the title and has no elves.And so on and so forth.

Well, some might say A Song of Ice and Fire does have elves, though the Others are elves of a different sort.

Fire Emblem is a fantasy series that doesn't have elves either.

edited 7th May '18 1:02:06 PM by dragonfire5000

I think people are taking the title a bit too literally. It's not about the need for elves specifically, just the need for any sort of non-human sapient species to be in a work. Fire Emblem has the dragons, for instance. A Song of Ice and Fire has the Children of the Forest and the White Walkers and the Giants (well, not many, but they're there).

The question is, do you need a species that is radically different from humanity with unique strengths and weaknesses in order to fulfill some element of your plot or populate some area of your world? Or can that niche be filled with regular baseline humans, or perhaps a race of humans with unique magical abilities? The biggest point of having other races is for them to have radically different abilities, values, or cultures that one couldn't reasonably expect to find in humans.

No. You don't "need" to have non-human fantasy races in your setting. You don't "need" to have swords or magic or anything at all in your setting if you don't want it to be there. You could absolutely explore ideas about humanity using different types of humans with different sets of abilities. You could explore ideas about humanity using different types of sandwiches living in a deli fridge, if you wanted to. There's any number of things that may or may not be "needed" in your setting in order to get your ideas across.

The answer to your question is, do you want to include them?

i bit surprising but i left my tergatta project a long time ago. I decided to do my other setting which was devoid of humans as they're basically giants in my setting and the main races are bug folk. no tiny human people here.

i'm just not gonna touch humans with a ten foot pole really.

edited 9th May '18 2:47:10 PM by ewolf2015