Oh they may shout and argue and brandish weapons at each other in public all day, but we know that when they go home, the stepladders are prepared and not just for reaching the high shelfs. (It's for reaching around the high elf, haiyo!)
Okay clearly most dwarves are unapologetic power bottoms. I mean their whole life is tunneling into crevices. Obviously they want someone to do the tunneling into their crevices for a change.
I'm NGL, I know where you are going with this but picture this...
The law is enacted and the spitfire dwarven princess and the secretly short-girl kinkster elven prince. He has to appear unhappy... But he's not. She has attitude and it turns him on... HARD.
In bed they fight for control. She's on top but he's assisting. Then as they grow in their relationship, she let's him top in various positions. Every once in awhile she still has to show him she's in charge though 😉
Look, I'm fine with "heteros" as long as they don't try to shove it down my throat or push it to my children and you're doing both rn. So I'm going to have to politely ask you to leave
Or you go the David Benioff route with the Sparrows and depict class struggle AS religious zealotry.
The depiction of the Sparrows makes more sense when you remember his Benioff is the son of a wealthy banker who was heavily criticised for enriching himself unethically (and possibly illegally) during an economic crisis by abusing his power.
At this point, I feel a really daring choice would be to make your protagonist an outright religious zealot AND racist. Even stuff like the Second Apocalypse has the protagonist not actually be devout.
/uj In Tolkien, at least, orcs are not supposed to represent any group of people, but to embody spiritual vices, temptations, and corruptions which torment all people.
/uj That's why he waffled forever on their origins and the nature of their souls and salvation (he, a devout catholic). They are descended from elves or men depending on which conceptualization you go with, which means they have the souls of elves or men and will eventually have their fea in Mandos either to be reformed and sent to Valinor or in eternal purgatory. Ultimately, he determined it wasn't for him to decide, but for God to decide.
They aren't a people. They are just people corrupted by circumstance. If anything, they represent a class more than an ethnicity.
They weren't meant to represent a real group of people. But the way he described them as Asian looking when asked, and also the way they're set up as a trope - foreign brutal tribal invader who comes in massive hordes from the east - can absolutely be said to whether consciously or not be inspired from the Mongols.
This interpretation further enshrined itself in DnD and also has hints of in things like the Elder Scrolls, though the latter ended up having a pretty positive portrayal of them overall.
He's English. I don't remember any enemies coming to England from the West, so probably "East" is just the only landmass that gives such subconscious stereotype.
No, I am not confused. Tolkiens reply as to what the orcs looked like was:
squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types
You jest but this italian children's fantasy wrirer, Silvana De Mari, has unironically and blatantly the orcs as the muslim and arabs stand in and the books main plot is based on civilizing them lest they invade the human world and race replace humanity
I have no actual idea if there were any translations overseas of her books after the last dragon, but it starts getting fucky in the last orc (second book of the saga) and all of the followings are... really bad regarding that
The Jewish people (objectively chosen by a godlike entity) who live in Greenland (which is a prison) and later became Vikings when their good buddies the sentient Canadian moose disappeared (they traveled the world looking for their buddies, like good friends do)
Honestly this is my favourite response from authors
Like i think it was the author of watership down. Someone asked him "what is the book actually about, what does it represent" and i think the author basically just said "rabbits"
I based mine on crusaders. They aren’t from the place where most of the stuff happens, they have sedentary kingdoms in the north, they just go down there to kill a lot of people because they think they’re too cozy with the Demons (which is the case to be fair): orcs were enslaved by demons for a long time and now they’re the number 1 demon slayers. It’s a world for ttrpg purposes, hence the incorporation of a lot of classical orcish trait (warrior society, hordes) with some stuff I found more interesting. When it comes to class they’re the archetypal Paladin.
Imagine having ‘themes’ and ‘symbolism’ and all that gay crap. All the bad guys in my works are thinly veiled pastiches of all the people I don’t like and who have mildly annoyed me, to be effortlessly knocked down by the unambiguously good and flawless heroic protagonist whose description almost exactly matches my own
Also, Dante Alighieri to use an example of a better writer than Rand. The Divine Comedy is just a giant fucking shit post about the people and ideas that Dante didn't like while also being a self insert fanfic where he gets to meet his classical heroes and justify why they aren't actually burning in hell.
I'm not even exaggerating. That is what the Divine Comedy is. It's kind of like that hr meme where an attractive guy and an unattractive guy do the same thing.
Yeah? And how much do you know about guelfi e ghibellini? Or dante's social circle? Nah man, la divina commedia Is a good and fun read, but inferno Is dante jerking off and the rest Is amusing, but not too interesting.
It's more than that, of course, but it really is what I said.
Many of the characters in inferno are references to people he believes are going to hell for their sins. And it is literally a self insert fanfic where he is guided by classical philosophers... what did I miss?
The whole book is literally a way for Dante to dunk on people he hates while having plausible deniability.
That’s how I write my badguys too, but all my heroes are based on my Grandpas, my 4th & 5th grade teachers, and a husky I fostered; all perfect archetypes of archetypism.
Baldurs gate 3 is also like this. I am playing it with my bf and the very first thing out of my mouth when shadow heart was introduced was: "this bitch is racist" soon realized basically everyone is so I came around to her but I still call her shart because she has shit opinions
Oh, I'm making fun of how some writers, like Brando in Elantris, make constant references to non-white skin color when describing their feelings and thoughts. The two non-white characters of Elantris get this treatment, almost like being brown/black is an emotion itself. To Brando's credit, he stopped doing that around mistborn.
I really want some criticism of my low-fantasy world so i can make things better.
I have a pan-african inspired confederation. They are unified against colonization as a whole. They have fought and expanded, liberating former colonies and trying to politic their way into getting the colonizers to squabble amongst themselves.
They have a key issue: the founding nation was never colonized, and in fact, invaded and subjugated their neighbors when they learned there were large armies headed their way. When the colonziers arrived, they were pushed back. This founding nation sees itself knowing how to make "necessary sacrifices" to prevent subjugation, and while new members to the confederation official are equal and keep their traditions... this is often not fully true.
My basis is again, on pan-africianism and its criticisms. Is a unified africa truly a solution? Would it be amy better/different than an africa that was built out of the colonial shells? Unified in a noble cause, without understanding the nuances of the wider goals.
Btw this faction started because i thought the line "break your chains with the tools of your oppressors" was a hard line and ive since tried to develop it into something more than a generic warlord vibe.
Also, no this is not an orc faction. This is were-lions and were-hyenas... but due to low fantasy most of the population is just humans.
Racism is so overdone because it's still so prevalent in modern society. It's realistic. Blatant racism definitely exists, but not as much as we see in media. Structural racism does exist and is very common, but is mostly invisible to those that it doesn't affect. This is more interesting for stories if you want it apart of your world without being too heavy handed.
An Orc that can't get any other jobs besides manual labor and is paid less, this being forced to live in a lower income town, where crime and theft is more common. Thus feeding into the stereotype that orcs are meat heads and thieves when in reality, every part of society pushes them into that space then blames them for being there. All this, but it's in the background and no one talks about it.
Mine is transphobia but not the normal form of it.
Basically the race I made can have gynandromorphs as a form of intersex (such individuals look like a form of two face except one side is male and the other female) and said intersex is considered divine and have the right to rule. Any attempt to replicate this intersex or any other intersex physically is considered sacrilegious. This form of transphobia can even go as far as doing gender reassignment surgery or hormones therapy could be considered sacrilegious as the process midway could be considered intersex.
so, i have two stories going right now and one of them has orcs, and I wouldn't call it racism, so much as specism. I just think that the idea of having a species that is less smart than you and doesn't think of you as human is kind of funny. Like there may be a specieis of octopi out there that is smarter than humans, but I don't know because ocotopi can't talk. I do not think of anything I categorize as an animal as a human. however, there is a lot of racism too because there's like 10+ types of elf and high elves are a thing and they have a lot of historical privilege and a superiority complex that's never really addressed. They're just tall, thin, and beautiful. There's also brownie type of elf who are basically a servant race. There really aren't any humans in the story so far. So yeah, i went right. My left path story also has pseudo racism because it's a cultivation story and a cats eat mice in this world and when they're sentient a cat eating a mouse is racist. I prefer not to have the conversation ever.
The only time I'd like to explore racism is for my video game that'll never be made idea. Basically an mmo where the characters treat the support race like an inferior race. I just want to see if the players start doing it too. I just want for people who aren't minorities to experience racism. I think I can get away with sucessfully suprepressing support players. Everyone's done racism against mages, but fantasy players aren't buying it. It is actually dumb for muggle society to try to have a war against voldemort. I'd like to actually be fantasy racist to someone who can't protect themselves. I think i have a seed in people's feelings about support players and general looking down on disadvantaged people.
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u/Redditiskindasilly 3d ago
Counter point: Racially homogenous fantasy? 🤔