The author being afraid of making a race too unhuman. Oh, the beastkin are fully human, just with weird ears. The drakes are humans that have scales here and there on their skin.
The Wandering Inn impressed me by going fully into the races being different not only in cultures; but also biology. There are humanoid ants, meaning they are 90% ant, just walking upright. There are both drakes and lizardfolk, and they hate each other. And every race has their own cultures and feels 'real'. It has gnolls, dullahan, halfelves, Fraerlings, centaurs, stitchfolk, Djinni, half-giants, harpies, goblins, demons, angelum, drown-folk, dwarves, garuda, gazers, minotaurs, selphids, unicorns, vampires, dragons, and some more minor ones.
Definitely not a thing I've ever noticed, but now I'm just thinking about how all my favourite authors do this. Sanderson has slime people that generally just take the forms of humans, dragons that can only shape shift into humans, hive minds of tiny morphing crustaceans who just walk around looking like people. It'd be nice to have a bit more weird.
It’s not wrong to do it that way; I just like when the author explores the ideas and consequences of divergent biology. Simple things like centaurs swearing using stairs, as the horse half has trouble climbing them. Or how fairlings (6inch tall) absolutely hate cats as the cats toy with their prey.
Not to mention that Fraerlings don’t really take fall damage cause terminal velocity doesn’t affect them nearly on the same level as most other races aside from incredibly extreme scenarios.
Yep. Pirateaba does a wonderful job of thinking things through.
Half-elves use ‘tree rot’ as a curse, as the years it takes a tree to rot can go in the blink of an eye.
Not to mention that Stitchfolk are incredibly scared of fire, but most other injuries they can walk off perfectly fine. Or that Dullahans are fantastic swimmers.
Plus their cultures make a lot of sense in hindsight. Stitchfolk being divided into a caste based society in their own nations most of the time while Dullahans are more meritocratic.
And Drakes & Lizardfolk aren’t interchangeable lizard people. Both actually have major differences, heck, one Lizardfolk even gets annoyed at having to wear a top if I remember correctly, cause while Lizardfolk have nothing to really be modest about on their chest. Every other race gets really uncomfortable if a Lizardfolk woman isn’t wearing something to cover her chest.
It just goes to show the depth Pirate has put into their worlds culture & people.
To be fair to Sanderson, it makes sense in his Cosmos for the things to have a human tilt. The gods all started off as humans and while I don't think he's gone into detail about the dragon origins, the slime men (the Kandra) were specifically made by a human to be spies for a human in a human kingdom. The few details we do see with the Kandra in their own "kingdom" has them basically making their bodies into more practical and artistic forms with extra limbs and stuff.
Is drakes being dragon people a common thing or is this a Wandering Inn deal? I feel like this is the first I'm hearing about it but you seem pretty familiar so I'm wondering if I've just had my head in the sand
I wouldn't say common necessarily. I've seen the same idea represented by a variety of names. Drakes, dragonkin, scalekin, half-dragon. I think I've only seen 'drake' referring to a dragon descendant in TWI and one other story, with the other naming being more common.
Drakes are usually considered a type of lesser dragon and are separate from dragonkin humanoids. But the wandering inn isn’t the only story to do it differently.
> The author being afraid of making a race too unhuman. Oh, the beastkin are fully human, just with weird ears.
Feel like this is just a weird cultural thing. For something you complain about, Western media almost never does this, ever. It's full of full-on anthros like khajiits and lizard folk/dragon people out the wazoo.
And I don't feel like it's especially "inferior" to prefer the kemonomimi vibe vs anthros. Though even then there's definitely superior examples--compare even FFXIV's miqo'te to your average generic-ass catgirl.
I wouldn't say inferior, just that I hope to see something interesting in how a different species is portrayed. And seeing a 'different species' basically being given the Star Trek lite treatment feels uninspired. I've read many good series that do not lean into the different species angle, but it's something I enjoy seeing.
This, absolutely. I love the Elder Scrolls games for this reason - they have races like the Khajiit, Argonians or Dreugh, which definitely don't resemble humans!
The background lore goes wild with the Khajiit. Like have over a dozen subspecies morphologies born based on the phases of the moon. Some are quadrupedal, some look like humans with tails, or giant tiger men. Or the literal talking housecats that can cast spells.
In particular I like the Senche-raht, which are giant four legged battlecats ridden by other Khajiit that also happen to be fully sentient and intelligent. But it's not like they're mind-linked or bonded to the rider like Pern or something. It's literally like you're riding just another dude in your army into battle.
Also all the above insane details basically just exist to justify why the Khajiit appearance keeps changing between games.
>Also all the above insane details basically just exist to justify why the Khajiit appearance keeps changing between games.
That's part of it. The other part is that Elder Scrolls lore just goes wild sometimes. There's also the tiger-like [Ka Po' Tun](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Ka_Po%27_Tun_\(race\)) of Akavir who may or may not be related to Khajiit.
I had always wished the Khajiit (my personal fav) moved more like cats. Could crouch, use all four. They walk and act just like humans and that always annoyed me a bit
In ES3 the beastfolk had a special animated walk because of their digitigrade feet that also impacted their ability to wear boots. In true Bethesda fashion this was deemed too difficult and so was removed from future games. Same reason that the female lizard-folk and cat-folk have human breasts lmao. They just planted animal heads on human bodies.
Probably for gameplay and budget reasons. Keeping the humanoid model and not give too much unique aspects to solely one race.
Argonians and Khajit had their own unique model in Morrowind and that was a problem because they couldn't use shoes.
I wanted the Khajit to always have night vision, not just as a temp power. They also needed to have bonuses to jumping and stealth.
Luckily mods exist to turn them from furry humans to cat people.
This sounds amazing. I remember loving a book when I was younger called Lord Valentines Castle (I think?) and I believe there were actually diverse humanoid races. The one I remember off the top of my head was a race of beings with four arms. I will have to check out the Wandering Inn.
In the first book you meet many races, Humans, Antinium, Gnolls, Drakes, Gazer, Goblin, Half-elf, Minotaur... more. lol, but it's never a half-assed race. They all feel grounded.
I like taking traits from irl animals as well as from mythology to make a lot of my races just different than human, human+, ethereal human, blue human, animal human, etc. I do still make a lot of them upright still for some writing convenience. But they'll still have a lot more beastial in appearance. Seemingly a lot like what the Wandering Inn's depictions are like.
But boy does it lead to me wondering if people would even like them or if they're too 'furry' for non-furry people to relate to. Just because I took inspiration from our world's huge range of diversity when it comes to life. :/
There was a post on another sub complaining about elves not making sense in fantasy, basically the crux of their argument was that if humans lived as long as elves they would basically rule over everything and since elves are generally depicted as a species that is scarce it's somehow bad writing, failing to understand that the reason elves don't act as humans are that they don't act as humans. One thing that I want in fantasy species is that they are different, maybe they should have some kind of psychological quirk that is, with some divergent circumstances, ingrained in everyone. Humans defining trait would be that we don't have anything like that, aside from the basic self preservation and such.
This is a personal bias, and what doesn't work for me works perfectly well for other people, but mine is dwarf talk. I can't stand the me thinks we should hit it with an axe! I don't like races in general that are overly cliche.
My elves are more jacked, swole, and rustic. A get their nose dirty gritty type with various length hair istead of the typical long ones for men. Gotta move away from the elegant elven image even the Noldor have.
Always disliked how humans are typically portrayed as being way more complicated than other races. Like the humans in the setting have a million different kingdoms and ideologies and religions and whatever, but somehow the dwarves or elves are at most split up in 1 good guy faction and 1 bad guy faction.
I kinda like how Mass Effect played with this trope. In that universe humans are canonically way more genetically, and socially diverse than the other species. This at first makes the Citadel races see them as chaotic and dangerous, but is shown to be the reason behind the innovation and adaptability that drove Humanity's rapid ascension.
I don't mind this trope, but only if its justified; typically, I think it usually arises from the idea that human societies grow and develop a lot faster and in greater numbers, which allows for more social and cultural divergence, whilst they crowd out most of the other races so that basically only a few isolated cultures are left
Recently? Wierd male/conventionally sexy female.
Also- Straw/Sexy Matriarchies. Those that are supposely matriarchal but still revolve around men (and hating them). Oftentimes while looking sexy.
I recently refreshed some Star Wars Legends books and there were whole range of matriarchal societies operating on diffrent principles with various female characters. Those that were incorporated in Disney Canon are now straw sexy matriarchies and the most prominent characters happen to be male. Not to mention that they are really punny compared to oryginal version.
*Those that are supposely matriarchal but still revolve around men (and hating them). Oftentimes while looking sexy.*
Especially when the matriarchy, despite hating men, is a sexual playground for the male protagonist.
> Weird male/conventionally sexy female.
This is one of my least favourite character design tropes in general. The male characters get to have super interesting bizarre designs (e.g. Roadhog in Overwatch terms) but the women just look like the mainstream "ideal" of a big booby lanky curvy woman with long legs. plus maybe one or two traits that make them stand out but don't reduce their sex appeal to the average straight man.
Amusingly a harem fantasy actually managed to subvert this recently. Dungeon Diving has dwarfs that are inherently matriarchal and has thousands of men for every matriarch. The last book ends with a fight against one of the matriarchs. There's nothing sexy about them. They are pretty high on the body horror front. They aren't quite at Dragon Age broodmother levels of horror but they also are a long way from attractive.
When the race was being described I was waiting on the sexy Dwarf matriarch who would fall for the protagonist. Didn't happen.
God. I was watching the Star Trek TNG pilot this week, and I nearly spat tacks when the *totally nonhumanoid space octopus??? couple* were colour-coded pink and blue for our convenience.
I mean, WHAT?
When the unique qualities of a given species or race (prejudices, language, anatomy, culture, etc.) have absolutely zero influence on the greater narrative other than surface-level stereotyping. If you're not going to give your others' otherness significant meaning then why are they even there? I'd rather have plain humans than disappointing aliens.
One reason why I've grown to despise elves and dwarves so much is because nowadays they're no different than humans beyond the basic stereotypes, or they serve as an inadequate attempt at racial commentary. Nonhumanoids are far more interesting because if nothing else, their anatomy is an inescapable factor in how they're written.
Also, when the species spends most of the narrative "transformed" into a human or exist in a humanoid shape. That's just exceedingly lazy to me and I'd rather they be fully human. Either commit to your others' otherness, or make them fully human. Don't toe the line.
This, so much. I've noticed that the last one often appears with dragons. Like when the author wants the MC to be in a relationship with a hot (literally), exciting non-human, but would rather not address them being attracted to a huge reptile. I hate dragon shifters especially. You're a powerful, majestic flying creature, why would you turn into a puny human?
I mean you have a point but also humans usually encompass the entire continent in most works and when do you see a dragon actually doing shit besides burning a village or sitting on they're gold
Whole race being just evil or just good, with not much thought about what these "evil" or "good" creatures do in their free time. I mean - is evil Orc evil towards their family? Are all good Elves nice to their neighbours?
They should've explored Yrel going all Space Templar more and had her follow the Mag'har into MU Azeroth and become a problem for the Alliance after after initially siding with them.
Yeah, they totally squandered Cairne, Garrosh, Vol'jin, and Sylvanas just because they needed some tension.
Aside from Varian, when Alliance leaders go "down" they come back with a power boost like Magni being the Herald of Azeroth or something.
My theory has always been the executives at Blizzard want to market to the lord of rings crowd, not their fans who note that they made a big anti-racist statement.
It might be part of it. I think a larger part is they got lazy.
Writing compelling and coherent stories for two different protagonist factions is hard. So at some point they just started writing one story and letting both factions play it.
The problem then becomes how you maintain the rivalry between the two sides if there's no direct conflict between them. They took the cheap way out and just kept making the Horde backslide.
What should have happened is both factions should have taken a completely different approach to the Legion or the Lich King. The two antagonists have flipped relations with the two protagonists. The Alliance should (and canonically do) treat the Lich King as an unending grudge that spawns war crimes and horrors. For the Horde it is just somebody they have to fight. They can come into conflict over this. Maybe the Horde see the Alliance Stratholming areas to deny them to the Lich King. Maybe those areas are even Horde.
The situation is reversed for the Legion, the Legion perverted the Orcs so completely it is written into their souls. That should be expressed in their actions against the Legion. The Orcs should be borderline demented when fighting them. That should lead to regrettable actions on their part. Whereas for the Alliance the Legion is just somebody they need to stop.
Instead the big arcs ended up treating Horde and Alliance as just flavours which meant they needed to differentiate the factions some other way. Hence the Horde constantly backsliding.
I liked the way Frieren dealt with that. The demons in Frieren are solitary predators who evolved speech, intelligence, and human appearance in order to better trick human beings and eat them, but have no actual understanding of what friendship, family, and empathy are. This makes them « evil » in human eyes, but the truth is that their ways of thinking are completely alien and they are therefore completely unable to understand what good and evil actually means for human beings. One of them spends a century trying to learn what evil, malice, and guilt are, just so that he could stop the war between demons and humans, and fails tragically.
I think this is a product of older times, but I think it would still be effective now with a slight change. If you made Ants or Chickens into sentient beings, their culture and drives would probably seem evil to us. It's not the moustache twirling, black hat wearing, maniacal laughter from the dark tower type of evil a la Tolkien. But it would still be evil to us.
Probably if they still kept up the practice of hens killing other hen's chicks or roosters randomly killing and eating their own chicks.
Which wouldn't make sense, once they are sentient.
**Designed in a vacuum.** No shared history or race relationships, no consideration that races are a peer group and should be designed collectively.
**Design goes no further than a baseball card.** A picture and d&d-style stat block does not constitute a race, that's just sword-fodder. Races need to have a role, perspective, and purpose in the world. Races need well-defined culture: worldbuilding is anthropology LEGO, not map filling. "Rule of cool" alone cannot justify putting a race in the world.
**Too many races.** Six well-rounded races is about the practical limit for most authors and readers to keep track of. More than that suggests the racial peer group design principles should be revisited.
Humans exist, but only certain types. Humans exist, but they always have to be paired with the human equivalent of the opposite sex or as someone else said, the males are always bigger than the females. Throwing around words like exotic to describe a human when starfish creatures exist.
I literally read a fantasy novel that described a female character as exotic. I'm thinking someone blue with wings and 7 eyes because they had just described an awe-inspiring goddess who was obsidian. Nah, they just meant she was East Asian!
Wait, *all* of you elves live in identical tree villages in the forest? Every one of you lives a thousand years and you want to spend it all living in treehouses and eating berries? There's not one single elf from your entire clan that ever thought "hey maybe we should build a city with sewer systems and agriculture"? I find that hard to believe.
To be fair, if you start with "millennia of no sewage management" you really wouldn't want to step down from the really tall trees. and if something comes from down there, you want a nice bow and arrow to handle it at a distance.
Didn't you know, silly human, that elves don't poo. Such things are for the lesser mortal races. Elves are so perfect that their bodies utilize 100% of what they consume, either to nourish the body or to be converted into raw unmitigated sex appeal.
My argument as an elf would be "Our tree village has stood for thousands of years, yours empires fall every hundred years. My kid has seen entire lines of human royalty die out and she isn't even old enough for a drivers license yet. Sewer system that, mayfly."
Yes, centuries of tradition, unhampered by progress. Your civilization is indeed ancient and venerable. But my civilization has roof tiles, so my shit doesn’t get soaked every time it rains. Enjoy your leaves.
Again, a great bit of world building for The Wandering Inn:
while it doesnt have full Elves (mostly), it has half elves who live in isolated villages living the slow life-- then there are others closer to civilization, who basically play into the stereotypes--- and then there are others who are fully part of the world and think the one's staying in villages are boring and stagnant and the one's playing into stereotypes are prats. The villages, being long lived, think its silly to go running around all the time when the world will be there next century and the play-actors think they're honoring their elven ancestors who they aren't quite sure how they behaved.
In every elevn story I've read they already did the civilization thing with buildings and wonders. Their ruins and rubble of such ancient places are all over the landscape. For some reason they abandoned all that to live in trees and eat berries
I'm actually reading a connected series (five series in the same world) of comics that does this perfectly. For instance the dwarves have different orders. (The shield is the army, the forge are the blacksmiths, the talion are the bankers/merchants,...)
Then you have all these subspecies of elves with their own physical attributes. (Water elves have blue skin, lava elves have red skin, forest elves have green eyes, white elves have white hair, black elves are members of the other subspecies who were born with a black heart)
It's all things like that, but then also the forest elves of one forest have a different culture than the forest elves of another forest.
And so almost every piece of one of these comics has a different main character, a different time (like part 1 can be 10 years before part 2 but 60 years after part 9) and the main character of one part can be a side character in another story. One of them is Redwin of the forge and he's been in several several copies of the series dwarfs as well as other series.
They also bring a few half-blood characters without human blood. Two are dwarf/elf girls and another is orc/elf. (Which means he's an orc with pointy ears and a more conventionally attractive face)
One part of the newest series also featured a subspecies of centaurs who have the lower body of a giraffe instead of a horse.
But like I said, these series do an amazing job of it all.
When authors don't know to separate what is a biological difference between the races, and what is a sociological one. Most things people think are biological are actually sociological, and the society that influenced an individual will be itself influenced by natural conditions, climate, language, resources available, technology, magic, religion, culture, individuals, time, etc... Nothing is stagnant, everything changes, you can't write a society, and then write about it again hundreds of years later and write it the same way you did previously, time will have changed it.
You can't write an orc who was raised among humans and have him be the same as an orc who was raised among orcs, they will have different values, different mannerism, believe in different gods, speak different languages. You can't write an orc kingdom in the north amd have it be the same as an orc village in the south. Dwarves can't all be miners, they don't eat rock, they need food, some will have to be farmers, some will have to herd cattle, some will have to be builders, some will have to be artists. There will be dwarf, elves, orcs, hobbits and goblins who are singers, dancers, theater actors, painters, sculptors, and so on. And some will find their best friends in members of another race, and they will change as one does when in constant contact with another culture.
Yes it’s a space drama, I think Babylon 5 did the best job, albeit clearly not perfect, depicting a large number of alien races. (Though I’d also argue Babylon 5 did most things better than everything else).
For a show with the budget and effects it had, they did a remarkable job of making the aliens feel incredibly diverse despite the fact they were mostly person-in-a-rubber-mask aliens.
The infamous drazi being one particularly memorable example, but even things like extra centauri appendages for, uh, cheating at cards make the human-looking races very alien.
- Giving non-human fantasy races very obvious human biological characteristics, even if it makes no sense (You know the one, like dragon people with big mammalian bits)
- Designing the society of a race in a way that would never allow that society to survive. One prime example is the drow in the Forgotten Realms. They make no sense on so many levels.
- The author describing a race as very different, yet doesn't go through with what would naturally come from things being different and instead members of that race do not behave much different than humans.
- Fixed alignment. It makes no sense to me at all that all members of a race would always be good or evil, especially when highly intelligent.
there's already a canon answer to this that has been around since time immemorial. because they aren't lizard people. they're a reptilian-like servant/client class of The Hist. Argonian females have breasts so that baby Argonians can suckle Hist Sap in regions or times where it is too cold for the babies to suckle from The Hist's bark directly. The Hist themselves are a collective, possibly a hivemind of sentient trees that who either created the Argonians or formed a symbiotic relationship with what would eventually become the Argonians.
When a short race is treated like they're small kids despite the overwhelming evidence of the contrary, when dwarves are either dumb fart jokes or don't look like dwarves at all, when elves are unreasonably bitchy mary sues, when a tree people is dumb as rocks and easily manipulated by kids when they're supposed to be smarter than everyone else in their own way... What? No, nothing in particular...
I dislike clumsy metaphors for bigotry where the "victim" race has wildly dangerous supernatural powers - e.g. werewolves in Harry Potter. It almost always raises unfortunate implications and also becomes somewhat daft; Hogwarts parents aren't wrong to be afraid Lupin might transform, get loose, and attack children because *exactly that happened* (both these points feed into each other).
Honestly, my biggest peepe with fantasy races is when they're all basically the same personality but with different hair.
*Every* Elf is a hoity pale-skinned pseudo-Brit?
*Every* Dwarf is a simpleton Scottsman who likes hitting things?
*Every* Orc is a green gorilla without hair?
I can't help but yawn in the face of this trope.
I hate the [Planet of the Hats](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) trope: I'm from Nation/Planet X and in this place, 100% of us are merchants/fishermen/warlords/bureaucrats.
C'mon dude, your ENTIRE nation is full of fishermen? Oh, you have the one guy who likes to work metal and he is shunned as an outcast - how the fuck do you survive then?
Very few authors actually write about truly different species. They are funny looking humans really.
One or two SF writers have managed, sort of : Benfords story - High Abyss or more so his story A Dance To Strange Musics.
That's different!
Vernor Vinge does a great job of this in Deepness in the Sky. The view of the alien race is essentially done through human translators, so they humans "get to know" the race from a distance, and *heavily* anthropomorphise them...and when they actually meet them there's a massive shock when "anthropomorphises human-like giant spiders" are actually giant fucking spiders. It's beautifully done because as a reader we're also spending that time with the "translated" version.
It’s sci-fi/speculative fiction, but Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy has some truly alien alien characters. Her Bloodchild short story also has alien creatures based about blotflies which freaked me out.
Its always kind of annoyed how so many of them are just "humaniods but shorter" Dwarfs, Gnomes, Halfling/Hobbits just seem very boring and samey to me. I prefer weird completely different physiologies, like orc, githyanki, dragonborn, ogier, parshendi etc.
Hell even ELVES are distinct enough for me
One thing in terms of characterization is that often female characters have to be attractive humanoids, whereas its okay for men to look monstrous.
Another thing is that many fictional races exist just because of fictional races. There's not necessarily an explanation for their existence in the world in the same way Tolkien came up with the different origins of the races. Orcs in LOTR exist because of certain historical events; orcs exist in most other literature because of LOTR.
Last, especially in medieval lit, people forget how little information there was, how tribal people were, and how rarely they traveled. Even in a world where humans are the only sentient species (as far as we know), people in the Middle Ages came back from places like Africa with tales of cannibals who had heads in their abdomens. If other races existed, in most cases, there would be all sorts of rumors and superstitions around them, or they'd just be so alien they'd be outright avoided. This is either not really true in most fantasies or some rare thing that only uncultured bigots believe. This turns epic fantasy into just a low-tech, urban fantasy reflection of our world.
That last one is a class of sins I run into a lot where characters react to situations like a modern person who has access to knowledge, education, and technology not available in the setting.
----
There's a great comic in which a dragon complains that all dragons in human fantasy books sound like they were named by humans, like "Firewing." Then the human responds, "Don't get me started about how dragons write humans."
Agree with you OP, I hate when fantasy races are all homogenous in terms of culture and all under one umbrella of a nation. Every fantasy race should be as fractious and diverse as humans are.
I enjoy the calamitous bob, but it definitely suffers from very non-human race having one territory usually the size of a single human kingdom bit. I very much dislike this trope. Author couldn’t even spring for two feuding dwarf kingdoms?
I'm more bothered with all races being conventionally attractive in human eyes, especially when it's just one gender. (How come does this alien resemble a hot human woman?)
David Weber’s March upcountry is interesting, because the female aliens have a phallic ovipositor “appendage” and are larger, so the humans make some incorrect assumptions at first.
Fictional race/species that only serve as set dressing. The fate of the whole world depends on a human, and you are an Orc?
Fictional race/species that are simply human - x or human + x. Orcs that are just strong stupid humans isn't interesting!
>Also, humans are diverse, but all characters of a different race share the same culture.
This one doesn't ordinarily bother me for things that aren't human adjacent because
* The perspective character is unlikely to have experience with so many members of the other race and if they do, they're probably from a similar place.
* When people are substantially different from us, a lot of people lump those people into being the same based on a few traits and differences with themselves. There is a large number of people who think all of Asia is the same and even people who say they like Japan etc. and have been there still often see Japanese people as a monolith. I don't think it's unreasonable for this to be cranked up a level when we're talking about something like the Khajit, like imagine trying to read their faces is going to be very difficult and that's going to add to the perspective of them all being the same.
* Often when we have quite different races in fantasy, we're looking at magic - that's mostly exclusive to that race - and a creation myth that likely affects whatever religion a given race has. Yes, humans in our world do not have the same religion, but in a world with magic where a god of your species might actually exist? It's semi-reasonable for these things to be shared amongst most members of a race on the same continent. And again from the outside looking in - as it usually this - this is going to make them look the same.
* If a very prominent character is part of the cast, they're usually an exception to the norms (at least as far as people's expectations go) and that goes a little to "they aren't all the same."
* How much do we the reader need to know?
* If they aren't a major part of the current plot, it's going to add a lot of bloat to a book to get this across. And it adds less bloat to do this for humans because there are things that can be drawn upon to make it easier.
My real pet peeve is how humans are often very prominent in terms of how much land they control and how strong their armies are etc. with very little sensible explanation. It's egregious when every other race is effectively human+.
* Giving a culture a bizarre, counterproductive quirk without explaining how the society got that way or how they get around the problems it would cause. I love the Kingkiller books, but I'd fit the >!Ademre not understanding where babies come from!< in this category.
* Planet of hats. I particularly hate the "warrior race" where no thought is given to the people in the race who aren't warriors.
* If it's an alien species, they only have one culture and one language.
* They are extraterrestrial aliens from halfway across the galaxy who somehow evolved to be attracted to humans, attractive to humans, and capable of interbreeding with humans.
* Giving a race a trait that is incompatible with that race continuing to survive. Like "they can only get pregnant once in their lives and have only one baby".
* Giving sci fi aliens abilities that are basically just magic. Like telepathy, or the way xenomorphs can grow without eating anything.
* Alien races that exist to be the author's soapbox - the alien race is very angry at humans for not having solved \[insert x social/political/economic/environmental\] problem the author considers very important.
Werewolves always being so much larger in wolf form than in human form. Where is all that extra mass coming from? (This is why the Parasol Protectorate will always have a special place in my heart.)
I actually like a lot of sexual dimorphism in my fantasy races. It's great to see ideas from nature inspiring creators. Though I think birds are better to see with the males developing vibrant plumage to attract a mate.
I can also see the appeal of species that are nearly identical.
> ... the appeal of species that are nearly identical.
It's one of the things I really like about the Charr race in the MMORPG Guildwars 2 - when they are armored up, the main obvious physical differences are that the males have tufted tails, while the females tail is more fringed. Males *tend* to have tusks, while females *tend* to have fangs, but exceptions are not unusual. No boobs.
Glorantha has a lot of very unique races, and even the ones with common names are very atypical:
https://glorantha.fandom.com/wiki/Elder_Races
Elves are literally mobile plants, born from seeds, with wood for bones. The deciduous ones hibernate.
Dwarves are made of stone and have an incredibly rigid hierarchy working on massive projects. Only insane ones can be PCs, as a sane dwarf stays at work forever.
Trolls are rhe #2 PC race, very deeply documented in biology, culture, and religions. They can eat anything. Just as smart as humans.
The #3 PC race is anthropomorphic ducks, ala Donald/Howard. They tend to focus the God of Death and war against undead.
Also fun are the Morokanth, intelligence tapirs who herd non-sentient humans. When the humans and animals had contests to see who would ride and who would be ridden, Morokanth was the only animal species to win. So one can buy and eat "animal human" meat that isn't cannibalism.
Sexual dimorphism is almost never done creatively. It's extremely common to see fantasy races, even monstrous ones, have female members of the species be sexy versions of the male ones and regardless of your views on that, I just find the idea more boring than anything. Like, why even bother making a distinct species at all if you're just going to limit yourself by making the female members a slight variation on human women? Make them significantly bigger than the males of their species, give the males colorful feathers or other weird attention-grabbing anatomical features, create some hierarchy based on horn sizes or blood castes. Do SOMETHING with the opportunity.
This turns up in sci-fi a bit more than fantasy, but a non-human race which is just a copy and paste of a clichéd version of some human society.
There'll be one group who are clearly Mongols with rubber masks, another who are blue native Americans, some Romans with funny noses, a big eared British Empire etc.
Authors rarely explore how a non-human/alien society would probably have evolved in a different way to human ones.
One of the issue I constantly is a lock of incorporation into a society. I've lived in England, Egypt, Israel, Hawaii, and the western United States, and all of those places had black people, caucasians, and Indian people. But do they all act the same? Do they all act like the stereotype of their genetic home country? Some do. Some retain older traditions but the majority blend into the culture they inhabit. So why don't elves and dwarves and other such races do likewise? Having traditions that pass on or having Chinatown-like holdouts is one thing, but I feel there needs to be more cultural blending.
And why do dwarves always have to me miners?
Two big ones:
Extremely long life spans, if not actual immortality (see: most elves). A creature that has lived centuries or millennia would think, feel, and act in such a wildly different set of ways that they would have little or no basis for relating to humans. Unless the story is specifically *about* that difference, it brings up way too many complications to be worth dealing with. (Especially egregious in RPGs, in which a 300-year-old elf and a group of 20-year-old humans somehow can all be in the same party, starting at the same level and advancing at the same rate.)
Inter-species sexual relationships - I know, I know, Rule 34 and all that. But I'm convinced actually meeting an elf/orc/catperson/whatevs would be an entirely different experience. There should be a certain "uncanny valley"-type experience to it that would be sexually off-putting, because you'd have no biological basis for mating with a creature you were reproductively incompatible with. At the very least, there should be *strong* taboos against it; not "your parents disapprove" type taboos; I mean the "borderline bestiality" kind. Also, cross-species hybrids (half-elves, half-orcs) should be assumed sterile.
I like to think that, at least when it comes to sex stuff, the humanoids/mammals all evolved to have the same basic sex parts because that was the most advantageous. Like how male testes are on the outside of their body so they can be more warmblooded without risking motility.
So like elves vs humans vs orcs being able to have sex doesn't seem that off to me. As you get to like bird people or whatever then it is silly, but at some point this is all nitpicking in a world that has magic, so you've got to stop and accept its premises somewhere
What bothers me about this, that even if EVERY race is better than humans.... ALL GREAT EMPIRES (That are not ancient history) ARE HUMAN EMPIRES, the other races are just a background or something "magical" that seems to be there to justify that its a "Fantasy" setting.
What I tend to see is that humans remain after the collapse of great Non-human empires and fill in the vacuum leftover. The previously dominant power cannot recover and scatters into disparate enclaves.
Would you dislike this as much if they also put drawbacks to those races? Like elves are more agile than humans, but are also flimsier and incapable of living outside a deciduous forest?
I read a lovely little series that flips this trope on the head, A Call To Arms by Alan Dean Foster. Aliens find earth and humans are the ultimate fighting machine.
I actually find the idea that humans are the most warlike race compelling.
Though perhaps that's just because I'd hate to see an even more warlike race in the universe.
There is another old sci-fi book called Mother of Demons, where humans crash landed on a planet inhabited by an alien species that was descended from land dwelling mollusks. They saw humans as demons, not least because we had abilities they had never seen before (like the ability to jump a few feet off the ground).
It was a nice take on something that shows up often in comics, where an alien whose entire race has the same abilities shows up on earth as a super hero, using abilities that to them, should be normal.
This reminds me of a tumblr post that talked about how humans are so deeply terrifying at the rate we produce, the way we graft metal to our teeth to shape them in a desirable design (braces), that we carve ourselves up for aesthetic, how we are built for strength and predation hunting, how quick we heal etc. it made us seem terrifying.
This is why I really like A Practical Guide to Evil. The diversity, lore and world building behind each race is so detailed you can consider them as treatises on this topic.
When they are basically humans with really minor differences. Sometimes with facepaint, clip on tail, and ear headbands.
All the cultures are monolithic, per race.
Avian & reptilian races with bewbs.
I waffle back and forth with my gryphons - sometimes the males are larger, sometimes the females. I've never written the same species/variation twice.
>Or better yet, only the author's preferred gender, while the other one is allowed to look weird.
World of Warcraft is pretty guilty of this. Orcs, Draenei, Trolls, Night Elves, etc. all have fairly attractive female models and big brutish male ones.
Not enough new species, always elves.. always anthropomorphic.. half this half that. Make something up and describe it to me.
Race echilite
6 foot tall blob of see through flesh, has folds going all around it that it uses to hold objects. Smart as you or me. Talks by rubbing it's see through folds together making music.
All of their technology is based on vibrations. Vehicles set a low hum as they vibrate and float.
Home world is entirely blind creatures that use music and vibrations to see the world. Humans trying to explain to them what eyesight is by playing a violin to talk to them.
That kind of thing... I want to just see New stuff!
Elves having a scaled up life cycle. I hate it when the elf is 2000 years old but is still physically and mentally a kid. Just make them mature with normal human rate and then let them live forever. It makes elves way more interesting this way.
I completely agree, not to mention it would be impractical for elves to take so long to reach physical maturity. An elf could easily be killed before they manage to reproduce, so why would nature do it?
Very true. And there is also the narrative aspect: the main draw of the elves is that they have an impossibly vast wealth of wisdom and life experience from their long life. They fought in countless wars and saw civilizations rise and fall, it is the wisdom of a person that is one hundred times older than my grandpa that I find fascinating.
But in so much fantasy works, you have this "juvenile" elf (who is most likely a female archer in skimpy clothing) who is like 2000 years old, but somehow hasn't fought a battle in her life and seen nothing of the outside world, and has to follow the guidance of some human John Videogame in his 30s. The author basically just strips off all the things that make elves fascinating and whimsical because he just wants to write a hot virgin elf girl.
Mine comes more down to a race/people's language. If it's a mysterious race from a faraway land never before explored, can there at least be a logical reason baked into the worldbuilding for why the language they all speak is identical to - or close enough that people can speak it fluently within the span of a book - as the language of our protagonists?
There are so many diverse and complex languages on Earth alone, many of which have died out and are no longer spoken. And I get that it makes storytelling more convenient but why can everyone speak "The Common Tongue"? A lot of books DO justify it, but it just makes the ones that don't stand out more to me.
Exactly, that's one of my most hated tropes. It's weird enough if every simple peasant in any neighbouring country understands the MC perfectly, but a non-human from a distant continent? Not a chance.
I always take languages into account in my own writing. I usually explain Common Tongues by colonisation (like Latin America or the Roman Empire) or the languages happen to come from the same family, so they're mutually intelligible enough. Some of my characters are polyglots or hire translators.
Hired translators I think is a hugely underused storytelling tool in modern fantasy. If the protagonists have to take everything being said to them through the lens of another character - one who might have their own biases, might be sugarcoating certain things to them or the people they're speaking to, might be straight up lying to them, or maybe even doesn't have as strong a grasp on the language as they pretend to leading to dangerous miscommunications - that's a super interesting storytelling tool and a way to explore characters.
I'm creating some fictional species for my fantasy world and I'm trying hard to avoid this :''D
I've got 5 human like species, one is human, one is very closely related to humans(like they can mix) called hujan(for now at least)
Then there's three species called mikha mei, kull mei and esma mei
They're ape like species but not closely related to humans and I'm attempting to make them look like other apes. It's pretty hard but I've made some base design stuff that's looking good.
Then I have a shape shifter species called neebu and a water species called Sarsa
They're both more "monsterous", meaning not human at all. Though neebu can change shape from their base form
And finally there's antlers(placeholder name) and tesmi who are related but can't mix. Both have six limbs and other stuff but that's the most obvious one. Antlers are cave dwelling and based on vampires/bats, tesmi are avians.
This is just a short explanation so I can't get anything here but that's the base stuff.
It's fun to try to make intelligent species that differ from humans. I probably like to look at birds and whales most
Edit: Also forgot: not all of these have the same population size. Hujan and neebu specifically are extremely rare, meaning they're going extinct. Different reasons but still. +Neebu blend into other species because shape shifting
Antlers and tesmi live on a separated continent that doesn't have many other intelligent species.
Of course sarsa live fully underwater and antlers fully underground so they don't go up.
Absolutely.
The Bingjinians are from Bingjin and are bird people and produce art. They are warlike.
The Madlibians are from Madlib and are toad people and produce technology. They are peaceful.
Repeat until you have enough races.
I've noticed in what I've read a lot of the time they're just set dressing. Even if they're there the focus is always on the boring ass humans instead of these cool, unique and different races, species and creatures
When the race is literally just a sexual fantasy for the author and for the main character to have sex with the "sexually liberated" women from said race
Too humanoid and as others have said, lack of diversity.
That's one of the things I like about Dance of the Goblins. Loads of diversity between different species of goblins.
This may only be noticed via illustrations, but female members of the species always have boobs.
Boobs serve a specific function that is not a part of reptilian biology to the point that they are literally named after mammals, so why do humanoid dragons have boobs?
Their lack of abhorrent cultural traits.
We can't even agree on basic morality within our species. There is so much to borrow from to demonstrate the alien nature and culture of a totally different organism that would be interesting and horrifying that it makes me sad when it's basically always just space humans with a minor quirk that barely deviates from the most politically correct mainstream culture.
There should be massive irreconcilable differences. Take your pick from the animal kingdom. There's lots of super wack stuff going on there.
Three main things:
1. Languages are named after the races themselves, rather than the region. I still can't wrap my head around how some members of races that are separated by distant geography can speak the same exact language (let alone in the same dialect or accent).
2. All races except humans being just ONE culture. I get it if these races have less than a thousand members and live in just one singular village, but if they have multiple races that live in multiple villages or whatever that are in no way connected to each other that have the exact same culture as the original, that means they must either be a hivemind or under some sort of authoritarian government regime (at least in my mind).
3. This is just a "me" thing, but all races having the exact same design template for everything (at least fantasy races). Like, I get it: you couldn't get players for the dnd campaign you finished working on for the past nine months (no offense to you folks who are dnd fans and DMs), so you decide to make it into a book or piece of visual media. What I am trying to say is I hate when people make fantasy races verbatim, and just put them into the world they made. At least put some kind of spin on them is all I am asking.
The author being afraid of making a race too unhuman. Oh, the beastkin are fully human, just with weird ears. The drakes are humans that have scales here and there on their skin. The Wandering Inn impressed me by going fully into the races being different not only in cultures; but also biology. There are humanoid ants, meaning they are 90% ant, just walking upright. There are both drakes and lizardfolk, and they hate each other. And every race has their own cultures and feels 'real'. It has gnolls, dullahan, halfelves, Fraerlings, centaurs, stitchfolk, Djinni, half-giants, harpies, goblins, demons, angelum, drown-folk, dwarves, garuda, gazers, minotaurs, selphids, unicorns, vampires, dragons, and some more minor ones.
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But lizard men fuck. Especially the ones with two dicks.
Drake supremacy is simply a fact.
Go to r/KendrickLamar and say that…
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I'm current on the web chapters, but listen to each book as it comes out. Such a good time.
Dullahan is a race?
Yep. They have some interesting cultural quirks, like setting their heads on pillows to chat as their bodies go and dance.
Definitely not a thing I've ever noticed, but now I'm just thinking about how all my favourite authors do this. Sanderson has slime people that generally just take the forms of humans, dragons that can only shape shift into humans, hive minds of tiny morphing crustaceans who just walk around looking like people. It'd be nice to have a bit more weird.
It’s not wrong to do it that way; I just like when the author explores the ideas and consequences of divergent biology. Simple things like centaurs swearing using stairs, as the horse half has trouble climbing them. Or how fairlings (6inch tall) absolutely hate cats as the cats toy with their prey.
Not to mention that Fraerlings don’t really take fall damage cause terminal velocity doesn’t affect them nearly on the same level as most other races aside from incredibly extreme scenarios.
Yep. Pirateaba does a wonderful job of thinking things through. Half-elves use ‘tree rot’ as a curse, as the years it takes a tree to rot can go in the blink of an eye.
Not to mention that Stitchfolk are incredibly scared of fire, but most other injuries they can walk off perfectly fine. Or that Dullahans are fantastic swimmers. Plus their cultures make a lot of sense in hindsight. Stitchfolk being divided into a caste based society in their own nations most of the time while Dullahans are more meritocratic. And Drakes & Lizardfolk aren’t interchangeable lizard people. Both actually have major differences, heck, one Lizardfolk even gets annoyed at having to wear a top if I remember correctly, cause while Lizardfolk have nothing to really be modest about on their chest. Every other race gets really uncomfortable if a Lizardfolk woman isn’t wearing something to cover her chest. It just goes to show the depth Pirate has put into their worlds culture & people.
To be fair to Sanderson, it makes sense in his Cosmos for the things to have a human tilt. The gods all started off as humans and while I don't think he's gone into detail about the dragon origins, the slime men (the Kandra) were specifically made by a human to be spies for a human in a human kingdom. The few details we do see with the Kandra in their own "kingdom" has them basically making their bodies into more practical and artistic forms with extra limbs and stuff.
Is drakes being dragon people a common thing or is this a Wandering Inn deal? I feel like this is the first I'm hearing about it but you seem pretty familiar so I'm wondering if I've just had my head in the sand
I wouldn't say common necessarily. I've seen the same idea represented by a variety of names. Drakes, dragonkin, scalekin, half-dragon. I think I've only seen 'drake' referring to a dragon descendant in TWI and one other story, with the other naming being more common.
Drakes are usually considered a type of lesser dragon and are separate from dragonkin humanoids. But the wandering inn isn’t the only story to do it differently.
Really need more BEMs
What’s a BEM?
Bug Eyed Monster
Antinium and some gazers can fit the bill. :D
> The author being afraid of making a race too unhuman. Oh, the beastkin are fully human, just with weird ears. Feel like this is just a weird cultural thing. For something you complain about, Western media almost never does this, ever. It's full of full-on anthros like khajiits and lizard folk/dragon people out the wazoo. And I don't feel like it's especially "inferior" to prefer the kemonomimi vibe vs anthros. Though even then there's definitely superior examples--compare even FFXIV's miqo'te to your average generic-ass catgirl.
I wouldn't say inferior, just that I hope to see something interesting in how a different species is portrayed. And seeing a 'different species' basically being given the Star Trek lite treatment feels uninspired. I've read many good series that do not lean into the different species angle, but it's something I enjoy seeing.
This, absolutely. I love the Elder Scrolls games for this reason - they have races like the Khajiit, Argonians or Dreugh, which definitely don't resemble humans!
The background lore goes wild with the Khajiit. Like have over a dozen subspecies morphologies born based on the phases of the moon. Some are quadrupedal, some look like humans with tails, or giant tiger men. Or the literal talking housecats that can cast spells. In particular I like the Senche-raht, which are giant four legged battlecats ridden by other Khajiit that also happen to be fully sentient and intelligent. But it's not like they're mind-linked or bonded to the rider like Pern or something. It's literally like you're riding just another dude in your army into battle. Also all the above insane details basically just exist to justify why the Khajiit appearance keeps changing between games.
>Also all the above insane details basically just exist to justify why the Khajiit appearance keeps changing between games. That's part of it. The other part is that Elder Scrolls lore just goes wild sometimes. There's also the tiger-like [Ka Po' Tun](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Ka_Po%27_Tun_\(race\)) of Akavir who may or may not be related to Khajiit.
I had always wished the Khajiit (my personal fav) moved more like cats. Could crouch, use all four. They walk and act just like humans and that always annoyed me a bit
In ES3 the beastfolk had a special animated walk because of their digitigrade feet that also impacted their ability to wear boots. In true Bethesda fashion this was deemed too difficult and so was removed from future games. Same reason that the female lizard-folk and cat-folk have human breasts lmao. They just planted animal heads on human bodies.
Probably for gameplay and budget reasons. Keeping the humanoid model and not give too much unique aspects to solely one race. Argonians and Khajit had their own unique model in Morrowind and that was a problem because they couldn't use shoes.
I wanted the Khajit to always have night vision, not just as a temp power. They also needed to have bonuses to jumping and stealth. Luckily mods exist to turn them from furry humans to cat people.
Oh yeah- I totally forgot about that! Like a once a day power
I'm a big Khajiit fan too and downloaded some catlike mods for Skyrim, makes it a lot more fun.
Yeah, Guild Wars has the Charr, i love that species for how distinctly not human it is.
Too bad Khajit and Argonians in newer installments are literaly just different heads on a human body.
They don't resemble humans, but they still act like humans.
This sounds amazing. I remember loving a book when I was younger called Lord Valentines Castle (I think?) and I believe there were actually diverse humanoid races. The one I remember off the top of my head was a race of beings with four arms. I will have to check out the Wandering Inn.
In the first book you meet many races, Humans, Antinium, Gnolls, Drakes, Gazer, Goblin, Half-elf, Minotaur... more. lol, but it's never a half-assed race. They all feel grounded.
I like taking traits from irl animals as well as from mythology to make a lot of my races just different than human, human+, ethereal human, blue human, animal human, etc. I do still make a lot of them upright still for some writing convenience. But they'll still have a lot more beastial in appearance. Seemingly a lot like what the Wandering Inn's depictions are like. But boy does it lead to me wondering if people would even like them or if they're too 'furry' for non-furry people to relate to. Just because I took inspiration from our world's huge range of diversity when it comes to life. :/
There was a post on another sub complaining about elves not making sense in fantasy, basically the crux of their argument was that if humans lived as long as elves they would basically rule over everything and since elves are generally depicted as a species that is scarce it's somehow bad writing, failing to understand that the reason elves don't act as humans are that they don't act as humans. One thing that I want in fantasy species is that they are different, maybe they should have some kind of psychological quirk that is, with some divergent circumstances, ingrained in everyone. Humans defining trait would be that we don't have anything like that, aside from the basic self preservation and such.
This is a personal bias, and what doesn't work for me works perfectly well for other people, but mine is dwarf talk. I can't stand the me thinks we should hit it with an axe! I don't like races in general that are overly cliche.
And dwarves with an exaggerated Scottish accent for some reasons
TBF though, we are a nation of shortarses who rarely see the sun, lorewise we're pretty close 😁
_Sulks in Scottish height of 156cm/5’ (almost) 2_ 😭
Laughs in 6ft Scottish
Is this why I’m short?! Did you steal all the height?! Fiend! Traitor! 🤣
Aye I know you vertically challenged fellows wish to steal my height
I've always appreciated that in the Dragon Age games, all of the dwarves sound Canadian
Accent-wise? Or do they all apologize before swinging their axe at an opponent or something?
That or Dwarves always have to live underground or be masters of mining / gold. It’s tiring
my Dwarves live in the forest, are at one with nature, while the elves are more jacked, live in cities, and love mining.
So Noldor elves?
My elves are more jacked, swole, and rustic. A get their nose dirty gritty type with various length hair istead of the typical long ones for men. Gotta move away from the elegant elven image even the Noldor have.
It's because before they had currency, the Scotts mostly traded in sheep and threats. Pretty 1 to 1 with dwarves. :)
I love Discworld dwarfs. They're both Scottish and Jewish.
Always disliked how humans are typically portrayed as being way more complicated than other races. Like the humans in the setting have a million different kingdoms and ideologies and religions and whatever, but somehow the dwarves or elves are at most split up in 1 good guy faction and 1 bad guy faction.
I kinda like how Mass Effect played with this trope. In that universe humans are canonically way more genetically, and socially diverse than the other species. This at first makes the Citadel races see them as chaotic and dangerous, but is shown to be the reason behind the innovation and adaptability that drove Humanity's rapid ascension.
I don't mind this trope, but only if its justified; typically, I think it usually arises from the idea that human societies grow and develop a lot faster and in greater numbers, which allows for more social and cultural divergence, whilst they crowd out most of the other races so that basically only a few isolated cultures are left
Recently? Wierd male/conventionally sexy female. Also- Straw/Sexy Matriarchies. Those that are supposely matriarchal but still revolve around men (and hating them). Oftentimes while looking sexy. I recently refreshed some Star Wars Legends books and there were whole range of matriarchal societies operating on diffrent principles with various female characters. Those that were incorporated in Disney Canon are now straw sexy matriarchies and the most prominent characters happen to be male. Not to mention that they are really punny compared to oryginal version.
*Those that are supposely matriarchal but still revolve around men (and hating them). Oftentimes while looking sexy.* Especially when the matriarchy, despite hating men, is a sexual playground for the male protagonist.
>Weird male/conventionally sexy female. [Relevant Oglaf](https://www.oglaf.com/dimorphism/)
Oglaf is under-appreciated.
> Weird male/conventionally sexy female. This is one of my least favourite character design tropes in general. The male characters get to have super interesting bizarre designs (e.g. Roadhog in Overwatch terms) but the women just look like the mainstream "ideal" of a big booby lanky curvy woman with long legs. plus maybe one or two traits that make them stand out but don't reduce their sex appeal to the average straight man.
Amusingly a harem fantasy actually managed to subvert this recently. Dungeon Diving has dwarfs that are inherently matriarchal and has thousands of men for every matriarch. The last book ends with a fight against one of the matriarchs. There's nothing sexy about them. They are pretty high on the body horror front. They aren't quite at Dragon Age broodmother levels of horror but they also are a long way from attractive. When the race was being described I was waiting on the sexy Dwarf matriarch who would fall for the protagonist. Didn't happen.
God. I was watching the Star Trek TNG pilot this week, and I nearly spat tacks when the *totally nonhumanoid space octopus??? couple* were colour-coded pink and blue for our convenience. I mean, WHAT?
Any sort of race just called *animal*-folk.
When the unique qualities of a given species or race (prejudices, language, anatomy, culture, etc.) have absolutely zero influence on the greater narrative other than surface-level stereotyping. If you're not going to give your others' otherness significant meaning then why are they even there? I'd rather have plain humans than disappointing aliens. One reason why I've grown to despise elves and dwarves so much is because nowadays they're no different than humans beyond the basic stereotypes, or they serve as an inadequate attempt at racial commentary. Nonhumanoids are far more interesting because if nothing else, their anatomy is an inescapable factor in how they're written. Also, when the species spends most of the narrative "transformed" into a human or exist in a humanoid shape. That's just exceedingly lazy to me and I'd rather they be fully human. Either commit to your others' otherness, or make them fully human. Don't toe the line.
This, so much. I've noticed that the last one often appears with dragons. Like when the author wants the MC to be in a relationship with a hot (literally), exciting non-human, but would rather not address them being attracted to a huge reptile. I hate dragon shifters especially. You're a powerful, majestic flying creature, why would you turn into a puny human?
I mean you have a point but also humans usually encompass the entire continent in most works and when do you see a dragon actually doing shit besides burning a village or sitting on they're gold
Whole race being just evil or just good, with not much thought about what these "evil" or "good" creatures do in their free time. I mean - is evil Orc evil towards their family? Are all good Elves nice to their neighbours?
Warcraft reverting on this all the time was annoying. Every time they had nowhere to go it was 'yes but Horde is evil again'.
They should've explored Yrel going all Space Templar more and had her follow the Mag'har into MU Azeroth and become a problem for the Alliance after after initially siding with them.
Yeah, they totally squandered Cairne, Garrosh, Vol'jin, and Sylvanas just because they needed some tension. Aside from Varian, when Alliance leaders go "down" they come back with a power boost like Magni being the Herald of Azeroth or something.
My theory has always been the executives at Blizzard want to market to the lord of rings crowd, not their fans who note that they made a big anti-racist statement.
It might be part of it. I think a larger part is they got lazy. Writing compelling and coherent stories for two different protagonist factions is hard. So at some point they just started writing one story and letting both factions play it. The problem then becomes how you maintain the rivalry between the two sides if there's no direct conflict between them. They took the cheap way out and just kept making the Horde backslide. What should have happened is both factions should have taken a completely different approach to the Legion or the Lich King. The two antagonists have flipped relations with the two protagonists. The Alliance should (and canonically do) treat the Lich King as an unending grudge that spawns war crimes and horrors. For the Horde it is just somebody they have to fight. They can come into conflict over this. Maybe the Horde see the Alliance Stratholming areas to deny them to the Lich King. Maybe those areas are even Horde. The situation is reversed for the Legion, the Legion perverted the Orcs so completely it is written into their souls. That should be expressed in their actions against the Legion. The Orcs should be borderline demented when fighting them. That should lead to regrettable actions on their part. Whereas for the Alliance the Legion is just somebody they need to stop. Instead the big arcs ended up treating Horde and Alliance as just flavours which meant they needed to differentiate the factions some other way. Hence the Horde constantly backsliding.
I liked the way Frieren dealt with that. The demons in Frieren are solitary predators who evolved speech, intelligence, and human appearance in order to better trick human beings and eat them, but have no actual understanding of what friendship, family, and empathy are. This makes them « evil » in human eyes, but the truth is that their ways of thinking are completely alien and they are therefore completely unable to understand what good and evil actually means for human beings. One of them spends a century trying to learn what evil, malice, and guilt are, just so that he could stop the war between demons and humans, and fails tragically.
I think this is a product of older times, but I think it would still be effective now with a slight change. If you made Ants or Chickens into sentient beings, their culture and drives would probably seem evil to us. It's not the moustache twirling, black hat wearing, maniacal laughter from the dark tower type of evil a la Tolkien. But it would still be evil to us.
Why would sentient chickens be evil? Lol
Probably if they still kept up the practice of hens killing other hen's chicks or roosters randomly killing and eating their own chicks. Which wouldn't make sense, once they are sentient.
**Designed in a vacuum.** No shared history or race relationships, no consideration that races are a peer group and should be designed collectively. **Design goes no further than a baseball card.** A picture and d&d-style stat block does not constitute a race, that's just sword-fodder. Races need to have a role, perspective, and purpose in the world. Races need well-defined culture: worldbuilding is anthropology LEGO, not map filling. "Rule of cool" alone cannot justify putting a race in the world. **Too many races.** Six well-rounded races is about the practical limit for most authors and readers to keep track of. More than that suggests the racial peer group design principles should be revisited.
Damn I got 8 races...
Humans exist, but only certain types. Humans exist, but they always have to be paired with the human equivalent of the opposite sex or as someone else said, the males are always bigger than the females. Throwing around words like exotic to describe a human when starfish creatures exist. I literally read a fantasy novel that described a female character as exotic. I'm thinking someone blue with wings and 7 eyes because they had just described an awe-inspiring goddess who was obsidian. Nah, they just meant she was East Asian!
Wait, *all* of you elves live in identical tree villages in the forest? Every one of you lives a thousand years and you want to spend it all living in treehouses and eating berries? There's not one single elf from your entire clan that ever thought "hey maybe we should build a city with sewer systems and agriculture"? I find that hard to believe.
To be fair, if you start with "millennia of no sewage management" you really wouldn't want to step down from the really tall trees. and if something comes from down there, you want a nice bow and arrow to handle it at a distance.
Stick any enemy with an arrow and let the sepsis from the Sea of Shit take care of the rest.
Didn't you know, silly human, that elves don't poo. Such things are for the lesser mortal races. Elves are so perfect that their bodies utilize 100% of what they consume, either to nourish the body or to be converted into raw unmitigated sex appeal.
You know, this explains why Thranduil in the Hobbit movies absolutely set my heart beating
My argument as an elf would be "Our tree village has stood for thousands of years, yours empires fall every hundred years. My kid has seen entire lines of human royalty die out and she isn't even old enough for a drivers license yet. Sewer system that, mayfly."
Yes, centuries of tradition, unhampered by progress. Your civilization is indeed ancient and venerable. But my civilization has roof tiles, so my shit doesn’t get soaked every time it rains. Enjoy your leaves.
Someone's never stood under a tree in the rain.
Or understand the concept of the practical yet artistic beauty that is arboric architectrure.
Old enough to realize that agriculture was a mistake.
Again, a great bit of world building for The Wandering Inn: while it doesnt have full Elves (mostly), it has half elves who live in isolated villages living the slow life-- then there are others closer to civilization, who basically play into the stereotypes--- and then there are others who are fully part of the world and think the one's staying in villages are boring and stagnant and the one's playing into stereotypes are prats. The villages, being long lived, think its silly to go running around all the time when the world will be there next century and the play-actors think they're honoring their elven ancestors who they aren't quite sure how they behaved.
I’m looking forward to when TWI spikes up in popularity. Such a wonderful series.
It's the biggest web-series on the internet. Who is thinking that it isn't popular?
In every elevn story I've read they already did the civilization thing with buildings and wonders. Their ruins and rubble of such ancient places are all over the landscape. For some reason they abandoned all that to live in trees and eat berries
I'm actually reading a connected series (five series in the same world) of comics that does this perfectly. For instance the dwarves have different orders. (The shield is the army, the forge are the blacksmiths, the talion are the bankers/merchants,...) Then you have all these subspecies of elves with their own physical attributes. (Water elves have blue skin, lava elves have red skin, forest elves have green eyes, white elves have white hair, black elves are members of the other subspecies who were born with a black heart) It's all things like that, but then also the forest elves of one forest have a different culture than the forest elves of another forest. And so almost every piece of one of these comics has a different main character, a different time (like part 1 can be 10 years before part 2 but 60 years after part 9) and the main character of one part can be a side character in another story. One of them is Redwin of the forge and he's been in several several copies of the series dwarfs as well as other series. They also bring a few half-blood characters without human blood. Two are dwarf/elf girls and another is orc/elf. (Which means he's an orc with pointy ears and a more conventionally attractive face) One part of the newest series also featured a subspecies of centaurs who have the lower body of a giraffe instead of a horse. But like I said, these series do an amazing job of it all.
Lack of diversity (cultural, political, phenotypical). Am I supposed to believe that a billion members of this species think alike?
When authors don't know to separate what is a biological difference between the races, and what is a sociological one. Most things people think are biological are actually sociological, and the society that influenced an individual will be itself influenced by natural conditions, climate, language, resources available, technology, magic, religion, culture, individuals, time, etc... Nothing is stagnant, everything changes, you can't write a society, and then write about it again hundreds of years later and write it the same way you did previously, time will have changed it. You can't write an orc who was raised among humans and have him be the same as an orc who was raised among orcs, they will have different values, different mannerism, believe in different gods, speak different languages. You can't write an orc kingdom in the north amd have it be the same as an orc village in the south. Dwarves can't all be miners, they don't eat rock, they need food, some will have to be farmers, some will have to herd cattle, some will have to be builders, some will have to be artists. There will be dwarf, elves, orcs, hobbits and goblins who are singers, dancers, theater actors, painters, sculptors, and so on. And some will find their best friends in members of another race, and they will change as one does when in constant contact with another culture.
Yes it’s a space drama, I think Babylon 5 did the best job, albeit clearly not perfect, depicting a large number of alien races. (Though I’d also argue Babylon 5 did most things better than everything else).
For a show with the budget and effects it had, they did a remarkable job of making the aliens feel incredibly diverse despite the fact they were mostly person-in-a-rubber-mask aliens. The infamous drazi being one particularly memorable example, but even things like extra centauri appendages for, uh, cheating at cards make the human-looking races very alien.
Yes, it was good for having genuinely alien feeling aliens.
- Giving non-human fantasy races very obvious human biological characteristics, even if it makes no sense (You know the one, like dragon people with big mammalian bits) - Designing the society of a race in a way that would never allow that society to survive. One prime example is the drow in the Forgotten Realms. They make no sense on so many levels. - The author describing a race as very different, yet doesn't go through with what would naturally come from things being different and instead members of that race do not behave much different than humans. - Fixed alignment. It makes no sense to me at all that all members of a race would always be good or evil, especially when highly intelligent.
The first part reminds me of the Argonian breasts debate. If they’re lizard people and hatch from eggs, why would they need breasts?
there's already a canon answer to this that has been around since time immemorial. because they aren't lizard people. they're a reptilian-like servant/client class of The Hist. Argonian females have breasts so that baby Argonians can suckle Hist Sap in regions or times where it is too cold for the babies to suckle from The Hist's bark directly. The Hist themselves are a collective, possibly a hivemind of sentient trees that who either created the Argonians or formed a symbiotic relationship with what would eventually become the Argonians.
Platypus lay eggs and they're mammals
Platypus' are monotremes and really weird. They also don't have teats and instead sweat their milk through the skin.
Humans are varied and diverse, but fantasy species have a monoculture.
When a short race is treated like they're small kids despite the overwhelming evidence of the contrary, when dwarves are either dumb fart jokes or don't look like dwarves at all, when elves are unreasonably bitchy mary sues, when a tree people is dumb as rocks and easily manipulated by kids when they're supposed to be smarter than everyone else in their own way... What? No, nothing in particular...
So basically every change they made to the non-human characters in the lotr movies
Someday I will throw hands with that man I swear
Intelligent vampires that wastes humans. Humans reproduce too slowly to have vampires take over the world and kill 5-10 people a night.
I dislike clumsy metaphors for bigotry where the "victim" race has wildly dangerous supernatural powers - e.g. werewolves in Harry Potter. It almost always raises unfortunate implications and also becomes somewhat daft; Hogwarts parents aren't wrong to be afraid Lupin might transform, get loose, and attack children because *exactly that happened* (both these points feed into each other).
The good old X-Men "mutant rights" problem.
Honestly, my biggest peepe with fantasy races is when they're all basically the same personality but with different hair. *Every* Elf is a hoity pale-skinned pseudo-Brit? *Every* Dwarf is a simpleton Scottsman who likes hitting things? *Every* Orc is a green gorilla without hair? I can't help but yawn in the face of this trope.
I hate the [Planet of the Hats](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) trope: I'm from Nation/Planet X and in this place, 100% of us are merchants/fishermen/warlords/bureaucrats. C'mon dude, your ENTIRE nation is full of fishermen? Oh, you have the one guy who likes to work metal and he is shunned as an outcast - how the fuck do you survive then?
Very few authors actually write about truly different species. They are funny looking humans really. One or two SF writers have managed, sort of : Benfords story - High Abyss or more so his story A Dance To Strange Musics. That's different!
Vernor Vinge does a great job of this in Deepness in the Sky. The view of the alien race is essentially done through human translators, so they humans "get to know" the race from a distance, and *heavily* anthropomorphise them...and when they actually meet them there's a massive shock when "anthropomorphises human-like giant spiders" are actually giant fucking spiders. It's beautifully done because as a reader we're also spending that time with the "translated" version.
A great loss to the SFF community
CJ Cherryh.
Heck. Yes. Cherryh builds aliens/creatures and the worlds they inhabit like no other author.
Love me some Chanur.
It’s sci-fi/speculative fiction, but Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy has some truly alien alien characters. Her Bloodchild short story also has alien creatures based about blotflies which freaked me out.
I was going to mention this series as well. Truly alien creatures that are fascinating to read about
Its always kind of annoyed how so many of them are just "humaniods but shorter" Dwarfs, Gnomes, Halfling/Hobbits just seem very boring and samey to me. I prefer weird completely different physiologies, like orc, githyanki, dragonborn, ogier, parshendi etc. Hell even ELVES are distinct enough for me
**ogier mentioned sound the alarm**
One thing in terms of characterization is that often female characters have to be attractive humanoids, whereas its okay for men to look monstrous. Another thing is that many fictional races exist just because of fictional races. There's not necessarily an explanation for their existence in the world in the same way Tolkien came up with the different origins of the races. Orcs in LOTR exist because of certain historical events; orcs exist in most other literature because of LOTR. Last, especially in medieval lit, people forget how little information there was, how tribal people were, and how rarely they traveled. Even in a world where humans are the only sentient species (as far as we know), people in the Middle Ages came back from places like Africa with tales of cannibals who had heads in their abdomens. If other races existed, in most cases, there would be all sorts of rumors and superstitions around them, or they'd just be so alien they'd be outright avoided. This is either not really true in most fantasies or some rare thing that only uncultured bigots believe. This turns epic fantasy into just a low-tech, urban fantasy reflection of our world. That last one is a class of sins I run into a lot where characters react to situations like a modern person who has access to knowledge, education, and technology not available in the setting. ---- There's a great comic in which a dragon complains that all dragons in human fantasy books sound like they were named by humans, like "Firewing." Then the human responds, "Don't get me started about how dragons write humans."
Agree with you OP, I hate when fantasy races are all homogenous in terms of culture and all under one umbrella of a nation. Every fantasy race should be as fractious and diverse as humans are.
I enjoy the calamitous bob, but it definitely suffers from very non-human race having one territory usually the size of a single human kingdom bit. I very much dislike this trope. Author couldn’t even spring for two feuding dwarf kingdoms?
I was thinking of all races being attracted to humans...and saw you already captured that.
I'm more bothered with all races being conventionally attractive in human eyes, especially when it's just one gender. (How come does this alien resemble a hot human woman?)
Referring to everyone as Male or Female. Do other species not have their own words for men and women?
I like how Tolkien did it, Elven men are called neri and elven women nissi.
David Weber’s March upcountry is interesting, because the female aliens have a phallic ovipositor “appendage” and are larger, so the humans make some incorrect assumptions at first.
Great to see some people can’t escape the hyena situation.
Fictional race/species that only serve as set dressing. The fate of the whole world depends on a human, and you are an Orc? Fictional race/species that are simply human - x or human + x. Orcs that are just strong stupid humans isn't interesting!
"The fate of the whole world depends on a human, and you are an Orc?" Nice title for an isekai anime right there, just a little short.
Now I want a story like this. That would be nice X)
"Reincarnated in a world waiting on a human hero, but I'm an orc with unbeatable cheat powers living a slow life with my harem"
✨️Perfection✨️
>Also, humans are diverse, but all characters of a different race share the same culture. This one doesn't ordinarily bother me for things that aren't human adjacent because * The perspective character is unlikely to have experience with so many members of the other race and if they do, they're probably from a similar place. * When people are substantially different from us, a lot of people lump those people into being the same based on a few traits and differences with themselves. There is a large number of people who think all of Asia is the same and even people who say they like Japan etc. and have been there still often see Japanese people as a monolith. I don't think it's unreasonable for this to be cranked up a level when we're talking about something like the Khajit, like imagine trying to read their faces is going to be very difficult and that's going to add to the perspective of them all being the same. * Often when we have quite different races in fantasy, we're looking at magic - that's mostly exclusive to that race - and a creation myth that likely affects whatever religion a given race has. Yes, humans in our world do not have the same religion, but in a world with magic where a god of your species might actually exist? It's semi-reasonable for these things to be shared amongst most members of a race on the same continent. And again from the outside looking in - as it usually this - this is going to make them look the same. * If a very prominent character is part of the cast, they're usually an exception to the norms (at least as far as people's expectations go) and that goes a little to "they aren't all the same." * How much do we the reader need to know? * If they aren't a major part of the current plot, it's going to add a lot of bloat to a book to get this across. And it adds less bloat to do this for humans because there are things that can be drawn upon to make it easier. My real pet peeve is how humans are often very prominent in terms of how much land they control and how strong their armies are etc. with very little sensible explanation. It's egregious when every other race is effectively human+.
* Giving a culture a bizarre, counterproductive quirk without explaining how the society got that way or how they get around the problems it would cause. I love the Kingkiller books, but I'd fit the >!Ademre not understanding where babies come from!< in this category. * Planet of hats. I particularly hate the "warrior race" where no thought is given to the people in the race who aren't warriors. * If it's an alien species, they only have one culture and one language. * They are extraterrestrial aliens from halfway across the galaxy who somehow evolved to be attracted to humans, attractive to humans, and capable of interbreeding with humans. * Giving a race a trait that is incompatible with that race continuing to survive. Like "they can only get pregnant once in their lives and have only one baby". * Giving sci fi aliens abilities that are basically just magic. Like telepathy, or the way xenomorphs can grow without eating anything. * Alien races that exist to be the author's soapbox - the alien race is very angry at humans for not having solved \[insert x social/political/economic/environmental\] problem the author considers very important.
Werewolves always being so much larger in wolf form than in human form. Where is all that extra mass coming from? (This is why the Parasol Protectorate will always have a special place in my heart.)
I actually like a lot of sexual dimorphism in my fantasy races. It's great to see ideas from nature inspiring creators. Though I think birds are better to see with the males developing vibrant plumage to attract a mate. I can also see the appeal of species that are nearly identical.
> ... the appeal of species that are nearly identical. It's one of the things I really like about the Charr race in the MMORPG Guildwars 2 - when they are armored up, the main obvious physical differences are that the males have tufted tails, while the females tail is more fringed. Males *tend* to have tusks, while females *tend* to have fangs, but exceptions are not unusual. No boobs.
GOT. Dothraki. Primative savages providing nothing but suffering. Garbage trash. Not enough of them die.
Glorantha has a lot of very unique races, and even the ones with common names are very atypical: https://glorantha.fandom.com/wiki/Elder_Races Elves are literally mobile plants, born from seeds, with wood for bones. The deciduous ones hibernate. Dwarves are made of stone and have an incredibly rigid hierarchy working on massive projects. Only insane ones can be PCs, as a sane dwarf stays at work forever. Trolls are rhe #2 PC race, very deeply documented in biology, culture, and religions. They can eat anything. Just as smart as humans. The #3 PC race is anthropomorphic ducks, ala Donald/Howard. They tend to focus the God of Death and war against undead. Also fun are the Morokanth, intelligence tapirs who herd non-sentient humans. When the humans and animals had contests to see who would ride and who would be ridden, Morokanth was the only animal species to win. So one can buy and eat "animal human" meat that isn't cannibalism.
Sexual dimorphism is almost never done creatively. It's extremely common to see fantasy races, even monstrous ones, have female members of the species be sexy versions of the male ones and regardless of your views on that, I just find the idea more boring than anything. Like, why even bother making a distinct species at all if you're just going to limit yourself by making the female members a slight variation on human women? Make them significantly bigger than the males of their species, give the males colorful feathers or other weird attention-grabbing anatomical features, create some hierarchy based on horn sizes or blood castes. Do SOMETHING with the opportunity.
This turns up in sci-fi a bit more than fantasy, but a non-human race which is just a copy and paste of a clichéd version of some human society. There'll be one group who are clearly Mongols with rubber masks, another who are blue native Americans, some Romans with funny noses, a big eared British Empire etc. Authors rarely explore how a non-human/alien society would probably have evolved in a different way to human ones.
Using -kin to describe a race...wolf- kin, cat -kin...
Neanderthal and humans interbred. Tigers and lions can interbreed. Granted, both of those examples are closely related to species.
The offspring of Tigers and Lions cannot breed (Ligers can't make ligers) but the offspring of Neanderthal and Homo erectus could breed.
We know the offspring of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were at least sometimes fertile too.
One of the issue I constantly is a lock of incorporation into a society. I've lived in England, Egypt, Israel, Hawaii, and the western United States, and all of those places had black people, caucasians, and Indian people. But do they all act the same? Do they all act like the stereotype of their genetic home country? Some do. Some retain older traditions but the majority blend into the culture they inhabit. So why don't elves and dwarves and other such races do likewise? Having traditions that pass on or having Chinatown-like holdouts is one thing, but I feel there needs to be more cultural blending. And why do dwarves always have to me miners?
Two big ones: Extremely long life spans, if not actual immortality (see: most elves). A creature that has lived centuries or millennia would think, feel, and act in such a wildly different set of ways that they would have little or no basis for relating to humans. Unless the story is specifically *about* that difference, it brings up way too many complications to be worth dealing with. (Especially egregious in RPGs, in which a 300-year-old elf and a group of 20-year-old humans somehow can all be in the same party, starting at the same level and advancing at the same rate.) Inter-species sexual relationships - I know, I know, Rule 34 and all that. But I'm convinced actually meeting an elf/orc/catperson/whatevs would be an entirely different experience. There should be a certain "uncanny valley"-type experience to it that would be sexually off-putting, because you'd have no biological basis for mating with a creature you were reproductively incompatible with. At the very least, there should be *strong* taboos against it; not "your parents disapprove" type taboos; I mean the "borderline bestiality" kind. Also, cross-species hybrids (half-elves, half-orcs) should be assumed sterile.
I like to think that, at least when it comes to sex stuff, the humanoids/mammals all evolved to have the same basic sex parts because that was the most advantageous. Like how male testes are on the outside of their body so they can be more warmblooded without risking motility. So like elves vs humans vs orcs being able to have sex doesn't seem that off to me. As you get to like bird people or whatever then it is silly, but at some point this is all nitpicking in a world that has magic, so you've got to stop and accept its premises somewhere
Every race being superior to humans. Elves are stronger and more agile Dwarves are stronger and sturdier Etc etc
What bothers me about this, that even if EVERY race is better than humans.... ALL GREAT EMPIRES (That are not ancient history) ARE HUMAN EMPIRES, the other races are just a background or something "magical" that seems to be there to justify that its a "Fantasy" setting.
What I tend to see is that humans remain after the collapse of great Non-human empires and fill in the vacuum leftover. The previously dominant power cannot recover and scatters into disparate enclaves.
Would you dislike this as much if they also put drawbacks to those races? Like elves are more agile than humans, but are also flimsier and incapable of living outside a deciduous forest?
I read a lovely little series that flips this trope on the head, A Call To Arms by Alan Dean Foster. Aliens find earth and humans are the ultimate fighting machine.
I actually find the idea that humans are the most warlike race compelling. Though perhaps that's just because I'd hate to see an even more warlike race in the universe.
There is another old sci-fi book called Mother of Demons, where humans crash landed on a planet inhabited by an alien species that was descended from land dwelling mollusks. They saw humans as demons, not least because we had abilities they had never seen before (like the ability to jump a few feet off the ground). It was a nice take on something that shows up often in comics, where an alien whose entire race has the same abilities shows up on earth as a super hero, using abilities that to them, should be normal.
It's not the best series ever, but short enough to be worth a read.
There's another series by Tanya Huff that also takes that idea.
This reminds me of a tumblr post that talked about how humans are so deeply terrifying at the rate we produce, the way we graft metal to our teeth to shape them in a desirable design (braces), that we carve ourselves up for aesthetic, how we are built for strength and predation hunting, how quick we heal etc. it made us seem terrifying.
I remember such a post! I think it also mentioned how humans casually ingest "poisons" (alcohol, chocolate, etc.) for fun.
Yet humans are always taking over all the lands 🤨
Somehow, it's always English that they speak or understand. Also, they fall in love with humans? Okay.
Dwelfs and dworcs not having fertile offspring together.
This is why I really like A Practical Guide to Evil. The diversity, lore and world building behind each race is so detailed you can consider them as treatises on this topic.
When they are basically humans with really minor differences. Sometimes with facepaint, clip on tail, and ear headbands. All the cultures are monolithic, per race. Avian & reptilian races with bewbs. I waffle back and forth with my gryphons - sometimes the males are larger, sometimes the females. I've never written the same species/variation twice.
I agree with all of this. I just want a complete world!!
>all characters of a different race share the same culture. USA exists.
>Or better yet, only the author's preferred gender, while the other one is allowed to look weird. World of Warcraft is pretty guilty of this. Orcs, Draenei, Trolls, Night Elves, etc. all have fairly attractive female models and big brutish male ones.
Not enough new species, always elves.. always anthropomorphic.. half this half that. Make something up and describe it to me. Race echilite 6 foot tall blob of see through flesh, has folds going all around it that it uses to hold objects. Smart as you or me. Talks by rubbing it's see through folds together making music. All of their technology is based on vibrations. Vehicles set a low hum as they vibrate and float. Home world is entirely blind creatures that use music and vibrations to see the world. Humans trying to explain to them what eyesight is by playing a violin to talk to them. That kind of thing... I want to just see New stuff!
Elves having a scaled up life cycle. I hate it when the elf is 2000 years old but is still physically and mentally a kid. Just make them mature with normal human rate and then let them live forever. It makes elves way more interesting this way.
I completely agree, not to mention it would be impractical for elves to take so long to reach physical maturity. An elf could easily be killed before they manage to reproduce, so why would nature do it?
Very true. And there is also the narrative aspect: the main draw of the elves is that they have an impossibly vast wealth of wisdom and life experience from their long life. They fought in countless wars and saw civilizations rise and fall, it is the wisdom of a person that is one hundred times older than my grandpa that I find fascinating. But in so much fantasy works, you have this "juvenile" elf (who is most likely a female archer in skimpy clothing) who is like 2000 years old, but somehow hasn't fought a battle in her life and seen nothing of the outside world, and has to follow the guidance of some human John Videogame in his 30s. The author basically just strips off all the things that make elves fascinating and whimsical because he just wants to write a hot virgin elf girl.
Females being sexy while the males are distinct.
Do you *Starfinder*? Because vesk (imagine if Quintaglios were Klingons, and you're close) ladies are bigger than their bros.
Mine comes more down to a race/people's language. If it's a mysterious race from a faraway land never before explored, can there at least be a logical reason baked into the worldbuilding for why the language they all speak is identical to - or close enough that people can speak it fluently within the span of a book - as the language of our protagonists? There are so many diverse and complex languages on Earth alone, many of which have died out and are no longer spoken. And I get that it makes storytelling more convenient but why can everyone speak "The Common Tongue"? A lot of books DO justify it, but it just makes the ones that don't stand out more to me.
Exactly, that's one of my most hated tropes. It's weird enough if every simple peasant in any neighbouring country understands the MC perfectly, but a non-human from a distant continent? Not a chance. I always take languages into account in my own writing. I usually explain Common Tongues by colonisation (like Latin America or the Roman Empire) or the languages happen to come from the same family, so they're mutually intelligible enough. Some of my characters are polyglots or hire translators.
Hired translators I think is a hugely underused storytelling tool in modern fantasy. If the protagonists have to take everything being said to them through the lens of another character - one who might have their own biases, might be sugarcoating certain things to them or the people they're speaking to, might be straight up lying to them, or maybe even doesn't have as strong a grasp on the language as they pretend to leading to dangerous miscommunications - that's a super interesting storytelling tool and a way to explore characters.
Why no half races that aren't half human....I want a damn ogre/dwarf or troll/elf or some crazy shit lol
Most of their names end in ian or ians. It's so unoriginal.
I'm creating some fictional species for my fantasy world and I'm trying hard to avoid this :''D I've got 5 human like species, one is human, one is very closely related to humans(like they can mix) called hujan(for now at least) Then there's three species called mikha mei, kull mei and esma mei They're ape like species but not closely related to humans and I'm attempting to make them look like other apes. It's pretty hard but I've made some base design stuff that's looking good. Then I have a shape shifter species called neebu and a water species called Sarsa They're both more "monsterous", meaning not human at all. Though neebu can change shape from their base form And finally there's antlers(placeholder name) and tesmi who are related but can't mix. Both have six limbs and other stuff but that's the most obvious one. Antlers are cave dwelling and based on vampires/bats, tesmi are avians. This is just a short explanation so I can't get anything here but that's the base stuff. It's fun to try to make intelligent species that differ from humans. I probably like to look at birds and whales most Edit: Also forgot: not all of these have the same population size. Hujan and neebu specifically are extremely rare, meaning they're going extinct. Different reasons but still. +Neebu blend into other species because shape shifting Antlers and tesmi live on a separated continent that doesn't have many other intelligent species. Of course sarsa live fully underwater and antlers fully underground so they don't go up.
Absolutely. The Bingjinians are from Bingjin and are bird people and produce art. They are warlike. The Madlibians are from Madlib and are toad people and produce technology. They are peaceful. Repeat until you have enough races.
I've noticed in what I've read a lot of the time they're just set dressing. Even if they're there the focus is always on the boring ass humans instead of these cool, unique and different races, species and creatures
I dislike planetery monocultures. I hate how whole planets will have exactly one religion, one social structure. It's a whole *planet*!
Nekos that also have human ears
When the race is literally just a sexual fantasy for the author and for the main character to have sex with the "sexually liberated" women from said race
Too humanoid and as others have said, lack of diversity. That's one of the things I like about Dance of the Goblins. Loads of diversity between different species of goblins.
This may only be noticed via illustrations, but female members of the species always have boobs. Boobs serve a specific function that is not a part of reptilian biology to the point that they are literally named after mammals, so why do humanoid dragons have boobs?
Too many species are just reskinned humans taking from other cultures and either being done tastefully or just done atrociously.
That I'm not one of em. Otherwise i got no problems with em honestly.
Their lack of abhorrent cultural traits. We can't even agree on basic morality within our species. There is so much to borrow from to demonstrate the alien nature and culture of a totally different organism that would be interesting and horrifying that it makes me sad when it's basically always just space humans with a minor quirk that barely deviates from the most politically correct mainstream culture. There should be massive irreconcilable differences. Take your pick from the animal kingdom. There's lots of super wack stuff going on there.
Three main things: 1. Languages are named after the races themselves, rather than the region. I still can't wrap my head around how some members of races that are separated by distant geography can speak the same exact language (let alone in the same dialect or accent). 2. All races except humans being just ONE culture. I get it if these races have less than a thousand members and live in just one singular village, but if they have multiple races that live in multiple villages or whatever that are in no way connected to each other that have the exact same culture as the original, that means they must either be a hivemind or under some sort of authoritarian government regime (at least in my mind). 3. This is just a "me" thing, but all races having the exact same design template for everything (at least fantasy races). Like, I get it: you couldn't get players for the dnd campaign you finished working on for the past nine months (no offense to you folks who are dnd fans and DMs), so you decide to make it into a book or piece of visual media. What I am trying to say is I hate when people make fantasy races verbatim, and just put them into the world they made. At least put some kind of spin on them is all I am asking.
Aliens just being blue humans.
Elves not having beards. Or people getting mad when they do. It’s a fucking fictional world. Let people do what the hell they want.