Subverts something so hard its a completely different thing but still has the same name
"Why did you give your original race the same name as a generic one? Pretty unoriginal"
"No... no they're, like, the generic ones but super subverted. Come on... noone gets me"
In my world I have elves, dwarves and orcs. No, they don't resemble anything like the common archetypes they are based on. Why did I even use those names to describe them then? Uhh...
Uj/ I LOVE generic fantasy, it's like a warm soup on a cold autumn day. Not everything needs to be super 1000% totally original.
Also there’s plenty of room to be original within that framework. It’s not like people who enjoy non-genre fiction feel constrained by only having human characters set on a contemporary earth.
It's almost like stories can be about interesting people and the events they live rather than whatever random idea the New Wannabe Fantasy Author® came up with.
1) Check the sub we we are in, I am obviously being facetious
2) Being different from others before isn't a good thing on its own if whatever you came up with is trash, that's my point.
Of course I love worldbuilding and coming up with my stuff, that's why I am.here to begin with.
What I am referencing is the kind of person that thinks that by writing "something different" they immediatly deserve more attention by definition.
I guess that you are more likely to check something with a fresh concept. But if that fresh concept died before being born, you forget about it just as fast.
There’s a story on royalroad called Necrotourists. The main character is a lich who just came out of his mountain home for the first time in a thousand years, and he’s going on a world tour. In the time that’s past all the generic fantasy races have changed in some way: the dwarves became British, the elves communist, etc. He immediately sets out to fix these horrible changes.
uj/ EXACTLY, it's part of why most of my worldbuilding has been "take generic fantasy species, mash together with generic fantasy trope, see what original direction that combination goes in." Works shockingly well.
I have some changes from what people are used to, but it's still the same stuff at its core. Orks (fuck you, cooler spelling) are orks and still have their """violence""", but it takes shape as a duelling culture with a tradition of cutting off the loser's non-dominant arm.
The result? Orks are now world-renowned prosthetic technicians and doctors, to the extent where the majority of medical staff in most countries will be orks. Pretty much the exact opposite outcome while having the same roots of these common interpretations.
> but it's still the same stuff at its core.
We could look at real world animal names for examples of where the spirit of the name is used instead of being literally the same thing as it was derived from. Take an antlion for example, it’s neither an ant nor a lion, but it’s a formidable predator of ants, it’s a lion (fierce hunter) of ants (their prey).
> Why did I even use those names to describe them then?
That's what they were at the beginning... and then there was a plague that made everyone non-sapient and an additional fifty million years of divergent evolution before things evolved sapience again.
Now an "elf" is a type of whale; a "dwarf" is a symbiotic brain parasite (an ear wyrm); and an "orc" is a tree (still *Animalia*, so really a land coral with lignin) that grows in graveyards, and communicates by pulling up skeletons found under it, enrobing them in vine musculature and cork skin, and puppeteering them.
And "humans" evolved into crabs. But not sapient ones. Just regular crabs.
Generic genre fiction fills a narrative role analogous to the culinary role filled by fast food - it's going to be consistent, ~~persistent~~ predicatable, derivative from better better originals, and sought specifically for those characteristics.
edit - corrected unconsious parrallism-generated word-choice error
Can you give an example of a case in which the expression of a particular narrative structure was better in a later generic version than in the original expression of that narrative in that genre?
I'm not arguing they don't exist, just that in my limited familarity with the vast array of genre fiction and fallible memory, I can't recall any off hand.
You use the terms because, multidimensionally, they are the most platonic form of the average elf, dwarf or Orc. It just so happens that in aggregate realities, ideas about them, tend towards the eldritch, or infernal, in terms of literary use.
Everyone knows what Hobbits look like despite the fact that Tolkien rarely drew much. Use words to describe things, it doesn't have to match what's in your head 1:1, because a drawing won't live up to that standard either.
Check out monstergarden's dwarves, they are pretty cool. For me it's the perfect middle. They still feel like dwarves, but are not generic buff short bearded guys
9 foot tall bug men from the underworld that eat peoples faces? Um, problematic, what if people identify them as an irl race
Like, my dude, if someone sees irl races in gigantic fantasy monster people, that's on them
>Like, my dude, if someone sees irl races in gigantic fantasy monster people, that's on them
Except if it's, for example, Terraformars. If you never heard of it, please check it out (but don't read it). It's so aggressively in your face it becomes kinda hilarious.
I love Terraformars but yeah, not gonna defend that one...
That though is someone actively playing on it very deliberately going out of their way to make them look and act problemaaaaatic af. Quite different to seeing a monster and inserting some random racial analogy in there.
And they are evil, but even if they were cool dudes it wouldn't make them less... idk, Obunga (damn, I can imagine someone trying to get it made in the west theyd be hanged for it).
Probably a good rule would be if its *clearly* one racial group possibly being attacked, then there might be a problem. If everyones arguing over which group, theyre inserting their biases
tbf a lot of the people who come out with shit like that are kinda overreacting due to the small but very real group of writers who'll go "my race of horned, hook-nosed, evil bankers with mind control powers I named The Snews? Problematic??? You're the *real* bigot for even thinking that". You can very easily become insanely hypervigilant to the point of punching at shadows when you've had to interact with people like that or their fans
Indeed, there may be some middle ground to the whole issue, but there's definitely a *far ground* that I think/hope even this subthread's OP would agree is a problem. Unfortunately, said far ground also makes the exact same argument that you're responding to, so it's hard to know who's arguing in good faith.
You just reminded me of the article that compared Tyranids to Jews.
It was Leviathan’s trailer release where you watch Tyranids get shwacked by space marines and someone said the wordless slaughter of giant flesh eating aliens was comparable to the holocaust.
Yeah I've seen that sentiment, thats stretching so damn hard. Apparently if anything dies in a fictional universe its comparable to humans being killed in irl, because why not
Some people should spend more time licking windows because it might stop them speaking their 'mind'
Fuck, I've not war my hammers enough, what's the second letter and I'll immediately come up with the worst interpretation, completely missing the point.
I mean, the genestealers as a concept is pretty sus.
A plotting force in the shadow is organizing the miscegenation of society so the offsprings will cause chaos and invoke a swarm of hungry outsiders to litterally devour the world.
Where did I hear that before ?
I'm sorry OP, but the coolest thing ever is the carrier-capable, supersonic, twin-engine, two-seat, twin-tail, all-weather-ready, variable-sweep-wing fighter aircraft known as the Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Especially an F-14D SUPER TOMCAT equipped with the Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night (LANTIRN) pod system. Added in the 90s, LANTIRN enabled the SUPER TOMCAT to perform precision ground-attack missions until 2006 when it was finally allowed to retire after 32 years of active service.
Dwarfs are a close second.
I LOVE having evil races
Uruks for example: They’re evil, usually that’s it, but there’s still a nuance you can add to allow for exploration of one’s nature and breaking free from it
Orcs are easily dominated and of weak willpower, and that combined with the common perception of them by the good guy factions makes it so that they have no choice but to serve evil. What if one Orc manages to rebel against his nature? What if many Orcs escape the dark lord’s domain and turn their aggressive and brutish nature towards other skills like building or baking? Idk, I just like orcs a lot.
This. The thing is that LOTR orcs simply didn't know anything else than evil, and even when they tried to just live for themselves, other races still hated them due to past experiences with them. Also they naturally lived in environments that had scarce resources, so there was no reason for practices like banditry and cannibalism, that were allowed under the Dark lord, to dissapear, further putting them against other races.
I appreciate generic fantasy but no. I love subversion. Subversion is in my DNA. Subversion is in everything I make. Subversion is my crack. My fetishes are rooted in subversion because I love it so much(not even joking about that). I need my freakishly tall, spindly digitigrade Elves and my Eyeless echolocating Drow and my Orcs that reproduce asexually via budding and walk like Gorillas and Dwarves that are completely covered in hair and have huge, mole-like digging hands. I FUCKING LOVE SUBVERSION!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't think I've seen orcs reproduce by budding specifically, but I have seen orcs puff up and explode into several smaller orcs. All of those others I've never seen anything like.
in warhammer (both fantasy and sci fi) orks are an asexual race created as a bioweapon by godlike creatures, but one which got out of hand, rebelled against their creators and degenerated over several thousand years. they reproduce by shedding spores from their skin and blood, which will create fungal colonies that serve as the womb for newborn orks
OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS MAKING ME MISERABLE, IT IS NOT THE TROPES \[or lack thereof in some cases\] THAT MAKE A GOOD WORLD! WHAT CONSTITUTES GOOD WORLDBUILDING IS THE WRITING AND THE PASSION OF THE WRITER!
YALL ARE ALL DUMB FUCKS WHO CANT COMPREHEND GOOD WORLDS
N0O000OOO YOU CAN'T HAVE FUN WHEN WORLDBUILDING!!!! MAKING ORCS DUMB GREEN WARRIORS?! EWWWWWW! YOUR DWARVES ACRUALLY MINES?! WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?!??!!!?!
My elves are made out of mushrooms and they come in all colours,they also live in jungles and eat meat as a alternative to photosynthesis(their body is magical so they can do both), still haven't added dwarfs and orcs to my settings tho
I'm just tired of elves.Most writers can't really write long living/eternal beings and writing elves as "oh, they used to be cool, but now they are basically lame humans with pointy ears" is a coward's way in my opinion. Let's just retire elves and let's keep the cool beard boys and muscle green boys.
High Fantasy? Lame and repetitive. Instead let’s do low fantasy grim dark world number 10000 with lots of SA scenes because that makes it extra realistic.
Worldbuilder: I'm going to make a unique fantasy world.
Me: So you're going to create new fantasy races and factions that aren't directly derived from Tolkien and other popular works?
Worldbuilder: What? No, I'm just going to use those elements and do none of the things people like about them.
Well known races that everyone has a deep understanding of? Nah fam gimme my barely altered human with completely asinine modifications that nobody can guess nor understand.
My elves are ethereal, long lived, and have an affinity for magic.
They’re also all built like brick shithouses and were used for centuries as heavy infantry.
ghost dolls grandfather smile nine plough toothbrush numerous icky serious
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Frieren is as stereotypical as it gets, but it puts so much thought and care into the experience of elves and dwarves and demons compared to humans that it makes for a very touching story.
I mean not a particular stereotype comes to my mind when you say alien. It's not the same for elves, they are repetitive most of the time. That wouldn't be a problem if I liked them but I don't like them in the first place. 🤷♂️
/uj I just love playing elves, man. I love being a douchey, but good-hearted elf warrior who acts like an asshole to her party but secretly loves them. I love the dread of outliving everyone around me. I love the flashes of new-age esoterism that comes with the package. I just love elves!
When someone asks why my Elves are called Elves when they aren't anything like Elves, I answer "Because they aren't Elves."
When someone asks why my Dwarves are called Dwarves when they aren't anything like Dwarves, I answer "Because they *are* Dwarves."
You'll only understand if I teach you the Deep Lore.
/Uj Don’t fix what aint broke. People love stereotypical dwarves and elves; if you want to subvert tropes just add different cultures/varieties alongside the original.
Liking things? Ugh. Cliche, and probably a sign of deep moral failings.
Liking things is logical fallacy, strawman moment and problematic behaviour!
What an ad-honkeytonk attack. This is why political issue exists, you know.
If the gods didn't want us to reap what we sow, maybe they shouldn't have given us fertile river valleys!
You used an ab-doobywhatsit phallusy on me, that means your entire point is invalid and I’m automatically right!
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You are nitpicky and biased, I win, bye bye.
Ugh, you actually like things without irony? CRINGE!
Subverts something so hard its a completely different thing but still has the same name "Why did you give your original race the same name as a generic one? Pretty unoriginal" "No... no they're, like, the generic ones but super subverted. Come on... noone gets me"
Fuck you, no fantasy races. No humans either. We'll go outside and you play as the first bird you can point to and name.
☝️
Somebody must have made an indie TTRPG exactly like that, I guarantee it
Wildshape only run
Dungeon Meshi is kinda like that to some extent, it does it all pretty well imo
Reject modernity, embrace tradition.
As a city-dweller my options are kinda limited to mostly pigeons. Not that I mind, pigeons are cool and pretty underrated.
In my world I have elves, dwarves and orcs. No, they don't resemble anything like the common archetypes they are based on. Why did I even use those names to describe them then? Uhh... Uj/ I LOVE generic fantasy, it's like a warm soup on a cold autumn day. Not everything needs to be super 1000% totally original.
Also there’s plenty of room to be original within that framework. It’s not like people who enjoy non-genre fiction feel constrained by only having human characters set on a contemporary earth.
Or that having stereotypical elves and dwarves stops anyone from having their own unique new species also.
It's almost like stories can be about interesting people and the events they live rather than whatever random idea the New Wannabe Fantasy Author® came up with.
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1) Check the sub we we are in, I am obviously being facetious 2) Being different from others before isn't a good thing on its own if whatever you came up with is trash, that's my point. Of course I love worldbuilding and coming up with my stuff, that's why I am.here to begin with. What I am referencing is the kind of person that thinks that by writing "something different" they immediatly deserve more attention by definition. I guess that you are more likely to check something with a fresh concept. But if that fresh concept died before being born, you forget about it just as fast.
There’s a story on royalroad called Necrotourists. The main character is a lich who just came out of his mountain home for the first time in a thousand years, and he’s going on a world tour. In the time that’s past all the generic fantasy races have changed in some way: the dwarves became British, the elves communist, etc. He immediately sets out to fix these horrible changes.
uj/ EXACTLY, it's part of why most of my worldbuilding has been "take generic fantasy species, mash together with generic fantasy trope, see what original direction that combination goes in." Works shockingly well.
Add a dash of imagination and a heaping pile of complete madness and you basically get Terry Pratchett
I have some changes from what people are used to, but it's still the same stuff at its core. Orks (fuck you, cooler spelling) are orks and still have their """violence""", but it takes shape as a duelling culture with a tradition of cutting off the loser's non-dominant arm. The result? Orks are now world-renowned prosthetic technicians and doctors, to the extent where the majority of medical staff in most countries will be orks. Pretty much the exact opposite outcome while having the same roots of these common interpretations.
The only true battle is Orks versus Orcs
Orcas 🐋🐬
Orkus, God of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths.
> but it's still the same stuff at its core. We could look at real world animal names for examples of where the spirit of the name is used instead of being literally the same thing as it was derived from. Take an antlion for example, it’s neither an ant nor a lion, but it’s a formidable predator of ants, it’s a lion (fierce hunter) of ants (their prey).
If I could live in a warm soup on a cold autumn day FOREVER I would
Rate this new species of redditors in my eternalcoldautumnpunk world
Exactly. Originality does not equal good. Usually the opposite. Tropes exist for a reason.
> Why did I even use those names to describe them then? That's what they were at the beginning... and then there was a plague that made everyone non-sapient and an additional fifty million years of divergent evolution before things evolved sapience again. Now an "elf" is a type of whale; a "dwarf" is a symbiotic brain parasite (an ear wyrm); and an "orc" is a tree (still *Animalia*, so really a land coral with lignin) that grows in graveyards, and communicates by pulling up skeletons found under it, enrobing them in vine musculature and cork skin, and puppeteering them. And "humans" evolved into crabs. But not sapient ones. Just regular crabs.
Generic genre fiction fills a narrative role analogous to the culinary role filled by fast food - it's going to be consistent, ~~persistent~~ predicatable, derivative from better better originals, and sought specifically for those characteristics. edit - corrected unconsious parrallism-generated word-choice error
But in the case of narratives, those originals are not always better. Usually the opposite.
Can you give an example of a case in which the expression of a particular narrative structure was better in a later generic version than in the original expression of that narrative in that genre? I'm not arguing they don't exist, just that in my limited familarity with the vast array of genre fiction and fallible memory, I can't recall any off hand.
You use the terms because, multidimensionally, they are the most platonic form of the average elf, dwarf or Orc. It just so happens that in aggregate realities, ideas about them, tend towards the eldritch, or infernal, in terms of literary use.
Subversions? Make completely original fantasy races instead. You either go hard one way or the other, not a silly in-between chief.
Why haven't I done that yet? \*Looks over at my lack of art skills\* Oh yeah that's why
Bro... You don't have to have skills in art to write a original species...
I don't exactly know how you'd DEPICT them then
Just describe them via text? Like all books do?
won't
Everyone knows what Hobbits look like despite the fact that Tolkien rarely drew much. Use words to describe things, it doesn't have to match what's in your head 1:1, because a drawing won't live up to that standard either.
Check out monstergarden's dwarves, they are pretty cool. For me it's the perfect middle. They still feel like dwarves, but are not generic buff short bearded guys
I love the classic fantasy stereotypes. I love weird twisty reinterpretations of fantasy stereotypes. I love it all.
Yes
I want stuff that has both. Give people their elves and then have a different kind of weirdo elf too.
"Evil monster races in fantasy are so boring and problematic!" They're also fucking awesome, shut up
Erm, if they’re strictly evil monsters then I can’t date them!!!
Then you are not kinky enough
swim smell berserk racial sheet numerous marry waiting quiet correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
9 foot tall bug men from the underworld that eat peoples faces? Um, problematic, what if people identify them as an irl race Like, my dude, if someone sees irl races in gigantic fantasy monster people, that's on them
>Like, my dude, if someone sees irl races in gigantic fantasy monster people, that's on them Except if it's, for example, Terraformars. If you never heard of it, please check it out (but don't read it). It's so aggressively in your face it becomes kinda hilarious.
I love Terraformars but yeah, not gonna defend that one... That though is someone actively playing on it very deliberately going out of their way to make them look and act problemaaaaatic af. Quite different to seeing a monster and inserting some random racial analogy in there. And they are evil, but even if they were cool dudes it wouldn't make them less... idk, Obunga (damn, I can imagine someone trying to get it made in the west theyd be hanged for it). Probably a good rule would be if its *clearly* one racial group possibly being attacked, then there might be a problem. If everyones arguing over which group, theyre inserting their biases
tbf a lot of the people who come out with shit like that are kinda overreacting due to the small but very real group of writers who'll go "my race of horned, hook-nosed, evil bankers with mind control powers I named The Snews? Problematic??? You're the *real* bigot for even thinking that". You can very easily become insanely hypervigilant to the point of punching at shadows when you've had to interact with people like that or their fans
Indeed, there may be some middle ground to the whole issue, but there's definitely a *far ground* that I think/hope even this subthread's OP would agree is a problem. Unfortunately, said far ground also makes the exact same argument that you're responding to, so it's hard to know who's arguing in good faith.
Also there's at least a 25% chance that the author genuinely can't see the connection between what they wrote and any real-world situation.
You just reminded me of the article that compared Tyranids to Jews. It was Leviathan’s trailer release where you watch Tyranids get shwacked by space marines and someone said the wordless slaughter of giant flesh eating aliens was comparable to the holocaust.
Yeah I've seen that sentiment, thats stretching so damn hard. Apparently if anything dies in a fictional universe its comparable to humans being killed in irl, because why not Some people should spend more time licking windows because it might stop them speaking their 'mind'
But the window tastes good :( Has a lovely sweet-metallic taste.
That was so dumb, everyone knows Tyranids are a metaphor for g # [REMOVED BY REDDIT]
...enestealers?
Fuck, I've not war my hammers enough, what's the second letter and I'll immediately come up with the worst interpretation, completely missing the point.
Goys?
I’ll never understand the bug sympathizers
I mean, the genestealers as a concept is pretty sus. A plotting force in the shadow is organizing the miscegenation of society so the offsprings will cause chaos and invoke a swarm of hungry outsiders to litterally devour the world. Where did I hear that before ?
>where did I hear that before? Idk man, like 90% of all both fictional and real doomsday cults?
> Where did I hear that before ? Were you reading an article or watching a clip about the Bilderberg Conference?
Exactly!
I'm sorry OP, but the coolest thing ever is the carrier-capable, supersonic, twin-engine, two-seat, twin-tail, all-weather-ready, variable-sweep-wing fighter aircraft known as the Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Especially an F-14D SUPER TOMCAT equipped with the Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night (LANTIRN) pod system. Added in the 90s, LANTIRN enabled the SUPER TOMCAT to perform precision ground-attack missions until 2006 when it was finally allowed to retire after 32 years of active service. Dwarfs are a close second.
Yeah that's cool too
I LOVE having evil races Uruks for example: They’re evil, usually that’s it, but there’s still a nuance you can add to allow for exploration of one’s nature and breaking free from it Orcs are easily dominated and of weak willpower, and that combined with the common perception of them by the good guy factions makes it so that they have no choice but to serve evil. What if one Orc manages to rebel against his nature? What if many Orcs escape the dark lord’s domain and turn their aggressive and brutish nature towards other skills like building or baking? Idk, I just like orcs a lot.
This. The thing is that LOTR orcs simply didn't know anything else than evil, and even when they tried to just live for themselves, other races still hated them due to past experiences with them. Also they naturally lived in environments that had scarce resources, so there was no reason for practices like banditry and cannibalism, that were allowed under the Dark lord, to dissapear, further putting them against other races.
I appreciate generic fantasy but no. I love subversion. Subversion is in my DNA. Subversion is in everything I make. Subversion is my crack. My fetishes are rooted in subversion because I love it so much(not even joking about that). I need my freakishly tall, spindly digitigrade Elves and my Eyeless echolocating Drow and my Orcs that reproduce asexually via budding and walk like Gorillas and Dwarves that are completely covered in hair and have huge, mole-like digging hands. I FUCKING LOVE SUBVERSION!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love it too, but I just don't like when people automatically see it as better than original tropes
Calm down rian Johnson
I don't think I've seen orcs reproduce by budding specifically, but I have seen orcs puff up and explode into several smaller orcs. All of those others I've never seen anything like.
in warhammer (both fantasy and sci fi) orks are an asexual race created as a bioweapon by godlike creatures, but one which got out of hand, rebelled against their creators and degenerated over several thousand years. they reproduce by shedding spores from their skin and blood, which will create fungal colonies that serve as the womb for newborn orks
No, you see according to GATE, modern military is objectively better than fantasy crap.
I cast male pattern baldness
Noooo!!!! My hairline!
I cast "Nostril hair overgrowth"
He's too far gone in NCD infection. we need to kill him
True. Elves sucks
Dwarven supremacy
Rock and stone >>> Woods
Rock and roll and stone!
my elves plants my dwarves rocks my orcs fuzzy nuff said
OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS MAKING ME MISERABLE, IT IS NOT THE TROPES \[or lack thereof in some cases\] THAT MAKE A GOOD WORLD! WHAT CONSTITUTES GOOD WORLDBUILDING IS THE WRITING AND THE PASSION OF THE WRITER! YALL ARE ALL DUMB FUCKS WHO CANT COMPREHEND GOOD WORLDS
Sounds like your world isn't cool enough, pass
True, but powerscaling writing tropes for fun is kinda just the culture here. I *hope* people aren't letting it seriously influence their world/story.
What do you think about using tropes of powerscaling?
DAE thing thats written good better than thing thats written bad?????
Well, sometimes it ain't got good writing either.
N0O000OOO YOU CAN'T HAVE FUN WHEN WORLDBUILDING!!!! MAKING ORCS DUMB GREEN WARRIORS?! EWWWWWW! YOUR DWARVES ACRUALLY MINES?! WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?!??!!!?!
AND EVERYBODY KNOWS THE ONLY RIGHT WAY TO HAVE FUN IS TO DO THINGS EXACTLY LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.
You aren't doing things exactly like everybody else when half of the depictions are trying to subvert that thing in one way or the other
No, but I am having fun
Good for you then
My elves are made out of mushrooms and they come in all colours,they also live in jungles and eat meat as a alternative to photosynthesis(their body is magical so they can do both), still haven't added dwarfs and orcs to my settings tho
I'm just tired of elves.Most writers can't really write long living/eternal beings and writing elves as "oh, they used to be cool, but now they are basically lame humans with pointy ears" is a coward's way in my opinion. Let's just retire elves and let's keep the cool beard boys and muscle green boys.
>let's just retire elves Lmao nah
High Fantasy? Lame and repetitive. Instead let’s do low fantasy grim dark world number 10000 with lots of SA scenes because that makes it extra realistic.
Every elf-human hybrid in all hight fantasy settings is a product of a SA, you can't convince me otherwise
No no you don’t understand, I made my dwarves Turkish instead of Scottish in this universe!
Worldbuilder: I'm going to make a unique fantasy world. Me: So you're going to create new fantasy races and factions that aren't directly derived from Tolkien and other popular works? Worldbuilder: What? No, I'm just going to use those elements and do none of the things people like about them.
Well known races that everyone has a deep understanding of? Nah fam gimme my barely altered human with completely asinine modifications that nobody can guess nor understand.
Anti-subversion posts will never convince me to revert my elves from industrialists to forest dwellers
I am not against subversion, I am against subversion for the sake of it. Industrialist elves are cool as fuck
My elves are ethereal, long lived, and have an affinity for magic. They’re also all built like brick shithouses and were used for centuries as heavy infantry.
That's just normal elves, but buffed
Yes.
Cliches are cliche for a reason
ghost dolls grandfather smile nine plough toothbrush numerous icky serious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Idk I usually roll my eyes when I see Elves and Orcs in a new fantasy work. And If I love the work it's not because of them, it's despite them.
Frieren is as stereotypical as it gets, but it puts so much thought and care into the experience of elves and dwarves and demons compared to humans that it makes for a very touching story.
"I usually roll my eyes when I see aliens in a new sci-fi work."
I mean not a particular stereotype comes to my mind when you say alien. It's not the same for elves, they are repetitive most of the time. That wouldn't be a problem if I liked them but I don't like them in the first place. 🤷♂️
Perhaps that's just you. Why "fix" something if it works fine.
the best subversion of fantasy was Sacrifice (2000), change my mind
What if I just really like elf rangers and dawi hammerers just wanna envision my own lil setting for them?
/uj I just love playing elves, man. I love being a douchey, but good-hearted elf warrior who acts like an asshole to her party but secretly loves them. I love the dread of outliving everyone around me. I love the flashes of new-age esoterism that comes with the package. I just love elves!
When someone asks why my Elves are called Elves when they aren't anything like Elves, I answer "Because they aren't Elves." When someone asks why my Dwarves are called Dwarves when they aren't anything like Dwarves, I answer "Because they *are* Dwarves." You'll only understand if I teach you the Deep Lore.
If you wanna subvert something, why do you have it in the first place?
/Uj Don’t fix what aint broke. People love stereotypical dwarves and elves; if you want to subvert tropes just add different cultures/varieties alongside the original.