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Love when 'original races' in a fantasy pitch just means 'Jews, but they're lizard people'.
that's not even original, my man, david icke beat you to it
I generally have a policy of not commenting on pitches but idk don't be nakedly racist perhaps.
I am not reading into this fwiw the pitch explicitly makes the comparison
D&D style races are always racialized to some extent but I think it's POSSIBLE to do it thoughtfully. The Dragon Age games do a great job imo, for one -- the elves absolutely draw on Jewish, Romani, and NDN history, but it doesn't feel violent to me. https://twitter.com/juliablunck1/status/1273316988941729792
And I mean it's baked into the genre -- Tolkien of course also based his dwarves on the Jewish people. He was working with an anti-racist intention, and that's cool given the time period especially, but it does feel a little weird in places.
Anyway like 90% of the time I agree elves/orcs/etc are a messy worldbuilding structure that I recommend avoiding in this day and age unless you have something really fresh to say about it.
Yeah the Vulcans are less messy because a Jewish actor developed that aspect of them. But they're also... weird, conceptually, because of it! And the Romulans make it extra weird. And then obviously the Klingons are a lot going on. https://twitter.com/juliablunck1/status/1273318311401488391
Yeah I love that the city elves and the Dalish are both right and wrong about different things, and view each other with suspicion, and etc. It feels very real as a diaspora metaphor. https://twitter.com/priyachandscifi/status/1273318924139053057
lol best not to speak of this https://twitter.com/juliablunck1/status/1273319250426507264
yeah basically this. no disrespect to the lizardfolk intended https://twitter.com/DerekSykes17/status/1273318630210535426
I tend to encourage all-human worlds unless you have a really good reason to have humanoid races who aren't human. It's a convention of the genre but there's no reason it has to be. Most of the time it becomes an awkward racial metaphor. https://twitter.com/MarxGBaker/status/1273319668787433478
Yeah basically anything you want to do with elves or orcs or whatever your version is, you can do it instead with a human culture you invent. And that way you're holding yourself actually accountable for whatever you're implying. https://twitter.com/eavandijk1/status/1273319940716736512
That said, I do think there are deconstructions of this idea that are very interesting and there are works I love, as I mentioned, that play with humanoid races as a worldbuilding element. I just think it's hard to do it well.
I think it's difficult to rescue the Ferengi as a concept at all, but that DS9 did its best, especially for almost 30 years ago (yikes @ doing this math). https://twitter.com/KaijuFunk/status/1273320280400826369
Star Trek has always MEANT well, and DS9 especially tried. Like, are the Trill a super sensitive analysis of fluid sexuality or gender transition? No. Are they still pretty cool, especially for the time? Yeah, I think so.
Honestly the wildest and most innovative stuff DS9 did with fantasy race was the Bajoran/Cardassian stuff that I am simply not going to get into on main. https://twitter.com/juliablunck1/status/1273322089588629505
Yeah and Dragon Age is also very directly in dialogue with the way D&D and other Tolkien-derived fantasy has framed race via fantasy races. Like, they're being intentional with it. That goes a long way. https://twitter.com/eavandijk1/status/1273322473161883649
Yeah just like Kirk and Uhura had to be mind controlled, Dax had to be channeling her male past life. But to accomplish that at all on syndicated network television in 1995 was remarkable, just as Kirk and Uhura were remarkable in 1968. https://twitter.com/juliablunck1/status/1273322804352516101
The Trill also debut in TNG -- Crusher falls in love with a male Trill ambassador but he ends up rejoined in a female host and she can't deal with it. https://twitter.com/juliablunck1/status/1273323977331662854
Right this is the problem, like the structure is sort of inherently racist as a concept. If you can make them less monolithic it's less messy, but the question is still 'why not just let them be human?' You need a compelling answer. https://twitter.com/cwbuecheler/status/1273322931909771268
lmao they absolutely are! you just need to think about what you imply w/them, that's all https://twitter.com/kurestinarmada/status/1273325774238515207
Discworld is also very good with this, especially when it comes to engaging with the 'fantasy Jewish' history of dwarves in genre fiction.
Exactly. And a lot of the time elves or goblins or dwarves (or a space variant, like Vulcans/Ferengi) stand in for Jewish people and orcs (or a space variant, like Klingons in TNG on) stand in for Black people & in 2020 we can be more thoughtful than that. https://twitter.com/rosieclaverton/status/1273326932533358594
Anyway don't let me scare you away from writing your fantasy with elves and dwarves and orcs in it, just take care to think about what you're doing especially if you are white and/or a gentile because these tropes are very historically loaded.
Yeah and I feel like by FEET OF CLAY with the golems he must have been leaning into it intentionally? https://twitter.com/Beardynoise/status/1273329158735749128
I also think that a great example of 'elves, but they're just a human culture' is the Valyrians in ASOIAF. They serve every function elves do in most fantasy literature -- ancient, mystical, scary -- but the Targaryens are absolutely human.
ASOIAF therefore actually deals with like, cultural imperialism. It isn't elves oppressing humans, it's different kinds of humans oppressing each other.
(YMMV on how well it deals with the subject, obviously! But it doesn't mask it with elves and orcs.)
A trans friend of mine told me Cheery really mattered to him when he was young and pre-transition and I didn't get it at first but he explained his thought process to me a bit and it was eye-opening. Pratchett really was a master. https://twitter.com/Jezzerat/status/1273330868761833476
lol I have an article on Aerith and Judaism in Final Fantasy VII forthcoming. It was delayed for a bunch of reasons but I will link it here eventually. Love her, obviously. https://twitter.com/merchantofvice/status/1273331768742027265
Adapting DUNE is fraught as hell and I am very intrigued to see how they handle all of that. https://twitter.com/juliablunck1/status/1273332501017178117
Okay my lunch break is over but I think this was actually kind of an interesting and maybe productive discussion so thanks to that antisemitic pitch, I guess.
Huh! Coincidental timing, but this is great to see. https://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1273413119813890048
