Fantasy Discrimination, And The Implications

Fantasy Discrimination, and The Implications

A post on my dash reminded me to share some more writing advice, so here is a very good article by @mythcreantsblog , about how to make sure you're not dehumanizing a species or culture in your writing, which is a good guide on how to avoid accidentally writing racist or ableist tropes:

Mythcreants

Six Signs You’re Dehumanizing a Species or Culture

A group doesn't have to be evil to be problematic.

In particular, I want to talk about the ever-present racist trope in a lot of fantasy and scifi fiction, and that is the decision a lot of creators make where the villains are not just a single person, a faction, or a kingdom -- *its an entire species* who is not only the villain, but are outright, inherently *evil*.

To start out, here's a political cartoon by Tom Gauld you've probably seen all around tumblr with the name cropped out:

[ID: a political cartoon by Tom Gauld, showing two identical cities and boats mirrored on a river, each with a purple or yellow flag; one side is labled "Our Blessed Homeland, Our Glorious Leader, Our Great Religion, Our Noble Populace, Our Heroic Adventuerers", The other side is labled "Their Barbarous Wastes, Their Wicked Despot, Their Primitive Superstition, Their Backwards Savages, Their Brutish Invaders. End ID]

This political cartoon is a very good tool for testing your writing for the trope of demonizing/glorifying your fantasy/scifi species.

Let's use a classic example: your fantasy setting is made up of the following species: Elves, Dwarves, Humans, and Orcs.

Your Elves are a long-lived, ethereal people who live in secluded, perfect cities, all of them tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, who are extremely wise and making plans that can stretch out over dozens of human generations, and they're the deciders of 90% of politics in your world. Your Dwarves are a short, squat, species who spend their lives working in forges, mines, and laboratories, tirelessly toiling (because they enjoy the hard work, of course!) and selling their products to the Elves who are their largest and wealthiest customer base; Dwarves work hard and studiously for decades at a a time to complete a piece of work in order to fufill the intricate orders from their Elven customers, which is how the majority of them provide for their families, working 16 hour shifts each day for decades per order. Your Humans are far more seperated, and often live on the fringes of what their longer-lived compatriots consider "Civilized Society", often living as Subsistence farmers and hunters, not out of choice, but often due to poor land and lack of resources; the wealthiest of Human cities are usually the capitals where the royals reside and may live in luxury with rich markets and high-quality products and running water, but the vast majority of Humans live in small, poor villages that must rely on traveling merchants to sell what produce and livestock they can spare from their farms in order to buy the supplies they need to live out another year. Your Orcs.... well, they don't really live anywhere, do they? Orcs strongholds can only maintain their grip in hellish wastelands where living is nigh impossible, with all food and water only obtained from outside sources; occasionally, Orcs will attempt to establish base camps in more fertile land, invading neighboring Human, Dwarf, and Elven territory to do so, who quickly unite to expel these vile, dark, brutish invaders lest they steal their daughters, destroy and taint all of the natural resources and steal the few jobs available to the Humans in Dwarven and Elven cities as manual labour and servants.

And Now, take a step back from this world, and take a long, hard look at these species (outside of humans who are just kinda there in the middle and the only ones capable of change because Humans Are Always Special) and societies and what ideas are being reinforced here, especially when the above descriptions are framed as Hard Facts which are both Just and True?

(archived read-more Here)

Elves are morally superior and are always Perfect and Correct,

Dwarves are happy to spend their entire lives toiling in the forges and mines to please their Elven patrons,

and Orcs are Evil Monsters who will rob, murder, and rape any hapless victim who comes their way, so it's better to slaughter them all on sight and kick them out of your cities and towns, and this is the 100% correct morally right choice every single time and the narrative and characters themselves support this?

Did you spot them already, or does the above just seem like a cool, fun fantasy world where Elves are the cool wise good guys and Orcs are the devil's army and can be used as canon fodder any time your main character needs to mow down some enemies for a Badass Scene?

Let's retrace our steps a bit, shall we, and examine this "perfect" world through a critical lens?

When your elves are all portrayed as Perfect Ethereally Beautiful Blonde and Blue-Eyed wise leaders of the civilized world, what idea is being reinforced here? Who does it harm, and what real world ideas is this mirroring and enforcing? Who is going to have their own biases reinforced by this narrative?

When only the longest-lived people are allowed to decide politics, what group biases are being enforced? Is portraying "young people" as "being incapable of making political decisions" as a correct, logical choice in your story something you wish to enforce? Are there any real world issues this trope mirrors?

When your Dwarves are all Happy Workers and Slaves, bound to and reliant on the superior Elves to live, spending the majority of their life purely in service to these Superior Beings while happy to do it, what idea is being reinforced here? Who might see themselves in the plight of the Dwarves and feel alienated and insulted by the Dwarves happily slaving away in the dark? Who might have biased ideas reinforced by seeing the Dwarves treated in such a way?

When your Orcs are portrayed as evil, dark skinned, brutish savages who will kidnap and rape poor helpless women from the "pure" species, when Orcs are incapable of creating anything of their own and can only steal, what racist messages are being enforced and upheld? Who are the real people and cultures being demonized when you perpetuate this? What real world peoples and cultures have faced *decades of propaganda framing them as such*?

If you spotted these harmful messages in the initial indented description, good job!

But if you didn't, it's time to find and read critical reviews and essays written by marginalized communities of works that include these damaging tropes, because if it your Evil Species are Weird Aliens, because when you characterize and describe your Evil Species, you are undoubtedly going to be drawing heavily on your own internal biases of what makes people Other and Wrong.

Are your Evil Species all dark-skinned, physically-strong and animalistic? Congrats, you have just regurgitated centuries-old racism that justifies slavery, segregation, and discrimination *to this day*

Are your Evil Species all nomadic ~cannibals~ who are incapable of creating anything of their own and have to loot and steal from others to have anything of value? Congrats, you are once again regurgitating racist propoganda that has been used against countless cultures and minorities for centuries.

Are your Evil Species reknowned for kidnapping and raping the women of your Good Guys in order to create Evil Twisted Halfbreed Offspring for ....uh, reasons? Congrats, once again, this is literally just racist propaganda being reinforced by your writing.

Anything you come up with to make your Species Inherently Evil is going to most likely be something that is weaponized against real world minorities that you are now reinforcing with your writing, from racism to ableism to queerphobia and all the ways they intersect.

How do you fix this?

It's incredibly simple!

Don't make an entire Species be Inherently Evil.

They need to be just as varied as real living people.

Your Species should not be a Monolith, let alone of *Evil*.

Your Species should not have their only "decent/civilized/kind people" examples come from ""crossbreeds"" [and this term itself should be used only by bigots as a deragatory term] or random orphans who were raised by one of the Good Species(tm)-- this is how your story starts advocating for *eugenics*, which is not something you want to do!

So, instead of having an entire Species be "Inherently biologically" Evil, consider instead:

Making your villain group diverse instead of all one Species.

if your villain group is a Species Supremacist, they're probably still going to have underlings and lower castes who do their dirty work, or have been taken in by the cult ideology.

Making the villains of this Species be a small fraction of a larger whole, who are part of a violent cult, ideology, or political party that not only puts them in conflict with your main characters, but also with the rest of their Species.

Having your main character or their friends be the same Species as your villain group, and they represents the vast majority of the Species, instead of hailing them as "the Paragon of Goodness who emerged somehow pure from of a species forged in hell" or anything similar.

You should also sit down and not only think about the harmful, racist tropes that would come from writing Inherently Evil Species, but also consider:

Why do you want to include an entire species of people who are inherently evil in your novel?

Is your novel gaining anything for including these tropes uncritically?

Does it make it a better, more interesting story to include these tropes uncritically?

What message are you trying to send with your story?

Does including these tropes uncritically in your story *undermine* your intended message?

Another trope in the opposite direction, is talking about "Oppression" and "Fantasy Racism" from the perspective of a character who is part of the oppressed minority, only to spend the entire novel talking about how your Opressed Class are Literally and Factually threats to the population that "discriminate" against them, usually by being rightfully wary in their prescence.

if the Oppressed Minorities in your story in anyway resemble the Orcs in Bright, the Predators in Zootopia, or the Khajiit in the Elderscrolls, where the Racism these peoples face in based on hard proven facts that these people have been and still are threats to most of the population..

... you're less writing a story about how "Racism Against Vulnerable Minorities is Bad"

and sound more like you're saying

"It's bad to be "mean" (afraid of) Nazis who literally want you dead and who can kill you with impunity and no consequences."

If you are writing a story about Fantasy Discrimination, and the basis of your Fantasy Discrimination is based on *cold hard facts that your narrative supports and upholds*, instead of actually basing it on and talking about what leads to discrimination in the real world

(xenophobia and the fear+hatred of The Other, economic gain, mainly),

then you are not making the progressive stance that you think you are, and instead are enforcing the ancient propoganda that racism is based on fact, that racism is "for a good reason", and you need to take care that you are not upholding this idea in your works.

TL;DR:

Instead of making an entire Species of people a trope of Wise Good Guys or Evil Incarnate, consider using *Factions not Races* for your groups, and think long and hard about the implications of your world's politics and how it mirrors our own world, especially in ways *you may not intend it to.* If your story is meant to be progressive and inclusive, but your villains are an entire race of black orcs who slave and rape the good guys species, you need to go back to the drawing board.

Ominous / Outline October 2024 Announcement Post:

The poll about Ominous October prompts has now wrapped up, and the results are in!

51% voted to used the narrowed list of polls, while 25% wanted to vote to narrow down the prompts, and the other % had no opinion.

So! We've got two (three?) options for those participating in Ominous October 2024 :)

Ominous October 2024 *Weekly Short Stories* - Writing 714 words each day, complete one short story each week totaling 5k (or more) based on the following prompts:

Week One: Undead / Strange Town

Week Two: Changeling / Curse

Week Three: Parasitism / Revenge

Week Four: Transformation / Eternity

[You can choose between either prompt for the week, or combine them both in your story!]

Ominous October 2024 *Daily Short Stories OR Poetry*- each day, write a drabble/short story or poem based on the following prompts:

Raised from the dead

Ghost stories

“I put a spell on you”

Replacement and parasitism (changelings, cuckoos, All About Eve)

Victim turns the tables on their bully

Playing pretend or acting out on stage turns real

Medical abuse and sadistic doctors

Phantom limb

A single candle

Costume

Under the bed

What lurks in the cellar

The weird small-town

A knock at the door

The witching hour

It will never end

Graveyard ghost hunting

Misty road

Potions

Harvesting

Banshee's lullaby

Crooked reflection

"Do not speak its name"

The eleventh hour

It's too late

Bones itching

Poisoned coffee

Bloody hands

Since October is right before November, and a lot of people are going for the 30,000 words in a month goal, there are three catch-up/rest days from the 29th through the 31st!

On the 31st, Everyone picks one (or more!) spooky stories to post to celebrate!

Here is a template for Ominous October:

Please feel free to make your own custom decorated goal cards and post them in the Ominous October tags!

And don't forget to reblog for more reach! Everyone participating has around two weeks to do any prep they'd like for the weekly short stories with the prompts :D

If you would prefer to focus on Novella November Prep, there's also:

Outline October 2024

Where you spend the month outlining, doing research, making character designs, world-building, etc!

Today's countdowns:

5 days, 15 hours til Ominous/Outline October!

Are you ready to get spooky with weeky scary stories? Or are you writing to sit down and plan out your novel? Check out the announcement post here !

36 days, 15 hours til Novella November!

Today's very belated countdown at 11 o clock at night now that the power is back on (but I can't currently use my computer)

3 days, 10 hours til Outline/Ominous October!

34 days, 10 hours til Novella November!

By the way, if you send anons "politely requesting that I focus this blog soley on writing and stop posting Palestine content because it can fracture the sense of community" would you like to know what will happen?

You will be blocked, and anyone else who tries the same thinly-veiled genocidal argument will as well.

If caring about our fellow human beings, *our brothers and sisters who are undergoing the worst things imaginable during an ongoing genocide* is too "fracturing for the writing community" then you are not the community I want to foster, and you'll be blocked accordingly.

Long live Palestine!

the obvious.

NBC News

Hurricane Helene live updates: Storm set to intensify and cause 'catastrophic' damage across Florida

Helene is expected to make landfall on Florida's Big Bend this evening as a major Category 4 hurricane, bringing the risk of catastrophic da

I'm seeing an endless line of meteorologists on Facebook and other social media who are all extremely concerned about this hurricane, which is currently a Category 1 but many are predicting will rapidly strengthen to a Category 5 before it makes landfall, with potential storm surge of up to 20 feet being described as "unsurvivable" and that this whole storm is going to be "Catastrophic"

This second video is an older one for previous hurricanes, but it gives you a good look at the human scale of destruction with storm surge:

If you live on the coast anywhere in Florida near water please make sure you are prepared and as safe as you can be. If you are in an evacuation zone but don't have transportation, the state has teamed up with Uber to give free rides to local hurricane shelters using the code:

HELENERELIEF

Take pictures of your entire home if you haven't already, inside and out (if it is safe to go outside) for insurance purposes and email them to yourself with your phone so they're backed up in the cloud.

Make sure you have as much clean drinking water as you can stockpile/carry. If your plumbing is functioning right now, fill up every clean container you have with tap water in advance of any power outages.

Also please make sure you have a way to wash hands in outages/during storms, and do not use running water in thunderstorms, as it is a shock hazard!

Just a PSA, Hurricane Helene is going to be passing through my area starting some time tomorrow, so I wanted to take a moment to remind anyone who is in this storm's path to make sure you have:

1) flashlights or other light sources that are not just your cell phone -- cheap solar lights work great in a pinch; to charge them, arrange them around indoor lamps to get the most light exposure, or put them in your sunniest window:

2) you should have food and drink that is stable at room temperature and does not require anything to prep, plus a can opener, in case of prolonged power outages.

3) keep important documents such as birth certificates, passports, etc all in a safe location that is preferably waterproof; a ziplock bag, or a locking food container will work in a pinch.

4) find which area of your house is the sturdiest, without windows, and make sure your household knows to go there in an emergency, which includes Tornadoes; for some, this is a basement, for others it is a bathroom located away from an exterior wall, and for us, its a small hallway in the center of the house. Try to put extra blankets, pillows, and other cushioning in this area in advance both for comfort of everyone crammed into a small area, and also for additional protection, since you can wrap yourself up in pillows and thick blankets in an emergency; if you've got small kids, try to make sure everyone has their favorite stuffed animal to hug.

5) make sure everyone's pajamas are clothes that are comfortable and good for wearing in public, and that everyone has closed toed shoes on hand that can be thrown on at a moments notice and that everyone knows to put them on ASAP when an emergency alert comes through.

6) make sure all phones are fully charged, and preferably that you have backup power banks; if possible, have an emergency handheld radio on hand to listen to broadcasts. If you need to use a phone to watch local news livestreams, have one member of the house use their phone to stream while everyone else preserves their battery.

7) make sure you have any essential medications on hand in a form that is easy to transport, and if you have pets, make sure you have food, pet carriers, and leashes/harnesses, etc!

Stay safe, everyone!