I actually think that’s good!
If our goal with fantasy is to examine different sides of the (real-life) human condition by assigning them to tangible metaphors represented by different fictional races, then not having obvious humans or near-humans actually serves that goal better, because it removes the incentive for the audience to associate themselves with the fictional humans (or the most human-like race the setting has).
Tangibly related peeve: Reading comprehension struggles are everywhere and I’m running out of energy when it comes to try and actually help these people find ways to improve without being mean.
Included advanced peeving: People seeing a trope they labelled “badwrong” and declaring the author must be engaging in whatever it is irl.
I have humans in my fantasy setting but they are never the main focus, closest we get is a few half humans.
They are the more common species, are industrious and cannot naturally use magic.
EDIT: Also often antagonistic to my main two focuses.
Thinking about it, it amuses me that all my Fantasy settings do actually have humans in them, and only one really doesn’t have them as protagonists?
That being said, I do prefer using fantasy settings to either pick at or flip established (some even Tired) tropes. For instance, stereotypical Dwarves and Wood Elves, flipping those, and their interactions with each other, is a lot of fun I find!
I think part of it is that when you engage in a collaborative creative activity, of which D&D is definitely an example, you end up sharing a cultural space and bouncing ideas and vibes around, and thus form a shared background of common concepts.
Over time, your community will develop in-jokes, implicit expectations and associations, and so on.
But to someone who isn’t part of that community and isn’t privy to the context that made its community culture develop in this way, and who partakes in the same activity — say, D&D — with people with a different background, it might seem weird and alien.
Rationally I understand your argument, and I thank you for the explanation. Emotionally, I think we just come from different cultural codes, and that ends up being a factor.
(For example, most of my D&D circle consisted of straight men, many of whom were more interested in mechanical optimization than roleplaying and took whatever race gave the most pluses, plus a few straight women who tended to be interested in playing “cool” characters. This was not by any means universal, I’m just talking about average trends. My own characters spanned a range of sexualities, which everyone just treated as completely normal in-universe, but most of them were relatively grounded.)
My main focus-- call themselves Wraith, but humans refer to them as fae/fairies because 100s of years ago, they used to do that trade-your-first-born-for-medicine-BS, they don’t anymore (though having said that, post apocalyptic bubble may still do stuff like that because they have been trapped in there for 500 years).
Its not any wonder why humans may be antagonistic to an inherently magical race that used to mess with them for their own amusement.
The other focus is the wyrms, who are bestial in nature and prey on both humans and wraith, but have their own customs. See-- Vampire who was caught by wraith to be “tamed” and “civilised” and how much he has hated that.
His “favourite” thing to hear is how he’s way too pretty to be as wild and feral as the rest of the wyrm population.
If it helps you understand, in Western circles, lots of people enjoy looking at characters in media and seeing a reflection of themselves, in some shape or form. They like seeing characters that make them feel represented and ‘seen’ by the author in a way that is more than visual, they like to feel as though the author of the media understands them and is creating a story that is connected to their experiences.
In tabletop games, some of these people like to look for classes, races and other such things that reflect their background or values, that allow them to inject a little bit of themselves into their character, that can represent them within the game.
In the case of tieflings, some queer people feel like their struggle for recognition and their constant battle against bigotry reflects their own real life experience. They sympathise with that and connect with that, and even if they don’t create tiefling characters, they feel represented by and ‘seen’ by the inclusion of the tiefling race, not because of their fiendish nature but because of the adversity they face.
In short, it boils down to representation, and sometimes representation isn’t as simple as someone seeing a character on a screen who looks like them. Sometimes it’s about that person seeing someone in fiction who has to deal with problems that reflect their own struggles and for a lot of people, this sort of representation is really important. It makes them feel like they’re being acknowledged and recognised, in a sea of media that either ignores them or humiliates them.
Sorry if that comes across as patronising at any point, but I’m aware that you don’t come from a Western background so I thought I’d try and clarify things a little.
Its a flipside of the “Why are there suddenly so many X in media?!”, I think.
Any number of ‘X’ will seem like a lot, when the previous representation was Absolutely Zero.
I’ll be honest, “Dystopian Cyberpunk Megacity” was not on my bingocard for Dawntrail.
Or alternatively, the ‘X’ that did exist before was a bunch of hollow and offensive caricatures, which is one of the reasons why the literal spawn of demons can seem like better queer representation than some actual gay characters in fiction, in the eyes of some.
In hindsight, there’s no way it was ever going to be as simple as a vacation expansion.
No, its probably going to be set up for the next big story.
Speaking of representation of sexes, one of the things in the setting I am building is that there are races that follow very different sexual dimorphism path.
For example, out of the two mammal species I have, humans are more or less as dimorphed as they are IRL, while the other species has hyper dimorphism due to sexual selection. It’s to the point that the female gender can’t actually fly past a certain age in most cases, while the males can.
But equally, the aforementioned crocodile folk, for them the only difference aside from the equipment is their size. Males are noticeably larger than their female counterparts, but otherwise almost identical in terms of morphology.
And then I have three other races, one of literal bugmen and one alien race and one plant/fungi race that in the latter two’s cases have no distinct sexes, while the females are noticeably larger than the males for the bugmen.
I didn’t develop these ideas out of any agenda, I just found the different variations of species IRL very cool, like how the peacock male has this ridiculous tail that is very much a detriment, but is nonetheless characterizing for them due to sexual selection.
The plant/fungi people also can not lie due to the simple fact that they do not actually have mouths and their thoughts are projected all around them in a radius- So whatever they think in their society, everybody else knows too.
Also use this dimorphism for my wraith, male wraith tend to be smaller than their female counterparts and way more colourful, normally sporting hair/tendrils with streaks. Whereas females tend to have more matte coloured hair.
It didn’t come off as patronizing until this point. My background is a complicated issue that isn’t easily described with such blanket labels.
I was already aware of everything you said, but thank you nonetheless.
The new Kusuriya opening for season 2 is good, but the one for season 1 was great, so this still feels like a downgrade. A shame.
Your character kills people? Like literally murders them? Uhm, police? Think we need to check out what this guy’s been up to…
Anyway, I had a dream where Tehya was showing me their apartment and then the building got hit by a huge tidal wave and collapsed (alongside some others), and the reactions to this kept being a thing in other dreams to the point I thought it was all real for a while, even after waking up.
Got a bit confused with ‘wait, that didn’t really happen?’
sorry it happened to you if ur still around Tehya x
@Meronspell
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDOk3ZPa8AA1iUx?format=jpg&name=large
thoughts?
and yet you lived? blast, another attempt failed…
how we feeling about femhroth? i love em
Fangs too small, otherwise pretty good.