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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6939275" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Wait... what? I mean, sure it can be argued that that is true (its possible to <em>argue</em> anything however nonsensical), and I suppose some DM wholly lacking in both creativity and good sense might actually draw clumsy analogies in that fashion, but I would argue that actual analogies of that sort are pretty darn rare and thus that argument is just unbelievably bogus and unreflective. </p><p></p><p>For example, consider the PC races in my campaign, and the characteristics that mark them:</p><p></p><p>1) Fey (Pixies, Changelings, Sidhe): Immortal, magical, often spontaneously generated rather than birthed, unaging eternally youth, denizens of two worlds. </p><p>2) Goblins (Goblins, Hobgoblins): Product of extensive selective breeding and perhaps magical manipulation that has transformed them from something quite different than their original form, resulting in division of the population into physical castes according to role. Obligate carnivores. Nocturnal. </p><p>3) Elves: Age at roughly 1/9th the rate of humanity. Pregnancy lasts 7 years. Infancy two decades. Adulthood is generally perceived as occurring sometime after the first century. Have innate connection to nature, allowing them to commune with animals. Usually vegetarians. Very little or no sexual dimorphism. Xenophobic and isolationist, arguably by necessity. Literally dies, as if starving, if unable to experience beauty.</p><p>4) Orine: Avian. Feathered. Two eyelids. Carnal, emotion and sensual race, loving dance and music, and notable for lacking emotional control. Have a tendency to go into a trance when experiencing profound beauty, and to fly into a rage when they feel slighted. Consequently, their own culture is steeped in layers and layers of customs and manners designed to avoid giving offence. Dislike cities for the filth that they produce, and prefer nomadic existence.</p><p>5) Dwarves: Male births outnumber female births by more than two to one, resulting in a culture which is both patriarchal and yet women have great effective power at the same time because female lives are actually worth more than male lives. Chivalric warrior ideas and theoretically chaste romantic love dominate the culture. Merchantile and cosmopolitan, they freely mix with other races but cannot breed with them.</p><p>6) Idreth: Individuals reincarnate and share in a group mind, resulting in infants being born aware and with memories. Called the 'born old', because even youths appear careworn, stooped, and fragile to members of the other races. Scholarly and monastic in their culture, they are admired for their wisdom and reviled as meddlers and conspirators.</p><p></p><p>Which non-white race is that? Match them up. Or maybe just accept that they are each in essence humans where I've changed some of the aspects we find universally in humanity, and asked people to consider what a people would be like if they lacked some essential human characteristic so basic we seldom think of it (mortality, families, sexual dimorphism, equal numbers of males and females, short life span, omnivorous, etc. etc. etc.).</p><p> </p><p>It would simply miss the entire point to treat any of these species as a stand in for some human race. The whole point is to have something not human to compare and contrast with humanity, so that we might see ourselves better as if in a mirror. It would likewise even miss the point to treat any of the human races in my fantasy world as direct stand ins for any real world race, although some analogies are inevitable simply because I don't have unlimited imagination. But the whole point of having non-human races is for them to be alien and non-human. I don't need to invent alien non-human things in order to have something analogous to a real world ethnic group. I can just have them stand for themselves. </p><p></p><p>Besides which, while human racism still occurs, it would be really odd if racism in a fantasy world was as marked and conventional as racism in the real world, given that unlike the real world humanity must also deal with sharing a world with a large number of other sentient and non-human species. Speciesism is therefore far more prevalent and dramatic on my world than racism, but even that isn't meant to be a conventional analogy for real world racism. I really want to explore the idea of how peoples of different species might possibly relate. If I just wanted to explore only racism, I probably wouldn't construct a fantasy world.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well I would hope you can. Anyone that judged what I was doing by some real world racial or gender biases would be missing the point. I might as well not write or create anything if you are going to always bring the bias that I'm writing about real world races.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6939275, member: 4937"] Wait... what? I mean, sure it can be argued that that is true (its possible to [I]argue[/I] anything however nonsensical), and I suppose some DM wholly lacking in both creativity and good sense might actually draw clumsy analogies in that fashion, but I would argue that actual analogies of that sort are pretty darn rare and thus that argument is just unbelievably bogus and unreflective. For example, consider the PC races in my campaign, and the characteristics that mark them: 1) Fey (Pixies, Changelings, Sidhe): Immortal, magical, often spontaneously generated rather than birthed, unaging eternally youth, denizens of two worlds. 2) Goblins (Goblins, Hobgoblins): Product of extensive selective breeding and perhaps magical manipulation that has transformed them from something quite different than their original form, resulting in division of the population into physical castes according to role. Obligate carnivores. Nocturnal. 3) Elves: Age at roughly 1/9th the rate of humanity. Pregnancy lasts 7 years. Infancy two decades. Adulthood is generally perceived as occurring sometime after the first century. Have innate connection to nature, allowing them to commune with animals. Usually vegetarians. Very little or no sexual dimorphism. Xenophobic and isolationist, arguably by necessity. Literally dies, as if starving, if unable to experience beauty. 4) Orine: Avian. Feathered. Two eyelids. Carnal, emotion and sensual race, loving dance and music, and notable for lacking emotional control. Have a tendency to go into a trance when experiencing profound beauty, and to fly into a rage when they feel slighted. Consequently, their own culture is steeped in layers and layers of customs and manners designed to avoid giving offence. Dislike cities for the filth that they produce, and prefer nomadic existence. 5) Dwarves: Male births outnumber female births by more than two to one, resulting in a culture which is both patriarchal and yet women have great effective power at the same time because female lives are actually worth more than male lives. Chivalric warrior ideas and theoretically chaste romantic love dominate the culture. Merchantile and cosmopolitan, they freely mix with other races but cannot breed with them. 6) Idreth: Individuals reincarnate and share in a group mind, resulting in infants being born aware and with memories. Called the 'born old', because even youths appear careworn, stooped, and fragile to members of the other races. Scholarly and monastic in their culture, they are admired for their wisdom and reviled as meddlers and conspirators. Which non-white race is that? Match them up. Or maybe just accept that they are each in essence humans where I've changed some of the aspects we find universally in humanity, and asked people to consider what a people would be like if they lacked some essential human characteristic so basic we seldom think of it (mortality, families, sexual dimorphism, equal numbers of males and females, short life span, omnivorous, etc. etc. etc.). It would simply miss the entire point to treat any of these species as a stand in for some human race. The whole point is to have something not human to compare and contrast with humanity, so that we might see ourselves better as if in a mirror. It would likewise even miss the point to treat any of the human races in my fantasy world as direct stand ins for any real world race, although some analogies are inevitable simply because I don't have unlimited imagination. But the whole point of having non-human races is for them to be alien and non-human. I don't need to invent alien non-human things in order to have something analogous to a real world ethnic group. I can just have them stand for themselves. Besides which, while human racism still occurs, it would be really odd if racism in a fantasy world was as marked and conventional as racism in the real world, given that unlike the real world humanity must also deal with sharing a world with a large number of other sentient and non-human species. Speciesism is therefore far more prevalent and dramatic on my world than racism, but even that isn't meant to be a conventional analogy for real world racism. I really want to explore the idea of how peoples of different species might possibly relate. If I just wanted to explore only racism, I probably wouldn't construct a fantasy world. Well I would hope you can. Anyone that judged what I was doing by some real world racial or gender biases would be missing the point. I might as well not write or create anything if you are going to always bring the bias that I'm writing about real world races. [/QUOTE]
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