IRL racial stereotypes in fantasy setting?

[PeterCai]

So there are plenty of parrallels between fantasy racial setting and real world racial stereotypes, take world of warcraft for example:

Tauran: primative warrior race that cares about nature? Noble Savage stereotype of Native American.

Orc: similar to Tauran, but with a hint of Mongolian stereotype.

Troll: Da voodo, mon. Complete with accent.

Goblin: probably the worse offender, I mean, geez, hook-nose, money loving amoral bastards that are also nerds?

Elves(of various kind): sexually protrayed female, unmasculine male; ancient society that was once great but in decline? Pretty obviously asian stereotypes, especially with the in-game architectures.

Dwarf: alcoholic, short temper, and Irish accent.

So, do you think it's this OK because it's in a fantasy setting? Do you think it's not because developers intentionally use real world stereotypes to make it easier for players to understand the racial differences?

[Vaniver]

Dwarf: alcoholic, short temper, and Irish accent.

Aren't Dwarves typically Scottish?

[Gelsamel]

I actually find it weird that so many fantasy games literally make other races sterotypes. I don't mean as in human stereotypes like Jews -> Goblins, but that that in most fantasy settings humans are the "most varied" of the races, but all the other races can be fairly easily stereotyped.

This is lampshaded in... I think it was maybe Mass Effect? One person points out that if you know someone is a X or a Y or a Z then you can pretty much tell what they're like but that you can't stereotype humans... what the hell? That's pretty much standard for most fantasy (although you usually end up interacting with NPCs of those races who do not follow those stereotypes, perhaps to emphasize their uniqueness).

[++$_]

I think it makes sense as long as the stereotypes are fairly represented and not cartoonish.

I mean, okay, dwarves like their alcohol. And the French like wine. But if dwarves like their alcohol WAY more than the French like wine, it becomes silly. And if the stereotype is connected to a real world stereotype -- say, by giving dwarves Irish accents and red hair in addition to alcoholism -- it's downright ill-conceived in my opinion.

You can justify silly things to some extent because the fantasy races are basically different species (maybe ethanol is an essential vitamin for dwarves, so they HAVE to drink lots of it), but there's a limit to how far you can push.

Of course, human NPCs might hold ridiculous stereotypes about dwarves. That's fine. (The only problem is when they are actually true.) In most of my games, nonhuman races have stereotypes about humans too. Typical stereotypes include that humans are greedy, wanton, short-sighted, stupid, foolish, uncultured, sex-crazed, and/or evil. What's more, many humans live up to the stereotypes, especially those played by my group of players :/

[General_Norris]

You are proyecting your own preconcived ideas and stereotipes over the fictional species. You are the one who thinks that an "effeminate" species leads to a connection with asians. Don't you see the problem with that? You are the using the stereotype! And why a species that leans towards being "female" is a bad thing, is something you have yet to explain! I also find ironic how you describe those fantastical species with quite a bit of backstory in one line as if you were, perhaps, stereotyping them?

You have also to reconsider if they are "stereotypes". If I imagine a sapient species based on bulls, like the Tauren are why is it wrong to have their culture based on Native Americans partly? What if their culture were based on Catholicism? And why are they a stereotype when they are complex characters? Also how primitive they are is debatable because, it's a medieval world and we still have primitive societies today.

World of Warcraft in particular and the Fantasy genre as a whole take a lot of their content from The Lord of the Rings, you can't talk about WoW without also talking about Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons.

@++$_

But WoW is kind of cartoonish. Why is cartoonism wrong? If I make a cartoon can I put caricatures in it?

[Izawwlgood]

I disagree with most of your assessments, because these are fantasy creatures that have stereotypes of their own. I would wager there are a few dwarves out there who hate the association with boozing, and have taken great efforts, you know, after losing a close friend or family member to a drunken battletank accident, to dry out.

But I think you do the creation itself a disservice by assuming these creatures are limited by or defined by human standards. Dwarves may be hard drinkers by our standards, but they aren't human; maybe the dwarven physiology requires alcohol, and they don't get drunk on the amounts they drink.

As for some of the cheap punches pulled pertaining to trolls worshipping the Loa, or Taurans blessing the trees, or Goblins being greedy (although, I must say, I never made the association with Jews, and find that entirely a reach); they're simply exaggerations of human characteristics here, something we can look at and giggle.

Druids IG have a form that allows them to turn into a tree. A tree. I find that even more hilarious than any racial stereotype. Haha, if you dig nature enough, you too can turn into something with barkskin.

[Belial]

Honestly, on top of all the racism and cultural appropriation (because yeah, loa-worshipping voodoo trolls are not "exaggerated human characteristics" they're a cultural caricature and a pretty fucking dickish one), mapping fantasy races to human cultures is just fucking lazy world-building. If you want to make up a culture, make up a fucking culture.

But then, given that all of these high fantasy games can't seem to stray too far from Tolkien's shadow without having a panic attack, creativity just really isn't their strong suit.

[HungryHobo]

Tauran: primative warrior race that cares about nature? Noble Savage stereotype of Native American.

Orc: similar to Tauran, but with a hint of Mongolian stereotype.

Troll: Da voodo, mon. Complete with accent.

Goblin: probably the worse offender, I mean, geez, hook-nose, money loving amoral bastards that are also nerds?

Elves(of various kind): sexually protrayed female, unmasculine male; ancient society that was once great but in decline? Pretty obviously asian stereotypes, especially with the in-game architectures.

Dwarf: alcoholic, short temper, and Irish accent.

You know I never saw goblins in that light.
The thing is that these races aren't randomly chosen.
They get based on older monsters and mythical creatures from the mythology of various countries which in many cases really are based on real groups of humans.

In some cases the association was crazy enough to begin with that we don't even see it any more.
hell as I said, the goblin association is wierd enough that I and apparently a lot of other people don't make the link.

just off the top of my head:
Lots of games have demons and angels.
Angels get portrayed as well educated shining knights with swords, shields and armour defending the realm.
Demons are big strong rebellious brutes with pitchforks and scythes.
I'm not very familiar with the actual origins of the images but I could without any authority claim that it's an old piece of propaganda about peasant rebels and noble knights.

It would be crazy though to treat modern games where you fight demons as bad for perpetuating class stereotypes.

also elves aren't asian, they're just hippies. massively exaggerated hippies.(plus they're often portrayed as very tall)

Dwarves are the strongest one there with the irish/scot stereotype but then dwarves are awesome.

And normally beyond that 1 line summary the author builds a whole origonal culture.
There was nothing Irish or Scottish about the culture of the dwarves of dragon age but they were still classic fantasy style dwarves.
We don't live underground for one, have a system of paragons or a rigid class structure.

[Izawwlgood]

So what's racist, the usage of things that are racial stereotypes, or the assumption that those stereotypes mean that the race bearing them is a commentary on human stereotypes? Like, what if the trolls had a cajun accent, worshipped the Loa, loved/hated their overbearing mothers, were really good at math, could dunk, fucked sheep, and were afraid of traveling?

I agree that sticking with perhaps one stereotype is a mite suggestive, and someone pointed out that the goblin females originally sounded very 'Brooklyn Jew', but I dunno. Seems a stretch

[Belial]

worshipped the Loa

You're pretty much always fucked here, because you've now not just lifted traits that are stereotypically associated with a real world race, you've lifted a religion which is associated with a particular culture, and not one that we have a history of treating respectfully. And you've hung that religion on ridiculous trolls.

Not a good call. No matter how much you mix it up.

I actually find it weird that so many fantasy games literally make other races sterotypes. I don't mean as in human stereotypes like Jews -> Goblins, but that that in most fantasy settings humans are the "most varied" of the races, but all the other races can be fairly easily stereotyped.

Yeah, this is also a really good point. You almost never see a fantasy or sci-fi race that has more than one culture (unless it's time for a very special lesson about racism). All dwarves share basically the same culture, all Centauri share basically the same culture, you never run into two hobbits with completely different cultural norms because they were born on different sides of the planet in different hobbit-cultures. It's silly, and rather lazy.

[HungryHobo]

Yeah, this is also a really good point. You almost never see a fantasy or sci-fi race that has more than one culture (unless it's time for a very special lesson about racism). All dwarves share basically the same culture, all Centauri share basically the same culture, you never run into two hobbits with completely different cultural norms because they were born on different sides of the planet in different hobbit-cultures. It's silly, and rather lazy.

Do you read any fantasy or play any games?
There's often lots of flavours of elves (example: high, grey, dark, wood and personally I often don't really get the difference but then such are distinctions in human cultures that I don't get),
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... sAreBetter

the dwarves are generally all the same but then they're generally the same in every fantasy setting ever:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... AllTheSame

Anyway,world of warcraft is not the entirety of fantasy genre.

And there's a whole raft of fantasy with races who's traits are based on those we ascribe to various animals(think kajit,Argonian ).

And the common use of the old favourites isn't without reason: http://hubpages.com/hub/Creating-New-Ra ... sy-Fiction

it's telling that the OP's ideas about goblins aren't even close to the tvtropes entry for them:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... eDifferent

Love of gold and hooked noses are not common goblin attributes.

and trolls, trolls vary in almost every fantasy setting.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... eDifferent

[Belial]

There's often lots of flavours of elves (example: high, grey, dark, wood and personally I often don't really get the difference but then such are distinctions in human cultures that I don't get)

Yeeeah, elves are pretty much the sole exception to this in most tolkien-lifted fantasy settings (especially those based on games).

[PeterCai]

I am not saying that all fantasy settings use the same stereotypes, and that WOW is representative of them, just that many fantasy settings lift real world stereotypes and graft them onto their racial designs.

In repsect to TVTrope links:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceJews

enjoy your wasted hours.

[Izawwlgood]

I dunno man, I recognize that the stereotype was applied to Jews, but feel that it's sort of repossessing it to apply it to other stuff now. I won't begrudge anyone who wants to use a short, hairy, money grubbing merchant in a story, indeed, it'll only be offensive when the merchants name is Zorlockensteil Fghorsteinowitz.

It's a fine line, I'll grant you that, but I don't think Jews exactly have the market on short, hairy, or money loving, cornered, and to assume that anytime a character is short, hairy, or money loving, that it's a slight on Jews, is actually offensive for the assumption that all Jews are short, hairy, or money loving.

[HungryHobo]

Yeeeah, elves are pretty much the sole exception to this in most tolkien-lifted fantasy settings (especially those based on games).

In a fantasy setting you can only subdivide so much before people start to get confused readers.
You can stick with "well there are humans, elves,dwarves and goblins"

or you can go nuts drilling down.
well there's (list of 10 human races), (list of 20 elven races), (list of 1 dwarf race), (list of 5 types of goblin), (3 types of troll), (2 types of gnome) etc etc

In any brief fantasy setting they're going to stay at the top level.
In stories where there's been more time to develop the canon or where you have 5 books to gradually introduce them it's normal for extra subdivision to turn up as you start to work out the distinctions between types of elves, types of goblins, variations on trolls etc.

Discworld is the only fantasy setting where dwarves are significantly divided up into different cultural groups while funnily enough elves only get 2(ish).

The particular example from star wars wouldn't even have been noticeable had it not been for the Yiddish accent, god that was a screwup.

[Glass Fractal]

There's often lots of flavours of elves (example: high, grey, dark, wood and personally I often don't really get the difference but then such are distinctions in human cultures that I don't get)

Yeeeah, elves are pretty much the sole exception to this in most tolkien-lifted fantasy settings (especially those based on games).

And even then, not really. All high elves are the same. All dark elves are the same. All wood elves are the same.

I dunno man, I recognize that the stereotype was applied to Jews, but feel that it's sort of repossessing it to apply it to other stuff now. I won't begrudge anyone who wants to use a short, hairy, money grubbing merchant in a story, indeed, it'll only be offensive when the merchants name is Zorlockensteil Fghorsteinowitz.

It's a fine line, I'll grant you that, but I don't think Jews exactly have the market on short, hairy, or money loving, cornered, and to assume that anytime a character is short, hairy, or money loving, that it's a slight on Jews, is actually offensive for the assumption that all Jews are short, hairy, or money loving.

Where do short, hairy, money loving, merchants, that speak a fantasy version of Hebrew fit along that line?

[Izawwlgood]

Where do short, hairy, money loving, merchants, that speak a fantasy version of Hebrew fit along that line?

Depends what your fantasy version of Hebrew is. Is it Hebrew? Then yes, that's kind of offensive. Is it not Hebrew? Then no, that's not particularly offensive.

[podbaydoor]

Yeah, this is also a really good point. You almost never see a fantasy or sci-fi race that has more than one culture (unless it's time for a very special lesson about racism). All dwarves share basically the same culture, all Centauri share basically the same culture, you never run into two hobbits with completely different cultural norms because they were born on different sides of the planet in different hobbit-cultures. It's silly, and rather lazy.

Planet of Hats. It always bothered me even from a young age that most of the planets in Star Wars were treated like "countries" instead of "worlds." But if the only planet we know is divided into hundreds of countries and thousands of warring groups, what makes sci-fi/fantasy writers think that planets in the future won't be even the tiniest bit conflicted?

I don't think Peter Cai is totally paranoid or oversensitive. What bothered me the most about Tolkien's elves were how WhiteWhiteWhite they were, and how the whiter a race was, the more likely they were to be on the "good" or "noble" side of things. Typical Eurocentric conception, though.

Though frankly, I think sexism in fantasy/sci-fi is the bigger problem.

[Belial]

It's a fine line, I'll grant you that, but I don't think Jews exactly have the market on short, hairy, or money loving, cornered.

No, but short, hairy, money-loving (and you forgot hook-nosed as the other common physical stereotype) are traits that don't tend to occur together by accident. There's nothing about liking money that implies that you should also be short and have a distinctive nose unless you're referencing the stereotype.

Trying to pull a "no john, you are the racists" on anyone who notices that the stereotype is being referenced is just bad taste.

Though frankly, I think sexism in fantasy/sci-fi is the bigger problem.

We got room for all sorts of problems in this genre.

[gmalivuk]

Dwarf: alcoholic, short temper, and Irish accent.

Aren't Dwarves typically Scottish?

Yeah, at the very least, the Warcraft Dwarves are meant to be fairly Scottish. (Their accent is definitely Scottish rather than Irish.)

[Izawwlgood]

And how do traits that have nothing to do with the stereotype fit into this then? The Goblins are also notoriously negligent of nature, have little compassion for their fellow Goblin, and love a hierarchical business model.

The stereotype seems to be more 'business run amok' than anything else. It's more stereotyped against corporate America than Jews, persay.

[broken_escalator]

I have to agree, I always viewed goblins as corrupt corporate culture instead of jewish culture. Well, I never really even though about them being jews to begin with, though I can understand the link that is made between something like watto from star wars and a jewish stereotype. I think goblins are always supposed to be aligned with greed as their main drive, and there are a bunch of stereotypes you could blend into that.

Though I think in one game they had goblins as the "chosen people" of a god (who was the evil god obviously), and they were short, nasty and always had coin on them. Some of them also had cod pieces on their armor and that was disturbing.

[gmalivuk]

I can understand the link that is made between something like watto from star wars and a jewish stereotype.

One bit of that connection is the accent, right? I was just reading where someone said that some of the WoW goblins also had a very stereotypical New York Jewish accent. But I suppose that's just coincidence, right? Even though no one of any of the other races has a similar accent?

[broken_escalator]

A similar coincidence is Jar Jar Binks. It's not like we had some history of this sort of caricature. No way could you link him to a Caribbean stereotype, so don't even try. No really. Please?

But yeah, I see how goblins could be linked to jews. I just never thought about it and always thought about them as corporate greed. New yorker accent made sense because of wall street and stuff. I swear!

[Shivahn]

I think it should be noted that as long as people are stereotyping races (e.g., Dwarves are short alcoholics, goblins are short money lovers, elves are tall, feminine, pretty people), you will end up with something that suggests a human racial stereotype. For example, the Tauren are primitive and love nature, so that's automatically assumed to be Native American. And the Elves are a sexy feminine race with a declining society, and that suggests they're Asian? It seems a bit of a jump to take two traits (in the Elves' case, the feminine one is almost always there as a racial characteristic, while the second is often the case for half of the races in fantasy settings) and proclaim them to be stereotypes of the Asians. It just seems, as I said, a bit of a jump to go "the race is feminine -> they're racist caricatures of Asians."

That is not to say that there is not a problem! I did not notice the goblins being dirty greedy cutthroat Jews at first, primarily because I'm oblivious to a lot of the racism against Jewish people. The more I look at it, the more disturbing it gets. And though I noted the Tauren in my first paragraph, they actually did make me feel a bit weird when playing them. If they were just a race of primitive nature lovers I wouldn't really have a problem (Native Americans really don't have a monopoly on that, and two very general traits in common with a modern group is a pretty low bar for considering something racist). But as I recall, the Tauren also lived in very Native American style dwellings with similar art, among other things.

And the trolls are just straight up offensive. I mean, ok, I'd accept a race of trolls that had a religion with similarities to voodoo, but it's a direct ripoff and they have stupid accents to go along just to tell you "HEY THESE ARE OUR FANTASY ANALOGUES TO REAL PEOPLE PRETTY WHACKY HUH."

The more I think about it the more offensive the accents become. And the unnecessary clustering of stereotypes. Hook-nosed, money loving, amoral, nerdy goblins is pretty unnecessary. There's no real reason to have any more than greedy and technophile as goblin traits, the rest (especially hook-nosed) really do seem to be there to make them more Jewish. And there's no problems with irritable, alcoholic dwarves, and I'd say you're projecting if you hook that onto an Irish or Scottish stereotype, as it's really just a single trait. But then Blizzard goes on and makes them Irish or Scottish or whatever accent and I am forced to facepalm at the fact that they decided to make an otherwise normal race that loves beer into hilarious drunken Scotsmen.

I agree with PodBayDoor that sexism is a big issue in fantasy, though I recall that in WoW specifically the actual game has little of it. But it's been a while, so I might be off base.

[Belial]

And the Elves are a sexy feminine race with a declining society, and that suggests they're Asian? It seems a bit of a jump to take two traits (in the Elves' case, the feminine one is almost always there as a racial characteristic, while the second is often the case for half of the races in fantasy settings) and proclaim them to be stereotypes of the Asians. It just seems, as I said, a bit of a jump to go "the race is feminine -> they're racist caricatures of Asians."

Yeah, it really doesn't become an issue until you start a really big stack of otherwise unrelated traits, or you choose *really* identifying traits of a particular group. For example, the Dragonlance novels made a big point of mentioning the elves' "almond-shaped eyes" which along with everything else pretty much hit you over the head with the fact that they were meant to be rough asian analogues.

[Glass Fractal]

Where do short, hairy, money loving, merchants, that speak a fantasy version of Hebrew fit along that line?

Depends what your fantasy version of Hebrew is. Is it Hebrew? Then yes, that's kind of offensive. Is it not Hebrew? Then no, that's not particularly offensive.

According to Toklien: "their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic"

[broken_escalator]

Y'know now that I think about it... why do dwarves have scott/irish accents anyway? Dwarves are from Norse mythology (I think), so its less offensive for them to be caricatured that way. That's why they always seem to worship thor, wield hammers and be great at metallurgy? But shouldn't they sound less Scottish and more like the Norse they mythically originate from? But I can't remember the last time I heard a dwarf voice that wasn't Scottish.

[JudeMorrigan]

I had noticed the WoW-goblins-as-bad-jewish-sterotypes thing myself, and wasn't entirely comfortable with it. I think that conflating WoW elves with asian stereotypes is kind of reaching though. I mean, I get the architecture parallel, but it honestly never occured to me that there could be anything more there than Blizzard trying to make the buildings distinct.

A few other notes: dwarves in WoW actually have three reasonably distinct types. I'm not entirely sure that the evil Dark Iron dwarves being there own thing really helps the matter, although I don't really think that that's about race.

Also, Smeagol was pretty much a hobbit born on the other side of the, well, continent in a different hobbit-culture.

[General_Norris]

I am not saying that all fantasy settings use the same stereotypes, and that WOW is representative of them, just that many fantasy settings lift real world stereotypes and graft them onto their racial designs.

Then don't use WoW as your example.


Concerning Goblins, your interpretation is completely off. The Goblins arise fom Nordic and Celtic mythology where they already had the appearence they are known today (Small size, pointed nose, long hair, etc). Their personality is no differnt from fairies, they are fae too. Being chaotic and greedy is a common trait in fairies. Like fairies they are not evil, being closer to neutral which coupled with their greed makes them seek only their personal gain. Like fairies they tend to be cunning but can be tricked leading to the modern idea that Goblins are genius with a complete lack of common sense.

Goblins were usually seen in fantasy games as weak Orcs and used as cannon fodder (See D&D, Warhammer and Warcraft I). Over time and as they grew more popular they started to be the ones carrying the dangerous weapons like cannons and explosives because they were expendable (See Warcraft II). The popularity of Goblins and game balance led to Goblins as tinkerers and machinists. Coupled with their original fae roots they become genius with a complete lack of common sense, as above.

In the WoW lore, Goblins got into commerce because they were tired of being abused by the orcs and being caught into the cross fire. This trait is slowly becoming more common but is, in no way, the most common representation of Goblins. I feel it's very dangerous to claim that a Goblin is only a good Goblin if he doesn't get into commerce, it would be akin to saying that a black person is fine as long as he doesn't it chicken.

In WoW they don't have a New York accent, according to this WoW wiki (

http://ja.wow.wikia.com/wiki/Goblin

) they have more commonly a Brooklyn or New Jersey accent.


I also doubt that if they hated Jews so badly so as to stereotype them into Goblins they wouldn't make them playable characters in the new update and advertise it as a big selling point.


@broken_escalator

They have Scottish accents because Tolkien based each race on a differnt part of Great Bretain.

[Belial]

In WoW they don't have a New York accent, according to this WoW wiki (

http://ja.wow.wikia.com/wiki/Goblin

) they have more commonly a Brooklyn or New Jersey accent.

...

Okay, I'll give you a pass on this one since you're not from here and don't know the geography.

For future reference, though, Brooklyn is part of New York, and most of northern jersey basically functions as a suburb for NYC.

[Dark567]

Planet of Hats. It always bothered me even from a young age that most of the planets in Star Wars were treated like "countries" instead of "worlds." But if the only planet we know is divided into hundreds of countries and thousands of warring groups, what makes sci-fi/fantasy writers think that planets in the future won't be even the tiniest bit conflicted?

Because as human history has went on, the size of our political states and cultures have been increasing. During Ancient Greece, city-states were the norm and would often go to war, conflicted with each other and were very culturally different. Of course now, the idea of two cities going to war with each other seems pretty impossible, because we have moved on to nation-states, and many of those are part of transnational organizations that are making the traditional national boarders breakdown. Globalization has also slowly been homogenizing cultures throughout the world, constantly integrating them with each other. If your creating science fiction that has had intergalactic transit and communication for thousands of years, I think that there is pretty good reason to believe that planets would be world-states, with fairly homogeneous cultures. Portraying each planet with certain different cultural traits, but not very varying within itself, doesn't really seem like a problem to me (although, clearly not sets traits that would stereotypically be associated with some human culture).

Hell, over long enough, galacticization might take place and there would be a galaxy-state with a homogeneous culture.

[General_Norris]

For future reference, though, Brooklyn is part of New York, and most of northern jersey basically functions as a suburb for NYC.

Woops I knew about the first one not the latter.

[podbaydoor]

@Dark567: That makes sense, and yet "war" continues within nation borders in the form of gang wars, mafia wars, culture wars, civil wars, province/state conflicts, etc.

My issue was the homogeneity of the planets. Even within, say, the United States, you've got radically different parts of the country in population, culture, language, economy, etc. Say, California and Texas. But with a Planet of Hats, lots of writers fall into the trap of making the entire planet the exact same all over. That's just not possible given the vast amounts of people and geography involved.

[CorruptUser]

@broken_escalator

They have Scottish accents because Tolkien based each race on a differnt part of Great Bretain.

Though according to tvtropes, Tolkien himself stated that the dwarves were meant to be Jews.

[McCaber]

Threads like this make me glad for the Warhammer world. Or Glorantha, Westeros, Randland, Artesia's Known World, or even Tekumel.

[EmptySet]

Yeah, this is also a really good point. You almost never see a fantasy or sci-fi race that has more than one culture (unless it's time for a very special lesson about racism).

That's not quite true. If you have any elves, there's like a 90% chance of having either elves/dark elves, or wood elves/high elves. Or both. Of course, then we have the problem of the dark-skinned elves being evil by default...

[PeterCai]

heh, I guess a more stereotypical representation of asians would be this:



somehow slipped my mind

[KnightExemplar]

Hmm... I'm finding a bit of irony between this thread and this other one? Racial Stereotypes hidden under a fantasy setting seems to be significantly more benign than the kind of real and actual stereotyping going on in the other thread. Overall... I think racial stereotypes will exist for the rest of our lives, and we'll just have to deal with them. Its not explicitly evil, its just something that humans do. Dealing with the problem legally seems to work out well, but I'm unsure if we can wipe them out from a casual setting.

That's not quite true. If you have any elves, there's like a 90% chance of having either elves/dark elves, or wood elves/high elves. Or both. Of course, then we have the problem of the dark-skinned elves being evil by default...

Someone's gotta be evil. Is it wrong if white skinned elves were evil? Or would you prefer to have it chosen by a fair coin toss? Dark Skinned, despite the unfortunate racial message, represents darkness and evil. Its in our culture and is the natural choice. Black is the color of the night, white is the color of the day.

But what would you prefer? In what ways can you create a fantasy humanoid creature that cannot be attributed to a IRL Race? Every part of the body, even the genitals (gasp, big hands), have a racial stereotype associated with them. At some point, its more likely that people are looking for a racial stereotype, as opposed to the fantasy setting evoking a racial stereotype.

Then again, I haven't played WoW, where a lot of these comments seem to be coming from. Does anyone have a youtube clip of voice selections or maybe some images? I've done some searching myself, but when I see pictures like this night elf, the LAST thing I think of is "Black Person" or "Asian". I see a purple female elf.

[Gelsamel]

KnightExemplar: LULWUT? Why is it a group that is only a group because of appearances has to be evil...? Characters should be good or evil on the individual basis.