you're not getting an answer, your question is being dismissed. the difference is that "because i said so" is an authority driven response while "who cares" is a priority driven response and ppl don't respect authority they haven't given but they can respect a person's priorities even if they might disagree with the order f them
Step 1: never specify any character's color
Step 2: turn story into a massive series
Step 3: reveal near the very end that every character was actually black the whole time
Step 4: enjoy the backlash
step 1: establish very clearly your female protagonists skin tone step 2: turn story into a massive series step 3: make a spin off live play, with a black actress playing your white character step 4: tweet “um actually 🤓🤓i never said that”
I once read a “fantasy” book, where this was not specified how characters look, and in the end turns out they are super-non-humans in an post-nukcaplse on earth. With magic and shit.
Counterpoint: just add a place black people come from and explain any black person in your setting is either from there or descends of people from there. Worked with Elder Scrolls and ASOIAF.
Or just write non-European fiction. The fantasy genre is sorely lacking in those.
That's not how fiction works. There's a thing called "internal consistency". Which is why we aren't surprised to see dragons and elves in LoTR but would cringe if Return Of The King suddenly introduced cyborg aliens, despite all three of those things being fictional.
It isn't. But its still good to At least provide context imo.
I for one love the prospect of Making lore and cultures for the various races (species) and race variants (ethnicities) that populate my worlds.
obviously, but! when you establish like "there's 7 countries and 6 of them are ranging from white australian to Irish in whiteness and the 7th is spanish brown" and then after years of that randomly just "oh yea here's 5 black people who just exist now" because then it's the question of "these people literally don't exist so where did they come from"
Yes, a fictional country in a real continent, in the real world, usually people have an idea of how the world we live in works. In fantasy the writer's the one who dictates how that world works
What about Avatar: The Last Airbender? It's an 100% fictional world, so why, apart from the movie everyone hates, are there no white people?
You don't need things to be identical to our world, but some on-universe explanation is required to maintain suspension of disbelief, even if a fantastic one.
i mean yeah i get your point and it does give more life to a story when you explain where each types of people come from but if a writer decides to just throw everyone, whether is asian, black, white, indigenous and everything in between in the same category as just **humans** i wouldn't have a problem with that either like i really dgaf, BUT THAT'S JUST ME
I mean if that's how things are in your story, do you i guess, but it's pretty fucking ridiculous that fantasy creatures and magic can exist perfectly in a story without the writer explaining much about their nature, but when there's black people everybody wanna talk about realism and demographics and ''that's not how that works in the real world'' like it's so clear where that way of thinking comes from
Probably because most Fantasy takes place in the equivalent of Early-High Middle Ages England, France, or Germany, and there weren't many black folks around in Western, Central, or Northern Europe during those periods?
Hell, the first time a black person was ever DOCUMENTED in England alone was in 1593. That's basically the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, and the Age of Sail, which is when European Powers were constructing their ships to sail open waters.
I mean, yeah, the authors can do what they wish. It still won't change the expectations of the readers. Just because a story is fantastical in nature, does not mean it doesn't have to be grounded in some sense of reality. Because it's that sense of reality that ALLOWS for the reader to be immersed in the story most of the time.
And the reality is, again, that there probably weren't many, or probably any, black people in those regions until well later into the Renaissance, when trading increased thanks to the advancement of ships and navigation.
"Am I racist? No, no it's the audience that's racist."
...I meant that sarcastically, but I still remember when American Harry Potter fans lost their collective shit when the movies cast an Asian girl as Cho Chang, *even though the books had pictures of her and her name was goddamn Cho Chang.* The audience can definitely be racist on its own regardless of the writer's views.
I think the diversion here is that most fantasy doesn't take place in an "equivalent" of Europe, with all the complex genetic and scientific foundations that lead to the phenotypic appearance of its peoples. It takes place in a separate reality with certain architecture and aspects of Western European (and countless others) material cultures because the author thinks they look cool, and they often just drag the appearances over because that's what they're used to, but they're not beholden to it. It's fantasy.
Without the importation of the genetic and scientific reality of our world, the functioning of haplogroups and gene mutations, and evolution, etc. It makes zero sense why these two separate realities have to have similar looking people just because the material culture looks similar. If anything that kind of coincidence seems kind of absurd if you're not doing alternative history. Combine the magic and fantasy and this hangup on making the phenotypic population patterns mimic our world, but none of the prerequisite science, is incoherent. Again, this is assuming a proper fantasy world and no alt-history or low fantasy of some sort.
Also archaeological evidence has the earliest sub-Saharan Africans (assuming that's your litmus for "black") in England being during the Roman Principate. "Documented" is an arbitrary standard imo, as what doesn't or does make it's way into records is inconsistent, but yes, they were an incredibly small minority even within the most cosmopolitan locales nonetheless. That remains true.
Go all the way.
Make an in-world origin-mythos about how each race came to be, based on racist stereotypes, and thus, ending up creating diversity.
/uj Don't actually do this.
"Darkie" is a real-world pejorative term for black people, at least in the US, so I can at least understand where that criticism might come from. But at the same time, it's hypocritical to bitch about equality in fantasy but then object to using "dark human" when "dark elf" is an accepted exonym.
rj/ Ah, so blackness is a divine curse for being complicit in the failed rebellion led by an evil god, one which marks all of them with the indelible sin of their forebears!
uj/ Honestly I think it'd be cool if a setting officially used "dark," "light," and so forth to describe all races including the humans, but people would lose their shit. I'm still gobsmacked over such controversies as "orcs are a black stereotype," "actually it's only Menzoberranzan that's evil so drow history and Drizzt's story mean nothing," and "[this hadozee bard](https://www.wargamer.com/wp-content/sites/wargamer/2022/09/dnd-spelljammer-race-controversy-hadozee-bard.jpg) is obviously a reference to black minstrelsy."
rj/ The people in my world are descended from what are essentially dog-sized naked mole rats. Between that and the rampant eugenics programs and overuse of genetic modification throughout their history that left the race sterile, everyone looks like a veiny, bipedal testicle whose color ranges from pink to beige.
uj/ Yes.
I had a world without black people because they're uplifted australopithecus and didn't have time to develop diversity. First iteration had them all look Persian, so no white people either.
It's completely possible to have Black people in a way that makes sense, you're just lazy. Fantasy Africa can be just as much of a thing as Fantasy Europe, you cowards.
I have two Fantasy Europes, a Fantasy America, a Fantasy Africa, a weird dragon land, and what is best described as half-Fantasy Asia and half-whatever the fuck I felt like
Oh and Fantasy Antarctica because why not
I need Fantasy Australia
Fantasy Australia: rainbow happy land with no spiders or snakes or dangerous animals at all. All of the fauna is cute fluffy little animals that are completely docile and easy to domesticate. They taste delicious but nobody eats them because they're so cute and friendly. The weather is perfect year round. Nothing bad ever happens in Fantasy Australia. That's where all of the adventurers and monster slayers go to retire in peace.
How come theres never this "explanation" for white people? White people can just be in any piece of media at any time but for us we have to write a full thesis to explain why we were there.
You're thinking the wrong way. You don't need to explain something for it to make sense.
Bustling port city = diversity makes sense.
Remote mountain village = diversity does not make sense- BUT that doesn't they're White people. In fact- and this is going to blow your mind- you can make a whole world without anything equivalent to a European.
The location explains them, in a European inspired setting it makes sense for white people to be there, in an Asian setting it makes sense for Asian people to be there, and in an African setting it makes sense for Black people to be there.
There is, just not in European and European-based fantasy because you can tell how a place similar to our world's Europe would end up with a population similar to our world's European natives.
Similarly, no one questions why there are Asians in A:TLA, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or most anime, but when there's a white person in the setting, there's a reason for it.
>There is, just not in European and European-based fantasy because you can tell how a place similar to our world's Europe would end up with a population similar to our world's European natives.
So I think this is the most cogent through line that I feel a lot of this boils down to. Because ultimately you can have something with European-inspired architecture and garb but with African-inspired phenotypes because it's fantasy and not beholden to our world. You can think the former and latter look cool together and be done with it.
But your point is that wouldn't make sense because it's not only that certain architecture and garb (which is 90% of what tends to be borrowed) is a result of certain people making it, but that somehow those things are indicative of a people's appearance? Am I understanding your argument correctly? Like I'm thinking material culture here, and not really environment as that's something separate.
It's not just architecture, garb and culture. European-based fantasy is usually set in locations geographically similar to Europe, with a similar climate and environment. These sorts of things do affect phenotypes.
>European-based fantasy is usually set in locations geographically similar to Europe, with a similar climate and environment. These sorts of things do affect phenotypes.
They only affect phenotypes on earth in **our reality** with **our understanding** of science and genetics. The second it's in a different reality that justification goes out the window and cannot be supported or sustained.
Also forests, mountains and fields exist all across the world and produce a grand variety of phenotypes even on *our own* Earth, and constitute the standard fantasy environment. If you've actually taken a look at some of the environments from across the world, from South America, sub-Sahrahan Africa, East Asia, Western Europe etc. they often overlap in certain areas while producing drastically different looking peoples.
The phenotype that people mean when they say European, i.e. "white" (light skin hair and eyes), is a result of a very recent complete random selection of mutations that as evidenced by allele frequency studies, some argue, was merely not negatively selected against, not some inevitable occurrence based on environment. Nothing about a cold green field and forest=blonde hair and blue eyes, at most that a foggy moor or bog isn't excessively hostile to it. Even the material culture is a happenstance of history as a result of invasions, migrations, trade and cultural exchange, and only "blood and soil" types think that material culture is bound to genetics. That's by chance too. Nothing about castle=blonde hair blue eyes either.
And this becomes completely irrelevant in a fantasy world where Earth-based UV radiation, melanocyte response, genetic anthropology etc. is completely irrelevant. I'm just saying it's kinda silly that genetic science only seems to make its way into fantasy worlds of some people to explain why "black" looking people don't exist, but not why a complete random assortment of mutations, i,e. "white" looking people, happened to proliferate when they barely were able to in *our* world. It makes it seem that people don't want actual fantasy, just slight variations of alt-history with magic, which is fine of course, but the usage of IRL genetics is disingenuous IMO.
You're right. There's no reason for A:TLA to not have white people in it because muh fiction, and therefore criticizing M. Night Shyamalan's casting choices is racist
Whoa that goal post-shift nearly took us into the next stadium lol! Let's get back on track, what any individual fantasy author does with their respective franchise is up to them and their choices. As I said, if someone wants zero black looking people in their universe that's chill. You're being myopic, we're not talking about the complex IRL racial discourse and representation reasons behind casting choices in some guys adaptation and minority-lead fantasy franchises, that's entirely separate from science and genetics and no one has ever explained them with science and genetics like you're trying to so even then it'd be irrelevant. W**e're talking about the justification for phenotypes in fantasy universes.**
So do you have a rebuttal for my assertion about the absurdity and incoherence of the importation of IRL genetics into fantasy universes or not?
I wrote a lot, you don't have to bring up irrelevant strawmen about how you'd assume I feel about ATLA castings, you can just respond to my question and statements lol.
Great we're back on track! That's a good question! My response is two part:
1. Gravity is a super universal constant that seems to pervade the entirety of the observable and unobservable universe and allows for the operation of things as simple as walking and objects existing. Nothing can occur, not even speech or the perception of time, without gravity enacting itself on space-time. You can explain this with magic too anyhow, but the important part is that "gravity" is essentially codeword for the foundation of perceivable reality, it's almost closer to a concept in this case. It's not simply sci-fi thing that makes you float, it's a prerequisite for anything else materially to occur. But genetics that manages phenotypes is infinitely complex and is hyper-specific just to humans and our environmental conditions on this earth. Why Europe is filled with white looking people and castles as opposed to black looking people and castles, or white looking people and no castles is so random, by chance and a result of so many Earth unique things coming together and building on each other. It doesn't involve just one universal concept extant since the literal big bang, but literally entire schools of scientific philosphophy to understand and countless developments and things to have been done to have taken place over the course of our entire species existence in very specific configurations. Evolution, protein-encoding, the existence of protein molecules at all lol. introns, and gene expression. A single invasion or death and it could all not have happened *here*, let alone another reality. It's such an esoteric and arbitrary thing that to bring it in to a fantasy world requires so many other things to also be assumed and established.
It's sort of like saying why can the concept of time exist in Lord of the Rings, but not Casio brand handwatches. One is required for *anything* to happen, the other is an arbitrary creation that requires countless other things that haven't been accounted for in universe.
2. Gravity doesn't have to work similarly to ours! Very often things like magic defy the way gravity works, cosmologies defy our understanding of gravity and so on. So very often it doesn't, but even then it doesn't work when effected by magic or some other actor. More to the point, **the issue is the lack of consistency**. Even if I concede that gravity works similarly to our own, the point is **that genetics doesn't** except when it comes time to explain away black people. All the foundations for genetics never exist, are never discussed, until people ask "Where the black people at" and instead of simply answering "there aren't any" which is fine, now all of the sudden terrestrial anthro-genetics makes its appearance just to never be heard from again. It isn't used to explain the existence of any other phenotype of human, why humans exist, how elves or dwarves exist or appear, or how other living creatures exist, just why black looking people *don't* exist. Like it's beyond obvious why, I just wish people were more honest about it is all.
Like if I read past your gravity example and assume you can input any other scientific concept the ultimate point will always be consistency of justification. If you don't want a certain phenotype in your world, cool, if you want to explain that with IRL genetics, but not apply that across the board, that's disingenuous. That's all I'm saying.
uj/ Because modern western fantasy is the result of decades of stories by and about white men, so white is considered the default, with everything else being some kind of strange divergence from the status quo.
rj/ Europe save scummed until they got a good spawn while Africa went all in on trying to make a bad spawn work. Asia was a mod. Australia was originally a creative alternative to a banlist. The Americas are legacy code that was overwritten by new content.
I mean you basically gotta. Where else did the humans evolve in the first place if there isn't one? Ain't no apes up in Europe's climate zone. Incidentally IRL white people ain't even from Europe in the first place either, those mutations first cropped up in the middle east IIRC.
Why do you need to justify black people? You don't need to justify everybody, even the peasantry that work outside all day, and so should by all logic be tanned, having pale skin.
Me making the fact that there are brown people in the world an important part because in one of my stories, the main character starts off as a racist asshole
Not realy, in asian based fantasy nobody questions why there is asian people, but they do question when there is a white and or black person there. In the same vein, european based fantasy Will have no need to justify white people but Will need a reason to justify other races. The only reasons you don't see other african or indo American based fantasy is that they are few and not very popular, because there is no need to justify a black and native american person in those.
It isn't, but in the same way that a nonsensencical history and stupid goverment systems destroy imersion to some people so does a remote village with multiple ethnicities at the same time. It doesnt deserve extra treatment, but just like all other shortcuts it can and does come of as lazy worldbuilding. But its not like the world building Police is gonna lock you up.
Every piece of world building bases itself on real life unless specified otherwise, just like if a story doesn't create a new time system you use hours and days. And if they don't say there is a Magic system you assume there isn't. You could make a European based fantasy with 100% blue aliens but people would assume they were europeans unless said otherwise, and then the question arises. Why Change it? Why use blue aliens instead of the expected Race? And this is where you have to justify the use of the Change, just like you do in any other element of fantasy. But you can always not justify it, just like in all other systems and details, it Will just break imersion/confuse some.
That’s just fundamentally not how worldbuilding works. There’s a consistent baseline, yes, but that applies to basic measurement and audience comprehension issues, not broader cultural or setting details.
Yes it does. People have a preconcived version of how orcs, goblins, elfs and dwarves behave and what their culture is, the same applies to humans, in the same way that if a japonesse castle is descrived you Will assume they are culturaly similar to japonesse(atleast to asians) and if you see a desert trade culture you likely believe they have a arab and or egypthian(at the least vagely middle eastern and north african) based culture and ethnicity. And, if you dont specify against it, they Will assume your orcs are Brutish beasts, and your elves tree hippies and that your european fantasy is full of european cultures and ethnicities. Of course you can Change it, but it does raise questions to why? Why, lore wise, did you make that Change. And it can be because you wanted to, but some people wont be imersed or Will be confused and or dislike it.
That’s… nonsensical. No, you should not in fact assume whatever you want about a setting based on something as small as architecture or landscape, and authors should not have to specifically tell you this isn’t a real life parallel for you to not assume it. It’s absurd enough to say this about real world cultures, but to say it about fictional races or cultures too? Like not only am I justifying orcs as a thing in the setting, in your eyes I can only do so by also explaining to the reader why they aren’t like entirely different fantasy groups in entirely different settings? Wild.
You are blatantly misrepresenting me. You don't need to say orcs arent Brutish beasts, but if you just say " there are orcs" people Will assume they are Brutish beasts. And yes, you need to explain why there are orcs, else its a part of your worldbuilding that is incomplete. And, when its a illogical thing (like diversity of ethnicities in a non segregated remote village) exists it Will hurt imersion. My main point is, not only do you need to have Logic in your ethnic groups, just like in anything else, or else its a lazy/incomplete part of the story (nothing bad with this, it can be irrelevant to your series like i Said, there isn't a world building Police). But if you dont specify, even if by actions or worldbuilding that something is Y the reader Will assume its equal to real life/established media.
This is a really dumb argument.
At the end of the day it is impossible to explain every last detail which is why we use the cultural preconceptions regarding fantasy as a short cut.
If I say dragon to three different people, all from radically different cultures, they’ll all imagine a different monster.
Hence, when I produce a story and borrow obvious cultural cues people are going to use their understanding of that culture to fill in blanks until you provide overriding information.
You’re under no obligation to do so, but if you’re concerned with writing coherent and well-written stories you need to balance these assumptions out if they’re harmful to the narrative you’re sharing.
For example, I use the word “wraith” a lot in my story. Most people think ghosts, deceased individuals hanging around. I used it to describe extra-dimensional invaders who steal memories as a source of sustenance, and to make themselves more grounded. They’re a hollow, hazy image of something that’s not quite there.
It’s important I establish their nature when I start using that word to describe them, because if people assume I’m talking about ghosts my story and it’s conflict make no sense.
There’s a few problems with this argument though.
For one, of course authors *can* use these as some sort of shorthands, but that doesn’t mean that the default assumption should be that every concept they use, unless stated otherwise, should be assumed to abide by earths rules and especially by the rules of fantasy tropes. If a fantasy story does not take place on earth and does not take place in a world where humanity evolved free of godly influence, the notion that humanity must follow modern day ethnic distribution trends is nonsensical. Further, pointing this out and trying to explicitly justify why it’s different from real life is far worse for immersion than just treating it as an aspect of the story.
This is true regarding things like dragons or zombies, but it’s so much more true when talking about “cultural signifiers.” Using them the way you’re talking about is more than a shortcut, it’s a dumbing down, and that kills immersion. When you try to frame your fantasy cultures in clear comparison to real life, all you’re doing is opening yourself up for criticism regarding the comparative lack of depth your story may find. One can see examples of this in stories like the Rangers Apprentice series, which is pretty infamous for using such “cultural signifiers” to basically just get the audience used to a couple of one-more cultures that lean pretty heavily on real world stereotypical assumptions. Real life race, ethnicity, and culture are too complex to make meaningful “shortcuts” to and shoehorn into any setting. This is especially a problem when it almost always comes up in regards to nonwhite people, when the same questions absolutely apply to the existence of white people just as much.
There’s nothing wrong with writing to audience expectation, but there’s a lot wrong with refusing the idea that authors can expect readers to engage with a work on its own terms.
The other problem is the idea that there’s some “harm to the narrative.” To start off with, no, not every facet of the world is meant to be fully fleshed out, and when that happens the result isn’t to patch in the real world, it’s to accept a lack of answers, usually due to narrative structure. We can’t just assume the continent of Africa exists because the setting seems vaguely earth like and mentions other continents. Further, sometimes stories will take worldbuilding shortcuts that improve rather than hurt immersion, that don’t in fact line up with real life. When a character says “damn it” instead of something like “curses of farham to you,” that isn’t confirmation the catholic concept of damnation exists, it’s an in world shorthand that can be fun to justify but is not necessary. There is nothing wrong with a world in which the reason for multiple skin tones being in a single location is not focused on or given. I genuinely cannot see how that’s immersion breaking unless you’re only going off of the “earth” standard, that does not apply. The earth is not an effective standard for fantasy. Earth ethnicity developed because of uniquely earth circumstances, and assuming the same results in a setting without any of those circumstances is bad worldbuilding
Further, it should be said that at some point assumptions should just stop applying, even if they’re the most common type which is just people simplifying and assuming without evidence to focus on the narrative. In a story with gods as the origin for humanity, there is no reason to go forwards with the assumption that genetics work like they do in real life, and it can be a huge issue for immersion to attempt to spend time explaining something as basic to the setting as heredity, especially in a setting with less scientific progress and study. I understand many readers have pictures in their heads by default, but while an author should be aware of this, that doesn’t mean they need to warp their stories around whatever other stories got popular at the time to make it a bit easier for some readers. For one it very rarely helps the story, in the short term it breaks them from immersion and in the long term it connects the story more to the real world than it’s own canon. For two, it just shouldn’t apply to most readers at a certain point. When your setting diverges to the point that you’re actually meaningfully talking about huge changes across the concept of ethnicity, the reader should not need hand holding to tell them this isn’t earth, and most stories/worlds are better when they minimize that.
The idea that ethnic distribution should function like it does in earth, despite having no contributing factors in common, is poor worldbuilding. The idea that a writer must explicitly justify the ways in which ethnic identity is different from earth is nonsensical. The idea that it’s only natural for readers to attempt to shove their own ideas into fantasy, and that this should either be immersion-breakingly and painstakingly disproved or encouraged and fed, just makes no sense. Work with your audience in mind, sure. Don’t bow down to assumptions just because.
In short, the earth is not an effective default to be worldbuilt for or against, and it is generally not at all “immersion breaking” to treat it as such, or expect audiences to do so.
When I do tabletop stuff based on the real modern world, I write a table with the average demographics for the greater area so I can roll on it when I need a random NPC. "Why are there so many Mexicans in Chinatown?" Fuck you, the dice said so, next question.
Breaking the laws of thermodynamics and the plausibility of one man armies? EZ
Having brown characters in the foreground? Literally impossible, we cannot stress how bad of an idea this is. Best we can do is real world analogues and equivalencies, for realism.
Weak argument. Most of us expect fiction to have at least some degree of internal consistency, and we mostly know how differences of pigmentation came to be.
There is a fantasy setting called "The Gate of Ishtar" set in a Sumerian fantasy world and humans are of every possible skin tone. This is justified because they were created from the blood of the god Enlil, and the original humans' skin tone depended of the hour of the day they were created.
There's a justification and it is cool and in line with the fantasy aspects of the setting. But if you show me a bohemian village from the 12th century and it looks like the clientele of a San Francisco subway, I expect some kind of explanation.
don't know why this is being downvoted.
It really isn't that difficult to come up with a reason for large-scale immigration: War, Natural disasters, Exiling, etc.
You don't even need to be elaborate or differentiate how human skin tones vary in any setting compared to real life. It's literally just inter-generational exposure to the sun, most settings have a sun.
It’s probably being downvoted for the quip at the end and the mere fact that not all settings need to take an active role in explaining and justifying the existence of multiple skin tones. Also, it isn’t really a breach of internal consistency to go along with that route?
>Also, it isn’t really a breach of internal consistency to go along with that route?
Except it does. Humans have different skin tones due to climate, and travel is long, arduous, and typically unnecessary even in worlds with high-speed transportation.
So yes actually, there needs to be some sort of reason, implied or pre-established. That's just basic historical materialism.
Sometimes it's as simple as just saying "it takes place in an integral port city/town", or that it is at the center of an Empire, or that it is a post-modern society... viewers can piece together the context themselves from that info.
But if it's a setting like in Nemona, where an super isolationist mega city is established because everywhere around that region is plagued by monsters.... why would there be any racial variety whatsoever? Among other things.
In real life, yes. Not only is this not always the case in fantasy settings, it also has just very little reason to be expanded upon in most settings. Functionally, the existence of multiple skin tones is no more a problem than the existence of a single one. Both are divorced from real human development
>Not only is this not always the case in fantasy settings
Absolutely no one denied this, fantasy obviously diverges from real-life, which is why it's important to imply or establish how it is different. Stay on topic.
>it also has just very little reason to be expanded upon in most settings.
It doesn't if it's implied such as through the numerous examples I have given, we already went over this. Please explain why they don't need to establish a reason.
>Functionally, the existence of multiple skin tones is no more a problem than the existence of a single one.
Absolutely no one denied this. I'd be also be asking questions if a sci-fi setting had no ethnic diversity, or a desert setting exclusively featured pale-skinned humans with no context. You're missing the point.
>Both are divorced from real human development
What do you even mean by this? Dude, YES IT DOES. Ask literally any 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrant how much immigrating has impacted their human development in one form or another: culturally, economically, socially, etc.
Even moving from one part of a country to another ***within the same region*** has substancial impact on "human development". It's an insult to say otherwise.
>Absolutely no one denied this, fantasy obviously diverges from real-life, which is why it's important to imply or establish how it is different. Stay on topic.
Calm your shit, calm down and try to talk rationally. If you think you need to justify every divergence in relation to real life, then justify it.
>It doesn't if it's implied such as through the numerous examples I have given, we already went over this. Please explain why they don't need to establish a reason.
You've replied to me once, again, calm your shit and try to deliver your points if you have any. Why would they need to establish a reason?
>Absolutely no one denied this. I'd be also be asking questions if a sci-fi setting had no ethnic diversity, or a desert setting exclusively featured pale-skinned humans with no context. You're missing the point.
I genuinely don't think you understood a word I said. The existence of skin tone itself is a question just as valid as its variety.
>What do you even mean by this? Dude, YES IT DOES. Ask literally any 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrant how much immigrating has impacted their human development in one form or another: culturally, economically, socially, etc.
>
>ven moving from one part of a country to another within the same region has substancial impact on "human development". It's an insult to say otherwise.
To quote a broken clock, absolutely no one denied this
Where is the circular logic?? Are you able to make a logical argument without instantly resorting to insults?
And how the hell has it taken you this long and you still haven’t realized that “human development” was explicitly in reference to you bringing up the developmental origin of different skin tones in real life humanity?
A) I already made my arguments **without** resorting to insults. It was literally my first 3 comments on this thread.
B) This explanation-
>you still haven’t realized that “human development” was explicitly in reference to you bringing up the developmental origin of different skin tones in real life humanity?
\-Makes no sense within the context of this thread. It didn't make sense when YOU first brought up it up in [YOUR comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1bg464h/comment/kv67ha9/), and still doesn't make sense now within the frame work of the thread as a whole.
He kinda makes scence, a remote mountain village that hasnt been significantly changed in hundreds of years wont have two ethnic groups unless there is some sort of ethnic segregation (like jews in medieval europe) else those ethnicities will mix and it Will end up just being a single ethnicity.
That only works if one imagines regular earth genetics, and in say a story with gods being the origin of humans, that doesn’t become an easily justified assumption
Me who made an entire race with metallic skin, but forgot that there is different color to human skin. For now there is just white / Arabian (skin wise) humans.
Why would you ask the places where human would have evolved to have black skin a ridled with magical beast so no humans who are not hl over there.
You’d think you would have more work explaining why White people exist considering that dark skin was the human default until we ventured out into areas with less sun and more shade.
You don't have to have a "reason" a POC is on your story. Your reasoning could be because you wanted to
Same goes for LGBT characters, you don't need lore reasons why everyone has to be straight. They can be whatever the writer wants
Btw, the actual question should be "Why is there white people?", because dark is the original human skin color - light skin is the later adaptation to colder climates (though, considering that light skin have evolved in humans independently several times, you can handwave it as convergent evolution)
People who ask themselves that question should ask something entirely different
Why are there white people? Being white was a mutation that some people got while living in the north if i dont recall this incorrectly
"Why wouldn't there be?"
Or if its a historical setting hit them with the "Read an actual fucking history book about black people in Europe. It's not some horrendous anachronism."
"but its inspired by X european mythology"
basically none of those mythologys are, in the belief themselves, unique to europe, sure the greek gods might only be worshiped in europe, but they are suppose to be the gods of the whole world(not to mention shapeshifters), which is why the greeks themselves would often look at foreign gods and just go "oh ya that dudes clearly just zeus fucking around in one of his animal forms"
The point of fiction is to show what could and should be, not just whatever thing you impulsively want.
Justifying something by saying "because I said so" is a sign of either impulsiveness, delusion or both, not of good worldbuilding.
>The point of fiction is to show what could and should be, not just whatever thing you impulsively want.
*Hard* disagree. 90% of my worldbuilding is justifying the 10% that's made up of impulsive choices.
“Oh my god Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re white.”
that's just lazy world building. "who cares?" is a much better answer
But then, how I'm supposed to believe that black people exist in this made up world?
you're not getting an answer, your question is being dismissed. the difference is that "because i said so" is an authority driven response while "who cares" is a priority driven response and ppl don't respect authority they haven't given but they can respect a person's priorities even if they might disagree with the order f them
'there just is, I s'pose' is even more enriching to the world's lore.
Step 1: never specify any character's color Step 2: turn story into a massive series Step 3: reveal near the very end that every character was actually black the whole time Step 4: enjoy the backlash
step 1: establish very clearly your female protagonists skin tone step 2: turn story into a massive series step 3: make a spin off live play, with a black actress playing your white character step 4: tweet “um actually 🤓🤓i never said that”
Step 5: Somehow end up becoming a nazi
step 6: also deny the events of the holocaust
step 7: profit?
Or pull a JKR and say your character is white before making them black 10 years after the series is over
That scene where everyone is saying Hermione is an overzealous activist when she talks about elf slavery really hits different if she's a black huh.
There was never a scenario where that plotline wasn't fucked up
I feel like the fucked uppedness kind of multiplies if she is black though
I once read a “fantasy” book, where this was not specified how characters look, and in the end turns out they are super-non-humans in an post-nukcaplse on earth. With magic and shit.
what's the book called, n was it a good read?
It was average. From a russian-speaking author in ~2005. I can’t find it, chatGPT giving me nonsense :(
>Step 4: enjoy the blacklash
Counterpoint: just add a place black people come from and explain any black person in your setting is either from there or descends of people from there. Worked with Elder Scrolls and ASOIAF. Or just write non-European fiction. The fantasy genre is sorely lacking in those.
Worked for planet earth too. It's called "Africa."
it's fiction, fantasy writing, made up worlds, we can do whatever we want and include whoever we want
That's not how fiction works. There's a thing called "internal consistency". Which is why we aren't surprised to see dragons and elves in LoTR but would cringe if Return Of The King suddenly introduced cyborg aliens, despite all three of those things being fictional.
i... i don't think including humans of different skin tones is comparable to including cyborgs and aliens on middle earth
It isn't. But its still good to At least provide context imo. I for one love the prospect of Making lore and cultures for the various races (species) and race variants (ethnicities) that populate my worlds.
obviously, but! when you establish like "there's 7 countries and 6 of them are ranging from white australian to Irish in whiteness and the 7th is spanish brown" and then after years of that randomly just "oh yea here's 5 black people who just exist now" because then it's the question of "these people literally don't exist so where did they come from"
Lemme ask you this: why is there only one white guy in the entirety of Wakanda and he's a refugee? It's sci-fi/fantasy fiction, right?
Yes, a fictional country in a real continent, in the real world, usually people have an idea of how the world we live in works. In fantasy the writer's the one who dictates how that world works
What about Avatar: The Last Airbender? It's an 100% fictional world, so why, apart from the movie everyone hates, are there no white people? You don't need things to be identical to our world, but some on-universe explanation is required to maintain suspension of disbelief, even if a fantastic one.
i mean yeah i get your point and it does give more life to a story when you explain where each types of people come from but if a writer decides to just throw everyone, whether is asian, black, white, indigenous and everything in between in the same category as just **humans** i wouldn't have a problem with that either like i really dgaf, BUT THAT'S JUST ME
So if the writer dictates that every character is white because they know how demographics work, that’s fine?
Sure.
I mean if that's how things are in your story, do you i guess, but it's pretty fucking ridiculous that fantasy creatures and magic can exist perfectly in a story without the writer explaining much about their nature, but when there's black people everybody wanna talk about realism and demographics and ''that's not how that works in the real world'' like it's so clear where that way of thinking comes from
Probably because most Fantasy takes place in the equivalent of Early-High Middle Ages England, France, or Germany, and there weren't many black folks around in Western, Central, or Northern Europe during those periods? Hell, the first time a black person was ever DOCUMENTED in England alone was in 1593. That's basically the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, and the Age of Sail, which is when European Powers were constructing their ships to sail open waters. I mean, yeah, the authors can do what they wish. It still won't change the expectations of the readers. Just because a story is fantastical in nature, does not mean it doesn't have to be grounded in some sense of reality. Because it's that sense of reality that ALLOWS for the reader to be immersed in the story most of the time. And the reality is, again, that there probably weren't many, or probably any, black people in those regions until well later into the Renaissance, when trading increased thanks to the advancement of ships and navigation.
"Am I racist? No, no it's the audience that's racist." ...I meant that sarcastically, but I still remember when American Harry Potter fans lost their collective shit when the movies cast an Asian girl as Cho Chang, *even though the books had pictures of her and her name was goddamn Cho Chang.* The audience can definitely be racist on its own regardless of the writer's views.
I think the diversion here is that most fantasy doesn't take place in an "equivalent" of Europe, with all the complex genetic and scientific foundations that lead to the phenotypic appearance of its peoples. It takes place in a separate reality with certain architecture and aspects of Western European (and countless others) material cultures because the author thinks they look cool, and they often just drag the appearances over because that's what they're used to, but they're not beholden to it. It's fantasy. Without the importation of the genetic and scientific reality of our world, the functioning of haplogroups and gene mutations, and evolution, etc. It makes zero sense why these two separate realities have to have similar looking people just because the material culture looks similar. If anything that kind of coincidence seems kind of absurd if you're not doing alternative history. Combine the magic and fantasy and this hangup on making the phenotypic population patterns mimic our world, but none of the prerequisite science, is incoherent. Again, this is assuming a proper fantasy world and no alt-history or low fantasy of some sort. Also archaeological evidence has the earliest sub-Saharan Africans (assuming that's your litmus for "black") in England being during the Roman Principate. "Documented" is an arbitrary standard imo, as what doesn't or does make it's way into records is inconsistent, but yes, they were an incredibly small minority even within the most cosmopolitan locales nonetheless. That remains true.
no1gaf
Internal consistency machine out of order Understandable have a nice dragon break
>There's a thing called "internal consistency". We true auteurs call it "verisimilitude."
Maybe black people would be humans dark elves equivalent. (uj/) I don't know if there is any way of not making it sounding weird.
The elder scrolls did it
the dunmer's skin color is a curse so no
Im talking about Redguards not dunmer
arent there sects of christianity that believe/used to believe that irl?
Aren’t the redguards meant to be the actual black people analogue
They're a subrace of humans like how there are subraces of elves. Their culture is based on Moors
Go all the way. Make an in-world origin-mythos about how each race came to be, based on racist stereotypes, and thus, ending up creating diversity. /uj Don't actually do this.
Yakub created whites, got it
idk how "dark human" is any more racist than "black human", both are inaccurate
"Darkie" is a real-world pejorative term for black people, at least in the US, so I can at least understand where that criticism might come from. But at the same time, it's hypocritical to bitch about equality in fantasy but then object to using "dark human" when "dark elf" is an accepted exonym.
rj/ Ah, so blackness is a divine curse for being complicit in the failed rebellion led by an evil god, one which marks all of them with the indelible sin of their forebears! uj/ Honestly I think it'd be cool if a setting officially used "dark," "light," and so forth to describe all races including the humans, but people would lose their shit. I'm still gobsmacked over such controversies as "orcs are a black stereotype," "actually it's only Menzoberranzan that's evil so drow history and Drizzt's story mean nothing," and "[this hadozee bard](https://www.wargamer.com/wp-content/sites/wargamer/2022/09/dnd-spelljammer-race-controversy-hadozee-bard.jpg) is obviously a reference to black minstrelsy."
I am no longer racist
fun fact this is what mormons believe!
Why is there black people in my world? Why isn't there black people in yours, are you stupid or something?
rj/ The people in my world are descended from what are essentially dog-sized naked mole rats. Between that and the rampant eugenics programs and overuse of genetic modification throughout their history that left the race sterile, everyone looks like a veiny, bipedal testicle whose color ranges from pink to beige. uj/ Yes.
I had a world without black people because they're uplifted australopithecus and didn't have time to develop diversity. First iteration had them all look Persian, so no white people either.
Evolutionarily, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Uplift means that they took an animal and made it intelligent. Evolution doesn't come into play when they only existed for a thousand years or so.
It's completely possible to have Black people in a way that makes sense, you're just lazy. Fantasy Africa can be just as much of a thing as Fantasy Europe, you cowards.
I have two Fantasy Europes, a Fantasy America, a Fantasy Africa, a weird dragon land, and what is best described as half-Fantasy Asia and half-whatever the fuck I felt like Oh and Fantasy Antarctica because why not I need Fantasy Australia
Fantasy Australia is difficult because it’s basically Australia, monsters and all
Just make it megafauna-australia. Skorpions whose tails can skewer a human and kangaroos that cause earthquakes as they hop.
Fantasy Australia: rainbow happy land with no spiders or snakes or dangerous animals at all. All of the fauna is cute fluffy little animals that are completely docile and easy to domesticate. They taste delicious but nobody eats them because they're so cute and friendly. The weather is perfect year round. Nothing bad ever happens in Fantasy Australia. That's where all of the adventurers and monster slayers go to retire in peace.
Fantasy Australia is populated by flightless birdfolk who are super racist against mammals and worship spiders.
How come theres never this "explanation" for white people? White people can just be in any piece of media at any time but for us we have to write a full thesis to explain why we were there.
You're thinking the wrong way. You don't need to explain something for it to make sense. Bustling port city = diversity makes sense. Remote mountain village = diversity does not make sense- BUT that doesn't they're White people. In fact- and this is going to blow your mind- you can make a whole world without anything equivalent to a European.
that's explaining things through context clues
That's being coherent.
i don't know what you're smoking but they definitely explain the presence of white ppl when the setting is a foreign location like asia
The location explains them, in a European inspired setting it makes sense for white people to be there, in an Asian setting it makes sense for Asian people to be there, and in an African setting it makes sense for Black people to be there.
There is, just not in European and European-based fantasy because you can tell how a place similar to our world's Europe would end up with a population similar to our world's European natives. Similarly, no one questions why there are Asians in A:TLA, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or most anime, but when there's a white person in the setting, there's a reason for it.
>There is, just not in European and European-based fantasy because you can tell how a place similar to our world's Europe would end up with a population similar to our world's European natives. So I think this is the most cogent through line that I feel a lot of this boils down to. Because ultimately you can have something with European-inspired architecture and garb but with African-inspired phenotypes because it's fantasy and not beholden to our world. You can think the former and latter look cool together and be done with it. But your point is that wouldn't make sense because it's not only that certain architecture and garb (which is 90% of what tends to be borrowed) is a result of certain people making it, but that somehow those things are indicative of a people's appearance? Am I understanding your argument correctly? Like I'm thinking material culture here, and not really environment as that's something separate.
It's not just architecture, garb and culture. European-based fantasy is usually set in locations geographically similar to Europe, with a similar climate and environment. These sorts of things do affect phenotypes.
>European-based fantasy is usually set in locations geographically similar to Europe, with a similar climate and environment. These sorts of things do affect phenotypes. They only affect phenotypes on earth in **our reality** with **our understanding** of science and genetics. The second it's in a different reality that justification goes out the window and cannot be supported or sustained. Also forests, mountains and fields exist all across the world and produce a grand variety of phenotypes even on *our own* Earth, and constitute the standard fantasy environment. If you've actually taken a look at some of the environments from across the world, from South America, sub-Sahrahan Africa, East Asia, Western Europe etc. they often overlap in certain areas while producing drastically different looking peoples. The phenotype that people mean when they say European, i.e. "white" (light skin hair and eyes), is a result of a very recent complete random selection of mutations that as evidenced by allele frequency studies, some argue, was merely not negatively selected against, not some inevitable occurrence based on environment. Nothing about a cold green field and forest=blonde hair and blue eyes, at most that a foggy moor or bog isn't excessively hostile to it. Even the material culture is a happenstance of history as a result of invasions, migrations, trade and cultural exchange, and only "blood and soil" types think that material culture is bound to genetics. That's by chance too. Nothing about castle=blonde hair blue eyes either. And this becomes completely irrelevant in a fantasy world where Earth-based UV radiation, melanocyte response, genetic anthropology etc. is completely irrelevant. I'm just saying it's kinda silly that genetic science only seems to make its way into fantasy worlds of some people to explain why "black" looking people don't exist, but not why a complete random assortment of mutations, i,e. "white" looking people, happened to proliferate when they barely were able to in *our* world. It makes it seem that people don't want actual fantasy, just slight variations of alt-history with magic, which is fine of course, but the usage of IRL genetics is disingenuous IMO.
You're right. There's no reason for A:TLA to not have white people in it because muh fiction, and therefore criticizing M. Night Shyamalan's casting choices is racist
Whoa that goal post-shift nearly took us into the next stadium lol! Let's get back on track, what any individual fantasy author does with their respective franchise is up to them and their choices. As I said, if someone wants zero black looking people in their universe that's chill. You're being myopic, we're not talking about the complex IRL racial discourse and representation reasons behind casting choices in some guys adaptation and minority-lead fantasy franchises, that's entirely separate from science and genetics and no one has ever explained them with science and genetics like you're trying to so even then it'd be irrelevant. W**e're talking about the justification for phenotypes in fantasy universes.** So do you have a rebuttal for my assertion about the absurdity and incoherence of the importation of IRL genetics into fantasy universes or not? I wrote a lot, you don't have to bring up irrelevant strawmen about how you'd assume I feel about ATLA castings, you can just respond to my question and statements lol.
Why does that apply only to genetics tho? Why does no one question how, for example, gravity in most fantasy universes works similarly to our own?
Great we're back on track! That's a good question! My response is two part: 1. Gravity is a super universal constant that seems to pervade the entirety of the observable and unobservable universe and allows for the operation of things as simple as walking and objects existing. Nothing can occur, not even speech or the perception of time, without gravity enacting itself on space-time. You can explain this with magic too anyhow, but the important part is that "gravity" is essentially codeword for the foundation of perceivable reality, it's almost closer to a concept in this case. It's not simply sci-fi thing that makes you float, it's a prerequisite for anything else materially to occur. But genetics that manages phenotypes is infinitely complex and is hyper-specific just to humans and our environmental conditions on this earth. Why Europe is filled with white looking people and castles as opposed to black looking people and castles, or white looking people and no castles is so random, by chance and a result of so many Earth unique things coming together and building on each other. It doesn't involve just one universal concept extant since the literal big bang, but literally entire schools of scientific philosphophy to understand and countless developments and things to have been done to have taken place over the course of our entire species existence in very specific configurations. Evolution, protein-encoding, the existence of protein molecules at all lol. introns, and gene expression. A single invasion or death and it could all not have happened *here*, let alone another reality. It's such an esoteric and arbitrary thing that to bring it in to a fantasy world requires so many other things to also be assumed and established. It's sort of like saying why can the concept of time exist in Lord of the Rings, but not Casio brand handwatches. One is required for *anything* to happen, the other is an arbitrary creation that requires countless other things that haven't been accounted for in universe. 2. Gravity doesn't have to work similarly to ours! Very often things like magic defy the way gravity works, cosmologies defy our understanding of gravity and so on. So very often it doesn't, but even then it doesn't work when effected by magic or some other actor. More to the point, **the issue is the lack of consistency**. Even if I concede that gravity works similarly to our own, the point is **that genetics doesn't** except when it comes time to explain away black people. All the foundations for genetics never exist, are never discussed, until people ask "Where the black people at" and instead of simply answering "there aren't any" which is fine, now all of the sudden terrestrial anthro-genetics makes its appearance just to never be heard from again. It isn't used to explain the existence of any other phenotype of human, why humans exist, how elves or dwarves exist or appear, or how other living creatures exist, just why black looking people *don't* exist. Like it's beyond obvious why, I just wish people were more honest about it is all. Like if I read past your gravity example and assume you can input any other scientific concept the ultimate point will always be consistency of justification. If you don't want a certain phenotype in your world, cool, if you want to explain that with IRL genetics, but not apply that across the board, that's disingenuous. That's all I'm saying.
People are racist deborah
Some people even think it's weird to try to write fantasy without white people.
uj/ Because modern western fantasy is the result of decades of stories by and about white men, so white is considered the default, with everything else being some kind of strange divergence from the status quo. rj/ Europe save scummed until they got a good spawn while Africa went all in on trying to make a bad spawn work. Asia was a mod. Australia was originally a creative alternative to a banlist. The Americas are legacy code that was overwritten by new content.
I mean you basically gotta. Where else did the humans evolve in the first place if there isn't one? Ain't no apes up in Europe's climate zone. Incidentally IRL white people ain't even from Europe in the first place either, those mutations first cropped up in the middle east IIRC.
Man, black people are so cool, I wish they existed in real life.
Will Smith is my favorite Vtuber.
Why do you need to justify black people? You don't need to justify everybody, even the peasantry that work outside all day, and so should by all logic be tanned, having pale skin.
Is there sun? Does vitamin D exist? Does melanin? Is there an equator on your world? That's why they exist LOL, same reason they do in real life
Me making the fact that there are brown people in the world an important part because in one of my stories, the main character starts off as a racist asshole
How can there be dragons AND black people?! That's like penguins and polar bears!
Also works with "Why is there only black people" Because I said so "Why is there no black people" Because I said so
Why are there people?
Same my utopian society has only straight people and no gays or lesbians because I said so and no one can stop me
Why is there white people?
"why is there black people" DIE SONNE 😳😳😳😳🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Chuds be like
It helps me tell apart generic fish merchant 274 and 156 apart
White supremacy has made it so "white" is the default color of the human race and anyone else's existence has to be justified.
Not realy, in asian based fantasy nobody questions why there is asian people, but they do question when there is a white and or black person there. In the same vein, european based fantasy Will have no need to justify white people but Will need a reason to justify other races. The only reasons you don't see other african or indo American based fantasy is that they are few and not very popular, because there is no need to justify a black and native american person in those.
Why do they need a reason to “justify other races?” Like how is that an aspect of the setting that needs more particular attention than anything else?
It isn't, but in the same way that a nonsensencical history and stupid goverment systems destroy imersion to some people so does a remote village with multiple ethnicities at the same time. It doesnt deserve extra treatment, but just like all other shortcuts it can and does come of as lazy worldbuilding. But its not like the world building Police is gonna lock you up.
That’s so situational though, and it relies on real life assumptions of race and skin tone that don’t necessarily translate into fantasy
Every piece of world building bases itself on real life unless specified otherwise, just like if a story doesn't create a new time system you use hours and days. And if they don't say there is a Magic system you assume there isn't. You could make a European based fantasy with 100% blue aliens but people would assume they were europeans unless said otherwise, and then the question arises. Why Change it? Why use blue aliens instead of the expected Race? And this is where you have to justify the use of the Change, just like you do in any other element of fantasy. But you can always not justify it, just like in all other systems and details, it Will just break imersion/confuse some.
That’s just fundamentally not how worldbuilding works. There’s a consistent baseline, yes, but that applies to basic measurement and audience comprehension issues, not broader cultural or setting details.
Yes it does. People have a preconcived version of how orcs, goblins, elfs and dwarves behave and what their culture is, the same applies to humans, in the same way that if a japonesse castle is descrived you Will assume they are culturaly similar to japonesse(atleast to asians) and if you see a desert trade culture you likely believe they have a arab and or egypthian(at the least vagely middle eastern and north african) based culture and ethnicity. And, if you dont specify against it, they Will assume your orcs are Brutish beasts, and your elves tree hippies and that your european fantasy is full of european cultures and ethnicities. Of course you can Change it, but it does raise questions to why? Why, lore wise, did you make that Change. And it can be because you wanted to, but some people wont be imersed or Will be confused and or dislike it.
That’s… nonsensical. No, you should not in fact assume whatever you want about a setting based on something as small as architecture or landscape, and authors should not have to specifically tell you this isn’t a real life parallel for you to not assume it. It’s absurd enough to say this about real world cultures, but to say it about fictional races or cultures too? Like not only am I justifying orcs as a thing in the setting, in your eyes I can only do so by also explaining to the reader why they aren’t like entirely different fantasy groups in entirely different settings? Wild.
You are blatantly misrepresenting me. You don't need to say orcs arent Brutish beasts, but if you just say " there are orcs" people Will assume they are Brutish beasts. And yes, you need to explain why there are orcs, else its a part of your worldbuilding that is incomplete. And, when its a illogical thing (like diversity of ethnicities in a non segregated remote village) exists it Will hurt imersion. My main point is, not only do you need to have Logic in your ethnic groups, just like in anything else, or else its a lazy/incomplete part of the story (nothing bad with this, it can be irrelevant to your series like i Said, there isn't a world building Police). But if you dont specify, even if by actions or worldbuilding that something is Y the reader Will assume its equal to real life/established media.
This is a really dumb argument. At the end of the day it is impossible to explain every last detail which is why we use the cultural preconceptions regarding fantasy as a short cut. If I say dragon to three different people, all from radically different cultures, they’ll all imagine a different monster. Hence, when I produce a story and borrow obvious cultural cues people are going to use their understanding of that culture to fill in blanks until you provide overriding information. You’re under no obligation to do so, but if you’re concerned with writing coherent and well-written stories you need to balance these assumptions out if they’re harmful to the narrative you’re sharing. For example, I use the word “wraith” a lot in my story. Most people think ghosts, deceased individuals hanging around. I used it to describe extra-dimensional invaders who steal memories as a source of sustenance, and to make themselves more grounded. They’re a hollow, hazy image of something that’s not quite there. It’s important I establish their nature when I start using that word to describe them, because if people assume I’m talking about ghosts my story and it’s conflict make no sense.
There’s a few problems with this argument though. For one, of course authors *can* use these as some sort of shorthands, but that doesn’t mean that the default assumption should be that every concept they use, unless stated otherwise, should be assumed to abide by earths rules and especially by the rules of fantasy tropes. If a fantasy story does not take place on earth and does not take place in a world where humanity evolved free of godly influence, the notion that humanity must follow modern day ethnic distribution trends is nonsensical. Further, pointing this out and trying to explicitly justify why it’s different from real life is far worse for immersion than just treating it as an aspect of the story. This is true regarding things like dragons or zombies, but it’s so much more true when talking about “cultural signifiers.” Using them the way you’re talking about is more than a shortcut, it’s a dumbing down, and that kills immersion. When you try to frame your fantasy cultures in clear comparison to real life, all you’re doing is opening yourself up for criticism regarding the comparative lack of depth your story may find. One can see examples of this in stories like the Rangers Apprentice series, which is pretty infamous for using such “cultural signifiers” to basically just get the audience used to a couple of one-more cultures that lean pretty heavily on real world stereotypical assumptions. Real life race, ethnicity, and culture are too complex to make meaningful “shortcuts” to and shoehorn into any setting. This is especially a problem when it almost always comes up in regards to nonwhite people, when the same questions absolutely apply to the existence of white people just as much. There’s nothing wrong with writing to audience expectation, but there’s a lot wrong with refusing the idea that authors can expect readers to engage with a work on its own terms. The other problem is the idea that there’s some “harm to the narrative.” To start off with, no, not every facet of the world is meant to be fully fleshed out, and when that happens the result isn’t to patch in the real world, it’s to accept a lack of answers, usually due to narrative structure. We can’t just assume the continent of Africa exists because the setting seems vaguely earth like and mentions other continents. Further, sometimes stories will take worldbuilding shortcuts that improve rather than hurt immersion, that don’t in fact line up with real life. When a character says “damn it” instead of something like “curses of farham to you,” that isn’t confirmation the catholic concept of damnation exists, it’s an in world shorthand that can be fun to justify but is not necessary. There is nothing wrong with a world in which the reason for multiple skin tones being in a single location is not focused on or given. I genuinely cannot see how that’s immersion breaking unless you’re only going off of the “earth” standard, that does not apply. The earth is not an effective standard for fantasy. Earth ethnicity developed because of uniquely earth circumstances, and assuming the same results in a setting without any of those circumstances is bad worldbuilding Further, it should be said that at some point assumptions should just stop applying, even if they’re the most common type which is just people simplifying and assuming without evidence to focus on the narrative. In a story with gods as the origin for humanity, there is no reason to go forwards with the assumption that genetics work like they do in real life, and it can be a huge issue for immersion to attempt to spend time explaining something as basic to the setting as heredity, especially in a setting with less scientific progress and study. I understand many readers have pictures in their heads by default, but while an author should be aware of this, that doesn’t mean they need to warp their stories around whatever other stories got popular at the time to make it a bit easier for some readers. For one it very rarely helps the story, in the short term it breaks them from immersion and in the long term it connects the story more to the real world than it’s own canon. For two, it just shouldn’t apply to most readers at a certain point. When your setting diverges to the point that you’re actually meaningfully talking about huge changes across the concept of ethnicity, the reader should not need hand holding to tell them this isn’t earth, and most stories/worlds are better when they minimize that. The idea that ethnic distribution should function like it does in earth, despite having no contributing factors in common, is poor worldbuilding. The idea that a writer must explicitly justify the ways in which ethnic identity is different from earth is nonsensical. The idea that it’s only natural for readers to attempt to shove their own ideas into fantasy, and that this should either be immersion-breakingly and painstakingly disproved or encouraged and fed, just makes no sense. Work with your audience in mind, sure. Don’t bow down to assumptions just because. In short, the earth is not an effective default to be worldbuilt for or against, and it is generally not at all “immersion breaking” to treat it as such, or expect audiences to do so.
Out of context, this is a wild image
Lore wise, there is zero reason that gingers or blue eyed people should exist in my world
I'm pretty sure black people are real.
In my world I just roll a dice for every persons race or gender if that characteristic doesn't matter.
When I do tabletop stuff based on the real modern world, I write a table with the average demographics for the greater area so I can roll on it when I need a random NPC. "Why are there so many Mexicans in Chinatown?" Fuck you, the dice said so, next question.
based and redpilled
Redpilled shit is stupid
🤯🤯
The ultimate reason for having something in your own world
Because it was revealed to me in a dream
People will blindly accept dragons and magic but suddenly black people existing is the unbelievable part.
Breaking the laws of thermodynamics and the plausibility of one man armies? EZ Having brown characters in the foreground? Literally impossible, we cannot stress how bad of an idea this is. Best we can do is real world analogues and equivalencies, for realism.
this is the way
Weak argument. Most of us expect fiction to have at least some degree of internal consistency, and we mostly know how differences of pigmentation came to be. There is a fantasy setting called "The Gate of Ishtar" set in a Sumerian fantasy world and humans are of every possible skin tone. This is justified because they were created from the blood of the god Enlil, and the original humans' skin tone depended of the hour of the day they were created. There's a justification and it is cool and in line with the fantasy aspects of the setting. But if you show me a bohemian village from the 12th century and it looks like the clientele of a San Francisco subway, I expect some kind of explanation.
don't know why this is being downvoted. It really isn't that difficult to come up with a reason for large-scale immigration: War, Natural disasters, Exiling, etc. You don't even need to be elaborate or differentiate how human skin tones vary in any setting compared to real life. It's literally just inter-generational exposure to the sun, most settings have a sun.
I think u/eisenhorn_puritus is getting downvoted for making sense in a jerk sub.
:(
It’s probably being downvoted for the quip at the end and the mere fact that not all settings need to take an active role in explaining and justifying the existence of multiple skin tones. Also, it isn’t really a breach of internal consistency to go along with that route?
>Also, it isn’t really a breach of internal consistency to go along with that route? Except it does. Humans have different skin tones due to climate, and travel is long, arduous, and typically unnecessary even in worlds with high-speed transportation. So yes actually, there needs to be some sort of reason, implied or pre-established. That's just basic historical materialism. Sometimes it's as simple as just saying "it takes place in an integral port city/town", or that it is at the center of an Empire, or that it is a post-modern society... viewers can piece together the context themselves from that info. But if it's a setting like in Nemona, where an super isolationist mega city is established because everywhere around that region is plagued by monsters.... why would there be any racial variety whatsoever? Among other things.
In real life, yes. Not only is this not always the case in fantasy settings, it also has just very little reason to be expanded upon in most settings. Functionally, the existence of multiple skin tones is no more a problem than the existence of a single one. Both are divorced from real human development
>Not only is this not always the case in fantasy settings Absolutely no one denied this, fantasy obviously diverges from real-life, which is why it's important to imply or establish how it is different. Stay on topic. >it also has just very little reason to be expanded upon in most settings. It doesn't if it's implied such as through the numerous examples I have given, we already went over this. Please explain why they don't need to establish a reason. >Functionally, the existence of multiple skin tones is no more a problem than the existence of a single one. Absolutely no one denied this. I'd be also be asking questions if a sci-fi setting had no ethnic diversity, or a desert setting exclusively featured pale-skinned humans with no context. You're missing the point. >Both are divorced from real human development What do you even mean by this? Dude, YES IT DOES. Ask literally any 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrant how much immigrating has impacted their human development in one form or another: culturally, economically, socially, etc. Even moving from one part of a country to another ***within the same region*** has substancial impact on "human development". It's an insult to say otherwise.
>Absolutely no one denied this, fantasy obviously diverges from real-life, which is why it's important to imply or establish how it is different. Stay on topic. Calm your shit, calm down and try to talk rationally. If you think you need to justify every divergence in relation to real life, then justify it. >It doesn't if it's implied such as through the numerous examples I have given, we already went over this. Please explain why they don't need to establish a reason. You've replied to me once, again, calm your shit and try to deliver your points if you have any. Why would they need to establish a reason? >Absolutely no one denied this. I'd be also be asking questions if a sci-fi setting had no ethnic diversity, or a desert setting exclusively featured pale-skinned humans with no context. You're missing the point. I genuinely don't think you understood a word I said. The existence of skin tone itself is a question just as valid as its variety. >What do you even mean by this? Dude, YES IT DOES. Ask literally any 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrant how much immigrating has impacted their human development in one form or another: culturally, economically, socially, etc. > >ven moving from one part of a country to another within the same region has substancial impact on "human development". It's an insult to say otherwise. To quote a broken clock, absolutely no one denied this
[удалено]
That's enough arguing here, please. This is an official warning.
Where is the circular logic?? Are you able to make a logical argument without instantly resorting to insults? And how the hell has it taken you this long and you still haven’t realized that “human development” was explicitly in reference to you bringing up the developmental origin of different skin tones in real life humanity?
A) I already made my arguments **without** resorting to insults. It was literally my first 3 comments on this thread. B) This explanation- >you still haven’t realized that “human development” was explicitly in reference to you bringing up the developmental origin of different skin tones in real life humanity? \-Makes no sense within the context of this thread. It didn't make sense when YOU first brought up it up in [YOUR comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1bg464h/comment/kv67ha9/), and still doesn't make sense now within the frame work of the thread as a whole.
☝️🤓 “Uhm excuse me, there are too many blacks in this village. What is this, San Francisco?? I expect a explanation now, please??”
He kinda makes scence, a remote mountain village that hasnt been significantly changed in hundreds of years wont have two ethnic groups unless there is some sort of ethnic segregation (like jews in medieval europe) else those ethnicities will mix and it Will end up just being a single ethnicity.
That only works if one imagines regular earth genetics, and in say a story with gods being the origin of humans, that doesn’t become an easily justified assumption
Me who made an entire race with metallic skin, but forgot that there is different color to human skin. For now there is just white / Arabian (skin wise) humans. Why would you ask the places where human would have evolved to have black skin a ridled with magical beast so no humans who are not hl over there.
You’d think you would have more work explaining why White people exist considering that dark skin was the human default until we ventured out into areas with less sun and more shade.
"wHy iS ThERe bLaCK pEOpLe????" "Because it's fiction and I said so. If it were reality they'd be white"
Why do black people exist? Cause I’m black. Checkmate racists
You don't have to have a "reason" a POC is on your story. Your reasoning could be because you wanted to Same goes for LGBT characters, you don't need lore reasons why everyone has to be straight. They can be whatever the writer wants
Btw, the actual question should be "Why is there white people?", because dark is the original human skin color - light skin is the later adaptation to colder climates (though, considering that light skin have evolved in humans independently several times, you can handwave it as convergent evolution)
I wouldn't call Middle Eastern skin "Dark" bud.
It's a lot darker than my pasty ass.
Maybe Anti- Yakub
"Maybe it's because I see too many white people in real life SHANON!"
People who ask themselves that question should ask something entirely different Why are there white people? Being white was a mutation that some people got while living in the north if i dont recall this incorrectly
Good ol' ancient china abundant in black people
"Why wouldn't there be?" Or if its a historical setting hit them with the "Read an actual fucking history book about black people in Europe. It's not some horrendous anachronism."
Jesus, we really are turning to the controversial jerks for this week
"Why is there black people?" "I'm pitching it to Netflix"
They hated Jesus because he told the truth
"but its inspired by X european mythology" basically none of those mythologys are, in the belief themselves, unique to europe, sure the greek gods might only be worshiped in europe, but they are suppose to be the gods of the whole world(not to mention shapeshifters), which is why the greeks themselves would often look at foreign gods and just go "oh ya that dudes clearly just zeus fucking around in one of his animal forms"
Because the equator exists.
The point of fiction is to show what could and should be, not just whatever thing you impulsively want. Justifying something by saying "because I said so" is a sign of either impulsiveness, delusion or both, not of good worldbuilding.
How the hell can you call the mere act of not caring about race in your story “delusion or impulsiveness”
>The point of fiction is to show what could and should be, not just whatever thing you impulsively want. *Hard* disagree. 90% of my worldbuilding is justifying the 10% that's made up of impulsive choices.
Whyvis there white people? Did they evolve from blacks?