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@i-david

Now. On to your question about races.

I, honestly, love the traditional races of elves and dwarfs and trolls, etc. But they definitely can get cliche and predictable. I also like cat-people(I have no idea what they’re actually called…), bird-people, winged humans, lizard-folk, dragonborn(*cough* myself *cough*), shapeshifters, werewolves, etc…. they’re fun. I love having lots of races in my fantasy. Like in my main WIP, I have elves, Cait-Sylf(kind of a variant of Cat Sidhe and cat-people), gnomes, dwarves, dragons(they’re intelligent creatures, so they count as a race here), and dragonborn… there’s also Masters/Mages who can come from any race but their magical powers sort of make them their own sub-race within their specific races.

So, in short… I like having lots of races. It’s fantasy, isn’t it? If you’re going to title something fantasy, it should be fantastical. Not a bunch of humans running around with swords in medieval England/France.

One thing I must say–I hate, hate, hate, hate how in fantasy the addition of races doesn’t change anything about politics, where people live, worldveiw, etc. If you have races that can overpower a human in mere seconds, why are the humans still free? If you have a race that can see in the dark well, why are they not on top demand as mine workers or even assassins? If you have a race that is odd, segregated, and displaced among the modern society, why are they still that way?

I like to see diversity in fantasy–not, oh and this dude is black, and that girl is Asian-looking–but actually diversity that fits the worlds. Elven children playing with gnomes. Immortal races taking care of the mortals, and fighting their enemies for them because they cannot die while their dear mortal friends can. A large leopard-man teaching a human child how to shoot a boy and throw knives.

I know there’s this big thing in fantasy now that you use it to show racism and such–but it’s so poorly done. If you’re going to write things like racism into a fantasy novel, you can’t do it the way it is in this world, because it’s not this world. What if, in your fantasy world, white people are the weird ones? What if cat-people are tacked to be mercenaries because of their skills and natural talents, and your character is someone trying to break that mold? You can’t just slap on “she’s black” and “he’s Indian” in fantasy just because you want to show racism in your novel. That’s not how it works.

And that is all I’m going to say for now. I could write a novella about this topic, but I’ll let you off with a forum page. XD