Hearthpwn

Why does there happen to be a lack of black/Asian representation in western fantasy these days?

I understand when it comes to Tolkien who basically invented the idea of orcs and elves and that times were different then but when it comes to modern fantasy there just seems to be a lack of. I'm guessing the creators just blend what was already there and build upon it.

Is it a lack of of black/asian people working on these projects?

I suppose im primarily focusing on warcraft but I think there is a general expectations that fantasy creatures are white.

What do you think?

Are you refering to specifically to video games?  Because I agree with you there.

In terms of modern TV shows and Movies, it is getting much more diverse... Witcher, upcoming Wheel of Time tv series etc..

Quote from Beep_Beep >>

Are you refering to specifically to video games?  Because I agree with you there.

In terms of modern TV shows and Movies, it is getting much more diverse... Witcher, upcoming Wheel of Time tv series etc..

 

 To be honest I wasn't but it's a fair observation. I was just considering fantasy as a genre. Elder scrolls have the red guard which have so far been highly unrepresented. All those fantasy novels that i've attempted to read but never finished. Just fantasy as itself.

Seems clearly intentionally controversial to me. Avatar and posts number seem to corroborate this idea.

What do you think?

I think it's no time and place for politics

I really didn't intend to cause offence and rarely talk about this kind of stuff. It was just an observation. People need to chill

Quote from MurlocHolmes_HS >>

Moved to General Chat -- doesn't directly pertain to the game or gameplay.

 yeah sorry. I don't usually post and didnt know where to put it. Had a few glasses of wine

I... what? Night Elves, Draenei, Worgen, Pandaren, Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, Goblins, Nightborne, Vulpera, Zandalari Trolls, Mag'har Orcs are just some playable races that are just not white at all, and even the ones that are white (or more accurately) "caucasian looking" in many cases let you change your skin-color to non-white.

You could argue that there's too many white people among the main story characters in many games, including Warcraft games, and you have a point there, that's definitely the case, but at the same time it feels forced for every game to NEED to have just a random mix of all the earth races, even though Earth doesn't even exist in the game's universe. There's no China on Azeroth, why does it need Chinese-looking people? And that's not saying the "human" race in a game has to be Caucasian-looking. If I played a game set in a fictional universe and everyone looked like Native American or Middle-Eastern, or East-Asian, I don't mind that in the slightest. The fact that the default skin colour if a game only has one race is pretty much always white is definitely an example of "western bias" or whatever you wanna call it. But if your game has races, I expect them to make sense. If your entire inhabited world is in a temperate climate, or if travel in your world is slow and difficult, and yet every isolated farm village still somehow has a random mixture of different races, I'm sorry, that comes across as a lazy attempt to fit an arbitrary "diversity quota" to me. 

If a game has underground cave-dwelling dwarves, they should probably be (a very pale shade of) white or grey, since they don't need melanin and would likely either not develop it or lose the gene for it after relocating underground. If your game has a human culture that has lived in a scorching desert for thousands of years, they should be black, since that's a genetic advantage that's the reason there's black people on earth. If there's extensive travel, it makes sense for some race mixing, white people living in a desert or black people living in an icy landscape, or anything else. You can even have temperate areas with plenty or a majority of black people if that makes sense with the history of your world. Maybe a major civilization that lived in a desert area conquered much of the known world. Works perfectly fine. Hell, you can even just have black people everywhere, maybe a structural protein in the skin of the people in your world tints the skin black and so everyone is dark-skinned, even though that didn't arise as an adaptation to high intensity of sunlight.

Pretty much any kind of racial structure is fine by me. It's fantasy after all. What I hate though, is when games feel the need to have every single zone a random mixture of different earth races, even though that makes no sense thematically, culturally, ecologically or historically. That's not inclusivity in my book, it's pandering. You're telling me that your fictional world, which has nothing to do with Earth, somehow just randomly developed all the same races? And they're all magically uniformly spread all over your world? Come on now. That's not even the case on Earth, and the availability of travel here is such that  most people can afford to just buy a plane ticket and be on the complete opposite side of the planet within a day.

If you want to see an example of diversity in fantasy done right, read Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. If you like books at all, you should read it in any case, it's one of the best works of fantasy literature ever, but that's getting off the point. The main culture in SA is very obviously closer to Asian than anything else in our world. That's never explicitly stated in the books, but it's very easy to realize it from the descriptions of characters and cultures. It's not just a carbon copy of any people in Asia either, it's just one of those things where if you saw an Alethi randomly on earth you'd be more likely to describe them as Asian rather than Caucasian. Then there's also people like the Thaylens, who have extremely long eyebrow hairs, to the point that it's a common fashion for them to tuck them behind their ears. I love things like those. It's a very possible genetic variation humans that lived in a completely different environment from us for thousands and thousands of years could have, and it's just much cooler than deciding that your fictional world just has all the same old boring races as planet Earth.

Sorry if that was a bit ranty, wanted to get my thoughts on the topic out, and it's hard to be concise when it comes to subjects like these.

Wow, this thread never should have been made and it’s worse now…

I’ll try to contribute constructively though instead of just bitching. I think think that there is much more representation of all people in modern fantasy. It’s easy to say we need more x characters, but let’s look at hearthstone and it’s closest counterpart, mtg. For HS, We have a non-binary character and two Black characters in the last expansion. Basing this off of American populations, this is in line with total demographics, if not over-represented. Basing it on the total number of characters in HS, this is a good representation, more Black women than turtles.

Now for MTG, there are tons of ethnicities, sexualities and genders represented. There are popular cards depicting interracial homosexual men standing together with a caption of “look what we have created.” This is definitely sufficient right? I’m not arguing that there needs to be more or less of anything, but when we are doing a good job of including people, let’s not stoke false outrage by shitposting trolls.

Quote from Beatsz >>

I... what? Night Elves, Draenei, Worgen, Pandaren, Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, Goblins, Nightborne, Vulpera, Zandalari Trolls, Mag'har Orcs are just some playable races that are just not white at all, and even the ones that are white (or more accurately) "caucasian looking" in many cases let you change your skin-color to non-white.

You could argue that there's too many white people among the main story characters in many games, including Warcraft games, and you have a point there, that's definitely the case, but at the same time it feels forced for every game to NEED to have just a random mix of all the earth races, even though Earth doesn't even exist in the game's universe. There's no China on Azeroth, why does it need Chinese-looking people? And that's not saying the "human" race in a game has to be Caucasian-looking. If I played a game set in a fictional universe and everyone looked like Native American or Middle-Eastern, or East-Asian, I don't mind that in the slightest. The fact that the default skin colour if a game only has one race is pretty much always white is definitely an example of "western bias" or whatever you wanna call it. But if your game has races, I expect them to make sense. If your entire inhabited world is in a temperate climate, or if travel in your world is slow and difficult, and yet every isolated farm village still somehow has a random mixture of different races, I'm sorry, that comes across as a lazy attempt to fit an arbitrary "diversity quota" to me. 

If a game has underground cave-dwelling dwarves, they should probably be (a very pale shade of) white or grey, since they don't need melanin and would likely either not develop it or lose the gene for it after relocating underground. If your game has a human culture that has lived in a scorching desert for thousands of years, they should be black, since that's a genetic advantage that's the reason there's black people on earth. If there's extensive travel, it makes sense for some race mixing, white people living in a desert or black people living in an icy landscape, or anything else. You can even have temperate areas with plenty or a majority of black people if that makes sense with the history of your world. Maybe a major civilization that lived in a desert area conquered much of the known world. Works perfectly fine. Hell, you can even just have black people everywhere, maybe a structural protein in the skin of the people in your world tints the skin black and so everyone is dark-skinned, even though that didn't arise as an adaptation to high intensity of sunlight.

 I understand what you're saying with regards to some races not even having that kind of differation. That's a fair point.

I think it's fine that there are no other races  in fantasy literature. It is that way because the people who create these worlds take heavy inspiration from the world around them.

When I went to fur conventions there were like 3 black guys among 500 white guys and girls. I don't have an easy answer for why that is.

I'd like to see more race integration.

Game of thrones

Warcraft

LOTR

I dunno

Quote from Beatsz >>

Pretty much any kind of racial structure is fine by me. It's fantasy after all. What I hate though, is when games feel the need to have every single zone a random mixture of different earth races, even though that makes no sense thematically, culturally, ecologically or historically. That's not inclusivity in my book, it's pandering. You're telling me that your fictional world, which has nothing to do with Earth, somehow just randomly developed all the same races? And they're all magically uniformly spread all over your world? Come on now. That's not even the case on Earth, and the availability of travel here is such that  most people can afford to just buy a plane ticket and be on the complete opposite side of the planet within a day.

If you want to see an example of diversity in fantasy done right, read Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. If you like books at all, you should read it in any case, it's one of the best works of fantasy literature ever, but that's getting off the point. The main culture in SA is very obviously closer to Asian than anything else in our world. That's never explicitly stated in the books, but it's very easy to realize it from the descriptions of characters and cultures. It's not just a carbon copy of any people in Asia either, it's just one of those things where if you saw an Alethi randomly on earth you'd be more likely to describe them as Asian rather than Caucasian. Then there's also people like the Thaylens, who have extremely long eyebrow hairs, to the point that it's a common fashion for them to tuck them behind their ears. I love things like those. It's a very possible genetic variation humans that lived in a completely different environment from us for thousands and thousands of years could have, and it's just much cooler than deciding that your fictional world just has all the same old boring races as planet Earth.

Sorry if that was a bit ranty, wanted to get my thoughts on the topic out, and it's hard to be concise when it comes to subjects like these.

 A fair point. It really should make sense geographically. I'll give Stormlight Archive a look.

Quote from RendInFriend >>

Wow, this thread never should have been made and it’s worse now…

I’ll try to contribute constructively though instead of just bitching. I think think that there is much more representation of all people in modern fantasy. It’s easy to say we need more x characters, but let’s look at hearthstone and it’s closest counterpart, mtg. For HS, We have a non-binary character and two Black characters in the last expansion. Basing this off of American populations, this is in line with total demographics, if not over-represented. Basing it on the total number of characters in HS, this is a good representation, more Black women than turtles.

Now for MTG, there are tons of ethnicities, sexualities and genders represented. There are popular cards depicting interracial homosexual men standing together with a caption of “look what we have created.” This is definitely sufficient right? I’m not arguing that there needs to be more or less of anything, but when we are doing a good job of including people, let’s not stoke false outrage by shitposting trolls.

 I dont follow MTG but you provide a fair argument. There has defiantly been a a shift

Quote from Beatsz >>

If you want to see an example of diversity in fantasy done right, read Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. If you like books at all, you should read it in any case, it's one of the best works of fantasy literature ever, but that's getting off the point. 

 I really can't stand Brandon Sanderson since he did the last books of the wheel of time. I had been reading WoT since 1990 and yes RObert Jordan's writing style changed from then to his death, but I really didn't connect with Brandon's style and the ending felt blah.  You can argue that because he didn't write the entire series with his own ideas, that it influenced what he could do... but it doesn't matter, it's already tainted now.