inspired by the previous question, in writing about these things, how would one go about still having different races like orcs, elves, dwarves, without making them psychologically equivalent to any humans? at least if one doesnt want to just repeat poor ways of going about it.

a second on it, if one wants a faction of fairly intelligent monsters, who are a threat to the heroes, what could be a good approach?

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(With reference to this post there.)

Well, that's the trick, isn't it? One of the central pillars of racial pseudoscience is the assertion that there are multiple, materially distinct "species" of humans (or, more broadly, of people). Most refutations of race science don't go any further than pointing out that this is false, because they don't need to go any further – losing that pillar kicks the legs out from under the whole affair. However, if you're designing a fantasy or science fiction setting with alien or non-human sapients that aren't just humans with funny foreheads, you're necessarily describing a world where the assertion that there are multiple, materially distinct species of people is, in fact, true.

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that you're inherently Doing Race Science, but you do have to face the fact that you're imagining a world where one of race science's central pillars is true. Some people adopt the zero tolerance stance that positing the truth of any part of race science is just as bad as positing the truth of all of it, which is where we end up with the argument that speculative fiction has a moral obligation to depict humanity as alone in the universe. Certainly, this is a hard-line position, but it doesn't come out of nowhere.

Ultimately, there's no magic bullet solution. You just have to think carefully about what you're doing, be conversant in the history of race science in speculative fiction in order to identify the less obvious pitfalls, and be prepared to accept that some people are never going to be satisfied with any solution other than the humans-are-alone-in-the-universe approach.

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Runaway to the Stars, by Tumblr user @jayrockin , is doing this rather well. Look into the depths of the world data and you'll find some very interesting things.

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Original Poster

@loki-zen The argument you're trying to refute isn't one that anyone in the subthread you're quoting is actually making. You're debating an imaginary version of my response.

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I think I'm debating something that is at minimum heavily implied by language you're using and the way you're talking about it actually? Like its not that you're saying you can't do that and it is racist if you do. But you are very much couching it in terms of something that's dangerously close and you need to be Really Careful, in contrast to the alternative which does not (in your account) possess such traits.

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@loki-zen So it's like I'm not disagreeing with your overall point I just think that you can conceptualise this as positively pro-equality in the things you can read it as a metaphor for; and not solely as something racist-associated that might be salvageable if you're Really Careful

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Original Poster

@loki-zen I'm not making any moral claims about ideological proximity. Ideological intent counts for very little in media; what you intend to produce can be different from what you actually produce due to context that's beyond your control, and you don't get to dictate whether that context is relevant or not. What I'm describing here isn't a *moral* risk, but a practical risk of recapitulating certain tropes regardless of your intent because you didn't think your shit through. (I didn't claim that any alternative approach wholly lacks this risk, either. Plenty of well-meaning speculative fiction tries to circle around the issue by taking the humans-with-funny-foreheads tack and ends up face-planting into racial pseudoscience anyway – witness "Star Trek" and its various imitators.)

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Perhaps the post just read very differently to me than you intended. Because what I'm seeing is one approach discussed in terms of, e.g. "you're not *inherently* doing race science" (very much damning with faint praise), and the positions of people who just flat-out say you should never write this way at all not *endorsed* necessarily but *repeatedly* brought up and characterised as reasonable. I feel as though it's not insane to read your post as underlining the riskiness inherent in going near the concept of meaningfully different species (which is repeatedly contrasted with the idea of not doing that as being much more Acceptable to everyone; the idea that that could have pitfalls besides maybe being a little boring doesn't come up)

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Perhaps it's just the context; I feel like people on tumblr are predisposed to be extremely skittish about this sort of thing, and that's colouring how I read it

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Original Poster

I don't disagree that folks on Tumblr tend to be gunshy about this sort of thing, but you do have to bear in mind that Tumblr's culturally dominant frame of reference for fantasy worldbuilding is "Dungeons & Dragons", a media franchise that only officially moved away from the concept of specific races having hard-coded moral predispositions, like, last year.

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And if you want to show that someone is REALLY struggling with the language they're trying to speak: instead of "caveman speak", have them say individual words, maybe a few common phrases they've memorized, interspersed by gestures and very obvious frustration. Because it is EXTREMELY frustrating to not be able to communicate properly.

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I don’t get it. I haven’t seen anyone state that *any and all fiction that depicts extraterrestrials* is racist, so why is it different for fantasy worldbuilding? “This fictional world contains multiple sapient species” implies nothing about humanity. The point where the racism come in is anything directed at inventing a sapient species that it is, by default, completely unproblematic to kill.

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