Ethics in Magical World-Building: Fantasy Bigotry
The two generals faced off against one another. Rigwarl’s nostrils flared and he bared his tusks at his opponent, the mighty knight Fingolfin. Long had he awaited this day, when the two of them would at last meet face to face.
Fingolfin stepped forwards, smiling broadly. “It is an honor to at last meet the general who has bested my armies, Warchief Rigwarl. But I must ask…why are you green? I thought orcs were dark blue.”
Rigwarl’s jaw dropped, stunned. He shook his head and roared at him, “Those are dark elves, you daft racist! Anyway, you can’t just ask people why they’re green!”
Fingolfin stammered out an embarrassed apology, but it was too late. Rigwarl bore down upon him with his mighty war-axe. He had hoped for an honorable fight, but instead would have to settle for tearing an ignorant bigot limb from limb.
A common trope, especially in modern fantasy fiction is an attempt for a progressive, liberal metaphor extolling the virtues of tolerance through fantasy bigotry. Unlike other entries in this series where I examine a trope and its ethical applications and deliberate between them, I will simply be stating my position on this trope outright: it’s bad and no-good and I don’t like it one bit. Nah-uh.
That’s not to say there aren’t properties I enjoy that do this, such as X-men or Shadowrun. My issue is that fantasy (and science-fiction) metaphors for bigotry don’t actually help anyone. These stories are for the privileged progressives to look at each other, wink and say, “What a good person I am, I know what this story is about, and I am on the right side.” Life-style content marketed to affirm progressive identities might feel good, but it’s not actually doing good. In some cases, it may even be harmful.
In Warcraft lore, there aren’t any black people. Oh, you can play as one in WoW, but there aren’t any major black characters. You’re hard-pressed to find a single PoC in general in all of the human factions. But that’s not to say that other ethnicities aren’t represented in WoW…well, representation is not the word I’d use for it.
That’s probably as close as you are going to get to seeing an Asian person in World of Warcraft, an exaggerated caricature and some jokes regarding Chinese food. The same is similar with Orcs as stand-ins for black people (enslaved by humanity aka white people), Tauren for indigenous natives (one literally says “How!” in a racist accent), and then there are the Trolls (shadowy voodoo priests from a “mysterious” continent with Jamaican accents).
Blizzard has an unfortunate history with racial representation all around.
The approach is distressingly popular and even dates far back to Tolkien and Lord of the Rings — an approach unfortunately preserved in Peter Jackson’s live-action adaptation. Instead of having actual people of color present within the world, their roles are relegated to savage war-like monsters and inhuman species that take on gross caricatures of non-white cultures, stereotypes, and aesthetics. This approach others and quite literally dehumanizes people of color within your fantasy world. It strips them of ownership of their own culture and history, and often comes with it the baggage of whatever the creator’s stereotypes and imaginings they are now projecting onto the fantasy race.
Furthermore, this approach creates a world that is shallow, bland, and uninteresting. When entire groups of people can be summed up with a few vague ethnic stereotypes, it displays lazy writing. It’s unimaginative, and unbelievable. It’s impossible to be immersed in a fantasy world that can’t even be bothered to flesh out the various different cultures of people that inhabit it.
Veering back into my lane, I want to talk about another kind of fantasy oppression metaphor: the all-around vague minority metaphor, for when you can’t be bothered to comment on a specific marginalized identity’s oppression so you just have one group be a catch-all for all of them. Let’s talk about Dragon Age. Let’s talk about Mages.
In Dragon Age, mages are persecuted and kept under tight lock and key by the Templars. They must pass a strict ritual and serve the Templars or else be summarily executed. Their state is that of a second-class citizen under the weight of fascist rule. Your magic will serve us, or you will die.
This by itself, is not necessarily a problem. Written well, this could have been an interesting look into how fascist governments systematically dehumanize and other their victims by spewing propaganda that justifies their oppression. To write something like that, however, would require careful thought and research. It’d take a deep understanding, and possibly factor in minority perspectives in order to understand how this kind of oppression operates in even more outspokenly “liberal” governments.
Of course, that might make the player not like the Templars all that much, and so Dragon Age immediately bungles its own oppression metaphor by creating a justification for its existence. If mages fail their trial, they may very well become possessed by a demon. Turns out this is so common, it’s the entire reason for the Templar’s existence. Mages are a legitimate danger and must be kept on a short leash or else they are liable to destroy everyone and everything around them.
This is why we can’t have nice things. This exists elsewhere in science-fiction, with anti-omnic sentiment in Overwatch, and the X-men as well. A failure to understand why systematic persecution of minorities exists often leads writers attempting to justify it, as if the propaganda that the marginalized are dangerous must be true in order for the oppression to exist, or even begin.
Real-life bigotry also comes with a real propaganda effort in order to justify it. Anti-trans bathroom legislation is always accompanied by fear-mongering lies about trans women sexually assaulting cis women in bathrooms. The notorious ’94 crime bill that led to the rise of incarcerations of black Americans was accompanied by speeches about violent thugs and “super predators.” Whenever any type of oppressive legislation that discriminates against a minority is about to be passed, it will always be followed by an attempt to smear that minority as dangerous, violent, and deserving of what happens to them. In order to justify their treatment of minorities, they must first be othered and dehumanized.
Science fiction and fantasy narratives that play into this by justifying the oppression with their own in-universe reasons, whether it be magical, a war, or a dangerous mutation, are lending weight to bigoted ideas and furthering marginalization. These stories put the blame of minority oppression on the victims, and at their most sympathetic seem to be saying that yes, minorities are dangerous, but we should still be nice to them anyway, right? It’s naive at best, and helps absolutely no one.
One unfortunate side-effect from these frequent metaphors for fantasy bigotry, is that we have entire fans of these properties with a very clear moral direction who still harbor bigotries against those minorities. There are legions of racist and borderline nazi Star Trek fans, and many more anti-semitic and queerphobic X-men fans within the geek community. It’s not so much that the points of these properties fly over their heads, but that the metaphors they use are completely toothless. They only teach you anything if you were already a member of the converted.
As Fangs for Fantasy points out, these stories also do minorities a disservice by appropriating our struggles without equally representing us in them. Fantasy stories exist that examine systemic racism without featuring a single person of color. Dragon Age played its catch-all metaphor for minority oppression and it was three games before there was even a gay male party member in the series. As a trans person, it is quite frustrating to constantly be compared to elves, wizards, and dragons before someone like me is ever allowed to exist within the pages of a fantasy novel.
Part of me might not feel too terrible about fantasy and science fiction being used to explore marginalization and oppression, after all, the beauty of speculative fiction is being allowed to explore aspects of humanity with the distance imagination and an alternative setting can provide, but so often minorities are completely shut-out and excluded from these genres. It doesn’t feel like allyship, so much as a self-flagellation on behalf of the writer. Next time you’re considering using a fantasy race or class of people as a stand-in for exploring marginalization and oppression within society, ask yourself if any minorities are represented within your story. It’ll make your world richer and more authentic. By this point, fantasy bigotry has moved from trope to outright cliche. Perhaps it’s one that ought to retire in favor of stories about actual marginalized people.
Dorian Dawes is the writer of the queer horror anthology Harbinger Island. You can support their other work at patreon.com/doriandawes