Our Humans Are Better (but it's bullshit)

Why is it that humans are constantly and consistently depicted as the quintessential race and culture within the bounds fantasy? This is especially prevalent (and notorious) in Dungeons & Dragons.

They're always portrayed as having the most land, resources and overall influence compared to other nations
Shorter lifespans? Means jack shit for some reason. They apparently learn and adapt in decades what takes centuries for the other races. Immortal humans? My god.
Think elves are the masters of magic? Nope, humans have pushed it further and produced far greater wizards.
The gods themselves are modeled after the fucking homo sapiens, what gives? Were all the gods originally human or do they favor them above the others?

They're also almost always white, privileged or not.
What the fuck is this?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kirchholm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Because we're humans and want to see humans succeed.
If you don't like it then change it.

>They're also almost always white, privileged or not.

You've uhhhh... never read the 5e Player's Handbook, have you?

Human writers, human readers, easier to self-insert that way, nobody got Lovecrafts point, but rather fellate ourselves in fictional works because reality is harsh.

It sometimes doesn't even make much sense if you think things through and ultimately just amounts to writers bias. Personally I'm tired of it, there is nothing original or engaging about it and most of the time I'm not even sure what the author wants to tell me with it.

Sorry, it was more of a jab than bait. Everything else is quite genuine on my part.

5e has been very inclusive.

elves reach maturity @ 120 years old
>twenty years of potty training
>sixty years of adolescence.

The poor parents

Magical elf condoms are an absolute necessity.

I'm not seeing you complaining about dwarves. Also you got this completely wrong, they are considered by their fellow elves to be adults, but they mature at a similar rate as humans.

This isn't what this thread is supposed to be about, anyway.

>they mature at a similar rate as humans

Not according to Drizzt's fabulous creator
Elves are like children before they reach the three digits.

That changes from writer to writer and from edition to edition. At most they have an extented tie as teens.
>criticize hfy
>but muh elves
Good job. Again, why am I not hearing anything about dwarves?

Dwarves are considered men at birth

That explains the lack of dwarven girls.

Sorry, I'm not finding anything about this.

Are you obsessed with dwarves?

>They're also almost always white, privileged or not.
What the fuck is this?

Well, getting upset that humans look like the creators AND audience of the genre, in settings where evolution and melanin differences doesn't even have to exist is not the most retarded thing you'll find on Veeky Forums, but it's up there.

Modern fantasy is heavily based on Western folklore by way of Tolkien. When described in stories, these beings would either be explicitly or implicitly compared to humans i.e. trolls are stupid (compared to humans), elves are beautiful and long-lived (compared to humans). It's simply much easier to work from a person's own frame of reference when it will suffice rather than ask them to imagine a different reference frame so as not to insult the sensibilities of fictional gnomes. And of course they're much fewer than humans at least where humans tend to dwell because otherwise, where are all the dwarves? Even when the reigns are let down , people tend to stick with their ingrained instinct on the matter.

Everything else in your post is bad generalization.

>nobody got Lovecraft's point

Which is strange because everyone seems to tell me that.

I really don't see humans succeeding so much in a setting with races like orcs or elves around. Dwarves I can understand since they stick to the mountains.

But orcs are stronger and breed much faster. They would dominate primitive human tribes with no problems.

And imagine how scary elf tribes would be in primitive times without armor to protect from arrows. And their natural magic.

Humans being the dominant race always needs some stupid shit to happen to other races like War of the Beard in Warhammer.

This is an Eberron picture, right?

Why are half of these obvious transvestites?

Dwarves; They hide in their mountains seeking riches...
Elves; They live half-dreamt lives within their forests
Gnomes; Gardening and with ambitions that never reach further than their homesteads
Hobbits; They are content within a good meal and a pint of beer
Humans; Fuck Yeah!

>Humans; slaughtering each other over imaginary friends.

Sounds like you hate your own species

Daily reminder modern homo-sapiens literally wiped out Neanderthals(!notorcs)

Not about hate, but it's pretty easy to recognize that orcs would out compete us in the hunter-gatherer phase because the main advantages that humans tend to have over orcs is technology, resources per person, applied knowledge, and societal and military coherency. Take things back to the stone age and humans are basically just smaller, weaker, less prolific orcs.

Of course most fantasy settings get around this by the world usually being young and wrought fully formed by [your creation myth here].

You make this sound like more of a straightforward race war than it was.

Neanderthals were shorter, stouter, considerably stronger, but considerably less prolific than humans so they were more like !notdwarves. Also the most likely reason they were eliminated was simply because there were more of us pouring into Eurasia than there were Neanderthals, so really, we orc'd them.

Looks like white human guilt: the post

>This is an Eberron picture, right?
>Why are half of these obvious transvestites?
The first question is the answer to the second question.

>humans need to auto succeed and be mary sues because I'm human

This is why 99% of fantasy writers are garbage.

we interbred with them and outcompeted them, so more like, one day grampa neanderthal notices that there are just less and less full blooded neanders around. and a few generations later there is just humans.

After many years arguing its generally agreed upon that Europeans and near-easterners have chunks of Neanderthal DNA in our genome

Love can bloom

They breed slower than humans and lived in small communities.

They were nothing like orcs. It's more like homo sapiens was the orcs in this case.

>Why is it that humans are constantly and consistently depicted as the quintessential race and culture within the bounds fantasy?
Because you can't go too far from established standarads in fantasy, or you lose your audience.

Literal humans with knife ears and long lifespan with human-like culture as one of the quintessential races? Everyone jizzes themselves over it.
Telekinetic hivemind rocks with inhuman culture as one of the quintessential races? Sorry, you just lost your entire audience.

People are mindless. They use shorthands all the time. And if the culture you are using isn't human-like, then no one wants to bother learning about it.
That's the thing, elves can be replaced by a similar human culture, with only exception of the long lifespan. Same can be said about dwarves and orcs and halflings etc.

Standard fantasy races are boring as fuck. They also are convenient shorthands that everyone is familiar with, so everyone keeps using them.
Personally, I don't see the point - if your culture can be replaced by a similar human one, why bother making another race in the first place?
But people like it. People want the human values and human culture to apply to fantasy races, because that's what they are familiar with.

This is why humans are constantly and consistently depicted as the quintessential race and culture within the bounds fantasy - because every single fucking thing is modeled off them.

I think the point was that humans shouldn't be #1.

I can see them being one of the more influential races, but definitely not the most numerous strongest race in control of 3/4 of the world.

If someone said this to me during a conversation, I'd be looking for the moment they stopped respecting me and started putting me on.

>They're also almost always white, privileged or not.
Nobody wants to play as a nigger.

>Think elves are the masters of magic? Nope, humans have pushed it further and produced far greater wizards.

I never liked elves being the absolute best at magic. I prefer it when there's no blatant superior, as it gives a variety to the magic in the setting.
Humans being -at least- as powerful as the elves when it comes to the arcane really evens things out.

Of course in some settings the reverse has actually intrigued me. Warhammer being an example.
Not that humans can't surpass the high elves assuming they follow Nagash as a role model.

All the shit you wrote can be just summed up as
>waaaah I am bitter because no one liked my new and unique setting

No user, the reason no one liked your setting is because it wasn't interesting. In this short text alone you are jumping through so many mental hoops to justify your taste in fantasy being superior to all others its not even funny.

More annoying than any genericness elves and dwarfs are people like you, who are so disgustingly tryhard at being unique and special snowflakes and yet wonder why they fail at trying to reinvent the wheel.

Doesn't contradict what I said. Whether we killed them, fucked them, or food yoinked them out of existence (or more likely a mix of the three), they got orc'd.

>humans
>better than the elves at magic
>every d&d setting ever

it gets tedious user

>I prefer it when there's no blatant superior
Why the fuck shouldn't be there someone being better than someone else at something? What's the point of fantasy races if they can't have their pros and cons, be it in fluff or crunch?

Gonna start of by apologizing for taking the bait.

>Most land resources
They are the guys we identify with so they are usually the winners, it also makes it easier to contrast with everything else.

> Shorter lifespans etc.
If you have 3 months to write 1000 words or 1 week to write the same thousand words which gets completed faster? There's also bioological and cultural reasons but mostly depends on the setting.

> Magic
Same as the former. Also if someone has the potential to be a great magician appears say ocne every million births, which race is going to have more, basically quantity > quality. Humans have both the worst and the best mages, elves have a better average in a chunk of settings. Again depends on the setting.

> Gods
Most fantasy settings I've read, each race has their own pantheon, your argument here is poorly though out.

>White
Until you mentioned privilege I almost thought it wasn't bait.
Most fantasy is/has been written by white people for white people in fantasy not Europe. Get over yourself and stop trying to push a nonexistent narrative. If I went to china, japan korea or any middle-eastern country and complained there books were mostly about and included people of their race I'd be laughed off of the continent or more likely ignored because if I did that I'd be a fucking moron, kinda like you actually.

Nah, I never wrote a setting in my life. I can wrtie for shit.
But when every single fantasy setting makes it a point to include elves|dwarves|etc. in some capacity, just because "everybody does it", you know you have a problem.

I should have worded it better. More so they're not better based on innate ability.

Rather every race has a chance to become one of the great ones. That kind of thing.

>nobody got Lovecrafts point
The point being that 'life sucks'? I'm pretty sure every gets that which is why most people like feel-good-happy-time fiction because we can get more than enough 'life sucks' in, you know, real life. Also since you are such a Lovecraft loving intellectual could you tell me what he was trying to tell me in "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" other than "I'm a paranoid racist"?

Because elves are fucking retarded. They're also pretentious as fuck with their magic. Human wizards get shit DONE.

That's still the same. What's the point of having any fantasy creatures if they don't have innate abilities? Just aesthetics?

You could write fantasy novels user.

>muh humans

In reality humans would go extinct or get conquered.

Yes user, having longer lifespans usually means you procreate less.

I don't know? Magic based on ethnicity and culture? All different and unique?

It's rather more interesting.

It's because we are white humans. All fantasy is riffing off of white human traditions and folklore. Shut the fuck up idiot.

>it takes them much longer to die
Only of old age.
Humans beat elves because of raw numbers, not because 1 on 1 humans are superior.

>muh innately magical elves
>still worse than not-magical humans

kek

Didn't know that elves are real so we could quantify that this is an established fact.

In warcraft orcs aren't native to the world and was lead by the burning legion (space demons) to invade the world and destroy the elves. They had a war with humans and basically destroyed one of the (2 or 3 in total) human kingdoms as well as destroying some minor dwarven kingdoms.

Humans only defeated the orcs once they allied with the elves and dwarfs to counter attack them.

It's kinda interesting that humans have nothing to do with the war but get caught in the crossfire and the elves just use the humans as meatshield against the orcs (and hire human soldiers to hunt the trolls that infest elven forests).

It's kinda sad to see that most warcraft books focus on the orcs (especiall Thrall, he is such a boring character) instead of the politics of the world.

In reality only humans exist. So kind of a moot point, you stupid fuck.

Fantasy races were a mistake. They're only ever used as a crutch for the world. Need a savage foreign group to be antagonists, or possibly noble savage protaganists instead? Orcs. Or maybe woodland elves. Need a luxurious noble race of angellic beings? High Elves.

>idiot weeb poster

Pay no attention

In pre firearms times elite warriors almost always slaughtered much larger armies of less competent warriors.

>not because 1 on 1 humans are superior

1 on 1 humans are always superior, user

the rule of cool says so

>humans are the ancient race
>get oppressed once or twice making em violently chimp out
>someone else chimps out
>they chimp out HARDER
>someone tries to subdue them
>chimping out just goes full retard
>finally decide to just put them om their own agic bubble to avoid the humaning
>main religion is a literal genocide endorsing death cult
>supposed to be the good boys
Ophiel is right.

>a setting and genre created entirely by white male humans, for a massive majority white male human audience, prominently features white male humans...
>HHMMMMMMMMMMM
>REALLY FIRIN UP MY BRAIN ALMONDS

>Magic based on ethnicity and culture?
You mean like the difference between moon elves and wild elves? Ultimately it's exactly the same, there is really nothing more interesting about this.

Yeah, human authors are really retarded if they let their own bias influence their writing.

Try to counter that. Imagine elves forcing human army to have a night battle. Literally one sided slaughter even if there are 10x more humans.

>he thinks human wizards being better than elf wizards is based on bias
>the irony here is that he's probably a bias elf retard

:^)

Nope.
Post firearms era is actually way more in favor of elite soldiers

These guys know what's up.

Of course you would think that

>Need a luxurious noble race of angellic beings? High Elves.
I prefer mine to be a dying race of assholes who are wiling to help you, but they're still a bunch of assholes. What the fuck is with everyone shitty on humans, when we are selfs are humans and humans make the god damn literature and media outlets for fantasy. I swear if people hate humanity that much they have to make their own little world where humans are the shittest of shit, then maybe they should kill themselves. After all, if you dislike humans that much, then you must hate yourself for being human.

>fucking homo

user, warrior cultures with elite armies always slaughtered more numerous but less warlike cultures before gunpowder happened.

Tell me, why should elves be the best at magic? Because they're magical?

That apparently doesn't stop humans from outplaying them at every opportunity.

user, both are completely made-up things, yet one of these goes around with + INT and is often described by human authors to be the better mages, so it's only the authors fault if they can't follow their own rules.

>Tell me, why should elves be the best at magic?
They don't need to, but they, or moreso some of their subraces, is often described as such and there is no good, innate reason for humans having the superior mages over anyone else.

It's also pretty common for orcs to be an invented race, either created whole cloth through sorcery or being a magically twisted form of an existing race. Point is, there are a lot of ways to get around orcs wrecking our shit before the end of the Pleistocene.

It is real in the DnD settings. And animals with longer lifespans usually reproduce less.

>often described by human authors to be the better mages
>so it's only the authors fault if they can't follow their own rules.

Except it's the exact fucking opposite. Not just with the authors, but in previous editions as well

Remember when elves couldn't be magic-users? I sure do.
Remember that time Ed Greenwood said humans were at least as good as the elves? Yeah, me too.

Humans being better than the elves at magic has always been a thematically appropriate plot standard.
Elves respect magic, humans abuse it. There is a clear contrast.

>Because they're magical?

Yes? They have innate magical abilities. Humans don't. They live much longer giving them more time to learn.

Humans outdoing elves at magic is retarded.

You need to ditch that bias, son.

>And animals with longer lifespans usually reproduce less.

Because they are larger? Are you really comparing rats to human sized animals?

If you look at mammals with similar size to humans they breed at very similar rates to us.

That's retarded.

You need to ditch human bias first.

That's not the point. The point is humanity is only but a small thing in the universe.

There is no human bias. You're complaining about something that has been pivotal for decades.

Look at Rome or China. Or even some stuff already form gunpowder age.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kirchholm

Elite highly trained warriors always slaughtered standard soldiers unless some kind of disaster happened.

Maybe in D&D.

>You need to ditch human bias first.
How the hell can he when he's a fucking Homo Sapiens. What are you, a fucking Homo Neanderthalensis? Homo Heidelbergensis? Or maybe your a bonafide faggot?

>Humans outdoing elves at magic is retarded.

Why are you playing D&D then? Anti-Netherese scumbag.

Run along to Warhammer now.

In what fucking world are the militaries of ancient rome and china elite forces?

>Why are you playing D&D then?

Dude, I'm no longer 14. I stopped playing D&D ages ago.

That's the point you idiot. Romans and Chinks got fucked by actual warrior cultures.

>Remember when elves couldn't be magic-users?
You mean when they were fighter-mages?

Anyways, all fantasy races are literally just thinly-veiled nonwhite cultures with a paintjob. May as well drop the act.

Also, what the fuck are you even arguing about, elves are a fake race. They're not real. And theres a thousand different kinds of them depending on the fantasy universe. Originally, elves were just invisible wise spirits that caused disease and sometimes helped people. Pretty much a metaphor of a sort for disease and genetics by the Germanics.

>Romans and Chinks got fucked by actual warrior cultures.

HAHAHAHAHA

That wasn't really his point either insofar as he had a point. His writing isn't didactic.

The entire point with DnD human mages is that there are so many humans and they are so varied genetic freak accidents happen. Very few humans can be very good at magic but the best 0.001% can surpass even magical races.

The stupid part is humans outnumbering races that live for centuries. Even if elves breed few times slower (without real reason) they would still have high population just because they can live for 800 years. And they are all fit through all this time only getting better while humans reach the peak around 25 and then start going downhill.

Humans don't need to be genetic freaks to outshine the elves, user.

Most of the worlds greatest wizards have been ordinary humans. Ed Greenwood for some reason loves his humans. Especially the women.

Humans also learn magic faster than elves for some reason.

Romans started as a warrior culture. Then got soft as Empire grew. They got fucked numerous times by warrior cultures like Huns.

Chinks were always terrible at war.

The innate spark of magic isn't enough to become a great wizard within the confines of the D&D multiverse.

Humans are literal proof of this fact.

*tips fedora*

The Romans were never real warriors. Their success was mostly economic. Their concept of war was inherently monetary by nature. Most of the great conquests were fueled by moneylenders and debts and political reasons. The Legions were a new, strange kind of army. Rome was just a big corporation with a very large paramilitary arm.

That said, you're both very ill informed and not qualifed to talk about this in any way. But neither am I, and it's fun to talk shit.