: Re: Avoiding racist tropes in fantasy I'm interested in starting a pleasure project: a fantasy story, along the lines of a witch delivering a prophecy to a king about a dangerous and deceitful foe

@Pierce369

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Since you have said this is a pleasure project, I think you shouldn't concern yourself with inadvertently stumbling into someone else's definitions of crypto-racism.

The story you are telling is yours. And, you should really put your heart into telling it. If you feel that your story needs Manichean polarities represented by these fantasy races then great, more power to you.

I think worrying about these kinds of unintended consequences of story writing are strategies that lead to failure. You never need to worry about what you write, since you can always revise it once you've finished the story. If you get done with it and to your horror find you've protagonist's exhortations to his army strongly resemble the words of an infamous jerk who rallied his people with a series of speeches at Nuremberg, Germany in the 1930s, then you can rewrite it. It's not a problem.

In short, have confidence in your own intent and write your own story.

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