quirky kitchen design ideas
want to make a fantasy world? great! the magic and mystery are at your commandwhile shaping a fantastic world full of exotic wonders. yet who will live in this marvelous fantasyworld? why, we need to make some fantasy races. but there are so many wonderful fantasy racesin numerous stories across many different mediums. how do we stand out from the crowd?
by ripping off j.r.r tolkien of course! now some of you may think that the genre offantasy is an excuse to free one's imagination to create truly alien and bizarre races. but that is utterly wrong. fantasy is all about being derivative andnot getting out of your comfort zone. it is very important that the genre of fantasyremain sternly under the shadow of tolkien and make no attempts to push the boundariesin any way. we do this by copying tolkien's fantasy raceswhile making sure to completely miss the point of tolkien's themes.
and of course, never should we actually botherto read the original mythologies that inspired tolkien to create his works. no one uses primary sources who wants to betaken seriously. just copy and paste. let's get started! the first race we want to add into our fantasyworld is the elves. tolkien's elves had a sordid and violent past. however, we have only watched the movies solet's make our elves just like that; ethereal, beautiful, and impossibly smug.
if fact, we can apply many of the lessonsof making a perfect protagonist to the elves. make sure they are flawless in every way. i am sure their ageless wisdom will come acrossas endearing rather than condescending. be sure they use their heritage as an excuseto lord over the other races. i can't see any historical parallels at all! so now that we have our eternal and perfectelves, what do we do next? why we add more of them! if readers like one race of smug, pretentious,and lecturing immortals who are always right, then they will love to have a whole bunchmore!
want to preach about environmentalism? use wood elves and make them tree hugginghippies! what to make your elves edgy? send them trough a goth phase and add darkelves! why stop there? keep adding new elven races until there isn'tany room. or until we run out of ideas. speaking of running out of ideas, dwarvesare the easiest fantasy race. just copy them directly from tolkien withoutchanging a single trait.
we may need to give them a scottish accentto save time rather than creating a whole distinctive language. need a source of steampunk technology? dwarves will be the go to origin of any mechanicaldevices within the setting, but don't bother to explain why they haven't used their technologicaledge to conquer all of the other races. make sure they stay within their undergroundhalls, not having anything to do with the plot. but don't leave them out either. we can't deviate from the theme of rippingoff tolkien.
next we will add in orcs. remember to make the orcs' nature fundamentallyevil. some may find the moral and philosophicalimplications of a race that is inherently evil to be rather problematic as it bringsup deep questions about the nature of evil as well as call into the question the influenceof society and culture upon its members. this presents troubling conundrums like wouldan orc be evil it he was raised in an environment that taught kindness and mercy while renouncingviolence? if evil only destroys, then how can it createa race at all? if orcs were once elves twisted into darkness,then could it possible for them to find redemption
under the right circumstances? how would a society that is utterly evil anddedicated to destruction even function? tolkien himself struggled with these veryquestions, which is why we are going to completely ignore them! now let's look at halflings! ditch them! you heard me. remember what i said earlier about rippingoff tolkien, well here is where we ignore that rule and completely remove halflings.
halflings are boring and they will have noplace in our fantasy plot since our conflict with the dark lord will be resolved in a oneon one duel with a teenager who is secretly the heir to the human kingdom. we can't have meek, ordinary folk actuallyrise to the occasion and selflessly risk their happy lives to save the world. after all, average people can't accomplishanything and the fantasy genre certainly wouldn't waste time pandering to those people, nowwould it? why would they need an escapist fantasy? now we have all the fantasy races we needto populate our very original and creative
fantasy world. some might worry that we stray into unfortunateimplications by creating 'races' who have specific 'abilities'. especially when we say that some races, likesay blond hair blue eyed elves, are better than others. but don't worry. no one calls anyone else a racist on the internet.