[Kurt Montandon]

rahahahakramer99999999;211365 said:

those marines were falari. they were a mix of the original phillipinoesque islanders and the scottishlike conquerers, which coincidentally(sp) makes for excellent marines

I don't think the original inhabitants of Falar were supposed to be sort of Pinay-ish, I think they were supposed to be like Gaelics.

[Sinisdar Toste]

i thought they were olive skinned and shortish with dark hair and eyes... and laconic that i remember for sure

[cerveza_fiesta]

I gotta go with Dal-hons = Black racial traits for sure. That's always the mental picture I got while reading through the various mentions of their skin color and general appearance in the MBotF books.

Same for Kalam and QBen...even though they're 7C right?

I always figured SE was trying to express the vastness of the Malazan empire in the books. I mean, it's a multi-continent-spanning empire. Any similar thing on our earth couldn't help but have dozens of major ethnic groups right?

[Zanth13]

True you dont find to many black characters in fantasy.

The fact that quick ben and kalam are black and most readers favorite characters is pretty cool.

Not calling anyone racist but, I dont remember seeing any black people in Dragonlance, Forgotten realms, Xanth, dragon riders of pern,Dresden ect ect ect.


-drizzt doesnt count.

[The Tyrant Lizard]

That might be because those lands you mentioned are slightly shallow insofar as their human realms go. There are fewer human cultures, and more inhuman ones.
But then again, when you talk about Drizzt, he's a dark elf isnt he? So if you can have two different coloured elfs, why not humans?

[Clip]

I think drawing comparisons of skin colours/races from our world to the Malazan world is not what SE had in mind.

For example, people in 7C are mostly dark skinned because of the environment they live in, same with the Dal Honese, and every other group of people. SE probably didn't say, "I'm going to make the Dal Honese dark-skinned so they'll be like our world's dark-skinned people", but did it because they evolved and developed in an environment where that was an advantage.

From various interviews with SE, you can see that he didn't make the cultures and races of Wu by stealing from our planets races and cultures, but by creating the environment where the people lived and going from there.

[Dolorous Menhir]

clip;211506 said:

From various interviews with SE, you can see that he didn't make the cultures and races of Wu by stealing from our planets races and cultures, but by creating the environment where the people lived and going from there.

That's only partly true. Several of SE's races are plainly based on real-world human evolutionary precursors (the Imass, the Eres), and his human ethnicities also correspond very closely with real-world ethnic groups (with the notable exception of the Napan).

You're correct as far as the non-human races are concerned, but SE's humans and near-humans are all closely based on real-world sources.

I should note, I'm only referring to physical attributes in the above, not cultures.

[Clip]

Well, that's to be expected, as an anthropologist, SE does know a lot about human precursors, and of course he would use that to create precursors to humans on Wu, I was mostly referring to cultures, but yes, what you said is true.

[Cougar]

Going back to Xanths point you have to say that the exclusion of particularly Afro-centric cultures in fantasy, and the prevalence of white-european culture is down to two factors:

1) Right; if someone asks you to think of an average person, you think of soemone like you, so there you have it, the default setting for most authors who are white european (racially anyway) is white. I agree with Xanth when he says it's not racism it's just a sort of default setting for fantasy (I mean how many times did Gemmell write series about opressed highland peoples fighting souless empires (twice that I can think of) and of course Gemmell is a Scottish name)

2) The genre is based mainly around a pseudo-medeival or earlier, sometimes Roman or Greek, settings which I think generally makes the whitness of the characters explainable. From an anthropological point of view you could argue that the kind of culture that most fantasy novels evolved in is unique to the temperate European type climate. Deserts and savannahs do not lend themselves very well to humping around broadswords, suits of armour, cavalry or castles.

I mean poor old Tolkein takes a right shoeing for making the only black characters badies in tLotR, but it probably never even occured to him the old duffer.

It further emphasises how much effort Erikson has made to write something that trys to defy the staid conventions of fantasy.

[Sinisdar Toste]

Dolorous Menhir;211538 said:

That's only partly true. Several of SE's races are plainly based on real-world human evolutionary precursors (the Imass, the Eres), and his human ethnicities also correspond very closely with real-world ethnic groups (with the notable exception of the Napan).

You're correct as far as the non-human races are concerned, but SE's humans and near-humans are all closely based on real-world sources.

I should note, I'm only referring to physical attributes in the above, not cultures.

well thats just the point, once we get outside our scope of what a human is, which is the planet earth and all the humans on it, then we get into non-human races. the only real fundamental change you can make to a human and have it stay human is change the colour