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Old 04-19-2019, 09:10 PM   #281
RyanW
 
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

How about a fantasy world where humans are in the process of leaving the hidebound fantasy races behind? Dwarven metalcraft is exquisite, but can't compete with the work of the best human steel makers. Elven spellsong is as beautiful as ever, but the human arcanists have reduced the whole process of spellcasting down to its essentials and bypassed the ancient arts. Human craft is just dumb, dirty, and effective.
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Old 04-20-2019, 09:08 AM   #282
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

Anthropocentric "racial" superiority isn't bending the stereotype. It is the stereotype. Even when it makes no sense, humans will often defeat or out compete objectively superior species.
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Old 04-21-2019, 02:32 PM   #283
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Anthropocentric "racial" superiority isn't bending the stereotype. It is the stereotype. Even when it makes no sense, humans will often defeat or out compete objectively superior species.
It seems to me that it's usually a case of being generalists, so we can beat everybody at something.
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Old 04-22-2019, 10:29 AM   #284
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

Most multi-species fiction I've seen, humans win, because their enemy holds the idiot ball.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall.
Or because the enemy has some absurd over the top weakness like robots that blow up when asked an unanswerable question, aliens that explode when touched with water, or fall to the horribly overused Trojan horse plot.
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Old 04-22-2019, 05:17 PM   #285
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

A robot can have a weakness built into it as a fail-safe of course.
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Old 04-22-2020, 05:35 PM   #286
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

The military monster/witch hunter:

He has nothing against witches/werewolves/vampires/etc. But, just like aircrafts can easily show up on the OpFor and thus modern armies train soldiers in the use of surface-to-air missiles like the Stinger, that guy is just a soldier specializing in neutralizing OpFor who just happen to be witches/werewolves/vampires/etc, and in fact "hunter" is the military designation for specialists trained to counter whatever they're a hunter of, so you have "Tank Hunters", "Aircraft Hunters", "Werewolf Hunters", "Vampire Hunters", "Witch Hunters"... And in fact, many Hunters of the paranormal actually belong to that category without cognitive dissonance.

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Old 04-23-2020, 04:32 PM   #287
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Anthropocentric "racial" superiority isn't bending the stereotype. It is the stereotype. Even when it makes no sense, humans will often defeat or out compete objectively superior species.
Yes. A real counter stereotype might be a fantasy world where humans are on the road to extinction and looking for a portal to some other world with less competition.
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Old 04-23-2020, 04:46 PM   #288
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Yes. A real counter stereotype might be a fantasy world where humans are on the road to extinction and looking for a portal to some other world with less competition.
Oh you mean Battlestar Gallactica?

Or if you want fantasy proper, the migration of the Three Tribes of the Edain.
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Old 04-24-2020, 12:45 PM   #289
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Oh you mean Battlestar Gallactica?
Except that genocidal robots are perfectly stereotypical. Elves squeezing out an uncompetitive humanity are not.
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