u/GoldDragon2800

I've reread the conversation. I maintain my position. Diversity in Wheel of Time is easily explainable in universe and is entirely common genre wide. Objecting to it requires willful rejection of classic fantasy tropes and ignorance of the source media. Additionally, I've concluded that you're dumber than a box of rocks, and don't understand debate in any capacity. The number of times you make a point, and I address your point, only for you to instantly make another point without acknowledging the previous point at all is staggering. I've demonstrated repeatedly that your logic is flawed and you cannot see it, constantly moving the goalposts and gaslighting me about what I do and do not understand. I have no interest in chasing your goalposts any longer. I won't reply again.

My man, you brought up D&D and then tried to tell me it wasn't relevant. You're dumber than a box of bricks.

YOU BROUGHT IT UP YOU TROGLODYTE.

D&D has nothing to do with the prevalence of popular fantasy novel tropes, so I don't care to address this argument at all. You can do whatever you want at your table, popular fantasy books still mostly follow the same rules.

You think those are the only reasons people have conflict? HAVE YOU EVER READ A FANTASY NOVEL. Racism and sexism and religion ARE NEVER the cause of conflict in fantasy settings, it's always a FUCKING DRAGON or a dark lord of prophecy or an invasion, you idiot.

Drizzt doesn't experience real world racism. Drow are objectively evil, and he is objectively an exception. The racism he encounters is legitimate, and has nothing to do with slavery or superiority. It's entirely different.

But what annoys me the most is your LACK OF READING COMPREHENSION. I've already said not every single thing on the list is absent in every single fantasy setting. Just that ON AVERAGE these things are absent from MOST settings, and if they are brought up, it's always important to the narrative.

You bring up racism in Forgotten Realms like it's some kind of argument winning gatcha while ignoring all the disease, hunger, sexism, and rape that IS NOT INCLUDED in forgotten realms books.

No they don't. Fantasy is escapism. Only the darkest, grittiest fantasy settings make major plot points out of real world issues like hunger, disease, and racism. In the vast majority of fantasy it's all handwaved away and ignored and if you don't know that I sincerely wonder how much fantasy you've actually read.

Also, you include conflict and murder on that list which makes me genuinely concerned for your reading comprehension. I didn't say anything about conflict or murder being handwaved away.

I'm describing most fantasy not inventing my own setting. This is how Lord of the Rings, Words of Radiance, Shannara series, Forgotten Realms, etc. works, and they are not a slice of life utopia you nob. There are just bigger problems than food and STDs.

If you sanitized Medieval Europe and Asia like a fantasy setting you'd have incredible diversity.

To turn the old world into a fantasy esque setting, you'd have to wholesale remove racism. Sexism is out too. Give everyone the same religion, or likely create a unified pantheon with gods for each culture, but insure that all religious doctrine agrees on the major details.

Once you've done that, you've removed most of the incentive for people to stay local. Living in Spain becomes palatable for Indians and Koreans.

Then you remove food scarcity. Fantasy does this all the time, the only time people go hungry is when it's relevant to the plot like during the war in The Witcher. Remove nutritional deficiency too, and food poisoning. Now travel becomes easier because spoiled food isn't an issue and if your supplies do run out or go bad, you are tall and strong and have enough fat reserves to survive to the next town.

Remove 99% of disease. In real medieval times disease was everywhere, in Lord of the Rings it's not mentioned a single time. this includes STDs and wound infection. Reducing disease means that stigma against travelers disappears even further, and spending time in the wilderness is far less deadly, allowing for distances to be covered.

Reduce wealth and class inequality, or increase wealth across the board. Of course it still exists, peasants being peasants and nobility being noble, but indentured servitude is removed. Peasants are free people with meager wealth instead, allowed to make a living however they please. This makes it much more realistic to save money and to make money traveling, doing odd jobs from town to town or delivery is worth decent coin instead of a pittance or literally impossible.

You make all these small changes that are taken for granted in modern society and apply them to a medieval society, and you realize that diversity becomes much much more realistic. All of these differences are genre staples in fantasy. There are exceptions of course, and it doesn't always result in diversity. Lord of the Rings for example doesn't have diverse settlements, but when you make these assumptions diversity becomes a real possibility instead of a plot hole.

The explanation is, it's FANTASY. Travel is easy and prevalent because of all the reasons I've already told you. If you sanitized Medieval Europe and Asia like a fantasy setting you'd have incredible diversity. Hell, just removing racism from a setting is enough of an explanation.

Are you trying to change the subject again because the discussion isn't going the way you want? Respond to my point. Fantasy settings allow for wider travel and diversity than the real world.

Wheel of Time for example. It's not medieval society, it's a fantasy society. Diversity isn't unrealistic, and complaining about it is tone deaf at best and racist at worst.

I'm not saying "it's fantasy" to avoid criticism and if you believe that I am, then you aren't understanding my argument or are arguing in bad faith. The fact that it's fantasy means that it's so entirely removed from reality that applying the rules of our reality to it is stupid. There's no food scarcity. There's no nutritional scarcity. People are muscular and tall with good teeth. There is little or no rampant disease. There is little to no infection risk. There is little to no food poisoning. There is no sexism or racism. Peasants are not indentured servants, they are free people with few resources. The quantity of differences between your standard fantasy setting and medieval France are staggering, and many of those differences allow for diversity where you would otherwise not expect. Bitching about it because in the Dark Ages Italy lacked diversity is mind bogglingly stupid.

IT'S NOT A HISTORICAL SHOW my god how can anyone be this dense? OBVIOUSLY it's different in this fiction!

You're the one who said that the show is forcing wokeness, so It's pretty obvious that this is about the presence of black people and nothing else. You don't care that Japanese and Chinese influences aren't one to one perfectly accurate. You literally only care about "forced wokeness" which is easily translated to the presence of black people.

sigh If there's a metropolitan city nearby, I guess they already explained the diversity to you, didn't they.

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Feel free to dodge the point of the comment again, and I'll rephrase it again to make the point more obvious.

The authors threw away that Buddhism piece because it's not convenient but you don't seem as upset about that. In fact, of all the pieces of the real world they threw away, the only piece you seem to have any level of vitriol towards is the presence of black people. Huh.

If there's a metropolitan city and a port nearby, I guess they already explained the diversity to you, didn't they?

Limited exposition about a trivial background detail is not a cop out response unless you're autistic and are physically incapable of ignoring it or explaining it yourself.

My man, you just said there's a metropolitan city near by. Maybe there's a yearly festival where people travel and form couples. It's literally as simple as that. It's a fictional setting where the diversity isn't explicitly explained, that doesn't mean it's physically impossible. You're just assuming it is and I can't imagine why you would choose that.

It's a TV show. Exposition is a limited resource, the history of each villager in a sleepy hamlet is not going to be a priority. If you're going to put this much thought into it though, you can clearly see the racial diversity, and can then do one of two things. Imagine events that lead to racial diversity in a fantasy setting, or bitch about it not being realistic. Your choice.

Tiny sleepy hamlets in Skyrim have lots of different races too. I don't understand why it's so hard for you to imagine a small town with racial diversity, but you do you, boo. To me, it's no harder than accepting magic that predicts the future through the Pattern of the Age.

Second, if you think basing a fantasy race off a real race needs to include all of the aspects of the real world race, you are definitely holding an opinion I don't agree with.

Ahh, but skin color is mandatory, I take it.

No, you are assuming that a cultural identity requires ethnic similarity. It does not. The Redguards living in Cyrodill might hold to their old religion, but are otherwise integrated seamlessly into Imperial culture. When you walk around an Imperial village, you might see any of those racial phenotypes tending to a random farm, and you'd never think anything of it. But Wheel of Time has black people out and about in a medieval society and you're losing your mind.

Yes, I'm talking specifically about the cultures that ARE based on Japanese and Chinese. They are not Buddhist in the show. Why does this not bother you equally? I'll bet their architecture, clothing, mannerisms, fighting styles, cuisine, and behaviors are not one to one accurate either, yet all you seem to care about is "too many black people". Do you not realize how suspicious that is? Why is skin tone the only difference you care about, when there are clearly SO MANY differences between the real world and these imaginary cultures?