RACIAL ESSENTIALISM IN HIGH FANTASY

Alex Ogilvie Kostrzewa

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

April 2022

Committee:

Jeremy Wallach, Advisor

Esther Clinton

Jeffrey Brown

© 2022

Alex Ogilvie Kostrzewa

All Rights Reserved

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ABSTRACT

Jeremy Wallach, Advisor

This thesis seeks to demonstrate how “race” as a concept is utilized in the genre of high

fantasy. It examines how race is constructed in fantasy texts utilizing an essentialist framework

wherein race is determinative of individual morality, psyche, and aptitude. In imagining race in

fantastical worlds, high fantasy texts reproduce the ideas of unabashedly white supremacist race

philosophers such as Carl Linnaeus, Arthur de Gobineau, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain,

applying them to fantastical beings rather than real world groups. The same racial logics that

informed Nazism are seen at play in The Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, and World

of Warcraft.

This thesis will examine how the essentialist framework is utilized through the three most

common racial groups in high fantasy: Dwarves, Orcs, and Elves. In examining each of these

groups in turn, broad patterns of how race is imagined become clear. Stereotypes about real-

world groups are imported into fantastical worlds, where they are often combined and remixed

over time by successive waves of authors. In comparing different fantasy texts, we see how the

characterization of particular races changes with time to reflect the culture of the eras that

produce them. In some cases, these re-imaginings are done directly in opposition to previous

texts in attempts to correct offensive caricatures. However, even as imagined races themselves

have changed with time, the overall concept of “race” in high fantasy remains mired in an

essentialist mindset.

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For Imagining Better Worlds

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my professors Jeremy Wallach, Esther Clinton, and Jeffrey Brown for the

guidance and education they have given me as a student. I wish to thank my undergraduate

students for the time and attention they have given me as an instructor. I wish to thank Bowling

Green State University for giving me the opportunity to attend graduate school as a non-

traditional student. I would like to thank caffeine for giving me the strength to finish this thesis.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1

Defining Fantasy “Race” .............................................................................................. 1

Defining Racial Essentialism ........................................................................................ 3

Race-Gendering ............................................................................................................ 6

Is Racial Essentialism “Racist”? ................................................................................... 6

Secondary Sources ........................................................................................................ 8

The Role of Games ....................................................................................................... 8

The Importance of Tolkien ........................................................................................... 11

What This Thesis is Not ................................................................................................ 12

The Re-Encoding Process ............................................................................................. 13

What This Thesis Is ...................................................................................................... 15

CHAPTER I: THE CASE OF DWARVES, RACIALIZED MASCULINITY ....................... 13

The Archetypal Dwarf .................................................................................................. 36

Jewish Dwarves: Wagner and Tolkien ......................................................................... 19

Scottish Dwarves: Re-Encoding Race .......................................................................... 23

Dwarves and Masculinity ............................................................................................. 27

Dwarves as a “Martial Race”: Gamifying Stereotypes ................................................. 29

Dwarven Psyches: Xenophobia, Stoicism, and Anger.................................................. 30

Dwarven Bodies: Muscles and Beards ......................................................................... 34

Invisible Dwarven Women ........................................................................................... 36

Dwarves in the Liberal Era ........................................................................................... 38

Final Thoughts .............................................................................................................. 44

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CHAPTER II: THE CASE OF ORCS, MONSTERIZING THE OTHER .............................. 45

The Lord of the Rings and the “Oriental Orc” .............................................................. 45

Dungeons and Dragons and the “Savage Orc” ............................................................. 48

Splitting Stereotypes: The Case of Hobgoblins ............................................................ 53

The Significance of Green Skin .................................................................................... 54

Orcs and Masculinity .................................................................................................... 55

Polygenesis in Dungeons and Dragons ......................................................................... 57

Degeneration in The Lord of the Rings ........................................................................ 59

Miscegenation and Half-Orcs ....................................................................................... 60

Warhammer 40,000’s Asexual Orks ............................................................................. 64

The Genocide Imperative .............................................................................................. 66

Humanizing Orcs in the Liberal Era ............................................................................. 72

Final Thoughts .............................................................................................................. 78

CHAPTER III: THE CASE OF ELVES, THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE ................................. 79

Elves and Whiteness ..................................................................................................... 80

Tolkien’s Elves and Aryanism ...................................................................................... 81

Superior Elves After Tolkien ........................................................................................ 85

High Elves and Magic ................................................................................................... 88

Racializing Femininity .................................................................................................. 91

Elves and Queerness ..................................................................................................... 95

Half Elves and Elves as Sex Objects ............................................................................ 97

Wood Elves and Stereotype Splitting ........................................................................... 99

Dark Elves: The Feminine Evil..................................................................................... 100

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Dark Elves and BDSM.................................................................................................. 104

“Fixing” Dark Elves in the Liberal Era......................................................................... 109

Final Thoughts .............................................................................................................. 110

CONCLUSION: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FANTASY RACISM ........................................ 112

Fantastical Counter Narratives ...................................................................................... 113

High Fantasy Apologia ................................................................................................. 114

Final Thoughts .............................................................................................................. 119

WORKS CITED... ..................................................................................................................... 123

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PREFACE

Throughout this thesis, I will be quite critical of the high fantasy genre in how it imagines

race. This may make me come across as a polemicist attacking the genre out of malice,

categorizing it as fundamentally derivative, racist, and broken so that others will not enjoy it.

This is not so: growing up, high fantasy literature and games had an enormous impact on my life,

particularly in my formative middle and high school years. I would not be who I am today

without the Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, The Elder Scrolls, and Warhammer.

That said, I am a firm believer in the principle of “kill what you love.” I do not wish my

attachment to high fantasy to blind me to its faults, or become a force which translates criticisms

of its failings into criticisms of me as a person. Rather, I want my attachments to impel me to

hold high fantasy texts to task, and to push them toward growth rather than stagnating in the tired

tropes that currently plague them. Like an athletic coach who pushes his best athlete to run extra

laps, I see the potential in high fantasy as a genre and wish to spur it onward towards realizing

that potential.

The other angle of this thesis worth explaining is the connection between contemporary

fantasy gaming and Enlightenment-era raciology. My original motivation in examining Hume,

Kant, et al was to strike the “root” of Western concepts of racial essentialism. And while

“inventor of racism” is a title too lofty and with too many entrants to be awarded to any one

thinker, the role that Enlightenment philosophers played in codifying essentialist narratives of

race is noteworthy, and gives a textual starting point for my analysis.

I believe it is important to connect the problematic values of “low” culture to those of

“high” culture. When examining popular culture, especially when examining it critically, it

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becomes easy to deride popular culture as inherently malevolent, a contemporary “opiate of the

masses” that reinforces people’s worst instincts. This type of criticism has a long history in the

study of popular culture, as seen in Theodor Adorno’s writings about jazz and Tin Pan Alley pop

music.1

As such, I feel it is important to demonstrate that while yes, Dungeons and Dragons is

racially problematic, so is a Philosophy 201 syllabus. And moreover, they are problematic in the

same way. “High culture” and “low culture” are not diodes at opposite ends of a spectrum, they

are deeply intertwined forces, and the arbitrary lines between them are constantly shifting. From

David Hume to Gary Gygax, the same intellectual currents run through.

1 Theodor Adorno. “On Jazz.” Translated by Jamie Owen Daniel. Discourse Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 45-69

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INTRODUCTION: RACIAL ESSENTIALISM IN HIGH FANTASY

In this thesis, I will explore how the genre of high fantasy is firmly entrenched in a

framework of racial essentialism that preserves and reproduces the most repugnant aspects of the

Western intellectual tradition. Texts such as The Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, and

World of Warcraft posit race as something that is biologically real, clearly defined, and

determinative of one’s morality and aptitude. Through this framework, high fantasy draws on the

most pernicious understandings of race from the 18th and 19th century. Fantasy texts are able to

create counterfactual worlds wherein, as China Mieville said of Tolkien, “racism is true, in that

people really are defined by their race.”2 Concepts such as polygenesis, martial races, race-

gendering, degeneration, racial purity, and moral justifications for genocide can all be found

within the fantasy texts as well the writings of historical race theory villains such as Carl

Linnaeus, Arthur de Gobineau, and William Houston Chamberlain.

Defining Fantasy “Race”

When “race” is discussed in fantasy books and games, it typically refers to something

that is a mixture of an ethnic group, an alien species, and a type of faerie being. The Elves3 from

The Lord of the Rings have their own language, culture, and phenotype, but they are also innately

magical semi-immortal beings. The in-universe logic of Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs as fantastical

beings is used as justification for presenting them along the lines of stereotype. Similar patterns

can be seen with science fiction franchises like Star Trek and Mass Effect, which present entire

planets’ worth of alien beings as one-dimensional monocultures who conform to a single

2Joan Gordon. “Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Mieville.” (New Politics, Volume 9, no. 3, 2003). 3 For the sake of consistency, I am capitalizing the names of all racial groups, real or imagined. This will include “Human” when referring to them as a racial group within fantasy texts. When quoting other texts, I will preserve their original capitalization.

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stereotype. Melissa J. Monson refers to this as the “Jar Jar Binks” problem:

The more one seeks to extricate oneself from the mire of terrestrial stereotyping, the more free and flexible the bigotry machine becomes, able to repopulate one’s racialized imagination with ‘‘aliens,’’ but aliens that conveniently still stick to the gangly comic relief of the blackface minstrel complete with exaggerated facial features and a Jamaican accent.4

The “Jar Jar Binks” problem is in full effect with high fantasy texts. The

fantasticalization of race serves to defang the incendiary nature of these stereotypes; while

presenting Africans as naturally violent and stupid is an immediate and obvious affront to real

Africans, presenting Orcs as naturally violent and stupid is not, because “Orcs” do not exist in

the real world. James Hodes refers to this process of displacing racial animosity onto fictional

groups as “Hate Laundering”:

First, colonizers come up with this theory of humans and not-quite-humans in order to justify narratives and policies of violence and dread towards natives. Then JRR Tolkien reifies these narratives in Lord of the Rings, granting via Middle-earth a sheen of fantasy and respectability by swapping out “Oriental” or “Mongol” for “orc” or “goblin.” These tropes cascade to a new generation of fantasists whose joy is to embody their setting; and while they may not consciously understand or acknowledge from which deep-set biases their embodiment springs, nevertheless they practice—in one of the realest senses available to polite society—to dehumanize intelligent beings.5

Through the creation of fantastical groups onto which racist stereotypes can be applied, fantasy

texts are able to operate within an essentialist framework without immediately appearing to say

anything racist. The rhetorical distance of fantastical worlds allows fantasy texts to imagine that

there are superior races and inferior races, good races and evil races, all while evading the

consequences of making those claims about the real world.

4 Melissa J. Monson. “Race Based Fantasy Realm: Essentialism in World of Warcraft.” "Race-based fantasy realm: Essentialism in the World of Warcraft." Games and Culture 7, no. 1 (2012): 48-71. 5 James Mendez Hodes. “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth Part II: They’re Not Human.” James Mendez Hodes (blog), June 19, 2019. https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/6/30/orcs-britons-and-the-martial-race-myth-part-ii-theyre-not-human

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Defining Racial Essentialism

By “Racial Essentialism,” I refer to a framework that has the following two qualities: 1)

people can effectively be broken down into discrete racial types, and 2) race is an indicator of not

just ancestry and appearance, but also of aptitude, morality, and personality. Both of these

concepts can be found in the writings of prominent Enlightenment philosophers. Early formal

taxonomy of human races can be found in the likes of Carl Linnaeus’s 1735 Systema Naturae,

which divided humanity into four groups: “Europaeus albus” (“European white”) “Americanus

rubescens” (“American reddish”), “Asiaticus fuscus” (“Asian tawny”), and “Africanus niger”

(African black)6. Immanuel Kant slightly modified Linnaeus’s categorization in his 1775 “On

the Different Races of Human Beings,” where he describes the four races as “the race of whites,”

“the Negro race,” the “Hunnish race,” and the “Hindustani Race.”7 Kant’s raciology would be

further simplified by Count Arthur de Gobineau, who reduced race to “the black, the yellow, and

the white.”8 In comparing these three scholars, we already see the flexible nature of who is

lumped with and split from whom. As Helen Young puts it, “No agreement could even be

reached as to how many races existed, let alone what they were.”9 For Kant, “Hindus” are

separate from “Mongols,” while for Gobineau, they are all “Yellow.” Various intellectuals would

prioritize skin color (such as Carl Linnaeus), skull shape (such as the phrenologist Samuel

Morton10) or language (such as the linguist Samuel Laing11) as the primary markers of “race.”

The important aspect of this is not the precise division of peoples, but rather, the shared belief

6 Carl Linnaeus. Systema Naturae. Ed. 10., 1759 New York: J. Cramer; Stechert-Hafner Service Agency, 1964, 45. 7 Immanuel Kant. “On the Different Races of Human Beings” 1775. In Anthropology, History, and Education. Cambridge University Press (2007), 87. 8 Arthur de Gobineau. The Inequality of the Human Races. 1853. Translated by Adrian Collins., London: William Heinemann. 1915.

9Helen Young. Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness. New York: Routledge, 2016. 10See Stephen J. Gould. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton, 1981. Chapter 2. 11 See Samuel Laing, Lecture on the Indo-European Language and Races. Calcutta, 1862.

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that peoples can effectively be sorted and ranked by race.

Linnaeus would go onto ascribe moral as well as physical characteristic to his four races:

The Europaeus was “Wise,” the Africanus “Lazy,” the Asiaiticus “Greedy,” and so on.12 This

framework could also be seen in David Hume’s 1747 essay “Of National Character,” where he

writes:

THE vulgar are apt to carry all national characters to extremes; and having once established it as a principle, that any people are knavish, or cowardly, or ignorant, they will admit of no exception, but comprehend every individual under the same censure. Men of sense condemn these undistinguishing judgments: Though at the same time, they allow, that each nation has a peculiar set of manners, and that some particular qualities are more frequently to be met with among one people than among their neighbours. The common people in SWITZERLAND have probably more honesty than those of the same rank in IRELAND; and every prudent man will, from that circumstance alone, make a difference in the trust which he reposes in each. We have reason to expect greater wit and gaiety in a FRENCHMAN than in a SPANIARD; though CERVANTES was born in SPAIN. An ENGLISHMAN will naturally be supposed to have more knowledge than a DANE; though TYCHO BRAHE was a native of DENMARK.13

Inherent in Hume’s premise of “National Character” was that the attributes of different peoples

made some inherently superior to others. Nowhere is this clearer than in his disparaging writings

about the peoples of Africa, where his invocation of Africans transplanted to Europe makes it

very clear he is talking about biological rather than sociological factors of race formation.

I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are NEGROE slaves dispersed all over EUROPE, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly. 14

As Hume demonstrates, these systems of racial categorization were not an innocent desire to

12Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, 45. 13 David Hume. “Of National Characters.” Essays XXI. 1743, 1. Hume’s full capitalization of proper nouns is original to his writing, and has been preserved here. 14Hume, “Of National Characters,” 13.

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understand the world through a burgeoning scientific lens - they were deeply tied to the power

structures of their time, and served as post-hoc rationalizations for the inequities of the world and

a tool for dismissing evidence to the contrary. Hume’s concept of National Character was part of

an intellectual framework to justify the subjugation of one people at the hands of another by

claiming that it was nature, not society, that had laid them low.

I invoke Hume and Kant in particular because they are highly respected philosophers

whose work is still taught in college philosophy courses. Thinkers such as Gobineau,

Chamberlain, and Morton are now largely looked upon with disgust by contemporary

intellectuals, and rightly so. However, racist logics were not the sole province of pseudoscientists

and faux-philosophers - they were widely accepted across the Western intellectual tradition, and

they have been preserved in aspects of our popular culture. I do not wish to give the impression

that racism is the sole province of “low” culture, but rather is something which has extended

from the popular through to the elite.

While contemporary biology has soundly rebuked racial essentialism as a pseudoscience,

fantasy texts such as Dungeons and Dragons, The Lord of the Rings, and World of Warcraft shift

these differences from having natural to supernatural origins.15 The racial differences between

Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves are attributed to divine acts of creation or supernatural intercession.

Different races often receive their innate character - their “essence” - from divine sources that

define them as eternally distinct from one another. In this manner, contemporary fantasy texts

preserve the essentialist frame by relying on their own fantastical conceits. When racial

essentialism is proven as a false hypothesis in the real world, fantasists change the rules of reality

15 Fantasy texts do still occasionally dip back into the language of “scientific” racism. Notably, the third edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook contains phrenological style illustrations of Elf, Dwarf, and Human skulls that deliberately evoke the pseudoscience of Morton and Chamberlain.

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in order to make it true again.

Race Gendering

In researching this thesis, I have discovered another theme of essentialist race narratives:

that of race-gendering. In examining the portrayals of Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs across fantasy

gaming, all three races are constructed through concepts of gender as much as through race.

Dwarves and Orcs are overwhelmingly masculinized, with representations of both consisting

almost entirely of hyper-muscular male bodies. Some texts go so far as to introduce fantastical

conceits which explicitly eliminate the existence of female Dwarves and Orcs. In the case of

Elves, there is a strong trend toward portraying Elven femininity, often leading to an obsession

with Elven sexuality. This is not an exclusive function of fantasy races: Gobineau posited gender

as a metaphysical principle of race, viewing the Aryan Indian as the quintessentially spiritual and

“feminine” race, and the Chinese as the quintessentially materialistic and “masculine” race.

Is Racial Essentialism “Racist”?

I am aware that I live in a nation where the term “racist” is extremely loaded and heavily

contested, especially outside of the academic sphere. While racism is widely acknowledged as

negative, what does and does not constitute “real racism” is a matter of constant argument. In

Hollywood dramas such as Tate Taylor’s The Help, racism is a malignant force that is confined

to a handful of irrational actors, most of them living in the past. For race scholars like Michael

Omi, Howard Winant, Ibram X. Kendi and Eduardo Bonilla Silva,16 racism is a set of

institutional forces that leads to poorer outcomes for marginalized groups. For the likes of

16For those interested, I would highly recommend Michael Omi and Howard Winant’ Race Formation in the United States as a primer on how race is constructed as a social reality rather than a biological one. Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning illustrates how theories such as racial determinism arise post-hoc to justify pre-extant systems of exploitation. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism Without Racists explores deeply why ignoring issues of race allows racism to flourish unnoticed.

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Senator Ted Cruz, racism is found in acknowledging the concept of race at all.17

Some of these definitions are better informed than others. I will argue, however, that by

virtually any benchmark, yes, racial essentialism is racist. The essentialist framework posits that

race is a real, biological factor that separates peoples and determines the nature of one’s

character from birth. As Young writes, “One key purpose of race theory, particularly in the

nineteenth century, was to simultaneously explain and justify European imperialism around the

globe.”18 It has been used historically to determine who is fit to rule, who is fit to serve, and who

is fit to be exterminated. Slavery, genocide, and many of the worst crimes of human history were

valorized as heroic and necessary by racial essentialism.

However, this thesis is focused explicitly on race in fantasy worlds, not the real world. It

is less concerned with how race operates and more with how it is imagined. As such, the sources

we will be drawing on are not the excellent contemporary race scholarship of Omi, Kendi, or

Bonilla-Silva, but rather the antiquated and horrifying race theory of the past. In demonstrating

that the essentialist framework is present in fantasy games in its most pernicious form, I will

regularly be quoting the likes of Gobineau and Chamberlain and juxtaposing them with excerpts

from fantasy texts. As Gould reminds us, “through his impact on the English zealot Houston

Stewart Chamberlain, Gobineau’s ideas served as a foundation for the racial theories espoused

by Adolf Hitler.”19 I can think of no stronger way to demonstrate that a set of ideas are racist

than to show parallels with the literal inspirations for Adolf Hitler’s policies.

17Schuessler, Jennifer. New York Times. “Ted Cruz Invokes Dr. King, and Scholars See a Familiar Distortion.” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/arts/ted-cruz-mlk-critical-race-theory-supreme-court.html 18 Young, Race and Popular Fantasy Literature, 8. 19 Gould, Mismeasure of Man, 372.

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Secondary Sources

I am not the first person to make note of the problematic ways in which race is framed in

high fantasy. I must acknowledge Helen Young’s excellent Race in Popular Fantasy Literature,

which is the most exhaustive exploration of the subject I have read. Secondly, I wish to

acknowledge my predecessor at Bowling Green State University, Philip Clements, for his own

thesis Roll to Save Against Prejudice and his dissertation Dungeons and Discourse. Besides

these, there have been a number of articles both scholarly and popular I have drawn on heavily in

the course of writing this thesis. Melissa J. Monson’s “Race-Based Fantasy Realm” is an

excellent exploration of World of Warcraft, a primary source with which I was personally less

familiar but well aware of the significance of with regards to the genre. “Orcs, Britons, and the

Myth of Martial Races” by game designer James Mendez Hodes was the piece which originally

started my own thinking about the issue of race and high fantasy.

The Role of Games

I will be paying special attention to games as my principle text in this thesis. This is for

two reasons: Firstly, contemporary popular fantasy literature such as A Song of Ice and Fire or

The Stormlight Archives has largely moved away from (if not entirely left behind) racial

essentialism as a core feature of worldbuilding.20 Fantasy games, conversely, have held tightly

onto the essentialist framework to the present day. Secondly, fantasy games reinforce national

character arguments by using race as a game mechanic with quantifiable benefits and detriments.

Whereas literature consists of linear narratives, games are systems in which different elements

have determined rules for interacting. To make race a game mechanic is to make deterministic

20 While their texts are not free of racially problematic material, I would go so far as to say that both G.R.R. Martin and Brandon Sanderson have demonstrated how socially constructed, rather than essentialist, models of race can be explored within fantasy texts.

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statements about race, granting innate quantifiable advantages and disadvantages to racial

identity. In this way, Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft have gamified racism.

The primary games I will be examining are the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons and

Dragons, the tabletop wargame Warhammer, and the video game series The Elder Scrolls and

Warcraft (particularly the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft, commonly abbreviated

WoW). Dungeons and Dragons (commonly abbreviated as D&D) is the lynchpin text of fantasy

gaming - in addition to being a long-running game that has sold millions of copies over the past

five decades in and itself, it has had a massive influence on fantasy games that came after it.

Warhammer, while slightly more niche, provides critical context for how the same race tropes

are re-encoded across tabletop games of different genres. Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls are two

of the highest selling Western fantasy video game franchises.21 Up until recently, World of

Warcraft was the highest played MMORPG (massive multiplayer online roleplaying game) in

the world, a title it occupied for more than a decade.22 These games are important due to their

popularity and, as I will demonstrate in chapter two, their role in changing key aspects of the

race framework in high fantasy.

One of the key ways in which racial essentialism manifests itself in fantasy games is how

race is used as a player option which grants bonuses and penalties. In Dungeons and Dragons, all

characters are broken down into six core attributes: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Wisdom,

Intelligence, and Charisma.23 When a player chooses their character’s race, they will typically be

21“The Top 50 Best Selling Video Games of All Time.” Hewlett Packard, September 28, 2021. No author listed. https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-takes/top-50-best-selling-video-games-all-time 22Oliva Richman. “Is World of Warcraft Dying?” Invent Global, August 10, 2021. https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/14788/world-of-warcraft-dying23 Early versions of D&D would randomly assign these attributes, furthering the notion that one’s abilities were biologically determined from birth. Later versions gave players increasing agency over their strengths and weaknesses.

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granted bonuses to certain attributes and penalties to others. This model of quantifiable core

attributes which are modified by race has been routinely used by the tabletop and video games

which came in Dungeons and Dragons wake. This system serves as mathematical ways to

reinforce stereotypes, dictating both what qualities are embodied by which races and given a

measurable degree to which they embody these qualities. This model of individual variance

modified by racial aptitude is strongly reminiscent of Hume’s conception of National Character.

Hume states that the average Englishmen is smarter than the average Dane, and Tycho Brahe is

an outlier; Gygax is stating that the average Dwarf is tougher than the average Elf, while

allowing for similar individual outliers.

This process of gamifying race has already come under criticism from multiple observers.

Hodes writes that these attribute adjustments “makes race literally real in-game by applying

immutable modifiers to character ability scores, skills, and other characteristics. The in-game

fiction justifies these character traits as absolute realities; they also just happen to be the same

cruel and untrue things racists say about different ethnicities.”24 Clements writes that Dungeons

and Dragons “uses race as a biologically determined category that imposes sharp limitations on

what a person can be and do…. D&D tends to present nonhuman races as monolithic groups,

with each individual simply being a variation on a single consistent theme.”25 The system of

racial attribute modification incentivizes players for playing toward stereotype and punishes

them for playing against it: an Elder Scrolls player can choose to play as an Orcish wizard, but

because of racial aptitude modifiers, they will find the game much more difficult than if they had

24 Hodes, James Mendez. “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror.” James Mendez Hodes, 2019. https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/1/13/orcs-britons-and-the-martial-race-myth-part-i-a-species-built-for-racial-terror 25 Philip Clements, Roll to Save vs Prejudice: Race in Dungeons and Dragons. Bowling Green State University, 2015.

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played as an Orcish warrior.

The Importance of Tolkien

Although he was an author of narrative literature, rather than games, it is very difficult to

discuss the fantasy genre without discussing the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. That said, Tolkien is

not the primary focus of this thesis, and I will be attempting to limit my discussions of his works

only to the extent that they are salient to fantasy games. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth set the template

for the worlds in which fantasy games operate, and his conceptualizations of Elves, Orcs, and

Dwarves will set the baseline for how “race” is presented in later works. His writings were very

reflective of the Imperial era he lived in and his status as an academic within it: As Dimitra Fimi

writes in her Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History: “When Tolkien started composing his

mythology, it was still entirely legitimate and scientifically acceptable to divide humankind into

races with fixed physical characteristics and mental abilities.”26 In an interview with Pacific

Standard, Helen Young refers to Middle-Earth as “literally a racist’s fantasy land,” and describes

it as follows:

In Middle Earth, unlike reality, race is objectively real rather than socially constructed. There are species (elves, men, dwarves, etc.), but within those species there are races that conform to 19th-century race theory, in that their physical attributes (hair color, etc.) are associated with non-physical attributes that are both personal and cultural. There is also an explicit racial hierarchy which is, again, real in the world of the story.27

“Race” in this sense was an all-consuming entity that encompasses one’s appearance,

biology, culture, language, and mindset. Qualities such as Elven beauty or Dwarven greed are

not specified as being the result of one’s biology or socialization, because “race” encompasses

26 Dimitria Fimi. Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History. London: Palgrave McMillan, 2008, 132.

27 David M. Perry. “How Can We Untangle White Supremacy from Medieval Studies? A Conversation with Australian scholar Helen Young.” Pacific Standard, Oct 9, 2017. https://psmag.com/education/untangling-white-supremacy-from-medieval-studies

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both of these aspects. As Sturtevant writes, “The core of the problem is that Tolkien conflates

race, culture, and ability. Hobbits, he says, are a race, and based upon a combination of their

hereditary traits and cultural practices, are better at being stealthy than other races.” 28 This

combination of appearance, culture, personality, and aptitude would form the basis for how

“race” would become a game mechanic in fantasy roleplaying games later on. 29

What This Thesis is Not

While this thesis will occasionally examine direct statements from J.R.R. Tolkien or Gary

Gygax to contextualize interpretations of their works, the focus is the texts themselves, not the

people who created them. Whether these writers personally deserve to be called “racist” or

condemned as an individual is ultimately irrelevant to this thesis. It is their writings, not their

personal characters, which is under assessment.

Similarly, this thesis is not a study of audiences. In my experience, people often feel

personally attacked when things they enjoy are criticized, and criticizing media tastes can be

used as a bad-faith way of indirectly criticizing those who consume it.30 As such, I want to make

it absolutely clear that statements such as “Dungeons and Dragons contain racist ideas” do not

translate to “if you enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, you personally are racist.” The same applies

for fans of The Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, and any other texts being discussed within

28Paul B, Sturteveant. “Race, The Original Sin of the Fantasy genre.” The Public Medievalist. December 5, 2017. https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-fantasy-genre/ 29 While Hobbits were at the center of Tolkien’s narratives, they have had relatively little popularity in fantasy texts that followed. Dungeons and Dragons presents the race of “Halflings” as their surrogate for Tolkien’s Hobbits, often encoding them as Romani-like wanderers whereas Tolkien encoded them as English country folk. Given their infrequency of appearance in other fantasy texts, Hobbits/Halflings will not be among the fantasy races analyzed in this thesis. 30 I have, on several occasions, assigned Hodes’s “Orcs, Britons, and the Myth of the Martial Race” article to my undergraduate students, often to the shock of those who were fans of the fantasy genre. One student described reading it as “a slap in the face.” Another was personally offended and wrote a lengthy rebuttal of his article when asked to analyze a reading assignment for the final exam.

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this thesis. As has been demonstrated by the likes of Stuart Hall and Janice Radway, audiences

are complex entities whose interpretation of the media they consume varies widely from

individual to individual, often being filtered through a host of personal experiences. For some,

the essentialist narratives of race in high fantasy may reinforce a White Nationalist or otherwise

racist worldview - the fact that Stormfront has a forum dedicated to high fantasy is evidence that

this does happen at least some times. For others, however, race in fantasy games may be a tool

for exploring themes of prejudice, marginalization, and sympathy for the Other even within the

bounds of an essentialist framework.31 And for many, I suspect, race in fantasy is an

afterthought, with the sociopolitical ramifications of their World of Warcraft character’s race

being far secondary to their gameplay and aesthetic ramifications.

The Re-Encoding Process

Though he is not cited directly, the ideas of Stuart Hall are perennially lurking in the

background of this thesis.32 Hall introduced the notion of encoding and decoding, and the

concept of negotiated readings, wherein the receiver of a text will reinterpret that text through the

lens of their own pre-existing cultural dispositions. Much of this thesis will involve comparing

either different fantasy texts or different editions of the same text. In comparing these texts, we

see a process of “re-encoding,” wherein different permutations of the same ideas appear over

time in a series of negotiated readings. Many of the race tropes present in early Dungeons and

Dragons stem from The Lord of the Rings, but negotiated through the lens of Gary Gygax’s own

mid-20th century American attitudes instead of Tolkien’s early 20th century English ones. Thus,

31This topic is explored in depth by Clements; see Philip Clements, Dungeons and Discourse: Intersectional Identities in Dungeons and Dragons. Bowling Green State University, 2019, 155-168. 32 Hall, Stuart. “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse.” 1973.

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the Orc is a racial monstrosity for both of them, but the races they associate with monstrosity are

very different. By the early 2000’s, there were several fantasy games questioning whether Orcs

should be thought of as monsters at all as the deterministic model is filtered through increasingly

liberal concepts of race and racism. Indeed, much of the modern era of fantasy gaming involves

the struggle to “fix” fantasy gaming by removing the most obviously problematic race elements

inherited from previous games. These efforts, while valiant, inevitably run afoul of the

essentialist structures in which they operate. This process of re-encoding allows us to break the

fantasy genre into three rough eras, with the following characteristics:

1) A “Tolkien Era” of the early 20th century, which consists almost entirely of the

literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien himself. Here we see a European inflected view

of race: linguistic racial categories such as “Aryans” and “Semites” are present,

and racial Others are frequently encoded as Huns, Saracens, or otherwise

“Oriental” threats.

2) A “Tabletop Era” of the 1970-1990s, herein represented by Dungeons and

Dragons and Warhammer. This era solidifies and gamifies the racial tropes of

Tolkien, making the stereotypes implicit in the Lord of the Rings explicit and

quantified. Racialized morality predominates here, with “Good Races” locked in a

war of attrition with “Evil Races.” Racial Others become decreasingly encoded as

“Oriental,” and more frequently as “savage” races drawing on images of

Polynesians, Africans, and Native Americans.

3) A “Liberal Era” that begins in the early 2000’s and extends through the present.

This era challenges the stereotypes of the tabletop era, presenting previously evil

races as heroic or sympathetic and relaxing (though not abolishing) the

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determinative nature of race with regards to aptitude. This Liberal Era is primarily

defined by video games such as World of Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls, though

it can also be seen in the evolutions taken by Dungeons and Dragons following

the properties acquisition by Wizards of the Coast in 1997 and the release of the

game’s third edition rules in 2000.33

What This Thesis Is

In order to unpack how racially essentialist frameworks are constructed, I will be

devoting a chapter to each of the three most consistent imagined races in the fantasy genre:

Dwarves, Orcs, and Elves. In structuring my thesis like this, I am taking the genre on its own

terms: if fantasy games and literature keep breaking the world into Dwarves, Orcs, and Elves,

then I will break my thesis up according to the same terms. In each chapter, I will be examining

how each of these fictional races is essentialized. In some cases, this is done by importing

stereotypes wholesale from the real world and mapping them onto fantastical races. In others, it

is done by using the essentialist framework as a tool to create stereotypes about nonexistent

peoples.

In the Case of Dwarves, I will examine how Dwarves set the model for combining racial

stereotypes with mythological beings through the works of Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Early depictions of Dwarves were laced with anti-Semitism and allegorical Jewish identity,

which gradually gave way to a gender-based encoding of race as Dwarves as a fundamentally

“masculine race.” In the Case of Orcs, I will be examining how fears of racial “Others” (whether

they be Asian, African, Polynesian, or Native American) are manifested with Orcs through

33 Unlike D&D, Warhammer has staunchly resisted this liberal era. Much of its texts exist in a “black and gray” morality, with unambiguously evil races such as Dark Elves, but its good races being of questionable morality.

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themes of polygenesis, miscegenation, and racial degeneracy. With Orcs, we see the most

flagrantly repugnant racial characterizations, with their positioning as an “evil race” is used to

heroize genocidal attitudes within fantasy worlds. In the Case of Elves, I will be examining the

uncomfortable parallels between fantasy Elves and European philological myth of “The Aryan

Master Race” and how this leads to Elves as objects of sexual desire and speculation. The focus

on “beauty” as an essential trait of Elves leads to female Elves being sex objects, male Elves

being queer coded, and evil Elves being characterized through the language of BDSM. In my

conclusion, I will address some of the common counter-arguments and apologia that have been

presented toward critiques of racial themes in fantasy media.

All three of the main body chapters involve tracing the evolution of a given fantasy race

through different eras, authors, and texts, often showing a surprising level of diversity. The

specific characterizations of Dwarves, Orcs, and Elves have changed a great deal over time, and

the texts in the post 2000’s era in particular have made great efforts to remove the most

obviously racist elements. However, what has not changed is the essentialist framework in which

race itself is understood, and that framework is the core problem of race in high fantasy.

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CHAPTER I: THE CASE OF DWARVES, RACIALIZING MASCULINITY

In the case of Dwarves, we see clear examples of two of the most persistent themes in the

construction of fantasy races: the use of fantasy races as stand-ins for real world racial groups,

and the attribution of gender as a function of race. Dwarves are heavily encoded as Jewish in the

Tolkien era, a characterization which gives way to being encoded as Scottish or Yorkish in more

recent fantasy media.34 Much of this recharacterization has been derived from the desire to

portray Dwarves as a masculine “martial race” in the Tabletop Era. These themes of racial

allegory and race-gendering are not unrelated, but rather, are an extension of viewing different

racial groups as either fundamentally “masculine” or “feminine” within essentialist frameworks.

The Archetypal Dwarf

I am devoting my first full chapter to Dwarves, rather than Elves or Orcs, because of the

high degree of homogeneity seen in portrayals of Dwarves across properties: Dwarves are

overwhelmingly presented as an entire race of ill-tempered bearded male warriors, with

relatively few examples running contrary to that image. The website TV Tropes, (a fan wiki

which organizes media according to recurring themes), provides a useful window into the issue

of Dwarven uniformity through their article “Our Dwarves Are All the Same.” It defines

Dwarves as follows:

You know what they are. Gruff, practical, industrious, stout, gold-loving, blunt-speaking Scottish-accented, Viking-helmed, booze-swilling, Elf-hating, ax-swinging, long-bearded, stolid and unimaginative, boastful of their battle prowess and their vast echoing underground halls and mainly just the fact that they are Dwarves.35

Under the “Our Dwarves are All the Same” article, TV Tropes lists 383 media texts

34 Indeed, the question that launched this entire project is “When did Dwarves start having Scottish accents?” 35 TV Tropes. “Our Dwarves are All the Same.” Accessed 12-10-2021. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame.

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featuring the fantasy Dwarf race as a trope, with approximately five-sixths of instances of

Dwarves in high fantasy at least partially aligning to stereotype. This is broken into three

sections: The first section, entitled “These Dwarves are Rather Dwariviative,” features 161

examples of depictions of Dwarves that closely match the definition given at the beginning of the

article. The second section, titled “These Dwarves are more Dwarvegent” cites 158 examples of

Dwarves who partially conform to the stereotype while deviating in some key way.36 A third

section entitled “These Dwarves are Too Bizarre to have a Suitable Pun” lists Dwarves who

share almost no commonality with the stereotype, and contains only 64 entries.

This uniformity of portrayals across texts demonstrates the ubiquity of the essentialist

framework: Dwarves as a race are boiled down to a narrow character archetype who stands in for

an entire people. As new fantasy texts arise, they draw on the texts that preceded them, repeating

the same stereotypes about an imagined group. This imaginary status allows the essential frame

to move onward unquestioned: whereas national character arguments about real peoples can be

questioned by members of those groups who deviate from or openly decry stereotypes about

their identity, there are no “real Dwarves” to question the narrative of Dwarven homogeneity.

There are precious few young Dwarves, female Dwarves, peaceful Dwarves, or clean-shaven

Dwarves to provide counternarratives to the idea of Dwarves being a race of violent-tempered

bearded old men.37

Even compared to other fantasy races such as Elves and Orcs, Dwarves have received relatively

little effort toward reinvention. As racial monsters, portrayals of Orcs shift with time to

36 Many of the entries in this section, particularly those related to fantasy roleplaying games, reflected “subraces” of Dwarves who co-exist with their more stereotypical brethren (“The wild Dwarves from Forgotten Realms are barbarians who live above ground in jungles and hunt with poisoned blades. Still very gruff and loyal, though.”) 37 That said, there are some important examples, and they will be discussed towards the end of this chapter.

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reflect the fears of the authors that create them and the societies which create those authors. As a

“superior” and “beautiful” race, portrayals of Elves reflect the desires of those same creators.

The TV Tropes pages for Orcs and Elves are entitled “Our Elves are Different” and “Our Orcs

are Different,” respectively, reflecting the active reinvention of these racial tropes in contrast to

the homogenous Dwarf. Without these hopes and fears being projected onto them, Dwarves have

received relatively little creative effort in fantasy media. Nonetheless, portrayals of Dwarves

have changed over time. Different texts have encoded Dwarves along the lines of different real-

world racial groups, and the characterization of Dwarves as a “masculine” race reflects how

ideas of masculinity are imagined.

Jewish Dwarves: Wagner and Tolkien

The concept of Dwarves as a fantasy race are descended from the svartálfar38 of Norse

mythology. Like contemporary fantasy Dwarves, the svartálfar are ill-tempered, subterranean

dwelling, short-statured, fine craftsmen, and lovers of gold. Richard Wagner’s Der Rings des

Nibelungen was a 19th century operatic adaptation of the 13th century Nibelungenlied. While

Wagner was drawing on Norse mythology in the construction of his opera, he was also clearly

drawing on his own racialized understandings of the world he lived in. In this we see the

beginning of fantasy “race” as the hybrid child of mythological faerie-beings and real-world

ethnic groups. His characters of Alberich and Mime, both Dwarves in the sense of svartálfar, are

heavily encoded with anti-Semitic characteristics. In Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic

Imagination, Marc A. Weiner writes:

As caricatures of Jews, Alberich and Mime share similar discursive features, yet, as representatives of the stereotypes of the wealthy and the impoverished Jew, the Nibelungs are given two distinct and

38 To avoid confusion, I will be using the Icelandic term svartálfar when explicitly referring to the mythological faerie-being rather than modern fantasy Dwarves.

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characteristically definings sounds that credibly distinguish them to the western ear. Though Alberich is vile, uncouth, and repulsive and hence comparable to the stereotype of the Eastern Jew, he is also clearly - albeit only temporarily - associated with wealth and hence is also a representation of the Western Jew striving for acceptance in a world that will not accept him.39

Richard Wagner was himself a personal friend of Arthur de Gobineau, and was heavily

influenced by Gobineau’s writings on race. In her diaries, Wagner’s wife Cosima frequently

mentions Gobineau as both a personal acquaintance and a topic of conversation with her

husband.

Our conversation starts with the article and touches on all subjects, including Gobineau’s theory, to which R. links the remark that it is by no means impossible that humanity should cease to exist, but if one looks atthings without regard to time and space, one knows that what really matters is something different fromracial strength—see the Gospels. And he adds jokingly: “If our civilization comes to an end, what does itmatter? But if it comes to an end through the Jews, that is a disgrace. 40

Wagner’s own anti-Semitism was influential on the writings of the Aryanist Houston Stewart

Chamberlain, whose own writings were in turn a major influence on Adolf Hitler.41 Wagner thus

sits at the intersection of race-theorists and fantasists: in his imagining of the Dwarf as a

slanderous Jewish caricature, he set into motion a tradition of using fantasy races as allegories

for real-world understandings of race.

With The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien is reproducing the “Jewish

svartálfar” of Wagner’s operas. With regards to their mythological ancestors, the names of the

Dwarves in Thorin Oakenshield’s company in The Hobbit are taken directly from the Icelandic

Poetic Edda. With regards to their Jewish encoding, Tolkien’s Dwarves also sometimes enters

the realm of debasing stereotype and antisemitism: Tolkien’s Dwarves are insular, greedy, and

disagreeable. In other cases, a more nuanced understanding of Jewishness is encoded into

39 Marc A. Wiener. Richard Wagner and the anti-Semitic imagination. Vol. 12. U of Nebraska Press, 1997, 144. 40 Cosima Wagner and Geoffrey Skelton. Diaries of Cosima Wagner, 1878-1883. New Haven CN: Yale University Press, 1997, 622. 41 Geoffrey G. Field. Evangelist of Race: the Germanic vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Columbia Univ. Press, 1981.

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Dwarves: they are a diasporic people, with the Misty Mountain serving as a fantastical Israel.

Perhaps most tellingly, the Dwarven language of Khuzdul is constructed as a Semitic language.42

Tolkien himself acknowledged this connection in a 1971 interview: “The Dwarves of course are

quite obviously— wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their

words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.”43 In her article, “Jewish Dwarves:

Tolkien and Anti-Semitic Stereotyping,” Renee Vink elaborates further on this: “In the original

BBC-interview, the text of which is given by Zak Cramer in Mallorn 44 (2006), Tolkien’s

statement is longer. It turns out that Tolkien had added a remark about ‘a tremendous love of the

artefact, and of course the immense warlike capacity of the Jews, which we tend to forget

nowadays.’”44 And thus, for Tolkien, the association of Dwarves with craftsmanship and warfare

are also rooted at least partially in their encoded Jewishness. In one of his letters, he wrote “I do

think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the

languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue.”45

While Tolkien’s attitudes toward Jews were more positive than Wagner’s,46 Rebecca

Brackam argues in her article “Dwarves are Not Heroes” that the very usage of a Jewish

character template is intrinsically anti-Semitic, regardless of whether or not Jewish

42 Renee Vink analyzes the connection between Khuzdul and Hebrew as follows: Indeed the dwarven tongue Khuzdul has a phonology and a triconsonantal root system that resembles Hebrew (and modern Ivrit for that matter). From these triconsonantal roots words are formed by inserting vowels, doubling consonants or adding suffixes. Compare, for instance, Hebrew words and names such as melek, David, shalom and baruch with Dwarvish words and names like Gabilgathol, baruk and khazad, which are obviously similar in phonetic structure (the meanings of similar looking words in Dwarvish and Hebrew, however, are completely different; Baruk means “axes,” while baruch means “blessed”).”

Renée Vink. “‘Jewish’ Dwarves: Tolkien and Anti-Semitic Stereotyping." Tolkien Studies 10 (2013): 123-145. https://doi.org/10.1353/tks.2013.0003 43 BBC Four. “An Interview with J.R.R. Tolkien.” 1971. 44 Vink, “‘Jewish’ Dwarves.” 125. 45 Christopher Humphrey. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981, letter 176. 46 In Letter 30, Tolkien writes “But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.” Humphrey, Letters, Letter 176.

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characterization of Dwarves is shallow or deep, benevolent or disparaging:

Before discussing Tolkien's works, I should explain what I mean by antisemitism and antisemitic beliefs for the purposes of this article. I do not limit the meaning of antisemitism to overt violence or discrimination against practitioners of Judaism or Jewish converts to Christianity. Rather, by antisemitism I chiefly mean the underlying assumption that makes such violence and discrimination possible—the claim that there is something about Jews, biologically and psychologically, that marks them as fundamentally different from the Christian cultures that have been dominant in Europe since the Middle Ages.47

Tolkien himself flatly denied having any influence from Wagner’s Der Rings des

Nibelungen, stating “Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases.”48 Tolkien’s

denial of Wagnerian influence has been subjected to a great deal of suspicion: In “Two Rings to

Rule Them All: A Comparative Study of Tolkien and Wagner” Jamie McGregor argues that

“There are similarities between Tolkien and Wagner that are not found in any of their mutual

sources” and suggests the view that Tolkien was partially motivated by a desire “to offer a

correction of (and possibly a corrective to) Wagner's tetralogy.”49 The mutual decision to portray

Dwarves with Jewish characteristics would corroborate this hypothesis, as would the different

ways in which they portray their Dwarves. If Tolkien was motivated by responding to Wagner,

he may have been deliberately crafting an image of “Heroically Jewish Dwarves” to counter the

“Villainously Jewish Dwarves” of Wagner. That said, If Tolkien was not influenced by Wagner

as he claimed, then both of their decisions to encode Dwarves with Jewish identity demonstrate a

pervasive set of racial ideals which both authors had internalized and independently projected in

their writings.

47 Rebecca Brackham. . "’Dwarves are not heroes’: antisemitism and the Dwarves in JRR Tolkien's writing." Mythlore: A Journal of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 28, no. 3 (2010): 7. 48 Humphrey, Letters, Letter 306. 49Jamie McGregor. "Two Rings To Rule Them All: A Comparative Study of Tolkien and Wagner." Mythlore: A Journal of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 29, no. 3 (2011): 10, 136

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Scottish Dwarves: Re-encoding Race

If we move directly from The Hobbit to contemporary fantasy games such as World of

Warcraft, we notice a strong cultural shift has taken place in the interim: Somewhere between

1937 and 2004, Dwarves lost their Jewish encoding and picked up a Scottish encoding in its

place. The Dwarves in World of Warcraft are depicted with red hair and Scottish accents, call

players “laddie” and “lassie,” and offer a quest that revolves around making haggis.50 This

evolution shows that even with the relatively homogenous example of Dwarves, imagination of

fantasy races shift considerably over time, even while being bounded within the essentialist

racial frame. The process by which Dwarves shifted from fantasticalized Jews to fantasticalized

Scots is gradual and haphazard, and it serves as an object lesson for how imaginings of race

evolve over time.

The earliest identifiable instance of a Dwarf character with a Scottish accent is, arguably,

Poul Anderson’s 1961 fantasy novel Three Hearts Three Lions. The novel features many

characters who speak in phoneticized dialect, including a Dwarf named Hugi whose speech is

possibly an approximation of a Scottish accent: “What’s the thocht here?’ he growled. ‘Would

ye gang oot in mere cloth? There’s a mickle long galoots in yon woods were glad to stick iron in

a rich-clad wayfarer.”51 It is unclear exactly how Poul Anderson wanted Hugi’s voice to be

decoded, and it’s similarly unclear if Hugi’s speech patterns were meant to be reflective of his

status as a Dwarf; indeed, the novel also features a “Swanmay” (that is, a woman who

shapeshifts into a swan) who speaks with the same patterns as Hugi.

50Wowhead. “Keeping the Hagghis Flowin’.” https://www.wowhead.com/quest=29353/keepin-the-haggis-flowin 51 Poul Anderson. Three Hearts and Three Lions. New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1961.

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In 1991, Warhammer depicts a clearly Celtic-coded Dwarf in the figure of the “Slayer”

unit.52 Slayers were depicted as red-haired and wearing clothing and war-paint evocative of Pre-

Roman Celts. Warhammer was in turn a major influence on Warcraft,53 which gives the first

clear example of a “Scottish Dwarf” I have been able to locate. Units in Warcraft had pre-

recorded voice clips that would trigger when certain units were commanded: the “Dwarven

Demolition Squad” in 1995’s Warcraft II spoke with thick Scottish accents, complete “aye,

laddie” as one of their response sounds.

In the Peter Jackson film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, Gimli spoke with a

distinctive northern English Yorkshire accent.54 The “Yorkshire Dwarf” is already pointing the

same direction as the “Scottish Dwarf,” associating Dwarves with the northern peoples of the

United Kingdom. In Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, Thorin and his company have similar Yorkshire

accents to Gimli, and Balin refers to Bilbo as “Laddie.” In the third Hobbit film, Scottish

comedian Billy Connolly plays the Dwarven leader Dain Ironfoot, doing an exaggerated

caricature of a “hot-blooded Scotsman” in the process.55

A 2019 thread on the tabletop gaming message board Giants in the Playground on

the topic of “Scottish Dwarves” provides useful illumination, with Dungeons and Dragons

players from various countries commenting on how Dwarves are portrayed in their home

language. One 52Jim Bambra and Rick Priestly, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Third Edition. Nottingham: Games Workshop, 1991, 215.

53Brett Slabaugh. “World of Warcraft Could Have Been World of Warhammer.” Escapist Magazine, Jan 26, 2012. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/world-of-warcraft-could-have-been-world-of-warhammer/ 54 Walking out of this first movie in high school, I distinctly remember one of my friends (mistaking the Yorkshire accent for a Scottish one) boldly declaring “I told you Dwarves were Scottish.” He himself typically played “Scottish Dwarf” characters in our games; years later, when I asked him why he associated Dwarves with Scottishness, he was unable to give an answer, saying it simply seemed natural. 55 Conversely, in the 1977 Rankin and Bass animated adaptation of The Hobbit, none of the Dwarves spoke with such dialectal markers.

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user wrote that “At least in german the "scotish [sic] Dwarf" does not exist. Dwarves speak in a

"gruff" voice, but with no regional coloring,” and another wrote “Same with French. However, I

know one series that gave its Dwarf a Gascon accent, and the more I think about it the more it

fits. (For one, it's a mountain region, unlike Scotland).” A user named Scarlet Knight wrote what

I believe is the most compelling analysis:

I believe it was decided that much of it was based on stereotype and familiarity. As mentioned, ask someone to do a pirate & they do Robert Newton; also cowboys sound like John Wayne & Italians like Chico Marx. For the same reason, ask a DM to do a Roman senator and they use an upper class British accent not Italian because that is what was heard in the old sword & sandal movies. We know it's not accurate but our meanings get across…. Then once we have accents, our stereotypes kick in. A player does an Irish accent for bards because of the association with music and mischief. Scottish for Dwarves because it's familiar enough to do while exotic & rough.

Scarlet Knight’s analysis points to a language-based form of semiotic convergence.56 The

association of Dwarves as being a fantastical race of gruff and hardy mountain-dwellers leads to

an association with the Scottish and Yorkshire accents in English language media, as it

apparently leads to an association with Gascon accents in French language media.

Likewise, marking Dwarves as Scottish puts them in position of “White Other” who is

familiar but distinct from an Anglo-Saxon center; it marks them as “Them” when contrasted to

Anglo-Saxon coded humans, but as part of “Us” when contrasted with non-White racial enemies

such as Orcs or Goblins. In fantasy novels, Dwarven characters appear primarily as supporting

characters for Human or Elven protagonists57 rather than as protagonists themselves. Even when

56 One of my professors also pointed out the shifting understanding of Jews across the 20th century: “I think that dwarves being coded as Scottish is an important part of the paper and should be maintained. American Jews in the 1930s were highly masculinized (think of Bugsy Siegel and all of the other Jewish gangsters) but, in the last 60 or so years, Jewish men have been coded feminine in the US.... by the middle of the 20th century Jews no longer seemed to be good representations of masculinity, and if dwarves were going to continue to be coded as male, they needed to no longer be Jewish. Scotts, as tall warriors who weren't British gentlemen but more or less spoke the same language we do, were good representations of masculinity.” (Esther Clinton, personal communication, 12/20/21) 57 Examples of these “Dwarven sidekicks” would include Flint Fireforge from The Dragonlance Chronicles, Bruenor Battlehammer from The Crystal Shard, Hendel from The Sword of Shannara, as well as Hugi from Three Hearts Three Lions and Gimli from The Lord of the Rings.

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Dwarves are allies, they are close-at-hand Others, typified as the “sidekick race.”58

As Tolkien’s ideas were reinterpreted through Dungeons and Dragons,59 the gruff and

war-like nature of Dwarves becomes increasingly dissonant from the perceived effeminacy of

Jews: as Karen Brodkin notes, the position of Jews in the United States labor force was heavily

associated with the garment industry in the mid-20th century, which led them to be perceived as

racially feminine.60 Conversely, The use of Scottish accents with the Dwarves in World of

Warcraft or around Dungeons and Dragons tables becomes short-hand to signify a set of racially

coded personality traits: masculine, war-like, unrefined, and of a slightly but not radically

different culture. We can see the same pattern with the “Scottish Vikings” of How to Train Your

Dragon (2010) or the “Scottish Spartans” of the film 300 (2006). In the case of World of

Warcraft’s Scottish Dwarves, the accent is something that followed from a pre-existing pattern

of characterizations established in the Tabletop Era. And when examining the Tabletop Era, we

find that the characterization of Dwarves as surrogates for a particular ethnic group is secondary

to their characterization along the lines of masculinity.

58 This subordinate-ally position parallels the experiences of real world “martial races” such as Sikhs and Gurkhas, who were given conditional membership in the British Empire in exchange for fighting against the Empire’s enemies. The role of the “Martial Race” myth will be explored again in Chapter 2. 59 Much like Tolkien denied having influence from Wagner, Gary Gygax also denied being influenced by Tolkien: “I have recounted this experience before, but I'll do so again: When I was part of a large con panel on the East Coast, one young twit of an editor for a major publisher also a panelist asked me before the audience why I had stolen dwarves from Tolkien. I responded in august tones: "I beg your pardon, Young Lady," but I stole my dwarves from the same source the Good Professor did, Norse Mythology. As with Tolkien and Wagner, there are textual similarities not found in mutual sources which indicate that Gygax was more heavily influenced by Tolkien than he was willing to admit. Gary Gygax. “Q&A with Gary Gygax, Part III.” Dragonsfoot, Forum, July 13, 2005. https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12147&start=60 60Karen Brodkin. "Global capitalism: What's race got to do with it?." American Ethnologist 27, no. 2 (2000): 237-256. 247.

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Dwarves and Masculinity

Across the fantasy genre, Dwarves are overwhelmingly depicted as male. All of Thorin’s

companions in The Hobbit are male, as are the Dwarves in Lord of the Rings. In the illustrations

of Dungeons and Dragons manuals, Dwarves are nearly universally portrayed as male,

particularly in the first two editions. In Warhammer, every single Dwarf unit is depicted as

distinctly male bodied, and the vast majority of Dwarf characters in their lore is male as well.

This innate Dwarven masculinity is further developed by the traits associated with fantasy

Dwarves: The common descriptions of Dwarves as heavy drinking, violent tempered,

hardworking, long-bearded, xenophobic, and emotionally repressed all contribute the image of

Dwarves as a “masculine race.” Dwarves are thus masculinized both in their being represented by

male rather than female members, and also in their association with masculine traits as an entire

race.

This gendered component of racial identity is a major aspect of the essentialist frame. In

his 1853 Inequality of the Human Races, Arthur de Gobineau presented race and gender as being

metaphysically linked categories. He wrote “We may use here the Hindu symbolism, and

represent what I call the ‘intellectual current’ by Prakriti, the female principle, and the ‘material

current’ by Purusha, the male principle.” He describes the Chinese as being “at the head of the

‘male’ category” of races due to their extreme materiality, and “the Hindus being the prototype of

the opposite class” due to their extreme spirituality.61 Gobineau would later define these

“male” qualities of the typical Chinese person: “He has a love of utility and a respect for order”

and “his will-power [is] rather obstinate.”62 When we look to our characterizations of Dwarves,

61 Gobineau, Inequality, 87. 62 Gobineau, Inequality, 206.

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similar patterns arise: The Complete Book of Dwarves states that Dwarves “value law and order”

and are “grumpy, taciturn, stubborn, and unyielding.”63 The Aryanist Houston Stewart

Chamberlain would later draw contrasts between the “hyperidealist” Aryan Indian who was “in

extreme contrast to the Semite,” stating the Indian was flawed in being “not materialist

enough.”64 This structural contrast between the materialist-masculine on one side and the

spiritual-feminine on the other side is preserved in fantasy literature and games, with

“masculine” races such as Dwarves and Orcs contrasted against “feminine” races such as

Elves.65

Dungeons and Dragons introduced a trope of Dwarves being a distinctly non-magical

and thus more material race. Early editions of Dungeons and Dragons forbid Dwarf characters

from being “magic users,” as do contemporary games such as the Dragon Age series; the Dwarf

armies of Warhammer are similarly forbidden from using magic.66 Magic, being ephemeral and

spiritual rather than material in nature, maps well onto Gobineau’s concept of “Prakriti.”67 In

contrast, fantasy Elves in the same games are almost always heavily associated with the concept

of magic. The “Elf” class in the earliest versions of Dungeons and Dragons was a magic-user,

and later editions incentivize players of Elves to pursue magic-using classes.68 In much the same

way that Dwarves are masculine and material, Elves are feminine and ephemeral; looking at

Dwarves and Elves through the lens of Gobineau’s “Prakriti” and “Purusha,” we see Dwarves

63 Jim Bambra. The Complete Book of Dwarves. Lake Geneva WI: TSR Inc., 1991, 18-21. 64Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Aryan World-view. Munich: F Bruckmann A.G, 1938, 435. 65The binary between Masculine-Dwarf and Feminine-Elf leaves Humans in the unmarked “goldilocks zone” of normalcy. 66The emphasis of the non-magicality of Dwarves stands in stark contrast to the Eddic svartálfar who preceded them: the svartálfar are themselves magical beings, and their role as artisans is specifically as the creators of the magical tools used by the gods. 67 The binary structure of earthy, masculine, and material on one side and airy, feminine, and spiritual on the other can also be observed with the characters of Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest. 68 The association between Elves and “Prakriti” will be explored more thoroughly in Chapter 3.

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emblematic of “Purusha” and Elves as emblematic of “Prakriti.”

Dwarves as a “Martial Race”: Gamifying Stereotypes

Brackham notes that this masculine characterization of Dwarves was already underway

between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, wherein the notion of the “martial races” was

encoded into aspects of Dwarven identity:

Tolkien even borrows from a "martial race" of the British Empire to underscore Gimli's bravery and skill—the Dwarvish battle cry, which translates to "Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!" (LotR App.F.1106) is adapted from the Gurkha cry, "The Gurkhas are upon you!" The notion of martial races held that some peoples were biologically pre-determined to be warriors, while others were not. 69

The concept of Dwarves as a “martial race” would further propagate itself in both

Dungeons and Dragons and the games influenced by it through their game mechanics. As

discussed in the introduction, Dungeons and Dragons created the idea of racial attribute

modifiers, wherein certain races would inherently be stronger, tougher, or smarter than others.

Because these attributes were tied to performing certain roles within the game, this made certain

races more naturally apt towards being warriors, magic-users, or other game roles. In the case of

Dwarves, they were given bonuses to their bonuses to physical toughness and penalties to their

social finesse, gamifying the characterization of Dwarves as tough but dour. In early editions,

this was reinforced by racial limitations on access to certain character classes, which forbade

Dwarves from being wizards, druids, and other magic-oriented roles that ran contrary to the

Dwarf stereotype. From third edition onward, these restrictions were dropped, but the use of

racial attribute bonuses still strongly incentivized players to choose certain race-and-class

combinations over others. While a Dwarf could be a wizard, he would never be as good of a

wizard as an Elf.

69 Brackham, “Dwarves are Not Heroes,” 98.

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The extent of this race-class stereotyping was analyzed by a 2017 FiveThirtyEight article

titled “Is Your D&D Character Rare?.” In the article, author Gus Wezerek analyzed characters

created on the website D&D Beyond from August 15 to September 15. It presented twelve

possible classes and thirteen possible races. Of 9,507 Dwarf characters analyzed, 6502 (68.39%)

were of one of four classes: Fighter, Cleric, Paladin, or Barbarian. This strong association

between Dwarves and a narrow band of character classes reflects both gamified and non-

gamified aspects of Dwarves. These are classes which rely on Strength, Constitution, or Wisdom

as their key attributes, which fifth edition Dwarves have bonuses to. With the exception of

clerics, these are roles that focus on close-quarters combat, confirming the role of Dwarves as a

“martial race.” 70

Dwarven Psyches: Xenophobia, Stoicism, and Anger

Characterizing Dwarves as a race of warriors required them to have enemies to war

against, and these enemies are framed in racial terms. As Dwarves evolved in the tabletop era,

racism itself has become part of their racial character. The insularity of Tolkien’s Dwarves

became recoded as xenophobia, ethnonationalism, and racial hatred in the Dwarves of Dungeons

and Dragons and Warhammer. The Complete Book of Dwarves states that the “dwarfcentric

view is deeply rooted in all dwarves, regardless of where they live, even when among other

races. Dwarves in such places may grudgingly admit that humans or elves have achieved some

level of civilization and political power, but these are inferior to their own achievements.”71

Likewise, Warhammer Armies: Dwarfs states that “Dwarfs are extremely resistant to new ideas,

70 Conversely, the four most popular classes for Human characters (Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric) represented only 48% of Human characters made. 71 Bambra, Complete Bookf of Dwarves, 19.

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especially if these ideas come from other races.”72

This xenophobia is frequently gamified, granting Dwarves bonuses when fighting against

racial enemies and penalties when fighting alongside them. In the fourth edition of Warhammer,

Dwarf armies are penalized for working alongside Elf armies: “No Elf will join a Dwarf unit,

and no Dwarf will join an Elf unit…. furthermore, Dwarfs distrust Elves so much that they

dislike fighting next to them, believing that they are untrustworthy and unlikely to stand their

ground.”73 Similarly, page eighteen of the first edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s

Handbook presents a “Racial Preference Table,” wherein each of its fantasy races is given an

innate level of hostility or hospitality towards the other playable races. In this table, Dwarves are

labeled as having “antipathy” towards Elves, and “hatred” towards Half-Orcs. This innate racial

antipathy is further gamified by a set of bonuses when in combat against enemy races: “In melee

combat… Dwarves add 1 to their dice rolls to hit opponents who are half-Orcs, goblins,

hobgoblins, or Orcs.” 74 In this manner, Dwarves as a race are given a quantifiable aptitude

bonus for racially targeted violence.75

Starting from the third edition76 of Dungeons and Dragons, we begin to see the softening

of these traits. The bonuses to attack specific hated races are gone. Elves are now regarded with

“grudging respect,” though “Dwarves fail to appreciate Elves’ subtlety and art, regarding Elves

72Nigel Stillman, Nigel, and Richard Priestly. Warhammer Armies: Dwarfs, Fourth Edition, Nottingham: Games Workshop, 1996, 60. 73Stillman and Priestly, Dwarfs, 78. 74Gary Gygax, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook, First Edition. Lake Geneva WI: TSR Inc., 1978, 16. 75The second edition of Dungeons and Dragons would preserve these racial combat bonuses verbatim. Though the “Racial Preference Table” would no longer appear, racial animosity is still listed as a defining trait of Dwarves, stating they are “not overly fond of Elves, [and] they have a fierce hatred of Orcs and goblins. (Winter and Picken, 20-21)76Edition changes in Dungeons and Dragons tend to be fairly drastic overhauls of rules and game lore, led bycompletely different teams of writers and separated by roughly decade long intervals. Conversely, new editions ofWarhammer are released much more regularly and with less substantial shifts.

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as unpredictable, fickle, and flighty.” Half-Orcs are no longer the object of outright hatred, but

rather “mistrust,” and “they grant individual half-Orcs the opportunity to prove themselves.”77

However, these shifting attitudes towards Elves and Half-Orcs seem less about portraying

Dwarves as more cosmopolitan and more about minimizing player conflicts; with regards to non-

player “monstrous” races, Dwarven racial hatred has not abated since D&D’s inception in the

1970s. The fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook states: “Dwarves harbor

a fierce hatred for Orcs, which often inhabit the same mountainous areas that Dwarves favor and

which wreak periodic devastation on Dwarf communities.”78 The fifth edition Player’s

Handbook cuts a curious trajectory, creating an ambiguous hostility towards Elves rooted in an

unambiguous hostility towards Orcs: “when the hammer meets the Orc’s head, they’re as apt to

start singing as to pull out a sword…. [but] when orcs or goblins come streaming down out of the

mountains, an Elf’s good to have at your back. Not as good as a Dwarf, maybe, but no doubt

they hate the Orcs as much as we do.”79 Racial harmony is presented as only be achievable

through mutual racial animosity.

As a “Good” race, Dwarves are put in a binary opposition with “Evil” races such as Orcs

and Goblins. In this light, their xenophobia is justified and made heroic by the racial logics of the

text. As will be explored thoroughly in Chapter 2, the end point of this moralized race war is a

fantasy about genocide, wherein racial extermination becomes a heroic cause. The Complete

Book of Dwarves explicates these genocidal undertones:

77Jonathan Tweet. Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook, Third Edition. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2000, 14. 78 Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt. Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook, Fourth Edition. Wizards of the Coast. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2008, 37. 79James Wyatt James, Robert J Schwalb, and Bruce Cordell. Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook, Fifth Edition. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014, (19).

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Dwarves detest drow, orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, and evil giants, eradicating them whenever found. Some strongholds are not above enslaving such creatures and forcing them to work in labor camps and Dwarves have no doubt that they are involved in a war of massive proportions. It is known as the "War to the Death," for the dwarves have sworn to fight until their enemies are destroyed.80

With the exception of its fourth edition, which was grounded in the Nentir Vale setting,

Dungeons and Dragons has historically been sold as a set of rules which can be applied within a

number of fantastical worlds with their own histories and cultural intricacies, which are sold as

separate products. The setting-agnostic nature of Dungeons and Dragons serves to reinforce the

essentialist racial framework: Dwarven hatred of Orcs and dislike of Elves is not rooted in

historical experience or political tensions, but is rather an innate function of racial identity.

In addition to xenophobia, Dwarves are consistently categorized along the lines of being

both stoic and vindictive. The Complete Book of Dwarves states that Dwarves “have personal

views that they rarely make known to others, one reason they are seen as a taciturn race.

However, when a dwarf thinks that his own views are not being heard, he will become grumpy,

silent, and bear his distress stoically.” It later elaborates that Dwarves “allow [their anger] to

simmer and increase until they explode.”81 Similarly, Warhammer emphasizes the ideas of

“holding grudges” as a core Dwarven trait, with their national historical text being called “The

Book of Grudges.”82 This characterization plays to a “boys don’t cry” attitude wherein outbursts

of anger are the only acceptable way for men to display emotion: Dwarves are allowed to feel

anger, or to feel nothing at all. In the xenophobic mindset described above, this anger takes on a

righteous and nationalistic tone when it is directed at the “evil” enemy races.

80 Bambra, Complete Book of Dwarves, 22. 81 Bambra, Complete Book of Dwarves, 21-22. 82 Stilman and Priestly, Dwarfs, 11.

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Dwarven Bodies: Muscles and Beards

The gradual re-encoding of Dwarves from Tolkien’s hybrid Jewish- svartálfar to a

masculine warrior race has led to a curious trend: over time, depictions of Dwarves became

substantially taller, heavier, and more muscular. The first edition Dungeons and Dragons

Player’s Handbook presents a picture on page 18 wherein a Dwarf comes up to a Human’s

navel, suggesting a height of roughly three and a half feet; similar proportions can be seen with

the 1977 Rankin and Bass adaptation of The Hobbit.83 The second edition Player’s Handbook

gives a complex table for randomly generating height and weight by race, with the average

results for a male Dwarf being 4’0 and 155 lbs.84 The third edition version of the table gives an

average height of 4’2 and weight of 165 lbs85. The fourth edition dispenses with the tables, but

lists average heights as “4’3”-4’9” and weight as being between 160 and 220 lbs86. Fifth edition

takes away the quantification, but states that “Though they stand well under 5 feet tall, Dwarves

are so broad and compact that they can weigh as much as a human standing nearly two feet

taller.”87 Changes in art reflect these changing heights and weights, with Dwarf bodies becoming

visibly larger in the second edition Player’s Handbook and visibly more muscular starting in the

third. The Dwarf presented on page 12 of the third edition Player’s Handbook is hyper-muscular,

possessing deltoid muscles roughly the size of his head and arms the roughly the same size as his

legs; The male Dwarf bodies presented in World of Warcraft have very similar proportions.

Between the 1970s and the early 2000’s, “Dwarf” being a synonym for “small person” is

83And while Dwarves and Halflings (D&D’s version of Hobbits) have similar proportions in the game’s first edition, they become radically different by the third. 84 Steve Winter and Jon Picken. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook, Second Edition. TSR Inc., Lake Geneva WI. 1989, 25. 85 Tweet, Player’s Handbook 3rd ed, 109. 86 Heinsoo, Collins, and Wyatt, Player’s Handbook 4th ed, 36. 87 Wyatt, Schwalb, and Cordell, Player’s Handbook 5th ed, 18.

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gradually overwritten by the need for Dwarf bodies to embody an idealized mesomorphic

masculine body type.

Just as extreme musculature conveys a sort of hyper-masculinity, so do the extremely

large beards Dwarves are consistently portrayed with. Facial hair is a strong signifier of

masculinity, age, and (in some cases) Whiteness. It visibly separates men from women, older

men from younger men, and European men from East Asian or Native American men.88

These age-based associations are explicated in Warhammer, which features a unit of elite

veterans known as “Longbeards”: "Longbeards are the oldest, most experienced Dwarf

warriors, a fact evidenced by the length of their beards. These ensure that they receive

complete respect from other Dwarfs, who have been taught quite rightly to respect their

elders."89 Dwarves are here portrayed as patriarchal in the full sense of “The Rule of the

Fathers,” in that age and maleness are correlated in their authority figures.

In his article “The Beard Movement in Victorian Britain,” Cristopher Oldstone Moore

explores the link between facial hair and masculinity in the 19th century:

The reasons given for wearing beards were remarkably consistent during the 1850s and 1860s. At the core of this consensus was the idea that beards were integral to that elemental masculinity which still pertained in the modern age, first by contributing to men's health and vitality, and second by serving as the outward mark of inward qualities-particularly independence, hardiness, and decisiveness- that were the foundations of masculine authority. As such, they came to symbolize the "natural" superiority of men over women, and more vigorous men over their effete counterparts.90

Oldstone-Moore ties the Victorian popularity of beards to soldiers returning from the Crimean

war, giving them a “martial” association. And at the same time, Oldstone-Moore notes that

beards were also encoded as markers of civility by their Victorian advocates:

88 As we will explore in Chapter two, these are two of the most common sets of ethnic encodings for Orcs. 89 Pete Haines. Warhammer Armies: Dwarfs, Seventh Edition. Nottingham, Games Workshop, 2005, 32. 90 Christopher Oldstone-Moore. "The beard movement in Victorian Britain." Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, Victorian Studies 48.1, 2005. 7-34, 8.

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The advocacy of beards by Kingsley and others-and the growing of beards-can be inter- preted in this light as the assertion of that essential male physicality in a manner appropriate for industrial civilization. Preferring words like "stern," "bold," and "decisive," enthusiasts embraced the forcefulness implied by beards while also associating them, as Kingsley and Gowing did, with reason and self-control. One might say that the beard was the sign of the civilized warrior-a man who retains the nature of essential manhood, yet remains within the bounds of Christian civility.91

This characterization of “martial, but civilized” is embodied in the Dwarves of Tolkien,

Dungeons and Dragons, and Warhammer, and can be contrasted to the uncivilized but martial

Orcs or the civilized but un-martial Elves of the same texts. Beards are a marker of Whiteness as

well as maleness. The traditional Dwarven antagonists – Elves and Orcs - are almost universally

portrayed as lacking facial hair. Just as Dwarves are masculinized by their beards, Elves are

feminized by their smooth faces, and Orcs are marked as non-White by theirs.92

Invisible Dwarf Women

Contrasting the abundant images of muscular, bearded, hyper-masculine Dwarven men

are the absence of Dwarven women in fantasy art, literature, and gaming. The vast majority of

fantasy art depicting Dwarves presents them as male: as of 12-20-2021, a Google image search

for “Fantasy Dwarf” depicts only three female Dwarf characters among the first sixty images,

two of whom appear in side-by-side comparison with male Dwarves. The various “Dwarven

sidekicks” in fantasy literature referenced in footnote 17 were male Dwarves who closely aligned

to the TV Tropes definition of the archetypal Dwarf. Likewise with Dwarf characters in video

games: the Baldur’s Gate series featured a large number of traveling companions who can join

91 Oldstone-Moore, “Beard Movement,” 26. 92 The seventh edition Warhammer Armies: Dwarfs mentions an incident called “The War of the Beard,” described as follows: “The envoys were shaved of their beards. Humiliated beyond endurance, the envoys were expelled from the Elf lands and compelled to return home, across the lands of strangers, without their beards or their pride. There could only be one response: war!” (P14) Those inclined towards psychoanalytic reads could easily draw a connection between this and Freudian castration anxiety, with male potency being tied towards secondary sex characteristics rather than genitalia.

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the protagonist, all of whom are bearded male Dwarves.93 Even modern game series such as

Dragon Age, while countering Dwarf narratives in several key ways, still exclusively portray

male Dwarves among cohort characters.

This trend begins with Tolkien; while we see at least some women represented amongst

the races of Men and Elves, there are no female Dwarf characters in either The Hobbit or The

Lord of the Rings. Appendix A of Return of the King, in a section entitled “Durin’s Folk,” states

that “there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of the whole people. They

seldom walk abroad except at great need. They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they

must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell

them apart.”94 In the film version of The Two Towers, Gimli explains this appendix in a scene

that is largely played for comedy, with the punchline being Aragorn whispering “it’s the beards”

when Gimli mentions Dwarven women being mistaken for Dwarven men.

The description in this Appendix minimizes Dwarven women in three ways: first making

them a minority population among Dwarves, then removing them from the public sphere, and

lastly removing visible markers of femininity when Dwarven women do appear. Various aspects

of this “triple minimization” would be seen again in the supplemental texts of both Dungeons

and Dragons and Warhammer. In D&D, The Complete Book of Dwarves reproduces the notion

of Dwarven women occupying only a third of the species95. Likewise, art in first and second

edition books of Dungeons and Dragons features exclusively male Dwarves, largely portrayed as

the archetypal long-bearded warriors. The lore of Warhammer featured no instances of important

93 Baldur’s Gate Wiki. “Companions.” https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Companions 94 Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King. London: Allen and Unwin, 1954, 360. 95 Bambra, Complete Book of Dwarves, 23.

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female Dwarf characters, and their armies field no female Dwarf units.

Dwarves in the Liberal Era

The appearance of Dwarven women has increased slightly in the Liberal Era, as have

male Dwarves who do deviate at least somewhat from the traditional mold. Terry Pratchett’s

1996novel Feet of Clay centers the female Dwarf character of Cheery Littlebottom.96 Pratchett

presents Cheery initially as a non-dimorphic Dwarf with a large beard and masuline presentation,

who comes to adopt outward expressions of femininity such as wearing makeup and high heels.

Pratchett’s novel is the rare case of the “bearded Dwarven woman” being used for an actual

character rather than a footnote. At the same time, the satirical nature of Pratchett’s novels means

the contrast between Littlebottom’s male-coded body and female-coded expression is being

played for comedy.

2004’s World of Warcraft was one of the first major games that allowed players to create

a female Dwarf avatar, providing visual representation of female Dwarves in a mainstream

fantasy game.97 World of Warcraft was followed by 2009’s Dragon Age: Origins, which

likewise allowed players to create a female Dwarf protagonist. These female Dwarf player

avatars were among the earliest visual depictions of female Dwarf characters in fantasy gaming,

and were thus key in expanding imagining of Dwarves as being more than a race of bearded

men. 2011’s Dragon Age 2 also deserves credit for the character of Varric Tethras, a clean-

shaven and silver-tongued male Dwarf rogue whose characterization is antithetical to the

traditional image of Dwarves. Varric serves as the game’s narrator and principal traveling

96 Terry Pratchett. Feet of Clay: a Novel of Discworld. New York: Harper Prism, 1996. 97 WoW also featured the Dwarven Princess Moira Bronzebeard as a major character in its lore, and the Dwarf starting area features a large number of male and female Dwarf characters.

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companion of the hero, centering a non-stereotypical Dwarf in the game’s narrative. In the film

adaptations of The Hobbit, Fili and Kili were portrayed along somewhat similar lines as Varric,

with youthful and at least partially shaven faces. Perhaps the most transgressive Dwarf character

of the Liberal Era is Pathfinder’s Shardra Geltl, an explicitly transfeminine Dwarf shamaness

whose backstory begins “It's a sorry lot for a proud dwarven daughter to be raised a miserable

dwarven son.”98 By including a transfeminine Dwarf character, Pathfinder is pushing back

against both the association of Dwarves with masculinity and their association with patriarchal

gender norms.

That said, the presence of markedly female Dwarves in these has received pushback from

fans. A meme posted to reddit99 displays an illustration of male and female Dwarf bodies from

Dragon Age: Origins (who display clear sexual dimorphism) and refers to it as “the moral

coward’s Dwarf design.” Situated next to it is an illustration labeled “my far superior Dwarf

design” wherein both Dwarves have male bodies and beards, but one is wearing a skirt and

brassiere. The meme was quite popular, receiving over three thousand comments and over forty-

two thousand upvotes. Memes such as this show how powerfully gender is encoded as a racial

trait in fantasy - displaying feminine examples of fantasy Dwarves is seen as doing disservice to

the race’s essential character. This meme is clearly echoing Tolkien's own statements about

Dwarven women being indistinguishable from men. This notion that Dwarves lack sexual

dimorphism serves to reinforces the essential character of Dwarves as being a race of bearded

98 Crystal Frasier. “Meet the Iconics: Shardra Geltl.” Paizo Blog, July 31, 2014. https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lgcn?Meet-the-Iconics-Shardra-Geltl

99 Bravo_Whale. “My friend made this after seeing the art on the left on the Dragon Age Wiki, dwarves deserve better.” Reddit, Jan 14, 2021. https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/kx8ngx/my_friend_made_this_after_seeing_the_art_on_the/

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men – even the women.

As I discussed above, attitudes towards race in Dungeons and Dragons began to shift

with its third edition, released in the year 2000. This era also marks a gradual increase in

depictions of female Dwarves: The earliest illustration of a clearly female Dwarf I was able to

find was in the third edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook, published in the year

2000. This female Dwarf appears only as part of a textbook-like line-up of male and female

members of each fantasy race in The Player’s Handbook, and not in any of the depictions of

adventurers that populate the book. The fourth edition Player’s Handbook presents a side-by-

side illustration of a male and female Dwarf adventuring pair, and the fifth edition of the same

book shows a female Dwarf adventurer without a male counterpart.

As these artistic representations of female Dwarves increased, so too did the rules that

slotted Dwarves into their martial archetype relax: Dwarven characters were no longer

mechanically limited to certain classes (though they were still optimized for their traditional

warrior roles), and they no longer had bonuses for attacking enemy races (though these races

were still clarified as enemies in the text). From the release of their third edition onward,

Dungeons and Dragons seem to be moving away from its essentialist roots, allowing for more

examples of “nonstandard” Dwarves. At the same time, these increasingly liberal attitudes are

clearly in tension with the desire to portray fantasy races according to their traditional

archetypes, making the move towards racial liberalization slow and inconsistent.

The most recent and most substantial move towards liberalizing race in D&D can be

seen in the 2020 supplement Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Here, D&D finally attempted to

address the longstanding issue of character aptitude being racially determined by allowing

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players to substitute out racial traits on an ad-hoc basis. It presents the gamified aspects of race

as representing “typical” members of that race, without having to apply to a given player’s

character. As the book states:

…if you're a dwarf, your Constitution increases by 2, because dwarf heroes in D&D are often exceptionally tough. This increase doesn't apply to every dwarf, just to dwarf adventurers, and it exists to reinforce an archetype. That reinforcement is appropriate if you want to lean into the archetype, but it's unhelpful if your character doesn't conform to the archetype. 100

Similarly, on a section labeled “Personality” states:

The description of a race might suggest various things about the behavior and personality of that people's archetypal adventurers. You may ignore those suggestions, whether they're about alignment, moods, interests, or any other personality trait. Your character's personality and behavior are entirely yours to determine. 101

In these passages, we see the high degree of tension between liberalism and essentialism that

continues to pervade D&D, placing race in a superposition of both being determinative and

indeterminative: Dwarves are exceptionally tough, unless a player decides otherwise, in which

case they are not. We see here a conflict between “Dwarves are” and “Dwarves can be” as

competing statements: There is on the one hand a desire to still view Dwarves as a race of

bearded male warriors, while allowing for individual exceptions to that rule.

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything received a great deal of negative reception: while most

of this was focused on changes to character classes, its new rules for race were also received

coldly: as one redditor wrote, “It feels like that whole thing was rushed out just to satiate the

Twitter mob and not to actually offer anything other than just being ‘Variant Human Plus.’ It's

dull.” 102 Reactions such as this and the female Dwarf meme cited above suggest that, for some

100 Jeremy Crawford. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2020, 9. 101 Crawford, Tasha’ Cauldron, 8. 102 Itseemsstrange. “What are your biggest gripes with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything based on what we know now?” Reddit. November 13, 2020. https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/jtb283/what_are_your_biggest_gripes_with_tashas_cauldron/

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at least, essentialist characterizations are part of the appeal of fantasy games.

In contrast to D&D’s gradual liberalization, Warhammer has done little to shift its

attitude towards race over time.103 In 2015, the setting was abandoned entirely by its publishers

and replaced with the Age of Sigmar, a similar fantasy-themed tabletop wargame. Since then,

Warhammer has seen a number of fan-made continuations. I want to focus on the “Warhammer

Armies Project,” which has created a robust unofficial “Ninth edition” of the game. As a fan-

game, Warhammer Ninth Edition can be seen as a reflection of the tabletop wargaming

community itself.

The ninth edition Warhammer Armies: Dwarfs book was vastly more detailed than its

officially licensed predecessors, running 230 pages as opposed to the 50-80 pages of earlier

editions. This added exploration of Dwarfs was not used to present them as more diverse than

previous editions would suggest, but rather to explicate the implicit essentialism found within

Games Workshops’s materials. A section entitled “Dwarf Womenfolk” begins bluntly with: “The

Dwarfs are a fundamentally patriarchal race.” It finally explored the issue of female Dwarfs in

Warhammer, and it used the opportunity to justify their invisibility rather than to create visibility.

It reinforces the idea of Dwarven women being confined to the domestic sphere, “The bulk of

daily work and craft is undertaken by male Dwarfs, while Dwarf women tend to the raising of

the children and the running of the household - much like in our own society.” It states that “a

Dwarf woman's standing is based upon the rank of her husband, or former husband in the case of

widows. It is the ambition of every proud father for his daughter to marry above his station and

103 In reading through the various editions of Warhammer Armies: Dwarfs, it became apparent that subsequent editions copied and pasted whole sections unchanged from their predecessors.

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thus increase the fortunes of the clan.”104 Warhammer Ninth Edition can be seen as a reactionary

text against the Liberal Era: as games like Dragon Age, Dungeons and Dragons, and World of

Warcraft have (with varying degrees of success) pushed back against essentialist

characterizations, Warhammer Ninth Edition is doubles down on traditional attitudes towards

race and gender.

As to the cause of Warhammer being a locus of such staunch essentialism, I propose four

possible factors. Firstly, in a tabletop wargame the player takes on the role of an army rather than

an individual. This lends itself to a much more essentialized presentation of fantasy race, with

the player’s army representing an entire race or nation. Second, the highly commodified nature

of Warhammer in the form of its figurines gives it a stronger visual culture than Dungeons and

Dragons, with each figurine creating a standardized image of the race as a whole. The question

of “what does a Dwarf look like” is answered by a player’s description in Dungeons and

Dragons, but answered by a figurine in Warhammer. Third, the preoccupation with medieval

warfare lends itself to traditional notions of gender and race, presenting images of masculine

warrior heroes fighting for national domination on a medieval battlefield. Lastly, as mentioned

before, Warhammer maintains a cynical tone of which posits some armies as horrifically evil but

none as particularly good. This grants greater license to authors to portray Dwarfs negatively;

without the cosmic absolutes of “Good Races” and “Evil Races” present in Dungeons and

Dragons, there is little need for writers to convince readers that their Dwarfs are in line with

contemporary morality.105

104 Matthew Eliasson. Warhammer Armies: Dwarfs. Ninth Edition. Warhammer Armies Project, 2018, 37-38. 105 Anecdotally, Warhammer also seems to attract a more conservative and male-dominated player base than Dungeons and Dragons. I myself played Warhammer briefly in high school, and female friends who still play have noted a relatively high degree of discomfort around women in Warhammer circles.

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Final Thoughts

Regardless of whether Dwarves are coded as Jewish, Scottish, or absent of any real-world

analogs, their homogeneous portrayal still consistently reinforces the idea of racial stereotypes,

regardless of what specific stereotype they may be reinforcing. As Vink writes:

The Nazi treatment of Jews before and during the Second World War made Tolkien realize that such stereotyping could have horrifying consequences, causing him to drastically alter the image of Dwarves in the works he wrote after The Hobbit, notably The Lord of the Rings. But, according to Brackmann, this change merely served to turn negative into positive stereotyping without solving the underlying problem that thinking in stereotypes is wrong to begin with. 106

Vink’s writing here encapsulates what I see as the most pernicious aspect of the

essentialist raciology of high fantasy games: regardless of how novel or derivative a given text’s

portrayal of fantasy races are, the framework of fantasy race is one which posits race as a

determinative category. With the case of Dwarves, the shift from Wagner’s malicious Jewish

encoding to Tolkien’s more positive encoding still operated by constructing imaginary races as

surrogates for real world ethnic groups. When D&D and Warhammer scrubbed Dwarves of their

earlier Jewish encodings, they left a set of determinative characterizations about an entirely

imaginary race. These texts demonstrate an essentialist framework so firmly entrenched that

fantasy texts do not need to rely on real-world racial stereotypes to construct fantastical racial

stereotypes. Ultimately, regardless of whether a given text states that Dwarves are warlike or

peaceful, greedy or generous, austere or flamboyant, good or evil, statements which begin with

“Dwarves are” will always posit race as a definitive category.

106 Vink, “‘Jewish’ Dwarves,” 123.

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CHAPTER II: THE CASE OF ORCS, MONSTERIZING THE OTHER

In this chapter, I will be examining how Orcs function as a racialized enemy and all-

purpose racial “Other” in fantasy games and literature, defined by “their skin colour, be it green,

brown, or black; extreme aggressiveness and irrationality; primitive, disorganized cultures; and

homelands which are outside the borders of civilization.” 107 In this role as polysemic racial

outsider, Orcs draw on negative portrayals of Asian, African, Polynesian, and Native American

peoples. I begin this chapter by examining the specific racial encodings of Orcs in The Lord of

the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons, the two texts which have done the most to codify Orcs as

a race trope. I then examine the specific building blocks of Orc narratives: biological

determinism, polygenesis, fears about miscegenation and racial degeneration, and justifications

for genocide. Lastly, I analyze counter-narratives about Orcs in twenty-first century video

games: These efforts to “rehabilitate” Orcs, while valiant, are hamstrung by continuing to

operate inside the essentialist racial framework.

The Lord of the Rings and the “Oriental Orc”

Tolkien’s Orcs have already attracted a fair amount of scholarship pointing towards

Orientalist fears. Helen Young, Margaret Sinex, and James Hodes identify Saracens, Huns, and

Mongols as sources of inspiration for both the Orcs and the other servants of Sauron in The Lord

of the Rings. Helen Young summarizes this theme as follows:

The literary antecedents of orcs, moreover, are located within a millennium-old cultural tradition that constructs a dichotomy between West and East as Self and Other. There are significant similarities between them and conventional Saracen enemies in European romances of the mid-to-late Middle Ages: they are marked as somatically different to the Good characters; often have giant-like leaders; and have vastly superior numbers. Locating Saracens as a source of Tolkien’s orcs does not excuse or justify their racialization, but rather confirms the enduring racism which has been present in Western culture for centuries.108

107 Young, Race and Popular Fantasy Literature, 89. 108 Young, Race and Popular Fantasy Literature, 25.

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Sinex’s article Monsterized Saracens is focused on Tolkien’s Haradrim, a foreign Human

group, but draws conclusions about them similar to Young’s conclusions about Orcs. In it, she

identifies geography, color, and structural binaries as the basis for Tolkien’s raciology. With

regards to the first, she points to the “the geographical parallel between the Haradrim living to

Gondor’s south in the ‘Sunlands’ and medieval Christendom’s perceived enemies to the south

and east.” This echoes the above quote from Young and the persistent theme of Orcs existing on

the edge of civilization; they are distant enough not to be part of the in-group, but close enough

to pose a threat to it. She also identifies several binaries which underpinned understandings of

the Christian/Saracen divide: inner/outer, light/dark, saved/damned. 109

James Mendez Hodes’s blog post “Orcs, Britons, and The Martial Race Myth” draws

similar parallels, but to Central rather than Southwest Asians. He argues that “Tolkien explicitly

and purposefully crafted orcs as a detrimental depiction of Asian people specifically” and that

the Orcish horde which threatens civilization parallels traditional narratives about Atilla the Hun

and Chingghis Khan. Orcs are thus modeled after Asian barbarians who threaten to sweep over

the “civilized” world, that “as we explore Tolkien’s background and his creations, references

(subtle and overt, but mostly overt) to Asia in general and Mongolia in particular will come up

again and again.”110

Hodes’s analysis relies heavily on a sort of speculative psychoanalysis, hypothesizing

that the culture of the early 20th century British Empire affected Tolkien’s personal worldview:

Anxieties about culture, sex, and empire kept a Central Asian threat from centuries in the past in the atmosphere while a young John Ronald Reuel Tolkien grew up in South Africa and Worcestershire. As he read about George MacDonald’s goblins, the adults around him would have discussed British colonialism

109 Margaret Sinex. "’Monsterized Saracens,’ Tolkien's Haradrim, and Other Medieval ‘Fantasy Products.’" Tolkien Studies 7 (2010): 175-196. https://doi.org/10.1353/tks.0.0067, 175-176. 110 Hodes, “Orcs Part I.”

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and the Yellow Peril.111

He reminds us that Tolkien was an adolescent during the Boxer Rebellion and a veteran of World

War I. He invokes propaganda posters that depict Britain’s German adversaries with monstrous

features and beg the reader to “Beat Back the Hun.” He reminds us that the British Army in

which Tolkien served held a firm belief in the notion of “Martial Races” such as Sikhs and

Gurkhas being inherently war-like by racial disposition. Though it is difficult to make

authoritative claims about the inner life of a dead author, Hodes’s article illustrates the ubiquity

of anti-Asian sentiment in the early 20th century.

And to Hodes’s credit, this influence is corroborated by Tolkien’s own personal writings:

In one of his letters, he describes the appearance of Orcs as such: “The Orcs are definitely stated

to be corruptions of the 'human' form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad,

flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive

versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.”112 Physically, at least, Tolkien really

did appear to have Central Asians in mind when he was imagining Orcs.

In his seminal book Orientalism, Edward Said points to the pattern of Eastern peoples

being portrayed as a faceless mass ready to spill over the borders of civilization:

In the films and television the Arab is associated either with lechery or bloodthirsty dishonesty. He appears as an oversexed degenerate, capable, it is true, of cleverly devious intrigues, but essentially sadistic, treacherous…. In newsreels or news-photos, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences…Lurking behind all of these images is the menace of jihad. Consequence: a fear that the Muslims (or Arabs) will take over the world.” 113

With The Lord of the Rings, we see similar descriptions of Orcs being repeatedly presented as a

faceless horde threatening to overtake civilization. At the battle of Helm’s Deep, they are

111 Hodes, “Orcs Part I.” 112 Humphrey, Letters, Letter 210. 113 Edward Said. Orientalism. London: Penguin Books, 287.

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described as “thick as marching ants.”114 The analogy is used again toward the end of the trilogy,

where “Busy as ants hurrying orcs were digging”115 and “down from the hills on either side of

the Morannon poured Orcs innumerable.”116 The image of endless Orcs overtaking civilization

can be seen in Merry’s report to Aragorn, where he says “He [Saruman] emptied Isengard. I saw

the enemy go: endless lines of marching Orcs”117 or the descriptions of Rohan following the

passage of an Orcish army: “Nearly due west the broad swath of the marching Orcs tramped its

ugly slot; the sweet grass of Rohan had been bruised and blackened as they passed.” 118

Ultimately, Young, Sinex, and Hodes are making the same argument with different

approaches. Fantasy races rarely map onto real-world ethnic groups on a one to one basis, even

when confined to a single text; the Tolkien Orc is a bricolage of racial ideas, sharing memetic

DNA with European perceptions of Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Huns, and nonspecific threats from

the “East.” The important aspect of the Orc is that they are Other. Orcs are defined as much by

what they are not as what they are - they are not civilized. They are not good. They are not us.

They are Them. And as the trope of Orcs spread through Tolkien-inspired fantasy games and

literature, the number of “Thems” which they could draw upon expanded.

Dungeons and Dragons and the “Savage Orc”

With the advent of Gary Gygax’s Dungeons and Dragons, we see a broadening of Orcish

racial codings. Whereas the Tolkien Orc reflects European “Others” in the form of Huns and

Saracens, the D&D Orc seems to draw more heavily on American Others in the forms of peoples

historically subjugated by White Americans: Orcs in D&D carry with them racial codings of

114 J.R.R Tolkien. The Two Towers. London: Allen and Unwin, 1954, 536. 115 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King. London: Allen and Unwin, 1954, 828. 116 Tolkien, The Return of the King. 902. 117 Tolkien, The Two Towers, 571. 118 Tolkien, The Two Towers, 528.

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Africans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. The first edition of Dungeons and Dragons

was extremely sparse in terms of its depictions of Orcs; we begin seeing a proper codification in

the second edition Monster Manual, which describes them as such:

Orcs are a species of aggressive mammalian carnivores that band together in tribes and survive by hunting and raiding. Orcs believe that in order to survive they must expand their territory, and so they are constantly involved in wars against many enemies: humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, and other orc tribes. Orcs vary widely in appearance, as they frequently crossbreed with other species. In general, they resemble primitive humans with grey-green skin covered with coarse hair. Orcs have a slightly stooped posture, a low jutting forehead, and a snout instead of a nose.119

If we examine these traits in turn, we see how D&D’s Orcs move away from the Orientalist

codings and towards nonspecific indicators of Indigenous peoples. They are an all-purpose

“primitive” people: organized into tribes rather than armies, “hunters and raiders” rather than

footsoldiers. They vary in appearance from one another, making it easy to map different ethnic

groups onto them. Having green skin marks them as non-White, without specifically marking

them as “Red,” “Black,” or “Yellow.”

Many of their descriptors - the stooped posture, the jutting forehead - also seem to call to

mind cartoon depictions of cavemen. The Complete Book of Humanoids, a 1993 Dungeons and

Dragons supplement, draws this parallel further, stating “Like the primitive ancestors of humans

and demihumans, most humanoids still embrace the fears and wonders of the primordial world, a

world that still exists in its simplest, most frightening form.”120 This description explicitly places

fantasy races on an evolutionary teleology, with Orcs being the “less evolved” form of humans.

With this highly flexible non-White “primitive” Orc as a template, specific texts are then

able to re-encode highly specific ethnic identity onto Orcs. Nowhere is this diverse stereotyping

more evident than the 1988 supplement Orcs of Thar by Bruce Heard. Orcs of Thar gives a

119 Tim Beach. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monstrous Manual. Lake Geneva WI: TSR Inc, 1993, 281. Emphasis mine. 120 Slavicsek, Bill. The Complete Book of Humanoids. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Inc, 1993, 108.

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description of a land inhabited largely by Orcs, Hobgoblins, and other “monstrous” races. The

two most notable Orc tribes in this book are the “Red Orcs,” and the “Yellow Orcs.” The Yellow

Orcs lean verily heavily on the Chinese and Mongolian codings of which Hodes writes. They

worship the deities “Hong-Tzu” and “Wong-Ah,” and are ruled by “Moghul-Khan,” who has an

“Ugly Pekingese dog face.” They have innate proficiency in “martial arts,” and “favor

mismatched pieces of oriental armor.”121 Depictions of Moghul-Khan on the book’s back cover

show him wearing a Mongolian-style headgear.

The Red Orcs utilize images of Native Americans the same way that the Yellow Orcs

utilize images of Asians. Their fighters are called “braves,” and they are ruled by “Chief Sitting

Drool.” They wear their hair “braided with feathers.” Red Orc are given vaguely Native

American names like “Little-Big-Snout” “Two-Feathers” and “Wart-Bag.” 122 Depictions of

Chief Sitting Drool next to Moghul Khan show him wearing a feathered headdress.

Four years before Orcs of Thar gave us “Red” and “Yellow” orcs, the supplement Drums

on Fire Mountain by Graeme Morris and Tom Kirby gave us Orcs encoded as Pacific Islanders.

The cover of Drums on Fire Mountain features a trio of orcs with curly hair, green skin, and

bones through their noses, carrying painted shields and Maori-style war clubs. The adventure is

set on the "jungle covered island" of “Teki-nura-ria,” “inhabited by a primitive humanoid race

known as the kara-kara” who are “ruled by councils of witch-doctors.” The Kara-Kara are

described as follows:

Kara-kara are tribal humanoids distantly related to orcs. They are slightly shorter than humans, and have olive green skin, tangled curly dark green hair, and muzzlelike mouths with curved yellowing fangs. Most wear only loin-cloths, lurid body paint and primitive jewelry…Kara-kara inhabit tropical or semi-tropical islands, but may occasionally be encountered at sea in their large outrigger canoes or while raiding the coasts of civilized lands.123

121 Burce Heard. Orcs of Thar. Lake Geneva WI: TSR Inc., 1988. 14, 24, 34. 122 Heard, Orcs of Thar, 10, 41. 123 Graeme Morris and Thomas Kirby. Drums on Fire Mountain. Lake Geneva WI, TSR Inc, 1984, 3, 32. This model of the Polynesian “Island Savage” was a staple of early Hollywood adventure films, such as the Skull

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I bring up these two supplements in order to show how easily “Orc” transitions from a general

“savage” race to a metaphor for actual peoples seen as “savages.” As Young writes:

Cultural explanations of orc Otherness do not replace its underlying racial structure, rather they are built on its foundations. The non-specific amalgam of cultural referents attached to orc bodies from the 1990s onward, moreover, are always to ethnicities which are marginalized in the West.124

In her essay King Kong and the Monster in Ethnographic Cinema, Fatimah Tobing Rony

writes of the deep connections between the study of monsters and the study of Indigenous

peoples: “Teratology was an important aspect of early anthropology: the 'monster,' like the

Primitive Other, was of keen interest because it could be used to study and define the normal.”125

In this context, the Orc can be seen as the fantastical extension of a broad pattern of

understanding and validating the “Self” through the imagining of the “Other,” whether that Other

is African, Native American, Polynesian, or Central Asian.

It is in these depictions of Orcs and their cohort that Dungeons and Dragons most

strongly echoes the writings of Count Arthur de Gobineau. Compare the above descriptions of

Orcs to the following passages from The Inequality of the Races:

These backward tribes, especially the Polynesian negroes, the Samoyedes and others in the far north, and the majority of the African races, have never been able to shake themselves free from their impotence ; they live side by side in complete independence of each other. The stronger massacre the weaker, the weaker try to move as far away as possible from the stronger. This sums up the political ideas of these embryo societies, which have lived on in their imperfect state, without possibility of improvement, as long as the human race itself. 126

We see here the way in which “backward tribes” become interchangeable, with Africans,

Polynesians,127 and Native Siberian all being treated as a functional monoculture. The non-

specificity of the Orc as a racial allegory is built upon foundations such as these. The Orc is able

Island Natives in King Kong. 124 Young, Race in Popular Fantasy, 108. 125 Fatimah Tobing Rony. “King Kong and the Monster in Ethnographic Cinema.” The Third Eye. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1996, 243-244. 126 Gobineau, Inequality, 27. 127 By “Polynesian Negro,” Gobineau was likely referring to Melanasians, who possessed darker skin and curlier hair than other peoples of the South Pacific.

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to easily interchange African, Polynesian, and Central Asian racial codes because these races

were considered united in their “backwardness” already.

Part of this backwardness was a sense of existing in a liminal state between human and

animal. Gobineau wrote that “the animal character… is stamped on the negro from birth” and

that “many of his senses, especially taste and smell, are developed to an extent unknown to

other races.”128 The earliest depictions of Orcs in Dungeons and Dragons were of humanoids

with the heads of pigs, which were quickly replaced by the more conventional image of the

green-skinned brute that is standard.129 And while I could find no oblique references to it in any

Dungeons and Dragons manuals, the idea that Orcs have an enhanced sense of smell nonetheless

comes up frequently. Tolkien ambiguously alluded to this, saying “Orcs were as keen as hounds

on a scent” in The Fellowship of the Ring,130 though it is unclear whether he is explicitly

referring to Orcish sense of smell or using it as an analogy for Orcs being keen hunters. Later

texts, however, would make this theme explicit: The 2010 satirical webseries Journeyquest

featured a joke in which a band of Orcs made fun of Humans for their poor sense of smell.

131The 2017 David Ayer film Bright featured Orcs in a contemporary setting as stand-ins for

urban Black populations, and a key plot point in the story hinged on an Orc’s enhanced sense of

smell being used to solve a crime.132 It would seem that David Ayer is operating on the same

racial logic as Gobineau - the lesser races are closer to animals, and thus, like dogs or wolves,

128 Gobineau, Inequality, 205. This concept of heightened smell and lesser races is also mentioned by Gould, who references the physician Robert Bennett Bean as stating that Blacks have superior sense of smell to Whites. (Gould, 102) 129 The “Pig-headed Orc” still occasionally shows up, as we saw in the previous passage describing Orcs as having snouts instead of noses. They are particularly common in Japanese fantasy texts inspired by early D&D, such as the Dragon Quest video game series. 130 Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. London: Allen and Unwin, 1954, 350. 131 Ben Dobyns, director. Journeyquest. Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. Season 2, Episode 4. “Spry Little Bugger.” 2010. 11 min. 132 David Ayer, director. Bright. Netflix, 2017. 1 hr, 58 min

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have an enhanced sense of smell. 133

Both Gobineau and Dungeons and Dragons likewise draw a correlation between racial

degeneracy and emotional impulsiveness. Gobineau writes that Africans have an “instability and

capriciousness of feeling,” and that “he kills willingly, for the sake of killing.” 134 The third

edition Player’s Handbook writes of Half-Orcs that they “feel emotions powerfully,” and they

“tend to be short-tempered and sometimes sullen, more inclined to action than contemplation and

to fighting than arguing.” 135 This characterization plays to a binary of civilization/barbarism

wherein the “civilized” races are able to control or repress their emotions (such as with the case

of Dwarves, described above) and the “savage” races are ruled by them.

Splitting Stereotypes: The Case of Hobgoblins

In Dungeons and Dragons, the Orc is accompanied by a host of other “monstrous races”:

Goblins, Ogres, Bugbears, and so on. For the most part, they share the same features and

functions as Orcs: monstrous beings who are ugly, violent, evil, and uncivilized, and serve as a

host of racialized enemies to be overcome by the heroes. Of these, the Hobgoblin is particularly

noteworthy for how it picks up the Orientalist imagery of the Tolkien Orc: As Orcs moved away

from the Tolkien-esque “Monsterized Saracen” and towards an all-purpose “Savage” race,

Hobgoblins take up the Yellow Peril imagery that is no longer dominating depictions of Orcs.

The first edition Monster Manual shows a Hobgoblin with a flat face, slanted eyes, and Asian-

style armor. A second illustration shows an army of similarly depicted Hobgoblins charging

against Human warriors wearing European-style armor.

133 A Google search for “Orc Sense of Smell” brings up several blog posts and forum threads wherein gamers seem to take heightened smell as an innate Orcish trait for granted: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167531/what-evolutionary-pressures-would-lead-to-orcs https://luna-xial.tumblr.com/post/183303059563/a-writers-guide-to-orcish-courting https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?t=43228 134 Gobineau, Inequality, 206. 135 Tweet, Player’s Handbook 3rd Ed, 36.

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Alongside its Yellow Orcs, Orcs of Thar gave us a more explicit version of the Mongol-

Hobgoblin suggested in the Monster Manual’s art. They are organized into “Hordes,” and ruled

by “Hutai-Khan,” who is described as a “Hobgoblin with Asian features.” They inhabit the same

lands as “Yellow Orcs” and the “Goblinus Orientalis.” Artistic depictions continue the Asian-

esque depictions begun by Gygax, giving them flat faces, slant eyes, Asian armor, and Fu

Manchu-style mustaches.136 The Complete Book of Humanoids has a table of “oriental weapons”

for use by Hobgoblins.137 While we do see Orcs sometimes still filling into their old “Yellow

Peril” role as with Orcs of Thar, their increasing categorization as “primitives” made them

dissonant with ideas about Orcs as “oriental” hordes.

Later editions of D&D would remove the explicit Asian imagery of Hobgoblin faces and

armor, but maintained separation of Orcs and Hobgoblins through its system of racialized

morality. Orcs were a disorganized “chaotic evil” race of wild tribesmen, and Hobgoblins were a

tyrannical “lawful evil” race of highly organized soldiers. In Dungeons and Dragons, the

Hobgoblin is a truer successor to the Orcs of The Lord of the Rings than Orcs themselves.

The Significance of Green Skin

Green skin marks Orcs as non-White without specifically encoding them as any real-

world racial group. As such, they are able to stand in for every non-White racial group. If we

were to place Orcs alongside Immanuel Kant's racial order of “The White, the Black, the Yellow,

and the Red” we would find Orcs effectively capable of standing in for the Black, the Yellow,

and the Red. Humans, Elves, and Dwarves, conversely, despite being racially distinct within the

fantastical worlds they occupy, all largely map onto aspects of White European identity. Humans

are the clear “us,” while Elves and Dwarves straddle a line between “Us” and “Them,”

136 Heard, Orcs of Thar, 7. 137 Slavicek, Complete Book of Humanoids, 113.

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functioning as stereotypes about sub-groups of Whites projecting into a racial identity.

Meanwhile, the whole of the non-White world - whether Africa, Asia, Oceania or Indigenous

America - becomes an interchangeable swirl within the “Green” identity of Orcs, Goblins, and

other “monstrous races.”

Green skin also carries its own set of unique semiotics. Being an unnatural coloration, it

marks Orcs as being further “Other” than if they shared a real-world skin coloration. While the

Orcs and the Haradrim may both be “Monsterized Saracens” in The Lord of the Rings, the

brown-skinned Haradrim still share humanity as a trait with their enemies; Orcs do not. Orcs are

not the only example of muscular green-skinned monsters: consider the Incredible Hulk, film

versions of Frankenstein’s monster, or popular imaginings of dinosaurs. WJT Mitchell wrote in

The Last Dinosaur Book that: "The modern (1900-1960) dinosaur was a uniform, monotonous

gray-green color that served to unite perfectly the savage, organic, reptilian skin and the modern

armored fighting vehicle. The lean, mean, fighting machine had to be green because war is a

return to the state of nature, and camouflage is a natural adaptation."138 When race is defined by

skin color, and green is the color of monsters, then green skin becomes the natural coloration of

monstrous races.

Orcs and Masculinity

Like Dwarves, Orcs are overwhelmingly depicted as male. In every Dungeons and

Dragon illustration and Warhammer miniature depicting an Orc, they were distinctly male-

bodied. Female Orcs only begin to appear in noticeable numbers with video games like World of

Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, where the character creation engine allowed players

138 WJT Mitchell, The Last Dinosaur Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, 147.

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to pick both race and sex, thus necessitating designers to imagine a female Orc body.

However, the hypermasculinity of Orcs is different from the hypermasculinity of

Dwarves discussed previously. The markers of Dwarves largely signify the masculinity of a

White working-class male - hardworking, taciturn, and reliable, with their primary flaws limited

to a cantankerous nature, and occasionally dipping into characterizations of “Off-White” groups

such as Jews and Celts. Orcs, on the other hand, embody the masculinity of the “Other” -

uncivilized, destructive, and impulsive. In contrast to the bearded Dwarves, Orcs are almost

universal in lacking facial hair, which helps bring their appearance closer to the Polynesians,

Africans, Native Americans, and Asians for whom they so frequently stand in. Young draws the

obvious connection between violent, muscular Orc bodies and real-world racial stereotypes:

“Black male bodies are stereotypically associated with strength, violence, and aggression

particularly – although not exclusively – in US culture and society, stereotypes which persist not

only around race and crime but in “entertainment” spaces around Black athletes.”139

These associations with “strength, violence, and aggression” are reinforced by the

mechanical benefits granted to Orcs in fantasy games. While they vary from text to text, they

tend to follow similar patterns: Orcs in fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons are given bonuses to

their Strength and Constitution, and penalties to their Intelligence. They are given special

abilities such as “Aggressive,” “Primal Intuition,” and “Powerful Build.” The Orcs in World of

Warcraft have “Blood Fury” and “Hardiness” among their racial attributes. The Orcs in The

Elder Scrolls: Morrowind have high Strength and Endurance, low Intelligence and Personality,

139 Young, Race in Popular Fantasy, 96. In his book Darwin’s Athletes, John Hoberman argues in depth that the myths of Black athleticism “do more than anything else in our public life to encourage the idea that blacks and whites are biologically different in a meaningful way.” Hoberman, John. Darwin’s Athletes: How Sports Have Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. Boston: Mariner Books, 1997.

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and the special ability to “Berserk.”

Polygenesis in Dungeons and Dragons

As discussed in the introduction, fantasy texts often turn to their own fantastical conceits

as ways to justify their racial essentialism: the malevolence of “evil races” are byproducts of

demons, curses, or evil deities. By reframing “scientific racism” as “magical racism,” they are

able to maintain the conclusions of racial essentialism long after those ideas were debunked by

the scientific community. In Dungeons and Dragons, this is done by attributing the essential

character of the various races to their various creator deities. At first, this comes across as almost

apologetic: one must not blame the Orc for being evil, for the Orc’s nature is the creation of an

evil deity. However, the use of separate creator deities reintroduces to D&D the old notion of

polygenesis: the idea that the different races of humanity were descended from their own

respective “Adams.” Gobineau wrote that “We must, of course, acknowledge that Adam is the

ancestor of the white race…This being admitted, there is nothing to show that, in the view of the

first compilers of the Adamite genealogies, those outside the white race were counted as part of

the species at all.”140 By subscribing to a theology of polygenesis, the theorist is able to deny any

common humanity between races. There is no common ancestor, no shared family tree. It is a

religious statement of “there is nothing between you and I.”

The polytheistic settings that are default to Dungeons and Dragons allow for an even

stronger model of polygenesis than those found in the real world. Christian polygenesis could

posit separate acts of creation, but not separate creators; ultimately, the different races are still

creations of the same God. However, Dungeons and Dragons could posit distinct creator deities

for each race, denying even the commonality of a shared divine parent; an Elf creator god for

140 Gobineau, Inequality, 118.

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Elves, an Orc creator god for Orcs, and so on. The innate moral character of each race is

portrayed as a manifestation of their Creator deity, with Good gods for Good races and Evil gods

for Evil races. Racial animosity is likewise an expression of divine rivalries, as represented by

this quote from the Complete Book of Humanoids: “That is why, to this day, the Orcs and the

Elves are such bitter enemies. From the beginning, even before their creation, the very essences

of their gods strove against one another.”141

As I discussed in the previous chapter, the subsequent editions of Dungeons and Dragons

show a gradual movement away from Gary Gygax’s biological determinism and towards a more

liberal philosophy that grants greater weight to the agency of the individual. However, even in

D&D’s later, more liberalized editions, we see that deterministic morality remains in a softened

form. Consider this passage from the fifth edition Player’s Handbook:

For many thinking creatures, alignment is a moral choice. Humans, dwarves, elves, and other humanoid races can choose whether to follow the paths of good or evil, law or chaos. According to myth, the good-aligned gods who created these races gave them free will to choose their moral paths, knowing that good without free will is slavery. The evil deities who created other races, though, made those races to serve them. Those races have strong inborn tendencies that match the nature of their gods. Most orcs share the violent, savage nature of the orc gods, and are thus inclined toward evil. Even if an orc chooses a good alignment, it struggles against its innate tendencies for its entire life.142

Orcs can choose to be “good,” but have a divinely implanted instinct towards evil. Elves and

Dwarves have no such moral instinct, giving them a full range of moral freedom. Ironically,

freedom from biological determinism is something which is itself biologically determined. The

liberal reforms of latter-day D&D are applied unequally, making moral free will a trait of the

traditionally “Good” races only.

141 Slavicsek, Complete Book of Humanoids, 10. Emphasis mine. 142 Wyatt, Schwab, and Cordell. Player’s Handbook 5th ed, 123.

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Degeneration in The Lord of the Rings

While Dungeons and Dragons presents Orcs as the result of polygenesis, Lord of the

Rings posits Orcs as the result of racial degeneration. Orcs are descended from Elves who “came

into the hands of Melkor… and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did

Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were

afterwards the bitterest foes.”143 As with D&D, a supernatural agent is responsible for the

existence of Orcs and their lesser nature, with Melkor being something akin to a fallen angel.

Tolkien allegedly “toyed with several different ideas to explain the Orcs' existence, ranging from

corrupted Men (rather than corrupted Elves) to low-level Maia (and hence, fallen "angels” like

Sauron himself).”144

Degeneration was a concern for both Hume and Gobineau. Hume specifically used

degeneration as a way to separate elevated ancient cultures from their modern descendants:

“The ingenuity, industry, and activity of the ancient GREEKS have nothing in common with the stupidity and indolence of the present inhabitants of those regions. Candour, bravery, and love of liberty formed the character of the ancient ROMANS; as subtilty, cowardice, and a slavish disposition do that of the modern.”145 Gobineau wrote that “a degenerate people” had “lost the characteristic virtues of its

ancestors.”146 Likewise, he believed that traces of superior races can be seen in the customs of

“savage peoples”: “Some tribes, otherwise sunk in brutishness, hold to traditional rules, of a

curious complexity… their rites are unmeaning to-day, but they evidently go back to a higher

order of ideas.”147 Tolkien’s story of Orcs as “twisted” Elves is operating in the same framework

as Hume’s Greeks, for whom a modern “low” race is descended from an ancient “high” race.

143 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion. London: Allen and Unwin, London, 1977, 37. 144 Robert Tally Jr. "Let us now praise famous Orcs: simple humanity in Tolkien's inhuman creatures." Mythlore: A Journal of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 29, no. 1 (2010): 3. Page 4. 145 Hume, National Character, 4. 146 Gobineau, Inequality. 24. 147 Gobineau, Inequality, 172.

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Miscegenation and The Case of Half-Orcs

Embedded in the idea of racial degeneration is the threat of miscegenation. If Orcs are a

lesser race, then interbreeding with others has the potential to lessen those races. For Gobineau,

miscegenation was the source of degeneration: “The word degenerate, when applied to a people,

means (as it ought to mean) that the people has no longer the same intrinsic value as it had

before, because it has no longer the same blood in its veins, continual adulterations having

gradually affected the quality of that blood.”148 The fear of degeneration through miscegenation

is fully present in The Lord of the Rings, including that between Humans and Orcs: “This decay

of the Numenoreans into the people of Gondor, partly through intermarriage with ‘lesser men’ is

a clear case of imagined miscegenation. Moreover, Tolkien describes Saruman’s ‘interbreeding

of Orcs and Men’ as ‘his wickedest deed.’”149

Dungeons and Dragons would solidify these ideas through the use of the “Half-Orc” as a

player race.150 In Dungeons and Dragons, the Half-Orc is presented as a child of Human and Orc

parents, yet also a distinct race from either with its own unique attributes. We again see echoes

of Gobineau, who writes of racially mixed people: “The heterogeneous elements that henceforth

prevail in him give him quite a different nationality—a very original one, no doubt, but such

originality is not to be envied.”151 Half-Orcs are posited as occupying a liminal space between

Orc and Human, and suffering as a result. These characters are positioned as struggling to live up

to their superior Human parent and to suppress their Orcish heritage. The fifth edition Player’s

148 Gobineau, Inequality, 25. Emphasis mine. 149 Young, Race in Popular Fantasy, 24. 150The term “Half-Orc,” used as a noun rather than an adjective, always struck me as having the ring of racial invective, akin to calling someone “A Half Japanese” or “A Half Mexican.” Its emphasis on the Orcish, rather than Human, ancestry, also plays to the idea of there being marked and unmarked races. There are no “Half Humans” in D&D. 151 Gobineau, Inequality, 25.

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Handbook spells out this internal dilemma quite clearly:

The one-eyed god Gruumsh created the orcs, and even those orcs who turn away from his worship can't fully escape his influence. The same is true of half-orcs, though their human blood moderates the impact of their orcish heritage. Some half-orcs hear the whispers of Gruumsh in their dreams, calling them to unleash the rage that simmers within them. Others feel Gruumsh's exultation when they join in melee combat-and either exult along with him or shiver with fear and loathing. Half-orcs are not evil by nature, but evil does lurk within them, whether they embrace it or rebel against it.152

In all editions of Dungeons and Dragons, it is only Half-Orcs who are presented as a

playable race: Orcs proper are relegated to being monsters only in the core rules. There is a

theme of assimilation underlying this depiction of Half-Orcs, an idea that the lower race can be

uplifted by a combination of interbreeding with the higher race and rejecting the heritage of the

lower race. In the early editions of D&D, Gygax’s descriptions of Half-Orcs state that “some

one-tenth of orc-human mongrels are sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human.... it is assumed

that player characters which are of half-orc race are within the superior l0%.”153 The Half-Orc is

presented as less than Human but more than Orc, presenting a clear racial hierarchy between the

two ancestries. At the same time, they are quantifiably lowered by their Orcish ancestry more

than they are elevated by their Human side; it is only the “superior 10%” (rather than the

superior half, or superior 90%) who are capable of “passing for human” and thus eligible to be

seen as a playable race. It is unclear whether Gygax was deliberately invoking W.E.B Du Bois’s

notion of the “talented tenth” when he refers to the “superior 10%” of Half-Orcs, or if this is only

a troubling coincidence. If so, this would indicate a direct correlation between Gygax’s

perception of Orcs and his perception of African Americans. And whereas Du Bois posited an

elite that represented a uniquely Black perspective that was counter to the dominant White

culture, the “talented tenth” of Half-Orcs being posited by Gygax is positioned as superior by

152 Wyatt, Schwab, and Cordell, Player’s Handbook, 42/ 153Gygax, Player’s Handbook 1st Edition, 18.

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virtue of their ability to participate in the dominant culture.154

The existence of the Half-Orc carries two threats: the first is degeneration of the race on a

macro level. The second is sexual assault on the personal level. Hodes writes that, “If we start

from the axioms ‘humans can be good or evil’ and ‘orcs are almost always evil monsters,’ no

explanation really gets us out ahead of the implication that orcs sexually assault humans to create

half-orcs.”155 He then points to the origin for Half-Orcs in the D&D spin-off Pathfinder, which

explicates this origin: Half-orcs are monstrosities, their tragic births the result of perversion and

violence—or at least, that’s how other races see them. It's true that half-orcs are rarely the result

of loving unions.156

With Orcs as an all-purpose racial “Them,” and Humans as an implicitly White racial

“Us,” we see the influence of fears of non-White men as sexual predators being reproduced in

the image of the Orc. From The Sheik to Fu Manchu to The Birth of a Nation, early American

cinema was rife with images of lustful non-White “Other” men whose uncontrollable desires

posed a constant threat to the sanctity of “our” women.157 As Clements states, “This, in turn,

helped to create the still-pervasive stereotypes of black men as rapists and black women as

insatiable wantons, concepts which are echoed in D&D in the form of half-orcs, whose existence

154 DuBois, W.E.B. 1903. "The Talented Tenth." Pp. 31-75 in The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of To-Day. Contributions by Booker T. Washington, Principal of Tuskegee Institute, W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chesnutt, and others. (NY: James Pott & Co., 1903). 155 Hodes, “Orcs Part II.” 156 Jason Bulmahn. Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Redmond WA: Paizo Publishing, 2009. 25. Anecdotally, this is an arena where oppositional readings are extremely common. In my experiences playing D&D, players of Half-Orcs do usually portray their characters as the “result of loving unions.” Tumblr user McNostril wrote a series of comics which are frequently reposted as memes in roleplaying communities about a Half-Orc adventurer who is the byproduct a happy marriage between a Human man and and Orcish woman, which embody this type of “loving union” narrative: https://mcnostril.tumblr.com/post/190716630085/well-yes-there-was-more-than-one-tweet-that-came 157 Said writes of this image: “The Arab leader (of marauders, pirates, "native" insurgents) can often be seen snarling at the captured Western hero and the blond girl (both of them steeped in wholesomeness), "My men are going to kill you, but-they like to amuse themselves before." 287

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implies mass rape on the part of marauding orcs.”158

Actual Dungeons and Dragons texts rarely explicitly mention rape as the origin point of

Half-Orcs, instead focusing on Orcish fecundity as a threatening trait. The first edition of the

Monster Manual states that “As orcs will breed with anything, there are any number of unsavory

mongrels with orcish blood, particularly orc-goblins, orc-hobgoblins, and orc-humans.”159 Here

we see an echo of Gobineau’s own feelings about race mixing, who wrote that “[mixed race

individuals] are merely an awful example of racial anarchy. In the individuals we find, here and

there, a dominant feature reminding us in no uncertain way that blood from every source runs in

their veins. One man will have the negro's hair, another the eyes of a Teuton, a third will have a

Mongolian face, a fourth a Semitic figure; and yet all these will be akin!”160 For both, the

presence of mixed-race peoples is depicted as undesirable.

Even as Dungeons and Dragons has liberalized in its later editions, the trope of the Orc

as racially promiscuous remains. The fifth edition Monster Manual states that “Rejecting notions

of racial purity, they [orcs] proudly welcome ogres, trolls, half-orcs, and orogs [Orc-Ogre

hybrids] into their ranks.”161 The supplement Volo’s Guide to Monsters states that “In order to

replenish the casualties of their endless warring, orcs breed prodigiously (and they aren't choosy

about what they breed with).”162 This “rejection of racial purity” would almost seem to make

Orcs laudable in their multiculturalism. Sadly, these texts also mark Orcs as inherently evil; and

by extension, their willingness to cross racial boundaries is marked as a part of their evil nature.

Even when narratives of explicit sexual violence are absent, the Orcish willingness to interbreed

158 Clements, Roll to Save vs Prejudice, 44. 159 Gary Gygax, Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual. Lake Geneva WI: TSR Inc., 1977, 76. 160 Gobineau, Inequality, 150. 161 Mike Merles and Jeremy Crawford. Monster Manual, Fifth Edition. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2018, 246. 162 Wizards RPG Team. Volo’s Guide to Monsters. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2015, 85.

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with other races implies that left unchecked, the other races will eventually become part Orc.

And as Gygax’s ratio establishes, those hybrid children will be far closer to Orcs than their other

parentage.

The themes of interbreeding and invasion play off of one another. Young writes that

“Orcs became a constant threat that could spill over the borders of civilization at any time in an

influx of monstrous bodies.”163 Hodes points to how these miscegenation fears link back to the

characterization of Orcs as Mongols:

As recently as 2003, a genetics paper asserted that one in two hundred men alive today descended from Chinggis Khan, based on a certain Mongolian Y-chromosomal lineage’s prevalence across the former Mongol Empire due to “a novel form of social selection resulting from [Chinggis Khan's relatives’] behavior.” The study thus lends credence to an old canard that paints Mongols in general and Chinggis in particular as virulent sexual predators.164

Orcs simultaneously threaten with violence and with sex, threatening to both kill and to sire

children upon their victims. The end result is the same: that the “us” will be transformed into

“them” with time. This strongly echoes the malignant “Replacement Theory” of White

Nationalists, who believe that non-White groups will eventually overtake and replace them in

their home countries via high birth rates and immigration.165

Warhammer 40,000’s Asexual Orks

There is a curious alternative to the hypersexual Orcs of D&D, and that is the asexual

Orks166 of Warhammer 40,000. Warhammer 40,000 (often abbreviated by fans as Warhammer

40k or simply 40k) is a science fiction spin-off of the tabletop game Warhammer, which features

spacefaring versions of its fantastical armies. Warhammer 40k’s Orks are explicitly asexual,

163 Young, Race in Popular Fantasy, 102. 164 Hodes, “Orcs Part I.” 165 See Lara Bullens: “How France's ‘great replacement’ theory conquered the global far right.” https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20211108-how-the-french-great-replacement-theory-conquered-the-far-right 166 “Ork” is the spelling used in Warhammer 40,000 to differentiate them from the “Orcs” of the medieval fantasy version of the game. I’ll be using the term “Ork” when specifically referring to this version, and “Orc” when referring to the race trope more generally.

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given a range of reproductive origins ranging from “Physical division” to “the release of

windblown spores after death” to the idea that “greenskins inhabit an alternative pocket of

reality, and simply fall through, fully formed, wherever others of their kind are already at

war.”167 In all cases, they reproduce though asexual rather than sexual means.168

Warhammer 40k’s asexual Ork reproduction both swerves away from and leans into the

sexual fears of the Other. By making Orcs asexual, they become wholly removed from ideas

about race-mixing and sexual violence that inform the “Half-Orc” trope. On the other hand, the

novel reproductive cycle of Orcs leads to the idea that they reproduce rapidly and recklessly, and

reconnects to the Yellow Peril imagery of the “Other” out-breeding the white race, and

eventually overwhelming civilization through numbers: “the Orks are the most savage and

warlike species in the galaxy, and – also being one of the most numerous – can be found

infesting its every corner.”169 This reinforces the idea of reproduction being part of the threat that

Orks pose to civilization: reproducing asexually allows them to reproduce more quickly,

requiring periodic extermination to keep them in check. The asexuality of Orks also reinforces a

race-gendering narrative by eliminating the need for Ork women. Asexual reproduction also

provides a fantastical explanation for portraying Orks solely as a race of aggressive, muscular,

green-skinned male bodies.170

167 Warhammer 40,000: Codex: Orks. No author listed. Nottingham: Games Workshop, 2018, 9. 168Warhammer’s Fantasy Orcs are never given any description of how they reproduce, either sexually or asexually. Anecdotally, many fans seem to assume it's the same way as their science fiction counterparts. 169 Codex: Orks, 4. 170 This “asexual” Orc can also be seen in the film version of The Lord of the Rings, which shows Orcs themselves being created in the foundries of Isengard alongside their weapons and armor.

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The Genocide Imperative

I would like to now explore one of the most unsettling subtexts present in the case of

Orcs, which I will refer to as “The Genocide Imperative.” Within fantasy games and literature,

killing Orcs is often presented as somewhere between an unpleasant necessity and a mark of

heroism. The Genocide Imperative is the result of two separate aspects of fantasy games: the act

of killing as the default method of conflict resolution, and attributing of “Good” and “Evil” as

absolute forces which are characteristics of different racial groups. When certain races are

definitionally evil, and slaying evil is the defining aspect of goodness, then the slaying of evil

races becomes definitionally good. This creates a scenario wherein ethnic cleansing and racially

motivated violence becomes not only permissible, but justified and necessary.

The act of killing is hardwired into Dungeons and Dragons and many of the games that

draw influence from it. The majority of the rules in Dungeons and Dragons surround how to

handle combat, and combat is the core gameplay loop (the primary task repeated by players) in

video games such as World of Warcraft. Combat in these games is by default lethal in nature:171

combatants trade blows until they run out of HP (“Hit Points”), at which point they are dead or

dying.172 A typical Dungeons and Dragons adventure module or World of Warcraft quest will

involve the player exploring an unknown area, fighting the monstrous inhabitants of it, and then

171 The lack of non-lethal combat flummoxed my own early experiences playing D&D in high school. As a player, it meant I had limited to no options when attempting to defeat an enemy without killing them. As a DM, it meant I had to ensure that my players would win every combat, because if they lost, it would mean their characters died and the game would end. These issues were confronted with a patchwork of rule modifications and other jury-rigged endeavors to play around the problem. 172 We can contrast this to the explicitly non-lethal violence of video games like Street Fighter, wherein defeated enemies are left bloodied and humiliated but alive. Likewise with tabletop RPGs, games like Masks and 7th Sea center combat in a way that does not necessitate killing as its inevitable result.

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being rewarded with treasure that is either guarded by or taken directly off of the body of the

slain enemy.

When it comes to human-like racial enemies such as Orcs and Goblins, efforts must be

taken to dehumanize them in order to normalize their killing. As Hodes writes, “In D&D, the

activity of role-playing, of merely describing orcs as intelligent beings with four limbs and

speech, starts to humanize and personify them. Lest we begin to afford [them] the same respect

and compassion as ourselves, we must dehumanize them, and aggressively.”173 This

dehumanization is typically accomplished through removing individuality from human-like

enemies: In the various D&D adventure modules which I studied for this thesis, very rarely

would individual enemies be given names or distinguishing characteristics: more commonly, the

book would present an encounter in terms of number and type; “three Orcs,” “six goblins,” and

so on, with most of their description being what weapons, armor, and treasure they carried.174

As I discussed in the previous chapter, Dwarves in the first two editions of Dungeons

and Dragons were given bonuses to doing violence against members of certain races, effectively

making aptitude for ethnic cleansing a racial trait of Dwarves. Notably, while Dwarves have

bonuses for fighting against Goblins and Orcs, Goblins and Orcs have no bonuses for fighting

against Dwarves. All other things being equal, the Dwarf has the upper hand in racial conflicts.

Just as D&D’s early rules mark Dwarves as perpetrators of racial violence, it marks Orcs and

Goblins as the objects of it. As Clements writes, “Within the context of the game, D&D

173 Hodes, “Orcs Part II.” 174 This has also been my experience with the vast majority of tabletop RPGs I’ve played through my life. The majority of combat encounters are against mobs of nameless, depersonalized foes who appear, attack the players, and die in the course of the same scene. When I began to notice this pattern in college, I referred to it as “meeting strangers and deciding to fight to the death,” and would quip that fighting to the death should be a second-date activity.

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encourages its players to use racial stereotypes as justification for genocide, and to profit from

ethnic cleansing.”175

Gary Allen Fine’s Shared Fantasy provides an in-depth study of tabletop roleplaying

groups in the early 1980s, shedding crucial light on the culture surrounding fantasy gaming in its

early era. He depicts a world where casual violence is celebrated, and relates the following

anecdote:

In one C&S [Chivalry and Sorcery, an early rival of Dungeons and Dragons] game that I was refereeing, I attempted an experiment. I told the players that they had come across a group of twenty preadolescent children in the wilderness. I decided that these children would give no information to the party, nor would they harm the players’ characters in any way. Despite this lack of harm, there was serious talk of killing the entire party of children for fear of what they might do. Eventually the consensus was that the children should be forced to leave immediately with the warning that if they were spotted by the party they would be summarily executed. Unfortunately because of the structure of the game I could not bring the party of children in contact with the players again, but that outcome would likely have been the children’s death. Frequently male nonplayer characters who have not hurt the party are executed and female nonplayer characters raped for sport.176

Fine is clear that this sort of cavalier attitude towards killing was not rare in his studies:

Mass murder and wanton destruction are not uncommon, as when a player character fires a machine gun into a crowded room of strangers or another lights a fire that destroys a town “just to cause havoc.” While such activities are a legitimate part of the game, they also require legitimation, since they provide prima facie evidence of players’ immorality.” 177

While it has none of the ludic elements of the games above, The Lord of the Rings

dehumanizes Orcs through their frequent depictions as dead bodies. When Legolas encounters a

group of dead Orcs on the road, we get a graphic description: “Five dead Orcs lay there. They

had been hewn with many cruel strokes, and two had been beheaded. The ground was wet with

175 Clements, Roll to Save vs Prejudice, 55. 176 Gary Allen Fine. Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1983, 44. 177 Fine, Shared Fantasy, 57. Anecdotally, I would assess that this type of play has gradually diminished since Fine did his research. When I began playing D&D in the late 1990’s, this type of player was known as “Murderhobo.” At that time, the killing without provocation would still have been considered semi-acceptable in the groups I played with; the rape would not have, though that may have been a byproduct of general discomfort around sexual topics. Since the late 1990’s, my own observation is that this type of behavior in D&D groups has continued to decline. That said, the idea of combat only being resolved when the opposing party lies exterminated remains extremely present.

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their dark blood.”178 When a dying Boromir is discovered by Aragorn, we are told that “Many

Orcs lay slain, piled all about him and at his [Boromir’s] feet.”179 After a battle with the Riders

of Rohan, we are told that “No Orcs remained alive; their bodies were uncounted” and “The Orcs

were piled in great heaps, away from the mounds of Men, not far from the eaves of the forest.

And the people were troubled in their minds; for the heaps of carrion were too great for burial or

for burning.”180 Repeated descriptions such as these normalize death as the natural state of Orcs,

and the presence of their bodies identifies Boromir and the Riders of Rohan as heroic warriors.

When living members of a race present an existential threat, then their dead bodies become a

mark of accomplishment.

The Fantasy genre tends to present worlds where “Good” and “Evil” are absolute cosmic

forces rather than social constructs. This moral realism is particularly core to Dungeons and

Dragons, wherein every race, creature, and plane of existence is mapped onto a 9-point morality

compass: either Good, Evil, or Neutral, and either a Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral variant thereof.

Dwarves and Elves are presented as Good the same way Angels and Heaven are Good; Orcs and

Goblins are Evil in the same way that Demons and Hell are Evil.181

In his research, Fine focused on how the idea of the fantasy game as escapism legitimized

these acts of violence for the players. Equally important from my perspective is the way in which

the arithmetic of moral realism legitimates such acts of violence within the game. Acts of casual

violence, which would normally fall under the label of “Evil,” become “Good” again when they

are committed against “Evil” beings such as Orcs and Goblins. As Fine states, “most worlds are

178 Tolkien, The Two Towers, 424. 179 Tolkien, The Two Towers, 414. 180 Tolkien, The Two Towers, 550-551. 181 This becomes slightly softened from the game’s third edition onward, in which probabilities were attached to these moral classifications: Demons are “always evil,” but Orcs are now merely “usually evil.”

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conceptualized as battlegrounds between good and evil with no middle ground.” 182 When we

combine the inherently lethal nature of fantasy roleplaying games with a moral framework

wherein the “Good” races are at war with the “Evil” races, genocidal action towards the evil

races is not just permissible, but becomes a moral duty in and of itself.183 The various forms of

hyper-fecundity described above further reinforce this Genocide Imperative - it’s both used as an

in-universe explanation for the endless waves of Orcs that are present to be killed in the course

of a fantasy roleplaying adventure, and adds the additional threat if Orcs are not killed en mass,

they will eventually overtake the “Good” races.

Closely tied to the Genocide Imperative is the “Race War Mindset”: When morality is

made characteristic of racial identity, then the conflict between good and evil becomes framed as

war between races. This mindset is the basis of fantasy wargames such as Warhammer and

Warcraft, whose armies are largely defined in racial terms: Dwarf armies, Orc armies, and so

on.184 This can be seen in The Lord of the Rings as well, which clearly delineates “good” races

(Elves, Dwarves, Ents) on one side of a conflict and “evil” races (Orcs, Haradrim) on the other.

D&D supplements frequently exhibit the Race War Mindset as well: In a section labeled

“Possible Conflicts” in The Complete Book of Elves, McComb writes: “There are so many

philosophical and physical differences between elves and other races that conflict seems almost

predestined.”185 The author then lists “Elves vs Elves,” “Elves vs Dwarves,” “Elves vs Humans,”

182 Fine, Shared Fantasy, 77. 183 This call for extermination can further be seen in the titles of the video game series “Orcs Must Die!” by Robot Entertainment and the heavy metal song “Destroy the Orcs” by 3 Inches of Blood. 184As mentioned in the previous chapter, Warhammer tends to frame their armies in a cynical black-and-gray rather than black-and-white morality; while certain races (such as Dark Elves) are portrayed as cartoonishly evil, very few of them are portrayed as “good.” As such, much of the conflict presented in their game lore is seen as the inevitable clash of incompatible civilizations, without necessitating that one is “Good” and the other is “Evil.” 185 Collin McComb. The Complete Book of Elves. Lake Geneva WI: TSR Inc., 1992

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and “Elves vs Orcs” as possible conflicts for a D&D campaign; there are no conflicts listed

which are not defined in racial terms.

Within D&D circles, the Genocide Imperative leads to a frequent scenario known as “The

Orc Baby Dilemma.” The AMP article “Dungeons and Diversity” by Ruqiyah Bareh describes

the Orc Baby Dilemma as follows: “during a raid of some sort at a camp of Orcs, the players

stumble upon a lone Orc baby. They are then forced to make a decision: either spare the child

and risk them growing into a villain due to the inherently evil nature of orcs or kill the child.”186

The 2018 fantasy anime Goblin Slayer plays a version of this scene straight and cold-heartedly:

in the first episode, the protagonist comes across a cave filled with baby Goblins, whom he beats

to death with a club, stating “there isn’t a single reason to let them live.” When one of his

teammates asks if there might be good Goblins, he replies that “the only good Goblins are the

ones who never come out of their holes.” Drawing on the theme of hyper-fecundity, he warns

that “they multiply fast” and if they had arrived later, “there would have been about fifty of them

and they would have attacked.”187

The Orc Baby Dilemma is the result of seeing the Genocide Imperative to its logical

conclusion. Fantasy games and literature have veered away from this problem by traditionally

presenting Orcs as adult warriors and having their death take place in the heat of combat; while

the Hobbit protagonists of Lord of the Rings are all at various points taken prisoner by Orcs, the

186 Bareh Ruqiyah.“Dungeons and Diversity: How Racism Permeates the Fantasy Genre.” AMP, 2020. https://ampatutd.com/2020/10/31/dungeons-diversity-how-racism-permeates-the-fantasy-genre/ 187Takaharu Ozaki, director. Goblin Slayer. Season 1, Episode 1. White Fox, 2018. This clip has been uploaded to YouTube numerous times, and the comments on it are unsettlingly supportive of the hero’s decision. One comment says “That’s what I love about this character. No feeble-minded, emotional dilemmas. He just does what needs to be done” and has 487 upvotes. goblin slayer. “Goblin Slayer Kills Baby Goblins.” Accessed 3-27-2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaMBymTQWzo

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Fellowship never takes any Orc prisoners whom they must decide whether to execute or spare,

nor do they encounter any Orc children. Typically, in both D&D modules and video games,

enemies will attack players first, turning the combat into a matter of self-defense for the players.

However, when presented with a defenseless Orc (such as a child or a prisoner) the game’s moral

logic begins to run contrary to some players’ moral instincts. The former says that killing Orcs is

always right; the latter says that killing children is always wrong. When the Orc in question is

presented as a child, the two moralities come into conflict and a paradox arises. As Bareh writes,

“By having races like orcs be considered so intrinsically evil that killing a baby is hailed as a

valid option within a moral dilemma, D&D creates a distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ races

that mirrors the justifications for racial violence within our own world.”188

Humanizing Orcs in the Liberal Era

Beginning in the early 2000s, there are several notable efforts to re-humanize Orcs,

recasting them from purely villainous into a sympathetic or heroic light. Often, this involves

stripping away the trappings of being dumb brutes or savage hordes, replacing them with a

“Martial Race” aesthetic similar to that of Dwarves. These portrayals of Orcs, while removing

the extremely troubling notion of an inherently evil race, still often construct the Orc around a

defined set of racial stereotypes and an innate predisposition towards violence. There are two key

texts I’ve identified in this effort, both video games: The first is The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind,

released in May of 2002, and the second is Warcraft III, released in July of the same year.189

Both of these game franchises are still highly relevant: The Elder Scrolls fifth game, Skyrim, met

188 Bareh, “Dungeons and Dragons.” 189 These come closely on the heels of the 2000 release of the third edition of Dungeons and Dragons, which while retaining its negative portrayal of Orcs, was far more liberal in its overall portrayal of race, as I discussed in the previous chapter.

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with immense critical acclaim and sold over 30 million copies, making it the 19th highest selling

video game ever released190. Warcraft III’s successor, World of Warcraft, was the most

successful MMORPG of the past two decades, and has only recently been surpassed in terms of

monthly active players.191

The Elder Scrolls series presents a compressed version of the shifting perceptions of

Orcs. In the first game, Arena (1994), Orcs exist solely as monsters. The second game,

Daggerfall (1996), still uses Orcs as monsters; however, a subplot of the game involves an

Orcish king who wants the rest of the world to see Orcs as people and to establish a nation for

them. Depending on the player’s actions, the Orcish nation either will or will not be established:

it is up to the player to decide whether Orcs remain in the category of “monsters” or are

upgraded to the status of “people.” In the third game, Morrowind (2002), Orcs are presented as a

fully playable race. The game presents Orcs who have recently been assimilated into the human-

governed Empire in which the game takes place, having earned citizenship through military

service. Later Elder Scrolls games continue to use this model of Orcs as a playable, assimilated

“martial race” rather than an enemy monster. As their in-game description states:

These sophisticated barbarian beast peoples of the Wrothgarian and Dragontail Mountains are noted for their unshakeable courage in war and their unflinching endurance of hardships. Orc warriors in heavy armor are among the finest front-line troops in the Empire. Most Imperial citizens regard Orc society as rough and cruel, but there is much to admire in their fierce tribal loyalties and generous equality of rank and respect among the sexes.192 Hodes writes extensively on how the myth of the “martial race” influenced the

characterization of Orcs in The Lord of the Rings, stating that “Men from martial races were

190“The Top 50 Best Selling Video Games of All Time.” Hewlett Packard, September 28, 2021. No author listed. https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-takes/top-50-best-selling-video-games-all-time

191Richman, Oliva. “Is World of Warcraft Dying?” Invent Global, August 210, 2021. https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/14788/world-of-warcraft-dying 192 The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind. Bethesda, PC/Xbox, 2002.

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strong, tough, savage…Easily controlled by more graceful, cerebral people—a rare few whipped

into shape as honorable soldiers for a good cause, more commonly forged into evil forces’ rank

and file. Like orcs.”193 He cites the 1832 manual On War, “In any primitive, warlike race, the

warrior spirit is far more common than among civilized peoples.”194 It is in The Elder Scrolls

attempt to rehabilitate the Orc that we see the clearest retelling of this myth. Just as the Gurkhas

were given provisional membership in the British Empire in exchange for their military

service195 and based on their perceived racial aptitude for war, Orcs are given the same

provisional membership in the fictional empire of Tamriel. And in the case of The Elder Scrolls,

the martial aptitude of Orcs is not a myth, but a reality reinforced by the bonuses and penalties

the player receives at the beginning of the game based on their decision to play as an Orc.

Morrowind’s rehabilitation of Orcs is largely a footnote in the game - the Orc subplot in

Daggerfall was a relatively minor one, and Morrowind itself focuses primarily on the homeland

of one of its Elven peoples. With Warcraft, conversely, Orcs are at the very center of the

narrative. The first game was aptly subtitled “Orcs vs Humans,” and both it and its sequel

focused on all-out war between evil Orcs and good Humans. These first two Warcraft games

from 1994 and 1995 presented Orcs in a Tolkien-esque fashion: they were a malevolent invading

army, literally from another world, sweeping over a peaceful Human civilization, and the game

follows the race-war format discussed previously in this chapter.

However, 2002’s Warcraft III marks a major departure from the first two games. Its

193 Hodes, “Orcs Part II.” 194 Carl Von Clausewitz. trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret. On War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. 195 The rights of the Gurkha’s in the United Kingdom have remained a thorny issue; “Gurkhas were armed soldiers with an all access pass to battle, but with none of the passport privileges to inalienable rights and residency in the UK.” The Gurkha Justice Campaign of 2008 was launched specifically to increase the rights of Gurkha’s who had served in the British armed forces. See Elizabeth Lee, "Foreign born soldiers and the ambivalent spaces of citizenship." University of British Columbia, 2012, 128-153.

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storylines present threats that are mutual to both Orcs and Humans, and defined primarily in

terms of supernatural rather than racial terms. Its opening narration says “like fools, we clung to

the old hatreds” while showing a battlefield. War between Humans and Orcs is no longer a

central conflict to be won by one party at the expense of the other, but rather a mutual obstacle to

be overcome. Its ending narration repeated this theme, stating “the Orcs, Humans, and Night

Elves discarded their own hatred, and stood united against a common foe.” It begins with Orcs

kept in internment camps by Humans, positioning them as victims rather than threat to Human

civilization. As Rowan Kaiser of Vice put it:

One of the best stories in Warcraft III is the Orc campaign, where the oppressed Orcs, led into camps by their Human conquerors, break free and go to found a land of their own, led by the diplomatic young Warchief Thrall and his much angrier friend Grom. The story touches on the conflicts between moderation and radicalism, revenge and forgiveness, and dying for freedom or living to fight another day, with Thrall serving as a cross between Moses and Martin Luther King, Jr.196

One of Warcraft III’s major plot points involves an ancient curse that drove Orcs as a

race towards bloodlust: in the course of this game, this curse is lifted. Like with Dungeons and

Dragons and The Lord of the Rings, the curse in Warcraft III provides a supernatural explanation

for a national character argument. On the one hand, this provides a post-hoc justification for the

portrayal of Orcs in Warcraft and Warcraft II: the Orcs in those games genuinely were an evil

and rapacious horde due to the curse. However, the blood curse narrative also provides itself

with an in-universe means for the game to escape from its own racial logic. If Orcs were made

evil by the result of supernatural intervention, then they can be redeemed through a second

intervention.

In the game’s conclusion, after slaying the demon responsible for the curse, an Orc

196 Rowan Kaiser. “Why Doesn’t Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm Have Any People of Color?” Vice, 2017. https://www.vice.com/en/article/ypwy8g/why-doesnt-blizzards-heroes-of-the-storm-have-any-people-of-color

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chieftain states: “The Blood Haze has lifted. The demon’s fire no longer burns in my veins. I

have freed myself.” To this, his compatriot replies “No, you have freed us all.” The focus here on

“freedom” is perhaps the best embodiment of the transition from a framework of essentialism to

a framework of liberalism. As with the previous discussion of fifth edition Dungeons and

Dragons, the opposite of “evil” is “free.” And while D&D excludes Orcs from this moral

freedom, Warcraft includes them. Orcs in a post-curse environment still can be evil, violent, or

warlike, but as attributes of them as an individual rather than as necessarily outcomes of their

being Orcs. By doing so, The Genocide Imperative is removed from the subtext of the game, at

least with regards to Orcs.

Warcraft III was followed by the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft, which

continues with the sympathetic portrayal of Orcs; when one creates an Orc character, their first

quest is a rescue mission to help a group of shipwrecked sailors. From its initial moments, World

of Warcraft is making a conscious decision to define its Orc characters through an act of

compassion rather than an act of aggression. The commander of the rescue expedition is a female

Orc, veering away from the notion of Orcs as a purely hypermasculine race. Warcraft III is a

good-faith effort to overcome the problematic implications of its own predecessors, and its

creators deserve credit for thinking deeply on the ramifications of their own prior conceits.

And yet, for as much a success story as Warcraft’s Orcs are, it illustrates the constraining

nature of the essentialist framework. While Orcs are no longer defined as a race of marauding

warriors, they are still defined as a race of warriors: negative stereotypes have been traded up for

positive ones. The statistical bonuses given to Orcs in both The Elder Scrolls and World of

Warcraft give them abilities that reinforce their position as being ideally suited for warrior roles.

Should a Morrowind player wish to make an Orc wizard instead, he may do so, but he will be

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punished by the game with increased difficulty due to his choice of race being poorly suited by

his choice of class. Hodes writes on this, echoing the same sentiment that Vink presented

towards Dwarves:

“Positive” stereotypes are still harmful. Stereotypes operate in kyriarchal systems where the Man presents his subjects with a narrow range of acceptable, “positive” stereotypes to which they may adhere—and if they don’t, threatens them with another, deadlier set of negative stereotypes… Fight to the death for our armies, or else you’re a threat to Western civilization to be beaten down and controlled.197

Even the storyline of Warcraft III that brought Orcs to their modern, sympathetic form

has troubling undertones. The primary supernatural threat which brings about the alliance of

Orcs and Humans in that game is an invasion of otherworldly demons called the Burning Legion.

And while the Burning Legion are much less racialized than the Orcs in Warcraft and Warcraft

II, they still fill the same narrative role: an invasion of monstrous “Others” who pose an

existential threat to the world order. Much like how Dungeons and Dragons presents Dwarves as

allies to Elves only when warring against Orcs, Orcs are only brought into the fold of an “Us”

when a more alien “Them” is presented by way of contrast.

Additionally, World of Warcraft has come under fire for the one-dimensional stereotypes

it applies to its other races, several of whom serve the classical role of the “savage race”

embodied by the Dungeons and Dragons Orc. Monson points to the Tauren (a race of Minotaurs)

and Trolls as particularly egregious examples:

As natural warrior herbalists, the Tauren are immersed in a culture that looks distinctly Native American. Taurens occupy the mesas and plains of Azeroth. They live in tepees and longhouses. NPCs have names such as Stonehoof, Cloudseer, Windhawk, and Mistrunner. Cities with names like Thunder Bluff, Bloodhoof Village, and Freewind Post are filled with colorfully painted totem poles, dream catchers, stretched animal skins, canoes, kilns, hand-woven baskets, ceremonial drums, and tapestries….. Troll villages are decorated with humanoid skulls both on pikes and in small piles, African style masks, caldrons, witch doctors, and spears while the sound of drums beat in the background. NPCs are frequently found squatting on the ground or engaging in Capoeira style dances. They speak with a stereotypical Jamaican accent and utter such things as ‘‘stay away from the voodoo,’’ ‘‘who you be?’’ and “‘greetings mon.’’198

197 Hodes, “Orcs Part II.” 198 Monsoon, “Race-Based Fantasy Realm,” 61.

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Orcs may no longer be standing in for a generalized Native Americans or Africans, but

Tauren and Trolls are now standing in for a very specific version of those peoples. Much like

with the Hobgoblins of Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft is engaging in stereotype

splitting - when Orcs can no longer function as an all-purpose racial “Other,” different monstrous

races are created to fill the gap. Part of this, likely, is that Orcs are central to the narrative of

Warcraft as a franchise, being the sole antagonist faction of the original game and having

experienced robust character development as a race across its sequels. Tauren and Trolls,

conversely, were introduced in Warcraft III, where they played a relatively minor part. Just as

Hobgoblins in Dungeons and Dragons largely fulfill the role of Orcs in Lord of the Rings,

Tauren and Trolls in World of Warcraft largely fulfill the role of Orcs in Dungeons and Dragons.

Final Thoughts

In examining different portrayals of Orcs, we see a host of retrogressive and repugnant

themes: ideas about polygenesis, racial hierarchy, and miscegenation abound. Most perniciously,

the idea of certain races being inherently evil and dangerous recreates the same rhetoric used to

justify ethnic cleansing in the real world. When creating or participating in fantasy games, we

should be aware of what exactly it is we are fantasizing about: if that fantasy is one of living in a

world where it is acceptable to kill based on race, we should question why we are fantasizing

about genocide. Even their most positive and sympathetic portrayals consist of trading negative

stereotypes for positive stereotypes, and Orcs still struggle to be more than “martial races” in

contemporary fantasy games. Efforts to humanize Orcs and move fantasy games away from the

mindsets of genocide and race war are laudable and necessary, but as long as these efforts are

still operating in an essentialist framework, they will never meet their goals.

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CHAPTER III: THE CASE OF ELVES, THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

Compared to Orcs and Dwarves, Elves are represented with a higher degree of diversity

in fantasy games. We frequently see good Elves and evil Elves, male Elves and female Elves,

Elves who are warriors and Elves who are wizards. Even with all of the above, Elves are not free

of the deterministic framework that dominates race in fantasy gaming. Across texts, Elves are

consistently essentialized as a “noble” race marked by the qualities of beauty, purity, intellect,

and femininity.

These traits lead to two seemingly disparate but subtly connected characterizations: the

first is the notion that the Elves are a “superior” race, often put directly in contrast to “lesser”

races such as Orcs. In this, they parallel myths about the “Aryan master race” as a superior

progenitor to contemporary Europeans. Variations on this theme are consistent from The Lord of

the Rings through World of Warcraft. In some cases (such as in World of Warcraft), this is

presented as a character flaw of Elves, an ethnocentric arrogance that leads them to believe

themselves superior to other races. In other cases (such as The Silmarillion), it is presented as an

implied fact in the text, with Elven superiority being marked by their wise temperaments, ancient

origins, and physical beauty.

This last trait ties directly to our second characterization: the emphasis on physical beauty

leads to Elves being encoded as racially feminine in the same way Dwarves and Orcs are

encoded as racially masculine. Female Elves are often presented as sex objects and male Elves

are often queer-coded. From the “Tabletop Era” onward, we see an increasing association

between Elves and homosexuality, genderfluidity, BDSM, and otherwise non-heteronormative

sexual practice. This strange evolution from a fantastical “Aryan master race” to a fantastical

LGBTQ+ community speaks to both the flexibility of the re-encoding process and the deeply

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intertwined nature of racial and sexual ideals. In imagining the “superior race,” fantasists and

Aryanists alike reveal their own sexual fantasies and project them onto racial identities.

Elves and Whiteness

Elves occupy a complex position with regards to Whiteness. In most fantasy texts,

Humans (the “Race of Men” for Tolkien) occupy the unmarked position of White Europeans,

being consistently portrayed with Caucasian features and broadly European-style clothing. In this

framework, Dwarves can be seen as liminal “Off-Whites” who are still distinctly European-

based, but often tied to more specific and subordinated communities such as Jewish or Celtic

peoples. As we discussed in the last chapter, Orcs function as a green-skinned stand-in for non-

White and Non-European groups.

Compared to these, Elves frequently occupy a position that I will refer to as “Hyper-

Whiteness.” Physically, they tend to be portrayed as exceptionally light-skinned and straight-

haired (with some notable exceptions discussed below), better embodying an image of Northern

European Whiteness than Humans in the same texts: if we compare the default bodies for Human

and Blood Elf characters in World of Warcraft, the Human model appears as a Caucasian of

medium complexion with dark brown hair and the Blood Elf as a gracile Caucasian with a light

complexion and pale blond hair.199 At the same time, they are physically marked as Other by

fantastical features such as pointed ears. Culturally, they tend to be defined by traits that are

desirable for Humans but only sometimes obtained: beauty, wisdom, and so on.

The “Hyper-White” Elf forms a binary with the Non-White Orc, and a binary that leaves

Humans (the standard audience-surrogate) in the liminal space. We see this binary at play in the

199 It’s worth noting that dark-skinned and African-featured depictions of Humans have occurred periodically in fantasy texts, such as the Redguard of The Elder Scrolls or some of the illustrations in the fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook. In these same texts, Elves are portrayed with either Caucasian or fantastical skin tones.

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origins of these two species discussed in previous chapters: The Elves in Lord of the Rings were

created directly by the creator deity Illuvatar, and the Orcs were Elves corrupted by the evil spirit

Melkor200 - Elven nature is a production of divinely created racial purity, whereas Orcish nature

is a product of degeneration over time. The Elves and Orcs in Dungeons and Dragons are the

creations of rival deities whose essence is manifested in their created races, explaining why

Elves are intrinsically Good and Orcs intrinsically Evil. Humans, conversely, are the only species

who have no innate morality, and are presented as equally capable of Good or Evil. With

Humans as a baseline, Elves are super-human in the same way that Orcs are sub-human.

Tolkien’s Elves and Aryanism

In previous chapters, I discussed the parallels between Tolkien’s Dwarves and real-world

understandings of Jews, as well as parallels between Orcs and “Saracen” or “Huns.” In

examining Elves through the race theories of the early 20th century, there are a number of

unsettling parallels with the myth of the “Aryan Master Race.”

Aryanism was a complex and sometimes contradictory set of ideas: In David Motabel’s

“Iran and the Aryan Myth,” he refers to it as “a series of conceptualizations and re-

conceptualizations” about language and race that connected Europe with India and Iran based on

a theorized “primordial people” (“Urvolk”) from which they are mutually descended.201 This

eventually evolved into a theory of a “higher race,” often directly contrasted to “lesser races”

such as Mongols and (especially) Semites. Motabel traces the origin of the Aryan myth to British

philologist Sir William Jones of the Royal Asiatic Society coming to grips with the linguistic

200 Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 37. 201 David Motadel, “Iran and the Aryan myth.” Perceptions of Iran: History, Myths and Nationalism from Medieval Persia to the Islamic Republic. edited by AM Ansari, 119-145.. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 119-121.

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connections between Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Farsi, which were taken as proof of shared

cultural identity and later racial identity:

In this context, the linguistic ‘Indo-European’ relationship was soon taken as proof of the tribal and volkish kinship of the people who spoke that language. As a consequence, European scholars began to see the ancient Persians as their ancestors…By drawing from language to volkish origin, Europeans became ‘Aryans’, whose roots (Urheimat) lay in the East.202

While Jones connected Europeans and Indians linguistically, Christopher Hutton’s

“Rethinking the History of the Aryan Paradigm” points to the German Indologist Fredrich

Schlegel as creator of the “Aryan” as an imagined Indo-European racial group:

Schlegel was writing against the background of the Napoleonic conquests, and his concern is with the historical grounding and ‘lineage’ of the Germans. He is the arguably true founder of the Aryan paradigm in its modern, ideological sense. Key elements in this paradigm include: the evocation of an empowering link between an ancient people and the modern Germans; the importance of the scholarly imaginary in the creation of modern German nationalism; and the centrality of language.203

This linking of Europe and Asia gave Aryanism a dual nature: it was a theory of White

European supremacy, but it was also a theory of understanding “Oriental” India and Iran on the

basis of language, culture, and intellect. The same themes of antiquity, superiority, intellect, and

civilization that consistently define Elves in fantasy were also the defining traits of the “Aryan,”

whether speaking of European or Indian examples. Like with Tolkien’s Elves, the incorporation

of Indians and Iranians makes the imagined Aryan serve as both a contemporary White “Self”

and a desirable exotic “Other.” 204

This vision of the Indian Aryan is perhaps best embodied by an 1862 speech by British

intellectual Samuel Laing:

. . . they [the Aryan race] are eminently the intellectual race, the race of science, art, poetry, philosophy, conquest, colonization, and progress.... All Arian[sic] nations possess in a greater or less degree this

202 Motadel, “Iran and the Aryan Myth,” 120-121. 203 Christopher Hutton.“Rethinking the History of the Aryan Paradigm.” Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong, 2013. 204 When Elves are not encoded along European racial lines, they often take up Asian racial encodings instead. This is best seen in World of Warcraft, where the Night Elves are given Japanese-inspired clothing and architectural trappings, and the Blood Elves are given Middle Eastern ones. These “Oriental Elves” can be seen as the thematic descendants of the “Oriental Aryan.”

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divine faculty. Contrasted broadly with the standard of other races, there is no such thing as a stupid Arian nation.... It is true, the very liveliness of his faculties makes the Arian more susceptible of outward influences than the Chinese with his stereotyped civilization, and the Semite with his one or two narrow but profound ideas.205

Laing’s speech contrasts the intellectual prowess of the “Arian” Indian to the intellectual

shortcomings of the “Chinese” and the “Semite.” Such themes are also present in Houston

Stewart Chamberlain's discussions of the Aryan in Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, the

text where he laid out his Aryanist views. For Chamberlain, Aryan superiority is understood

through his contrast to the “Mongol” and the “Semite.” Contrasting nomadic and settled peoples,

he writes that “the beautiful flowers of old Aryan life —Indian thought, Indian poetry—were to

be trodden under foot by the savage bloodthirsty Mongolian.”206 With regards to the Persian

conquest of Babylon, he writes that the “inexperienced Indo-European” King Cyrus “permitted

the return of the Jews and gave them a subsidy for the rebuilding of the temple under the

protection of Aryan tolerance the hearth was erected from which… Semitic intolerance was to

spread like a poison over the whole earth.” 207 As discussed in previous chapters, both the

“Mongols” and “Semites” are represented in The Lord of the Rings through their parallels to

Orcs and Dwarves. In this light, the Elf/Orc and Elf/Dwarf binaries of Middle-Earth show

striking similarities to the Aryan/Semite and Aryan/Mongol binaries in Chamberlain’s writings.

Whereas Orcs are defined almost entirely in terms of negative traits, and Dwarves have a

mixture of positive and negative traits, Elves are defined almost entirely in terms of positive

traits. Let us consider the following passages from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion and Arthur

de Gobineau’s The Inequality of Human Races:

In the beginning the Elder Children of Iluvatar were stronger and greater than they have since become; but not more fair, for though the beauty of the Quendi in the days of their youth was beyond all other beauty that Iluvatar has caused to be, it has not perished, but lives in the West, and sorrow and wisdom have

205 Samuel Laing. Lecture on the Indo-European Language and Races,. Calcutta, 1862, 13-14. 206 Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 494-495. 207 Chamberlain, Foundation of the Nineteenth Century, 457.

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enriched it.208

The white race originally possessed the monopoly of beauty, intelligence, and strength. By its union with other varieties, hybrids were created, which were beautiful without strength, strong without intelligence, or, if intelligent, both weak and ugly.209

Both groups are defined by traits of intellect, strength, and beauty. Both are subject to

threats of losing some of these traits through racial degeneration, while maintaining others that

demonstrate their connection to a lost, higher form. The threat of degeneration plays to a sense of

antiquity, that the superior was once dominant but has lost or is under threat of losing its

superiority with the passage of time. Being the “Elder Children of Illuvatar” associates Elven

nobility with their ancient origins, much like the hypothetical nature of the Aryans as the

“Urvolk.”

Intentionally or otherwise, Tolkien’s writings have multiple strong parallels to real-life

Aryanist theories. It is also important to bear in mind how Tolkien’s training as a linguist in

Imperial Britain may have influenced his ideas on race. As Joan Leopold’s “British Applications

of the Aryan Theory of Race to India, 1850-1870” states:

From I850-70 perhaps the majority of comparative philologists accepted the principle that in the classification of contemporary human 'races' linguistic criteria were the most reliable and should supersede as yet scarcely formularized ethnological criteria such as hair, eye and cuticle colour or cranial and skeletal measurement.210

As such, the odds of Tolkien being exposed to linguistically informed race categories such as

“Aryans” and “Semites” in his own academic training strikes me as high, and further supported

by how closely the texts he created seem to mirror these models. This may have been deliberate

influence from the writings of the likes of Gobineau, Chamberlain, and Laing or it may have

208 Tolkien, Silmarillion, 36. 209 Gobineau, Inequality, 209. 210 Joan Leopold. "British applications of the Aryan theory of race to India, 1850-1870." The English Historical Review 89, no. 352 (1974): 578-603. 579.

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simply been an early 20th century intellectual writing what seemed natural to him, and what

seemed natural emerging from the currents of late nineteenth century race theory.

Superior Elves After Tolkien

In fantasy games, Elves are frequently divided into a number of distinct types or

“subraces,” each with different essential characteristics. Though these vary from text to text, the

most common subdivision is the trichotomy of magical “High Elves,” nature-loving “Wood

Elves,” and sinister “Dark Elves.” Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, and The Elder Scrolls

all use this trichotomy explicitly (though Dungeons and Dragons occasionally adds in other

forms of Elves).211 Each of these have their own peculiar sets of racial signifiers which are worth

exploring: High Elves embody the Aryanist ideal described above, often through intellectual and

spiritual traits. Wood Elves are a case of the same sort of stereotype-splitting seen with

Hobgoblins and Orcs, giving a model for Elves who are rugged “Noble Savages” rather than

intellectuals. Dark Elves serve as a “feminine evil” to balance out the “masculine evil” of Orcs,

and their descriptions are steeped in ideas about sexual deviance and BDSM.

In Dungeons and Dragons, we see Aryanist themes with “High Elves” and “Grey

Elves,” who are described as following in The Complete Book of Elves:212

While not exactly bigoted toward other races, the grey elves do believe in the purity of the elven line. They are the least tolerant of other races, and they take pains to ensure that they remain secluded from all-sometimes even other elves….The grey elves are not rabid in their dislike of the shorter-lived races, but

211Tolkien also made reference to various Elven peoples, including “Wood Elves” and “Grey Elves,” which likely set this pattern into motion. Likewise, World of Warcraft divides their Elves into “Blood Elves” and “Night Elves,” who roughly correspond to the High Elf and Wood Elf archetypes. 212 The official website D&D Beyond parses the term “High Elf” into two subcategories: “In many of the worlds of D&D, there are two kinds of high elves. One type (which includes the grey elves and valley elves of Greyhawk, the Silvanesti of Dragonlance, and the sun elves of the Forgotten Realms) is haughty and reclusive, believing themselves to be superior to non-elves and even other elves. The other type (including the high elves of Greyhawk, the Qualinesti of Dragonlance, and the moon elves of the Forgotten Realms) are more common and more friendly, and often encountered among humans and other races.” The Aryanist themes of beauty, purity, and intellect are present in both versions, but are played up and presented as a character flaw in the former type. The D&D Grey Elf is functionally a “Higher High Elf.” D&DBeyond, “Elf.” Accessed 2-25-2022. https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/elf

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they do fear the corruption that the other races can bring to the elves…These elves feel that they are the "true" elves and that others are somehow lesser versions.213

McComb’s description of Grey Elves is attempting to walk a fine line, portraying them as

ethnocentric without portraying them as “Evil” in the racialized hard morality of Dungeons and

Dragons. In the same section, McComb refers to them as the “The most noble and most reclusive

of the elves” and states that they “view themselves as the protectors of good in the world.”214

Here, ethnonationalism and desire for racial purity is contrasted with explicit statements of high

moral character, marking those behaviors as acceptable among “Good” races. Their fear of

corruption from other races is presented as at least partially justified. 215

The Warhammer: High Elves army book paints a very similar picture of Elves as a noble

and ancient but diminishing race. They “hold the honour of being the one true civilization from

which all other Elven realms have sprung" and "Once masters of the mortal realm... the High

Elves are now passing into twilight." The book continues that "Only a relative handful of High

Elves see the lesser races as something worth protecting - and even then they believe that these

races must occasionally be saved from themselves." 216 The first statement plays to the same

sense of superiority rooted in antiquity seen with Tolkien’s Elves, presenting them as an original

pure race from which other races have (d)evolved. The second statement suggests something

akin to the “White Man’s Burden” wherein Elven morality is rooted in a framework of

stewardship over other races. Their morality is linked to racial purity as well, with an innate

racial resistance to the “warping influence of Chaos” that serves as the principle cosmic threat in

Warhammer.217 This emphasis on purity is particularly noticeable in the description of their

213 McComb, Complete Book of Elves. 18. 214 McComb, Complete Book of Elves, 18. 215 We see here again parallels to the “Replacement Theory” described in the previous chapter. 216 Matthew Ward. Warhammer Armies: High Elves. Eighth Edition. Nottingham: Games Workshop, Nottingham, 2012, 6-7. 217 Ward, High Elves, 7.

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“Maidenguard” unit, described as “[aspiring to] perfection; not only in mind and body, but also

in pursuit of the spiritual.... ensuring that they remain incorruptible."218

The Blood Elves in World of Warcraft occupy a similar space, of being marked by an

Aryanist ethnocentricism. In “Race Based Fantasy Realm” Melissa J. Monson offers the

following analysis of the Blood Elves:

Much of what the Blood Elves have to say reflects an arrogant superiority and disdain for other races which is aptly conveyed through bigoted jokes and a haughty demeanor. Along with the phoenix adorning their flag and large draping red banners lining the streets, these Neo- Nazi cues have led many on the WoW forums to read the Blood Elves as Germanic.219

The Nazi imagery associated with Blood Elves was likely intended to be ironic; Blood

Elves are part of the “Horde” faction that also includes Orcs, Trolls, and most of the traditionally

“Evil” races, though in a setting that has actively distanced itself from the racialized morality of

Dungeons and Dragons. However, Monson goes on to analyze a series of comments from the

White Supremacist website Stormfront that connect Blood Elves to Aryanism: “Blood elves are

very European . . . the “Aryan” bloodelves [sic] are the only race on the horde side that is smart

enough to be a Paladin. So you see even in fantasy it shows that the white culture is superior to

other mud cultures.”220 She then concludes that “ethnicity is being interpreted through a filter of

racial imperialism. Blood Elves are viewed as culturally superior; therefore, they must be

Aryan.”221

In all of these cases, we are presented with a civilization of Elves who believe themselves

superior to other races on the basis of age, purity, and intellect - the same traits which define the

218 Ward, High Elves, 48. The Maidenguard are one of the few explicitly female High Elf units in Warhammer, and with them we see the doubling down on purity as a feminine as well as Aryanist racial trait. 219 Monson, “Race-Based Fantasy Realm,” 63. 220 Quoted in Monson, 63. 221 Monson, “Race-Based Fantasy Realm,” 63. The Stormfront reading of Blood Elves as “Aryan” and “European” is contrasted by the aggressively Middle-Eastern themes of the Blood Elves clothing and architecture in World of Warcraft; it would seem that these encodings were less salient to White Supremacist players.

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“Aryan” race. These games portray this belief in a flippant way that is neither confirmed nor

denied by the text: players are left room to interpret whether these Elves are merely arrogant

ethnocentrists or genuinely are a superior race. And as evidenced by Monson’s research on

Stormfront, these statements are taken at face value by at least some players.222

High Elves and Magic

Of the above-mentioned three types, the “High Elf” type is the one which most heavily

contains the themes of Aryanism, typically being the oldest, most civilized, and most intellectual

of the Elven races. High Elves are consistently portrayed as more intelligent and more heavily

associated with magic than other races, often with game mechanics being used to reinforce these

associations. This emphasis on the spiritual rather than physical side of Elves reinforces their

position as a “noble” race who work with their minds rather than bodies.

In fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons, The Elder Scrolls, and World of

Warcraft, characters are principally defined by their “class” as well as their “race.” Class in this

sense refers to an adventuring profession rather than a position within a social hierarchy, though

it often contains subtle associations of the latter as well. While a game may present a dozen or

more different such classes, the vast majority of them amount to variants on either warriors (who

work with their bodies) or wizards (who work with their minds). As previously discussed, Orcs

and Dwarves are both consistently given attributes that make them better warriors, emphasizing

the physicality (and hence masculinity) of these races. Elves, conversely, are consistently given

bonuses that make them better wizards, emphasizing their intellectual nature.223

222If Elves are decoded as more exotic or “other,” then their ethnocentricism carries with it notes of “Reverse Racism”: the idea that the other races look down on us, and thus we are justified in looking down on them. 223 The Lord of the Rings, being a narrative text rather than a game, did not use this framework: however, it did present magicality as a function of race: wizards such as Gandalf and Saruman were “Maiar,” beings roughly analogous to angels, and thus separated from the “Race of Men.” Elves were also presented as having a subtle but intrinsic level of magicality, as seen in the conversation between Samwise and Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring:

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In the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons, Elves were the only non-Human race who

could be Magic-Users; later editions relaxed this restriction, while still giving Elves bonuses to

the abilities used for magic. Within Dungeons and Dragons, magic is foremost an expression of

intellect; the “Intelligence” attribute’s primary function is to govern one’s ability to perform

magic, making it a vital attribute for Magic-Users and of little utility to other roles.224 The role of

the Magic-User was to be an intellectual among the uneducated, and thus carries with it the

suggestions of being a higher “class” in the conventional sense of the word. The Grey Elves

described earlier represented the peak of this intersection of magic, intelligence, and aristocracy:

“These noble elves are the rarest and most powerful of their kind. They are more intelligent

than other sorts (+ 1 on dice roll for intelligence), and those few with supra-genius abilities can

become wizards.”225 Even in the current edition of Dungeons and Dragons, where any race can

become a wizard, High Elves are still given a racial intelligence bonus that makes them better-

qualified than other races.

Subsequent fantasy games would follow D&D’s model of race and class being tied via

ability bonuses and penalties, often slotting Elves into the intellectual magic-user role. In the

World of Warcraft, the Blood Elves are given abilities such as “Arcane Affinity” and “Arcane

“It’s wonderfully quiet here. Nothing seems to be going on, and nobody seems to want it to. If there’s any magic about, it’s right down deep, where I can’t lay my hands on it, in a manner of speaking.” “You can see and feel it everywhere,” said Frodo. … “And you?” she [Galadriel] said, turning to Sam. “For this is what your folk would call magic, though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word for the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel. Did you not say that you wished to see Elf-magic?” (Tolkien, 397) 224 This briefly changed in the game’s third edition, when Intelligence also governed the number of skills one could learn, making it useful for all characters. Third edition also introduced the “Sorcerer” class who wielded the same magic as Wizards, but their ability was governed by “Charisma” rather than “Intelligence.” The combination of these two changes was to radically de-emphasize the connection between magic and intellect. 225 Gygax, Monster Manual, 39. It is worth noting that first edition Dungeons and Dragons gave attribute penalties to female characters, limiting their “Strength” statistic (which was the primary attribute used by warriors). Thus, female characters were better suited towards wizard rather than warrior roles by their limitations, just as Elves were better suited to being wizards by their bonuses.

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Acuity” which are framed in terms of innate magical ability. In The Elder Scrolls, High Elves are

consistently given large bonuses to their intellectual attributes and magical skills, as well as

special abilities which make them better at performing magic than other races: the game

mechanics typecast them as “wizards” by the same mechanisms that Orcs are typecast as

“warriors.” Like with the Grey Elves of D&D, racial superiority, civilization, intelligence, and

the practice of magic are all linked, as evidenced by the in-game description of High Elves from

The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind.

The High Elves consider themselves the most civilized culture of Tamriel; the common tongue of the Empire, Tamrielic, is based on Altmer speech and writing, and most of the Empire's arts, crafts, and sciences derive from High Elven traditions. Deft, intelligent, and strong-willed, High Elves are often gifted in the arcane arts, and High Elves boast that their sublime physical natures make them far more resistant to disease than the “lesser races.” 226

In Warhammer, the race/class intersection is not present, with each race being presented

as armies rather than individuals. However, the association of Elves with magicality and intellect

remains through the narrative aspects of the book. It states that for High Elves, “their minds are

their finest weapons” and "by lineage and inclination, the High Elves are a magical race.... their

mages' nimble minds can embrace a deeper understanding of its subtleties and whims than other

wizards."227

In my chapter on Dwarves, I discussed Gobineau’s metaphysical principles of “Purusha”

and “Prakriti,” representing the masculine/material principle in a race and the latter representing

a feminine/spiritual principle. Dwarves embody “Parusha” both in masculinity and their

associated antipathy towards magic and spirituality; conversely, Elves embody “Prakriti” in that

they are frequently portrayed as both feminine as well as emotional, intellectual, and magical.

Though he did not share Gobineau’s appropriation of Sanskrit terminology, Chamberlain also

226We see the Aryanist themes of linguistic origin here at play: The “Common” language of Tamriel’s European-coded Humans is a linguistic descendent of the originating Elven language. 227 Ward, High Elves, 37.

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associated these cerebral qualities with Aryan identity:

The Aryan Indian can stand as an example of the extreme contrast to the Semite…. the mind of the Hindoo embraces an extraordinary amount—too much for his earthly happiness; his feelings are tender and-full of sympathy, his sense pious, his thought metaphysically the deepest in the world, his imagination as luxuriant as his primeval forests, as bold as the world's loftiest mountain peak, to which his eye is ever drawn upwards.228

Chamberlain, Gobineau, Tolkien and Gygax are operating in the same binary framework

that imagines the body as masculine and the mind as feminine. As discussed in previous

chapters, the Dwarves in Lord of the Rings were heavily coded as “Semites” through language

and stereotype. Just as Chamberlain contrasts the “Aryan” as the opposite type of the “Semite,”

Elves are consistently presented as the opposite type of the Dwarves: Elves are emotional,

feminine, artistic, and magical, while Dwarves are taciturn, masculine, pragmatic, and material.

Just as we can examine an Elf/Orc binary that forms around purity vs degeneration, we can also

examine an Elf/Dwarf binary that revolves around feminine spirituality vs masculine materiality.

Racializing Femininity

In addition to being feminized through the Purusha/Prakriti binary, the repeated theme of

“beauty” connects notions of Elven superiority to femininity, sexualization, and ultimately

queerness. In the Silmarillion, Tolkien emphasizes “beauty” as the unchanging characteristic of

the Elves, even when their physical strength is in decline. Likewise, Arthur de Gobineau

repeatedly emphasizes the superior physical beauty of Europeans over non-white peoples. In The

Mismeasure of Man, Stephen J. Gould analyzes the preoccupation with beauty shown by the

English polygenist Charles White:

White’s criteria of ranking tended toward the aesthetic, and his argument included the following gem, often quoted. Where else but among Caucasians, he argued, can we find … that nobly arched head, containing such a quantity of brain.… Where that variety of features, and fullness of expression; those long, flowing, graceful ringlets; that majestic beard, those rosy cheeks and coral lips? Where that… noble gait? In what other quarter of the globe shall we find the blush that overspreads the soft features of the beautiful women of Europe, that emblem of modesty, of delicate feelings … where, except on the bosom of the European

228 Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 435.

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woman, two such plump and snowy white hemispheres, tipt [sic] with vermillion.229

In a male-dominated cultural landscape, “Beauty” becomes an inherently feminine trait.

Laura Mulvey’s famous Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema expounds upon how “to-be-

looked-at-ness” becomes a defining trait of women. With Elves, we see this same process

approached in reverse: Rather than being necessarily beautiful as a byproduct of being defined as

female, Elves become necessarily feminine as a result of being defined as beautiful.

The fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook describes them as follows:

With their unearthly grace and fine features, elves appear hauntingly beautiful to humans and members of many other races…. They are more slender than humans, weighing only 100 to 145 pounds… Elves have no facial and little body hair.” 230

These typical depictions of Elves as “beautiful” - sharp-featured, waifish, lacking body hair - all

cleanly map specifically onto Western ideals of feminine beauty. And indeed, across the fantasy

genre, we see an abundance of representations of female Elves, even in texts which lack

representation of women in general.

There are relatively few female characters in Tolkien’s work, but the ones we do see are

disproportionately Elves. The Lord of the Rings features few examples of female Dwarves, Orcs,

or Hobbits, and the ones who are mentioned are minor characters at best (such as Sam’s fiancé

Rosie Cotton or Bilbo’s cousin’s wife Lobelia Sackville-Baggins). Of the major female

characters in the Lord of the Rings, two of them are Elves (Galadriel and Arwen), one is Human

(Eowyn), and one is a giant spider (Shelob). Elven women are better represented than even

Human women in Tolkien’s trilogy, making them the race most heavily associated with female

229 Quoted in Gould, Mismeasure of Man, 67. White’s description points toward an underlying bisexual frame at the heart of racializing “Beauty.” White’s description of the “bosom of the European woman” is matched by his description of the “majestic beard, those rosy cheeks and coral lips.” In imagining a beautiful race, White is imagining beauty as the property of both male and female members of that race, and giving expression for same-sex as well as heterosexual desire. 230 Wyatt, Schwab, and Cordell. Player’s Handbook. 23.

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characters.

This association of Elves as “The female race” is exemplified by the character of Tauriel

in the film version of The Hobbit. Peter Jackson added the original character of Tauriel (a female

Elf) to compensate for the dearth of female characters in the original text. Jackson confirmed this

as a motivation in an interview with the Daily Beast, stating. ”…you do have a lot of young girls

seeing this film, and they should have somebody in there who they can empathize with.”231

Given that his goal was to add female characters, Jackson could have made Tauriel a

Dwarf, given the central role that Dwarves play in The Hobbit. Conversely, since his goal was to

create a character for young girls to empathize with, he could have also made her a (Human)

young girl. The decision to make Tauriel an Elf, instead of any of the above, serves as a test case

to the extent to which Elven-ness and femininity were associated in the mind of The Hobbit’s

producers. Despite the minimal role which the Elves play in The Hobbit, they were viewed as the

logical choice of racialization for an original female character.

In examining early Dungeons and Dragons texts, we see a similar trend. In the

illustrations of the first edition Player’s Handbook, there are seventy-three male characters and

two female characters. The first of these female characters is an Elf in an illustration displaying

all of the playable races side-by-side: the representations of all other races are male. Likewise in

World of Warcraft, the introduction cinematic features a number of characters representing the

different races present in the game - Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, and so on. All of these

representative characters are male, with the exception of a conventionally attractive, scantily clad

female Elf. Among the various armies of Warhammer, the Dark Elves were the only army who

231 Alex Suskind. “‘No Regrets.’ Peter Jackson Says Goodbye to Middle Earth.” The Daily Beast, December 4, 2014. Updated April 14, 2017. https://www.thedailybeast.com/no-regrets-peter-jackson-says-goodbye-to-middle-earth

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extensively fielded female units, and those units are depicted in similarly hypersexual fashion.

Gary Gygax himself was a self-described “biological determinist” who stated that women

did not enjoy the game he created because of differences in the way their brains function.232 Gary

Fine’s research on tabletop gaming communities in the early 1980’s indicated that these

communities were incredibly hostile to women. One interviewee presented the way sexual

harassment was normalized:

Yeah, they’re (women) accepted. They’re accepted and they’re sort of treated special. I mean people make a little joke about them, or talk to them in kind of a kidding way, and it’s quite obviously a reflection of our own societal values. You know, they’re making sexual remarks to the girl and teasing her about sex and so on: it’s considered standard, no big deal.” 233

All of this is to clarify that early Dungeons and Dragons, on the level of text, creator, and

audience, was thoroughly masculinist in its outlook and definitively a “boy’s club.” This led to a

thorny issue with Elves being so heavily coded as feminine, and what to do with the male

members of a female race. With the case of Dwarves being portrayed as a race of gruff old men,

there is little need to consider where that leaves Dwarven women - Dwarves were male, players

were male, characters were male, and Dwarven women could remain invisible. However, as a

male-oriented game, male Elves cannot be erased as easily as female Dwarves could be. And

thus, left with a pool of feminine male characters for artists to draw, writers to expound upon,

and players to inhabit the role of, fantasy games are left to reckon with how to deal with

feminine-coded male characters.

232Gary Gygax, Q&A with Gary Gygax, Part III. Dragonsfoot Forums. July 13, 2005. https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12147&start=60 233 Quoted in Fine, Shared Fantasy, 68. Clements’s dissertation indicates that this sort of casual sexism is very much alive in the present incarnation of the gaming community: “Every female respondent [to his interviews] had at least one story of going into a game store and being made to feel uncomfortable because they were a female in a male-dominated space. Sometimes it’s a case of active misogyny, and sometimes it is a matter of awkward men not knowing how to interact with a woman, but the net result is that many spaces where D&D is played are not friendly for women. Clements, Dungeons and Discourse, 28.

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Elves and Queerness

The association between Elves and femininity has led to the curious outcome of Elves

(particularly male Elves) being consistently queer-coded. This is most apparent in parodies of the

fantasy genre: In the 2004 Comedy Central adult animated series Drawn Together, which

featured cartoon characters of disparate genres in a reality-TV format, the character of Xandir P.

Wifflebottom was drawn as a D&D-style Elf and portrayed as a disparaging caricature of a

hypersexual effete gay man. The 2012 children’s animated series Gravity Falls would repeat a

milder version of this same joke in the episode “Dungeons, Dungeons, and more Dungeons.”

The episode featured characters from a D&D-esque game drawn into the real world, including a

male Elf adventurer. The Elf spoke with the type of lilting voice stereotypically associated with

gay men, and the episode made a persistent gag of him being aloof to flirtatious gestures made

by female characters.

The 2009 fantasy video game Dragon Age: Origins featured the character of Zevran

Aranai, a bisexual male Elf whom the player could pursue a romantic relationship with.

Conversely, the game also featured the character of Allistair, a heterosexual Human who could

only be courted if the player had created a female character. Dragon Age was one of the earliest

high-budget video games to explicitly include same sex romances, and Zevran is a milestone

character in this regard. However, the decision to make the Elven male love interest bisexual and

the Human male love interest heterosexual is part of the same pattern that created homophobic

caricatures such as Xandir in Drawn Together.

Within fantasy games, Elves are frequently characterized as having less defined gender

roles on both a personal and a societal level. The Warhammer: Wood Elves army book states

“most Wood Elves make no distinction between male and female when it comes to all duties,

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whether those responsibilities find their calling in war or peace."234 As early as 1992, we have

this line from the Complete Book of Elves: “Lastly, since elves make no distinction between male

and female, the personal pronouns in this book alternate between genders. Not all examples will

be only of "he" or "him"; some will consist of only "she" or "her."235 While the Warhammer

book limits Elven genderfluidity to occupational duties, McComb seems to be suggesting that

Elves have no personal concept of gender binary, a theme which will return strongly in later

D&D texts.

More recently, several D&D adventure manuals have featured explicitly nonbinary

characters, both of whom were Elves. The 2018 Waterdeep: Dragon Heist has the character Fala

Lefaliir, described as “an outgoing wood elf with long, braided hair. Like the elven god Corellon

Larethian, Fala is neither male nor female. If referred to as ‘he’ or ‘she,’ Fala gently requests to

be addressed by name or as ‘they.’”236 The 2020 Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden has a

nonbinary Half-Elf explorer named Tali who “presents as neither male nor female and requests

to be referred to as ‘they’ or by name in conversation.”237 In Perkins' description of Fala Lefaliir,

we see another instance of polygenesis being the origin of racial essence in D&D. For Fala,

being nonbinary reflects the character of a genderfluid creator god; Corellon Larethian is

described as “When consorting with other gods, Corellon often adopted their appearances- male,

female, or something else- but just as often kept their company in the form of a rose blossom or a

delicate doe.”238 Elven genderfluidity is here part of a divinely imparted national character in the

same way that Orcish aggression is.

234 Matt Ward. Warhammer Armies: Wood Elves. Eighth Edition. Nottingham: Games Workshop, Nottingham, 2014, 18. 235 McComb, Complete Book of Elves, 8. 236 Christopher Perkins, Waterdeep Dragon Heist. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2018, 33. 237 Christopher Perkins, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2020, 31. 238 Mike Merles and Jeremy Crawford. Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. Renton WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2018.

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Both of these texts are by the same author, Christopher Perkins. Dragon Heist features a

wide number of LGBTQ+ characters including Elves, humans, and Genasi (a sort of genie-folk).

Perkins appears to be making a good-faith effort to portray a wide range of sexual identities in

writing and deserves credit for it. And yet, it is telling that the nonbinary characters in both

Dragon Heist and Rime of the Frost Maiden are some variety of Elf, rather than nonbinary

Dwarves, Orcs, or Humans. The long-running feminization and sexualization of Elves make

them a more natural fit for queer representation, to the point where queerness has become a

racial characteristic for Elves. These representations themselves are not problematic in and of

themselves, but rather are made so by how they are racially focused: If there is any disservice

being done to the LGBTQ+ community, it is not in the presence of queer Elves, but rather in the

absence of queer non-Elves. 239

Half-Elves and Elves as Sex Objects

In my previous chapter, I discussed the implications of the “Half-Orc” as a racial trope in

Dungeons and Dragons. The same game also presents players with “Half-Elf” as a race option;

like the Half-Orc, the narratives surrounding Half-Elves are centered around the circumstances

of their conception. While Half-Orcs exist as a byproduct of fears of miscegenation, the Half-

Elves are a byproduct of fantasies about the same. The Half-Orc is implicitly the child of rape,

reflecting fears of the uncontrolled sexuality of the Masculine Other. Conversely, The Complete

Book of Elves defines Half-Elves as the product of the sexual allure of the Feminine Other: “Elf

females sometimes find themselves drawn to human men for a brief while, and human women

cannot resist the charms of certain elf males.”240 The Elf/Orc binary is at play here again: Elves

239I have complex personal feelings about this trait. I myself am nonbinary and often identified with Elf characters in fantasy media precisely because of this queer coding. However, my personal attachment to queer-coded Elf characters should not come at the cost of acknowledging the patterns of homophobia that inform their creation. 240 McComb, Complete Book of Elves, 42.

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are presented as sexually desirable to Humans, while Orcs are presented as sexually desirous of

Humans. As Hodes writes, the idea that Elves are “beautiful” and Orcs are “ugly” implies

consent in their conception: “because both humans and elves are playable, their unions are

implied to be consensual. Besides, they adhere to dominant beauty standards, unlike the gray-

skinned, slope-skulled orcs with their protruding teeth.” 241

As with much of Dungeons and Dragons, Half-Elves exist as extrapolations of characters

and lore from Lord of the Rings, where we both see the Human/Elf romance between Aragorn

and Arwen and the title “Half-Elven” used to describe Elrond based on his mixed-race heritage.

Notably, the mixed-race marriages described in Tolkien’s works - Aragorn and Arwen, Beren

and Luthien, Tuor and Idril - are all between Human men and Elven women. In this, we see two

key points: firstly, we reinforce the connection between racial divisions and gender binaries: in

the union of Men and Elves, the Elf is always the woman in the marriage. Secondly, we see an

Orientalist pattern of desire at play, with Elven women functioning as an exotic “Other” to be

desired and obtained by heroic Human men.242 When contrasted with the miscegenation fears

encountered with Half-Orcs, we see a pattern in which miscegenation is acceptable when it’s

“Our” men and “Their” women, but not when it’s “Their” men and “Our” women. Elizabeth

Hoiem’s “World Creation as Colonization” illustrates the connection between Human/Elf

romances and racial purity:

The reason why racial intermarriage and gender interdependence are privileged in Tolkien, contrary to the fear of miscegenation prevalent in colonial discourse, is that Tolkien depicts the fictional unified center from the opposite end of history. He is not trying to prevent racial decay, but to trace the ascension of a race long ago. Interracial marriage between elf and man is far from threatening, as it is always the woman who is an elf. Through patrilinear inheritance, the superior elven race is harnessed within modern man: the fertile spirit, colonized and tamed by male order in the name of progress. Tolkien begins with diversity, but ends with dominance.243

241 Hodes, “Orcs Part II.” 242 This was summed up crassly but succinctly in a Facebook post by Adam Franti: “there are hot races and ugly races, and you can definitely fuck the hot races and most of the coolest people actually did.” 243 Elizabeth Massa Hoiem. "World Creation as Colonization: British Imperialism in ‘Aldarion and Erendis.’" Tolkien Studies 2 (2005): 75-92. https://doi.org/10.1353/tks.2005.0020. 83.

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In Hoiem’s argument, we see the “hyper-white” status of Elves informing these

human/Elf marriages. Tolkien’s Race of Men are an “Us,” but an “Us” that has suffered a degree

of racial decay; Elves, conversely, are the fantasticalized Ancient Aryans, the pure original race

from which the “Us” descends. Via these interracial marriages, the male increases rather than

decreases the purity of his bloodline. Within a patriarchal and patrilinear system, interracial

marriage becomes a tool for conquering and absorbing the “other” race through their female

members. In Hoiem’s analysis, we see the convergence of the seemingly disparate themes of

“Aryan” Elves and “Feminine” Elves - beauty, femininity, and racial purity are all bound up

together in the imagining of a fantastical ideal sexual partner.

Wood Elves and Stereotype Splitting

The above image of the High Elf as an aristocratic wizard is countered by the trope of the

“Wood Elf,” who is typically categorized as a skilled hunter, archer, and woodsman. As with the

High Elf, these characterizations are reinforced by game mechanics. The first edition of the

Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual states: “they are unusually strong for elves (add +1 to

all die rolls, treating 19 as 18), but they are not quite as intelligent (treat 18 intelligence as

17).”244 In The Elder Scrolls, likewise, Wood Elves are given bonuses to skills in stealth and

archery rather than magic as with High Elves. Their in-game description from The Elder Scrolls:

Morrowind holds several key points I wish to highlight:

The Wood Elves are the various barbarian Elven clanfolk of the Western Valenwood forests…. Bosmer reject the stiff, formal traditions of Aldmeri high culture, preferring a romantic, simple existence in harmony with the land, its wild beauty and wild creatures. These country cousins of the High Elves and Dark Elves are nimble and quick in body and wit, and because of their curious natures and natural agility, Wood Elves are especially suitable as scouts, agents, and thieves. But most of all, the Wood Elves are known for their skills with bows; there are no finer archers in all of Tamriel.

In the ways in which Wood Elves are contrasted against High Elves, we see a number of

244 Gygax, Monster Manual, 40.

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structural binaries at play: urban/rural, civilized/barbarian, physical/mental.

Both Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer use Elven subraces to reinforce the

racialization of morality, with “Evil” Dark Elves contrasted against “Good” High Elves. Within

the racial trichotomy, Wood Elves are typically portrayed as neutral isolationists: their

description in the first edition Monster Manual states “"these creatures are very reclusive and

generally (75%) avoid all contact. Wood elves are more neutral than other elves."245 Likewise,

their Warhammer sourcebook describes them as "Capricious and unpredictable, the Wood Elves

have been likened to a force of nature, neither truly good nor evil."246

By looking at the role of Wood Elves, we can see the same sort of stereotype splitting as

with the case of Hobgoblins in the previous chapter. The Wood Elf model seems to be based

directly on the character of Legolas from The Lord of the Rings, locking an image of the Elf as a

woodsman and hunter into the genre. Rather than having some Elves who are airy aristocrats like

Galadriel and some Elves who are earthy hunters like Legolas, the High Elf/Wood Elf binary

reinforces the essentialist framework by putting each archetype of Elf into its own distinct racial

group.247

Dark Elves: The Feminine Evil

With Dark Elves, we see the intersection of many of the themes that have been explored

in the past three chapters: they combine themes of race-gendering, racial hierarchy, and

racialized morality. Like Elves in general, they are consistently portrayed as more feminine than

masculine, more spiritual than physical, as a haughty “superior race,” and as the objects of sexual

245 Gygax, Monster Manual, 41. 246 Ward, Wood Elves, 5. 247The combination of Elven nobility with their rugged physicality makes Wood Elves a strong fit for the “Noble Savage” archetype. And as we see with characters like Conan the Barbarian, the desire to have a White European model of the Noble Savage has been a long running theme in the fantasy genre.

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fascination. Like Orcs, they are frequently portrayed as innately evil and marked by unusual

coloration.248 In this regard, Dark Elves complete the structural quartet of gender and morality

implied by Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs: Dwarves are Masculine and Good, Elves are Feminine and

Good, Orcs are Masculine and Evil, and Dark Elves fill the role of the Feminine and Evil race.

And while this may not have been the intended purpose of Dark Elves at their inception, I

believe it is this function which accounts for their enduring popularity with the fantasy genre.

Though the term predates the game, the modern codification of Dark Elves in fantasy

gaming stems largely from the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The first description of

them appears in the first edition Monster Manual as follows: “The ‘Black Elves,’ or drow, are

only legend…. The drow are said to be as dark as faeries are bright and as evil as the latter are

good.”249 The origin of Dark Elves in D&D is, seemingly, a translation error. Tom Shipley’s

“Light Elves, Dark Elves, and Others” talks about the linguistic origin of the term “Dark Elves”

being another term for the same faerie-beings that evolved into the Dwarves of modern fantasy

games:

What Snorri [the author of the Icelandic Eddas] says is clear and unequivocal, but it raises an immediate problem. “Dark-elves” (dökkálfar), he says, are “black” (svart). Surely that means that they are “black-elves” (svartálfar)? But everywhere else in Snorri’s work, it is clear that when he says “black-elves” (svartálfar), he means “dwarves”: Odin sends Skirnir í Svartálfaheim til dverga nokkurra, “to the home of the black-elves to certain dwarfs,” and Loki too goes into Svartálfaheim where he too “comes across a dwarf.” There is a simple explanation here, which is that while Snorri identifies four groups, light-elves, dark-elves, black-elves, and dwarves, there are really only two: the last three are just different names for the same group.250

248 The Dark Elves in Dungeons and Dragons were evil and black-skinned, but most later presentations of Dark Elves avoid using both of these qualities. The Dark Elves in The Elder Scrolls have dark skin and a grim demeanor, though they are not specifically evil. The Dark Elves of Warhammer are evil sexual deviants, though they are just as light-skinned as the other Elves in that game. The Dark Elves in Heroes of Might and Magic live underground, but have exceptionally pale rather than dark skin. The Dark Elves in Spire are described as having skin in “shades of gray” and are presented as sympathetic rather than villainous. Even within Dungeons and Dragons, while texts still describe them as having black skin, many artists will render them with purple or gray coloration. The discomforting subtext of black-skinned Dark Elves is lampooned in Episode 14 of Season 2 of Community, wherein the character of Chang functionally wears blackface makeup to cosplay as his Dark Elf character. 249 Gygax, Monster Manual, 39. 250 TA Shippey. "Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien's Elvish Problem." Tolkien Studies 1 (2004): 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1353/tks.2004.0015. 5

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Gygax, it would seem, interpreted “Dark Elf” and “Black Elf” much more literally: Elves

who were black-skinned. Particularly in their early depictions, images of Dark Elves were clearly

modeled on African Americans: the cover art of the 1986 adventure Queen of the Spiders by

Gary Gygax depicts a female Dark Elf with brown skin and thick white hair in a metallic dress

who looks for all the world like Tina Turner in Beyond Thunderdome. The Drow are largely

depicted with the same “Aryan” qualities of beauty, nobility, and intellect as High Elves, but

morally inverted to make these qualities dangerous rather than admirable. While Orcs absorbed

the majority of pernicious stereotypes about Africans as “savages,” there are still shades of

stereotypes about Blackness seen in D&D’s Dark Elves. In particular, the theme of Dark Elves as

an “evil matriarchy” (discussed in depth below) mirrors the comedy archetype of the “Sapphire”

(named for Sapphire Stevens from The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show), an aggressive and domineering

African American housewife that was a staple of American comedy television.251

With Dark Elves being an “Evil Race” the themes of innate superiority become more

explicitly marked as a character flaw. Warhammer: Dark Elves states that "Naturally, the Dark

Elves consider all other races inferior" and that “they dismiss the others [High Elves] as

sniveling and effete weaklings."252 Likewise in Dungeons and Dragons, “From the time they're

old enough to understand, drow are taught that they're superior to all other creatures.”253 This

mutual ethnocentrism between High and Dark Elves creates a race-war mindset that is very

present in both Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons when the two races are contrasted. The

Complete Book of Elves presents an Elf-Specific version of the Genocide Imperative, which sets

. 251Dr. Angela Nelson, one of my own professors at BGSU, has written extensively on the significance of the Sapphire archetype. 252 Matthew Ward, Warhammer Armies: Dark Elves, Eighth Edition. Nottingham: Games Workshop, Nottingham, 2013. 253 McComb, Complete Book of Elves, 51.

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up a similar purity/corruption binary to that of the Elves and Orcs in Tolkien:

Although we continue to war with the Drow, the cause of that war is far more than the color of their skin or their beliefs. It is the fact that their very existence is an affront to ours, that they were created by perversions within our own race. Our war is nothing less than a sublime effort to undo an error made hundreds of centuries ago.254

Both Warhammer and D&D present Dark Elves' evil nature as being tied to the embrace

of religious heterodoxy. In a fantastical retelling of the “Curse of Ham” myth which posited that

Africans had been made turned Black as a divine punishment,255 the origin of both Dark Elf

immorality and skin color is traced to apostasy and divine curse:

The Drow turned their faces away from the sun's purification, preferring instead their fallen goddess. They consciously chose the shadows over light, and Corellon decreed that such treachery would forever show upon their faces. It is for this reason that the skin of the Drow is dark.256

Warhammer, which uses race-war as recurring theme of its game, emphasizes that this is the

most intense of all its racialized conflicts: “There is no peace to be had between the courts of

Ulthuan [High Elves] and Naggaroth [Dark Elves], for the millennia of their shared history have

been of endless blood and betrayal. No enmity in the world is so bitter, no war so savagely

fought.”257

The Dark Elves of Warhammer are similarly presented as apostates who “have turned

aside from the benevolent gods of their pantheon, flocking instead to the worship of more

capricious and cruel deities.” 258 In this, we see echoes of the same Anti-Saracen attitudes and

Christian/heathen binaries discussed in the previous chapter, with High Elves worshiping

good/rightful deities and Dark Elves apostatizing toward evil/heretical deities. Religious

righteousness is determined by a sort of spiritual autochthony: the good deities are the original

254McComb, Complete Book of Elves, 13. Emphasis mine. 255 See Haynes, Stephen R. “Noah's Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slave”, p 1150. 256 McComb, Complete Book of Elves, 12. 257 Ward, High Elves, 5. 258 Matthew Ward, Warhammer Armies: Dark Elves, Eighth Edition. Nottingham: Games Workshop, Nottingham, 2013, 5.

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Elven gods, and Dark Elves “betray their heritage” and “turn aside from benevolent gods” to

pursue novel, foreign religions. This emphasis on Dark Elves as apostates is a variant on the

polygeneticist origins of racial essence seen with Orcs; however, rather than their racial essence

being a direct inheritance from a divine creator, it is a later attribution imparted by new deities.

Dark Elves and BDSM

When we combine the feminization and sexualization of Elves with the concept of “evil

races” embodied in Dark Elves, the result is a strong theme of deviant sexuality. We see a

recurring image of the “Dark Elf Dominatrix” - a sexually provocative but threatening woman

who takes pleasure in inflicting pain and subjugation, particularly on men of other races. There is

a semiotic arithmetic at play in creation of these images, and this equation of “Evil + Sexy +

Feminine = Dominatrix” can be seen in the portrayals of cartoon supervillains like Catwoman

from Batman and The Baroness from G.I. Joe.

These BDSM themes are most pervasive in Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer,

which often describe slavery and torture as defining aspects of Dark Elf society. In Dungeons

and Dragons, these themes are further reinforced by the characterization of Dark Elf society as

an “Evil Matriarchy.” This theme of matriarchy is presented as a society-wide version of BDSM

practices. McComb describes their society as such:

Their society is usually matriarchal, with the female drow holding the majority of power…. These females wield their tremendous goddess-given power mercilessly. Using the threat of intense punishment, they keep the males cowed and submissive. They are the top of the social hierarchy in the Underdark [D&D’s term for subterranean realms]; they jealously guard their power against lowly males who might try to take that power away.259

The description of male Drow as “cowed,” “lowly,” and “submissive” in comparison to

the “merciless” “goddess-given power” of the female Drow all create an image of Dark Elves as

a society of sexual domination, both in the sense of the domination of one sex by the other and in

259 McComb, Complete Book of Elves, 17. Emphasis mine.

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the sense of domination through sexual practice. McComb further provides a biodeterministic

explanation for this matriarchal rulership: “Since drow females have greater power than males

and are physically stronger and more intelligent as well, the drow have a difficult time

believing that males can hold power in other societies.”260 This statement cuts to the heart of

biological determinism in a way that encompasses both sex and race: the notion that culture is

the product of in-born differences between groups. By positing that matriarchy emerges in a race

where women are physically and intellectually superior to men, McComb is implicitly stating

that patriarchy emerges from physical and intellectual superiority of men over women. At

various points in Dungeons and Dragons edition history, the notion of female Dark Elves being

inherently superior was gamified as well. In the third edition game rules, Dark Elves were the

only race option to have different attribute modifiers for men and women: female Dark Elves had

a bonus to their Charisma (the attribute associated with, among other things, leadership and sex

appeal) and men had a penalty to the same attribute.261

The trope of Dark Elves as a race of slave-raiders has been with Dungeons and Dragons

since Vault of the Drow. The 1986 D&D Adventure Queen of Spiders describes the lair of a Dark

Elf priestess as “decorated with innumerable perverted and lewd paintings, tapestries, statues,

etc. Even the carpets are obscene.” A secret room contains a bound and gagged man whom the

players may rescue, along with “torture instruments” which were implied to be used against him.

The image here is clear: the priestess is in that same category of “Dominatrix Supervillain” who

can serve as both a sexual threat and a sexual fantasy about female domination. The 2018

Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes explicates the practice of Dark Elf slavery that deliberately

downplays the idea of slaves as a workforce and plays up themes of BDSM:

260 McComb, Complete Book of Elves, 17. 261 Dungeon Master’s Guide, Third edition, page 57.

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Slaves are often kept as signs of status as much as for their intrinsic worth as laborers. When they are put to work, they are also put on display, doing jobs that enable everyone on the street or in an audience chamber to see that their drow master owns and subjugates powerful enemies. As such, the creatures are commonly used as litter bearers, banner carriers, servers, and footstools.262

At its surface, the Drow being an evil matriarchy could be seen merely as the distaff

counterpart to Orcs being an evil patriarchy (as they are frequently described in D&D), fulfilling

their roles as the Evil-Feminine and Evil-Masculine and combining to make the statement that

sexual inequality is inherently wrong. A D&D Beyond article defending the portrayal of Dark

Elves referred to Drow society as “stratified along gender lines in a perverse, funhouse-mirror

reversal of real-world patriarchal gender roles.” 263 However, this argument does not sit right

with me. Within the male dominated spaces in which Dungeons and Dragons emerged, the “Evil

Matriarchy” of the Drow carries with it a slightly different weight than the “Evil Patriarchy” of

Orcs. The “Funhouse mirror” reversal that posits pale-skinned men as victims of oppression at

the hand of dark-skinned women is a way of casting the “Us” as a victim of the “Them.” In

contrast to the Human male/Elven female romances described above, the inversion of sexual

dominance is categorically tied to the inversion of racial morality. Good Elves are loving and

submissive sexual partners to Human men; Arwen sacrifices her immortality in order to be a

wife to Aragorn, literally giving up her own (supernatural) power for the sake of her male lover.

Conversely, Evil Elves are cruel mistresses who dominate men. This carries with it a moral

judgment on sexuality; “Good Sex” is male-dominated and vanilla, “Evil Sex” is female-

dominated and kinky. In this sense, Dark Elves are a distaff counterpart to Orcs in that their role

as villains contains a threat to the sexual order - with Orcs, that threat comes in the form of

262 Merle and Crawford. Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, 53-54.

263James Haeck. “The Spider Queen’s Web: The Truth About the Drow., D&D Beyond, 2018. https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/320-the-spider-queens-web-the-truth-about-the-drow

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miscegenation, and with Dark Elves, that threat comes in the form of female domination.

While Warhammer does not inherit the trope of the “Evil Matriarchy” from Dungeons

and Dragons (The Dark Elves are ruled by a male “Witch King,” a term which carries with it

suggestions of sexual deviancy and genderfluidity), its use of BDSM imagery is even more

explicit. In the Warhammer: Dark Elves army guidebook, there are numerous descriptions of

slavery and torture using deliberately sexual language: The inhabitants of a Dark Elf slave

market are described as “Trapped between life and death, these wretches haunt the streets of the

Slaver's Gate, filling the dreams of their tormentors with delicious images of suffering and

pain.” The description continues that "A captured High Elf is the most valuable of prizes, and a

wealthy slaver will gladly trade much of his remaining stock - or even members of his own

family - for the opportunity to bring such a sweetmeat before his patron's tender mercies.”264

Later on, it describes Dark Elf warriors as preferring to kill with stomach wounds, because it

“guarantees that the enemy's last moments will be spent in mewling agony.”265 The language

used here is combined with a host of sexually provocative images: Warhammer: Dark Elves

contained more visual representations of women than any other Warhammer sourcebook I

encountered in my research; even the Wood Elf and High Elf army books depicted almost solely

male characters. Conversely, there are half a dozen illustrations of female characters in

Warhammer: Dark Elves266, and almost all of them are clad in some variation of bikinis with

thigh-high leather boots. The first of these illustrations is the most evocative, depicting a near

naked female Dark Elf executioner holding a bloody sword atop a sacrificial dais. While Dark

Elves are no longer textually described as matriarchal in Warhammer, the image of the “Dark Elf

264 Ward, Dark Elves, 10. Emphasis mine. 265 Ward, Dark Elves, 37. 266 See Pages 11, 35, 36, 42, 50, and 51.

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Dominatrix” is nonetheless retained through visual language.

In Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture, Jeffrey

Brown points to the fundamentally gender-subservice nature of the dominatrix as a symbol.

Brown argues that the dominatrix figure “enacts both masculinity and femininity” and “straddles

both sides of the psychoanalytic gender divide”267 in their use of traditionally masculine

dominant social roles manifested through explicitly feminine sexuality, functionally making

them hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine in a way that structures those traits as not being

mutually exclusive. In this regard, the association between Dark Elves and female domination

fetishes is part of the same pattern of Elven genderfluidity we see with the nonbinary Elves in

Perkins’s adventure modules. In his section on dominatrix figures, he points to the commercial

failure of explicitly BDSM-coded action heroines such as Barb Wire: “Perhaps the dominatrix

overtones she embodies are still too unsettling for viewers within this realm of masculine fairy

tales to accept en masse.”268 This statement points to why dominatrix figures show up most

prominently as villains - the subversive sexuality of female domination can be flirted with by

male viewers or players, but it is ultimately cast as pernicious and a male-dominant social order

can be restored when they are defeated. And particularly in the highly male-dominated sphere of

early tabletop roleplaying communities, these dominatrix villains were created by male writers,

controlled by male game masters, and leveraged against male players: As Brown writes of

cinematic action heroines, Dark Elf dominatrixes “serve as a way for male authority to revel in a

form of threatening female sexuality, and to control it.” 269

“Fixing” Dark Elves in the Liberal Era

267 Jeffrey Allen Brown, Dangerous Curves, 47. 268 Brown, Dangerous Curves, 61. 269 Brown, Dangerous Curves, 15.

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Within the Liberal Era, there have already been substantial movements away from the

obviously problematic ideas of evil, dark-skinned elves. The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, the same

game that first gave us playable Orcs, was set in the Dark Elf home country of its own world.

These Dark Elves were portrayed as grim and somewhat alien, but not inherently evil or

matriarchal. World of Warcraft abandoned the concept of Dark Elves entirely; instead, it applied

darker skin to its “Night Elves,” who otherwise closely fit the nature-loving “Wood Elf” model.

However, the earliest and most heavily discussed Dark Elf counter-narrative is from R.A.

Salvatore’s 1988 novel The Crystal Shard and its protagonist Drizzt Do’Urden. Set in the

Forgotten Realms, one of D&D’s most popular settings, Salvatore created an enduringly popular

tale of a heroic male Dark Elf who breaks from the rest of his (evil, matriarchal) society. Drizzt

represents an oppositional reading to the essentialist narratives about Dark Elves that nonetheless

reinforces it. By focusing in on a single heroic male Dark Elf who breaks away from a sinister

female dominated Dark Elf society, Drizzt exists as the “the exception that proves the rule.”

Salvatore’s novels are questioning the absolutism of biologically determined morality while

relying on the general reliability of it. As Tika Viteri of Book Riot wrote, “The issue with Drizzt

in particular is not that he is a dark elf; it is that he is a prime example of the ‘credit to your race’

trope that assumes the race itself is not as good as that of the speaker. Drizzt is the only row who

is good; the rest are all evil simply because they are drow.”270 In an interview with Lightspeed

magazine, R.A. Salvatore spoke to his own struggles with trying to right a sympathetic member

of an “Evil” race:

I mean, enlightened people could care less where someone’s born, the color of his or her skin, or anything like that, and yet in fantasy that’s embraced. Now, they’re different species, it’s not like orcs are just some other brand of human, right? So you can get away with that, but that’s always been the paradox that I’ve had to deal with right from the beginning of writing a dark elf who’s not a bad guy, right? And hinting that

270 Tika Viteri. “Dungeons and Dragons and Racism, Oh My.” Book Riot, August 27, 2021. https://bookriot.com/dungeons-dragons-racism/

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there might be other dark elves who aren’t bad guys, right? I mean, that gets difficult. And so I wrote that story to try to sort that out, and you notice at the end of the story that Drizzt is very confused? Yeah, that was me. I was still very confused about it because in fantasy, you embody evil in a race, and then you disembody it with your sword, and that’s also what mankind has done through the centuries, right? By dehumanizing the enemy so you don’t feel bad about killing them. 271

Salvatore is clearly aware of the troubling implications of the dehumanizing race

narratives that dominate the fantasy genre and how pernicious they are. The confusion that he

alludes to would indicate that the process of writing The Crystal Shard led him to confronting

some of his own cognitive biases, and that he himself was still working out the implications of

writing a story about a “good” member of an “evil” race. Sturtevant summarized Salvatore’s

writing succinctly: Perhaps it is too simple to think of Salvatore’s novels as simply good or

bad…. It seems at the very least that Salvatore can be credited with inheriting a fundamentally

flawed fantasy world and leaving it a more complex and less-racist place than he found it.”272

Especially given that it was written in 1988, The Crystal Shard can be seen as one of the early

texts that challenged some (though not all) of the racial logics inherent in high fantasy, paving

the way for the “Liberal Era” of fantasy gaming. And like with Warcraft III, The Crystal Shard

is caught in a paradoxical space between needing to preserve the essentialist conceits of the

intellectual property it is operating in and wanting to tell a story that challenges the racism of

those conceits.

Final Thoughts

On its surface, these “subraces” seem like different ethnicities of Elves. In the same way

that “Asian” is a racial super-grouping of Koreans, Vietnamese, and Filipinos, then “Elf” could

be seen as a super-grouping of Wood Elves, Dark Elves, and High Elves. However, upon

analysis, “subrace” is a distinct concept emerging from fantasy games. The traditional qualities

271 https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/interview-r-a-salvatore/ 272 Sturtevant, “Race, the Original Sin of the Fantasy Genre.”

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that separate ethnic groups - language, religion, and so on - are rarely present in differentiations

between fantasy subraces.273 Rather, things that separate the subraces are the same qualities that

separate races in fantasy games: physical appearance, morality, and aptitude. In Dungeons and

Dragons, The Elder Scrolls, and World of Warcraft, choosing a different subrace of Elf results in

a different set of skills and abilities.

All of these qualities are the same which separate Elves from Orcs or Dwarves in fantasy

texts, or which separated Europeans from Africans and Asians in the imaginations of Gobineau

and Chamberlain. While on the surface, these many sub-varieties would seem to de-essentialize

race by presenting greater diversity among Elves, it functionally re-essentializes race by

presenting this diversity as the result of further racial boundaries. While we are able to say that

“some Elves are good, some Elves evil,” and “some Elves are wizards, some Elves are warriors”

and even “some Elves are light-skinned, some Elves are dark-skinned” we create racial

boundaries within the realms of Elves that informs which Elves are wizards or warriors, good or

evil, light or dark skinned. Across these categories, Elves are almost always “noble,” whether

that is ancient protectors of civilization, haughty slavemasters, or serene “noble savages” living

in a state of nature. And regardless of what else they might be, Elves are always beautiful,

objects of sexual fascination fetishized as exotic lovers and serving as the locus for themes of

deviant sexuality in fantasy texts.

273 While fantasy gaming has inherited many things from Tolkien, his fascination with language was not one of them. In neither Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, or Warcraft do the different subraces of Elves speak different languages; when the issue of language arises at all, they speak a universal “Elvish” language. When religious differences between subraces of Elves are presented, they are presented as extension of their innate moral character - the High Elves and Wood Elves in Dungeons and Dragons worship the good deity Corellon Larethian, while the Dark Elves worship the evil deity Lolth. Likewise in Warhammer, wherein the High Elves worship a pantheon of good deities, the Dark Elves a pantheon of evil ones, and the Wood Elves a mixture of the two.

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CONCLUSION: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FANTASY RACISM

A large part of why scholars study popular culture is to better understand the society that

it occupies. Popular culture artifacts such as movies, television, and games serve as windows into

cultural values on a wide level. In this regard, looking at how fantastical races are imagined

grants insight into how race itself is imagined. When we look at fantasy games and literature, we

find that retrograde ideas about racial essentialism which may seem like dead artifacts of the past

are, in fact, alive and well in the collective imagination. The racial logics that informed The

Third Reich did not die with it, but lived on in the fantastical worlds of The Lord of the Rings,

Dungeons and Dragons, and World of Warcraft.

The extent to which fantasy racism influences real-world racism is beyond the scope of

this thesis: I do not have data as to whether playing fantasy games makes players more racist, less

racist, or has no effect. Based on Stuart Hall’s studies of audience reception, I would suspect that

race in fantasy texts is interpreted through whatever attitudes towards race the reader already

holds. Certainly, the fact that the openly white supremacist website Stormfront has a subforum

dedicated to The Lord of the Rings and the genre of high fantasy suggests that these ideas do

resonate with avowed racists. As I cited with Monson’s analysis of Blood Elves, when Aryanist

themes appear in high fantasy texts, Aryanists feel seen and validated. In his study of active

D&D groups in his doctoral thesis Dungeons and Discourse, Philip Clements came to similar

conclusions: “Whether a game of D&D uses racism because it reflects the way groups interact in

real life, or whether the narrative the game offers tries to justify racism depends on the game, the group, and who is doing the reading.”274 While games such as Dungeons and Dragons can be

used to reinforce racist frameworks, that does not mean they always or even often will. Fantasy

274 Clements, Dungeons and Discourse, 163.

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racism is better seen as a reflection rather than a cause of real-world racism; as Clements

eloquently states, “Racism and sexism both exist in D&D because they exist in real life.” 275

Fantastical Counter Narratives

Popular culture texts, including fantasy games, have strong incentives to be polysemic.

The ability to be many things to many people is a path to success for capturing wider audiences.

Dungeons and Dragons can be a space for living out genocidal power fantasies or for exploring

what it means to be an “Other.” Warcraft III can be read as both racially progressive for the way

it focuses on engendering sympathy for downtrodden racial minorities and racially retrogressive

for the way it relies on ethnic stereotypes in constructing fantasy races.

Indeed, fantasy race can be a tool for exploring issues of racism and creating

oppositional narratives, and we have seen impressive examples of this in the past twenty years.

Warcraft III is succeeded by games such as Of Orcs and Men (2012) and Spire: This City Must

Fall (2018) in using fantasy races as deliberate allegories for racial inequality in the real world.

Of Orcs and Men presents a war of Humans against Orcs and Goblins explicitly as a genocide,

and puts the player in the position of an Orc and Goblin pair who set out to save their people.

Spire: This City Must Fall is set in a city of Dark Elves that have been colonized by High Elves

and puts the player in the position of anti-colonial freedom fighters. Games such as these lean

into the underlying racial themes of the fantasy genre to tell stories that are explicitly about

fighting against racism, and represent the best efforts of modern fantasy gaming to reckon with

its own past.

And yet, the desires of these games to provide fantastical counter-narrative are undercut

by operating within the essentialist frame they have inherited. While it soundly rejects the idea

275 Clements, Dungeons and Discourse, 184.

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that these qualities make them worthy of genocide, the Orcs and Goblins in Of Orcs and Men are

still portrayed as brutish warriors and conniving schemers. Likewise, Spire: This City Must Fall

takes the Dungeons and Dragons characterization of Dark Elves as a race of sadistic

slavemasters and applies that characterization to High Elves instead. While these games invert

who is the “Us” and who is the “Them,” they are also still relying on biological differences of

race in constructing their conflict. Of Orcs and Men questions Orcish villainy while maintaining

Orcish inhumanity. Spire: This City Must Fall inverts classical notions of good and evil races,

while still relying upon the existence of evil races as a source of conflict.

High Fantasy Apologia

The genre of high fantasy has already attracted a substantial amount of criticism for how

it portrays race, and that criticism has in turn attracted a number of apologists defending it. I find

this type of apologia to be, at best, missing the forest for the trees, and at worst, written entirely

in bad faith. In my chapter on Elves, I discussed James Haeck’s article on Dark Elves, and why I

find his “funhouse mirror” take on Drow matriarchy unconvincing. Haeck’s article was

published on the website D&DBeyond, an officially licensed website which exists to promote

Dungeons and Dragons. Given that D&DBeyond is not a neutral party when it comes to

assessing problematic elements of their game, Haeck’s article strikes me as a case of starting

from the conclusion of portraying a brand positively and working backward toward an argument.

The most frustrating style of apologia can be seen in Christopher J. Ferguson’s

Psychology Today article “No, Orcs Aren’t Racist.” Ferguson aggressively denies that the racial

encodings of Orcs has anything to do with real-world racism, and argues that those noticing these

trends is the real problem:

If D&D or Lord of the Ring orcs are indulging tropes of an anthropological race, observers can’t seem to agree which race that is. As noted, initial concerns seemed to focus on Asians, but others suggest orcs may

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trope Africans. These inconsistent observations suggest some observers may be projecting their own stereotypes onto orcs.276

Ferguson’s argument is a classic example of “colorblindness,” a rhetorical tool that suggests that

seeing race is in and of itself a form of racism. This colorblind framework has been thoroughly

dissected and dismissed by contemporary ethnic studies scholars as a tool for deflecting

accusations while perpetuating racial biases. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva writes in Racism Without

Racists that colorblindness provides “gut-level, emotional arguments to validate some important

myths about race relations in America.”277 Likewise, Joe Feagan’s The White Racial Frame

argues that “colorblind rhetoric, although often apparently sincere, has just papered over what

are still blatantly racist views of Americans of color that have continued in most whites’ racial

framing.”278

Ferguson’s article also states that “there is no evidence that playing Dungeons and

Dragons or, for that matter, watching or reading Lord of the Rings contributes to racist attitudes

and behaviors in real life.” Statements such as these miss the point: audiences are clearly

affected by the way in which race is portrayed in high fantasy, but in a more complex way than

mechanical reproduction of values. For some, such as Hodes, the racial essentialism of fantasy

games makes those games alienating and difficult to enjoy. For others, such as those on

Stormfront, the racial essentialism reinforces their White Nationalist worldviews and makes the

games more enjoyable. For the likes of Ferguson, he suffers no discomfort from the essentialism

itself, but apparently suffers great discomfort from that essentialism being criticized.

276 Christopher J Ferguson. “No, Orcs Aren't Racist: Why Cultural Critics Keep Arguing About the Wrong Things.” Psychology Today, April 29, 2020. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202004/no-orcs-arent-racist 277 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. 189. 278 Joe Feagan, The White Racial Frame. New York: Routledge, 2009, 112.

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Ferguson clearly has an ax to grind: he writes that “Increasingly, critical theories

resemble rigid ideologies that have jumped the rails, and whose main contribution to society is

moral outrage, all the time” and complains about “pearl-clutchers on the left and the right,” and

refers to complaints of racism in media as “shrill hectoring and fun-policing.” In his Psychology

Today profile, he describes himself as “a consummate geek, interested in everything from

science fiction to Dungeons and Dragons.”279 His article strikes me as a case of someone who

feels personally offended by their hobbies coming under attack and lashing out against their

perceived critics for daring to impugn them.

While Ferguson’s article represents the most noxious apologia, Robert J. Tally’s article

“Let us Now Praise Famous Orcs: Simple Humanity in Tolkien’s Inhuman Creatures” gives a

kinder and gentler defense. Tally’s arguments are subtler than Ferguson’s, and do acknowledge

the criticisms leveled against The Lord of the Rings in good faith. However, they also attempt to

shift the narrative frame by minimizing the broad trend of racial determinism in The Lord of the

Rings and focusing on minor characters and subtextual implications instead. Tally argues that

even as J.R.R. Tolkien was portraying Orcs as inherently ugly and evil, he was subtly validating

their humanity: their status as corrupted Elves makes them still creations of Illuvatar, and that

“their very existence shows they have value and are worthy of being.” He further argues Orcish

evil from a point of narrative necessity, that “the overall world of fantasy adventure requires a

broadly understood enemy class, which may or may not be identifiable as a race or a species, so

that the heroes have an endless source of enemies to fight.” 280 While adventure stories do tend to

279Christopher J. Ferguson. About.” Psychology Today. No date, Accessed 3-10-2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/christopher-j-ferguson-phd

280 Tally, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Orcs,” 18-20.

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necessitate obstacles to overcome, if those obstacles take the form of a racial group they quickly

become allegories for race-war and genocide.

Tall focuses on the characters of Shagrat and Gorbag in Return of the King, the two Orcs

who Sam and Frodo overhear complaining about the ongoing war and dreaming of “good loot,

nice and handy, and no big bosses.”281 Tally argues that these two might as well be talking about

“The American Dream.” And while this pair are sympathetic by the standards of Orcs in The

Lord of the Rings, their “American Dream” is to become brigands and continue to prey on

civilization.282 His focus on Shagrat and Gorbag individually deflects from the issue of how Orcs

as a whole are portrayed. Granting individual Orcs humanity is countered by the routine

dehumanization of Orcs as a whole. Tally writes that “Tolkien never seem s to invite the reader

to sympathize with the Orcs directly, but neither could he make them entirely inhuman,

completely lacking in those characteristics which would allow for their possible redemption.” 283

And yet, Tolkien’s Orcs never reach their “possible redemption,” either as individuals or a race.

Final Thoughts

Tolkien himself was an ardent critic of Nazism, a position which may entreat some

readers to view the raciological angles of his writing more sympathetically. In one of his letters

to his son, Tolkien scathingly criticized Hitler’s Aryanist regime:

I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making forever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.284

281 Tolkien, The Return of the King, 738. 282 The names “Shagrat” and “Gorbag” do not seem as though they were designed to engender sympathy, either. 283 Tally, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Orcs,” 26. 284 Humphrey, Letters, Letter 45.

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Tolkien’s personal criticisms of Hitler are not incompatible with Tolkien himself being

immersed in the same racial logics that led to Nazism. Racial essentialism and Aryanism were

not the exclusive province of the Germans, but rather a widely consumed set of racial logics that

pervaded Europe.285 The idea that Hitler was “perverting” the “noble northern spirit” speaks to

the same ideals of racial nobility and fears of corruption that informed Aryanism as a philosophy

to begin with. As Helen Young stated in interview:

[Tolkien's] statements against anti-semitism and Hitler give "cover." It's the idea that only something overtly abusive or violent is racist. People think that one can't be racist except deliberately, consciously, intentionally. Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth are structurally racist, but because Tolkien doesn't appear to have been personally an extremist, that racism is denied, ignored, and dismissed.286

A similar assessment can be made of Gary Gygax; in an interview with the podcast Live

From the Bunker, Gygax’s son Ernie Gary Gygax Jr. stated that his father wanted to “put a

kibosh on fascism, as well as any sort of communist things.” In the same interview, Gygax Jr.

also referred to the gradual shift towards liberalism as “joining the pack of lemmings” and

wanting to launch a game company for designers who were “dissed for being old-fashioned, anti-

modern trends, and enforcing or even having gender identity.”287 Gygax Jr.’s comments about

his father indicate someone who, like Tolkien, was personally critical of Nazism while still

holding to essentialist frameworks himself.

J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892, and the problematic elements of his writing can be used

as a window to understand the normative worldviews of eras past. Gary Gygax was born in 1938,

and the biological determinism of his writing can be seen as a retrenchment of traditional

285 Indeed, the essentialist race theorists quoted in this thesis came from across Europe; Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born in England, David Hume was Scottish, Arthur de Gobineau was French, and Carl Linneaus was Swedish. 286 David M. Perry. “How Can We Untangle White Supremacy from Medieval Studies?” 287Jason Hunt. Live from the Bunker. “The Return of TSR Games.” Episode 277. Podcast Audio. Flaming Dog Media, 2021. https://www.audible.com/pd/Live-From-The-Bunker-277-The-Return-of-TSR-Games-Podcast/B09753MGMB

119

worldviews against the changing cultural landscape of the 1970s. And whereas The Lord of the

Rings is a fixed product forever bound to its original author, Dungeons and Dragons is an

evolving collaborative text that has passed through many hands. Through the release of

subsequent editions, D&D’s official materials have shown a decreasingly essentialist attitude

towards race. Though its most current version still holds many problematic elements, these

elements are leftovers from previous eras rather than new innovations. Every year, the influence

of Gary Gygax’s biological determinism fades slightly more. The same can be said of Warcraft

and The Elder Scrolls; these games are still far from perfect, but they have an established

trajectory of treating race and identity with greater levels of nuance and sympathy. At the same

time, the pushback seen in the likes of Ferguson’s article demonstrates a continued attachment to

racial essentialism as a core concept of high fantasy.

I want to reiterate that enjoying The Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons or World

of Warcraft does not personally make one racist, nor am I advocating that these texts be

boycotted because of their essentialist attitudes towards race. Rather, I am advocating that fans of

high fantasy become critical readers of the things they enjoy, and not allow their own affection

for a text to blind them to its weak points. Just as one might enjoy an action movie for its fight

scenes while disliking its storyline, one can enjoy The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the richness

of its worldbuilding without endorsing its racial themes.

The overall trend of fantasy games in the last twenty years has been to approach race

more critically, while still retaining the overall essentialist frame. This evolution in attitudes

towards fantastical races indicates a shift in attitudes toward the concept of race more broadly, an

increased sensitivity that makes even racism towards imagined peoples uncomfortable. At the

120

same time, even relatively liberal games such as World of Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls are

still using the old racial tropes of warlike Orcs and aristocratic Elves.

I have tried to avoid heavy-handed moral judgments during the course of this thesis.

Hopefully, I don’t have to convince readers that the ideas of Arthur de Gogineau and Houston

Stewart Chamberlain are bad, both in that they are pernicious and in that they are incorrect.

When these ideas are brought into fantasy games, they are still bad: the similarities to real-world

racist ideas alienate players who find such themes repulsive and court players who find them

attractive, all while limiting player experiences according to predetermined stereotypes. At our

current stage of popular culture, most challenges to the old racial order of fantasy gaming have

been to re-invent individual race tropes, slowly adding complexity to the previously one-

dimensional Orcs and Dwarves. In order to move forward, designers should look not just at how

individual race groups within their games are portrayed, but also at how the concept of race as a

whole is portrayed. If we truly wish to lay the ghosts of Gobineau and Chamberlain to rest, we

should remove their ideas from our imagined worlds as well as the real one.

121

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