#I will NOT get into a discussion about the conservative/fascist/unhelpful beaurocrat person of color trope in modern media

[tofixtheshadows]

My first reply got cut off but originally I was talking about how common it is for fantasy writers to fall into the "fantasy racism, but everyone is white" trap, and how deftly Kui subverts this by both being extremely in depth about how the differences between her fantasy races shape their societies, and by commenting on this with characters like Kabru and Thistle.

i love that elves are properly shown as imperial powers in DM. i'm personally clapping and cheering with every post you make on the matter. race doesn't quite exist in DM as we understand it in our reality (where skin color is used to box people into groups) but kui EVOKES it a lot and definitely takes advantage of real-world impulses and biases despite them not quite manifesting in DM the exact same way.

my favorite instance of it is how the elves of the west ("western civilization" which are also, conveniently, in the north) abuse and suck a region in the global south I Mean Utaya dry, and how they try to do it over and over and over again at the expense of the local populations there. it's such a good parallel.

It's really well done. Like, the elves have a very good reason to be there anytime a dungeon develops, they are theoretically keeping a demon from devouring the world ... but good intentions or not, it still allows them to throw their weight around and seize control of land and resources that they deem "lesser" races unfit to steward. All while not telling them what's really going on, and going around and snatching up random civilians around the world to throw them in prison.

Plus, as I've talked about before, Kabru implies that the Canaries were to blame for how Utaya went down. And he might be right! We don't know. But even if they weren't, best case scenario is still everything I said above.

I commend Kui for giving this storyline to a person of color in a majority white cast, and for giving him a fairly explicit (for Dunmeshi at least) racial identity.