Humancentrism

I am out of town this weekend, so it was a bit of a toss-up if the Saturday Note will be posted on time! But here we are!

I am almost done with season one of Once Upon a Time, and the new season of The Dragon Prince is here. I’m also getting towards the endgame of Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, so Al-Bahamut, watch you back!

This week I read Black Shield Maiden and Damsel, though the Note is more inspired by Great Tree of Avalon.

On Humancentrism

Quite a lot of fantasy and science fiction features worlds or universe with several different sapient species living in the same general area, and cooperation between them is either part of the setting or part of the Plot. Despite this, they tend to be very humancentric, though there’s often little to no in-universe reason for it. There are for instance, fantasy universes where specifically human belief shapes the way the world works (Discworld, specifically Hogfather), or everyone who is important to saving the universe is apparently human (Star Wars), or there are alien beings who never learned empathy, understanding, or how to have fun until they met humans (the MCU). 

To be clear, there are fictional universes where the main story features humans, but the non-humans are doing their own thing. Tolkien’s Legendarium comes to mind: the elves have already had their day (and what a day it was; read The Silmarillion), and the dwarves are doing their own thing while the adventures go on, and the ones who actually destroy the Ring are hobbits.

Then you also have fantasy stories where the importances is in not being human. I take a lot of issue with the way The Witcher is written, but it’s kind of interesting that what makes Ciri the Chosen One in this universe isn’t that she’s a special human, it’s that she’s got elven blood. Elven blood, an elven prophecy, and an interdimensional elven empire are all the things that drive the actual Plot.

Most speculative fiction, though, tends to assume that humans are the default, the important ones. We’re human after all! (If not, I have questions.) It makes it easier to relate. Still, it’s a little weird that, in many of these stories, we’re meant to take away a message about how everyone is important or contributes, and we should care about everyone, only for the stories to explicitly frame it so that the humans are apparently the ones that matter.

This is actually an important part of the Plot in Great Tree of Avalon by Thomas Archibald Barron, that many of the humans of Avalon are becoming convinced that they should be in charge of the other species, and this causes problems. There are some missteps in how this story plays out though; for starters, ‘non-humans’ in Avalon covers everything from animals (who may or may not be near-human intelligence; unclear) to fantasy races like dwarves and elves. The first book features the heroes liberating ‘slaves’ which includes both elves, and also horses and bears.

And then there’s that the most sympathetic faction is the Drumadians, a religious sect of sorts dedicated to serving others and promoting peace between the peoples of Avalon… and all the full members are human. Each priest or priestess (or the ones in training) are bonded to a ‘maryth’, which is a non-human companion to be anything from a sprite to again, an animal. The point is again to show cooperation between races, but most of those maryths are little more than little helpful familiars–and once more, they’re not actual priests or priestesses. The closest that the world of Avalon gets to actual interspecies harmony is… peaceful subservience towards humans.

Hm.

The main thrust of this seems to be that we need human characters, otherwise we, the audience won’t care. But that’s not true! There are plenty of stories that can work without humans as the lead characters. Again, large chunks of Tolkien’s work comes to mind. The 2018 God of War doesn’t have any human characters in it (slight spoiler, that). Neither does the book The Goblin Emperor. I’m a bit stunned that, when Lucasarts was brainstorming for The Force Unleashed, George Lucas shot down a Wookie game idea because he figured that no one would be able to tell a relatable story about a protagonist that didn’t speak English/Basic.

I do get that in live-action, it’s much easier to just have human actors–especially in action-heavy stories. It’s still egregious, though, that you’re trying to tell us that all the people matter, when in stuff like Star Wars the only ones who really make a difference are humans. I strongly suspect that Ahsoka wouldn’t have been Torgruta if she was introduced in live-action. As an animated character, you could have her do a lot of acrobatic fight scenes and not worry about the logistics of someone in costume and makeup trying to do that. You’ll notice that when she was turned into live-action, they shortened her head tails considerably, and her fight scenes are significantly less dynamic.

[whispering] Which is why Star Wars is often better in animation than live-action but Disney’s gone all-in on this live-action thing like losers.

There are interesting subversions and different takes on it, though. Like, in Gunnerkrigg Court, for instance, it’s suggested (though not proven) that magical creatures exist because of human belief. This actually drives one of the characters, the wolf Ysengrin, insane, because he doesn’t get along with humans, and the notion that he exists because of us is offensive to him.

Or you have the anime and manga Delicious in Dungeon, in which humans aren’t called ‘human’, they’re referred to as ‘tall men’. Because, as many of the other races (like dwarves, halflings, and gnomes) are shorter, they consider humans to be tall. It also shows that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily revolve around humans, or base their standards of what’s normal on them.

[You’d be surprised (or not, really) how often in science fiction and fantasy that other species’ standards of beauty tend to match up to… what modern American men find attractive in women.]

If you’re going to build a world in which you have several different species appearing, then they should feel important. Especially if you’re trying to make us think we’re supposed to care about them. It undermines the idea in so many fantasy stories of unity, of how ‘we’re all a part of this world and need to fight together’ when apparently, no, it’s just the humans who are the ones who actually make a difference. Because they look like you. That’s not a horrible message to spread, is it?

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