Writing believable fantasy bigotry

So I'm running into some trouble with my worldbuilding, and I was wondering if I could get some help.

My story is about magical immortal humanoids like vampires and werewolves living in secret among human society, and one of the planned themes of the story is a pervasive bigotry that permeates immortal culture.

Here's how it works: Not all immortals are created equal. Humans and immortals have four grades of magic they can have, and when you're an immortal, the higher your grade, the more of your race's powers and the fewer of your race's weaknesses you possess. The four grades, in increasing order of power, are gamma (30% of the human population), beta (60% of the human population), alpha (9% of the human population) and cambion (1% of the human population).

I know what you're probably thinking: the bigotry comes from the higher-grade immortals thinking they're better than lower grades. ...Nope, not exactly. See, the thing about how magic grade genetics work is as follows:

*If you're human, the grades of your parents are completely irrelevant. You have the chances listed above to be born with each grade of magic regardless of what grade your parents were. The only way it "runs in the family" is that identical twins will have the same magic grade.

*If you're an immortal, then it is inherited. Immortals can reproduce with either their own kind or with humans (hybrids between two immortal species are possible, but that's not important here). If they're the same grade, the child will be an immortal of that grade. If they have different grades, then 90% of the time the child will have the lower grade, and 10% of the time it will have the higher grade. If it's a human and an immortal and the human has the higher grade, it will always be the immortal's lower grade.

Furthermore, some immortal races, like vampires and werewolves, can transform humans into new members of their race, but can only do it to those with a lower blood grade than themselves.

Which means two things for cambions, the highest grade: they're very rare, and they have to be born. If every cambion of a species is wiped out, there will never be another cambion of that species again.

In short, in strictly biological terms, if the species is to survive, the lower grade immortals of a species are expendable. Especially in races like vampires and werewolves, where cambions can make a new alpha, beta or gamma in a couple of hours. Thus, the immortal species that have survived have a tendency to have cultures that have a sort of "species patriotism" where their lower-blood members are taught the virtues of defending the cambions with your very life. And this results in some extremely toxic ideas and attitudes about the worth of "lesser" life that I'd really like to explore.

Here's the problem: While the immortal clan the main characters are a part of is definitely one of the most progressive clans around with regard to their views on the treatment of humans and getting along with other species and the like, I want them to still have these sorts of attitudes to some degree, so I can explore the impact of them. But in giving serious thought to how this would work, I'm starting to think it's outright impossible. Because this clan is an alliance of vampires and werewolves, and the reason that makes it an issue is that the reason vampires and werewolves are near the top of the immortal food chain is because it's so easy for them to replenish their numbers by converting humans into more of their kind.

...But these humans haven't been raised in immortal culture and have no concept of the "species patriotism" that causes lesser blood grades to view themselves as expendable. So it feels like the lower grade vampires and werewolves who actually buy into this species patriotism BS would rapidly become the minority without some pretty drastic and unsympathetic direct intervention by the clans in question, and I feel that would be too extreme to let my main immortal clan remain sympathetic. The sort of subtler bigotry of self-perpetuating cultural attitudes the immortals barely even think about doesn't feel like it could survive such repeated and prolonged exposure to outside views and attitudes. It honestly seems like it would be hard for these species to maintain any culture at all, let alone one that would rub the majority of its members the wrong way.

Is there any way you guys can think of that I can salvage this concept, or do I have to keep this bigotry as something I have to explore in the other clans' cultures that the main characters will run into?

 

I think it's kind of unnecessary. Frankly, bigotry in stories has grown tiresome, and even despite that, bigotry in and of itself isn't terribly interesting. Someone hates someone else for being different? Meh. If there was something unique about the concept, that would be one thing, but just general bigotry seems lame.

As for your world, if there is any bigotry at all, it would be against lower magic users, rather than a specific race. Maybe someone might say "you're strong for a human" or whatever, but generally magic would be the real dividing aspect. Maybe you could go into patronizing people -- those that claim to feel no bigotry at all, but often express pity or patronize those who seem lesser. Or those that suck up to the "lesser" crowd in the effort to seem important and accepting.

Or you could just have the story focus on other things and just have bigoted characters in spots where it's plot relevant.

 

I won't pretend to understand all that complicated stuff you wrote, but I will say this. And I hope I at least partially understand the problem.

Societies don't necessarily work the way people think they should. Attempts to understand how they work, or worse yet to create a society based on scientific or rational reasoning always fall far short of the mark. Logic and reason don't have much sway in the way a society is run, it's got more to do with subtle feelings, intuitive drives, and taboos. Taboos, mores, rituals, superstitions, call them what you will. But it's things like this, arising spontaneously from the unconscious (the group unconscious) that hold things together. When a society's rituals fall apart, unless they've been replaced by something equally good, the society is done.

And it sounds like you're trying to reason out some logical way the society should work. I don't think there's a formula for that.

 

This whole magical blood quantum concept seems problematic, I have to say. You're essentially not just creating a division of identities in society, but providing an objective justification to treat those groups differently. Your cambions are actually essentially better than everyone else, as far as I can tell. You've basically created a world in which the racists are right. Whether or not your story supports any kind of removal of rights or genocide or anything like that, you've already conceded on the central point of white supremacy in your allegory. "Not all grades are created equal" is not a great place to start with for a racism allegory.
You could try aiming your allegory more at disability rather than race, but even then the strength and simplicity of the differences in your system is still a problem I think.
If you're going to have some kind of division of magical power in your society it should be messier with more complications, in my opinion, so that there isn't any clear cut sense of superiority.

I agree with Xoic that you may be overthinking the logic of what is ultimately supposed to be irrational. I would add that you should also consider that the overlap between prejudice and power is a huge part of the history of prejudice, and in many ways systems of prejudice have also been systems of hoarding & abusing power. Prejudices can be reinforced from the sense of economic and political importance e.g. slavery wasn't just about 'the natural state of the races' but also a massive part of the economy. This kind of ingraining into society also makes it much harder for the average person to actually imagine a world without it, and provides a huge amount of motivation for the most powerful in society who most benefit from it to work to uphold it. People may well believe in the unequal socioeconomic system not because they believe in prejudicial notions that might call for such a system, but rather they believe in prejudical notions because they believe in the socioeconomic system and prejudical notions allow them to justify that system. i.e. people didn't necessarily support slavery because they were racist, they supported slavery therefore they became racist.
"Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in Amerca." - Ibram X Kendi
In the case of your story, then, I would think about the ways that this culture of prejudice manifests beyond simply the attitudes of those people in it but also in the systems of this society. Are people of different grades assigned to different roles? Do they have segregated spaces they live and work in? Are there laws that disproportionately criminalise the activities of the lower grades? And such.

 

I don't think this is like race, it's more like genetics. Some people are way better than others at certain things, because of their genes. How many budding guitarists dream of being Eddie Van Halen, and how many have the sheer talent to make it? The same applies across the board in skill-based things like sports and the arts. There's a definite hierarchy of ability levels, and no denying it. Feel free to challenge a champion chess player, but unless they let you win, or you have the genetic disposition for it yourself, you haven't got a prayer.

 

That's not an accurate view of how genetics works- it's not that simple or powerful, and people's genetics certainly can't be meaningfully categorised into any linear hierarchy. Also, 'it's genetics' is a very common racist line of argument, just as IQ is also regularly used this way.
If the system in this story worked like how guitar skills or chess skills actually work, that would be good. Chess and guitar skills are complicated in their origins, complicated to measure accurately and objectively, and being good at either can come at the expense of developing other skills so it doesn't necessarily make you better than anyone else.

 

If I understand correctly (and I'm really not sure I do), it's hard to father-in or even realistically maintain a notion of certain members of the clan being superior. I bite Tom, tell him his life is worth less than Joe, but Tom doesn't buy in.

The problem is framing:

1. Chances are too high: 1% is a really high birth rate of exceptional 'human' people. I'm pretty sure fewer people than that know how to play guitar in the real world. That's much higher than the number of people with genius IQ as well.

2. The immortals have complete control of scarcity: Since two cambions can procreate to produce a guaranteed cambion then they can pretty much determine their own scarcity at will. The growth would be exponential; it would only take a few generations for the number of cambions to explode. Given that they're immortal by definition and exceptionally powerful they're also not going to die in a car accident any time soon. Even if you somehow get a white rhino situation they can play 10% roulette (especially quickly if male).

That's why the sense of fragility is hard for me to respect at any level, because the chance of a 'last cambion' dying is urgent like all of the world's doctors might die one day. I would have a very hard time taking that seriously as a motivation for conflict and put the book down.

I see a solution, but it depends on whether or not you want the 'bigotry' theme to have a tangible, persistent 'support:' the last dracula (or king werewolf or crimmeneybit) could have already been Van Helsinged a few centuries ago. That racial finiteness would give credence, and in my opinion depth, to traditionalists while allowing room for opposition. But again, it really depends on how you want to handle the theme.

 

Isn't that like, what, bread and butter of any fantasy stuff? Any aberration of preconceived normalcy, whoever or whatever calls it off and perceives it. Just fix the setup so that each factions has equal chance to come up on top, one way or another, it'll make for more fun story anyway. You can even storyboarding the plotline first, so you know whether or not the story worthwhile to be written at such present state.

Though as far as I know, the fun part of reading fantasy coming from discovering a semblance of coherence in illogical milieu where unknown variables can't be predicted in absolute.

Not the least a sense of wonder that sincerely lost in most contemporaries. Thanks pomo.


Edited to say, a plotline about achieving some equilibrium is a possibility. Characters must have wants and needs anyway and those desires aren't really doable to be fulfilled on their own.

 

That's a very commonly used Neo Marxist argument, and the way they use it is extremely oversimplified. If talent falls only along racial lines, how do you explain Jimi Hendrix and Eddy Van Halen? Or great white or Asian basketball players? Talent doesn't divide up according to race, though certain things do that would affect ability. Also, you seem to think not having a talent in one area means a person has no talent, which isn't how it works.

Someone might not be great at math but excellent at baking or stunt driving or surgery. And yes, it's complicated and unpredictable. That was pretty much my point.

 

My current WIP is about bigotry of humans towards non-humans, and I strongly disagree it's a worn-out topic.

 

It is what I want to say, if there's a breakdown in the transmission then as a writer of that sentence I have failed.

 

Just a few dropped articles and minor changes. Fix those and it all makes sense.

 

Not to me.

 

Well, maybe you disagree with his opinion, but it's now clear what it is anyway.

 

It's not any clearer for me. But seeing how getting it restated/explained in a way I can understand it has proven surprisingly difficult, I'm ready to drop it.

 

My story features reverse-bigotry. I don't think it's a worn-out topic, per se, but definitely one that needs to be handled well. For example, it starts with deciding if you want bigotry to be the whole point of the thing ("bigotry bad! bigotry bad! bigotry bad! who knew!"), versus it being a sub-issue that complicates situations for characters and helps to make things even more interesting.

I agree with most of what the others here said. You haven't yet responded so it is possible we're all missing some other worldbuilding details, but it seems like the way in which your world works actually makes one group objectively better than another.

So if your goal is to say "despite the fact that one group is objectively better than another based on x, y, z criteria, that is not in itself enough justification for them to tyrannize the lesser group(s)", then you need to make that case. You'd basically be arguing for something like inalienable rights, and a whole lot of real-world philosophy and political thinking has been done on that. Personally, I sometimes wonder if the only proof of inalienable rights is the ability to think it up, write it down and let the ink dry. Then again, you might be able to make some objective arguments about standards and conditions of living in societies that do not believe in certain inalienable rights, and you might also make the point that if the tables are turned in such a society, the newly oppressed group might find themselves wishing for the inalienable rights they previously denied. For example, it is easy to say that mobbing, canceling, and censoring the lesser-bloods is fine when you belong to the majority, or if you've been lucky enough to not have your own wrong-think doxxed. Everybody has had shitty, messed-up thoughts or fantasies, and only some are lucky enough to never have them exposed. And those lucky few are often the ones doing or celebrating the exposing. So the unconscious of the whole society "dreams" an inalienable right so that the lesser-bloods cannot be tyrannized on the basis of opinions.

I am not you though, so I don't know what your plans or intentions are thematically.

 

I started reading the first post on this thread. My head hurts.

I'd encourage Writinginthedark to stop over thinking and look to the meaning of bigotry. If I'm immortal, it's not bigotry to comment on the death of mortals. Bigotry is where I generalise attributes to a diverse group of people based on an attribute shared by that group, whether it's skin colour, gender, height, religion, location or any other aspect of life's complicated fabric. At it's essence, bigotry is irrational and illogical. It's not bigotry if you justify the prejudice according to the categories of species in your story. It's just tough shit. I'm immortal and you're not. Words I've always wanted to say.

As a relatively innocuous example, I'm left handed. So too was my grandfather. He was forced in school to write with his right hand, for which the only justification seemed to be that the Latin for left is sinister. I write with my left but use a knife and fork as a right hander because that's what I learned as the correct way from my sibs at the dinner table. There are far more damaging examples of bigotry but they're still grounded in falsehood, simplification, generalisation and whatever.

 

I remember it being problematic when left-handed writers sat next to me on my right, because I'm right-handed. That's not a justification, but like your Latin example, it's an explanation I remember hearing before.

Or, you know, you could just... separate the desks a little bit. Or have them sit on the other side. But I'm crazy, don't listen to me.

 

I remember it being a nuisance when some right hander sat next to me in school. That wasn't you by any chance?
(I'm new to emojis so hope I haven't grievously offended you with that)(so new that it doesn't appear! I'm going to start a thread on my theory that emojis are the most insidious invention in human history)
And yet, when we worked it out, we had more room when switching positions. Didn't stop me dragging ink across the page with that whole left to right convention.

 

... and then on that basis deniy some basic rights to that group or hate them and feel justified in treating them as inferior. I think just feeling superior to someone or an entire group is rather innocuous, though it is a gateway drug to action. But it's the action that really counts. Thought crime is only a crime in a totalitarian dystopia where they're afraid free thinking will expand and wipe out the enforced bigotry.

Emoji virgin!! Emoji incel!! Get out of here! This room is only for seasoned emoji champions!! There's no place here for your kind!!

 

That's the whole point. In the era of preferred and personable identity, in my opinion, definiteness should be something of preference. That's a part of identity, anyway. But anyhow, thank you for fixing my mishap.

 

If you're going to write about bigotry and persecution, make it about what you know. I personally believe anything less is a disservice to the oppressed.

Edit: And yeah, fantasy. Regardless, metaphors relative to reality are rudimentary.

 

That is an interesting statement; especially considering the OP precisely marked "Fantasy" for their genre. You can write about governance, wealth, war, violence, torture, desperation, magic, fate and religion freely, but there's supposed to be light limits on one precise topic? I consider this a possible slope of the trigger-culture that wishes to light-censor everything and would leave any work of art hollow.

On the other hand... And this is going to be some tiny rant over experience in fantasy roleplay communities.

There's obviously a cadre of people who take "be what you want in a fantasy world" to a limit and live out their bigotry fantasy in them. I don't ever think we/you should pander for those, they're a lost cause in this regard. Specific experience is the recent addition of the full breadth of human skin colours in World of Warcraft and the "backlash" it received from certain parts of the community. People scrambled to make up excuses for in-character racism in a fantasy world where such (skin-shade based) did not exist.

The same people are largely ignorant of the actual bigotry that exists in the game, which is based on worldbuilding/lore over RL parallels. Bigotry like orcs disliking their green-skinned brethren due to it being a sign of former demonic affiliation, or Draenei treating their cursed/broken cousins as slaves. Or trolls being prejudiced against a specific set of tribes (Sand trolls) due to their hostile nature towards the rest of the world. Or even better an example, any citizen being prejudiced against demon hunters due to their demonic look and affiliation.

TL/DR bigots will be bigots, but the borders are clearly marked and I don't think an author should shy away from featuring the theme in their works. Especially if it's done with respect and the featured bigotry is different to those we experienced in our real life.