like the double whammy of race in your bog standard dnd-like fantasy is first that race is biologically real, and second that people of color can only exist in the world as caricatures or as implicitly assimilated. a person can be recognized as black or east asian or central american insofar as they can have racialized features associated with those peoples, but they can't be meaningfully black or east asian or central american in a way that connects with real-world experiences or cultural practices. in a lot of cases the closest you'll get is some exoticized caricature applied to a non-human biologically distinct race.
well, of course it's not equivalent to real life - it's fantasy! except that the western white experience is not only totally compatible with this fantasy but in fact the assumed default. i do a bit about dak-wai being a totally lore-friendly name, but the fact you can have guys running around with fully french or english names no problem, and yet Being Chinese Is Not Supported, is racist. it's hostility towards and rejection of people of color built into a world that accepts white people just fine.
you can exist as a person of color in fantasy to the extent that you can look like one but you cannot act like one. this is by definition a fantasy of assimilation. and because race is not actually just about Looking Different, this makes attempted racial coding extremely fraught. okay, this character has this physical feature. ...so what? what does that mean if in every other aspect of their dress, their culture, their name, their practices, they are indistinguishable from a whiteness that is treated as default - or if they are different, they're exoticized in a way that bears no actual resemblance to any real culture? if this is supposed to 'represent' someone in reality, then who - and what are you saying about them?
stormborns
areudirty
origamiaround
gummygunk
kaledo-art
romaincrisis
