Tropes to avoid, and how to subvert those Tropes into a very interesting, creative world.
Have some examples of bad tropes, and how to fix them! Please feel free to use this post as a writing or world-building prompt :)
Tropes to avoid:
#1 Having your Fantasy Racism be a factually-correct reaction to past (or current!) atrocities committed by the species who is experiencing the Fantasy Racism;
Examples:
Zootopia: Prey being 100% correctly afraid of Predator because Predators used to, (by the laws of sentience), *literally cannibalize* Prey.
Bright: Orcs are seen as second class citizens who ar inherently dangerous and evil because in past generations, their entire species sided with The Dark Lord (tm) to commit genocide against the rest of the world, and only the holy union of Elves and Humans banding together defeated The Dark Lord and threw the Orcs into disgrace for all eternity.
#2 Ambitious worldbuilding that falls short, with an entire world of different sentient species living together, including obligate carnivores, with no real thought put into the logistics of how obligate carnivores would actually operate in a logical, functioning society that has evolved over millennia together.
Examples:
.
Dinotopia: (Miniseries, at least, I haven't had a chance to find the books yet) -- Dinosaurs still exist, and all Dinosaurs are fully sentient people, which includes quite a few birds, so everyone on the island of Dinotopia who Is A Good Person (TM) has taken up veganism;
.
(Dinotopia continued) no explanation is given for where the humans are getting enough protein and essential B & D vitamins that are only found in meat products without access to modern day supplements, and all Carnivores are excluded from society entirely and instead roam the roads between towns, starving constantly until they manage to take down a trading caravan so they can cannibalize some random people in order to survive a few more days.
.
Zootopia: Predators and Prey live side by side, with Predators treated as second-class citizens and regarded with deep suspicion and life-long medical abuse in the original concept. Absolutely no explanation is given for what, exactly, Predators are eating to live relatively comfortable lives, and from the distinct lack of specific animal classes has the unfortunate implication that Predators are eating sentient fish, lizards, insects, arachnids, etc that have been, for lack of a better term, dehumanized into being acceptable food.
How to Fix these tropes:
#1 Racism and oppression should never have anything in the text to "factually back it up/justify it" unless it is literal propaganda that is disproven over and over again within the text.
Instead of having Scary Super-powered Predators be oppressed by Under-powered Mean Prey….
Have your oppressed people be the same species as the ones oppressing them, just from a different geographic region, culture, or, you know, of a slightly different physical appearance, such as skin color, hair color, fur color, scale color!
Because of politics, racism, and xenophobia, have the Fantasy Oppression happen because these people are *viewed* as both lessor and aggressors, *not because they actually are* any of these things, and show this repeatedly in the text.
.
Have the oppressed people have shorter lifespans than their oppressors, which is used to belittle any achievements they make as well as rob them of their agency; reveal later that they do not *actually* have a naturally shorter life span, but they tend to live shorter lives because of the constant hardship, while their oppressors live life in the lap of luxury.
.
If a species in your fantasy world has committed genocidal atrocities.... they had better be the *oppressors*, and not the poor little meow-meows being oppressed by their past genocide victims. You can... see why that is not a good look, yes? If you wouldn't genuinely write a story where we're supposed to side with the literal nazis who are 'being oppressed now' by the survivors of the holocaust, don't write the fantasy equivalent. That's not how oppression works.
#2 How to build a world where Obligate Carnivore People live side by side with Herbivores and Omnivores
Have regular animals on your world that are not sentient, and specifically are not a dehumanized species seen as acceptable food; If you have hundreds of sentient species, there needs to be thousands of regular animals, and very distinct traits that distinguish them from people.
.
If your world is so vast that there is literally countless sentient people of all shapes and sizes, you need your world to have an actual universal system of greeting, distinction, and behavior that separates People from Animals.
.
Your audience should never be accidentally left to question whether or not the carnivore hero of the story we're supposed to like has been accidentally murdering and cannibalizing other sentient people simply because they didn't look like the bipeds the character is familiar with.
.
If your world is truly filled *entirely* with Sentient People, and there's no animals who can be eaten without also eating a Person, and you have Obligate Carnivores who are People, *and* these people have all naturally evolved side by side into a relatively-cohesive society over millennia of evolution....
.
Have a bunch of the species on your world naturally evolve to lay unfertilized eggs like Chickens, and there is a booming job industry of laying the fanciest and tastiest unfertilized eggs for carnivores to eat, or a booming barter economy where unfertilized eggs are used in place of currency, as there will always be a demand for them, with special storage and transportation solutions, where pickled, hard-boiled, and other preserved eggs are worth more or less than fresh eggs depending on the climate.
.
Have a culture that gifts the dead to the local carnivores as a supplement to their egg-based diet, which is both a funerary rite of great respect as well as a very solemn ceremony about the circle of life, with Carnivores protecting or assisting Herbivores in exchange for food in an actual symbiotic relationship, trading both currency and protein for wares, skills, and offensive capabilities.
.
Have a huge variety of plants that provide complete proteins feature as staple crops and staple foods in your setting, both new fantasy plants in your setting as well as real world examples, such as: Moringa leaves, quinoa, soybeans, amaranth, chia seeds, hemp seeds, beans & rice, etc.
.
We live in a society, and society is built on community, trust, communication, and a love for other people; how would an actual functional society evolve on a magical world facing these systemic issues in a way that is fair and balanced, developed and literally evolved over millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of interspecific communities co-habitating?
Remember: Oppression is never 'logical' or 'based on hard-facts' or 'based on immutable biology'; it is *always* politics, and it is *always* designed from the top down to keep certain people in power, and others under their heel.
If you write a story where the attempted message is "Oppression is Bad"-- but the oppresion in the text *is still based on factual evidence* that means the Oppression is fully justified within the text, you're not actually showing the experiences of real oppressed people, you are instead positing that people effected by racism, ableism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc 'deserve' it in some way shape or form.