Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General What is behind elf design?

A species is an incredibly broad basket.
Technically, if elves can have half-human children, they are the same species as a human.

The discussion about humans being a "single <something>" is usually about "race", of which not all humans are the same.

Well noooo!

Well Humans are one race... this is backed up scientifically and MOST settings don't really alter this (Eldar Scroll suggests humans are multiple species that are entirely different. Ignore the unfortunate implications!). This ALSO includes that humans are all the same species.

Other fantasy races are often multiple and are genetically divergent. "High Elves" and "Drow" though both being Elves are separate.

A Human + Elf Hybrid... would be a different species... a Cross Species (Though I guess it might count as both).

Unless in typical fantasy setting a cross between two races creates an entirely new race unlinked! DND Tieflings are this.

dividing species into races is as a matter of fact a practice of racism.
Don't downplay the impact of such - even deemed "harmless" by you - racism.
Differentiating people by their physical traits - the "apparently good or ok" racism justified by the obvious deviation of physical appearances is what lead to the justification of enslavement of "other races" - "cause apparently they are different and not us". It is a terrible thing to do. Differentiating people by their genetic mutations is the dumbest and most shallow thing one could do. It has no benefits at all to todays society ( quite the opposite actually) and apart from certain medical conditions it isn't medically nor scientifically relevant at all and even those specific particularities that are currently still being tied to certain people of some regional decent will be gone a few generations from now.
The invention of race is the most inhumane and fatal mistake ever done and it only ever had one purpose: the breakdown of a society. So no I think trying to divide humans into races is neither right nor justified nor helpful at all. Knowing a person decents from africa, asia or europe or wherever quite literately has no practical application whatsoever, the only thing truly of relevance to a person is the social environment which he resides in as that's what the individuum will define itself by.

that out of the way I like the elves a lot. They look different - much more treebound. and that's great. I would love it though if people would stop trying to identify themselves with a product of fantasy and then complain about how they are too skinny or dressed too skimpy.
Being a male gay feminist supporter absolutely grants no authority to impose your western set of values on a fantasy based not even truly human / mammal related species and their made up culture. If you feel offended by this you need to see a doctor(I'm serious). I wonder if you'd be the kind of person to walk into an indian settlement somewhere deep within a national park and tell the men and women to get dressed cause you'd deem it rude over there wherever your from even though you are not even going to live within their mids in the near future or ever. Cultural difference will only ever be overcome in one way - more tolerance.

You aren't exactly forced to play an elf if you don't agree with their lifestyle
- even if you were min-maxing you'd predictably at best have a net gain of 1~5% more damage in perspective to the late game lvl 20s from being an elf... that is a marginally irrelevant difference.

So you aren't excatly forced into anything really - so please don't complain about such things when they aren't exactly true...

Race is no 'invention', race is science. There specific traits that divide caucasian from african and asian.

To identify difference does not make you a racist. Saying caucasian are better than african or asian, that would make you racist.

Also humans never needed 'race' to seperate themselves from others. There were always groups to support such things: gender, religion, class. Color of skin is just something more obvious and therefore even less deniable.

In old times people said: They are not humans, they look totally different. No we can prove they are humans, they just have some different traits.

But most likely this topic does not really fit into this forum anyhow.

I figure it's fine as long as it stays friendly (and non-racist, obviously).