etonbears i think your argument fails with FR tho. FR isnt Warhammer where certain fantasy races are directly associated with real world ethnicities (Tomb kings with egyptians, lizardmen with aztecs, elves with brits, dark elves with americans).
FR isnt a moorcockian world, its in many ways the opposit of it.
A Moorcockian world is essentialy our world with a fantasy filter over it.
meanwhile FR is a fantasy world which specifically has portals to our normal world where humans come from.
Basically any Human Erath culture counterpart in FR IS a Human culture.
orcs are not the stand in for scotts and football hooligans as they are in WHFB. Orcs are a stand in for nothing, they are orcs, they exist outside of the Human frame of mind.
Wehter or not thats good is... up to anyones debate. I dont mind counterpart cultures actually, in my personal setting the Fish people are Dutch because i think thats hillarious, but in FR, an Orc sn an Orc. a Human is a Human.
True, but I wasn't really arguing about how much the real world influences any particular fantasy world; more that fantasy writers often use what they know of the real world as a template or inspiration. Its much easier than writing from scratch, and it resonates with the audience.
But because we all know much less than we like to think we do, a writer can easily end up portraying something they did not intend to be offensive, but through their incomplete understanding, actually is offensive to someone because it resonates with stereotypical depictions.
In the end, I guess it's someone else's world, and they'll change it as they see fit, just as they always have
