I’m currently writing a story where the main character is an elf princess who flees the evil elven empire to warn the orcs of an impending invasion. The elven empire has a long history of imperialism and attacks against their peaceful orcish neighbours. Orcs also work as servants in the palace the MC grew up in.
Now, I want to avoid racist pitfalls and also avoid making this a parallel for a white-saviour story, even though the elf princess and her mother are dark-skinned. So far what I’ve done in hopes of avoiding harmful messages is a) have it set on a different world with no humans or real-world races or countries b) make it clear that skin tones vary within the elven population and elite (i.e., not all imperialists are Black) c) have the MC merely warn the orcs of the attack and not participate in any actual fighting to drive the attackers off (she’s underage, under suspicion, and untrained so this makes sense). She also goes to find a known rebellious orc servant as her first ally to help her flee the palace. (In an earlier version, she just recruits her personal maid which I changed because it came across as too selfish and not that smart.)
I hope my concept is not sending harmful messages, but I’m still worried. Should I not make my main character an elf at all? Or can I make it work, possibly even include some lessons readers can take away about how to leverage privilege for good?
Bellis
Hi Bellis,
Based on what you’ve told me, I don’t think you’ll have a white saviorism issue. However, it’ll still be a story about oppression with a privileged main character. Since your story is not on Earth and you’re going out of your way to avoid parallels between your fantasy groups and real races, it’s not a huge problem. But it’s also not ideal.
For one thing, it may feel like your protagonist isn’t at the center of the problems of the story, and it should be about an orc instead. For another, while it’s an analogy, it’s still possible some readers may feel it’s still making oppressed characters work in service to a privileged character and be uncomfortable with it.
Here’s some options for making this better:
- First, you could use two viewpoints – one from your elf princess, one from a rebellious orc servant who teams up with her. This would allow you to have both a privileged and marginalized main character. As you probably know, I’m not a big fan of multiple viewpoints, but if the two characters mostly stick together instead of being far away, it should be fine. It does still risk making it feel like the story should be entirely about the orc. However, if you want to focus on how to leverage privilege for good, putting that passion into the elf character should help balance things without making it feel like the story is all about the privileged experience.
- Second, you could give the elf her own mark of oppression that’s a big deal in the setting. That way she can learn to deal with both the oppression she faces and the privilege she wields. If she ends up with an orc friend, they can both learn from each other how to use the privileges they have to help. Keep in mind that any mark of oppression you give her that feels plausible is also likely to feel analogous to a type of real-world oppression, just like the elf and orc conflict is analogous to racism, even if it’s not analogous to the oppression of a specific race. Ask yourself if her mark of oppression feels like a disability, and, if so, make sure it’s represented appropriately.
- Finally, if covering oppression is more trouble than it’s worth to you, a few changes to your setting could make this a conflict between two groups of relatively equal power. Take away the orc servants and say your rebellious orc character is an ambassador from the orc kingdom instead. The orcs have always been good neighbors. They have a long history of peace, so while they are fairly prosperous, their military is small. The new elf monarch has imperial aspirations and wants to launch a surprise invasion on their longtime neighbor and ally, using the big army the elves assembled to fight off a previous dwarven attack.
I hope that gives you some idea of what you’d like to do with this story.
Best wishes,
Chris
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If elves already have an empire and are actually imperialist towards orcs, if they are peaceful they would already be part of the empire (they are servants, after all). Peaceful cultures have been short lived unless they were isolated enough to thrive in peace. Most of the time, the war monger culture would wipe off the peaceful ones.
For it top fall into White Savior territory, the princess should learn the orc ways and being better at being orc than the orc themselves.
One of the most common and glaring issues with a White Savior narrative is the ability of the White Savior to become better than the Natives at their own culture. Avoiding this is a worthwhile challenge.
By not having the MC perform combat, and letting Orcish combat have it’s place in the narrative, you’re already reducing the risk of the Orcs feeling like their whole race has been damseled. Consider how the Princess is in a position to use Elvish skills/knowledge to defuse/sabotage future Elven plans.
How exactly is cultural ability measured? Ie How is someone better at a culture than someone else?
By picking up quickly on specializes skills, the language, the rituals practiced.
The White Saviour usually comes into another culture without any prior knowledge and quickly outshines the people in it in every way that is special to the culture (like flying those creatures in “Avatar” – not the last airbender). It would be like an American moving to China and learning all Chinese dialects in four days and then proceeding to teach Chinese people about their own history because they know it so much better.
In the context of skills, language and rituals – this makes sense.
White Savior, especially in its most known form, is an interesting trope. In many ways it’s a symbol of how whites know they have done wrong, but have no idea how to do it right again.
Like many things in white culture, White Savior comes down to shame, namely the shame of being white. White Savior starts the story as part of something shameful, usually military. Despite being part of the center, the respectful normalcy, he takes no pride in it. In the center he’s nothing but a shameful being.
It is among the others that he can feel respected, because there he can cast away the shame. The reason he excels at what the others are skilled is because others have something to excel at. In White Savior’s place of birth, the center, there is nothing to excel at, nothing to stand out in, except what brought White Savior shame and nothingness. Only among the others, where there is something to excel in, can White Savior excel.
In the end, the others defeat the center, and White Savior’s shame is erased.
It all sounds good on paper, but in practice… You know.
I’m not sure if the Elves here are supposed to be an allegory to white people, but if they were, the best way to do it would have them be conformistic, looking down not just on Orcs, but on each other. Make it so that among elves there are lot of elves, that the “mainstream elves” don’t approve of: Those who are not good with the bow, those who have too pointy (or not pointy enough) ears, that kind of stuff. And said elves that aren’t approved of feel shame of not meeting the standards.
You know, although Bellis doesn’t want the MC to be a White Savior, there could still be an opportunity to show why said trope doesn’t work. Like say, the princess at one point meets another elf, who tries to be like the orcs, because he “doesn’t want to be an elf anymore”, with the princess calling him out on his idea that the best way to help the orcs is to stop being an elf.
You can make the Elf princess and the Orc rebel dual protagonists, who both share equal roles in this. Vampire in the Garden did that with their protagonists and is IMO one of the best stories ever told when it comes to stories between people in conflict. It is not so much an oppressed and oppressor situation as both Humans and Vampires in that story are awful to each other, but even in your tale of Elves oppressing orcs, two equal perspectives should work just fine.
As long as you don’t overhpye the Elven princess, it is all ok.
There seems to be an assumption that these elves are powerful, beautiful, refined and generally considered superior (first of all, by themselves) while these orcs are ugly and ignorant inferior brutes, so it is obvious that elves oppress orcs and the issue is how to write a satisfactory story about this unavoidable oppression.
Compounding the problem there’s the assumption of ethnically homogeneous nations (orcs among elves are servants; elves among orcs are, probably, dangerous trespassers).
But taking a step back, the warring kingdoms can be realistically complex and diverse, the plot of elves threatening to invade orcs can be framed as different values (e.g. imperialist vs. peaceful) of different but equal cultures, and the distance between the two races (or better, the two neighbouring kingdoms) can be small enough that the elf MC, separated from bad influences, learns how to be a good person and not how to be a better orc than actual orcs (itself a racist concept).
Two apparently important questions:
How is the prepared war, clearly a large part of the story, going to go? Averted, called off because of plot developments, tragically one-sided, won thanks to the MB’s effort, something else?
And what’s the difference between elves and orcs? For example, if you obtain the latter by corrupting the former, like in Tolkien, there’s no question of who is superior, inferior, good and evil.
This would play into the dual-protagonist concept. It would allow you to show the positive and negative aspects of both groups, and to show these two learning from the other culture. The orcs learn that there’s more to life than the Cult of the Bad-Ass (or whatever motivation you give them), and the elves learn that other cultures are capable of existing, that they are not inherently superior (or, again, whatever motivation you give them). You don’t need to make them meet in the middle. You don’t even need to make them like each other. The conflict here is “Person vs Self”–the climax is the realization that this Other is an equal, and you don’t need to like someone to respect them, particularly in war. The war would act as a setting and potentially justifying Deus ex Mechina should it be necessary (“How am I going to save the elf….let’s see….scouting parties! I’ve already discussed these twice!”).
It gives you a lot of options for endings, depending on theme and tone. If you want a more optimistic theme, have them join forces or even fall in love. If you want a more realistic one, have them fight multiple times through the story, with the last one being a fight that ends in a draw, but with them both respecting one another (happens a LOT in naval fiction–see “The Surprise” by Patric O’Brian for a good example). If you want a pessimistic tone, have each side turn on the one learning to be a good person, with the conclusion being that they both end up in hiding.
To elaborate on Mythcreants’ final suggestion, make the history behind the elves and the orcs even more complicated. Treat orcs as historically akin to the Mongols or Tatars; tribes constantly engaged in raiding-style warfare with each other, and with their neighbors when united. Historically they were a existential threat to the elves, until the elves developed a strong counter (a great wall, a great work of magic, etc.).
Since then the elven nation has grown in power and military might, while the orcs themselves have grown more peaceful with no neighbors to easily raid, even developing a tribal confederacy that has kept things relatively peaceful for generations. The elves themselves are now officially signators to the orcs’ tribal treaty of Great Peace.
Now along comes that new elf monarch who doesn’t trust that the Great Peace will last, and in any case feels the orcs would be much better off under elven rule, and you Main Character is off to the races. You have a duplicitous elf king, an idealistic orc ambassador, and a royal princess caught between duty and justice.
If I write a story where Satan is the good guy and liberated the humans from god’s control, would that story be a white savior narrative?
I believe that would be “Paradise Lost”.
I wouldn’t say, though, that it is a white saviour narrative. In the white saviour narrative, a privileged (so usually white person) is better at their skills and culture than the usually not white people living somewhere and uses that to save them from a problem they haven’t been able to solve. Stan liberating humans from God’s control doesn’t fall into that trope. There is no way Satan can do that by being more human than the humans.
A good answer I feel, it makes sense. Satan cannot be more human than the humans, since what they are wouldn’t exist without a will beyond God’s control.
It’s more akin to a human giving Robots free will rather than a White person liberating black ones, who historically had a huge saying in their struggle for freedom that continues even today.
Thanks Cay, your rationality is well appreciated by me. I enjoy reading your responses.
I propose that, henceforth, Satan shall be known as Stan.
I believe this was his original name but it was changed to Satan by the other side as part of a smear campaign.
On a related note, God actually prefers to be addressed as Bob.
Thanks everyone for your comments and ideas! I have revised my premise a bit by making the orcs hitherto free neighbours instead of already oppressed. I will also give the orc ally, who is now an ambassador instead of a servant as in my previous draft, her own POV. The story is already getting out of control so why not lean into it :P (It was supposed to be a silly short story but evolved into a novella that I’m putting way more work into than I had planned)