Goblins should be silly little guys that don't give a fuck. Sucks that some shitty writers have turned them into an anti-semetic caricature.
I like silly little guys.
I want a fantasy thing where the goblin is the hero. Let goblins win for once.
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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Hard agree, the goblins are good and cute and deserve better. It's also bullshit bioessentialism to make them the villains.
There's a series of books called Goblin Quest that I keep meaning to read but have not so I can't say if it's any good.
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is interesting and I enjoyed it when I read it years ago. you might like it because it is deliberately the opposite of a lot of fantasy. It's about goblins and their court politics, and there's almost no violence at all. It's kind of slice of life, kind of court intrigue.
I am fond of the band Nekrogoblikon. Their 2011 album Stench is about a bunch of space goblins invading Earth to eat all the humans. "Goblin slander!", one might object. But no, this is very pro-goblin, and John Goblikon is quite charismatic. Over the top gruesome, but the music has a thread of cheerfulness throughout that is very catchy
Fantasy is kind of boring without bullshit bioessentialism. Without it monsters are just people with horns.
You can do both. The bioessentialism can be a backwards reactionary cultural view that different cultures have, for example your humans could view the goblins as essentially just monsters that have to be slaughtered but the reality of goblin existence could be quite different.
When told from the human perspective you're getting your bioessentialism and then when told through the elf perspective, who could have an entirely different opinion of goblins, you can humanise them.
This would work best told in multiple books with completely different viewpoints. Viewpoint 1 being human, viewpoint 2 being a different race, viewpoint 3 being another. Each with different bioessentialist views of other races and each with more nuanced views of the races they respect and interact with amicably.
That’s only interesting as a deconstruction of the bio essentialism. I don’t think that concept could stand on its own enough to support a whole genre.
It's a very regular feature in anime isekai writing. At what point does it stop being a deconstruction and start being just a sub-genre niche within a niche of its own due to the frequency of it? How many times must a deconstruction be used before it just becomes its own thing?
I don't think it has to be that way though.
I agree. The fantasy genre is inherently racist and pretty much totally trash.
Inherently racist is a bit much. Largely racist, sure. Built on many inherently racist works, sure. But certainly not inherently. Show me the racism in A Wizard of Earthsea.
I don't think it inherently has to be but it certainly is, in practice. At the very least as long as the various sentient species are called "races" you're going to see a lot of racist nonsense for sure.
Goblins are funny mischievous little guys just like my kitty cat, or a lot of the pet rodents I see videos of online, and therefore they are cute and I want to hug one.