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n7punk · 2 years

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All Fics Extra #6: Races

This is going to be a weird mix of reboot canon, original canon, fanon, and personal headcannon. I used to cover this partially in my AU Constants fic extra, but I wanted to make things clearer.

This is specific to my fics and not fact/correct, just worldbuilding I’ve done based on what the show provides us and general fanon. That said, some of these terms (or similar ones) are widely used across the fandom.

Note: I will use race and species somewhat interchangeably in this post. Race is a social construct that I think would form differently in a world with multiple sentient species, and also I feel weird using species a lot because it's such a scientific-feeling term to me.

Intro

Though we can get more information from show materials/Crew-ra, inside the show itself, species aren’t often named. Angella is immortal, Adora is a First One, there are humans, and everyone else on Etheria is indistinct. It isn’t even clear if First Ones and immortals are actually separate races from humans. It can be inferred that First Ones are in some way distinct as the Sword of Protection only responded to a First One, and thus likely relied on something similar to a DNA marker to identify them, but this is conjecture and it could have used some kind of magical signature.

ND stated (I don’t remember where for sure, but my instinct is to say the BLM livestream) that a history for Etheria that the crew came up with was that Etheria was a melting pot planet of various immigrant races. This can be seen in the show when Mara (via hologram in S3:EP3) says that “we [the First Ones] were the first ones to settle Etheria - to really study this planet’s magic.” Thus, the great diversity of sentient life on Etheria is likely due to many alien species arriving as explorers and settling there before the planet was put in Despondos by Mara. This means that a term like “Etherian” would be closer to a nationality than anything else.

There are species from other iterations of the franchise that have canonical names which can be extended to the reboot. Please check out this amazing chart that clarenecessities/birdindale put together to reference those. While the names here are researched and have canon sources, that’s not research most of the SPOP fandom has done, especially early on, so there are common fanon names for several species that developed. Many of us built on each others’ ideas to flesh out the world in writing. It’s easy to not mention a character’s race in a visual medium when you can see that they are a satyr, but in writing we usually need names.

Species/Races

Humans: (EX: Bow, most of the princesses, etc). Humans seem to be found in large congregations in Bright Moon, Plumeria, and the Kingdom of Snows. There are many characters that are “questionably” human as well, such as Glimmer (one of her parents is “immortal”, and thus she could be human or demi-mortal). I consider the princesses (and Adora/Mara) to be human in most AUs.

First Ones: (EX: Adora, Mara, etc). As discussed above, this could be distinct from the humans of the show, an ancestor race humans descended from, or merely the nationality for the humans that come from the First Ones’ homeworld. This homeworld is Eternia, and thus the term Eternian might be used instead of First One depending on the story.

Elves: (EX: Shadow Weaver, Entrapta’s busgirl, etc). Elves are seen mostly in the background. I state Hordak’s race as dark elf for fics where he isn’t a clone, though he looks the same. Dark elves are different from other elves due to having skintones in either monochromatic or blue/purple colors, which range in saturation from white to dark blue/black. They also generally have varying degrees photosensitivity, which is why Shadow Weaver wears a veil or mask to protect herself from burns even in modern AUs.

Hybrids: (EX: Catra, Scorpia, Rogelio, etc). Hybrid is a term that I believe originated with the fandom/fic writers. It describes the races in the show that don’t fall neatly into human or some other common fantasy species. These are the alien species that show both human and animal characteristics. Hybrids are commonly found in the Crimson Waste and the Fright Zone.

Magicats: (EX: Catra). Magicats are a named species from previous iterations of the franchise. In the original they resembled furry, anthro cats that walked both on hind legs and all fours, but in the reboot they are mostly-human in appearance but with the addition of fur, fangs, cat ears, and cat tails. They have various coat patterns/colors and some cat characteristics in personality and traits (examples from Catra in canon include: grooming her arm with her tongue, her tail reacting to her emotions, hissing, growling, purring, etc). In the BLM charity stream, ND stated their headcannon is that magicats were an explorer race who came to visit Etheria, but that the magicats seen on Horde Prime’s screens are intended to be from the magicat homeworld. They are found in very limited numbers on Etheria (in fact, only two are seen on Etheria throughout the entire show that I could find - Catra and an unnamed background character in S5EP7 - with an additional two from the homeworld seen on the screens). There are other feline background characters that are visually distinct from Catra, however. These characters have cat-like head shapes and more closely resemble the magicats from the 80s original. Whether they are intended to be magicats as well (or related to them) is unclear. Note: Catra was human in the original 80s show.

Scorpioni: (EX: Scorpia). Another highly-rare species as of the time of canon, though this is explained by the Horde’s base having been built on top of their conquered kingdom.

Lizardfolk: (EX: Rogelio, Tung Lashor, etc). I believe this is a term that originated with the fandom to describe the lizard hybrids in particular (I've also seen variants of it, such as lizardkin). Some lizardfolk seem incapable of human speech (Rogelio), or perhaps just don’t speak it as a first language, while others use the human tongue (Tung Lashor).

Finfolk: (EX: Octavia, Salineas background characters, etc). This is a term used to describe supernatural/magical creatures related to the sea IRL, and is an umbrella term I use to refer to any ocean-related hybrids such as Octavia or the many sea-based people of Salineas. I think they are canonically called Merfolk, but I leave that term to describe more strictly mermaid-based/sea-bound characters. Therefore Merfolk might be used to describe Mermista (I mean, she can literally turn into a mermaid) but it wouldn’t be used for Octavia since she primarily lives above ground and far from water.

Other Species/Terms

Krytian: (EX: Melog). We don't really have a name for Melog's race, so I just call them krytians, or perhaps more generically shapeshifters, but they are very distinct from say, whatever shapeshifting race DT is, so krytian works best.

Fae: We see what appear to be fairies, elves, satyrs, mermaids, etc in the background or in recurring cast characters. I don’t use this a lot, but it’s included here because some of the races we see could fall under it as an umbrella.

Orc: Apparently Huntara's race has a name (from Clare's chart), but I've always just called them orcs in my fics since it fits with their general look.

Satyrs: (EX: background characters, such as in Thaymor). Satyrs are definitely present in the world of Etheria, though I don’t know if any actually speak in the show. They are, of course, human-goat hybrids.

Moth hybrids: This is what I believe the leader of Elberon is supposed to be.

Bull hybrids: Seen in the Crimson Waste. See Clare’s chart for possible names. I believe taurus-based terms are used by furries for this kind of character? But that's coming from like, one tweet, I don't know shit about furries, so take that with a grain of salt.

Fairies: Again, this is what I think Flutterina is supposed to be (or maybe she’s some kind of butterfly hybrid, but clearly her race exists out in the world or the Alliance would have been more suspicious of her).

Canidae (Lycans/Vulpes): A term I’ve used before but decided not to really again because it caused confusion in the two fics where I did. These are the canid-based hybrids seen in the Crimson Waste (Lycans: dogs/wolves. Vulpes: foxes). Based off terms I think furries use once again, but I only asked one person.

Squamagica: (EX: Double Trouble). This term probably hasn't appeared (yet?) and I think is the main reason I drafted this fic extra a year ago and forgot about it, but I like what I came up with, so I'll leave it in. As said above, there are multiple shapeshifting races, so referring to DT’s race as simply that (even if it is what's used in canon) and nothing else isn't a perfect solution, especially for AUs where magic doesn't exist. In those AUs, they don't have full-on shapeshifting powers (some ability to manipulate their forms, maybe, but not total reformation), so I’ve settled on the name squamagica for them, based off squamate (the largest order of reptiles, which DT’s design seems inspired by) and the precedent from magicats. I think it sounds like something that could be from the franchise, but I just pulled it out of my ass and worry it would cause confusion once again, which is the main reason I haven't actually used it yet.

#fic extra #ficmeta #all fics #drafted SEPTEMBER 28 2021 #yeah ive been sitting on this a long time #i actually had to copy it to a new post so i could turn off reblogs XD #the DT thing is the main reason i havent posted this #but also that i stopped naming/differentiating the races so much #so it felt kind of unnecessary to post anymore?#but a comment on an old fic reminded me the OLD stuff is still out there #so hopefully this helps clear it up and i do still stand by most of it #not all because clare's chart gave us more canon-based stuff for some things #but i'll keep using a lot of this and just supplement when needed

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