Stats and Soil: Fantasy Ethnostates as Idyllic Worldbuilding in Games
The Journal of Popular Culture
Published online on April 15, 2026
Abstract
["The Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 59, Issue 2, Page 81-87, April 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis essay focuses on the common linkages between race and environment in popular fantasy works. Specefically, I argue that linking fantasy race, culture, language, and environment discursively and rhetorically align with White supremacists worldviews analyze the history of this trope across literature, digital games, and analog games then link the trope to the rhetoric and goals of far‐right actors. This work makes the case for greater attention towards the means by which race is created in speculative fiction, especially when such fiction does not pretend to verisimilitude.\n"]