Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-98.247.168.42-20181122042639/@comment-32987979-20190526192313

I agree mostly, except for one thing you said-

"SM couldn't even bother giving Tam and Linh an actual race. Oh no, saying that they were "asian" was totally enough."

Elves don't have race. They just have different skin colors and traits. Elves don't know what "Asian" is; the only reason Sophie labels them as Asian is because she grew up as a human. We KNOW the elves don't know about different human races/ethnicities, as in a flashback, Keefe mentioned "speaking human," and that he didn't know that there were different languages humans spoke. Just like they wouldn't call Wylie African or Jamaican, they wouldn't call Tam and Linh Vietnamese, Japanese or Korean. Sophie only identifies them as Asian because that's what she learned as a human, and she probably wouldn't be able to identify if they were Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese, since they just look Asian in general.

Shannon COULDN'T give them a race because they're not human, and don't have races. Elves aren't Vietnamese, Japanese or Korean. They don't divide themselves into seperate cultures like humans do. Just like she doesn't say if Fitz is French, English or German, or if Wylie is African or Jamaican. They're just elves, and Sophie can only identify them as "Asian-looking," But really they're not Asian at all, because elves don't live in Asia.