Talk:Races and creatures in His Dark Materials

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~~ The word panserbjorne is NOT danish-- panser is german (meaning tiger) and bjorne means bear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.39.190.163 (talk) 01:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense, panser is Dutch and means armored (the germans use "panzer", with a 'z'), and bjorne (or bjorn) is -not- a german word, I its a scandinavian boys name meaning "bear". The "tiger" you mention, is a german tank, or "Panzerkampfwagen". Mahjongg (talk) 13:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnic groups?

Gyptians are not a "race" in the fantasy literature sense and should be removed from this list. If no-one objects, I'll do just that. Or maybe move the entry to a page named Ethnic groups in His Dark Materials? – Adrian Lozano (talk) 16:28, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree, they are a human ethnicity. However, the entry is well-written and deserves to be placed elsewhere. Perhaps the article title should be changed to something more encompassing like "Inhabitants of the His Dark Materials Universe." Then you could include animals, races, ethnicities, creatures, beings, etc. Of course, that doesn't include plants (e.g. bloodmoss), so perhaps it could be something like, "Life Forms of the HDM Universe."

Thoughts about this? StrangeAttractor (talk) 01:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi there! I fully agree with you regarding the quality of the entry on Gyptians. But the name of the article is "Races and creatures in His Dark Materials" which I think is specific enough, considering "Gyptians" is the only entry that doesn't fit the article name. A general-purpose article, such as the one you suggest, would maybe not be such a good idea, lest we'll have articles like Inhabitants (individuals, races, species and groups), locations (real and hypothetical) and objects (concrete and abstract) of the His Dark Materials Universe and also the Narnia and Middle-earth universes (and all others). ;-)

We already have articles named Characters of His Dark Materials, Objects of His Dark Materials and Locations in His Dark Materials, so a new article, like the one I suggested earlier (but with a better name), wouldn't be out of place. The article Objects of HDM already covers a lot of what you suggest, BTW.

Other fantasy universes on Wikipedia have similar subdivisions. Middle-earth have Bestiary of Middle-earth and List of Middle-earth peoples, Narnia have List of Narnian creatures, Discworld have Category:Discworld peoples and Flora and fauna of the Discworld and Star Wars have List of Star Wars races for sentient species and List of Star Wars creatures for non-sentient species.

In short, my suggestion is to restrict this article to just sentient and non-sentient animal species, and have another article listing the various ethnicities and/or groupings. Whatchasay? – Adrian Lozano (talk) 00:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I haven't been working on any of these articles, but re: my comment above, I think this is sound. There are enough ethnicities in the HDM universe to warrant an entry: Gyptians, Skraelings, Tartars, etc. Of course, pretty much all of them are analogues of ethnicities in the real universe (Gypsies, Amerindians, Siberians, etc.), but worth detailing because they have a different history and significance in HDM. (One of the most notable differences: America was not successfully colonized, so the "Skraelings" continue to have a significant political role.) StrangeAttractor (talk) 00:26, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of missing species

These are the species from His Dark Materials that I think should be added for completeness. My criteria for inclusion are that they are fictional (e.g. spy-flies), differ from our "version" of the species (e.g. arctic fox), or otherwise play a notable role in the novels (e.g. dragonflies)

Arctic Foxes - the speech-parroting version
Ghosts - actually more like a state of existence, but still...
Dragonflies - gestation-controlled gallivespian-mount
Grazers - mulefa-like cattle
Harpies - foul-smelling half-bird-half-woman ghost-watchers
Humans - differs from our world's humans by having a physical manifestation of the soul.
Nälkäinens - referenced to by Tony Costa; forest-dwelling sleeper-grabbing ghosts.
Riders - centaur-like creatures in the Battle of the Plains
Spy-flies - mechanical beetle-sized creature, powered by an angry spirit
Waylurkers - from TGC p62 "... and waylurkers tempted careless travelers to their doom in the swamps and bogs ..."
Windsuckers - referenced to by Tony Costa; drifting invisible shimmering strength-draining creatures.
Witches - humans in that they have dæmons, but possesing special powers, indifference to cold, flight capapability and extended life-span.
Breathless Ones - referenced to by Tony Costa; half-killed warriors with lung-pumping dæmons