Is Hylian Human?

What's wrong with the term 'demihuman'? You must respect Dungeons & Dragons, especially since it is doubtful we would have Zelda without D&D.

Anyway, is the consensus that Hylians are indeed just another race of human beings like Gerudo, Shiekah, Wind Tribe, ect.?

I would like to put forth the theory that 'human' is the mix of races that happened following the unification of Hyrule, where the special qualities of the individual races (pointed ears, Gerudo sex determination, magical powers, red eyes) were diluted into the rather mundane folks we see in most Zelda games.

Oh, and that little dude at the end of AoL was a gnome!

Originally Posted by GrimmyV

Oh, and that little dude at the end of AoL was a gnome!

How can you just state that? We know NOTHING about him.

Originally Posted by Andross

Define "traditional elf."

Elves have varied so wildly in portrayal across fictional universes that the only thing that has remained static over the years is the fact that they have pointy ears, and going by that as the defining "elven" feature, then yes, Zelda has elves (In the form of hylians, and the kokiri).

In moer modern media, such as Lord of the Rings, Elves are displayed as slender, feminine people. The males often look like women. There's talks of ungodly, lengthy lifespans. More adept at archery and healing magic. Are associated with Fairies and a tree nymphs. Mostly because their natural habitat is generally forests and the like.

The reason I say Kokiri is because of the Trees, Fairies and the lifespans. Kokiri are supposed to be immortal, save leaving the Kokiri Forest. Their natural habitat is the Kokiri Forest. And all of them have Fairies pretty close after their birth.

Mandrag brought up the possibilities of the Zora being the Zelda equivalent of Elves. Because of their association with Nayru and Wisdom, they're more stuck up; looking down on the other races. [I have yet to see it] They're more slender looking. And the ones that aren't important, it's harder to differentiate differences between gender. There's also the possibility of extended life spans. This is supported by King Zora in OoX is supposed to be the one from OoT.

And the reason I say Zelda has no elves, is because I have never seen or heard of them in game.
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What's wrong with the term 'demihuman'? You must respect Dungeons & Dragons, especially since it is doubtful we would have Zelda without D&D.

Miyamoto designed Zelda aroud his experiences as a kid. This involved him going outside. Very contradictory of playing D&D. D&D had nothing to do with Zelda's creation. So don't disrespect Zelda saying without D7D, there'd be no Zelda. Try it the other way around.

D&D greatly influenced anything fantasy related, including video games and computer games, since the 70's. If anything Zelda was heavily influenced by Gauntlet (Link resembling Questor the Elf, dungeon labyrinths, keys, treasure, big immoble dragons spotting fire) in actual appearance and even gameplay. And Gauntlet was of course inspired by D&D.

Miyamoto may have run around in the woods as a kid( maybe even pretending to go down into underground mazes) but I doubt Legend of Zelda would have been made without the success ofearlier efforts.

---------- Post added at 05:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:46 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Mandrag

How can you just state that? We know NOTHING about him.

exactly! I was being silly. But he does look like a grizzled old gnome. Kind if a caucasian Yoda.

Originally Posted by GrimmyV

D&D greatly influenced anything fantasy related, including video games and computer games, since the 70's. If anything Zelda was heavily influenced by Gauntlet (Link resembling Questor the Elf, dungeon labyrinths, keys, treasure, big immoble dragons spotting fire) in actual appearance and even gameplay. And Gauntlet was of course inspired by D&D.

Miyamoto may have run around in the woods as a kid( maybe even pretending to go down into underground mazes) but I doubt Legend of Zelda would have been made without the success ofearlier efforts

Proof for all of this?

My only proof (besides the similarities above) is that D&D predated Zelda, and that Japanese video game programmers were influenced by certain aspects of D&D (FF classes). At any rate Miyamoto uses much wierder and original monsters in Zelda.

Maybe I have a stronger case that Zelda was influenced by Gauntlet (green clad elf boy, bow and arrows, top down perspective, keys, dungeons)

Whether or not D&D influenced Zelda is irrelevant: Zelda, D&D, Gauntlet, early Final Fantasy, and ****, the whole high fantasy genre in general owe a ton of their **** to Lord of the Rings.

Which in turn demonstrates how stagnant modern fantasy is, as there are very few new ideas; we may get stuff such as Dragon Age that attempts to deconstruct the genre, but instead falls back in to the crowd with insignificant differences ("NO WE DON'T HAVE ORCS WE HAVE DARKSPAWN, ELVES EXPERIENCE RACISM FROM HUMANS INSTEAD OF THE OTHER WAY AROUND OOOH").

Originally Posted by Andross

As for humanoids, there's a big difference between "human" and "humanoid." Hylians are both humanoids...

...yes. A humanoid is something that has human characteristics. Humans have human characteristics as well as elves, but if someone categorizes a race as "human" then it exempts all other races from being human...if that isn't too redundant.
The only way to prove that Hylians are humans instead of just humanoids are ingame description. And I believe we verified so.

Originally Posted by Cayenne Pepper

Humans and Hylians are in the same race of Human. Yes, this is also known as Humanoid, but there is a subrace of Human in the Human category. As seen in my chart. Humans and Hylians are both human but are different races of Human; the same as Chinese, Mongolian, French, Blacks, Caucasians and Inuit are different races of Humans.

I wouldn't say so. In my opinion, and it is absolute, Hylians may be considered Human, as it serves as a ground term for being humanoid + sharing a lot traits with the actual Humans of that world and also being compatible in terms of interbreeding. However Hylians and Humans are still different species in my opinion, while Chinese and Europeans and Africans are different Races of the same Species.

As i said, just compare it to Tolkiens Realm. Elves there are a different species there but might still be considered quite human.

But now that I am thinking of it...a lot of Games and Stories name Elves and Dwarves and Humans the races of the world...I am confused.

No, shiekahs, dwarves, etc are also "human". Hylian is like, a race, kind of. It's a group of the descendants of the ancient royal or priestly caste, so to speak. Hence "close to the gods"

Ok, Hylians are a human racial type. Gotcha. The games call pointy-eared fair skin people human, and Hylians have pointy ears and fair skin, and so are human. Ok. Hylians still possess innate and inheritable magic powers that other human races do not.

But...

I believe the term humanoid was misused a few times. Humanoid is a general term describing body type reguardless of the biology of the being (i.e. not all humanoids are primates, or even mammals).

Also humans are technically humanoid, but that term usually implies that the creature in question is human-like in a general sense, but not actually of the human species.

Originally Posted by Kamina

I wouldn't say so. In my opinion, and it is absolute, Hylians may be considered Human, as it serves as a ground term for being humanoid + sharing a lot traits with the actual Humans of that world and also being compatible in terms of interbreeding. However Hylians and Humans are still different species in my opinion, while Chinese and Europeans and Africans are different Races of the same Species.

So what's the problem here?

As i said, just compare it to Tolkiens Realm. Elves there are a different species there but might still be considered quite human.

But now that I am thinking of it...a lot of Games and Stories name Elves and Dwarves and Humans the races of the world...I am confused.

Again, I'm confused on your stance because you seem to only be repeating what I say.

Originally Posted by Cayenne Pepper

So what's the problem here?

Again, I'm confused on your stance because you seem to only be repeating what I say.

I dont know, you confused me...or so I think.
This topic is too confusing, so I am out of here.

Originally Posted by TriforceLegacy

No-one is disputing that LINK IS HUMAN

Originally Posted by MajorasWrath1

No-one is disputing that LINK IS HUMAN

By disputing that Hylians are human, they are disputing that Link is human. Link is a Hylian, you see.

Originally Posted by MajorasWrath1

No-one is disputing that LINK IS HUMAN

It doesn't matter. The point is (provided the screenshot), if Link is human, it would imply that all other Hylians are humans, as well. As directly responding to the OP, I would think that this thread is resolved, given in-game evidence. I do not wish to debate.

Originally Posted by Mandrag

By disputing that Hylians are human, they are disputing that Link is human. Link is a Hylian, you see.

No, it's my understanding that the question is not "are hylians human?" but rather "are hylians equivalent to humans in the zelda universe" (as opposed to shiekah, etc also being human), which is a very different question. Unless I've misunderstood

Originally Posted by MajorasWrath1

No, it's my understanding that the question is not "are hylians human?" but rather "are hylians equivalent to humans in the zelda universe" (as opposed to shiekah, etc also being human), which is a very different question. Unless I've misunderstood

You have misunderstood.

Originally Posted by MajorasWrath1

No, it's my understanding that the question is not "are hylians human?" but rather "are hylians equivalent to humans in the zelda universe" (as opposed to shiekah, etc also being human), which is a very different question. Unless I've misunderstood

A few people here have been saying that the Hylians, with their long ears, are different from Humans (small, round ears like ours). In some Zelda games, there are humans with small ears-- As far as I can tell, everyone in the series just treats it as a trait, like blue eyes.

For instance, Miss Marie from WW has small ears, but her students have long ears: