- I have, once again, run headlong into the question of how one refers to non-white people without causing offense when things are set in a fantasy world. I mean, say you have an African-American character. Wait... this world contains neither an Africa nor an America. Huh. In that particular case, I guess "black" could be the solution, but I'm never sure whether that's okay or not. But, say, you have an Asian character. Wait, there is no Asia. Hispanic character? ...What Spain? I mean, there are areas in the world that are similar to these areas in culture and geography and whatnot,
because I am too lazy to make up a whole boatload of fresh cultures because other cultures are awesome and deserve to be glorified in fiction. (Down with the standard pseudomedieval Europe setting, I say!) But these places aren't actually called any of the above. So how do I refer to these characters without falling headlong into racefail? I mean, I hear about the lack of minority characters in speculative fiction, and I think it's bad, and it shouldn't stay that way. Not fair. And I want to be a part of the solution, but I can never figure anything out. So far, my method has been to mention, say, chocolaty skin while describing my non-white characters, but it always feels inadequate. And a really cliched description. (And let's not even get into the persistent little voice at the back of my head going "You're a WASP. You live in a tiny town where almost everyone is either a WASP or a white middle-class Catholic or an archetypal redneck. What makes you think you can write these characters without doing everything Wrong?")
- In much less serious stuff, I was (in the depths of my disease) slumped on the couch flipping through Netflix's Watch Instantly thing. In the recommendations I see
Firefly, which I've been wanting to see just to find out what the fuss is about. One
very long pilot later, pretty much the entire household has trickled into the living room and is enraptured. I believe the household has a new favorite show. Excuse me while I go feel smug beyond belief or reason.
-
On the Warfront is now at 1,208 words. 4,000 looks like it might be a possibility (if I could just stop feeling brain-dead and stuffy, IMMUNE SYSTEM). I absolutely
love putting two characters together and just letting them talk. It almost always creates several hundred words of dialogue that I had absolutely no intention of writing when I sat down. It just sort of... shows up, under my fingers.
-I have got to track down that "Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia" icon that somebody had. And come up with some clever text to go with
the Liberty/Justice femmeslash painting so I can make it into an icon too. Does anyone else think it looks an awful lot like
the sailor/nurse end-of-WWII shot?
-
MOCKINGJAY. It has finally come into my possession; priorities will be skewed highly for the next few days.
- I should just sneak around the house with a camera while people are reading, and send all the resulting stealth shots to people who claim that boys don't read books about girls. Between one of them hooked on Beka Cooper and the wars over Katniss, this house is plain old proof of how stupid it is.