Random blather

[sour_idealist]

- 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.

Comments

[indemaat.livejournal.com]

Are people particularly PC in that fantasy world of yours? Although, then you'd probably have that problem of extensive world building where for instance Agorniam means this person has very dark skin, because all people from Agornia have very dark skin.

Perhaps rather than say black you could say something about brown (chocolate is an awful word too. And does your fantasy world even have chocolate?). Dark brown, light brown. His skin was the same brown as his eyes.

Personally, I think it is race fail if in a small community (say 100 souls) on a fantasy world, or a far far away planet, white, Asian and African people are all living together. Particularly, if that community is described as having very little contact with the outside world. How did they manage to have three distinct races in such a small community? Shouldn't those three races have mixed into one with a little of each?

I think that most readers will picture the characters as like themselves. At least, that is what I do. It's not deliberate; I have tried to think of characters as not white, but unless I make a conscious effort I will default to white. I think this will also go for many other people.

Another thing to think of: you are writing about a culture/cultures that are very different from our own to begin with. Skin colour may have a very different impact there. My point: you are already writing about a non-WASP community, what makes you think writing about the white people in the non-WASP community is any different from writing about the non-white people in that community? It's your fantasy world; you can make up the rules for it.

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

Hmm. In this particular case, it's a third-person omniscient narrator, so it doesn't really matter about whether the characters are PC. I guess I'll go with the brown.

The case that caused the post is a small community, but it isn't self-sustaining - it's a military outpost with people getting shipped in from a very large and multicultural army.

And the skin color isn't especially plot-relevant or anything, it's just a little detail about the character's appearance, I just can't find a way to work it in there that doesn't feel too awkward. I guess it's "brown".

[chelonianmobile.livejournal.com]

In my original work, I'm actually coming up with names for the countries where the non-white people are from, mentioning that they're of that descent, and then not bringing it up again except when it's important. Of course, skin colour in that context may not be terribly important because they've also got elves and goblins and such to deal with ...

Kinda reminds me of that Technical Errors mission with the "Latino" Sue in a Redwall setting - first off, it should be "Latina", and second, very wrong universe.