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Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
I'll just start another thread, but I'm basically responding to LDWriter's comment.

[/QUOTE] There is an--for want of a better term--inclusive cult that demands we all include everyone--except for perhaps those that disagree with them. [/QUOTE]

LDWRiter, I can only look at examples of books I read to best respond to this.

As Phil notes:

quote:
I will write the stories I want to write and people them with the characters I set out to create for the purposes of my narrative.
This is what writers are *supposed* to do, but legitimate criticisms of inclusiveness, or lack there of, are warranted, in my opinion.

I enjoyed "The Hunger Games", but it does have the fault of many popular novels: a lack of inclusiveness. "The Hunger Games" takes place in a future America recovering from an old, undefined war.

America as we know it today is currently a very multicultural society.

So how is it that in "The Hunger Games", the only character with dark skin is Rue and her family? Katniss is said to have a yellow tone, but I don't think anyone would draw the conclusion that she's Asian. And she's definitely not played by an Asian actress in the movies.

So though Suzanne Collins can write anything she pleases, a legitimate criticism is how is it that in the future America of her imagination, there are no Mexicans, no Native Americans, no Indians, no Middle Easterns, no Asians, and one black family, when all of these groups are a part of the social fabric of America today? What happened to them in her universe?

I suppose one can ask, "Well, why does one of the central characters, say Gale or Peeta, have to be something other than white?" They don't, but it is, or should be noticeable, that in three books, the only character who we are sure isn't white is Rue, and that's only in book 1. This is simply odd for a book based on the multicultural/multi-racial country like America.

Korea is very homogeneous, so it makes sense that a future Korea is going to also be homogeneous. It doesn't *have* to be, but logically speaking, it could be. But it's hard to make a logical argument as to why so many different groups are missing from the universe of "The Hunger Games".

"The Golden Compass" is written in basically the same manner. This is an alternate-reality England, yes. But Europe has had close dealings with India, Africa, and the Middle East for centuries. There are large pockets of each of these groups in England. Yet when you read the series, there is once again the propensity to have all of the *central* characters be white.

You write what you want to write, but, logically speaking, how is it that a book that takes place in a multicultural/multi-racial country like England would have all central characters of the same race?

"Game of Thrones" takes place in an alternate-reality of the Middle Ages of Europe, but it could have easily added a central character of a different race. I only read to book 3, so I can only comment upon those. But the Targaryens were foreign invaders, to my memory, who conquered Westeros with the use of dragons. Sure, I guess one can ask, "Well, why force a non-white character in the role of Danny and her brother in the narrative?"

But the thing is that most of the world is non-white, so it's not an irrational request. It's not that much of a stretch to have, in your alternate reality of the Middle Ages, a central character who is Arabian. Europe and the Moors were in contact for millennium. And while there is the Horse Lord Danny marries, he's not the central character that narrative is about. He's a periphery character, a flat character, and really, a minor character. There are some dark skinned lords Danny meets in her desert wanderings, but they're all also periphery characters. "Game of Thrones" chapters are broken up by the character they follow, of which there are many in the first three books. But all of these characters basically have the same complexion.

"Inclusiveness" is spoken as if it's a dirty word, but really, it's a critique of how a novel manages to populate its world with characters that don't seem to reflect the diversity of our actual reality. I wouldn't call it a plot hole, but it's a deficiency born from the fact that writers, writing what they know, seldom know enough about the other to employ them in their fiction.

A response to this might be, "Yes, but if I do that, if I try and write a character ouside of my ethnicity, I'll get criticisms for not doing the character 'right'."

Yes, there's a risk in that, but like all aspects of writing, listen to the critique and figure out how to write that character more realistically. Paolo Bacigalupi grew up in Colorado, but has written white, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese characters, and he's won multiple awards for his work.

Saying that writing outside of one's race will draw criticisms isn't exactly the strongest argument.Octavia Butler wrote diverse worlds. Walter Mosley wrote an interesting speculative fiction book called, "Blue Light" which also had a diverse cast of *central* character. Not periphery characters, but characters who had active roles in the unfolding of the main plot.

Of course, all books don't have to be inclusive. Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" is, from my memory, cast strictly by Jews. But the premise of the book is one of exclusion, a Jewish State that's been set up in Alaska.

Salman Rushdie mostly almost exclusively writes Indian characters, but his most popular books take place in India. However, he does have central characters who are Hindi and Muslim, a diversity we may shrug at, but in India I'm sure they don't.

The question is, logically speaking, why are you populating your world the way you are? How are so many future and fantasy fiction worlds existing without the diversity of our current world? Okay, so your main character, the one you're most intimate with, looks most like you. But does his/her best friend have to? His/her mate? The people important to them in their lives? This isn't to force a writer, but to seriously question the narrowness of their view in a world that's awful big.
 
Posted by Natej11 (Member # 8547) on :
 
I can think of 2 reasons off the top of my head:

1. It's easier. Way, way easier to keep all characters the same culturally and racially, and if you do introduce new cultures and races (in a fantasy or sci-fi setting) to make them mostly the same aside from a few easily remembered quirks.

2. If you don't mention race, you can't be accused of racism. Cynical as it sounds, these days race is too touchy a subject to, well, touch. Individually you can get away with characters of another race, ethnicity, nationality, etc, but any mention could potentially draw you into a boondoggle you may not want to get into. Unless of course you can play it for publicity like J.K. Rowling or Phillip Pullman.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
For me, I think we write what we know. I know what it is to be white. Any attempt by me to 'include' ethnic diversity would entail me doing research into different cultures and ask 'pointed' questions about subjects that may or may not be taboo. All in all, it's too hard for li'l ol' white moi to make that cognitive leap.

Having said that, in Jack Rayne, because Earth's population has almost been wiped out the exigencies of species survival demand that race be one of the things deliberately engineered out of existence through prescribed mixed marriage. Just think of the song, can't remember it's name.

Phil.
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
Reading in U.S. America statistically appeals more to females than males by a 20 point lead, of all females 60%, and males 40%. "Whites" lead reading statistics averaging 50% of whites read. Blacks, hispanics, other nonwhites read in the 25% range of each population group.

Considering that each minority population group comprises roughly 10-14% of total population, blacks for example, roughly 45 million population, 25% readership amounts to 11.25 million. On the other hand, white population of 60% of total populace at roughly 225 million and 50% readership, 113 million readers. Ten times as large an audience.

Publishing statistics, content, agonists' ethnicities and identities and life complications, and sales generally reflect those marketplace consumer divisions.

Accusations of cultural misrepresentation, racism for example, are generally another issue besides bigotry. Cultural malappropriation represents entire culture groups in a negative light and "borrows" culture group identity icons and uses them as warped representations.

The "Noble Savage" legend, for example, portrays Native peoples as wise and respectful and stewards of nature. On the other hand, the savage Native is portrayed as a heathen and brutal malcontent.

The same conclusion of what constitutes a "strong female character" applies to respectful cultural appropriation; that is, unique, individual, specific characters with agency, be they central agonists, antagonists, villains, nemeses, secondary characters, or backdrop extras. So that no culture group is singled out as a generalized stereotype.

A pure vanilla patriarch character cast is safe for appealing to a patriarchal white readership, since many patriarchal whites live in patriarchal white enclaves. An ethnically diverse cast, though, has attendant risks and potential depth appeals.

Inferrably, maybe reasonably, a blending of ethnicities at a future time may result in a single ethnicity or at least a singular similar complexion for a closed culture. That's the trend seen in history. Recessives notwithstanding. Alternatively, since evolution follows environmental adapations, one biome region's populace may develop similar complexions and another different ones. The appearances of diverse ethnicities are exactly that: environmental adaptations.

Myself, I favor casts and complications and complexions of a more wordly diversity, since I am a worldly misfit castaway coexisting out and about along the peripheries of closeknit enclaves, a perennial outsider.

[ June 27, 2014, 05:03 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
I might add that my own approach in Jack Rayne was to write a back-story, which encapsulates the milieu, where the aliens are first defeated by provincial Chinese civilians backed by the Provincial PLA Commander and troops at his disposal; which is why all military ranks in the story are based on the PLA. An homage to bravery.

I only took this approach because it suited my narrative tale to have the first successful human battle against the aliens in China. It was narrative imperatives that drove the choice, not some perceived need to kow-tow or pander to strident calls to be more inclusive of minorities--although I'd hardly call the population of China a minority.

Phil.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
Well,this boils down to "write what you know." Lousy writing advice in general, but safe in this case.

I actually think there's nothing wrong with whitewashing a story world because you don't know how to write people who are different from you yet. That reflects your current limitations as a writer, not necessarily as a human being. But over time you should start taking baby steps out of that safe zone. Maybe introduce characters you simply *inform* readers are different, and over time learn about what such characters would really be like.

Tony Hillerman took a route like that. His first breakthrough Navajo character was Joe Leaphorn, a detective who was raised in an assimilationist school and so was ignorant about a lot of thing a Navajo would know. That helped explain a lot of things that Hillerman himself didn't know. He did commit the mistake making Leaphorn a natural tracker despite being alienated from his ancestral culture, as if that skill was something that came free with Indian genes. But overall Leaphorn was a success, and not an embarrassment.

In 1980, after ten years writing about this not very Navaho Navaho, Hillerman introduced Jim Chee, a more complex and authentically Navaho character, and Chee quickly became the focus of the series. That's the fruit of research and practice.

You can also expand your expressive palette by writing about people who think differently from you.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
I completely agree with you, MattLeo.

Phil.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
I actually think there's nothing wrong with whitewashing a story world because you don't know how to write people who are different from you yet. That reflects your current limitations as a writer, not necessarily as a human being. But over time you should start taking baby steps out of that safe zone.
Some can believe that the publishing industry is forcing them to diversify their writing. As I research markets to send my novel in case the ones I've chosen don't work out, I admit that I don't see much evidence of that in the writers' guidelines of this forced inclusion.

But let's say for now it's true. Instead of seeing it as your hand being forced, see it as the publishing industry challenging you. If you live in a country which is diverse (which, to be honest, doesn't include a *lot* of countries), then step outside of your bubble. It makes good business sense, in my opinion, because now your book can be marketed to different groups. When writing a story, you're trying to get readers to suspend disbelief in your fictional world. This becomes easier for non-white people if they're reading a story that takes place 300 years in the future and there's actually an abundance of non-white people.

As would probably be the case 300 years for now if humans don't destroy the planet or something. Gene Roddenberry understood this. I've been watching the old Star Treks recently on Netflix, and even beyond the main casts, the diversity of periphery characters is overwhelming in the original Star Trek. That came out in the 60s, no less. I wonder where Hollywood even found all these Indian, Asian, and black actors in the 60s.

But unless your future world has undergone some racial war that has eliminated most of the non-white population, their lack becomes noticeable to non-white readers.

quote:
It's easier. Way, way easier to keep all characters the same culturally and racially, and if you do introduce new cultures and races (in a fantasy or sci-fi setting) to make them mostly the same aside from a few easily remembered quirks.
It's definitely easier. And let's face it, Rue was dark skinned, but there was nothing especially culturally ethnic about her. Cultures die hard. We know we're 75 years from the war fought between the Capital and the Districts, which set up the Hunger Games. But we don't really know how long its been since the collapse of civilization that led to the Capitol and the Districts. However, if Rue was meant to be black, or Mexican, or Indian, as all we really know is her skin is dark, and that can be a lot of races, then there could have been some culturally significant aspect to her family that survived.

To avoid this problem of having a character diverse only in appearance, as a writer, it does require you to break bread with those who look different from you in order to appropriate something culturally unique about them. I don't consider appropriation bad, for what are artists if not thieves, stealing narratives from life around us. Most of my best characters are based upon people I personally know. I think that goes for a lot of writers, or artists in general when constructing their art.

quote:
Having said that, in Jack Rayne, because Earth's population has almost been wiped out the exigencies of species survival demand that race be one of the things deliberately engineered out of existence through prescribed mixed marriage.
If it makes sense for the narrative, go for it. In Ursula K. LeGuinn's "The Dispossessed", a group of people set up a communist colony on the moon. I'm sure this was a very select group of people who basically all looked the same.

But in the Jack Rayne example, if the mode that was chosen is white after forced mixed marriages, this will draw attention to itself, because there's a billion Chinese people and a billion Indians. I would think that if the human race is almost wiped out, just from sheer current population numbers of Earth, non-white would probably be the physical mode that wins out in mixed marriages.

Yes, its difficult, and I can understand why a white writer would have white characteristics win out in this scenario. But for non-white readers, it makes it that much harder to suspend disbelief when you look at real population levels (isn't Europe an aging country with low birth rates? Won't minorities be the majority in America in two or three decades?), but then you get a story where the result of mixed marriages after a global catastrophe has left a decidedly white population.

In "Hunger Games", Peeta has blue eyes. But isn't blue eyes a recessive trait?

quote:
A 2002 study found that the prevalence of blue eye color among the white population in the United States to be 33.8% for those born from 1936 through 1951 compared with 57.4 percent for those born from 1899 through 1905.[13] As of 2006, one out of every six people, or 16.6% of the total population, and 22.3% of whites, has blue eyes. Blue eyes are continuing to become less common among American children.[44]
-Wikipedia

It becomes even stranger when you have a futuristic story that takes place lets say a 1000 years in the future, where humans have long since left Earth, where the culture of your universe is different from known Earth cultures, yet the majority of your central characters all look basically like you.

quote:
Reading in U.S. America statistically appeals more to females than males by a 20 point lead, of all females 60%, and males 40%. "Whites" lead reading statistics averaging 50% of whites read. Blacks, hispanics, other nonwhites read in the 25% range of each population group...

A pure vanilla patriarch character cast is safe for appealing to a patriarchal white readership, since many patriarchal whites live in patriarchal white enclaves. An ethnically diverse cast, though, has attendant risks and potential depth appeals.

Again, no doubt. But I think most of this angst towards "forced inclusion" is directed to visual media. Basically, television and movies, where the audience is extremely diverse. So we're left with one or two options: to challenge those writing the source material, the authors populating their world with those who are most similar to them. Or, once the work is adapted, adding diversity since everyone wants to suspend disbelief, but that's more difficult when you're a teen watching 'Gattaca' and wondering to yourself, "What in the world happened in this future that almost everyone is white?" Or you're watching 'Lord of the Rings' and you think, "Elves, hobbits, and dwarves don't even exist. Really, not one of these conjured races could have been dark skinned? But wait, the bad guys, the orcs, are."

Or Hollywood could start adapting some of the many works from Octavia Butler. Or the publishing industry could make a point of exploring more titles heavy in diversity, particularly since so many books seem to be templates for future movies.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
I don't see any evidence of the publishing industry forcing anyone to diversify their story cast either. Let's face it, most books that get published are too obscure to be controversial over not being inclusive enough, but even the blockbusters aren't particularly inclusive.

What I *have* seen a lot of recently are social critics calling for more substantial female characters, and press and social media picking that call up and beating the drum. But the reason this question is in the air isn't that the culture is changing. It's in the air because the culture already *has* changed. The particular issue has reached a sweet spot where it sounds avante garde but is in fact perfectly safe and non-controversial. When you get to the bottom of most arguments over this, there usually isn't a substantive disagreement. Someone's been provoked by a ridiculous straw argument.

Now the question of minorities is more interesting, because it gets, not just to the duties, but one of the pleasures of writing: the challenge creating credible characters who are different from you.

For men this naturally includes writing female characters. But guess what? It's a challenge for women to write credible male characters. So ladies, listen up: we guys don't just sit around burping, scratching our bellies and lying about getting you into the sack. And yes, I have read MSS where I've needed that notation. It's easy to fix, though: just share and learn. So there's no reason to hide in your comfort zone to avoid hurt feelings, unless those feelings are your own.

Same goes for writing minority characters. There's no reason to hide in your safe zone because the bar for success is actually quite low. You do some research and try to write a character who a reader from that group will recognize both as an individual and a member of that group. It doesn't have to be perfectly accurate, because you can learn from feedback. And the character doesn't have to be a paragon either. Look at the Jewish actors who want to play Shylock. A vivid, unique, credible villain isn't an insult to the group. A villainous stereotype is an insult; a paragon stereotype is just patronizing.

But why stop there? We're spec fiction writers. So show me a strong, credible, interesting aliens, fairies or vampires. Those are pretty rare. These characters are often badly written by lazy writers who get away with it, the way they used to get away with badly written female characters, or stock minorities.

[ June 28, 2014, 01:42 AM: Message edited by: MattLeo ]
 
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
 
Two cases that I know about that could factor into the discussion of reader and/or book buyer response to people writing outside of the "white" mode:

1--Barbara Hambly has a mystery series with a free black man living in antebellum New Orleans as the sleuth. She has gotten quite a lot of flack for presuming as a white woman to write about a black man during slavery times. I'm glad she continues to write the series in spite of that.

2--I have a friend who is an editor for a book publisher that publishes diverse (as in generally non-white) YA fiction. Lately, they have been getting "we don't want that kind of stuff in our store/library" noises from book buyers.

I find both situations very sad and frustrating.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
I never heard of Barbara Hambly, but I just bought one of her books, "A Free Man of Color". It has four stars from 92 reviews on Amazon, and a 3.98 from 1,624 reviews on Goodreads, which is pretty good for that site. I see she publishes vampire fiction also.

I always think vampire literature is interesting as it's done to death but refuses to die.
 
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
 
I'm vaguely offended by the notion that I must do something when I write, in this case make my cast of characters diverse in some way relating to skin color and ethnic origin. The skin complexions of my characters depends on the story, and how it suits me to write it.

Besides, when one deals with robots and aliens on a regular basis, what's a little difference in skin color shades between friends?
 
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
 
A FREE MAN OF COLOR is the first in the Benjamin January series, Denevius. I'd be interested to know what you think of it. I think she does a great job of helping the reader experience another world.

As for vampire lit, it is "undead," after all. [Smile]
 
Posted by jerich100 (Member # 10202) on :
 
Who says The Hunger Games is future America? Is America mentioned in the Hunger Games? Does the author pick people's races or is it the people who make movies? When people read books can't they decide whatever race they want for the characters?

I would think it disturbing for the author to be forced to specify the race of each character. Doesn't the modern iconic mantra about "description" dictate that we describe only what is relevant to the story? Is the race of every character relevant for every story?

I don't tell in my stories what religion each person is. I don't discuss their going to church. Does that make my stories anti-religious?

How much more backwards would it be for the author to have to specify the race of each person? Besides, isn't that "telling"? Why not instead, describe the person in such a way that some people--the people who want to--will think, 'Wow, Nikki is Japanese." Wouldn't that be much more sophisticated, artistic, and professional?

Children of all races grow up loving each other until someone starts making comments. Stop it, people. If you don't, I'm going to make up a new race called, "People who wear glasses" and appoint them superior above all others. Then you'll be sorry. Muuuahaahhhaaaaahhaaa!!!
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Who says The Hunger Games is future America?
It specifically says so in the book, actually. I don't know about the movies, as I haven't seen them.

quote:
The series takes place at an unspecified point in the future. By this time, following mass death and destruction the nation of Panem rules North America in place of the United States, Mexico and Canada governments, which failed to survive.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Panem's seat of power is a superficially utopian city called the Capitol located in the Rocky Mountains...

The nation consists of the wealthy Capitol and twelve surrounding, poorer districts united under the Capitol's control. District 12, where the book begins, is located in the coal-rich region that was formerly known as Appalachia...

Appalachia is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.[1] [5]

- Wikipedia
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury:
A FREE MAN OF COLOR is the first in the Benjamin January series, Denevius. I'd be interested to know what you think of it. I think she does a great job of helping the reader experience another world.

At first I thought the same -- loved the first book. Then after a few volumes it took up a tendency to preach the evils of slavery when the opportunity arose, and (having read 7 of the series so far) I began looking forward with less enthusiasm; one-liners, but they'd blow me right out of the narrative, because it never sounded like something the people then and there would say or think. -- I'd wonder if it was in response to the flack you mentioned, but she's done the same occasionally WRT feminist postures in other works, so I think it's more her than external forces.

[And as she said to my face, she doesn't want her books in libraries anyway; she counts library copies as multiple lost sales.]

I do think it would make a good TV series. At this point my fave character in the series is Abishag Shaw, for whom my brain has irretrievably cast William Sanderson.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by jerich100:
Who says The Hunger Games is future America?

The author. It's on her website.

quote:
I would think it disturbing for the author to be forced to specify the race of each character. Doesn't the modern iconic mantra about "description" dictate that we describe only what is relevant to the story? Is the race of every character relevant for every story?

You are asking straw questions. Of course the race of every character isn't relevant for *every* story. But it may be relevant to some stories. And even if race is not an issue for characters, it may be in the story world. Panem is the remains of Mexico, US and Canada. By 2042 non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in the US. If you combined the three countries they'd be a minority today. So to the reader who is aware of the demographic trends in North America, the absence of Latinos strongly suggests a genocide at some point between now and then. This may well suit Collins' purposes, although I think we are meant to think that the story is *not* set in the near future.

The lesson if you *do* want to set your story in, say, North America 2100 CE, you'd better scatter some Hispanic names around, or accept that readers will think you've killed off most of the continent's inhabitants. It's a consequence of your near-future setting. If you set your story ten thousand years in the future, or on a different planet, you don't have that problem.

As for descriptions only being provided when "relevant", I hope you don't take take that as a rule in your writing. I used to think that way, but I've discovered that some readers need descriptions, and most benefit from them -- if you don't go overboard. They trick is not to over-determine the character's appearance. A few spare hints is all you need to encourage readers create their own picture.

quote:
I don't tell in my stories what religion each person is. I don't discuss their going to church. Does that make my stories anti-religious?

Obviously not, but that is in part because religion is semi-taboo in science fiction. And because it is taboo, it can be quite useful to break that taboo for effect. So I have done all these things you don't do, but I do it because it's an easy to understand marker of cultural differences. When I have a character from a frontier planet read her bible, it makes the other characters uncomfortable because unlike her they come from the stock "post-religious" future of science fiction.

quote:
How much more backwards would it be for the author to have to specify the race of each person? Besides, isn't that "telling"? Why not instead, describe the person in such a way that some people--the people who want to--will think, 'Wow, Nikki is Japanese." Wouldn't that be much more sophisticated, artistic, and professional?

Well, no. Not necessarily. For one thing "show not tell" is about the mindlessly habitual use of diegesis. It doesn't mean you have to replace "blue" in "the robin's egg was blue" with a description of the physiological sensations of "blueness".

For another, readers are not so sophisticated about the similarities and differences in Asian cultures as you apparently think. I've had people "correct" a manuscript in which a Chinese boy is forced by his guardian to practice calligraphy because supposedly it was the Japanese who do calligraphy, not the Chinese (both cultures practice calligraphy, although it's even more important in China than Japan). People assume that the Chinese are culturally averse to open displays of disagreement because the Japanese are. They're not, and the businessman going to China expecting to be handled with kid gloves is in for a rude surprise. People assume that Chinese people put a great store in formality like the Japanese -- they don't. At least not those from the post cultural revolution PRC, who in my experience affect a kind of immediate chummy familiarity that's very similar to post 1960s Americans.

Is it a big bother to learn about this stuff and keep track of it? Yep. But those are colors for your palette, and until you master them you're limiting yourself to painting with black.

quote:
Children of all races grow up loving each other until someone starts making comments. Stop it, people.
I think this is misguided. Children love each other with a childish love. Adults should still do that, but they should also understand the differences between cultures and respect them.

I once knew a guy from a West African society where saying "no" was considered disrespectful. So if you asked him whether you could borrow his car this , he wouldn't say, "No, I need it," he'd say, "No, it's in the repair shop," even though you'd seen him drive up in the car and he knew you'd seen him. The childish response is, "what a liar!". The adult response is, "Obviously he knows I know his car isn't in his shop; this must be their way of saying 'no'."
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Nowall:
I'm vaguely offended by the notion that I must do something when I write, in this case make my cast of characters diverse in some way relating to skin color and ethnic origin.

I'm quite offended by this notion; I'm even more offended by the oft-repeated concept that I'm unable to know enough about these characters to write suitably about them, or worse, that if I don't represent the non[whatevers] in the prescribed PC fashion, I've committed 'racism' and 'cultural appropriation'. So am I required to or forbidden to? Make up my mind!!

This is a huge ongoing ... I won't say discussion, more like an extended put-down session on Another Site[TM]; it's become a way to guilt-trip people, and it's long since stopped being about representing characters fairly as who they are, whatever that may be. It's to where I've flung up my hands and stomped off muttering, "You can't fix stupid."
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
Freedom of choice is an inherent and innate right, duty too, that everyone in an empowered society has. Choose to be a writer, audience considerations are one of many choices and with manifold choices and selections.

A duty is to choose one's own aesthetic according to one's ambitions. Choose to write white patriarchal prose, a choice that targets a large audience, expect pushback from others, expect praise from the choir, the congregation, and the clergy. Choose otherwise, expect audience role reversals. Different sources of pushback and praise audiences. Use the pushback, though, to generate word-of-mouth buzz, Buzz, BUZZ.

Anyway, the number of publishing outlet choices available now, most anyone can enjoy an audience suited to the aesthetic choices made, conventional publishing giants' choices for whatever reasons notwithstanding nor in the way. Choose Random House, for example, which doesn't accept unagented, unsolicited manuscripts, choose automatic rejection. Choose agent representation instead for slightly improved opportunities. Write a breakout narrative in the first place, enhance opportunities more so. Choose self-publishing, a choice that is open to most anyone, and as such cluttered with mediocrity and ample competition for readers, hope to generate buzz, which is the only marketing method that works.

In other words, either way, build buzz so that audiences sit up and take notice. If that's writing from an educated, privileged Caucasian woman about ethnic issues in antebellum New Orleans, that's to an audience that receives it as packaged for that audience. Pushback by others who take exception to the product generates buzz. Not much else meaningfully matters.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
I won't say discussion, more like an extended put-down session on Another Site[TM]; it's become a way to guilt-trip people, and it's long since stopped being about representing characters fairly as who they are, whatever that may be.
If you're writing round, complicated characters with the ability to surprise the reader, then you'll probably be fine.

You step into troubled waters, though, if you write a character from a different race, or a female character, or a character of a different sexual orientation, and they're flat, uncomplicated, and not dynamic.

Too often what I think people giving criticisms perceive the author doing is basically writing not from a place of intimacy. For example, if you genuinely haven't broken bread with someone with a background of, say, Honey Boo Boo, then you'll end up writing what you've seen on television, or what you've observed from a distance. This is probably going to be a flat character full of stereotypes that would be bound to offend anyone from that background and who realizes that there's more to them than what's depicted on a reality television show.

I include Indian characters in my fiction because for seven years, I worked closely with them, I went out with them, I attended their marriages, I was involved with an Indian girl, and one of the best friends I've had was Indian. So I feel somewhat safe in how I depict them in my fiction.

Writing what you know is the common writer's advice, but it probably shouldn't be a license for a writer to feel that they can stay in their personal bubble as they craft fiction. "The Hunger Games" was an exciting book, but Suzanne Collins depicting the world in a more logical way based on current reality would have added an additional dimension to the book, for the better. Again, having Peeta or Gale be non-white isn't to fulfill some quota, it's to acknowledge that a fictional future world based on America will probably have white people as a minority. Unless current trends as we know them has been altered in the story, and there's no mention of that in the narrative or in related texts about the series.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Reziac:
I'm quite offended by this notion; I'm even more offended by the oft-repeated concept that I'm unable to know enough about these characters to write suitably about them, or worse, that if I don't represent the non[whatevers] in the prescribed PC fashion, I've committed 'racism' and 'cultural appropriation'.

You missed one: if you portray the non[whatevers] as paragons, you're patronizing them.

Personally, I don't give a fig about what somebody who doesn't write thinks writers should do. They have no idea what they're talking about. As for people who claim to write, I have a simple response:show me yours. If it's even close to doing what you think writers should do, then maybe I'll give your demands some serious thought.

I actually think that among people serious about writing there's a lot less real disagreement than you'd imagine from the heated discussions this topic encourages.

So let me propose this as a reasonable consensus position:

(1) It is good to be able to write fully developed minority characters who are both recognizably individual and recognizably part of the group to readers in that group. Writers who do the work to make this happen deserve praise.

(2) Where the author specifies that a character belongs to a group, the author should do the research to make that specification credible. If you make the character an heroic Navajo shaman,you should learn about Navajo religion and rituals, or make him something else. If you make a character a Wahabbist terrorist, you should read some Wahabbist terrorist screeds so you know how they actually think. You should be prepared to back up anything you claim about any group, even groups you made up.

(3) Important characters should be individuals first, members of the group second. Bigotry is denying members of a group either their individuality on one hand, or their identity on the other. Even minority villains can be OK as long as they are credible individuals. Even minority heroes can be bad if they convey the condescending attitude that minorities can't bear to see one of their number who isn't perfect.

(4) The presence or absence of token minority characters should be governed by what the readers will take away from that presence or absence. If the readers take away something the author does't want them to, then that's a problem that needs attention. If the presence of token minorities makes no difference, then putting them in won't accomplish anything.

(5) Sod the agendas of non-writers! Sod them left, right and center! It's one thing to complain about an author's positive misdeeds (using stale stereotypes in place of research), it's another to demand he does anyone's work but his own. If you think the world needs more of some kind of story, write one yourself and show us what we're missing.
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MattLeo:
(1) It is good to be able to write fully developed minority characters who are both recognizably individual and recognizably part of the group to readers in that group. Writers who do the work to make this happen deserve praise.

Well, here's another problem: This kinda assumes that the group is uniform -- that everyone within the group is recognisably a member of that group. And I dislike the Star Trek school of character typing.

But yeah, sod the bloody agendas, including those of writers.
 
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
 
Factoid about all of this:

From what I've heard, the question of strong female characters (or even just realistic female characters) has recently caused quite a schism/controversy/brouhaha among SF and Fantasy writers (as in the SFWA organization).

So it isn't just readers.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
I wonder why? I ask that because everything I've read in this thread strikes me as a lot of nonsense either railing against the conspiracy of darkness or the army of light; whatever those metaphors might mean to each individuals arguments. If you've got a story to tell, tell it.

Phil.
 
Posted by JSchuler (Member # 8970) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury:
From what I've heard, the question of strong female characters (or even just realistic female characters) has recently caused quite a schism/controversy/brouhaha among SF and Fantasy writers (as in the SFWA organization).

That seems to be the least of the SFWA's worries, although I wouldn't be surprised if that's the worry it chooses to preoccupy itself with.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
But yeah, sod the bloody agendas, including those of writers.
I'm unsure why accuracy is an agenda. When you're creating a future world, you base space travel on what currently exists, and assume where it can go; you base artificial intelligence on where it currently is, and assume where it will go; you base the environments of other planets by what we know, and assume how man will exist in them.

Yet after you've taken the time to create this future universe, you shrug and decide that nine out of every ten people introduced in the narrative will be (in most cases in published scifi, white) like you, the author?

What about applying population levels as they currently exist to the future is an agenda?
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
I'm unsure why accuracy is an agenda.

It's not. But arguing over politics is easier than writing fiction because you always know what to say next.

Let's get our head out of the story world for a moment and consider what accuracy accomplishes for us. Accuracy is a means, not an end, and the end is credibility. Truth is often stranger than fiction, and that's because fiction attempts to be credible. Reality doesn't care if you believe it or not.

Credibility puts authors on the horns of a dilemma because readers won't agree with each other about what is believable. I grew up in a dense urban "melting pot" neighborhood so when I read a story set in North American circa 2100 and it's populated with nothing but Browns and Smiths, I naturally wonder what happened to everyone else. But there are still in the US a large plurality of people, maybe even a majority of your readers, who grew up in places where everyone was named 'Johnson', or 'Miller', or 'Davis'. When they see all the Rodriguezes and Gonzaleses running around in your story, they're going to wonder what happened to all the descendants of all the people they know.

Now it so happens that the demographic data supports *my* view of what a normal North American names will sound like in 2100. But that doesn't matter; what matters is credibility. You pretty much can't avoid irritating someone no matter how you handle this.

What I think is the Estevez running the Galveston spaceport in 2100 will have more in common with his colleague Johnson than either of them will have with their great-grandfathers in the paternal line from 2014. In fact Estevez may be Johnson's cousin on the maternal side. This is exactly what happened with the great German demographic shift. In the 1800s Americans were worried about German immigration, and their fears were realized. The Germans took over, but nobody noticed because they changed their names from "Schmidt" to "Smith" or "Mueller" to "Miller". There are more Americans of German descent than any other ethnicity *by far*. They're just thoroughly assimilated and intermarried.

That is the accurate picture, but partisans on either side of the "diversity in fiction" debate aren't going to like it.
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
Several writing principles suggest, imply, guide, and offer individual solutions, or individual satisfactions anyway, to the identity crises of character identity matrices.

Individuality, as MattLeo notes.

Causality. If a narrative contains a person, say, a heavyset person of large proportions, those proportions (or other identity marker) ought should as a best practice be antagonal, causal, and tensional. Otherwise, the heavyset character motif is a cheap emotional appeal ploy: for humor, for disgust, for pity, at the expense of all heavyset people. Though an appeal no less for its cheapness at the expense of others' hurt feelings.

This is also Chekhov's Gun applied to any and all motifs as well as firearms. If a heavyset person appears in a first act, the heavyset person best have agency in a final act. Or contrarily, if a heavyset person influences an outcome--agency--the heavyset person best appear in an earlier act, so that the heavyset person's agency is pre-positioned or foreshadowed as influential.

Diversity for diversity's sake, purely, has no purpose antagonal, causal, tensional, no function, is coincidence, unnatural, and challenges willing suspension of disbelief, overlooks exoticness appeals, and disrupts participation mystique--the magical reader illusion of reality imitation immersion that is the highest ideal of popular prose writing.

I can imagine a narrative that contravenes all the advice, guidance, suggestion, imperative, writing principle, whatever, by any and every consensus position, any individual opinion, and yet appeal to a broad and deep audience.

Go ahead, put a heavyset character as the influenceless, agencyless paragon, central character of a work, say as the wise hermit everyone asks about but no one cares for, nor even "on stage," glorify bigotry, disparage nobleness, grandly exemplify what it means to be praise-ably wicked, ignore Chekhov's Gun, put disposable characters in the way for an immediate to the moment's exigent conveniences, malappropriate culture markers, tell all the action, show nothing, write dispassionately, create white room settings, portray no events to speak of, leave all wants and problems and complications open and ongoing, unended, satisfy nothing, no outcomes, ad infinitum. This too would be a rhetoric.

By the way, many narratives, some critically praised, do exactly this. Joyce, Chekhov, Brecht, Samuel Beckett, David Foster Wallace, to name a few writers who have done the above and been praised for contravening normative expectations.

Everything and anything under the sun or otherwise will have its day in the sun or the night or enjoy the guilty pleasures of private, personal indulgence in covert, locked rooms of the forbidden fruits of free will.

Not two sides, several billion individual sides, no two of which are in absolute agreement. Do what you will writing-wise; prose allows anything. How many can you reach with your side's viewpoint position? The best that's been done to date is in the half billion range.

[ June 30, 2014, 04:26 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
For me, it all boils down to this: I write whatever the heck I want to write and whoever likes it reads it. If I brown someone off they're free to hang me from the gibbet of my own literary construction or to burn me in effigy. But, apart from that, they can sod off and push their own barrow somewhere else.

Phil.

PS. Accuracy be damned! I never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
PS. Accuracy be damned!
I suppose this will come off as facetious, but this is an interesting statement in comparison to this quoted from May 30th, exactly a month ago.

quote:
For me, milieu means the society within which your story is set and, by society, I mean every aspect of the cultural, economic, theological and sociological elements of that society and how they interact and clash. Our milieu is the entire world around us that we inhabit and experience...

Just how much effort do you put into creating the milieu of your story? Is it a rough sketch (if that) to get you started and you’ll work it all out as you go, or is it a methodical exercise in world creation similar to JRR Tolkein, it took him 40 years to create the world of Middle Earth, or is it somewhere in-between?...

Personally, I have found that creating the milieu my characters inhabit is not enough, I have to explain, at least to myself, how that milieu came into existence.

This is excerpts from your post, but if you feel they're taking out of context to redefine their meaning, please correct me.

Just imagine this, though. Suzanne Collins sitting down to construct the milieu of "The Hunger Games". She pictures a setting: the Rocky Mountains, which stretch from Canada, through America, down to New Mexico. She puts the narratives date some 200 years in the future. She pictures the governments of three countries, Canada, America, and Mexico, collapsing, and from this wreckage, she images Panem rising from the ashes.

And as she's going through the painstaking task of creating this milieu, of taking notes, of rewrites, of asking questions about the area, of taking advice from friends and colleagues.

As she goes through the exercise of writing, is it to be understood that it never enters her head that *maybe* if Mexico is part of Panem, that there should be Mexicans in either the Capitol or one of the 13 Districts. That perhaps this is an important aspect of world building in her narrative? That if three countries fall and become one, that perhaps the darker representatives of that country should be featured somewhere, some how? It's an entire country who have millions of its citizens currently in America.

When Suzzane Collins wrote "Hunger Games", she was already a professional writer. Just some research would have filled in details to bring Mexican culture into the narrative. I can't believe she didn't have the time. This is what world building is. "Lord of the Rings", to my understanding, was heavily researched by J.R.R. Tolkien, researched from culture and history from real life.

This is what writing is.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
No, Denevius, the quote is accurate and not out of context. But what I'm struggling to understand is, what context? I can, as a writer, create any damn milieu I like and how accurately it mimics real life is my (the writers) decision. If anyone doesn't agree with my decisions and doesn't like what I've written based on those decisions then, well, not to put to fine a point on it, sod off and write the story you want to read. And, if in the process of writing my antithesis of the PC novel I make 47 trillion dollars, who's the fool then?

But, here I'll take issue with your assertions on JRR's world building. He built the entirety of his creation solely as a context within which to explore Elvish language. You can say whatever you wish, but they were explicitly his words. Middle Earth was an afterthought and the War of the Ring simply a footnote in the struggle against the enemy, Morgoth after he poisoned the Two Trees in Valinor.

And, as a footnote to another thread on strong female characters, they don't get much stronger than Galadriel. At the time Frodo met her she was roughly, (and I say this because there was a time when the Two Trees were in bloom where time was measured only in the intervals when the light of both trees intermingled), 25,000 years old, but that could easily be 25 or 250 million years old; only Tolkein really knows. The problem with Middle earth is it is a stagnant society. Nothing changes, nothing 'grows'. It's all as it was when men strode forth upon the land, carried there from the wreck of Numenor.

Phil.

[ July 01, 2014, 07:54 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
 
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
 
You could look at Middle-Earth as a vehicle for Tolkien's exploration of his private language, which is the reason why he developed it, but he did research many other details (rising of the moon, how to skin a rabbit), the better to invoke his world in the reader's mind. Though he did get some things wrong (spiders don't sting, they bite.)
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Robert, that is true. But that was for his 'story' not his 'world'. ERB did the same thing for Barsoom. As far as I know, he was the first 'modern' writer to attempt to 'create' a unique world. Banths, Callots and Zanths etc were all uniquely Barsoomian creatures and time measurements; there are no horses or minutes on ERB's Barsoom.

Btw, I'm not sure I remember correctly, but I think 'sting' refers to Bilbo's 'letter-opener' and not what the spiders were doing.

Phil.
 
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Grumpy old guy:

Btw, I'm not sure I remember correctly, but I think 'sting' refers to Bilbo's 'letter-opener' and not what the spiders were doing.

Phil.

Bilbo's and later Frodo's sword is called Sting. But Shelob also stung Frodo and attempted to sting Sam.

In fact, if I remember correctly, Bilbo named Sting after his encounter with the spiders in Mirkwood.
 
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
 
One theory traces that mistake to an experience Tolkien had as a child in Bloemfontein, where, it was said, he was stung by a spider. Only it may not have been a spider, it may have been a scorpion the locals called a spider.
 
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
 
quote:
But that was for his 'story' not his 'world'.
It's part and parcel of the same thing. Tolkien didn't need to research how to construct a language; he was already an expert in how languages work.

But other details, well, any one of them could trip up the unwary-but-knowledgable reader. Details are part of the world, not the story.

(I remember a couple of other errors. Pearls were found at the Mines of Moria---a location well away from the ocean. And Bilbo serves tomatoes to the party of Dwarves, at a time of year where they wouldn't've been ripe. (These might have been ones taken care of in after-the-publication revisions Tolkien (and his successors) carried out.))
 
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
 
Oh, yeah. There's also the error when Gimli says he hewed "naught but wood" since Moria, forgetting the vigorous exercise at Parth Galen. That is an error of story.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Nowall:
I remember a couple of other errors. Pearls were found at the Mines of Moria---a location well away from the ocean.

Be careful! There are such things as freshwater pearls.

While pearls are most often found in certain species of oysters, any bivalve can sometimes produce them, including the freshwater "pearl mussel". And there are a few, rare, obligate subterranean bivalve species found in cave-y places like the karst terrain of Slovenia or Bosnia.

So the existence of cave-pearls is far from impossible. In fact I suspect that somewhere in the deep places of the world there is such a thing, although humans may never find it.

Since there clearly is water in Moria, there may well be aquatic life there, either surviving on nutrients washed down from surface waters or on some kind of geothermal or geochemical energy. In fact ... we know that life on Middle Earth predated the creation of the Sun. There were trees that grew in perpetual darkness! Life must have flourished on some other vital principle, and so elaborate ecosystems may have flourished in the deep places of the world for many years.

The notion that Tolkien created Middle Earth first and then set his stories in it is an oversimplification in my opinion. It's clear his concept of Middle Earth and its history grew with the stories he wrote in it, which is only natural.
 
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
 
Also pearls are listed in a list of precious mineral jewels, making it likely something chosen for its poetic sound rather than a hard appreciation of mineralogy.

Water in Moria was evidently found at a deeper level than the mines---when Pippin throws a stone in the well, it takes a long time to land---as do Gandalf and the Balrog. Perhaps that deep cave pearls were found---but it's deeper than the mine.

All a point in favor of working out details for the world and not the story---one detail could spin off any number of problems for the writer later on. Some of the posthumous Tolkien publications have lengthy explanations and explorations for elements of Middle-Earth, and some of them fail because of a short-but-published reference.

To move away from Middle-Earth...there's a story about Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, where one world was a cold world, something that momentarily escaped one of them while writing. (I forget which.) One of them put a paragraph about someone sweating and looking at a female character, expressing something that implied a very hot world. So Niven-and-Pournelle changed the world, the ecology, the orbit, the history, everything---just to save the good line.

*****

Edited 'cause I dug out my old (thirty-nine years old) copy of The Mote in God's Eye and found the line---it's on page 17 of the old Pocket Books paperback. It reads: "Perspiration dripped steadily down his ribs and he thought, She doesn't sweat. She was carved from ice by the finest sculptor that ever lived." [Italics in the original.]

[ July 02, 2014, 05:06 AM: Message edited by: Robert Nowall ]
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Diversity for diversity's sake, purely, has no purpose antagonal, causal, tensional, no function, is coincidence, unnatural, and challenges willing suspension of disbelief, overlooks exoticness appeals, and disrupts participation mystique--the magical reader illusion of reality imitation immersion that is the highest ideal of popular prose writing.
I agree with this to an extent. The truth of the matter is that America is a multicultural, multiracial country. Not having a diverse cast in ones story is in direct opposition to the reality of America, and many Western countries. I'll go so far as to say it's like writing a story in Korea without Koreans. It should be impossible to imagine this, though the reality is that the story could be written. Expats, like every other foreign group in a native country, tend to clump together, and tend to stick together. I can definitely imagine a short story that takes place in a more isolated area, say a camping trip, or the night of a party, featuring only expats, even though it's in Korea.

And I can easily imagine a story that has only major expat characters, and Korean people are entirely descriptive, like a bus, or building. This is because fiction is usually about some type of change, and in expat communities, it's often another expat that creates this character change. One of the complaints of Koreans mirrors Americas complaints about foreigners. You'll have expats who have married a Korean, who have kids who are Korean, and who have been living here for five years or more, who know almost no Korean. Beyond their Korean wife, these people tend to only have other foreign friends, so the necessity to learn the language isn't there.

In the expat community, you tend to find one of two types of people: those who stick almost exclusively to expats, so all of the most important moments of their lives in Korea for the one or two years they tend to be here are wrapped around another expat (and this is the vast majority of them here); or those who you seldom see around at expat events, who have mastered some Korean, and whose most important moments in Korea have Koreans in them.

So yes, a story in Korea can very well have almost no Korean characters. But isn't this a travesty? It may not be an expat's duty to include Korean characters, but it certainly seems like a failing not to.

I would say the same for America. Yes, you don't have to have a diverse cast in your scifi, fantasy, or speculative fiction story. But it seems like a failing to live in a society quite so diverse, but to only represent a small percentage of that diversity in your world building. Now, I'm not naive, and I am aware that many people's experiences in America is exclusive. You'll have immigrants live in the country for years never learning the language. You'll have communities, almost all Asian, all Black, all Mexican, all White. If you simply observe groups of people out at the mall, or restaurants, or the movies, you'll see that the groups are homogeneous.

So okay, this is reality, but I don't think we should try and rationalize it. Suzanne Collins didn't include Mexicans, or Asians, or Indians, in "Hunger Games" not because it didn't have a place in the narrative. Again, how could a story taking place in America combining three countries, one of which is Mexico, rationally claim that there was no space for non-white people besides Rue?

But I'm willing to guess that Suzanne Collins probably lives in an exclusive bubble. It's not that she doesn't interact with non-white people. It's more that all of the most important moments in her life don't include non-white individuals. Because the alternative to this would be depressing: that she has a diverse range of individuals intimately in her life, but decided to stick to white as some type of default color in her prose. Like bandaids that are "flesh colored", but they only fit the flesh of one color.

And this is where I disagree with the idea that diversity for diversity sake is distracting, or breaks the illusion. Applying a bandaid to dark skin and calling it flesh colored is extremely noticeable; having a cast of all whites as if they're the everyman that all non-whites are supposed to simply accept as representatives of themselves is noticeable, and distracting as one tries to submerge in the fictional world.

I read an interesting article on Cracked.com that made a similar point about the movie "Noah", which featured an all white cast.

quote:
What's different in this specific case, however, is that when Noah co-writer Ari Handel was asked in a recent interview why they chose not to cast anyone of color, he said this:

"What we realized is that this story is functioning at the level of myth, and as a mythical story, the race of the individuals doesn't matter. They're supposed to be stand-ins for all people. Either you end up with a Benetton ad or the crew of the Starship Enterprise."

He went on further: "You either try to put everything in there, which just calls attention to it, or you just say, 'Let's make that not a factor, because we're trying to deal with everyman.'" And that, you see, is why no one was distracted by the all-white cast, and why no one asked him that question just now. There's also the subtle implication that non-white audiences are perfectly capable of relating to the white everyman, while white audiences will obviously freak out at the slightest hint of diversity.


Read more: http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/4-bad-excuses-awful-stereotypes-in-recent-pop-culture/#ixzz36S8TEYUm


 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
Speaking of heavyset people, they are curiously absent in fiction considering half of America's population is overweight. But I think in sci/fantasy fiction, they're properly neglected. Both of these universe genres tend to be really competitive physically, and the role of a heavyset person would have to be sedentary. But then, Tolkein had his overweight dwarves. It's a question, though, of how Bombur could be quite so fat considering all the walking characters generally did in Tolkein's Middle Earth. It's one thing to be big-boned, but it's another to have rolls of fat, as Bombur's character is described.

In "Hunger Games", there wouldn't be much of a logical reason for overweight people to feature in the narrative. First of all, the districts are starving. Secondly, the Capital is filled with extreme body modification. Sure, as a metaphor, the President could have been fat, similar to what Frank Herbert does with the Duke in "Dune". But the fat evil lord is a cliche image, and somewhat offensive. Not that it can't be done, but it would need to be subverted somehow to make it fresh and original.

Funny enough, to turn to good examples of an overweight person being used in an interesting and realistic manner in fantasy is "Game of Thrones". Here, you're introduced to two notable overweight characters: King Robert Baratheon,and Samwell Tarly.

With King Robert, it makes sense that he's overweight, as muscle turns to fat, and he has been sitting on the Iron Throne, drinking and womanizing, for years. Samwell, being a coward in a warrior's universe, turned to books, which also makes sense, and makes him useful to the other characters.

And I'm sure it doesn't hurt that George R.R. Martin is overweight, so added overweight characters.

I've never written fat characters in a story. There's no narrative I've written where an overweight person would reasonably fit in. However, I have written characters who I describe as 'thick', simply because 'thick' has different cultural connotations depending on who you ask.

I had a young female character who enticed all men who looked at her, I described her as thick, and I got one or two critiques that mentioned that I used the wrong word.

But just a fat character? If I'd lived in Japan rather than Korea, I could have probably done it. I saw sumo wrestling in Japan and know that there's a compelling argument for overweight warriors. These guys won't be running and dodging any time soon, but they're lightning quick in close combat.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Denevius, if you're looking for diversity try The Horseclans series written by Robert Adams. It even has Queebekians in it. (I think that's how he spelt it.)

Phil.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Denevius, if you're looking for diversity
It's question, though, of why diversity in fiction has to be "looked for" in a country like America. It seems like it would be there naturally and in abundance simply by the nature of the country.
 
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
 
"Thick" in a description suggests problems with mental processes to me, but I'd have to see the content to know for sure.

Denevius, you bring up a couple good examples of "diversity within fat." There's a difference between, say, Mr. Creosote fat, and the guy / girl who's just put on a few pounds, with considerable room for variation between them.

Also standards have changed over the centuries in the Western world...evidently the Renaissance period and beyond thought women beautiful when they were a little, er, heftier than what's preferred now.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Robert, I think you're referring to Rubenesque. Denevius, to be brutally honest I'm wondering what all the fuss is about? So, there isn't enough diversity in ethnicity and culture to satisfy your wants? Fine, do something about it and write stories with what you consider to be the appropriate ethnic mix and be done with it.

But, why should I care, or bother to pander to your desires. I'll write the stories I want to write and we'll let the readers decide what they want to read.

"It isn't fair and it isn't right!" But, who really cares? Frankly, I don't. And if that makes me a bad person in your eyes, I really couldn't give a toss.

Now, having 'wound you up', no doubt, think about what I'm saying: You want us to change the world, to become the avant-garde of fantasy/sci-fi and lead the way in setting all of writing wrongs right. Really? 'Cos that's essentially what you're asking and my response is simply, "What's in it for me?"

Phil.
Opinions sold for a dollar each and one world wrong righted for two.
 
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
 
Yup, "Rubenesque" is the term I had in mind. I do admit a certain doubt over the subject...after all, what do works of art made for commissions say about standards of the culture?
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Grumpy old guy:

But, who really cares? Frankly, I don't. And if that makes me a bad person in your eyes, I really couldn't give a toss.

That's really not the point. The question isn't whether you're a bad person, it's whether you're a bad writer.

Diversity is very similar to the issue of scientific accuracy in sci-fi. Some readers don't care if you have canals on Mars or cavemen riding dinosaurs in your stories. Others are sticklers for accuracy.

It's largely a function of scientific awareness. I'm sensitive to landscape. When Captain Picard lands some planet, I'm not seeing trees, bushes and grass, I'm seeing canyon live oak, California sagebrush, and bone-dry fescue. There's really only one landscape on Earth that looks like that, and it's all found within two hundred miles of Los Angeles. Seeing a planet hundreds of light years from Earth that looks like Southern Cal is jarring; seeing it repeatedly is unintentionally funny. But I can live with that because they have a good reason not to travel to Tibet or Costa Rica for exterior shots: budget. It's either a location shoot in LA county or back to fiberglass rocks and dry ice mist.

Anthropological and sociological accuracy is exactly the same kind of issue, it just affects different people depending on their awareness. Naturally, if you set your story in Middle Earth, Hyperborea or Westeros, nobody can say you're wrong about the ethnic makeup of your characters. But if you set your story on Earth, either in the recent past, present or near future, people will notice inaccuracies in your depiction of all kinds of things, including ethnicity, depending on their awareness.

Example: A story set in near-future post-Apocalypse LA needs to have Latinos, or I'll think you're just a lazy and ignorant writer. Set the same story in Fargo North Dakota and the question never arises.

Example: Set your story in 1950 America, then nobody will an eye at the absence of women in positions of responsibility. Set the same story in 2050 and there'll have to be women in leadership positions or you'll look stupid.

Of course you can do anything you want if you *explain it*, and the explanation has relevance to the rest of your story. Set your post-Apocalypse LA story in a gated neonazi enclave, and the absence of Latinos makes perfect sense: they're Untermenschen. Maybe in the future there's been a civil war between men and women, after which they live in different cities, reproducing exclusively through cloning. It makes sense that there are no women astronauts in your space force; they're all on the other side.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MattLeo:
depending on their awareness

That's the whole point, right up there. And, I'm sorry to say, most people are blissfully unaware of any issues of ethnicity in the stories they read. They're reading for entertainment, not social or anthropological commentary. If it were such a big issue amongst readers then that would translate into book sales--or the lack of them for non-inclusive authors. But do we see that? No. We simply see writers navel-gazing and proposing views that the majority of the planet don't care about.

Phil.
Throwing petrol on the fire.
 
Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :
 
Here is some more fuel to the fire. [Smile]

Grumpy Old Guy;

quote:
And, I'm sorry to say, most people are blissfully unaware of any issues of ethnicity in the stories they read.
Not most people, you mean most white people don't care. I'm fairly sure most people of color do care.

I remember watching the movie Boomerang when I was young, and I spent half the movie wondering where all the white people were. I bet people of color wonder about that in 90 % of movies and books they watch and read.

If you don't think it is important to be inclusive than don't worry about it. But I agree with Denevius that it is unrealistic to have stories about present day Earth or a futuristic Earth and not think about diversity. Just my opinion.

Denevius, I think your stereotyping heavy or overweight people by saying that they are lazy and don't move much. I'm not sure how big you are thinking about when you talk about overweight, but genetics plays a huge role in body type. I know a lot of people who are a little overweight who are a lot more physically fit than some thin people.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Throwing petrol on the fire.
I don't think your response is throwing petrol on the fire, Phil. I do think that your responses are not up to snuff to your usual thoughtful commentary. Obviously you don't agree, or don't think this is worth the time to worry about, but to brush it off and say "most people don't really care" is wrong. At the very least accept the fact that most non-whites do care, which is close to 50% of the population in America.

The problem, though, is publicly saying you care brings up accusations of complaining, or tying to force people to fill a quota. The status quo doesn't want to lose its privileged status, and no argument is going to sway that.

quote:
I remember watching the movie Boomerang when I was young, and I spent half the movie wondering where all the white people were. I bet people of color wonder about that in 90 % of movies and books they watch and read.
There were white people in "Boomerang". One of the earliest jokes of the movie had Eddie Murphy and his three friends shopping for suits, being followed by a white attendant, and on their way out, Murphy screams, "Ah", the white guy jumps, and he makes a witticism about it which I can't quite recall now.

Most black movies will feature white people somewhere, even if they aren't central characters, simply because any alternative is completely unrealistic. Even in all black neighborhoods, there's a better than average chance that the corner store will be run by someone from Korea, or the local Dunkin Donuts will have an Indian worker behind the counter. But you'll find movies filled *only* with white characters, like "Noah". Or, to my memory, "Fargo". I'm pretty sure "Clerks" didn't feature anything except a white cast. And, really, I could name a quite a few movies that have only white characters. Where a non-white face simply doesn't show up in any capacity.

In "Boomerang", though, all of the central characters, to my memory, were black. But that's not much different from "Lost in Translation", a movie that takes place in Tokyo, but all of the central characters are white. There is not one Japanese person of consequence in the movie, and the role the Japanese take in the movie are basically set props. They're there as a backdrop to this offbeat romantic copy between two white people.

However, this is realistic. These movies took place in more or less modern times where, as I mentioned above, most groups, even in America, are still quite homogeneous. Those people who create character change in their lives usually look like them.

quote:
Denevius, I think your stereotyping heavy or overweight people by saying that they are lazy and don't move much.
That's interesting, as I specifically didn't say that. What I said is that in the right circumstances, such as sumo wrestlers, you'll have an overweight person who proves to be a very adept and fast fighter:

quote:
If I'd lived in Japan rather than Korea, I could have probably done it. I saw sumo wrestling in Japan and know that there's a compelling argument for overweight warriors. These guys won't be running and dodging any time soon, but they're lightning quick in close combat.
This is from my comment on overweight characters. My point, though, was that overweight characters would be difficult to write in a lot of scifi/fantasy novels because usually, these stories require people in fit, physical condition to survive.

It's hard to see Decker from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" as overweight. It's hard to see Katniss as overweight. Of course, Harry Potter could have been overweight, since that's just magic and studying. And to be honest, it might have made more sense. I only read the first book, of course, but I don't recall Harry engaging in too much exercise or physical combat.

quote:
I'm not sure how big you are thinking about when you talk about overweight, but genetics plays a huge role in body type. I know a lot of people who are a little overweight who are a lot more physically fit than some thin people.
We're using the term general"overweight", but we haven't given concrete descriptions, so perhaps that's why there's disagreement. When Extrinsic mentioned an "overweight" character, I figured he meant obese, like Bombur in "Lord of the Rings".

EDITED TO ADD: most people aren't aware that Oskar from "Let the Right One In" is a plump child in the book. If you watch the movie, you might wonder why he keeps getting called "Piggy" by the bullies. Well, that's why. He's a plump little kid.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Denevius, I guess I'm biased--I'm a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). And that's probably the main reason why my stories do not have a huge level of ethnic diversity. In my story, Æsir Dawn, all of the 'human' characters and 'gods' are predominantly white, however some essential characters are non-white (Anatolian I guess would be the current designation but in the past they were better known as Trojans). In another, The Gryphon Throne, the ostensible 'bad guys' have ebony coloured skin that is pitch black. This isn't racial stereotyping as they have the more advanced culture, society and technology.

Now, I'm not sure that these examples even faintly meet any level of cultural diversity, but I am trying to point out that, as a writer, I will pick and choose that level which I deem is appropriate to my story. And, again, I have to stress the point that I'm biased, and I admit it, but I'm not about to stretch my abilities to extrapolate what it is to be a member of another race or culture unless I've spent the time to create that race or culture.

Phil.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Grumpy old guy:
quote:
Originally posted by MattLeo:
depending on their awareness

That's the whole point, right up there. And, I'm sorry to say, most people are blissfully unaware of any issues of ethnicity in the stories they read. They're reading for entertainment, not social or anthropological commentary.
You're attacking a strawman - nobody is saying make your story an anthropological commentary, any more than anyone is saying make the story a lecture on physics or astronomy.

Getting details wrong that can easily be got right is just lazy writing, and *some* people do notice when the author can't be bothered. Even *more* people notice when an author takes the trouble to get things right.

Factual errors about ethnicity are easy to avoid. If you don't want to have any Hispanic surnamed characters, don't set your story in post-apocalyptic LA. Set it in Fargo. Or a different planet. No anthropological commentaries needed, just a basic respect for the intelligence of your readers.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
But, MattLeo, my point is that despite what you may think, the majority of people don't notice. I can honestly say it never occurred to me or any of the writers I've been associated with. As far as readers perceptions of the 'issue' are concerned, I've never met one who's asked, "Why are all your characters white?" And that isn't just limited to me talking with white readers, I have had contact with a vast array of people from diverse backgrounds that cover most of the globe.

Phil.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
Well, let's leave "white" aside -- that's just meaningless pseudoscience. Let's say "culturally identifying with a country which speaks a Germanic language." Let's call such people ethnically Germanic (or perhaps para-Germanic in the case of the Celtic peoples of Britain).

Now as you should have gleaned from this conversation that I'm not a huge fan of tokenism. Although... like anything else, some people do tokenism better than others. Bollywood films have to sell into a market with over 40 distinct ethnicities, and the results are disarmingly eager to please, despite that being crassly calculated to maximize box office. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned there.

Still, I'm not talking about tokenism. I'm talking about situations where the author's own choice of setting and story call for at least some of the characters to identify themselves as other than ethnically Germanic.

If there is no logical requirement that the story contain a diversity of characters, you're fine by me. But if there is a requirement, and you ignore it, I think you're being lazy. But tokenism isn't the only way to do handle this.

THE HUNGER GAMES is an interesting example. As Denevius points out Panem ought to be an ethnically and racially diverse nation. But I'm not so much focused on the lack of people named "Gonzales" or "Rodriguez" as the lack of people named "Johnson" or "Miller" -- Or "Tremblay" or "Bouchard" for that matter.

What the lack of now common surnames suggests to me is that Panem experienced a kind of forced de-ethnicizing at some point, during which people were assigned new surnames with no past assocations. That's not lazy, it's brilliant.

Of course it may not have been a conscious choice by the author. So much of this stuff comes from who knows where, but what it means is that the diversity problem doesn't actually arise in the HUNGER GAMES.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
What the lack of now common surnames suggests to me is that Panem experienced a kind of forced de-ethnicizing at some point, during which people were assigned new surnames with no past assocations. That's not lazy, it's brilliant.
Is this from an addendum, as I don't remember that from the series.

And I guess that would kind of work, as acts of cultural genocide is common throughout history when one side dominates another. It doesn't explain the absence of non-white features in physical descriptions of characters, however. This is just some stats from U.S. Census Bureau's projection of population growth by race.

quote:
The non-Hispanic white population is projected to peak in 2024, at 199.6 million, up from 197.8 million in 2012. Unlike other race or ethnic groups, however, its population is projected to slowly decrease, falling by nearly 20.6 million from 2024 to 2060.

Meanwhile, the Hispanic population would more than double, from 53.3 million in 2012 to 128.8 million in 2060. Consequently, by the end of the period, nearly one in three U.S. residents would be Hispanic, up from about one in six today.

The black population is expected to increase from 41.2 million to 61.8 million over the same period. Its share of the total population would rise slightly, from 13.1 percent in 2012 to 14.7 percent in 2060.

The Asian population is projected to more than double, from 15.9 million in 2012 to 34.4 million in 2060, with its share of nation's total population climbing from 5.1 percent to 8.2 percent in the same period...All in all, minorities, now 37 percent of the U.S. population, are projected to comprise 57 percent of the population in 2060.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb12-243.html

So, realistically speaking, even if Katniss never ran into a Gonzales, she'd still see around District 12 the descendants of Mexicans, Indians, Blacks, Asians, all of which are missing in descriptions of characters in all three books.

quote:
As far as readers perceptions of the 'issue' are concerned, I've never met one who's asked, "Why are all your characters white?"
I wouldn't ask this question, either, because I already know the answer, and asking will only make you feel like you're being attacked and put you on the defensive. So it's more out of politeness, I think, that it's not mentioned.

quote:
And that isn't just limited to me talking with white readers, I have had contact with a vast array of people from diverse backgrounds that cover most of the globe.
I question the veracity of this statement, as dialog about lack of diversity in literature and film is nothing new. Again, I can see people not bringing it up out of politeness, though, as one doesn't bring up politics or religion.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
MattLeo, Denevius, I can see, at least from my point of view, that we will never agree on this subject. Each of us has our own perspective and rationale concerning the relevance of incorporating diversity in our literary endeavours, and each of them is different. Personally, I'm satisfied that my writing is not intentionally exclusive, simply unintentionally so. Having said that, in my Jack Rayne story, my protagonist is envisioned as being either half Anglo and half Chinese or half Sri Lankan. And, politeness be damned, numerous times I've been referred to as a 'skip' by members of other races at various times in my life, a racist slur referring to my 'white' antecedents. It goes both ways, you know. Btw, skip refers to 'Skippy, the bush kangaroo'--a TV show.

Phil.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
Well, Phil, you seem to insist on putting me in the "token minorities camp," a place where I'm neither comfortable nor entirely welcome. Here's my problem with tokenism: it's crypto-majoritarian. By that I mean tokenism conceives "diversity" in terms of categories *as perceived by the majority culture*.

Case in point: I once worked in a new non-profit organization headed by a brilliant scientist/environmentalist -- man of strong and noble liberal sentiments. He looked around at the eight of us at the conference table one day shortly after Alejandro joined us. "Four women, one black, one Latino, one Asian," the boss said, rubbing his palms together. "We're doing great on diversity!" He was counting me as "Asian" because I'm 1/2 Han Chinese.

While the sentiment was as I said noble, the logic struck me as absurd. Why do people descended from Spain have a category of their own, but all of Asia ends up in one giant pot? People in Japan are no closer culturally to Han Chinese than Spaniards are to Englishmen -- and people from Indonesia and the Philippines are less so. And the "black" woman was from Africa -- she had no cultural affinity at all with African Americans. And why does *Africa* get one category which they share with African Americans? There's over 2000 distinct languages spoken in Africa. Using language as a rough marker of cultural identity, there's 50x as much cultural diversity in Africa than in all of Europe from Greenland to the Caspan Sea. The conception of "Africa" as one place falls so short of the reality that calling it "Eurocentric" doesn't begin to capture the absurdity.

As for Alejandro, he wasn't particularly representative of Mexicans. He was from an elite family, one of the roughly 10% of Mexicans who are entirely of Spanish descent. In fact this was true of everyone else around the table but me: each was a scion of some wealthy, elite family. And here's the kicker: all of the others graduated from the same environmental policy program the boss founded. They were a great group of people, but from where I sat they were not "diverse".

The point here is that the token minority approach to diversity is patronizing and unavoidably ignorant, even when it is undertaken by very, very smart, well-intentioned people. So don't take this approach when you write.

But don't stubbornly hire character after character right off the same production line either. Good writing is particular. It manages at once to be both familiar and surprising. You can't do that with paper dolls for characters.

And I know you haven't got any complaints. That's not the point; if a *reader* complains it's going to be for political reasons, and I'm talking craft. Fiction is like stage magic. Readers have no idea how it's done.
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Grumpy old guy:
No, Denevius, the quote is accurate and not out of context. But what I'm struggling to understand is, what context? I can, as a writer, create any damn milieu I like and how accurately it mimics real life is my (the writers) decision.

I take what you're saying to be: "I want my created world to be real in context and true to itself. If that's nothing like Real Life, too bad."

And I feel more and more this way as my world continues to develop into its own self place.

It does bother some readers that my people don't react like humans. They're NOT humans; should I force them to behave as they would not? Isn't that the core of the argument here -- that some characters are deformed into roles rather than allowed to be themselves?
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Nowall:
(I remember a couple of other errors. Pearls were found at the Mines of Moria---a location well away from the ocean. And Bilbo serves tomatoes to the party of Dwarves, at a time of year where they wouldn't've been ripe.

Not necessarily... The hothouse for growing out-of-season fruits was invented at least a couple thousand years ago; Hobbits are not primitives. And there are freshwater pearls:

http://www.greatriver.com/pearls.htm
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Each of us has our own perspective and rationale concerning the relevance of incorporating diversity in our literary endeavours, and each of them is different.
Yeah, I do think you're missing the point, though I'm unsure why.

"Hunger Games" is a future America. Current population of America suggests that non-white will be the majority by a fair percentage. "Hunger Games" has only one description of this projected majority in Rue and her family, whereas everyone else is white.

This doesn't make sense. If you look at only those four statements:

1) "Hunger Games" is a future America.

2) Current population of America suggests that non-white will be the majority by a fair percentage.

3) Hunger Games" has only one description of this projected majority in Rue, whereas everyone else is white.

4) This doesn't make sense.

I'm left unsure how there can be disagreement. If there were no descriptions of characters, then fine, they truly would be the "everyman". But we get loads of physical descriptions, from Katniss and her family, to Peeta, Gale, and the people of the other Districts, to the people of the Capital.

It simply doesn't make sense that minorities are "unintentionally" left out.
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
Though western culture is diverse, the majority of any identity cohort, ethnicity in particular, live out their lives in close-knit enclaves most of their existence. More people rarely stray outside their carefully well-designed enclaves than people live and coexist within a culturally diverse society. The actual absolute barriers between enclaves mere veils of illusion, though relative bastions and edifices of impermeability.

Simply put, the larger reading audience in the west wants no contact with the other, the stranger, the danger of those not like them.

On the other hand, the relative few who exist outside enclaves generally welcome diversity for its excitements, though they (we) are generally most comfortable, most content at least, when uncomfortable. We know each other on sight, by our unconventional, subtle subversions. Although we can be content among our native enclaves, we remain exoteric to esoteric cohorts, perennial outsiders no matter where we may be, range riders of the frontier social peripheries. We are a natural force for cultural diffusion. We are traders, explorers, scientists, philosphers, artists, sociologists, writers, ambassadors, warriors, subversives, and so on: we venture where most fear to tread.
 
Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :
 
Finally getting around to responding here. Besides being busy with getting my E-novel ready and not doing much in the way of responding here or on G+, I also I misunderstood the title for this thread. I didn't take a look at it until three or four days ago.

After thinking about it I decided that I didn't have much to say that is new. I already stated on the other thread what I thought of all of this--pretty much.

Fat people though is new. I think not all that long ago leaving them out would have been considered bad--like any other group, but lately I believe that has changed and now including them would be good. At least from the POV of the group(s) who push hard at diversity.

However I know I have ran into fat characters in books and stories. Recently in fact, even though I can't remember the tale. It could have been in one of the anthologies that I have read recently instead of a book.

To repeat something I did say before and add something new after all.

Diversity in skin color and ideas, is good because we are made up of differs peoples, so it's more realistic. But I recent the idea that we as writers should include diversity. And I ask those of you who feel like we should. Do you include A-sexuals? Yes, I read a blog post of a pro writer who was had just thought that that was one group that have been totally forgotten.

I said I do a lot of different types of people--almost too many in that E-novel I referenced--but many times I don't say who my characters are. Many on the demand side will say that are all whit, because I am, but I don't describe them so no one can say for sure. I have included MC's with hispanic names not for reasons of diversity, but because I liked the names.

And Hambly isn't the only writer with that problem Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a series with a black PI and has gotten flack over it. I believe she just pretty much ignored it and let the readers decide. They did. I don't know if she talks about slavery or even racism in her books, even though it would seem likely there would be some talk of it.
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
I'm unsure why accuracy is an agenda.

With regard to characters, accuracy is an opinion. Accurate according to whom, or per which faction?

So I make my characters accurate according to their world, with no agendas but their own.

Tho I freely admit the reason I have one intelligent species was an adverse reaction to the monster-mashing overindulged by Lucas.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Do you include A-sexuals? Yes, I read a blog post of a pro writer who was had just thought that that was one group that have been totally forgotten.
Do you have a link to this blog?
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
With regard to characters, accuracy is an opinion.
This is quoted from Kathleen on a story thread:

quote:
Gregg L, on Earth mass can be used inter-changeably with weight (though it really shouldn't).

Mass is basically how much matter there is and weight is how much gravitational force is exerted on that matter.

Mass will not change unless some matter is either added or removed.

Weight will change depending on the gravitational force (which is different on the Moon than it is on the Earth).

So if someone from the Earth goes to the Moon, that person's WEIGHT will change, but the mass will remain the same.

Is this opinion or fact? What's more accurate, to say weight changes on the moon, or to say mass changes on the moon?

If you think this is opinion, you'll have to explain why, as it seems like fact, and one wording is more accurate than another wording.

Similarly, if you write a future world in America based upon what we currently know abut population levels, projections state that non-white will be a majority to white in America, and Mexicans will be 1 in 3 of the population.

If you don't want your future America to reflect projected population levels, that's not accurate. If you want your world to still have a majority of whites over non-whites, that's not factual based on what we know today. And when this is done, motivation becomes an issue. One can say it was unintentional, but then, when the unintentional mistake is corrected, usually the answer isn't, "Well, I'll just use mass anyway even though I know it should be weight."

As Matt said, that doesn't make you a bad person, but it does make you a poorer writer. Can you get away with it? Sure, it happens all the time. Should you willfully *decide* that though you know better, you're still going to do the wrong thing? Well, I suppose if you're white, and it's a comfort level thing to dream a white future America, okay.

But don't tell yourself that non-whites don't mind because they may still buy your book, or see your movie. They *do* mind, which is why the conversation (and let's not say 'diversity', as that's a loaded word to shrug off the argument) takes place.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Denevius, your arguments about the possible make-up of the population of any given country in the future as being directly relational to our current projections is, not to put too fine a point on it, extrapolation and assumption.

Yes, on the balance of probabilities, you may be correct, but there is many a slip betwixt cup and lip. Anything could happen to skew population statistics in unexpected ways. In the 90's it was assumed that Chinese would be the prime language on Earth, for trade at least. English, and usually bad English, is still the 'international' language and that doesn't look like changing (which will annoy the French no end). So, if you have a rationale for having one race being preeminent go for it.

Phil.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
It seems more problematic to "assume" that non-white populations will substantially decrease so that the majority white populaton in scifi/futuristic books can exist, than it is to follow the projected populaton levels of the U.S Census Bureau when crafting your story.

Though you may be wrong with the U,S. Census Bureau, at least you're following the best empircal evidence currently available. If you assume that whites will just be the majority wihout any just cause, you're writing a racial agenda in your narrative, intentional or not.

Comparing the lack of Chinese spoken for international trade, to millions of non-white people currently living in America no longer existing in the future, is, to use a cliche, comparing apples and oranges. Non-whites already make up 37% of the population. If you write a story where everone is white except for one family, you're writing a gross inaccuracy. The question is to what end?
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Denevius, imagine a virulent, mutated strain of sickle-cell anemia that is 100% fatal--all peoples of middle eastern ancestry would be wiped off the face of the planet in on fell swoop. The same could be said of a mutant strain of rosacia that, instead of enlarging surface blood cells caused them to rupture in a similar vein to some hemorrhagic fevers--a vast majority of people with Celtic ancestry would be wiped off the face of the planet.

You DO NOT KNOW what will happen in the future and your assumptions are predicated on another; that trends that are happening now will continue into the future. That is, in my opinion, arrant nonsense. As for this:

quote:
If you write a story where everyone is white except for one family, you're writing a gross inaccuracy. The question is to what end?
The ends are of my own making for the purposes of my own story. If you don't like it, don't read it. If you want a different sort of story, then you write it and, if it's any good I'll read it and, if it isn't, I'll bag it (call it a load of rot in case you're wondering about the slang).

Phil.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Grumpy old guy:
In the 90's it was assumed that Chinese would be the prime language on Earth, for trade at least. English, and usually bad English, is still the 'international' language and that doesn't look like changing (which will annoy the French no end).

Nobody with any brains thought Chinese was going to take over from English any time soon in International business. It take a long time to displace a language in a function. English hasn't completely taken over from French as the operating language for international organizations due to French's former status as a language of diplomacy. If you're writing about two hundred years in the future, it's very possible that English will play a secondary role to Chinese or Hindi in business. It doesn't *have* to, but it might.

All that's a red herring though. We're talking about following a "whites only" policy in your writing. If you are writing about international business in the present day, it wouldn't be credible to have someone in, say, manufacturing who never comes in contact with non-Europeans. He'd have to have Asian suppliers and competitors. Believe me, I've been involved in this kind of thing. China and Asia are a BIG deal.

I'm not talking politics here, I'm talking about not looking foolish. If you insist on maintaining your whites-only policy you can't write about anyone involved in international business in the present day or near future -- and probably not the far future either. It's your *choice* of course, but that means it's your choice whether you want to look like you have no idea what you're talking about.

That doesn't mean you can't set your story in other situations, say a planet thousands of years in the future populated by an entirely white expedition from Cornwall, UK.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
MattLeo, apart from a few archaic terms and outmoded phrases, French is no longer de-rigueur in diplomatic discourse. And, I'm sorry to say, that according to your argument, the majority of writers writing the majority of works of fiction, literature and fantasy are at this moment, what did you say? Ah, yes, looking foolish. Really?

More and more this is reminding me of a group of people railing against the way the world IS and NOT doing anything themselves to change it other than to point the finger at others and say to everyone else, "You oughta . . ."

Grumpy.
 
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
What's more accurate, to say weight changes on the moon, or to say mass changes on the moon?

1--You're kidding, right?

2--What does this have to do with the topic of this thread?
 
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
 
On the language predictions, Poul Anderson wrote a whole series of science fiction novels in which Brazil had become the major economic power of the future. So the "trade" language in his books was Portuguese.

Still hasn't happened, but that didn't make his books any less valid as science fiction.
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
Detailing a character's identity matrix, which gender studies does as ethnography, another social science, is about as practical for prose writing as a psychoanalysis of a character. Explain and summarize a character's personality conditions as non-normative: schizophrenia, bipolar, obsessive compulsive, autism spectrum, or other, clinically, is about as dry and bland as doing so with any detail: physical appearance, complexion, ethnicity, vocation, etc., and same with setting's details.

A best practice for any and every setting or character and often event detail is to show through implication.

This character's name is John Smith, for example. About as plain a name as Anglo society has to offer, or Jane Leigh. Use a name like Dante Tercell implies a person of a minority ethnicity; however, other cues are needed to meet readers' needs. Actions, speech, thought, perception emphases, motives, stakes, etc., ad infinitum.

Can an audience care about that ethnic minority person if complicated by wants and problems that mean little if anything to the audience? Probably not, nor be curious about. If that character is a complication for a character an audience does care about and is curious about, that former character matters to that audience.

Otherwise, even diverse cultures co-existing somewhat self-isolate into rigid enclaves, regardless of identity marker. Unlike magnetic poles and atomic particles, like attracts like, though only insofar as folk need variety within limits.

By an exponential factor, educated well-to-do Caucasian females of any age read more than any other cohort group, numerically, quantity per capita and material quantity, to a peak of as much as one hundred times more reading than any other cohort, no matter the native language or location in the world.

Fantasy's core audience outpaces science fiction's core audience two to one for the same reasons, roughly 100,000 core U.S. fantasy readers, 50,000 core science fiction readers. Literary fiction's core audience also numbers around 100,000.

During the Potter phenomenon's heyday, young adult readership swelled beyond all adult readership. Though not a measurable core audience, youth are fickle readers, arguably, the Twilight and Hunger Games franchises reflect the Potter phenom numerically, a core reading audience numbering around two million. They are coming of age, though, having middle adult life complications, and soon will number statistically comparable to prior adult readerships. Life gets in the way.

Pragmatically, a writer might target reading audience cores, which favor, again, educated, well-to-do Caucasian females of any age. Do they care if an ethnic person is a central agonist? Do they care if an ethnic person is portrayed in an unsympathetic light? Do they care if antagonists, villains, nemeses, etc., are more similar to them than protagonists? Of course they do. Their lifeways generally shape and reflect their sympathies and antipathies.

I know many persons who have never left the communities they were born into: same neighborhoods, same schools, same churches, same shopping strips, same roads, playgrounds, social venues, same circles of acquaintances, same lives. This is irrespective of ethnicity. Even more worldly persons cluster into enclaves, though they are more widely travelled. Are these worldly persons likely to circulate among geo-centered persons? No. They are traveling enclaves and are yet another minority as less likely to read than any other minority cohort group.

Yet audiences abound for any identity metric, anymore. The Digital age has brought them into unprecedented accessibility. They don't even have to leave their native communities in order to experience whatever their hearts desire and may do so with the utmost privacy such that no one need know this reverred middle-aged, secondary school educated, Hmung tribal head man reader reads and imagines life as an inner city lesbian drug peddler supporting her family. The Hmung man reads that novel because it was pointed out to him, by marketing, by word of mouth, by browsing, and was attracted to it.

Otherwise, write for a target audience, be that audience a vanilla suburbian soccer mom waiting to pick the kids up at their private school and chaffeur them on their after-school rounds before stopping by the beauty saloon and shopping for groceries, who likes to read bodice ripper, colonial era swashbucklers where the hero and all agonists are just like her in every ethnic detail.

A double or more bind: who's your audience? Like you, though outwardly different? Like you and outwardly identical? Unlike you and outwardly different? Unlike you and outwardly identical? Which choice has the outcome you want? Riches and fame? Popular acclaim? Critical acclaim? Social acclaim? Mediocre sales performance yet a solid, diehard following? Mega sales performance yet a fickle following? All or as many of the above as possible? Writers have as many choices as they wish to consider, a right to choices predicated upon critically, consciously thinking for one's self, reliably, responsibly, flexibly: free will a sacred human right and duty many persons fail to appreciate. None or several or more or an infinite number of choices.

[ July 09, 2014, 03:10 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
This character's name is John Smith, for example. About as plain a name as Anglo society has to offer, or Jane Leigh. Use a name like Dante Tercell implies a person of a minority ethnicity; however, other cues are needed to meet readers' needs. Actions, speech, thought, perception emphases, motives, stakes, etc., ad infinitum.
So let's eliminate culture. It wasn't much of an issue in "Hunger Games" anyway, and since it takes place perhaps a 150 to 200 years in the future, one *may* be able to make a compelling argument that including Mexican culture isn't necessary for the plot, so will read in an unwieldy manner in the series.

But if you want to be accurate to current population levels and projected population levels, wouldn't it be more likely that the name of the characters would be Gonzales and not John Smith? Gonzales' culture is unimportant, and it could have changed or died out over the two centuries. But why would his name also die out?

But let's say Anglo naming is forced on all Panem at some point in the future. What about their physical attributes?

Why is Peeta's blonde hair and blue eyes essential enough to the plot to exist over the potential of his dark skin and curly hair? How does Peeta's blonde hair and blue eyes make any real difference to how anything unfolds in the "Hunger Games"? Because if it makes no difference, he could have easily had dark skin and curly hair as his description. No culture behind his dark skin and curly hair, but dark skin and curly hair nevertheless to accurately address the change in minority/majority status projected for the country.
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by extrinsic:
By an exponential factor, educated well-to-do Caucasian females of any age read more than any other cohort group, numerically, quantity per capita and material quantity, to a peak of as much as one hundred times more reading than any other cohort, no matter the native language or location in the world.

Fantasy's core audience outpaces science fiction's core audience two to one for the same reasons, roughly 100,000 core U.S. fantasy readers, 50,000 core science fiction readers. Literary fiction's core audience also numbers around 100,000.

Goes to show that what what writers think and do and argue about is pretty durn irrelevant to the world, eh? :/

quote:
Originally posted by extrinsic:During the Potter phenomenon's heyday, young adult readership swelled beyond all adult readership. Though not a measurable core audience, youth are fickle readers, arguably, the Twilight and Hunger Games franchises reflect the Potter phenom numerically, a core reading audience numbering around two million.
Note that this is some small fraction of a percent of all literate kids, and a smaller fraction of a percent of all literate persons.

Reading in these modern times has become at most a niche interest. [Frown]
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Reziac:
Reading in these modern times has become at most a niche interest.

I'll second this. Among my numerous identity groups, I read more than any of them individually, one close to half as much, the rest maybe once in a while or never beyond what they are assigned and even then resistant to reading. And perhaps a writing goal, my goal anyway: interest more readers in reading by making a splash that appeals in ways no other medium can.

Knowing an audience's sensibilities is for me essential; that begins with a reading audience, not a film audience or family or news or work or whatever, but prose that arouses imaginations attracted to reading entertainments.

I do portray a diverse culture aesthetic if diversity matters to the theme-plot-complication. If not, I default to the audience's sensibilities my writing appeals to. Generally, that audience is ethnicity blind and favors figuring out for themselves who's who and what's what and especially assigning identities that suit their sensibilities. So I avoid absolute culture group identity markers and emphasize relative markers--specific individuals that can be of any ethnicity readers want them to be. Unless this or that character must be outwardly this or that; however, an archetype, larger-than-life representation of a kernel human condition that is ethnically blind.

This minority individual acts--personality and behavior, basic nature and behavior--exactly the way this other majority individual does. Only the individual's complexion is different. No need to call a shovel a digging appliance, only need to show the reality imitation events that characterize the individual.

For example, this boy on the cusp of manhood experiences a birthday where his kin impose an assortment of informal coming-of age-rituals on him, rituals any boy encounters from a variety of inputs and methods. He's still recognizeably initiated as a man, or as a woman if that's the role of the character. Or this woman or man who will not mature despite every sign in her life it's time to grow up. Or this soldier who questions whether war is a necessary evil and questions if she or he's a sinner. Ad nauseam. Kernel human conditions. Bigotry or its opposite xenophobia being ones where a diverse cast is required. Otherwise, within the audience's identity markers and archetypes.

On the other hand, why not a diverse cast so that the audience's sensibilities expand? Still, a portrait of a human condition and its archetypes--epic, larger-than-life agonists experiencing life defining, life complications universal to humanity, which is my audience. External appearances are superficial and superficial to prose: personalities and behaviors are crucial and meaningful.

[ July 09, 2014, 06:40 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by JSchuler (Member # 8970) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
[If you don't want your future America to reflect projected population levels, that's not accurate. If you want your world to still have a majority of whites over non-whites, that's not factual based on what we know today.

Sorry, this is complete BS. Current trends are just that: current. They can, and do, change. There have been lots of ridiculous predictions pushed into popular culture based on taking a current trend line and assuming it will run, unchecked, far into the future.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Current trends are just that: current. They can, and do, change
There are some things that are fact, however.

1) The non-Hispanic white population was 197.8 million in 2012.
2) Hispanic population was 53.3 million in 2012.
3) The black population was 41.2 million in 2012.
4) The Asian population was 15.9 million in 2012.

Panem is Canada, the U.S., and Mexico.

1) Canada's current population is 34.88 million people, of which 6.3 identify themselves as visible minorities.

2) The current population of Mexico is 118,000,000, of which it seems that about 4 million consider themselves to be other.

You all don't want to abide by current trends. But if we only use the facts we know now to determine the racial makeup of Panem, we'd have about two hundred twenty-eight million whites to two hundred sixty-one million non-whites. My math is absolutely awful, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

But if I'm right, non-whites are still the minority in Panem, which makes the only mention of them in "Hunger Games" in Rue to be extremely suspect.

quote:
I know many persons who have never left the communities they were born into: same neighborhoods, same schools, same churches, same shopping strips, same roads, playgrounds, social venues, same circles of acquaintances, same lives. This is irrespective of ethnicity.
Okay, so this may explain why Katniss, Peeta, and Gale are all white. They stick together, after all, because of the color of their skin. Not a very good message to send to YA readers, but there it is.

However, there are a lot of people they meet who they have no control over. Why are none of these people Asians, black, or Mexican, except Rue?
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
A reason why developed countries', like the U.S., have a trending ethnic population diversity, declining, say, Caucasian and increasing, say, Hispanic and Oriental populations is due to demographic transition.

Persons who enjoy more leisure time and comfortable living standards have fewer children. Persons of ethnicities who have more recently migrated into a majority population region continue their native lifeways that encourage fertility. Generally, a third generation migrant person has assimilated into a new culture and begins to reflect the majority's lifeways.

Statistical trend predictions do not account for demographic transition and cultural assimilation.

Though many South American countries may not be developed enough to have reached a demographic transition threshold, the general ethnic makeup of the majority is part native nation nations--Aztex, Mayan, Incan, for example--part Hispanic due to little regard by Spanish settlers for ethnic purity, and part African native nation people imported as servant laborers. The term that was at one time used but is now deprecated as offensive is mestizo. Ethnically "pure" enclaves still exist across the continent, though they are a declining population because within their enclaves a mini demographic transition has passed, fewer children on the order of less than two average per couple.

Religious belief systems that direct their followers to be fruitful and multiply tend to swell ethnic populations once they migrate to a region that supports their unchecked reproduction. Soon, though, in an empowered society, they reach a demographic transition tipping point if their living standard is comfortable and, most importantly, women are as equally empowered as men, and no overt incentive for more than one to three children exists.

Could the world of Hunger Games have reached both an ethnic mixing like South America's and a demographic transition? Maybe, yet film requires actors who are available and suited to a director's sensibilities.

Ethnicity is only an issue of substance in the novels as concerns a district enclave's standing in relation to the capital district. City folk dependent on rural hinterlands for their comfortable living standard and servile rustic folk supporting the primate city's living standards, including the games for entertainment and control of the populace behavior and a kind of population control in the "sacrifical" gladitorial deaths from the games.

Italy was at the time of the Roman empire and the casears' gladiator games a diverse culture, though is now not as diverse, somewhat uniform actually.

[ July 10, 2014, 04:02 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :
 
Here is the link to a discussion about non binary gender people.

It evidently first appeared on TOR, so Jim Hines was commenting on it and the discussion that followed. It may have been the TOR article that I originally saw and later noticed a comment on Jim's Google+ post. I will try to find that post but it might be too long ago.

But the original post is linked in this blog post. Jim has done a series of posts on diversity in writing. In fact the newest post on his blog deals with it.


Here
 
Posted by JSchuler (Member # 8970) on :
 
quote:
You all don't want to abide by current trends. But if we only use the facts we know now...[/QB]
The fact that we know now is that we do not know tomorrow.

Now, would a good explanation for the makeup of the world make for a better story? Perhaps. But that is true of whether you have an all white society, ethnic conclaves, or a vast melting pot. Of course, if your story isn't about race, throwing race relations into the mix can also be distracting. But otherwise, there's no such thing as an inaccurate portrayal of the demographics of some future far removed by war.

And, in fact, Hunger Games gives you a setting where it's a plausible outcome: the states of North America collapsed after an apocalyptic war, and were replaced by an oppressive government that was comfortable with geno/culturecide and liked to mess with genetic engineering to achieve its goals. This stuff is in the books, and it's all the tools the reader needs to construct whatever mechanism is necessary to make sense of the racial homogeneity. I don't think it's necessary for Suzanne Collins to spell it out, whether she intended it or not.
 
Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :
 
Here are a couple more links from Jim Hines' blog.

The Other


The Invisibles

An anthology of essays he put together dealing with this subject.


This is the one that I should have linked in my last post.

Non-Binary
 
Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :
 
Speaking of over weight people not being represented, there is an group usually not see, not as heroes anyway.

I thought of this at least eight months ago.

Older men and women.

At first I thought that Harry Dresden was a bit older, in his late thirties--maybe forties. But after a couple of books I saw that he was younger.


But now I have started two stories with over weight people--one is the MC. And he is middle age or so.
 
Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :
 
When you set a story on futuristic Earth, race and gender issues are part of the world-building. Not projecting how race and gender equality would evolve in your futuristic world is lazy world-building. It may not matter to all readers, but it will matter to some, and how you handle race and gender will be making some sort of statement to those people who care whether you intend it to or not.

I agree with JSchuler that there is no wrong way to project populations or equality except to not think about it because racial and gender issues are an important part of our culture. They affect us daily in terms of how we interact with each other. And it is unrealistic to just ignore that and make everyone one race unless you have an essential world-building reason for doing so.

I'm not saying you turn your story into a social issue, but you do need to figure out what roles minorities and women play in your futuristic society, and make sure they are represented to reflect those roles.

Otherwise, if everyone who is important or doing important things is a white male, then some readers are going to have an issue with it. Your society hasn't naturally evolved in terms of race or gender equality, which we would think it would because it seems to be moving in that direction.

Your readers will need a reason for that progression to have stalled or reversed or else it looks like you believe that white men are inherently better at doing important things than women and minorities. That with all things being equal, they will always come out on top.

And I guess if that is what you really believe, then go for it, but be prepared for a backlash.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Australia has a long multi-cultural history, as does the USA. Invariably, first generation migrants tend to 'stick together' for mutual support and protection from the strangeness that surrounds them. In Australia, by the second generation, most people are 'Australianising' their names and, more importantly, their world view. By the third generation, they're as Aussie as the next bloke, nasal twang and all, and mixed marriages are not uncommon or unusual.

Phil.
Not so grumpy now, he just hates being told what he 'oughta' do.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
It evidently first appeared on TOR, so Jim Hines was commenting on it and the discussion that followed. I
Jim Hines is voicing a fringe view. Nothing more, nothing less.

Every position has one. If you're against guns, you can find some nut on Youtube exposing extreme pro-gun rhetoric. If you're against gun control, you can find a fringe view to dismiss the argument of the other side.

To me, it's telling that when a debate about diversity comes up, you pull up Jim Hines, who represents less than 1% of the population. It's like using the slippery slope argument. Do one thing, and now you have to do the most extreme version of this thing.

Jim Hines, who I guess is asexual, is arguing that scifi and fantasy authors should consider adding asexual characters because...well, because he enjoys scifi and fantasy, and as a kid he wanted to identify with an asexual character in fiction, but couldn't. But what about asexuals who like mystery, or historical fiction, or steam punk, or all the other genres out there? These he ignores *specifically* for scifi and fantasy because this is what he reads.

It's absurd, but it also has nothing to do with acknowledging 37% of the population when you write a story. Which is an even bigger percentage of the population if you also add women with minorities.

Jim Hines argument has nothing to do with the fact that when white writers sit down, they seem to rationalize ways to have almost every character met in the narrative be white. Famine kills off minorities, or war, or a sudden plunge in birthrates, or disease, or racial genocide. Something seems to have to happen so that minorities, which is millions of people and their descendants, almost don't exist in the future.

Somehow Suzanne Collins managed to get rid of more than two hundred million non-whites currently living in Canada, America, and Mexico, except for Rue. That's quite the narrative feat.

So I guess if you choose, when the conversation of diversity, or lack thereof, in fiction comes up, you can throw up the absurd opinion of Jim Hines arguing that asexuals should be added. But it's a disingenuous tactic to take.

quote:
Older men and women.
Aragon was 87, Gimli was 137, and Legolas was even older. In fantasy, it's common for characters to be advanced ages. If you simply mean someone who is old and grey, it's hard to realistically write them as heroes unless they're only old in appearance. But if they're truly old as we understand humans to be old, then there's not much one can do with them and adventures that makes sense.

[ July 10, 2014, 07:55 AM: Message edited by: Denevius ]
 
Posted by JSchuler (Member # 8970) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
[QUOTE]Somehow Suzanne Collins managed to get rid of more than two hundred million non-whites currently living in Canada, America, and Mexico, except for Rue. That's quite the narrative feat.

What do you mean "except for?" How do you know that Rue's ancestors were black? Remember, we're dealing with a government that knows no limits and messes with the genetic blueprint of creatures on a whim. Rue's family could just as easily have been an experiment.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Rue's family could just as easily have been an experiment.
And everyone in the Districts could be clones. And the Hunger Games universe could be the Matrix.

We can start reading lots of stuff in novels where plotholes exist. That's why it's best to make your narrative as tight as possible.

However, the text doesn't state that Rue's family is a genetic experiment. It also doesn't state that there was racial genocide, or scientific experiments to make the entire population white, or cultural genocide.

The text simply neglects to mention hundreds of millions of people who make up the population of Canada, America, and Mexico.
 
Posted by JSchuler (Member # 8970) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
[QUOTE]We can start reading lots of stuff in novels where plotholes exist.

But this isn't a plothole. Whether or not Panem controls a rainbow of peoples or just one is completely inconsequential to the plot. That's why taking time out to explain it one way or the other is the precise opposite of keeping the narrative tight. It is what it is, and the setting of the novel does make sense for it to be. That's enough.
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
I see two plot holes of substance in Hunger Games, technical details. Katniss eats her namesake marsh tuber without safe preparation. Sagittaria brevirostra midwestern or eastern Sagittaria australis known to Algic Native nation peoples as tuckahoe is toxic without careful preparations. The tuber contains unsafe amounts of oxalic acid, which forms into sharp crystals during digestion and causes intestinal cramps.

Further, oxalate is a mineral that causes kidney and gall stones, forms nucleation sites in those internal organs. Safe preparation of the tuber requires mincing the flesh and several tedious soakings and washings with fresh water before cooking and at least two changes of cooking liquor to reduce the oxalate concentration to safe levels. Fortunately, folk nowadays do not rely on the arrowhead tuber for their diets.

Katniss eats snow to hydrate. Snow is an inefficient hydration source. Fine, light, champagne snow is forty times the volume of its melted volume. A liter of water needs forty liters of such snow. Katniss' activity level at the time is high and would need on the order of three liters of water per day to remain hydrated.

The description of the snow Katniss eats suggests the snow is a midway density, still on the order of twenty times the volume of its melted volume. Icy slush is about four times the volume of its melted volume. Further, eating snow is problematic from loss of core body heat and impacts on digestion, also may cause intestinal cramps. Hydrating with snow is time and effort intensive.

Missing ethnic populations from the Hunger Games' milieu are a complication of little consequence; that is, no issue of ethnic bigotry is germane to the plot's antagonisms and causations. For tension's empathy or sympathy and curiosity features, perhaps germane for appealing to ethnic minority readers' rapport, though fiscally irrelevant since those populations read exponentially less than the ethnic makeup of the targeted audience.

However, if Hunger Games' milieu for a film were entirely persons of dark complexions, or other complexions, the narrative would be no different. Collins did not compose a narrative where complexions matter, only districts' primacy standing and consumer production toward each other in terms of social stratification.

Is a lack of ethnic diversity a plot hole? Only in so much as an ethnic country monoculture is an unnatural human condition for a large, environmentally diverse area. Complexions and external anatomical features are a consequence of adaptation to environmental influences, mostly revolved around exposure to heat, sunlight, or dearth thereof and consequent need for heat retention, instead of radiation, and no need for protection from sunlight due to clothing worn for protection from heat loss.

Other complexion colorations are consequences of environmental contributions. The so-called "redksins" Europeans noted on Eastern Woodland New World native people are from a cosmetic coloration matter added to a skin protection cream made from animal fat and bloodwort root--puccon or Algic name poughkone. The cream was worn to protect from insects and to a lesser degree sunlight and later as a cosmetic ornamentation, as makeup is worn today.

Orientals' "yellow" coloration is from the yellow dust of the Yangtze plains' loess soils blown across the Far East. "Olive" colorations of Mediteranean peoples is from heavy dietary emphasis on olive plants' fruit and oil consumption.

Caucasians' sometimes ruddy complexions is likewise from roots consumption--carrots and beets. Yams too cause a ruddy coloration tint contribution for cultures' people who consume them as a staple diet item.

Cultures that once relied on dulses--maritime red algae--for their diets also had ruddy comlexions: Iceland and Greenland Vikings, coastal Irish, and Labrador settlers.

Hot pepper consumption, a dietary adaptation to climate, also causes a ruddy complexion, though not from food-borne dye, from vascular activities that increase blood flow to the dermis, a heat radiation function.

More than clothing makes the person: place and consequent diet makes the person. Does Hunger Games' milieu affect persons' physical appearances? Unlikely since the food culture is monolithic and otherwise environmental influences upon complexion are mostly moot, since folk wear protecive clothing. Last, complexions are not consequential to the narrative; complexion has no agency in the plot. The milieu is monocultural except for social stratification relevant to the plot and target audience.

Edited to add: What about turning the discussion to strategies Collins might have used to show cultural diversity without materially changing the creative vision?

[ July 10, 2014, 08:20 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
However, if Hunger Games' milieu for a film were entirely persons of dark complexions, or other complexions, the narrative would be no different.
The narrative would have been no different, but would the series reception have been different? Its reception to publishers, its reception to consumers, and its reception to Hollywood?

If all of the characters looked Mexican (ignoring culture, just looked Mexican), and Rue was the only little white girl in "Hunger Games", would the first book had been so popular with absolutely no difference except its character descriptions?

Not only do I think its reception would have been different, and greatly diminished, but I also doubt Hollywood would have made a film of all Mexican looking characters, and I strongly suspect many white people would have wondered what in the world happened to all of the white people so that Mexicans now dominate North America.

Can you not imagine the political rhetoric behind this exact same book *except* with Mexican looking characters. All names rename the same, no Mexican culture is ever mentioned. Just they look Mexican.
 
Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :
 
Denevius, I don't understand why you insist Katniss is white when she is described as olive skinned with dark hair. In fact, Gale too is a person of color. The coal mining community of district 13 are all described as people of color. Peeta and the more wealthy people in district 13 are described as white.

Katniss could very well be Mexican or some mixture of white and Mexican because her mother was white (from the more wealthier side of town). I am white and my husband is Mexican, and we have a beautiful daughter who is olive skinned with dark hair just like Katniss.

But whatever race Katniss is, it isn't white.

[ July 11, 2014, 12:48 AM: Message edited by: MAP ]
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Denevius, I don't understand how you insist Katniss is white when she is described as olive skinned with dark hair. In fact, Gale too is a person of color.
There was controversy surrounding this since Jennifer Lawrence is definitely *not* a person of colour.

Edited to add: An excerpt from an article on the controversy.

quote:
Gary Ross, director of the Hunger Games films, blatantly ignored the chance he was given to put a minority actress up on the big screen. Like many people involved in the media world, Mr. Ross fell prey to a terrible sickness, a disease that has been affecting the film industry since day one. Known as whitewashing, this affliction can be seen when movie producers and directors change the race or ethnicity of a character. Although it can be used to describe situations where a white or Caucasian character has been changed to represent a minority, whitewashing usually refers to instances where a character of color has been recreated to represent the white “majority” of America. The casting call that went out for Katniss left no wiggle room or space for questions. The actress trying out for the lead role of the trilogy “should be Caucasian, between ages 15 and 20, who could portray someone ‘underfed but strong,’ and ‘naturally pretty underneath her tomboyishness.’”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/hunger-games-movie_n_1314053.html
 
Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :
 
quote:
There was controversy surrounding this since Jennifer Lawrence is definitely *not* a person of colour.
Yep, and as much as I love Jennifer Lawrence, I wish they had stayed true to the book on Katniss's race.
 
Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
quote:
It evidently first appeared on TOR, so Jim Hines was commenting on it and the discussion that followed. I
Jim Hines is voicing a fringe view. Nothing more, nothing less.

Every position has one. If you're against guns, you can find some nut on Youtube exposing extreme pro-gun rhetoric. If you're against gun control, you can find a fringe view to dismiss the argument of the other side.

To me, it's telling that when a debate about diversity comes up, you pull up Jim Hines, who represents less than 1% of the population.......

Sorry I have to comment on the rest later but to this comment of yours.

I didn't mean to imply that the diversity side has a lot of people in it. They are just noisy and when you include the non writers who also push this mind set they have media clout. Yet still not a large group compared to the rest of the population.

Jim isn't the only one there is also Mary Robinette Kowel who joins with Jim at times. She doesn't talk about it as much as Jim, but still it's there.

And there are others who sometimes post on Goggle+ also, but I haven't kept up with their blogs.

Her blog

You however wanted an address to the blog I referenced in an earlier post so there it is.

As to old age characters, you do have a point about Fantasy, even though I believe there is less even there than there has been in the past.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
Actually, Collins herself says that Katniss isn't supposed to be biracial.

quote:
COLLINS: They were not particularly intended to be biracial. It is a time period where hundreds of years have passed from now. There’s been a lot of ethnic mixing. But I think I describe them as having dark hair, grey eyes, and sort of olive skin. You know, we have hair and makeup.

In the interview, Collins states that in her post-apocalyptic world of Panem, “a lot of ethnic mixing” has occurred, but also that Katniss and Gale are not biracial. She does not attempt to answer Entertainment Weekly’s question about whether or not she understands “fan dismay” about the casting.

That makes Peeta's blonde hair and blue eyes even harder to understand, however, since even in America today, genuine blonde hair is rare, and blue eyes is a recessive trait.

quote:
Blue eyes are indeed becoming less common in the world. One study showed that about 100 years ago, half of U.S. residents had blue eyes. Nowadays only 1 in 6 does.

What is happening in the U.S. will undoubtedly happen throughout the world as well. Especially as Europe opens itself up to more immigration. This is one of the reasons blue eyes are becoming less common in the U.S. -- immigration.

The odds of Peeta having both blonde hair and blue eyes after hundreds of years of interracial marriages seems almost astronomical.
 
Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :
 
Recessive traits don't just disappear. Two heterozygotes mating have a one in four chance of having a child with a recessive phenotype. Don't make me pull out my Punnet squares. [Smile]

ETA: If I remember correctly, eye and hair color are linked genes (on the same chromosome). So blue eyes and blonde hair tend to go together unless there is a cross over (same with brown hair and brown eyes). Although this might be an oversimplification since hair and eye color is probably rather complex. But it is not unbelievable from a genetic standpoint for some blue eyed and blonde hair remaining in the gene pool.

But the story clearly states that the wealthier part of district 12 is white, so I'm not really sure what Collins is talking about in her statement about decades of racial mixing.

[ July 11, 2014, 01:34 AM: Message edited by: MAP ]
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
But the story clearly states that the wealthier part of district 12 is white, so I'm not really sure what Collins is talking about in her statement about decades of racial mixing.

I think she took a calculated risk. Making it definite that Katniss isn't white might not stop the novel from being a success, but making it definite that she's a woman of colour very well might hamper its chances, particularly if you have your sights on the narrative being looked at by Hollywood for a potential movie deal.

She could have easily described Katniss as dark skinned with curly hair and been done with it, but she decided for olive skin, which could be European even though the description is usually reserved for Asians, and long black hair.
 
Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Grumpy old guy:
Denevius, imagine a virulent, mutated strain of sickle-cell anemia that is 100% fatal--all peoples of middle eastern ancestry would be wiped off the face of the planet in on fell swoop.

I was going to let this go, but now that I'm on my science kick, I just can't. Sickle-cell anemia is a genetic disorder. In fact, it is a single amino acid change in one of the subunits of the protein hemoglobin which causes the defective subunits to stick to each other resulting in a sickle shape of the red blood cells.

It can't be made more virulent.

[ July 11, 2014, 02:30 AM: Message edited by: MAP ]
 
Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
quote:
But the story clearly states that the wealthier part of district 12 is white, so I'm not really sure what Collins is talking about in her statement about decades of racial mixing.

I think she took a calculated risk. Making it definite that Katniss isn't white might not stop the novel from being a success, but making it definite that she's a woman of colour very well might hamper its chances, particularly if you have your sights on the narrative being looked at by Hollywood for a potential movie deal.

She could have easily described Katniss as dark skinned with curly hair and been done with it, but she decided for olive skin, which could be European even though the description is usually reserved for Asians, and long black hair.

Yeah, I thought she just wanted Katniss to racially ambiguous which is probably why her answer to the question is also rather ambiguous.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Okay MAP, I'm not about to enter a biology/haematology debate, I was just trying (crudely, I admit) throw up the possibility of 'genetically specific' diseases that could account for a lack of people of a certain race. Although, if I remember the stuff I've read on gene therapy, the use of a retro-virus can alter the gene sequences. So, perhaps by some impossible long-shot sickle-cell anemia might mutate.

Phil.
Medical expert I am not.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Okay MAP, I'm not about to enter a biology/haematology debate, I was just trying (crudely, I admit) throw up the possibility of 'genetically specific' diseases that could account for a lack of people of a certain race.
Again, I'm just trying to imagine white authors dreaming of the future and coming up with ways that non-whites almost don't exist. Whether it's from war, disease, or interracial coupling that seems to target non-white physical attributes for elimination, somehow, some way, non-whites have to go in the imagination of our future world.
 
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
 
Denevius, just exactly where in that quote did I mention a particular race or skin colour? In the post that quote refers back to, I specifically mentioned a condition that could account for the exclusion of all people with a celtic background in a story as well, and the last time I checked (in the mirror, actually) celts are predominantly white.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: It is my decision alone what I write about and who populates my stories. And, if I don't live up to the demands you insist on imposing upon me I don't care one wit. Because, in this instance, you're opinions matter naught to me. If you want the world to change you'll have to do something about it instead of telling me to.

Phil.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
I specifically mentioned a condition that could account for the exclusion of all people with a celtic background in a story as well, and the last time I checked (in the mirror, actually) celts are predominantly white.
How are most futuristic scifi narratives served in any way by concocting a means in which a specific race of people currently living on Earth are killed off?

Offhand, I can't think of one title where this works to advance the plot, whether it's a movie or a book.
 
Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :
 
Grumpy old guy,

Sorry for being so pedantic. I knew what you were trying to do, and that was why I was just going to let it go, but you just happened to pick a genetic disorder that I have studied up on extensively. [Smile]

Interestingly, I can see a scenario where the exact opposite selection could occur with Sickle Cell Anemia. Sickle Cell Anemia is a famous genetic disorder because it is the classic example of heterozygote advantage. Where individuals who are heterozygotes for the gene (in this case they have one sickle cell gene and one normal gene) are more fit to survive than those who are dominant or recessive homozygotes (have two identical genes for the specified trait).

In sickle cell anemia, heterozygotes have none of the problems of those individuals with two recessive sickle cell genes and also have an inherent resistance to malaria. So in regions where malaria is endemic, sickle cell heterozygotes are more fit than individuals with two normal hemoglobin alleles (genes). Thus, sickle cell anemia is actually partially selected for despite the fact that it is a devastating disorder.

So in your future, you could have an exceptionally virulent strain of malaria arise that we cannot control, and those who are heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia have an evolutionary advantage and would be selected for.

Thus having a population that is predominantly black.

Okay, I'm done. No more genetic lessons from me. I promise. [Smile]
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MAP:So in your future, you could have an exceptionally virulent strain of malaria arise that we cannot control, and those who are heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia have an evolutionary advantage and would be selected for.

Thus having a population that is predominantly black.

Equally possible is that some new disease arises that sickle-cell heterozygotes are especially susceptible to. This would not kill off all blacks, but it would kill a lot of Africans.

DNA ==> RNA ==> enzymes in a direct chain of production; as a general rule, 'genetic defects' have an effect by producing a defective enzyme, so some particular biochemical process fails to happen. Carrier status may have a partial effect, such as MDR1 in dogs (carriers metabolize certain drugs less well than normals; homozygous affected don't metabolize these drugs at all, leading to a potentially-fatal accumulation from normally-safe dosages).

At any rate, by such methods one might target any relatively homogenous gene pool, with collateral damage possible due to genetic mixing (which humans do more of than any other species on Earth), as well as animal species that may have the same vulnerability.

Frex, let's target any significant melanin production: We not only kill off a big chunk of humanity (not only the dark-skinned, but also the black- and brown-haired); we also kill off all black or brown animals (skin or hair), possibly plus variants like blue (grey) and fawn depending on how much these dilutions are affected (if it targets the gene, yes; if the melanin production, no). In one swell foop, we've killed off 90%+ of the people and animals on the planet, and left the remainder with potentially substandard immune systems (in dogs, there's good evidence tying melanin production to immune health).

And of course we could instead target those with less than X-much melanin production, with inverse results (no more people or animals with both light hair and light skin).

[If my Node of Extrapolation were in charge, the world would have ended long ago... [Eek!] ]
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Denevius:
Offhand, I can't think of one title where this works to advance the plot, whether it's a movie or a book.

Not a race, but everyone with a pair of X chromosomes:

The White Plague, by Frank Herbert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Plague

Hmm... now I'm wondering how it would have affected the oddities like XXY.
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
A prehistoric mass genocide extinguished the neanderthal race roughly 30,000 years ago. Scientists and scholars have speculated that some of their genetic legacy survives on in homo sapiens due to interbreeding.

Cultural ethnicities have been exterminated in the past as well. The Germanic Goth tribe nations effectively perished though intermingled with other indo nations across Europe. The Inca, Mayan, and Aztec cultures effectively perished. The mid Atlantic Native Nations perished, though Algic nations continue up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The Cherokee nation was nigh exterminated mid nineteenth century, but rebounded and continues a Native nation enclave in the Western Carolinas. The Lenape, Pamunkey, and Mattaponi continue as Algic Native nation enclaves. Canada's Ojibwe continue. Native nation reservations (enclaves) across the Americas continue despite efforts to extinguish their populaces.

The Firbolg, Nemedian, and Pict cultures died off hundreds of years ago. The Iberian nations, the Anglo and Saxon, the Norse, the Norman, the Frank died off, though their decendents live on in contemporary, somewhat homogenous cultures.

A family gathering at our patriarch's home hosts persons of most every global culture, assorted Caucasian, African North and Sub Saharan, Middle Eastern, Far Eastern, Hispanic, North Asian, Old World and New World, Pacific Oceana, Arctic, Sub Continetal Indian, and Native Nation Americas. None Antarctic. As well as a gamut of countercultural and mainstream cultural lifestyles and lifeways.

Several of our kin are of a worldy ethnic mix, all of us are ethnically mixed. Not mutts, nor mudbloods, but a melting pot of precious legacies and cultures.

The future of such nations are more likely than not to become further alloyed, though according to the precious materials proportions. Australia will have its own mixes, as will Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Mexico, the U.S., Israel, Italy, Spain, India, and so on.

Some countries will maintain a "racial" purity and ethnic stratification: Japan, Korea, Samoa, India, Caribbean islands excluding Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, small countries with a separatist cultural tradition.

The U.S. will end up with regional homogeneity: southeast, mid Atlantic, northeast, Appalachian, mid west, south central, subtropical, southwest, northwest, and California and Alaska, and so on according to ethnic proportions and regional resources and climates and cultural stratification. Like the Eygptian empire did over several thousand years. Like assorted Chinese dynasties did over several thousand years. Like the Roman empire did over several thousand years. Like the British Isles did over several thousand years. Like the Ottoman empire did over several hundred years. Like South America did over several hundred years. Enclaves notwithstanding.

[ July 11, 2014, 07:05 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by extrinsic:
Further, oxalate is a mineral that causes kidney and gall stones, forms nucleation sites in those internal organs. Safe preparation of the tuber requires mincing the flesh and several tedious soakings and washings with fresh water before cooking and at least two changes of cooking liquor to reduce the oxalate concentration to safe levels.

And even then it's not really safe. This may actually have been what caused the demise of the 'modern' central California Indians, who 1) had not been in CA all that long, historically-speaking, and 2) derived a major portion of their diet from acorns. By the time there was a significant influx of Europeans, the Yana tribes were already in a situation of "children raising children" due to early deaths from apparent kidney failure. (There exists an in-depth journal about the Yana by a pre-goldrush explorer; the Great Falls MT city library has a copy.)


quote:
Originally posted by extrinsic:
Katniss eats snow to hydrate. Snow is an inefficient hydration source. Fine, light, champagne snow is forty times the volume of its melted volume. A liter of water needs forty liters of such snow. Katniss' activity level at the time is high and would need on the order of three liters of water per day to remain hydrated.

The description of the snow Katniss eats suggests the snow is a midway density, still on the order of twenty times the volume of its melted volume. Icy slush is about four times the volume of its melted volume. Further, eating snow is problematic from loss of core body heat and impacts on digestion, also may cause intestinal cramps. Hydrating with snow is time and effort intensive.

With realworld snow, this is not the case. Because in winter all our outdoor pipes freeze up, I have to use snow to water dogs (and last winter, also pigs), and I have many Montana winters of experience using snow as the dogs' primary and often only water source. And because MT's winter is a series of rapid freeze/thaw cycles, we often get to see exactly how much of yesterday's snow became how much of today's water.

Slush contains no air (it is part ice crystals, part water), so the ratio is 1:1 (but you don't want slush in your bucket; come nightfall when it freezes solid, it will break the bucket). Snow that's been partly melted and refrozen is about 1:2 or a little better. Dense deep-cold snow is about 1:3; light fluffy snow is around 1:6 when halfway packed (no special effort, just the natural packing from being moved with a shovel).

In the real world, when you eat snow you grab a handful and compact it before chowing down, which brings it down to around 1:4 even if it's the fluffy crap. And you don't just eat a handful and call it done; you consume it as you go, all day long. (Not too much at once, to avoid getting chilled.)

If you carefully avoid packing the snow and only consider today's pristine snowfall which hasn't experienced ANY melting (no matter how cold the air, it always melts a bit at ground level, and a little on top as soon as any sun hits the surface) yeah, then you'd see very inefficient ratios, of value only for calculating precipitation.

So yes, speaking from lengthy and realworld experience, you can get by just fine on snow alone. The drawback is that you sacrifice some body heat to melt it, but if you're active and reasonably insulated, that's not a huge difficulty. (Big dogs run 'hot', and usually prefer snow to water, even in well-below-zero temps.) The big advantage is that you don't have to carry water with you. Every team of running huskies in the world uses snow instead of liquid water; you can't carry a practical amount (nor the weight) of water on a sled, let alone the fuel to thaw it... every single time you want a drink. (20 working dogs = 20 gallons or more per day.)

[BTW I am a canine professional, and I keep a large kennel -- 50 dogs on average.]
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
The White Plague, by Frank Herbert.
I haven't read it, but the point of that book seems to be *specifically* the killing off of women by, who I guess, is the antagonist.

How is "Hunger Games" served in, however you want to explain it, the disappearance of non-white physical characteristics in favor of white physical characteristics in Panem? How does that push forward the plot of the novel?

quote:
The U.S. will end up with regional homogeneity: southeast, mid Atlantic, northeast, Appalachian, mid west, south central, subtropical, southwest, northwest, and California and Alaska, and so on according to ethnic proportions and regional resources and climates and cultural stratification.
Suzanne Collins seems to claim that interracial coupling has been going on in her world for hundreds of years, so there is no southeast, mid Atlantic, northeast, Appalachian, mid west, south central, subtropical, southwest, northwest, and California and Alaska, and so on. There is only Panem.

A Panem that produces a Katniss with olive toned skin and black hair that isn't biracial, that isn't a minority, but isn't specifically said to be white, though there are white people in District 12 in blonde hair blue eyed Peeta and Katniss' mom.

How is this not a plot hole? How is it that hundreds of years of interracial coupling managed to erase non-white characteristics while still maintaining a white race to be the District's version of the bourgeois class?
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
The plot holes for both toxic tubers and snow for hydration are from how they cause complications of effort, time, and physical effects. Eating either causes those effects, yet Collins drops them in offhandedly. the toxic tubers would have debiliated Katniss for several days. The snow eaten at least for a noticeable time span: brain freeze and mild digestive distress at least. She's not acclimated to snow for hydration the way cold-climate adapted beings are.

Collins goes into an adequate amount of detail how Katniss and implies the other gamers treat surface water with iodine; but not the impacts of toxic tubers and snow!?

[ July 11, 2014, 09:01 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
Hunger Games' milieu suits general target audience sensibilities, such that artful ambiguity, intentional vagueness, spans the rapport indices of the audience and avoids overt controversies. No more; no less.

On the other hand, what little "ethnicity" that is exhibited suits audience sensibilities adequately. Ethnictity is not a plot feature of the novel.

Narratives that do portray ethnicity as a plot feature, such that at a risk-reward index. Controversy starts and builds buzz. Even Jim C. Hines' public opinion position about lifestyle representation serves that marketing function: part packaging, part promotion, part publicity, and each driving advertising. Collins didn't take those risks. Debut writers are advised to avoid those risks.

Note that Jim C. Hines' agent firm JABberwocky emphasizes countercultural motif representation and publisher DAW accommodates those narratives.

Room enough for all opinions, only the caliber of the narrative making any meaningful difference. Take risks, raise controversies, be consistent, though, and preparation for success is begun. Or take no risks, raise no controversies, consistent, though. Or anywhere between, consistent though.

[ July 11, 2014, 09:26 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
quote:
Hunger Games' milieu suits general target audience sensibilities, such that artful ambiguity, intentional vagueness, spans the rapport indices of the audience and avoids overt controversies.
I think to say that she avoided "overt controversy" is to willfully ignore all of the controversy that surrounded the series over the racial makeup of the characters.

It's willfully ignoring minorities who saw the success of a mega-book series with a minority character, a rare occurrence, and having that enthusiasm trampled upon first by the director calling only for a white actress to play the lead role, and then by the author herself who claims that Katniss was never intended to be a minority or biracial.

Because what this looks like to minorities is that race doesn't matter, as long as the white race gets the lion's share of representation in the medium. *Then*, it doesn't matter.

So, perhaps in the circles many of you defending the racial makeup of "Hunger Games" exist in, there was no overt controversy. However, within minority circles, there was a lot of controversy, a lot of angst, and a general sense that, once again, society is asking them to see white characters as the "everyman", while it balks at the idea of forcing white consumers to accept non-white characters as the everyman.

I can link a dozen sites making a similar point. So I think it's disingenuous to say it wasn't an overt controversy, but I suppose you can say that those opinions don't matter as much in your worldview.
 
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Grumpy old guy:
MattLeo, apart from a few archaic terms and outmoded phrases, French is no longer de-rigueur in diplomatic discourse. And, I'm sorry to say, that according to your argument, the majority of writers writing the majority of works of fiction, literature and fantasy are at this moment, what did you say? Ah, yes, looking foolish. Really?

More and more this is reminding me of a group of people railing against the way the world IS and NOT doing anything themselves to change it other than to point the finger at others and say to everyone else, "You oughta . . ."

Grumpy.

This has got depreressing. No matter how I try to take
what you say seriously, and turn the discussion away from politics and toward craft, you replace my opinions with a straw position and use that as a launching point to rail against politics you don't like - with a generous side helping of ad hominem.

I get it now. You've hijacked Denevius's thread to vent about people you don't like instead of talking about writing. Well I'm done enabling that behavior.

By all means carry on writing exactly the way you always have. Don't even consider changing a thing if you find that upsetting. It's not as if anyone else has the power to take your head out the dark place you've stuck it anyhow. It's your choice. It's always been your choice, and people pointing out you have OTHER choices isn't tantamount to persecution.
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
This debate could carry on ad nauseam until the end of time and satisfy nothing. For every opinion position a host of opposition will rise and likewise a host of opposition to those numerous oppositions ad infinitum. And no one's opinions be changed one iota. Craft and aesthetics are choices free will allows.

Criticism is too an infinite host. Negativism, however, reveals as much about a critic's biases as those the critic denounces. On the other hand, celebrate negative criticism for defining audiences and for marketing advantages.
 
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by extrinsic:
The plot holes for both toxic tubers and snow for hydration are from how they cause complications of effort, time, and physical effects. Eating either causes those effects, yet Collins drops them in offhandedly. the toxic tubers would have debiliated Katniss for several days. The snow eaten at least for a noticeable time span: brain freeze and mild digestive distress at least. She's not acclimated to snow for hydration the way cold-climate adapted beings are.

ETA: Acclimation is not really an issue, any more than it is if you consume an iced drink on a hot day. You do not suffer from either brain freeze or digestive distress, unless perhaps you swallow big lumps of snow, which is no different from swallowing ice cubes (and about as practical to accomplish). Too much very cold water at once can cause reflexive vomiting, but we're talking a quart or more chugged very quickly, which you can't manage with snow.

And if gastric distress were an issue -- dogs are rather more subject to gastric upset than are humans. And they can eat snowe a lot faster than you can. [Smile]

One suspects the real story when such distress happens is a combination of dehydration (from simply not consuming enough) and perhaps altitude sickness. And 'brain freeze' is a side effect of rapid consumption, not of the consumption itself (possibly an abnormal reflex akin to migraines, as only a minority of people are affected):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-cream_headache#Anterior_cerebral_artery_theory

quote:
Originally posted by extrinsic:
Collins goes into an adequate amount of detail how Katniss and implies the other gamers treat surface water with iodine; but not the impacts of toxic tubers and snow!?

I think this is a more general problem, which I've griped about before and elsewhere ... that most authors have at best superficial clues about extreme climates. Most get both desert and arctic conditions laughably wrong (I say, having lived half my life in Montana, and the other half in the SoCal desert). Characters run around in the desert sun at 120F degrees with inadequate clothing and insufficient water; characters run around in -40 temps and blizzard conditions with only gloves and no hat. The authors clearly have never tried to walk in loose sand while wearing sandals, or in deep snow or while wearing an eskimo suit. They have clearly never worked outdoors under such conditions. They know some superficial things from watching documentaries and occasionally from common sense or from vacations in such regions, but that's about it. (And the same applies to their treatments of farm and ranch work, which of course derives from that most are city folks without hands-on experience.)

So the effect in the writing is somewhat patchwork; characters seem to know some things necessary to survival in their environment, but not other things that anyone with actual experience would think about as a matter of course. I haven't read The Hunger Games but I think your complaints are examples of this.

Of course if the character is ignorant about survival methods, that's a different patch of cactus, but in that case let 'em suffer the consequences, and either learn better or die of it.

[ July 12, 2014, 08:34 PM: Message edited by: Reziac ]
 
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
 
Thanks, Reziac, for the great information about hydrating with snow.
 
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
 
It's interesting. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the release of ENDER'S GAME. I hadn't planned on watching the movie, not because of the controversy, but because the previews really just weren't very compelling, and I really and truly think it's time for Harrison Ford to retire. I have not enjoyed him in any movie probably since 'The Fugitive'.

But I flew to America abruptly last month as a result of a family emergency, and on the plane they were playing ENDER'S GAME, and I figured, "Why not?"

When you go into a movie with low expectations, it's not hard to be entertained. But I have to admit, it was a cool movie. But what I found most engaging about it was: 1) Harrison Ford nailed the role, though I'm not sure if his portrayal was true to the book or not, as I haven't read it in at least ten years; 2) Someone involved in the making of that movie seemed to decide to create a future that more closely represents what the actual future of the human race is most likely going to look like in reality - diverse.

They even had Ender repeating an Arabic phrase, which was like, "Whoa!" Perhaps they were trying to over-compensate because they predicted the political/cultural baggage that came along with making the movie. But it really was a pleasant surprise that a movie featuring the future of the human race wasn't 95% white, 5% other. It's good getting the science right in scifi, but it's also good getting racial diversity based upon current racial population of the world right as you stipulate about the future of mankind.
 
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
Ender's Game and The Hunger Games films are more or less faithful to their respective novels. Like with any film adaptation of written word narratives, they short-shrift internal discourse in favor of visual and audio spectacle.

Written word internal discourse content that takes up a few paragraphs or more filmmakers cut, and use a brief "reaction shot" in place of internal thoughts and emotional responses. Written word's ability to delay or suspend story time and expand narrative time film cannot manage easily either. Films generally rush past written word content filmmakers think is repetitive, too. A net result is film condenses or excises philosophical and temporal and thematic signficance and emphases that written word luxuriously develops.

The Ender's Game film portrays Wiggin more proactively heroic and a mite more peevish, almost bratty, than the novel, loses the self-doubts and internal crisis struggles and moral crises and agonist and character basic nature, personality, and behavior four-dimensionality the novel artfully develops. Same with The Hunger Games, film generally. That's film. Tel est la vie d'escritur: Such is the life of writing. C'est la vie: That's life.
 


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