on writing race/ethnicity/culture/social class/rel

[laura]

Okay, I guess I got picked to head up this discussion, lol! I am confident that we can all discuss this with grace and humility and understanding and respect, and I hope that in all of this, no one is offended. Let's keep in mind that we all love and respect each other, and we come at this with the most honest and innocent of intentions. We want to understand each other better.

Let's all have a group hug before we start?



Now...

This question first started in my mind from a thread that was posted over at N99: do your Sims have distinctive nationalities or ethnicities? With Sims though, it's one thing - it's a game, that most people play largely on their own and do not share detailed stories of like we do. With writers, like us, it's different. We're not just playing Sims, we're writing fiction, and thus we're held to the same standards of social responsibility that all fiction writers should follow.

The question for us is a little different, I think. Not do you write ethnicity, but do you attempt to write any ethnicity/religion/social class that is *different* than your own?

Most of the families in LH very strongly reflect the kinds of generic blended middle/working-class American people (mostly white, but black too) that I grew up with and lived with for the first 28 years of my life. But I'm not just talking about my game - all of my stories reflect this.

I do have a family of aliens in my story, and have even lightly touched on some racial tensions there, but it isn't the same. There's a safety zone with sci-fi and fantasy, because chances are there isn't a race of real aliens out there to be offended by what I've written if I got it wrong. Stories set in a realistic Earthly world have a different standard of responsibility to deliver.

Plenty of writers (Sim-writers even) will include ethnicity in their stories - some do it very well, and I've also seen some do it badly. And I think my discomfort stems from not wanting to get it "wrong" and offend people. It might be different if I was just playing a game full of Sims for myself, but since I have all these people reading my stories, I feel kind of responsible for doing whatever things I do in an authentic way. Or as much as possible anyway. It's easiest then, without doing a ton of research, to write about families that are like my own and the ones I've known in my life, and well, that's also kind of limiting.

(The time limit on research is my own fault, of course. LH is mostly a hobby story for me, and I can't afford the level of research I might give to my more serious work.)

But when it comes down to it, even if 70 years in the future, my story is set in a world that is Earth, and a country that is still America. And I have characters with a full range of skin colors and facial characteristics that might suggest they come from certain backgrounds, but I never actually go there.

Granted, just because a family might come from a certain background doesn't mean they all behave the same way. Of course not! Families are families after all, and people are diverse. Most of the people I've been close to who *not* from the same cultural make up as me, were almost indistinguishably like me anyway. (I say "almost" even because really, there is no one on this planet exactly like me, and no family exactly like mine. Really, they're a bunch of nutjobs! lol!) And at the same time, there are people of my exact recipe of "whiteness" who are nothing like me or my family at all.

Then, could it be the case that the families I'm writing about just happen to be those people of that ethnicity/religion/social class who happen to be like the people I know? How far can that illusion hold? At some point, my world becomes unrealistic if it doesn't include people who are unlike the people I'm most familiar with.

So long story short, here are some questions:

Do you feel comfortable writing from the point of view of a race/ethnicity/culture/social class/religion different from your own in your stories? If so, what is your process in doing that?

Have you ever read something written about your own race/culture/etc. that offended you? No need to name names or point fingers (please!), but if you can, what was the reason it offended you?

If anyone else has questions to add to these, please go ahead!

[celebkiriedhel]

Do you feel comfortable writing from the point of view of a race/ethnicity/culture/social class/religion different from your own in your stories? If so, what is your process in doing that?

I'm not sure comfortable is a word I'd use.

Writing from a different social class is something that is fairly easy for me, as I've got experience of living in poverty, and experience in living well off. So I'm relatively comfortable with writing that now.

Gets on soap-box.

I think religion is the big one for me - my current work is trying to spread out between 5 different faiths, of which only one I'm really familiar with. While I don't have time to do a lot of research (though I am thinking I should if it keeps on turning into a novel instead of a sims story), what I have done is talk to friends who are in those faith groups. I think the hardest thing for me is to write about them as inside the group, rather than as an outsider.

I find that most religion in books is written wholely-negatively from an outsider's point of view, or written wholely-positively because it's trying to convert people to their point of view. Neither position I think is reasonable or worthwhile. I get offended by the first, and embarassed by the second.

/gets off soapbox.

Culture, ethnicity, race.

Most of my characters in my stories have been white/european or something completely alien. For some reason both of those groups are familiar to me.

What I haven't written much of is Australians. (which is my own group).

That hasn't been intentional, and certainly in my sims hoods I have mixed skin types. I'm not sure I'd call them races or ethnicities. I'm not convinced that I need to purposefully use different ethnicities in my stories unless there's a reason for it. For one reason only - any different cultures that I include I would want to include a lot of research, to represent them honestly. And I'm lazy.

(Of course, in my current story, there are maoris and kooris, but again, this is purposeful because I need them for the story.)


Have you ever read something written about your own race/culture/etc. that offended you? No need to name names or point fingers (please!), but if you can, what was the reason it offended you?

Personally, I'm offended whenever the writing belittles the race/culture/etc regardless of whether it's personal or not. I get the same way with writing that puts women down too.

Actually, thinking about it - I get more offended by writing that objectifies and belittles women than I do with anything else.

If anyone else has questions to add to these, please go ahead!

[raquelaroden]

I think I'm with Kiri--I definitely wouldn't say I'm comfortable writing from a point of view that is markedly different from my own. In point of fact, I don't. But I do try to incorporate different cultures and ethnicities into my stories, and I try to keep their features to some of the less offensive aspects surrounding their cultures, like their foods or language.

I grew up in rural east Texas, and as a result I am a little more familiar with some of the Mexican language, traditions, and culture than I am with other cultures. My uncle is married to a woman who is half Mexican, and we are very close to her family through her mother and brothers. One of my grandmother's sister-in-laws is Mexican as well, so my family has long had fairly close contact with that culture. That being said, we're talking about Tex-Mex culture, which is probably different from, say, the Mexican culture present in Arizona or California. I use characters that I think of as Mexican Americans (though they aren't explicitly labeled as such) in my story, but not to any great effect--I think it is clear that they are of Latin American descent because of their names and because I sprinkle very tiny bits of Spanish into their speech. By the same token, I don't use a lot of Spanish in the story, and what is worse is that it is probably closer to Spanish from Spain than Mexico when I do use it. In high school, I took three years of Spanish, but it was Castilian Spanish, rather than Tex-Mex. The only Tex-Mex Spanish I learned was what I affectionately call "schoolbus Spanish" (the place I heard it the most), and that is mostly the er...bad words and offensive phrases (which incidentally, is very useful information to have).

[raquelaroden]

Oh, and Illandrya and Kiri reminded me of the times I've been offended by portrayals. Women are often portrayed in stereotypical and offensive manners, but I also get offended by the portrayals of Texans, too.

[laura]

Beth, first hand experience is tricky for me. All the people I've known very closely different from my own background have been largely no different than my own family. I'm so stuck on this one.

Maybe it's a sort of naivety that I think they're no different than me? Because from their point of view, living in the world as it is, and the people and situations they have to deal with, they are different, because they have to deal with things I don't have to. That's where I wonder if I'm being insensitive and not doing the reality of their struggles justice.

And this is another question for everyone: How do you incorporate diversity among your characters in a genuine way, without seeming like a token gesture? My world is unrealistic if it doesn't include diverse characters, but if their diversity doesn't matter to the story, then should you, or how do you go about including it?

Kiri, ah, religion! Yes, I'm kind of tackling religion in my novel too, and it's scary. (But really, I think in my case it'll be more faith versus non-faith.) I do think the key is making that very tough balance of letting the characters own their opinions, and not the story itself. Or at least I hope that works for me, because my characters do have very strong opinions on religion, but I want my story to remain unbiased.

Illandrya, oh wow! Yes, that is a good example of trouble you might run into with a fantasy/sci-fi story.

I'd love to know the errors of how Australians are portrayed in books and movies, lol!

Rachel, good point about the language differences. I'm sure any phrase I tried to look up in a dictionary would be largely incorrect, lol!

[blackdaisies]

Representing culture in any story (writing, visual mediums) can be very entertaining and enlightening when done right. I appreciate writers who manage to do it honestly. That is, not going for cultural stereotypes to the point where they're ridiculous cartoons, or trying to overcompensate by making whatever culture almost superior. (i.e. the "Asian" stereotype where asians are enlightened zen, green tea drinking, karate butt kicking math wizards -- okay that's a big generalization, but yeah, that's the idea). Recognizing that everyone has different personalities and react differently to their surroundings is something I really appreciate in fiction.

Personally, I don't like generalizing characters. I try not to completely define a character from their background or ethnicity. There may be times that a particular character defines themselves strongly as their race/culture/creed (how many times have you heard that from the most interesting people you know "I'm a proud Irish/Southerner/Canadian!" etc. etc. ), but that would be part of who they are and how they define themselves, if that makes sense. But I'll try to give them more depth to their personalities that they may not know themselves. I wouldn't straight out stereotype them even if the character wants to stereotype themselves.

Me, I'm asian, immigrated here with my family when I was two. As interested I am with my background, I identify more with being Canadian (Maple Syrup, Tim Horton's, take off hosers, eh?!). I'm not writing anything of my backgrounds, there isn't a character in my story that I define as my ethnicity or nationality, but I've never thought that I was writing something foreign.


I'm writing a Sims story. My characters are of the race of Sims, lol. Skin colour is irrelevant in my story, but there are different regions and there may be some cultural differences pertaining to those regions. Also there are different subcultures too that I do touch on but I purposefully don't go into any real depth about those differences. In my story, the Marlens are bohemian, artist, respect-for-nature types. The Bairds are nouveau rich (the founder could be defined as "lower classed blue collar"). It isn't really a big part of my story, but that's how I prefer it. I generally don't want to make any big social statements in my story just to keep to the light and fluffy nature of it. I guess that makes it easier to write as I can make up my society's culture as I go along.

It's hard for me to articulate exactly what i'm talking about, all I can hope is that it made sense.

[thelunarfox]

I'm glad you did go ahead and post this because I think it is an interesting discussion, and I think with all the various places we come from, there has to be some interesting points of view!

Now I'll also add in that I'm mostly watching here, lol. I mean my story isn't really set in reality. I only have it thinly based on what I know in real life, so I'm able to make up all sorts of stuff.

But yeah, totally agree with you, Illandrya. It's like with the new Star Wars movies, and there were some aliens that people found offensive. (I think it was because JarJar and his people seemed to be a caricature of Jamacans, and there were another set of aliens who were a trade federation that were semi-evil and they had some traits that people could associate with Asians.)

I think it's accidental when stuff like that happens, but you still have to be careful and very aware of possible ideas that get lodged in your brain without you realizing it. Like the whole white = good and black = bad. That's a very old and basic concept that has nothing to do with skin color/ethnicity, but I'm still highly suspicious of it, lol.


Do you feel comfortable writing from the point of view of a race/ethnicity/culture/social class/religion different from your own in your stories? If so, what is your process in doing that?

No. I don't think I do. But I haven't ever given it a real shot either.


Have you ever read something written about your own race/culture/etc. that offended you? No need to name names or point fingers (please!), but if you can, what was the reason it offended you?

I don't think I have ever read anything about my own race or culture that offended me, but I'm not easy to offend. I will say that once in a classroom, I did get really offended by a teacher. Basically, we were going to go work in a school in my hometown. We're a small community with a high percentage of Hispanic, Korean and other ethnicities (Caucasian are the minority here) and many working class families, and so she was basically assuming that every child we'd work with would be destitute. I don't remember what she said, but I remember writing her an anonymous note that she was being a little bit presumptuous.

It felt as if she was more concerned with the idea of the children rather than the actual children themselves.


How do you incorporate diversity among your characters in a genuine way, without seeming like a token gesture? My world is unrealistic if it doesn't include diverse characters, but if their diversity doesn't matter to the story, then should you, or how do you go about including it?

This is the hard part. Even I have concerns. So first thing I will say is that if you don't want it to seem like a token gesture, I'd suggest that it be a genuine move. Rather than being concerned about the idea, you actually incorporate a person into the story.

I think LH has been perfect for this. You deal completely with the stories of people, and I think an honestly told story about a person is the most important thing, first. (Also, I want to make clear my talk in the babble thread isn't because all these details don't matter, but because I know you're a perfectionist and you'll make LH perfect when I want to see you in print. Maybe on my ereader. )

Hopefully that's making sense, lol. Rad also does this super well with Naomi in the town down south. She never resorts to stereotypes, it's just people. She does give them accents, but it honestly feels like part of the character. I know she ran it past others first, and I thought I saw Stacy suggesting that on Twitter too.

[thelunarfox]

Dec 4, 2010 20:30:32 GMT -5 blackdaisies said:

Personally, I don't like generalizing characters. I try not to completely define a character from their background or ethnicity. There may be times that a particular character defines themselves strongly as their race/culture/creed (how many times have you heard that from the most interesting people you know "I'm a proud Irish/Southerner/Canadian!" etc. etc. ), but that would be part of who they are and how they define themselves, if that makes sense. But I'll try to give them more depth to their personalities that they may not know themselves. I wouldn't straight out stereotype them even if the character wants to stereotype themselves.

Yeah, this is what I mean. Said even better than I said it.


I think it would then be important to get an understanding of how a culture has affected the character also, not just an understanding of the culture and what the character must do to be part of it. Man, I hope this is making sense.

[Stacy]

I will respond with answers to the questions later, but I just wanted to reply to Lunar's post real quick.

The black and white thing - I definitely think about that. I use colors as symbols and metaphors a lot, and in the past I've fallen into using black and white that way.

Seth's three colors are black, white, and red, and I've been trying to stay conscious of how I use them. Like the intro to 10.06, with all the talk about the black pavement and the white line - I deleted a lot there and wrestled with it for quite some time. I wanted to stay true to what the colors mean to Seth and the real colors of pavement and the lines but at the same time I didn't want to be all black is bad, white is good. Which - it's Seth. None of his colors are good, lol.

And when Laura brought this up I immediately thought of Rad and Taken and how she asked us for help. I definitely approve of the way she handled that. She's my role model.

[thelunarfox]

Stacy, your use of color though was so abstract, there's no way it could be taken in a negative fashion. Mostly because I think it's clear how detached Seth is from other people. It would have to be a stretch for someone to find offense in that.

But I will say I loved how you worked culture and accent into Farmer Brown. It completely gave it a different feel from other stories, and I think the accents and word usage was important. The characters didn't feel like stereotypes to me.

[Stacy]

Dec 4, 2010 21:16:58 GMT -5 @thelunarfox said:

Stacy, your use of color though was so abstract, there's no way it could be taken in a negative fashion. Mostly because I think it's clear how detached Seth is from other people. It would have to be a stretch for someone to find offense in that.

But I will say I loved how you worked culture and accent into Farmer Brown. It completely gave it a different feel from other stories, and I think the accents and word usage was important. The characters didn't feel like stereotypes to me.

I read this yay!!!! *does a happy dance of happiness*

Good to have an outside perspective on Seth and his colors. Helped me feel a little better.

And thank you for the compliments!

Farmer Brown is my culture, so I think that's a bit different. In that universe (which I am planning a prequel and a sequel) I'm writing what I know. The accent is what I grew up hearing and talking (I think if you look over my posts you'll find a lot of "got" where other people would say "have", for instance) and the people are the people I grew up around. Not anyone in specific, but the characters are definitely amalgations of Surry County peeps.

Like I said in my post on LJ - far in the future, after a lot more 10 chapters and the Farmer Brown prequel and sequel and the Glitterface the Necrofairy story - if I'm feeling brave and like I've researched it enough, I may try and write a Sims 3 story with a Creole main character, set in Twinbrook. Now that will definitely not be something I can pull from my own experiences.

Off to answer the actual questions now.

[infinitygoddess]

Well, the Mikhailachevs originated from Russia, though over the course of their history, they've mingled with people of all kinds. Rasputin is 1/4 Chinese, Olik is half-Korean, seven of Kliment's kids are biracial, Anton is half-Puerto-Rican, etc.

Piotr, Sergei, Pavel, and Sacha still have their Russian accents. (Sacha is not a Mikhailachev by blood; his name was initially Romanov.) They can still speak Russian, though they will mostly speak English, unless they are addressing the Khrushchev twins (both of whom are Ukrainian from medieval times), in which case, they will speak the old native Slavic tongue that the Khrushchev twins speak, as their English is rather limited.

The zombies William Bennett and Mary Wiloughby both came from early 19th-century England. Obviously, since they've both been zombiefied (on purpose, not an accident unlike with Pavel), they've had to adapt with the times. The zombie Emma comes from Medieval Europe, though her country of origin is unknown. She is the oldest character I have, next to the Khrushchev twins, heh.

I also have half-aliens, but as people have said, you can probably get away with things in sci-fi that you wouldn't have otherwise. Same with zombies.

And yes, religion does come into my stories a lot. There are good religious people and the bad ones as well. The bad ones are particularly important, as they use religion as an excuse to hate people they disapprove of. I would even argue that I had at least one guy who was a "mixed bag" as it were. He was homophobic and sexist, but at the same time, he was merciful with zombies and saw that protecting people against vampires were far more important than any socially conservative causes that he espoused.

I also had religious people see the error of their ways and change for the better.

Even with my non-Sims-related graphic novels, I have people of all kinds in them. I try to be as sensitive to the issues as I can. It's not easy.

(And yes, I do have LGBT-related issues in Mikhailachev Manor, but that's something I relate to on a personal level as I'm gay myself.)

[Stacy]

Oh, and Mela - I wanted to bring that up too. Stories set in the Sims game as opposed to stories set in other worlds that just use the game as illustration.

If it's set in the game - the Sims don't really have social and cultural differences. They don't see skin tone and barely register gender and don't care about gender preferences or anything else. And except for the occasional wish to marry rich or be a gold digger, they don't notice economic class that much.

It's really sort of an ideal world, a little electronic utopia. But I think that has its uses - like in my second Sims 2 legacy, the My Little Pony one, the founder (Majesty was her name) was S4 and married a grocery delivery dude who was S1. Their daughter, the second gen heiress, was S2. Her name was Firefly, btw. And her little brother was Salty. Ah, those were good times.

I didn't deal with racism at all in the story, because it was a funny legacy and set in the Sims world. But still - one person thanked me for having a founder with the S4 skintone. I think that even if you don't deal with the issues, it can still be helpful to have that ideal world out where people can see it. Like they can read stories with biracial couples and same sex couples and all that where it's not threatening and is accepted as normal. It's like an antidote to the other images that they're absorbing from our culture.

So I think light and fluffy and set in the Sims game can be a good thing.

God - not gonna delete this because people have already seen it, but now I'm all checking myself for showing off my privilege. If I did - I am sorry and I am willing to learn.

[celebkiriedhel]

Stacy - I'm not sure how it's showing off your privilege - I don't see it ... but girl - you don't have to be ashamed of being who you are!

[heredoncove]

I like this topic. I actually think it's a great extension and more indepth look at what we were touching on in this thread: valleysunsims.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=422. I'm just going to answer the questions first and see what word vomits out from there.

Do you feel comfortable writing from the point of view of a race/ethnicity/culture/social class/religion different from your own in your stories? If so, what is your process in doing that?

I've never actually thought about it at least when I started the blog. I knew that they were Sims and that for the most part on game level it wouldn't matter but I did know in the back of my mind that I wanted representation of beyond the majority.

I tried not to think too much about about the great implication of race, ethnicity (even though I show ethnic diffferences a lot in my story), etc. I try to makre sure I think individual character responses rather than does this fit my perception of how their race, ethnicity, culture, etc would act because generalizations suck. On the other hand, I do like to tip my hat to certain things know about a culture.

Joaquin's deep shame about needing help to take care of his family isn't simply because it's a integral value, even though it is, but it also comes from the heavily patriarchal Hispanic culture he's from.

Have you ever read something written about your own race/culture/etc. that offended you? No need to name names or point fingers (please!), but if you can, what was the reason it offended you?


I've never read anything in someone's story that has offended me because most people ignore it. Hell, I ignore it at times. They (and we) often just like to take it at face value and say they're Sims, just Sims.

I do try not to get offended even though I do get annoyed when it moves beyond stories where we're playing the color blind thing to CC creation. I know I'm taking a bit of a walk with this but here me out.

It took me several years before I could find a skintone set that did several shades into the darker skintone range and that used to irritate the hell out of me. I couldn't understand why S4 would be a golden tan color and I was suppose to be ok with that. It felt like a major slap in the face to my desire to use the pretty new skintones to make some Sims that looked like me.

I try not to pay attention too often to the Anglicization a lot of Sim creators do of Sims that are suppose to be of any kind of African decent or any other minority beyond Asian. Those of you who follow me on twitter might remember my recent face template rant.

I actually had a minor nervous breakdown and spent hours, ok several long minutes, staring at the faces of some of my characters to see if I was guilty of this. Then I had to call myself to the carpet and ask why out of my 8 families were only 3 of them non-white and one is mixed race. I couldn't answer beyond well, character development went out of control and it does bother me on some level.

I do have another question: How do you handle mixed race couples? I see it a lot in Sim stories and for the most part people ignore the obvious and I get why, but sometimes I want to just confront the issue.

I have two: Fabrice/Elise and Kal/Taj's mother.

I always wonder whether people think Fabrice's parents disowned him because he married a Black girl. I don't know why but I do, even though in my mind her race had nothing to do with their decision. I tend to ignore race in their situation because I don't think it's important to either of them.

On the other hand, I'm going to confront race in the Behar household because, and I'll just put it out there for the sake of this discussion, Taj's mother left because of the race factor. I just think it's realistic to deal with it using one couple.

I guess that was long and ranty enough. I'm sleepy again but I will be back.

[celebkiriedhel]

I agree with you Heredon Cove (I wish I could remember your actual name. My bad. Sorry).

Creation of non-anglo sims in TS3:

I actually don't think that EA do any non-anglo faces justice at all. Asian faces like Malaysian, Phillipine, Indonesian, Indian - are not represented. The faces in WA for egyptian and chinese - aren't. The only thing they really got right was the sliders for skin tone.

The sliders make proper asian/islander faces very difficult as well. I was doing Maori faces for my story, and the nose was almost impossible to do, and is still not correct.

To be honest - there are some european faces that are hard to do as well like Italian, or Greek. It's the nose. Very hard to do a nose with character. The sliders are wrong in the nose, cheek, chin and jaw.

[laura]

I'm going to pull the utopia card on my story as well, even if my world is supposed to be a realistic one. I've had this in the back of my mind ever since I started my war storyline, and I've always known that my characters lived in a world where extraterrestrial life was a given. My story is also set 70 years in the future, so if you look at where we were 70 years ago, versus where we are now, I don't think it's unrealistic to think we might come to a place of Sim-like colorblindness in another 70 years. Not only that, but in my story, once humans learned of other life out there in the universe, our own differences ceased to matter so much, and instead we came together and it was us versus them instead.

Of course, that also makes it very convenient for me, not have to deal with the level of racial tensions people experience today.

Nicole, I suppose because my characters live in a real Earth world, even if 70 years in the future, you would have to then gather that they come from these real racial backgrounds we're talking about here. So I guess I do have a ton of mixed-race couples, but I never thought of them that way. And I can't think of a time it's ever mattered.

(Although, now that we're talking about it, Stephanie's mom has never really liked Jeremiah, and still doesn't, and the kind of woman she is, I guess it is possible their difference in skin color could be why. Because really, she's just never had any valid reason for not liking him. That's just in the back of my head though, and I've never shown that in the story.)

The only other mixed race couples that have or could matter are my alien/human couples: Orion and Violet, and Dallas and Lucy.

I wonder if I've kind of touched on social class a bit with Micah and Mariah. Bryson has always been very vigilant with his little girls, and though he didn't have to worry with Keri and Justin, because Justin comes from money too, Micah doesn't. And there is a little bit of tension there between Bryson and Micah, especially with as quick and rocky as the marriage went down, I do wonder if Bryson doubts Micah's intentions there.

Mixed religion couples is something I tackle in my novel, though my hubby and I are mixed religion, so I guess that's not really different than my own experience.

Lunar, lol! Even though I should be spending this kind of energy on my novel, I think what I learn through writing LH helps me on my novel anyway

Yes, you're right, I am writing people stories. But at the same time, some people *are* bigots, and that's a character trait I've never been brave enough to tackle so far. Maybe I won't for a while, but maybe some day. I don't like racial tensions, and I love that my LH characters can live in a world where it's not as prominent.

My novels are another issue though. My first novel has such a small cast of characters that I can't really see it mattering that there's such a lack of diversity (though for some reason, I see Hannah dating a lot of non-white boys, lol!), but in future stories, I'm sure I'll have to tackle it eventually.

You're right, if there is going to be diversity, it should be genuine. But if the character's diversity doesn't matter to the story, then how do you go about introducing that diversity at all?

Okay, this was so long, lol! I'll pick at some more of these other points again later.

[thelunarfox]

You're right, if there is going to be diversity, it should be genuine. But if the character's diversity doesn't matter to the story, then how do you go about introducing that diversity at all?

I have to admit I'm semi-torn here. My first thought is why would you introduce it as an issue at all if it isn't important to the story? But I think that's because I am lazy.

Sometimes a character is fully formed in my head and that's that. Like Pat and her father. I see them both having dark skin. But I have to admit I haven't gone deeper than that. Why do they have dark skin in my head? Is it something that has negatively affected their lives in some way? Are there any expectations placed on them that aren't placed on the other characters?

I haven't come to any conclusion. Mostly because I look at the big picture, and if I stopped to look this in detail I don't think I'd get far. (Because I am still really lazy, lol.)


I will say though that sometimes there is something behind it. Like when I made Henri's family tree. I noticed that everyone was white. Well that gave me pause.

So I thought about it for a couple of seconds and came to the conclusion that it did fit. I didn't think anyone else would notice though. Did anyone? With what I know about Henri, I don't think he would purposely not pick darker skinned partners, but I do think he's set in his ways and he's not always conscious of them. He's not a huge bigot, but he might be a tiny one without realizing it.

Meanwhile, his son's first serious partner was Pat. I think this is an important distinction between the two despite the fact that Pat's skin color isn't important to the story.

But did anyone even notice that? I did, and I wondered if I was being sensitive. Then I wondered if maybe others had noticed the tree and hadn't said anything.


I think I use race subconsciously in that way. Like I doubt the higher ups in the Neutral Territory are darker skinned. I would see that as a flaw-- I wouldn't be doing it because I couldn't imagine darker skin characters as leaders. Who knows, this might even become important to the story, lol.

[sfe]

This discussion is very interesting. All your opinions are interesting.

I won't answer the questions as none of my works dealt with such matters.

I agree with Kiri about what offends me. It doesn't have to be about the social group I belong to, I am offended every time I hear people acting as superiors to other people.

Dec 5, 2010 8:45:54 GMT -5 @celebkiriedhel said:

I actually don't think that EA do any non-anglo faces justice at all. Asian faces like Malaysian, Phillipine, Indonesian, Indian - are not represented. The faces in WA for egyptian and chinese - aren't. The only thing they really got right was the sliders for skin tone.

.....

To be honest - there are some european faces that are hard to do as well like Italian, or Greek. It's the nose. Very hard to do a nose with character. The sliders are wrong in the nose, cheek, chin and jaw.

I agree. I found it particularly hard to represent some faces. Generally, I think you could say that EA decided to represent caucasians with a variety of skin colours. However, as regards the european faces, I can do my nose just fine ;D

[laura]

Dec 5, 2010 12:24:57 GMT -5 @thelunarfox said:

Sometimes a character is fully formed in my head and that's that. Like Pat and her father. I see them both having dark skin. But I have to admit I haven't gone deeper than that. Why do they have dark skin in my head? Is it something that has negatively affected their lives in some way? Are there any expectations placed on them that aren't placed on the other characters?

I haven't come to any conclusion. Mostly because I look at the big picture, and if I stopped to look this in detail I don't think I'd get far. (Because I am still really lazy, lol.)

Pat is a good example then - you just saw her with dark skin, but why? That's like the issue I have with Hannah (from my novel) and her boyfriends. I see them as non-white (of all varieties) in my head, but why, and what does that mean? Maybe it has more to do with Hannah's character than it does the boyfriends themselves? First, I don't think she'd be discriminating in that way, but second, I also bet she gets a small rise out of seeing if her mother would be bothered by it, lol! <-- oh, that sounds terrible, doesn't it? But it's a very real thing that some girls (and boys) do.

Or maybe it's just that she doesn't like the look of white boys? But then, what does that mean?

I have wondered what you thought of skin color in your own story, and what it means. Because as far as I can tell, your characters don't seem too bothered by it, or at least no more than mine are on the surface level.

Yes, I get stopped up on all of these very fine details, when in the big picture, I'm not sure how much it really matters to the story. I guess it can never really hurt to be aware of it at least.