Neglected cultures in Scifi and Fantasy

[Datepalm]

Funny thing, I've tended to imagine the Dorneans as a bit darker skinned. Not as dark as a Summer Islander, but perhaps a bit Arabic.

I think they're pretty repeatedly described, (In Ariannes case, with great and lingering detail :rolleyes:) as being arab/mediterranean looking. More oddly perhaps, I always imagine the Greyjoys, and other Iron Islanders by extension, to be sort of olive skinned, which makes less sense.

Lol, i'll manage without Xho rising to proiminence, but a lot of Dany's supporting characters get something of a raw deal. I'm really interested in her bloodriders and in Grey Worm, for example, but I don't think they're ever really going to be major characters, which is a shame.

[Sci-2]

Thanks for the strawman argument.

Well, the original argument Kevin put forward wasn't deserving of more anyway.

OP: I wish there were more minority characters.

Kevin: Minorities kill albinos and eat people - do you expect a writer to put that into their fantasy?

Last I checked minorities do a lot of other things besides black magic. It's a silly counter to the OP, even though I disagree with the notion that writers not putting in strong characters of demographic X means they are obligated to correct it or that they are prejudice.

Kevin's argument jumps into the negative aspects of minorities, ignoring that a writer could find the same dirt on Europeans and yes, the modern West as well.

[Nukelavee]

The problem, Eurytus, with you simply screaming "strawman" when people point out barbaric acts on the parts of the First World, is that, well, it isn't.

Hmmm, Africans killing and eating albinos? How about bizzare Christians killing their children in exorcism rituals? Satanists?

Certainly, there are a lot of fucked up beliefs in the world...and tons of them are fat and happy in North America.

I'll be honest - as much as I love learning about other cultures, as open as I am to new things, as good as I am at putting myself in anothers shoes, there are limits. As a reader, there is a point where I can't relate, heh, things just seem too foriegn. If I read a story written by a Saan tribeswoman, totally based on her culture and mythology, no matter how well written or how much I enjoyed it...I'd still feel outside the story.

And if I was writing a story from her viewpoint, how would I manage to dump my biases and assume hers?

[Sci-2]

The problem, Eurytus, with you simply screaming "strawman" when people point out barbaric acts on the parts of the First World, is that, well, it isn't.

Hmmm, Africans killing and eating albinos? How about bizzare Christians killing their children in exorcism rituals? Satanists?

Certainly, there are a lot of fucked up beliefs in the world...and tons of them are fat and happy in North America.

I'll be honest - as much as I love learning about other cultures, as open as I am to new things, as good as I am at putting myself in anothers shoes, there are limits. As a reader, there is a point where I can't relate, heh, things just seem too foriegn. If I read a story written by a Saan tribeswoman, totally based on her culture and mythology, no matter how well written or how much I enjoyed it...I'd still feel outside the story.

And if I was writing a story from her viewpoint, how would I manage to dump my biases and assume hers?

Has there ever been a case of genuine Satanic abuse? Not attacking, was *just* reading about the controversy over repressed memories that led to the Satanic cult scare.

[emberling]

Some of this is because people often don't get it when an author uses a setting where the characters are racially as well as culturally different. Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea is set in a world where most of the inhabitants have darker skin, but a lot of readers I think simply don't remember it that way. There's a Catch-22 here where too many mentions of different racial characteristics will make the writing seem stilted and unrealistic, but only using sparing mentions and descriptions risks having people in the majority White "western" world missing this and simply assume all the characters look like Caucasians.

There's a lot of this going on, yeah, and it definitely muddies the issue.

Fremen? Aiel? They're brown in my head, no matter how white on the page. Earthsea? Cold Magic? White as white can be, when they're meant to be medium-dark.

Even in modern-day fiction, I've found myself doing double-takes and saying wait, that character's black? on the fifth read of a story or something. My mental impression of a character's appearance isn't really influenced at all by the description I'm offered; it's influenced by how they act, how people act around them, what their culture is. If it acts like a Native American, it looks like a Native American. And (unfortunately) if it acts like just any miscellaneous person, I'm likely to assume any darkness of skin is just a tan.

[Kosciuszko]

Wait, the Fremen are white? Is this actually in Dune or are people just defaulting characters to white in their minds? Because I don't remember the Fremen being described as white. I always imagined them as much more Arabic.

[Lummel]

Wait, the Fremen are white? Is this actually in Dune or are people just defaulting characters to white in their minds? Because I don't remember the Fremen being described as white. I always imagined them as much more Arabic.

And yet they are blue eyed.

[Kosciuszko]

And yet they are blue eyed.

The spice does that. Or I could have sworn.

[Liadin]

Fremen? Aiel? They're brown in my head, no matter how white on the page. Earthsea? Cold Magic? White as white can be, when they're meant to be medium-dark.

Even in modern-day fiction, I've found myself doing double-takes and saying wait, that character's black? on the fifth read of a story or something. My mental impression of a character's appearance isn't really influenced at all by the description I'm offered; it's influenced by how they act, how people act around them, what their culture is. If it acts like a Native American, it looks like a Native American. And (unfortunately) if it acts like just any miscellaneous person, I'm likely to assume any darkness of skin is just a tan.

Which would explain your thinking of the characters in Earthsea and Cold Magic as white when they aren't. Evidently they're not exotic enough? I mean, Cold Magic I sort of get since it does take place in alt-Europe (even though many of the cultural influences are not European....), but Earthsea is not a European-feeling world at all to me.

[Lummel]

Now that's one criticism in this thread that strikes me as just being silly. There have been plenty of people of all races in the real as well as the fictional world that have gone by nicknames derived from geographical names, such as Tex, Frisco, Vegas, etc. Indiana Jones, anyone? Not to mention there are now thosuands of real life Americans with names like Brittany, Trenton, London, Paris, Boston, and Memphis on their birth certificates. :)

Sorry Gov'nor that probably a problem on my part then. Names like Brittany, London, Paris, Boston, Memphis or Trenton sound impossibly ridiculous on a person to my ears (and for that matter giving people surnames as first names too like Madison or Tyler). I think both practises are still a little unusual in the UK, well that's my impression anyhow.

[ljkeane]

I tend to skim over the physical descriptions of characters so to be honest I totally missed the characters in Earthsea weren't described as white.

I don't really see a great deal of significance in what superficial racial descriptions fictional characters in fictional cultures are given though. Yes most of the characters in Westeros are given a caucasion appearance and it's loosely based on medieval Europe but none of us live in a culture that remotely approaches that of Westeros. We all have a lot more in common with a character of any skin tone set in the modern world than with any of the characters set in Westeros regardless of any similarities they may have in physical description.

[Eurytus]

The problem, Eurytus, with you simply screaming "strawman" when people point out barbaric acts on the parts of the First World, is that, well, it isn't.

Hmmm, Africans killing and eating albinos? How about bizzare Christians killing their children in exorcism rituals? Satanists?

Certainly, there are a lot of fucked up beliefs in the world...and tons of them are fat and happy in North America.

I'll be honest - as much as I love learning about other cultures, as open as I am to new things, as good as I am at putting myself in anothers shoes, there are limits. As a reader, there is a point where I can't relate, heh, things just seem too foriegn. If I read a story written by a Saan tribeswoman, totally based on her culture and mythology, no matter how well written or how much I enjoyed it...I'd still feel outside the story.

And if I was writing a story from her viewpoint, how would I manage to dump my biases and assume hers?

Someone who wants to describe North America as "barbaric" with a straight face has never, I suspect, been to the Congo.

I have.

And Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Tanzania and Kenya too. Amongst other non-African countries.

Even excluding some of the 100% barbaric customs already mentioned (like FGM, forced marriage, complete absence of women's rights, murdering gay people etc) which are way, way, way more prevalent than anything like satanist killing children in the west, which essentially never happens, the normal way of life in large areas of some of those countries would seem wholly alien and yes, barbaric to residents of the developed world.

[Nukelavee]

I sort of knew people would leap to "Satanic baby-killing" without me actually saying it.

No, seriously, I was simply pointing out that, yes, all sorts of idiot Satanists do exist, and that they firmly believe in stuff just as crazy as those nutty Africans.

Just like, hard to believe, things like the killing of gays occurs here, too, as well as racially motivated attacks, religious crimes, general hate crimes...

So, somehow, we overlook the barbaric elements of our own countries, even when they mirror those of those barbaric 3rd worlders.

I'm glad you are a seasoned traveller, Eurytus, so am I, although I don't equate alien with barbaric. Nor do I tend to pose points where I imply that whole ethnic demographics can be covered by a simple term, while ignoring many of similar traits show up among our own culture.

[Sci-2]

Someone who wants to describe North America as "barbaric" with a straight face has never, I suspect, been to the Congo.

I have.

And Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Tanzania and Kenya too. Amongst other non-African countries.

Even excluding some of the 100% barbaric customs already mentioned (like FGM, forced marriage, complete absence of women's rights, murdering gay people etc) which are way, way, way more prevalent than anything like satanist killing children in the west, which essentially never happens, the normal way of life in large areas of some of those countries would seem wholly alien and yes, barbaric to residents of the developed world.

I don't think it has anything to do with where someone has traveled but the bizarre and as far as I can tell racist need to jump to statistics and descriptions of "barbarism" when someone makes a heartfelt post about wishing there was more SFF that include their race/culture.

Notice I don't even agree with the OP, and found the idea that white authors have an obligation to include minorities unfounded, but I saw no need to lash out about the crime members of certain races commit or claim that their homelands have massive amounts of "barbarism". Perhaps this wasn't the intent, but to me it seemed like a disrespectful and unseemly way to try and "win" a discussion.

[Ormond]

Has there ever been a case of genuine Satanic abuse? Not attacking, was *just* reading about the controversy over repressed memories that led to the Satanic cult scare.

There have been cases of small isolated groups of alienated teenagers committing crimes as part of their own ideas of Satantic rituals. So although most of the "Satanic cult" stuff revolving around "repressed memories" was nonsense, there are a few cases of atrocities committed in the name of Satanism in modern times.

[Spring Bass]

I think they're pretty repeatedly described, (In Ariannes case, with great and lingering detail :rolleyes:) as being arab/mediterranean looking. More oddly perhaps, I always imagine the Greyjoys, and other Iron Islanders by extension, to be sort of olive skinned, which makes less sense.

The "salty Dornish" are probably "Mediterranean" in appearance, and the "sandy Dornish" are apparently even darker than that.

As for the Greyjoys, I wouldn't dismiss that impression entirely. Jon is described as being "dark" compared to Robb being "fair", with brown hair and very dark eyes. I always imagined Jon - and others who primarily hail from First Men descent - as looking somewhat swarthy in appearance, although fairer skinned than the Dornish. Since the Iron Islanders are largely descended from the First Men, they'd largely have the same appearance and features.

The Summer Islanders are an interesting case of Martin keeping modern racial categories out of his fiction and describing features that his characters see instead. They're described as being "dark as teak", but what do they actually look like? Sub-Saharan Africans? Very dark-skinned pacific islanders or Australian aborigines? Very dark-skinned caucasians, like you get in parts of the Indian subcontinent?

[WhiteHaven]

"But Westeros is based on Medieval Europe!" You know, Europe, with all it's gigantic walls of ice, snow zombies and dragons. But you can't throw black people in there! THAT WOULD BE CRAZY!

;)

[Black Wizard]

And yet they are blue eyed.

There are blue-eyed Syrians aren't there? I think Lawrence of Arabia posed as one of them.

[Nukelavee]

The problem is, how do you create a different race, or culture, that isn't simply a variant on your own surroundings, or people?

Leaving alone "minorities" in fantasy or sci-fi, look at aliens that aren't, really, alien. How many races have you ever read that are truly alien, and not just a WASP in a rubber suit?

[emberling]

Jon is described as being "dark" compared to Robb being "fair", with brown hair and very dark eyes.

"Dark" can simply mean dark/black hair, saying nothing about the skin. Or it can mean pale skin with black hair (dark by lack of color). It's a delightfully imprecise description that leaves much to the imagination, allowing the reader to find their own comfort.

Not that I recall whether Martin used it in that particular nonspecific manner.