# Diversity in SF and Fantasy



## Philip Overby (Sep 5, 2013)

The hashtag #DiversityinSFF was going around on Twitter today, discussing what people thought about this topic. Later that day, someone shared with me this survey, which I filled out: 

A survey about SFF fandom | Mary Robinette Kowal

My thoughts about it afterwords was "Wow, almost all the fantasy I read is only by English speaking, Western authors."

That has always made me a little sad, being that one of my favorite writers is Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. Since discovering his work, I've been eager to read more fantasy fiction from writers from all over the world. South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East. These are places I've either read very little from or not at all. This in part with me not being a multilingual. If translations existed from more of these places, I may seek out their fiction more often.

The topic also seemed to focus on depictions of gender and race in fantasy. We've had discussions about these topics with mixed results, but one thing that kept coming up on Twitter was the lack of diverse heroes SF and fantasy. 

So when I read about this, I thought we as a community at Mythic Scribes should be discussing these things. In order for our fantasy horizons to be broadened (both as readers and writers) shouldn't we explore more outside our comfort zones? Shouldn't we seek out translations of writing from authors that represent a whole new approach to fantasy story-telling? Shouldn't we try to read more fiction about characters that don't look and act exactly like us? Isn't that how the genre grows and expands?

Chuck Wendig tackled this discussion and there are some comments about non-English speaking authors:

Crowdsourcing The Essentials: Non-US, POC Sci-Fi and Fantasy? Ã‚Â« terribleminds: chuck wendig

My two questions are these: 

1. What are some examples that you've seen recently that seem to show a positive shift toward more diversity in SF and fantasy (meaning authors, characters, worlds, etc.)? 

2. What do you think could be done to improve diversity in SF and fantasy? (more translations from non-English speaking countries, more diverse characters when it comes to gender, race, or other backgrounds)

Let's keep this discussion friendly and productive!


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## Svrtnsse (Sep 5, 2013)

I'll take this opportunity to put in a good word for the author of some of my favourite books: Tove Jansson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The books in question are the ones about the moomin trolls: Moomin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Technically they're children's books, but even adults are able to enjoy them and I don't think that's just because I've loved them ever since I was a small child. Some of them, in fact, are way too dark/deep to be suitable for children - especially in this day and age (Moominpappa at Sea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

The stories are set in some kind of fantasy version of Finland, inhabited by all kinds of strange and interesting figures... and no humans. The world building is nothing like the kind we discuss here. It's more whimsical and playful than your average modern day fantasy world. Consistency gives way to amusement and fantastical and inexplicable things happen as if it's completely normal.

The books have been translated to English and in my opinion the translation is pretty good. There are some losses here and there, but overall the general feel of the prose carries over well.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 5, 2013)

In fantasy, diversity of characters is a product of diversity of settings. We have a lot of white males because a lot of fantasy is about settings similar to medieval Europe, and most history books that deal with medieval Europe talk about it in terms of white males.* If, say, you're writing about Africa like Jabrosky does, that won't come up as much.

* I'm avoiding saying that white males were the "dominant" people in that time and place, since I'm guessing if I do so, someone who knows more history than me will name one or more queens who played a prominent role in that time period.

Diversity of authors is a separate issue, and I'm not sure how it should be best approached.


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## SineNomine (Sep 5, 2013)

Hmmmm, for the "positive shift" question I really don't want to break any rules about bringing politics into this, so I will try to be as general as possible.  The recent events in the SFWA have been very revealing of two things;  For one, they have shown just how far we have to go before the community of SFF authors is truly a safe, inclusive place for all, not just white heterosexual cismen.  And they have also shown that, as a group, while we still have major issues, we always legitimately want to fix them.  We want to get better.  And that is promising.

That deals mostly with authors, obviously, but it's an important barometer of whats present in the genre as the whole.  Stories are profoundly influenced by the default assumptions of the author, and what _isn't_ said in a story can be just as important as what is.  Increased diversity representation in stories is a great first step when focusing on building the next generation of SFF authors.  However, there is this horrible endless feedback loop of stories being written about western europe analogs starring white males, which then serves to inform those readers as to what fantasy fundamentally is.  When they start writing, they tend to make those same assumptions.  Someone, somewhere has to step up and try their hardest to break that chain of the harmful assumptions that SFF is only about or for certain people.  And that can be incredibly messy since authors' hackles tend to raise the instant you mention something they "should" write about.


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## skip.knox (Sep 5, 2013)

But SFF is not done only by white guys. First of all, there are plenty of females in the genre, and this has been true for a long time. Second, From Chesnutt to Delaney to Butler there have been black writers. I didn't know they were black until I happened to look them up, because it didn't matter: it didn't matter to the stories they wrote and it didn't matter to me as a reader. Nor did their religion, their sexuality, or their favorite baseball team.

Yes, I know, literary criticism majors read all sorts of Significance into ratios and race. The one place it truly matters is if any sort of prejudice makes it harder for a particular work to get published. Getting published is hard enough as it is without the writer facing additional hurdles. But when it comes to the story, the author's race and gender matter no more than does the reader's.

It would be amusing to write a short story in which an orc complains about how orcs are portrayed in literature. He would of course go on a rampage.


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## Steerpike (Sep 5, 2013)

Read Octavia Butler. Great books, and she addresses issues of diversity in the stories.


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## Devor (Sep 5, 2013)

I have trouble seeing it as a priority to read non-Western books when you're reading to improve your fantasy writing.  There's translation issues, and often a cultural gap - there isn't as much you can borrow in your own writing.  And it just seems like your typical must-read list is long enough already.  I don't mean to overstate, but you've got to prioritize the things that will help you most.

That said, I think too-large-a-portion of the genre has gotten stale and repetitive in more ways than one.  We should probably all be looking a little more closely at stories with out-of-the-box settings and more diverse characters.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 5, 2013)

Some writers of colour who write stories about characters of colour in non-Western settings, but also write in English as to avoid the problem mentioned by Devor:


 Saladin Ahmed, Arab-American, who is active in the #DiversityinSFF tag. His novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, was nominated for several awards and I'd recommend it. You can also read a collection of short stories by him for free on your Kindle, here.
 Nnedi Okorafor, Nigerian-American, one of my favourite authors. The book I'd recommend for this website is _Akata Witch_, which is about a young black American girl living in Africa who discovers that she is a witch and attends lessons and events and fights a big bad. The backbone is similar enough to other, Western fantasy novels that you can really appreciate the worldbuilding and the characters. She also wrote _Who Fears Death_, which is for an older audience.
 Malinda Lo, Chinese-American, who is perhaps better known for her lesbian retelling of Cinderella, _Ash_, wrote another novel called _Huntress_, which is set in fantasy!China. I haven't gotten my hands on that one, but I've read _Ash_ and can tell you that she's a great writer. 
 Nalo Hopkinson, Jamaican-Canadian, who has written more books than I could recommend, but nearly all of which have strong Caribbean influences. _Midnight Robber_ is probably my favourite by her. It's more science fiction than the others I've rec'd, but it's got a lot of fantasy elements, too.
 Some others I'm less familiar with but will recommend for the sake of the list: Kiini Ibura Salaam, Karen Lord, Cindy Pon, Grace Lin, M. Lucie Chin, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Hiromi Goto.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 5, 2013)

Does Lauren Beukes write in English? If she doesn't, she must have a very good translator. (There's a thread about her buried somewhere in the Novels section.)


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## Ophiucha (Sep 5, 2013)

I'm pretty sure she does, yeah. She's from South Africa, right?, so I'm guessing she speaks either that or that Dutch-ish language I can't remember the name of that sounds sort of like 'African'? I'm on my phone so I can't google it. She's definitely on my to-read list, I've heard great things about _Zoo City_. And it's nice to see a book cover that actually shows that the protagonist is black - it always makes me wince a bit when they whitewash the characters on the official artwork.


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## Darkblade (Sep 5, 2013)

I'm going to second Hiromi Goto and Nalo Hopkinson. Having not only read their work but done workshops under them (they are friends of the mentor from a young writers group I'm involved in) I can say that more people should be exposed to their works.

I'd also recommend Silvia Moreno-Garcia an up and coming Mexican-Canadian author who just released her first collection of short fiction, just kickstartered the funding to take a year writing her first novel and has edited quite a few anthologies. Her urban fantasy captures the wonder of the natural world and the paradoxical blend of corruption and mercy displayed by society in a fashion that seems both deeply Canadian and Mexican.

There is also Isuna Hasekura's Spice and Wolf series of light novels (illustrated novellas) about a ambiguously medieval European traveling merchant and a Shinto-esque Wolf goddess that he takes in going around from kingdom to kingdom trying to turn a profit. While both the anime style original cover and the western naked wolf-woman covers leave something to be desired the English translation by Yen Press is quite good and it presents an interesting view on the standard fantasy setting that you probably wouldn't get from someone as exposed to the Tolkien-esque mold as we are.

You are on the internet so you most likely have at the very least heard of Nagaru Tanigawa's Haurhi Suzumiya series, at least the anime adaptation of it. Again these are light novels and therefore may seem quite short to western readers. None the less Yen Press did a good job with the translation, capturing the snarky narration overlooking a strange metaphysical look into the whims of a strange teenage girl (it's hard to explain more than that without major spoilers so I won't even try).

Beyond looking going out and reading books by authors from other countries translated or in English originally we can also turn our attention to other cultures ourselves. Look at their mythologies and histories, draw on that research to build our worlds so that within time they become as tied to fantasy as Howard's barbarians and Tolkien's elves and dwarves. Just because you may be straight, white and male doesn't mean your heroes have to be. Go out, experiment, write as other genders and orientations, explore other races.


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## Devora (Sep 6, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> I'm pretty sure she does, yeah. She's from South Africa, right?, so I'm guessing she speaks either that or that Dutch-ish language I can't remember the name of that sounds sort of like 'African'? I'm on my phone so I can't google it. She's definitely on my to-read list, I've heard great things about _Zoo City_. And it's nice to see a book cover that actually shows that the protagonist is black - it always makes me wince a bit when they whitewash the characters on the official artwork.



Afrikaans.


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## Philip Overby (Sep 6, 2013)

Thanks everyone for contributing so far. I think that for us to move past only reading about medieval style fantasy, there needs to be infusion of different cultures into fantasy writing in general. I do love my fair share of medieval fantasy (A Game of Thrones being one), but I would like to get my hands on fiction that is told from the POV of characters I _don't_ feel like I know already.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 6, 2013)

I definitely agree that there should be more non-medieval fantasy, but I think it's important to diversify our standard medieval epics, as well. People of colour were certainly fewer in numbers back then than in modern Britain, but they weren't _non-existent_. After all, even the Knights of the Round Table had a Moor, aptly named Sir Morien. It wouldn't be hard to have at trader from the fantasy!Silk Road or a mixed-race bastard or two running around.

Rec for non-medieval story: N. K. Jemisin's _Dreamblood_ series. It's a fantasy version of Ancient Egypt, except without any of the usual 'curse of the mummy' and tomb raider nonsense that is the premise of, I believe, literally every other Ancient Egyptian fantasy story.


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## Devor (Sep 6, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> I definitely agree that there should be more non-medieval fantasy, but I think it's important to diversify our standard medieval epics, as well. People of colour were certainly fewer in numbers back then than in modern Britain, but they weren't _non-existent_. After all, even the Knights of the Round Table had a Moor, aptly named Sir Morien. It wouldn't be hard to have at trader from the fantasy!Silk Road or a mixed-race bastard or two running around.



I want to agree . . . I mean I do agree, we need more diversity.  But we can't handwave the challenges.  Is it really better to include racial diversity if it's setting after setting of medieval oppression?  I mean, especially if those aren't themes that necessarily fit into the work.  And in that kind of setting, sometimes good intentions still lead to portrayals that are panned as the opposite of what they're intended to be.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not even working in a western-medieval setting at the moment.  And I'm not trying to make excuses.  I'm just trying to give a shout out to the fact that dealing with these issues can be extremely challenging, specifically when you're boxed into a setting that limits the available archetypes.

If I had to suggest a solution, I think we should look at elves and dwarves and orcs - I mean, specifically, the way that we've taken these races and littered them throughout the genre.  Is there a way that we can take modern racial experiences, insert them into the medieval setting, make them more flattering than backwoods tribal nations, and then litter that culture throughout the genre like we have elves and dwarves and orcs?  Y'know, give people a better baseline archetype to work with.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 6, 2013)

Devor said:


> I want to agree . . . I mean I do agree, we need more diversity.  But we can't handwave the challenges.  Is it really better to include racial diversity if it's setting after setting of medieval oppression?  I mean, especially if those aren't themes that necessarily fit into the work.  And in that kind of setting, sometimes good intentions still lead to portrayals that are panned as the opposite of what they're intended to be.



How oppressive is oppressive, anyway? I mean, the U.S. pre-Civil War was pretty oppressive to black people, but there was still a sizable community of freemen. (Massachusetts even had a black judge by 1848.) I'm not that knowledgeable about the medieval period, but one-size-fits-all models of oppression are often overly simplistic.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 6, 2013)

Depends on the story. Medieval Europe, though unquestionably racist, _was _largely pre-slavery, so the sorts of racism they experienced were more of the casual assumptions about their culture and language, a fear of the unknown, but not quite as actively oppressive. There is evidence to suggest that some areas, trading cities and Viking colonies, were even relatively accepting of their non-white residents.

I would also point out that the vast majority of medieval fantasy is far from historically accurate, and you could simply include a Moorish trader without ever addressing the racism he may or may not face. After all, I don't expect (or desire) every story with a female character to deal with sexism, nor do I want every story about gay characters to deal with homophobia. Whether you go with a trade route city in a pre-Crusades and pre-colonization timeline or just take the BBC's _Merlin_ route of 'colorblind casting' (if you will) with a black Guinevere and Latino Lancelot without comment or question, you can definitely include people of colour in your historical setting without having to deal with oppression and race issues.

But I do also like the idea of just changing up the setting enough to account for the varying cultures, as we do with elves or dwarves. You could even just make elves or dwarves black/[email protected]/Asian and skip a step in the middle.


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## Devor (Sep 6, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> Medieval Europe, though unquestionably racist, _was _largely pre-slavery, so the sorts of racism they experienced were more of the casual assumptions about their culture and language, a fear of the unknown, but not quite as actively oppressive...
> 
> I would also point out that the vast majority of medieval fantasy is far from historically accurate, and you could simply include a Moorish trader without ever addressing the racism he may or may not face..... Whether you go with a trade route city in a pre-Crusades and pre-colonization timeline or just take the BBC's _Merlin_ route of 'colorblind casting' (if you will) with a black Guinevere and Latino Lancelot without comment or question.....



Yeah.  Okay.  But none of those are challenge-free.  "Blind Casting" can break immersion for some people or in some stories, and it would be easy to see a Moorish trader as a token character.

What I would want to see is a whole new way to present racial issues in a medieval setting, something that would be closer to reflecting race in our society, that wouldn't portray everyone of another race as the distant Moor or tribal warrior or whatever-else we expect, and that we could copy-and-paste as prolifically as we do orcs and elves.  I want to see a setting where the black knight, the black lord, the black wizard, and the black peasant _can make sense_ without having to make it a big deal in every story.  Is that too much?


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## saellys (Sep 6, 2013)

Devor said:


> What I would want to see is a whole new way to present racial issues in a medieval setting, something that would be closer to reflecting race in our society, that wouldn't portray everyone of another race as the distant Moor or tribal warrior or whatever-else we expect, and that we could copy-and-paste as prolifically as we do orcs and elves.  I want to see a setting where the black knight, the black lord, the black wizard, and the black peasant _can make sense_ without having to make it a big deal in every story.  Is that too much?



You want a new way to present racial issues, without any potential for racism to be an element of the story? That treads dangerously close to making major omissions in the worldbuilding process. Attitudes about different races and cultures are an important part of the world, if not necessarily an important part of the story. I thought _The Lathe of Heaven_ and _The Steel Remains_ struck a particularly good balance of illustrating attitudes about the races of major characters without hinging those characters' arcs entirely upon their struggles in racist societies, but I don't know what you consider "making it a big deal".


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## Devor (Sep 7, 2013)

saellys said:


> You want a new way to present racial issues, without any potential for racism to be an element of the story?



That's a big misread of what I said.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 7, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> But I do also like the idea of just changing up the setting enough to account for the varying cultures, as we do with elves or dwarves. You could even just make elves or dwarves black/[email protected]/Asian and skip a step in the middle.



I already said 'yes that would be fine too' to that?

I don't see why all of these ideas are mutually exclusive, though. I don't expect any one author to write 'the all-inclusive medieval fantasy novel'; I expect a bunch of authors to give us their worlds with regards to the fact that you can't paint the world in a single stroke. Worlds like ours, worlds with co-existing cultures of different races, or worlds where everybody is just a different colour and everyone just accepts that. There is no harm in having a character from 'a distant land', and there is no _need_ to make a big deal of it. 'Mohammad, a trader from the Ibn-al Islands and a close friend of Rorik's, waved at the group as they entered the market.' You never _need_ to make more mention of it than that.

It depends on what you're writing, who you're writing for, and who you are. I'm white, so it's not like I'm writing dozens of novels about the realities of racism. I don't have those experiences to share, nor do I think my voice needs to be heard. Since I write primarily about the social aspects of my world, I do often worldbuild in a bit of race relations, but my characters of colour are never defined by it and their stories don't revolve around it. I wouldn't tell any author they have to write about racism, because frankly most authors aren't qualified to do so. But it seems odd to me to write a story that doesn't _have_ people of colour. It's not the world I live in, it's not a world I'd want to live in, so why would I create a world that reads that way? It's like writing a story that doesn't have any women, when everyone in the world lives somewhere where women make up half the population. It's... jarring, both from the modern perspective and from my perspective as someone who majored in Medieval Studies.


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## Devor (Sep 7, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> There is no harm in having a character from 'a distant land', and there is no _need_ to make a big deal of it.



The character from a distant land is a foreigner, who dresses differently, speaks differently, behaves differently, believes different things, approaches society with an outsider's perspective, and probably wants to return home.  The foreigner doesn't necessarily embody the racial experience of African-Americans or even 3rd-generation immigrants.

To create a character who embodies those experiences in a medieval society, you have to build your world around it.  There's no archetype on hand you can slip in that even comes close.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 7, 2013)

Oh no, you might have to do more _worldbuilding_. Wouldn't that be a burden.

Seriously, though, if you are just doing medieval European counterpart culture, then you could just as easily toss together a quick medieval Islamic counterpart culture for the sake of a single character; if it's not the setting of the novel, you don't have to spend hours on it (though feel free to; I spend hours working on the nuances of my straight white male characters). You don't have to develop the entire world, just make a few adjustments to the clothes (which you can google an appropriate analogue for in ten seconds flat), come up with a few different words that could be cultural (refer to the gods by a different name, similar to Allah v. God), you can create a character who is living here happily because he makes better money, done. Or give him a son who he travels with who grew up half in fantasy!Europe and half in fantasy!Middle East and wears clothes from both and has a bit of an accent but nothing you'd need to emphasize.

Again, it depends on the novel. Sometimes, yeah, if you'd want to have this character you would have to really work for it. In which case, either do some extra worldbuilding (after all, so often writers give their kings and queens silk gowns and spiced ham - where do those spices and garments come from? you'll have to do that worldbuilding _anyway_) or just go with the idea and build a multi-racial Europe in the style of the elf-dwarf-human Europes of other fantasy stories. But a lot of stories just don't have that level of realism or depth where you'd _need_ that. Some _characters_ just don't need that. Write what works for your style and your setting and whatever character this is. A comic relief poc!character would be better suited for a casual trader who likes Europe sort of character, whereas the main character or love interest - someone who gets a ton of development - could be made more interesting by giving them memories of home and a very strong sense of culture shock.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 7, 2013)

I just realized, is it "diversity" if you're not representing any culture? I've done a few short stories in a setting where desert nomads and hunter-gatherers encounter each other--they're respectively described in terms that could be called "Middle Eastern" and "European," but their cultures aren't based off of any specific society. (For instance, the nomads don't follow any religion indigenous to the Middle East, instead believing that water is a vital force that contains the souls of the dead.)


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## Philip Overby (Sep 7, 2013)

I don't think this discussion has to be limited to gender and race. One thing Saladin Ahmed tweeted made a lot of sense as well:



> Class diversity also needs to be part of #DiversityInSFF. I want fewer kings and starship captains, more coach drivers and space waitresses.



What Feo said is also interesting:



> I just realized, is it "diversity" if you're not representing any culture? I've done a few short stories in a setting where desert nomads and hunter-gatherers encounter each other--they're respectively described in terms that could be called "Middle Eastern" and "European," but their cultures aren't based off of any specific society. (For instance, the nomads don't follow any religion indigenous to the Middle East, instead believing that water is a vital force that contains the souls of the dead.)



I have similar issues in my work. I often have multi-racial characters, but if you asked me what they were based on I could only say in broader terms, not peg it down to one or two specific real world cultures. If I did more world-building I could develop these cultures more so I could see what they most resemble. This is something I prefer to do the text of my writing and not independently though (meaning months of separate world-building).


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## Amanita (Sep 7, 2013)

A subject matter that has sprouted quite a few rather heated discussions over on the NaNo-forums. 
Like other posters before me, I have to admit that I've mainly read fantasy by German, British or US-authors so far. The reasons are the same, availability and language even though I am curious about non-western works and try them out if I find them in a good translation, the less English or German speakers knowing the language, the harder this becomes of course. I've noticed some trend towards Russian fantasy recently at least around here.

I'm all for fantasy that goes beyond the usual clichÃ©s with white medieval European castle land but I'm wary about any attempts to implant the situation of minorities in 21th century US into a fantasy world if the story isn't explicitly about making a point about US society. 

Anyway, at the moment, the situation seems to be such that you can freely write white characters and do whatever you want. (Barbarians, evil empires, corrupt city states, noble kingdoms and so on.) As soon as you include none-white groups or single characters, they’re interpreted as your version of all people with similar physical traits and people start to feel offended if you did something wrong in their opinion. With some African-American activists, it seems to be impossible not to do that especially if you’ve grown up in a different country. I’m still surprised by all the things that are considered racist clichÃ©s because I’m missing the background in American history to understand why they’re deemed offensive. (A recent example, the “strong black woman” from the other thread.) 
There seems to be a similar problem with female characters actually.

I tend to make up my own history and cultural background for my fantasy peoples and I think most others on here do the same and I try my best to make them all multi-dimensional but reading many of those online-discussions, it’s clear that this isn’t deemed enough. So is avoiding non-white characters the less offensive path after all?

Speaking from my personal experience, I don’t expect a book to have German characters but do feel offended if there are badly done ones.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 7, 2013)

Amanita said:


> A subject matter that has sprouted quite a few rather heated discussions over on the NaNo-forums.
> Like other posters before me, I have to admit that I've mainly read fantasy by German, British or US-authors so far. The reasons are the same, availability and language even though I am curious about non-western works and try them out if I find them in a good translation, the less English or German speakers knowing the language, the harder this becomes of course. I've noticed some trend towards Russian fantasy recently at least around here.
> 
> I'm all for fantasy that goes beyond the usual clichÃ©s with white medieval European castle land but I'm wary about any attempts to implant the situation of minorities in 21th century US into a fantasy world if the story isn't explicitly about making a point about US society.
> ...



It's a common mistake to treat offending a category--say, offending black people--as a binary "does offend" or "doesn't offend", when in truth you're more likely to offend a certain _percentage_ of category members. If you want proof of this, just look at how often category members offend others in the category (for instance, LL Cool J's involvement in the song "Accidental Racist", which a lot of other black people thought was just plain racist.) Of course, another common mistake is to treat the approval of one person in the category as automatically meaning that criticism from others "doesn't matter"--just because one person's particularly thick-skinned doesn't mean that others don't have a valid complaint. (See, again, just all the discussion that sprang up about "Accidental Racist".)

If this sounds a bit bewildering, the upshot of it is that there are two things to do about being offensive:

1): Know _exactly_ why people are angry at you. "Because they're stupid" is not, in and of itself, a reason, nor is "because they're overly sensitive"--you have to understand the logic or pseudo-logic by which your work is considered offensive, and what sort of work they might consider to not be offensive instead.

2): Decide for yourself, with your own judgment, whether you're okay with those people being angry with you. (I do mean "those people," not "that category," since again, the whole category won't be angry.)

To give a personal example, I wrote a romance between a straight man and an agender bisexual. Quite a few readers misinterpreted the agender character as transgender, and consequently assumed that I had made "errors" indicating that I didn't know what transpeople were like. My mistake wasn't in writing an agender character, but in solely using the perspective of the confused straight man--had I also used scenes from the perspective of the agender character, it would have been more clear that he/she was in fact agender. (If, on the other hand, someone had bitched at me for even having an agender character, I would have ignored them.)

Edit: If you really want to see a crystal-clear example both of invalid criticism, and of others in the category rejecting the criticism and accepting the original work, look up Allecto's essay that argues that _Firefly_ is misogynistic. From the get-go other feminists were arguing that Allecto was misrepresenting her case.


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## Devor (Sep 7, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> Oh no, you might have to do more _worldbuilding_. Wouldn't that be a burden.



Right now, in a medieval setting, it's easier to handwave a time-travelling Russian toothfairy than it is a black peasant.  All I'm saying is, if the literature is going to be dominated by medieval societies, then how can we fix that?


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## Ophiucha (Sep 7, 2013)

Raise the standards of American education so people are more aware of actual medieval history?

I just... don't think it's that hard to justify/handwave the presence of a non-white person in a pseudo-medieval setting given that they were in our _actual_ medieval history and any number of alternate history and magical explanations could go further to justify it. If readers cannot accept black people in medieval England but are perfectly capable of accepting dragons and warlocks, then we've got a whole other set of problems to deal with and, odds are, those people are not my target audience. I mean, one of my current projects is set in actual Medieval Italy, not pseudo!Italy, and it has a Moroccan character as well as _werewolves_. I'd give a good long stare of shame to anyone who pulled the realism card on me over the Moor and not the shapeshifter.

*@Phil, *Yes, definitely! I get kind of tired of having the throne be every hero's reward for saving the world, or their talents (usually magical) being the result of royal blood. There are practical concerns that make the upper class more popular (ability to travel, for instance), but many of those would go away in a non-medieval setting. Disability is another one. For what few disabled character there are, they nearly all have a counter magical ability. Blind seer, deaf/mute telepath, and so on. It'd be nice to see a character with a disability that actually has a _disability _and didn't just sacrifice their human senses/limbs for more awesome magical versions.


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## Philip Overby (Sep 7, 2013)

I honestly find enjoyment in all types of stories. I wouldn't necessarily say I get sick of novels that depict certain kind of characters over and over again, but I more reticent to read a story that feels like I've already read it before. I love A Song of Ice and Fire, but that doesn't mean I only want to read about medieval fantasy royalty. I love it because the characters are well done and I like the story. However, just because I'm familiar with these types of characters and settings doesn't mean I always want to read or write about them. Writing, to me, is about exploring some part of yourself that you want to share with the world. My sense of wonder about the world and all its people is what attracts me to read outside of what I've read so far. 

One thing that attracted me to _Throne of the Crescent Moon_ for instance, was the focus on a _Arabian Nights_ kind of world with ghuls and djinn and such. I thought, "Huh, I haven't read anything like that" so it encouraged me to read it. Another example is _The Wind-Up Girl_ which focuses on a 23rd century Thailand. Something about settings I've never seen before attracts me to the stories. I suspect if I'm reading about Arabic or Thai settings, that most of the characters are going to be more diverse than I'm used to reading. 

Personally, for me, a certain kind of setting can attract me to a story, then when I read more about the characters in the blurb or sample, that is what gets me hooked. If everyone was publishing stuff about 23rd century Thailand, I'd probably be less inclined to check it out. However, the merits of blurbs and samples is what really makes me buy something.


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## Devor (Sep 7, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> I mean, one of my current projects is set in actual Medieval Italy, not pseudo!Italy, and it has a Moroccan character as well as _werewolves_. I'd give a good long stare of shame to anyone who pulled the realism card on me over the Moor and not the shapeshifter.



I think you're still missing something about what I'm trying to say - that's still a _Moroccan_ character.  There's a tremendous gap between the experiences of a Moroccan in medieval Italy and of anyone dealing with racial issues today.  If we can't get over the handful of foreign-based tropes and find a more inclusionary way of dealing with race, we're never going to have real fantasy diversity.

That is, we shouldn't have to work so hard finding a way for a person of another race to have a starting position of knight. Or peasant.  Or Lord.  Instead of foreigner or immigrant or traveler or outsider.


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## Chessie (Sep 7, 2013)

Devor said:


> Right now, in a medieval setting, it's easier to handwave a time-travelling Russian toothfairy than it is a black peasant.  All I'm saying is, if the literature is going to be dominated by medieval societies, then how can we fix that?


Your comment is one of the reasons why I love these forums. The writers on here are forward thinking and aware that our beloved fantasy genre is getting stale. That said, I agree with Ophiucha in that characters of color are included and a big deal isn't made of them. Its fantasy, no? 

This discussion has gone in an interesting direction. I'm Hispanic but that doesn't play into my world-building. My WIP is a Victorian setting based off Russian and Canada's New France cultures. My protagonist is the member of a tribal nation, though she is married to a 'white guy' for certain purposes. A flicker of information is given as to why that is acceptable, but then the story continues. Racism is seen in one scene towards the protagonist, but its really by someone that is already a jerk. 

Anyway, I like the idea of having tribal nations in my 'Last Frontier' novel. But what about other races? Well, my story isn't based on planet Earth. Its a completely different land with different customs. But I still have a hard time deviating from the norm...and I'm with Devor on how do we change that? By no longer writing elves and orcs and dwarves that simulate other races, is my vote.

One day, I'm going to write a fantasy novel based off Indian culture. One day.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 7, 2013)

I have said, _multiple times_, that I am also in favour of stories that just handwave having completely European non-white people casually living in the towns and that I am also in favour of stories that just sort of condense the world into Europe but with all the racial diversity of the real world. But I am also in favour of stories that deal with the fact that the world is large and not a monolith, stories that deal with racism - either Medieval-style or modern, and stories that are more realistic, for better or worse. None of those last ones are non-inclusive. You don't need to have a wondrous ethnically diverse yet culturally bland utopia to be _inclusive_. Nor does said utopia need to have arbitrary justification for its existence to keep people from whining about a few more black characters than they'd see on _Game of Thrones_.

If you want to have a black knight, have a black knight. You don't need to build your novel around the justifying that. You just say 'Sir John, with dark skin and dark eyes, strode into the tavern' and that is perfectly fine. If you don't want it to be more than that, don't make it more than that. If some readers have a problem with the mere _presence_ of a black person, see my previous comment regarding Moors and werewolves.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 7, 2013)

Devor said:


> I think you're still missing something about what I'm trying to say - that's still a _Moroccan_ character.  There's a tremendous gap between the experiences of a Moroccan in medieval Italy and of anyone dealing with racial issues today.  If we can't get over the handful of foreign-based tropes and find a more inclusionary way of dealing with race, we're never going to have real fantasy diversity.
> 
> That is, we shouldn't have to work so hard finding a way for a person of another race to have a starting position of knight. Or peasant.  Or Lord.  Instead of foreigner or immigrant or traveler or outsider.



In a couple different threads, I've seen you talk about the "tropes" of this character and that character, and having to start from scratch when making a character who doesn't have a "trope." As best I can tell, you seem to mean archetypes, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me--why would race and sex determine what archetypes you use?

To give an example outside the standard race and sex stuff, one of my protagonists is from a very rich family, but she doesn't follow any of the archetypes associated with "rich kids." I built her around the "friendly nerd" trope, and then modified it according to what sort of life experiences wealth would make a nerd more likely to have. I don't think the relative paucity of positive rich-kid archetypes made it any harder to create her, since "rich kid" wasn't really her defining trait--it was just something that impacted her.


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## Devor (Sep 7, 2013)

Feo Takahari said:


> In a couple different threads, I've seen you talk about the "tropes" of this character and that character, and having to start from scratch when making a character who doesn't have a "trope." As best I can tell, you seem to mean archetypes, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me--why would race and sex determine what archetypes you use?



I've used both sometimes somewhat interchangeably.  I switched a few posts ago because I don't think, right now, that archetype is the right word for what I'm referring to here.  Here I'm talking about wanting to put diverse races into your standard archetypes, without having to pick one of the two:

 - Handwave the fact that they are separate races, with separate ethnic origins, and somewhat different perspectives on life.

 - Spend a great deal of time and wordcount trying to justify why people of many races are mixed in a medieval society.

There's a third consideration, which is that the common archetypes for using diverse races tend to involve things like tribal people and foreign travelers, who don't really represent the racial sentiments a diverse modern readership actually experience.  Those tropes don't do the situation justice, but they're the ones that represent race in a medieval society.

What I want to see in this case is a set of common tropes develop which writers could refer to when they want to do better by racial issues without dedicating a significant portion of their work to rewriting the medieval experience.

For instance, let's say we did the following:

 - Create a colony of a civilized non-white nation which invaded "medieval Europe," waged years of war and after years of racial tension, was integrated into the nation (or some other history - that's just a first thought because someone mentioned Viking settlements).

 - Create a new archetype for how this nation is portrayed which actually speaks to a modern fantasy readers and isn't bogged down by the stereotypes and common portrayals of Moors and tribesmen and what-have-you.  That is, how would people of different races want to portray themselves in modern fantasy?

 - Develop a set of terminology which people could refer to in their writing to say, "This happened in my story," which became common enough that you didn't need to redevelop the wheel every time you wanted to do it.

Wouldn't something like that be beneficial to the genre?


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 7, 2013)

It's not like we're writing historical fiction here. If you want to create a feudal society that has a great deal of trade with other regions, you can easily convey that through flavor (e.g. markets filled with chatter in a variety of languages.) If you want to create a fantasy society that's totally insular, I don't think there's anything inherently _wrong_ with that, but don't then give your society trade goods from all over the world and familiarity with a great many philosophies.

(It's not medieval, but I think I introduced an outside culture pretty quickly in _The Seal Breaks_. A classful of Blessed are studying a style of magic invented by the Scorned, and the one Scorned student is singled out by the teacher. A lot of elements of their interaction are never explained, but there's a general implication of colonialism.)

Edit: maybe the difference here is how much worldbuilding I _don't_ do. There are a lot of details I never quite explain, so while I try to create a feeling of cohesion, I focus more on tone and character than on the mechanical bits.


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## Lawfire (Sep 7, 2013)

From a 'realistic' 'earth-like' world building perspective, it makes sense that people (humans and non-humans) native to areas closer to the equator would have darker skin and those nearer the polar regions would have lighter skin. People in hot areas would tend to wear less clothing (including heavy metal armors), those in cold would have to wear more clothing. In our world natives of Scandinavia, Japan, and Alaska tend to have lighter skin than those of Greece, Thailand, or Peru.

If there is a culture that has developed a reliable mode of transportation, or simply began wandering, there are many reasons they may have spread beyond their homelands. Perhaps the homeland could not support the population growth. Maybe they wish to spread their religious or cultural beliefs throughout the land. Maybe the simply wish to expand their empire.

In a fantasy world, anything is possible. If orcs can have green skin, why couldn't the humans in a temperate climate have dark skin? I don't think it has to be a big issue.


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## The Dark One (Sep 8, 2013)

I've said it before and I'll say it again...push your personal agendas by all means, but do it subtly. Let the agenda be expressed as a backgound corollary rather than as an upfront issue. Overthink something, or get too PC and you'll come across as preachy and boring.

Do it tastefully, subtly and enable readers to come to their own conclusions, and you might just change the world.

A bit.


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## Amanita (Sep 8, 2013)

I think a society that resembles modern American one as far as race relations are concerned could maybe be achieved in the context of a larger empire inspired by the Roman empire with black people starting to rise into positions of power in the senat after years of white domination or similiar.
I can't see it with a typical medieval society where positions of power are inherited and people even believe they're granted by God. This kind of change would be difficult to achieve there without massive violence to bring it about which might send problematic messages once again. I wouldn't mind seeing more fantasy with different political systems at all but most readers and writers seem to fixated on the kings and queens. 
Many countries are still linked to ethnicity nowadays though and I don't quite understand why that has to be different in fantasy stories to make them "diverse." The need for international cooperation in face of a common enemy has been a staple of fantasy since Tolkien at least. Why not make it different human "races" instead of elves and dwarves who have to akindle different beliefs to achieve a common goal. That's what I'd like to read and what I'm trying to do as well. 

Phil, the book "The throne of the crescent moon" really sounds interesting though I have to admit that the description where they "are forced to save a tyrant's life to keep worse things from happening" did strongly remind me of recent events. I'm going to check it out though.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 9, 2013)

I know I've been posting a lot in this topic, but Jimquisition did an episode today about representation and freedom of expression in video games, and a lot of the points it made relate to what we've said in this thread. I think it's worth a watch.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 9, 2013)

I love Jim Sterling; he has a lot of great videos about female characters in games.

And I agree with him on this. Everyone has the right to write whatever they'd like, but it doesn't mean you can't be criticised for what's in it. Further, I find people act like only certain topics are open to criticism and others aren't. You can critique a character for being useless to the plot, but you can't point out that they are 'yet another' _female_ character useless to the plot. You can critique the worldbuilding for having the unexplained presence of tropical crops or fabrics, and writers will justify it with handwaves of trade or different climates to the real world, but with nary a mention of the fact that they pointedly don't have any of the _people_ to come from those same regions. You can critique the story for being boring, dry, confusing, formulaic, meandering... but not for glorifying imperialism. See: _Avatar_. Everyone will jump up to point out how similar it's story is to _Pocahontas_ or _Dances With Wolves_, but will shut down any criticisms of how all three films have problematic 'white saviour'/'going wild' exotification plots.


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## Addison (Sep 9, 2013)

1. If you want a good fantasy not from U.S.A, I strongly suggest the Tara Duncan series by Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian. Yea there's a new american print, and a cartoon in several languages, but the original is French and very good. It took forever for me to read it though, I taught myself French when I got the book.

2. I love diversity, not just because it makes our world unique, but unity of different ethnicities is beautiful. In my WIP each character is a different ethnicity. One is an American raised Irish/Scottish mix, with a family of proud old culture. The others are: Greek, Iranian, Russian....or Slovakian (still on the board), the other I'm using as a symbol of unity by being half Italian and half Brazilian. (Brazil brings a flavor of Aztecs.   )


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## Steerpike (Sep 9, 2013)

Addison said:


> . The others are: Greek, Iranian, Russian....or Slovakian (still on the board), the other I'm using as a symbol of unity by being half Italian and half Brazilian. (Brazil brings a flavor of Aztecs.   )



I like the same thing.

With respect to the Aztec, well...it is fantasy and you can do what you like, but just for the sake of historical accuracy, I want to point out that the Aztec weren't in Brazil, or even South America. They were in Mexico, and even further away from South America than the Maya, who extended further along the Yucatan and down into Guatemala, etc. 

The Inca were the closest to Brazil, being in western South America, though I don't believe their empire actually spread into Brazil. But going with an Incan flavor would probably be the closest thing if you're looking at the primary Pre-Columbian new world empires.


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## Chilari (Sep 10, 2013)

There are, I think, opportunities to introduce diversity whatever source of inspiration you use from Europe. There have been links with Africa and the Near East within Europe since the Minoan civilisation, and thus people of a range of ethnic backgrounds. The Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt are thought to have been very mixed race - Hellenic, Near Eastern and North African ancestry. Greek traders regularly mixed with Egyptians especially after Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, and long before that traded with the Near East, where the Persian Empire stretched from the Mediterranean to India, and to the Caspian Sea in the north. Under the Roman Empire, people from all over the place could find themselves thousands of miles from where they were born - or where they were two years ago. Legions raised in the Near East made it to north-western Europe; legions raised in Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal) ended up serving in Judea. Egypt was Rome's breadbasket. There were legionaries, auxilliaries, slaves and freedmen of every colour. There was trade on the Silk Road with China via Persia. In the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, thee were huge movements of populations all around Europe and North Africa. The Italian city-states and principalities had traders all across the Mediterranean.

Only the most isolated, distant locations - like Britain and Scandanavia - didn't regularly see this kind of variety and diversity.

There's plenty of opportunity for diversity even within the context of medieval Europe or Greco-Roman inspired worlds, and even in very ancient societies. The only real excuse for failure to include diversity is using an isolated setting like an island with no nearby landmasses, or a huge landmass where there's no means of accelerated travel like transit on water (river or sea).

I for one am trying to make an effort not just to write more diverse characters, cultures and experiences, but to read a lot more about them too - I've been reading a book about the history of China recently and will also have a look at some books on ordinary life in as many cultures as I can get my hands on.


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## Graylorne (Sep 10, 2013)

To write about diversion in medieval Europe, you don't per se need to import strangers from Thebes or Beijing. Never forget that to a small village, someone from fifty miles away could be completely alien. 

--

Scandinavia had plenty of its own diversions; there were the Sami from the North, Karelians from the East, Russians and Mongols, and ofc the many traders in the summer towns along the coast. Traders from Norway ended up in Byzantium, traders from Arab lands visited Novgorod and Narvik.

The British isles even before the Romans had their visiting traders, too. Their civilization was rich in gold, tin, iron and other resources (I believe Britain was a major tin supplier to the whole of Europe). After the Romans, tribes from all over the West ended up in Britain. Different Gods, different clothing, different techniques. 

Even the neothic peoples traded all over the continent. Glassware and pottery, jewelry and stones in burial places proved that often enough.

--

Diversity is everywhere. You just need to look.

--

In my books I have people from all over the place. The world of my Rhidauna books is an alternate of sorts of our world. 
There are many peoples peoples like ours, but because of several reasons there is no discrimination because of race, religion etc. Therefore it isn't strange that my cast of MC's is mixed. It would be quite strange if it wasn't.

I have one MC who is the bastard son of a white farm girl and a famous black minstrel, I have two Arab royal twins, of whom the male is rather stout and hinted a homosexual, but a good fighter, and the female marries my main MC. I have a barbarian from a land where the females read and write, while the males hunt and fight (except for priests and battle maidens, where it's the other way round). I have a girl from a medieval Eastern European duchy, a lad from a Mongolian nomadic tribe, etc. I don't make a show of it, they are what they are, not because I want to prove anything. I didn't even plan it, they just happened that way. 

--


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## The Dark One (Sep 11, 2013)

Chilari said:


> Only the most isolated, distant locations - like Britain and Scandanavia - didn't regularly see this kind of variety and diversity.



Just blew a mouthful of wine through my nose.

Britain without diversity? How about Celts, Picts, Scots, Romans, Welsh, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings, Normans...all within about 600 years of each other. And those are just the warring tribes and invaders.  The trade networks spread as far as the middle East and Africa even in antiquity.


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## The Dark One (Sep 11, 2013)

Left out Angles...after whom England is named.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 11, 2013)

Not to mention the fact that the Romans were by no means exclusively white, and the Moors were as close as _France_ during the Middle Ages. Europe has always been quite diverse, both culturally and ethnically. Vikings, well, they may well have discovered America, so you have the Canadian First Nations, plus they were dangerously close to the Mongol invaders (which extended to the Slavs/Russia). And they traveled far enough to come back with more than a few mixed race children, possibly even wives from the Caspian Sea (where they had settlements). Plenty of opportunities to play around with.


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## Jabrosky (Sep 11, 2013)

Part of the problem with measuring diversity is the arbitrary nature of racial or ethnic categorization. Would Mediterranean Europeans like the Greco-Romans qualify as white in the same sense as Celtic and Germanic peoples further north? Consider that certain sub-Saharan African groups like  Ethiopians and Kalahari Bushmen have sometimes been excluded from the "black" category since most of those peoples look distinct from, say, Nigerian Yoruba. Depending on which outdated anthropological material you consult, Indians may either belong to the "Caucasoid" race alongside Europeans or the "Australoid" race alongside Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians. And then there's the whole issue of just how many races you must subdivide humanity into...


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## Chilari (Sep 11, 2013)

The Dark One said:


> Just blew a mouthful of wine through my nose.
> 
> Britain without diversity? How about Celts, Picts, Scots, Romans, Welsh, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings, Normans...all within about 600 years of each other. And those are just the warring tribes and invaders.  The trade networks spread as far as the middle East and Africa even in antiquity.



Compared to other parts of Europe, Britain didn't see much _racial_ diversity - Celts, Picts, Welsh, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings, Angles and so on were all white northwestern Europeans; Romans were the exception, but they were only here for about 367 years, and for the earlier and later stages of that, not everywhere here. There certainly was _cultural_ diversity.

The Mediterranean region saw a lot more on a regular, week-to-week sort of basis; in Rome itself, there lived people from every province in the the Roman Empire and several territories outside it, in such numbers that it was perhaps normal to see half a dozen different skin tones in a single day. More remote locations might have heard half a dozen languages, but not seen such a variety of racial diversity.

My point is that remote locations saw _less_ diversity - not none at all - and that only very isolated locations such as islands without nearby landmasses or vast landmasses where long-distance travel is incredibly difficult, will see minimal diversity or even none at all.


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## The Dark One (Sep 11, 2013)

My point was all about the impact on people's lives...which tended to be fairly savage, fairly frequently. People don't have to look physically different to behave different.

In any case, my point was just a reaction to the (I thought rather glib) point about Britain. But diversity is relative. Until WW2, the vast majority of Brits had never travelled more than 20 miles from their home village/suburb. The world has exploded in the last 70 years...for us in the wealthy 1st world at least.


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## Sanctified (Sep 12, 2013)

Phil the Drill said:


> My two questions are these:
> 
> 1. What are some examples that you've seen recently that seem to show a positive shift toward more diversity in SF and fantasy (meaning authors, characters, worlds, etc.)?
> 
> ...



I think it's completely unhelpful, even destructive, to have this kind of debate about perceived diversity in science fiction and fantasy via Twitter and blogs. Just look at the all-encompassing flamewar known as "racefail" from 2009. 

The best diversity goes unnoticed and isn't the product of an intentional push for "more diversity" sparked by some dude's blog post or essay in the Guardian. (Besides, the recent Books Blog post in the Guardian has it wrong -- a lot has changed, and the white man antagonist is no longer the default.)

Maybe it's easier for me, as a New Yorker, to view diversity as a natural thing and not contrived. After all, you can walk two blocks and hear 15 different languages here. But we tell people to write what they know for a reason, and maybe the perceived lack of diversity has more to do with authors living in a bubble. 

My list of favorites includes Haruki Murakami (Japan), David Mitchell (UK/Japan), Iain M. Banks (Scotland), Alastair Reynolds (Wales), Neil Gaiman (British expat living in New York), Chekov (Russia), Charlaine Harris (U.S.), Steven Pressfield (U.S.) and Steven Saylor (U.S.). Oh, not enough women! What to do...


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## Jabrosky (Sep 12, 2013)

Sanctified said:


> I think it's completely unhelpful, even destructive, to have this kind of debate about perceived diversity in science fiction and fantasy via Twitter and blogs.


The Internet in general is a lousy medium for a serious and civil discussion. It's great for exposing yourself to different points of view all over the world though.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 12, 2013)

Sanctified said:


> Maybe it's easier for me, as a New Yorker, to view diversity as a natural thing and not contrived. After all, you can walk two blocks and hear 15 different languages here. But we tell people to write what they know for a reason, and maybe the perceived lack of diversity has more to do with authors living in a bubble.



Outside science fiction and fantasy, this actually ties into some of the complaints I've seen--have you noticed that shows set in New York tend to cast mostly white actors, both as main characters and as extras? (In the sci-fi realm, I've also seen this complaint about _The Walking Dead_, a primarily white show set in and around the city with the highest black population in the United States. And James Marsters, an actor on _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, infamously stated that he'd never seen a real town as white as the show's locale of Sunnydale.)


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## Philip Overby (Sep 12, 2013)

Sanctified said:


> I think it's completely unhelpful, even destructive, to have this kind of debate about perceived diversity in science fiction and fantasy via Twitter and blogs. Just look at the all-encompassing flamewar known as "racefail" from 2009.
> 
> The best diversity goes unnoticed and isn't the product of an intentional push for "more diversity" sparked by some dude's blog post or essay in the Guardian. (Besides, the recent Books Blog post in the Guardian has it wrong -- a lot has changed, and the white man antagonist is no longer the default.)
> 
> ...



Well, we're not having the discussion via Twitter or blogs. We're having it here on a forum where we can have an extended conversation. I feel like if the science fiction and fantasy community at large is discussing something, we should probably attempt to discuss it here. Even if it's not the way you'd want to discuss it, I don't find it to be destructive. If anything else, I've learned about some new authors I wouldn't have known about otherwise. People get what they want out of these discussions. They can view them negatively or try to receive something positive from them.

Your comment about writers living in a bubble could definitely be true. Not so much a bubble in their personal life, but a writer's bubble. If they only read certain kinds of fiction from certain kinds of authors, then their experience is definitely going to be limited. That is why I used this thread to reach out to people to ask them about non-English speaking, translated fiction from authors I may never have heard of otherwise. Others have taken the opportunity to talk about other issues they'd like to see discussed.

I'll echo what Feo said about New York. I do find it strange that one of the most multi-cultural cities in the whole world focuses most on one race. However, I find it discouraging that a lot of movies about New York involve "a down on his/her luck so-and-so that is trying to make it in the big city and find love at the same time." Well, at least the bad movies about New York are about that.

However, living in Japan, 99 percent of the people I see are Japanese. This allows me to get a lot of perspective on their culture, but very little on anyone else's unless I seek out other foreigners in Tokyo or another big city.


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## Sanctified (Sep 12, 2013)

Good point about how New York is portrayed in some movies and TV. That's been a criticism leveled at the HBO show Girls, and for good reason I think -- the entire show takes place in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and it's entirely too white-washed. Brooklyn has been gentrified, but I don't know anyone who lives in social circles without people of different races and ethnicities.

And The Walking Dead? Yeah. The crazy thing is that they really do film in Georgia. We saw Atlanta in the first season, and it's been a journey through rural and suburban GA since then, but still.

Regarding race discussion, Phil, did you see any of those racefail posts? It got extremely nasty. The short version is that a midwestern, bubble-living white female novelist wrote a blog post about how to write minority characters for the sake of diversity. Problem was, her version of an authentic minority character was based on stereotypes. Some people pointed that out, some very politely and some not so much, and soon it became a massive flamewar that managed to suck in a few well-known authors who made fools of themselves.

As for me, I was upset when a favorite author of mine was called out, but glad to see he stayed above the fray. (And anyway,  his characters ran the gamut and were from a far more diverse range of backgrounds, races and ethnicities than the vast majority of others.)

My problem with these discussions is that they tend to degenerate or blow up, and they can become minefields, although this is a friendly environment so hopefully that won't happen. In any case, I believe the diversity or lack thereof in a story reflects the author's experiences, biases and social experiences.


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## Philip Overby (Sep 12, 2013)

Thankfully, this thread hasn't blown up. We have a good community here that respects other people's opinions. I can see how topics such as these can get out of hand and cause people to throw accusations at each other. 

That said, I don't know about this "racefail" you speak of. I don't typically follow any sort of flamewars as it's usually just an attempt to shout people down you don't agree with about whatever. 

I always find these types of discussions to be terribly tricky. You can either ignore certain problems and stay out of the discussion, or you can get involved and either change people's minds or alienate them. My tendency is to stay out of too many discussions that could get too sticky, but when it comes to reading fantasy and finding new types of authors, that's something I'm passionate about. I'm all about spreading the word about new and exciting fantasy writers, and I think there are a ton that may get passed by because they're not heavily promoted in English speaking markets or there aren't translations of their work. I hope that can change and more and more authors from around the world get recognized for their contributions to the genre.

I have less to say about diverse characters because I try to include what I think works best for my stories. I'm happy reading stories about any kind of characters as long as they're good and engaging. However, experiencing new types of characters (from the perspective of people not from the same culture as me) I'm not accustomed to, interests me more and more.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 13, 2013)

Racefail '09, I stayed out of it at the time since I'm white and didn't really want to speak over the people I agreed with, but was also pretty young (16) and didn't want to confront some of the adult, professional authors on the other side either. I lurked some of the livejournals, though, and it got pretty nasty. Though there was a great blog post towards the beginning, I Didn't Dream of Dragons, which I would recommend giving a read. It's not very long.

On the subject of blogs, I'd recommend skimming the 'greatest hits' section of N.K. Jemisin's website. She's written some great posts about writing characters of colour, and a few about general fantasy writing that are worth a read (as well as things about her books that are interesting if you've already read them and want to know more about the world and her writing process).


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 13, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> Racefail '09, I stayed out of it at the time since I'm white and didn't really want to speak over the people I agreed with, but was also pretty young (16) and didn't want to confront some of the adult, professional authors on the other side either. I lurked some of the livejournals, though, and it got pretty nasty. Though there was a great blog post towards the beginning, I Didn't Dream of Dragons, which I would recommend giving a read. It's not very long.



I don't know much about race, but I know directly about gender, and I know indirectly about [r-word]*. Between the two, I recognize a pattern that makes me question this post.

I write a lot of female characters, and I don't write a lot of characters who embody traditional feminine virtues. To put it bluntly, I write a lot of women of the type other women often call "guys with tits," and I've seen a lot of ink spilled (by women as well as men!) to argue that characters like them are unrealistic depictions of women. But if I were to make them more conventionally feminine, they'd stop being like certain women I know and respect. They're not "guys with tits," they're women, and they have as much of a right to the word as any other women.

Tarol Hunt is one of my favorite authors. His mother was [r-worded] repeatedly by four men over a period of several days. In his comic _Goblins_, he portrays a character who has survived a similar experience, and who is slowly recovering from it and becoming comfortable around men again. On several occasions, [r-word] survivors have called this character's thoughts and actions unrealistic, arguing that she should display more or different trauma than she displays. But after the blog post when he admitted the character was based on his mother, I saw more [r-word] survivors and friends of survivors come forward to state that her behaviors were not unique--one in particular noted that his girlfriend matched the character's actions almost exactly after her [r-word.] Again, the group that saw itself as misunderstood policed itself to eliminate not _unrealistic_ portrayals, but _unconventional_ portrayals.

When this blog poster mentions that "I do not want to see a White American with brown skin and kohl and an elephant sidekick," I could interpret that to mean that she's seeing white Americans who have brown skin and kohl and elephant sidekicks. But from this pattern, I find it far more likely that she's seeing people who have brown skin and kohl and elephant sidekicks, noticing that they're not perfectly like her, and concluding that they must be white Americans.

* I still think it's incredibly stupid that we're not supposed to say that word, but I'll respect the mods' wishes.


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## Ophiucha (Sep 13, 2013)

I doubt, however, that the author is also alone in their viewpoint and perspective. Part of diversity is culture, and culture varies within groups of people of the same race. A brown American may write a vision of South Asia with the knowledge granted by being raised in America with American media. With pride in their skin and culture, undoubtedly, yet with a perspective that does not speak to those who actually have lived there. This is fairly common, from what I've read.

I don't think the criticism is invalid or incorrect simply because some people within the author's demographic would disagree. Even as a white person, I see this very often, more with Japan and China than with India, but the principal is the same. Western views of morality applied to an Eastern culture, often glorifying the protagonist for having 'enlightened' views in a wince-worthy way. This is particularly common when you have some crossover with the diversity, for instance a story of shoguns with a female warrior as the protagonist. You'll end up with her being glorified for having feminist views that are very modern American in their origin, to the point where characters who have more cultural or contemporaneous views are shamed and even exotified, emphasizing their more foreign traits (these villains are often darker and may have a more distinctly 'foreign' nose - this is strangely common, the nose thing) compared to the protagonist's often more fair skin and typically European nose.

There is, obviously, room in fantasy for all portrayals of these characters, particularly by Western authors of colour whose culture is European or American despite where their race may originate. But when those stories dominate an already small market for diverse sff... yeah, I don't blame the author for criticizing it's prevalence.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 13, 2013)

Then I guess the question for me is, what do I do when my story requires a depiction of a society I don't live in? How do I portray that society fairly and accurately?

If I may give a tentative answer, I believe that you can understand a society insofar as you can relate it to ones you understand. For instance, if one society burns its dead to free them from this world, one buries its dead until the day they will wake, and one eats its dead so that their power will be passed on, all three have a tradition that involves honoring and respecting the dead. If you have any connection with honoring the dead, you can tap into those emotions when depicting another society's funerary customs. (When you pull away the false exoticism, I think any societal trait can be understood in this way--I once read a book that revolved around the morality of ancient China, and realized halfway through it that I'd seen all this before in books about the American South.)

P.S. I should note that I've written and published a story that takes place in a society I don't come from. I'm not holding it up as an example of anything, just admitting that I have a dog in this fight. (I didn't do anything in particular with local traditions, instead relying on obvious universals like shame and loneliness.)


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## Ophiucha (Sep 13, 2013)

For me, the answer is research. Just not always the sort of research people think of. Since we're talking fantasy, I'll use medieval Europe as a base example since none of us lived in medieval Europe, but this applies to everywhere I've built worlds based around. Read original texts. Yes, you can read the Wikipedia articles and scholarly text books and modern medieval fantasy, but also read _Historia Regum Britanniae_, read _Beowulf_, read Chaucer. If you're writing about women, read Christine de Pizan. Read from the sources to see through their eyes, and use the modern and secondary sources to help parse out all of the little details like what their garments were made of and what crops they grew. But the sources, that's where you can find the social aspects of a culture that just don't translate as easily into academic writing.

It's not perfect. The writers of many cultures were often exclusively male, exclusively wealthy. But you can get a sense for the voice of the time and place, which I think is a crucial aspect of writing a different culture.

Empathy and commonalities are excellent, as well, when it comes to writing the personal aspects. My only concern with those things is the risk of generalization. Say, for instance, that I believed we should 'burn the dead to free them from this world', but was writing a story where they eat their dead. On a personal level, while writing the character whose mother just died, I could place my own feelings of mortality and the soul into my character, but I run the risk of blurring the lines between passing onto another place and passing on their power into the character. I often see writers mix their metaphors, trying to - if you will - explain away that the body of their child is 'a better place', another realm of sorts, for their soul - that their power _is_ their soul. And while that may reconcile this practice with the author, it also misrepresents the beliefs of the people who practice it.

It depends on the setting how that comes across, inevitably, but certainly in the context of your standard 'pseudo!Japan' or 'pseudo!Italy'-style fantasy worlds, it can come across as lazy, or even ignorant.


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## The Dark One (Sep 13, 2013)

Feo Takahari said:


> Then I guess the question for me is, what do I do when my story requires a depiction of a society I don't live in? How do I portray that society fairly and accurately?



Jeeez...isn't this a fantasy site? 

Sorry Feo...cheap shot, but _my _this is an interesting conversation. Some very thoughtful points nicely articulated.

I'm about half way through an historical novel, set in the C11, with some fantastical undertones. I want the world of the book to be as authentic as I can reasonably make it, but I'm not losing sleep over it...not least as I am deliberately giving both the MC and his love interest some quite modern ideas (which get them both into a bit of trouble).

I do, I suppose, already know a fair bit about the milieu but it's the minds you need to get into to truly convey an alien world. Accordingly, it can only be educated guesswork, even for a culture from which our own sprang, which means I may as well just try to be consistent in my portrayals.

My strategy is to just write the story, relying on certain aspects of the human condition to be as axiomatic today as they ever were (like fear, hunger, avarice, treachery, lust, vengeance etc) and then go back through filling the story with heaps of high medieval character.

But it's the story that matters.


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## Ghost (Sep 16, 2013)

Phil the Drill said:


> So when I read about this, I thought we as a community at Mythic Scribes should be discussing these things. In order for our fantasy horizons to be broadened (both as readers and writers) shouldn't we explore more outside our comfort zones? Shouldn't we seek out translations of writing from authors that represent a whole new approach to fantasy story-telling? Shouldn't we try to read more fiction about characters that don't look and act exactly like us? Isn't that how the genre grows and expands?



I enjoy reading fantasy, horror, and weird fiction translated into English. There are themes and approaches that I'd never think to use, so I learn a lot from good books that weren't originally in English. They're difficult to come across by chance, I think. Usually, you have to be looking for them.

I'd recommend googling a region that fascinates you and seeing what fantasy novels it has produced. So if you want to Russian fantasy authors, see who comes up and use after you read that person, use them as a springboard into more Russian authors who write in a similar vein.

Here are some things I've found.

Goodreads Non-English Fantasy shelf: some of this is obviously not in English, but it seems like a good place to start.
Favorite Science Fiction & Fantasy in Translation: a Tor.com article
Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards: this site is difficult to navigate, but if you're willing to slog through it, it information about current translations.
Golden Days for Indian Fantasy: a blog post just to show if you look up fantasy authors by a specific country, like India, you can find some leads that way.
The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy or The Weird: Dedalus Books does anthologies of fantasy in a country. I've read some of the Finnish one and thought it was very cool. The Weird has a mix of authors from the world over. Most are English-speaking, but many aren't. I'd really recommend it.
International Speculative Fiction: I was reading an article which had this relevant and timely link. I can't vouch for the quality of this zine, but it's nice to know it exists. They have a free issue up.



Phil the Drill said:


> I don't think this discussion has to be limited to gender and race. One thing Saladin Ahmed tweeted made a lot of sense as well:
> 
> 
> 
> > Class diversity also needs to be part of #DiversityInSFF. I want fewer kings and starship captains, more coach drivers and space waitresses.



Yes, once people bring up diversity, the conversation seems to turn to ethnicity, culture (in a broad sense), gender, and sexuality. I feel like I've already talked about those things at Mythic Scribes. I'm far more interested in diversity of class, age, and mental health.

I think if your setting is brilliant, a door-to-door salesman could be more fun than a king. Tax collectors could have short life-expectancies due to dissatisfied citizens casting hexes on them. Settlers on a frontier could be harassed by mythological creatures. A story about the dangers of dragon-slaying told from the prospective of an armorer would be intriguing. Having characters who aren't in power provides a different view of a fantasy setting.

Some fantasy authors _love_ young characters. Sometimes, there's little difference between adult fantasy and YA fantasy because of the tone and content. I've noticed fantasy with a darker tone is more likely to have older characters. There's even a type: jaded or grizzled men who have some sort of leadership position. I'd like to see more older people with a wider variety of personalities, especially women.


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## Ghost (Sep 16, 2013)

Phil the Drill said:


> My two questions are these:
> 
> 1. What are some examples that you've seen recently that seem to show a positive shift toward more diversity in SF and fantasy (meaning authors, characters, worlds, etc.)?
> 
> 2. What do you think could be done to improve diversity in SF and fantasy? (more translations from non-English speaking countries, more diverse characters when it comes to gender, race, or other backgrounds)



There's more of everything due to the proliferation of avenues for writers to publish their work and talk to each other, whether that's blogs, zines, POD presses, e-books, forums, etc. Some interesting things I've come across are the Carl Brandon Society (which aims to "increase racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction"), Expanded Horizons, Icarus Magazine (Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction), Femspec, Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Marcher Lord Press (Christian Fantasy and Science Fiction publisher).

I definitely see plenty of conversations about diversity in blogs, articles, and publications' websites—ranging from discussions about the genders of book reviewers to the ethnic make-up of a segment's readership. I think the willingness to have these conversations is a positive shift. My perspective is skewed since I don't do novels, but I see plenty of submissions guidelines calling for diverse voices. They accept work "from neuroatypical writers and writers with disabilities." They want writers to "[c]hallenge what we might consider normal." It's not like people aren't trying to adapt.

Some areas seem resistant to change. A few places like the New Yorker have too much content from one demographic. Marketing departments and companies relying on screenings and consumer polls probably weed out or misrepresent content for the sake of "mass appeal." This is where people whitewash covers or market video games with sex. I think that's what happens when book publishers get absorbed into corporations that focus on "proven results" and the bottom line. On the whole, however, I believe most publishers and editors are doing what they can to find new voices.

Here's an interesting this blog post from Tor UK. I bet it's the same—but with more dismal numbers—for groups besides women. I've come across the sentiment before that underrepresented groups don't submit enough. Even if publishers want diversity, there are only so submissions by writers of a certain ethnicity, followers of a certain religion, or people of whatever other category. I'm assuming 90% of what's sent isn't any good, so that further reduces what can be published. Given that, introducing diverse voices sounds like a difficult task.

If people aren't submitting, it probably means they aren't reading. I've seen agents complain about the lack of male YA authors, which makes me wonder what the male readership of YA looks like. I've seen authors on the forum complain that their countrymen don't read much fantasy. Lack of readership contributes to the lack of authors. Then you have a problem of getting those novels translated and read in other languages...In the US, I'm not sure if readers are unwilling to read foreign authors or if it's that publishers don't like taking risks unless they think an author has traction in some way.

Word-of-mouth is an important tool, and I've got to say, most of the authors people recommended are white, male Anglophones. There's nothing wrong with that—it's just something worth considering. I know I do it myself. People recommend Martin, Abercrombie, Gaiman, Rothfuss, Kay, Pratchett, Sanderson, etc. I'm not saying we unrecommend those guys , but I don't see why we'd then complain that people aren't reading Cornelia Funke, Andrzej Sapkowski, Nnedi Okorafor, etc.

The best you can do is read diverse works and recommend the good ones. No one wants to be preached to, but people do want good books. If enough people recommend a book or list it as a favorite, people will naturally become interested. Awareness goes a long way.

I decided to split up my post because it was so long. Sorry about that.


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## Philip Overby (Sep 16, 2013)

Wow, thanks for the links, Ghost. This is exactly the kind of things I'm looking for. You're right in saying not to "unrecommend" writers who are doing great things. The names you mentioned above are some of my favorite writers. But for me, I'd personally like to find some things that may be buried or just inaccessible due to there not being much exposure for non-English speaking authors at times. 

I do like your mentioning of class, age, and mental health. Those kind of topics bring up a wealth of possible story ideas to be considered. I'm especially interested in what you mean by mental health. Could you elaborate on that more?

I don't personally complain if people aren't reading what I'm reading. I find a sort of pride in finding undiscovered authors that I think are really awesome and getting to share them with other people. So my hope is I can discover more of these non-English speaking fantasy writers and just share my opinions on them. It's up to each individual person to decide what they want to read or write. 

I'm a white, male, English-speaking fantasy writer/reader. I do like other white, male English-speaking fantasy writers. This doesn't mean it's the only thing I like or want to read. Everyone reaches different points where they may say "What else is out there?" I did that after years of only reading Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books. I eventually wanted to see what else there was. I don't feel like every reader wants to only read about people they can relate to or look or act just like them. I've always had a fascination with other cultures and backgrounds, something I hope to explore more through my own writing and reading habits.

I hope I can make a more direct response to your post(s) as I think there's a lot in there. When I have more time later, I may delve more into that.

Thanks a ton again!


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 16, 2013)

Ghost said:


> Word-of-mouth is an important tool, and I've got to say, most of the authors people recommended are white, male Anglophones. There's nothing wrong with that–it's just something worth considering. I know I do it myself. People recommend Martin, Abercrombie, Gaiman, Rothfuss, Kay, Pratchett, Sanderson, etc. I'm not saying we unrecommend those guys , but I don't see why we'd then complain that people aren't reading Cornelia Funke, Andrzej Sapkowski, Nnedi Okorafor, etc



It's subtle, but there are points where both Sanderson's worldbuilding and his outlook seem to be influenced by his Mormonism. In that sense, I believe he adds to the variety of different kinds of voices, without being heavy-handed or preachy.


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## Mindfire (Sep 16, 2013)

iceman said:


> In fantasy, differing qualities of characters is a result of assorted qualities of settings. We have a great deal of white guys since a great deal of imagination is about settings comparative to medieval Europe, and generally history books that manage medieval Europe discuss it as far as white males.



Perhaps I'm blind to the obvious, but I don't see any logical reason you can't use that same setting, and still have non-white people. It is fantasy after all. There's no rule that the "standard" setting _must_ have white people. Take the show Merlin for example. Based on Arthurian lore- and Guinevere was black.


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## Devor (Sep 16, 2013)

Mindfire said:


> Perhaps I'm blind to the obvious, but I don't see any logical reason you can't use that same setting, and still have non-white people. It is fantasy after all. There's no rule that the "standard" setting _must_ have white people. Take the show Merlin for example. Based on Arthurian lore- and Guinevere was black.



It's maybe because you're quoting a disavowed spammer.

While there's no reason not to include a diverse cast of characters, I do think there's challenges to doing so in a way that breaks from the medieval experience of race.  Blindcasting worked for Merlin, but doing it without explanation kind of cuts a little into the story's seriousness.  It's a thing that readers notice, and wonder about, and ultimately have just go with.  Is there a history there?  Are they from different regions?  Was there magic involved?  N'ahh, they just did it.

But giving it an explanation comes with historical overhead, and we haven't developed the tropes to draw on to help simplify that overhead for readers.  That's all I was saying.  Let's create better ways to blindcast, while having it make sense, and still giving us the chance to explore racial issues when we want to.


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## Mindfire (Sep 16, 2013)

Devor said:


> It's maybe because you're quoting a disavowed spammer.



I was wondering why the post I quoted suddenly vanished.


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## saellys (Sep 21, 2013)

Sanctified said:


> I think it's completely unhelpful, even destructive, to have this kind of debate about perceived diversity in science fiction and fantasy via Twitter and blogs. Just look at the all-encompassing flamewar known as "racefail" from 2009.



If the alternative is to not have this kind of debate at all, I firmly disagree. The Internet is the greatest communication tool the world has ever seen, and blogs and Twitter help make it that way. I believe we need to be talking about this any way we can. If that means in person with other writers, great, but I don't have a real-life writing discussion group at this time and I've found the Internet to be a wonderful venue for exchanging these ideas. The great thing about this format versus face-to-face discussion is that I have more time to really consider my perspective before I respond to someone. 

Yup, there was a crappy flamewar four years ago. There have been more since. They will continue to happen. This does not mean we should avoid talking about this on the Internet.



Sanctified said:


> The best diversity goes unnoticed and isn't the product of an intentional push for "more diversity" sparked by some dude's blog post or essay in the Guardian. (Besides, the recent Books Blog post in the Guardian has it wrong -- a lot has changed, and the white man antagonist is no longer the default.)



I'm trying to work out exactly what you mean with that first sentence. Can you give some examples of "the best diversity"? It doesn't matter to me whether someone was inspired by some dude's blog post or an essay in the Guardian to include more diversity in their work; it matters to me that they did it. 



Sanctified said:


> Maybe it's easier for me, as a New Yorker, to view diversity as a natural thing and not contrived. After all, you can walk two blocks and hear 15 different languages here. But we tell people to write what they know for a reason, and maybe the perceived lack of diversity has more to do with authors living in a bubble.



Yeah, I think you nailed it here. Writing doesn't happen in a vacuum, and most of the time, diversity doesn't just naturally spring up in people's writing. The things we write are, in part, products of our environments and experiences, and you may find it easier to default to a certain level of diversity because you're steeped in it, while other writers have to work to make it happen. Still other writers live in the same sort of melting pot, but might still struggle with only writing about one slice of humanity. Being aware of it is the important thing. 

And for what it's worth, I think "write what you know" is bunk. That's what research is for. It's also why we're fantasy writers. 

Someone sent Travis Beacham, the writer of _Pacific Rim_, a message on his Tumblr saying they had hoped that the Wei triplets and the Kaidanovskys would have bigger roles in the film, calling the endgame heroes "the Anglosphere alliance + Mako". Harsh, but accurate, and that's in a film that deliberately set out to demolish action movie tropes, and which had one of the most diverse casts I've ever seen in an example of its genre. And _still_ it defaulted to making four out of the six active world-saving participants white men. 

Beacham was wise enough to acknowledge this and say that POV in writing is a really personal thing. Could it have been changed at some point in the writing process? Sure. Can he do anything about it now that the movie is finished? Nope, but fortunately he's also generating a lot of expanded universe material (starting with the graphic novel _Tales from Year Zero_) that includes loads of diverse and awesome characters, and as he does this, he is aware of what he defaulted to for the film.



Sanctified said:


> My list of favorites includes Haruki Murakami (Japan), David Mitchell (UK/Japan), Iain M. Banks (Scotland), Alastair Reynolds (Wales), Neil Gaiman (British expat living in New York), Chekov (Russia), Charlaine Harris (U.S.), Steven Pressfield (U.S.) and Steven Saylor (U.S.). Oh, not enough women! What to do...



The solution that presents itself most readily to my mind is that you could read more women. Unless, of course, you were just being facetious about not having enough female authors in your list of favorites, in which case... okay?


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## Abbas-Al-Morim (Sep 21, 2013)

saellys said:


> I'm trying to work out exactly what you mean with that first sentence.



I don't want to speak for Sanctified but I think he means the following. A lot of TV shows and books include a _"token black (or any other ethnicity) character"_. The only reason they include him is so they can tell people how diverse their series is and how cosmopolitan they are. You shouldn't add a character from a different ethnicity to your story just to show you care about diversity and whatnot. Usually those characters are bland too. A lot of video game shooters have that on clichÃ© black sergeant that's a total badass and that keeps throwing around oneliners etc. That's a token character.


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## saellys (Sep 21, 2013)

Sure, you shouldn't have a single racially divergent, stereotypical character in your work and then turn around and claim you understand and employ diversity. That's pretty much a given. 

That being said, "I care about diversity" is a totally valid reason to include many types of people in your work. This isn't an either-or; your choices are not "a bunch of characters who all look exactly the same" versus "I wrote a clichÃ© black sergeant and now my work is diverse!"


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## ascanius (Sep 22, 2013)

Mindfire said:


> Perhaps I'm blind to the obvious, but I don't see any logical reason you can't use that same setting, and still have non-white people. It is fantasy after all. There's no rule that the "standard" setting _must_ have white people. Take the show Merlin for example. Based on Arthurian lore- and Guinevere was black.





saellys said:


> Yup, there was a crappy flamewar four years ago.



In that crappy flamewar there were some good points early on, then well...   However one thing I remember is the point Mindfire made above.  If it's fantasy than why can't the dominant medieval population be blacks, or Chinese.  Why can't x race/ethnicity be replaced with another it's fantasy after all, we are in total control of what we create.  Only problem is those same questions can be asked in reverse.  Why can't x race/ethnicity be white?  If a writer is arbitrarily picking for the sole sake of diversity then it's meaning is hollow.  However it is fantasy and we are in control but I think before someone decides or even thinks to diversify their cast they should at least put the time into world building.  I think the so called "diversity" should be a little bonus that you discover when finished writing.  A little surprise that you didn't even consider.  This is, of course, assuming their goal is to be the a great writer first and foremost.

Just my 2 cents.


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## Chilari (Sep 22, 2013)

Fantasy cultures can be inspired by realworld cultures, and in those cases giving the people of that culture a silimar ethnicity to the source material feels normal. But it's not the only way to create cultures. Yes, you can draw upon real world cultures, but you can also think "right, this land has X geography and Y climate, what would it be natural for the people living here to look like? What might they find in their environment to focus upon as important to their culture?

For example, you might have a rocky barren region in a temperate clime, with geography such that it doesn't get much rainfall and doesn't have many rivers because the topography of the region sends drainage in another direction; but they've got a lot of natural resources like precious metals and gemstones, and so they trade with neighbouring cultures, food and drink for what they have. This culture might therefore have a major focus on water in their religion, and in terms of fashion, wear a lot of gold and brightly coloured jewels combined with woolen clothing, also dyed brigh colours - gemstones offering some dyes, trade providing others - to make up for the otherwise rather drab colours, the greens and greys and browns around them.

So to someone unaware of how they got to look the way they look, it might seem off to have a pale-skinned eastern asian appearance combined with bright colours reminiscent of India, in styles that are more Celtic with jewellery that looks more Egyptian and a religion that is perhaps inspired by Buddhism with a serious focus on water; but if you look at the geography and climate of where they live it makes perfect sense.


Or you might have an equatorial inland sea with numerous islands, fertile river valleys and lots of rainforests. The people living in this region might have dark skin, a religion with a sun god and a sea goddess and a few other minor deities, a very strong sea-faring tradition with boats that look like Viking vessels and sea charts made of sticks and shells, and light airy clothing like that the classical Greeks wore made of linen and largely undyed or with natural colour dyes (browns, mostly) and status shown by pearls sewn into garments rather than worn as jewellery.

But, since they've got some long distance trade links, you often see brown-skinned people from the northwest, who wear wide-brimmed hats and gold jewellery and worship rivers; pale-skinned people from the far south whose preference is for dark colours and who are repeatedly amazed by the sight of the sea, as they're inland-based and reached by river only; and a light brown-skinned ethnicity from the east with a fascination for birds and a tendency to build as tall as they can and make food as spicy as they can, and a very strict hierarchical social system based around the day of the week you were born on. These all mix freely in a few trade hub cities where gold, wine and numerous commodoties flow with ease.


Being inventive with worldbuilding makes it very easy to introduce diversity. And isn't worldbuild a major part of fantasy?


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## Devor (Sep 22, 2013)

ascanius said:


> Why can't x race/ethnicity be replaced with another it's fantasy after all, we are in total control of what we create.  Only problem is those same questions can be asked in reverse.  Why can't x race/ethnicity be white?  If a writer is arbitrarily picking for the sole sake of diversity then it's meaning is hollow.



The issue isn't the portrayal.  The issue comes from ignoring the concerns of a specific subgroup of your audience, as if you don't really care whether they read you or not.  It's the real people who matter, not the fake ones.


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## saellys (Sep 22, 2013)

ascanius said:


> Only problem is those same questions can be asked in reverse.  Why can't x race/ethnicity be white?  If a writer is arbitrarily picking for the sole sake of diversity then it's meaning is hollow.  However it is fantasy and we are in control but I think before someone decides or even thinks to diversify their cast they should at least put the time into world building.  I think the so called "diversity" should be a little bonus that you discover when finished writing.  A little surprise that you didn't even consider.  This is, of course, assuming their goal is to be the a great writer first and foremost.



I would hope a partial answer to "why can't x race/ethnicity be white" is that there's already quite sufficient representation of white people in the fantasy genre. Assigning different races to your fantasy cultures on purpose is not hollow. It's called making an effort. As long as they're believable, compelling characters, there's nothing hollow about it.

Discovering diversity after you finish writing would be nice, but the sad fact is that an overwhelming majority of the time, it doesn't happen. I've lived this. My co-writers and I looked back at our first draft and discovered it was completely whitewashed. That's one of many things we're working to fix now. My goal is to be a great writer first and foremost, and part of that means writing a broad swath of humanity. 



Chilari said:


> Being inventive with worldbuilding makes it very easy to introduce diversity. And isn't worldbuild a major part of fantasy?



I love your examples because they bring together disparate elements that we'd recognize from the real world. I wish more writers worldbuilt like that. 



Devor said:


> The issue isn't the portrayal.  The issue comes from ignoring the concerns of a specific subgroup of your audience, as if you don't really care whether they read you or not.  It's the real people who matter, not the fake ones.



Agreed, but that can also embrace the portrayal (the aforementioned point about stereotypes). 

I've said it before on this forum, but it still staggers me how many writers shrug it off when people point out problematic things in their work. "That's not my target audience" is a popular refrain. Well, A) if they're reading my work, they're my audience and I should value their perspective, and B) my target audience is people. I'm a writer--humanity is my business.


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## Philip Overby (Sep 22, 2013)

I really think this issue comes down to each individual writer. If writers care about these matters, trying to make their worlds diverse, then that works for them. It makes sense to me personally to have a diverse cast simply because our world is diverse. We all have unique histories that have criss-crossed over each other in good and bad ways over the years. I find utilizing different cultures and how they butt up against one another or assimilate or whatever the case may be is fascinating for a fantasy world. However, I can't force another writer's hand. It's up to them if they want to explore this way of creating a world. 

At the end of the day, it's really going to be depend on a group that hasn't been mentioned much in this discussion: readers. If readers are scrambling to read stories with more diverse casts, or interested in non-English speaking authors, then publishers will push these stories. If fantasy or sci-fi readers don't show much interest in changing the status quo, then things will stay basically the same.

I'd like to draw a small parallel. When the movie "The Ring" came out in the U.S, suddenly there was this influx of interest in Japanese horror films. No one had shown much interest in these kind of films prior to this point. It was a different take than American fans were used to: more tension, less gore, more creepiness, less jump scares. It had an appeal for a short while and even introduced more Japanese style horror to the market. However, the well dried out. People are still making Japanese horror films today. But the U.S. public isn't scrambling for this anymore. 

In the literary world, we have Martin's fantasy becoming more widely popular due to _Game of Thrones_. Therefore, we'll probably see more and more political fantasy with a darker feel to them. If the audience wants this stuff, the market provides it. Supply and demand.

So in order for there to be increased diversity in fantasy and sci-fi truly, readers have to vote with their wallets. If they don't want the same old same old, don't buy it. That's the only true way to change anything. But first a handful of writers have to write fantasy that includes diverse casts of different races, genders, sexual orientation, classes, etc. 

It really only takes a few to instigate real change. But they have to be good. If some of the best writers step up and change, more will follow. And then we'll get real diversity. Writers and readers on the same page. Not just diverse for the sake of doing it. Not just plugging a stereotype into a role. Real diversity. 

That's what I hope anyway.


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## Devor (Sep 22, 2013)

saellys said:


> Agreed, but that can also embrace the portrayal (the aforementioned point about stereotypes).
> 
> I've said it before on this forum, but it still staggers me how many writers shrug it off when people point out problematic things in their work. "That's not my target audience" is a popular refrain. Well, A) if they're reading my work, they're my audience and I should value their perspective, and B) my target audience is people. I'm a writer--humanity is my business.



For some points targeting is more valid an explanation than others.  Sometimes you have to end up making tradeoffs between audiences - usually when you pick the main characters and themes and story elements because different people are interested in different things.  And of course the writer (or producer/company) is going to be better at handling some types of content compared to others.  But when it comes to secondary characters, secondary themes, you're almost always going to expand your audience by considering the wider market.


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## Chilari (Sep 22, 2013)

I've expanded on my above post and added some pictures including one of a giraffe as drawn by Chinese people in the 15th century, on my blog. Link in sig, if anyone wants to read. It's not so much "why" as "how to".


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## saellys (Sep 22, 2013)

Really helpful stuff. I'm going to spread the link around Tumblr if that's cool with you.


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## Devor (Sep 22, 2013)

saellys said:


> Really helpful stuff. I'm going to spread the link around Tumblr if that's cool with you.



Do you mean the thread link or the link to Chilari's blog?


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## saellys (Sep 22, 2013)

Devor said:


> Do you mean the thread link or the link to Chilari's blog?



The link to Chilari's blog post, to avoid any "tl;dr" reactions.


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## Chilari (Sep 22, 2013)

Saellys, please do. I've added a link to this thread at the bottom of my post too.


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## Philip Overby (Sep 23, 2013)

Interesting essay from Strange Horizons that may be worth checking out for those interested in this discussion. It talks about how to view science fiction and fantasy from a non-Anglocentric POV. I only skimmed it thus far, but I may give more thoughts on it once I have time to read the whole thing.

You can check it out here: Strange Horizons Articles: Recentering Science Fiction and the Fantastic: What would a non-Anglocentric understanding of science fiction and fantasy look like?, by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay


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## Sanctified (Oct 1, 2013)

saellys said:


> I'm trying to work out exactly what you mean with that first sentence. Can you give some examples of "the best diversity"? It doesn't matter to me whether someone was inspired by some dude's blog post or an essay in the Guardian to include more diversity in their work; it matters to me that they did it.
> 
> ...
> 
> ...




Yes, I was being facetious. I found out the other day that a writer whose work I really enjoy is transgender. More power to her. I really like her writing, and that's what matters. I'd imagine she appreciates that -- people who appreciate her talent -- more than readers who decided to read her stuff because they needed a transgender author on their list. And if we're going to have this discussion, we ought to point out that folks advocating genderized lists are being disingenuous -- no one's writing blog posts fretting about the lack of male voices in any particular female-dominated genre.

The best diversity is natural diversity, like Colson Whitehead's "Zone One," a literary novel about survivors trying to re-establish New York City after a zombie apocalypse. The main character is black, but that's not even directly acknowledged through the first 3/4 of the book, it just is. 

And I believe "write what you know" is more relevant than ever at a time when people don't peek around the sides of their smart phones long enough to learn about how the world really works. That applies to SF and fantasy as well, because we're reading and writing those stories through the lens of our own experiences.


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## Feo Takahari (Oct 1, 2013)

If this topic has risen from its grave, I have one more author to bring up: Nancy Farmer. I first encountered her in the context of a book about Zimbabwe, and she knew so much about the region that I assumed she was from Zimbabwe--turned out she lived there for many years. Then I read a book from her about Mexico, and she was so well-informed I thought she was Mexican--she's a bit north of the border, as it happens. Apparently, she's done the same thing with a book about Scandinavia!


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## Mindfire (Oct 1, 2013)

Sanctified said:


> Yes, I was being facetious. I found out the other day that a writer whose work I really enjoy is transgender. More power to her. I really like her writing, and that's what matters. I'd imagine she appreciates that -- people who appreciate her talent -- more than readers who decided to read her stuff because they needed a transgender author on their list. And if we're going to have this discussion, we ought to point out that folks advocating genderized lists are being disingenuous -- no one's writing blog posts fretting about the lack of male voices in any particular female-dominated genre.
> 
> The best diversity is natural diversity, like Colson Whitehead's "Zone One," a literary novel about survivors trying to re-establish New York City after a zombie apocalypse. The main character is black, but that's not even directly acknowledged through the first 3/4 of the book, it just is.
> 
> And I believe "write what you know" is more relevant than ever at a time when people don't peek around the sides of their smart phones long enough to learn about how the world really works. That applies to SF and fantasy as well, because we're reading and writing those stories through the lens of our own experiences.



Okay I'm confused. What side are you on exactly?


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## saellys (Oct 4, 2013)

Sanctified said:


> Yes, I was being facetious. I found out the other day that a writer whose work I really enjoy is transgender. More power to her. I really like her writing, and that's what matters. I'd imagine she appreciates that -- people who appreciate her talent -- more than readers who decided to read her stuff because they needed a transgender author on their list. And if we're going to have this discussion, we ought to point out that folks advocating genderized lists are being disingenuous -- no one's writing blog posts fretting about the lack of male voices in any particular female-dominated genre.



I don't think there's anything wrong with purposefully seeking out work by specific kinds of human beings. 

So far the only time I've seen writers mentioned "female-dominated" genres has been in the context of romance, usually accompanied by the implication that no self-respecting dude would ever want to write that genre. If you were referring to some other genre whose voices are overwhelmingly those of women, please let me know.



Sanctified said:


> The best diversity is natural diversity, like Colson Whitehead's "Zone One," a literary novel about survivors trying to re-establish New York City after a zombie apocalypse. The main character is black, but that's not even directly acknowledged through the first 3/4 of the book, it just is.



I'm still not clear on what you consider "natural diversity". Based on the example you gave, we can't possibly know whether the author set out purposefully to include a person of color as a protagonist, or if it just happened that way. And the thing is that with a decent writer, you won't be able to tell from the story itself.



Sanctified said:


> And I believe "write what you know" is more relevant than ever at a time when people don't peek around the sides of their smart phones long enough to learn about how the world really works. That applies to SF and fantasy as well, because we're reading and writing those stories through the lens of our own experiences.



I'm interested in the opposite of "write what you know" for those exact reasons. Write what interests you. Write outside of your comfort zone. Write with respect and curiosity. Write to explore humanity.


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