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Diversity Lioness misfire?

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Mindfire

Istar
Okay. Thanks for addressing all this with a level head!

The character that I'm outlining is a wizard, a black man who dabbled with tribal shamanism when he was young, but has long since switched over to the more academic magical studies. But because of his experience with the tribal magics, he's able to recognize something in his scrying that the other wizards don't, that a spirit monster (to keep it simple) is on its way to attack the white king's new baby daughter. He stops the creature in an epic magical smackdown, but the king, who has no idea what's going on, assumes that he somehow created the monster and has him arrested.

He's rescued/recruited to join the MC's spirit-monster hunting party from his prison cell.

Does that raise any red flags with you?

The only thing I see that could be a potential issue is the tribal shamanism thing and the fact that he seems to "graduate" from it to "real" magic. Now that, in and of itself, is not bad or offensive. But if your story makes the implication that tribal shamanism = African, academic "real" magic = European, ergo European > African, then you could have a problem. But this is very easy to avoid. I'd simply suggest you carefully consider how shamanic magic is portrayed and what role it plays in the world as compared to academic magic so you don't end up relying on stereotypes accidentally. But really it's not shamanic magic per se that you need to be careful about handling, just the culture associated with it. The "trap" is not the shamanism itself, but rather the stereotypes of African culture that are often associated with shamanism and that shamanism is sometimes used as a shorthand for. Namely that African people are ignorant, superstitious, barbarian pagans.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
So none of the rest of you see a problem with making sure that certain people are treated differently (you can't use certain words around them, you can't talk about them in certain ways, etc.) because of the color of their skin?

I don't think that's what's happening here. I think what's happening here is a real discussion about trying to appeal to a racially diverse audience.

Regardless, we get enough of these debate threads without derailing this one -

Please, let's keep this discussion thread focused on actual, specific stories.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
The only thing I see that could be a potential issue is the tribal shamanism thing and the fact that he seems to "graduate" from it to "real" magic. Now that, in and of itself, is not bad or offensive. But if your story makes the implication that tribal shamanism = African, academic "real" magic = European, ergo European > African, then you could have a problem. But this is very easy to avoid. I'd simply suggest you carefully consider how shamanic magic is portrayed and what role it plays in the world as compared to academic magic so you don't end up relying on stereotypes accidentally. But really it's not shamanic magic per se that you need to be careful about handling, just the culture associated with it. The "trap" is not the shamanism itself, but rather the stereotypes of African culture that are often associated with shamanism and that shamanism is sometimes used as a shorthand for. Namely that African people are ignorant, superstitious, barbarian pagans.

As I presently intend to write it, the tribal magic is forbidden by laws or some sort of treaty, which is why he has to pursue the formal, academic magic. He thinks of the shamanistic magic fondly as a thing that connects him to his family and his people, and it's implied that it's wrong for the laws to suppress it.
 

Mindfire

Istar
As I presently intend to write it, the tribal magic is forbidden by laws or some sort of treaty, which is why he has to pursue the formal, academic magic. He thinks of the shamanistic magic fondly as a thing that connects him to his family and his people, and it's implied that it's wrong for the laws to suppress it.

I don't see any problems then. Not at a glance anyway.
 

Gryphos

Auror
Mythopoet said:
So none of the rest of you see a problem with making sure that certain people are treated differently (you can't use certain words around them, you can't talk about them in certain ways, etc.) because of the color of their skin?

This isn't about stopping writers from doing anything. This is about advising them against using harmful tropes and criticising them when they do use them.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I'll try and get back on topic then.

My character Alene is, among other things, brown skinned. She's also a shape-shifter and her animal aspect is destined to eventually driver her insane. As the story starts out, the reader will know right away that she's brown skinned, but they won't know about the other shape-shifting and the impending madness. Alene herself is well aware of the beast inside though, and how its madness is slowly seeping into her own mind.

The scene where I'm introducing Alene has her getting ready for the day and putting on her uniform. She works as a hostess/stewardess on a long distance passenger train. As she gets dressed she reflects on how the uniform symbolizes order and how it's reflected in the sharp contrast between its white shirt and her brown skin.

To start with, the main issue I see here is that of putting people of color in the role of servants. She's also wearing a uniform, which doesn't really improve matters any. So right away I've got a horrible racial stereotype on my hands. What I'd like to do is try and portray her as a real and interesting character with more depth than what's hinted at by the stereotype. I want to show her as she's dealing with her internal issues (looming madness), and external issues (racism, sexism). Can I do this? I don't know, but I'm going to give it a go and see how it turns out, and hopefully I can do her justice.

Based on the above information. What other issues do you see with the character that I ought to pay attention to?
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Since some of your cultures are refugees, could you not make them a melting-pot culture? Instead of them being comprised of all dark skinned people, could you not make them be of all different colors?

I'm taking all this from the review and the synopsis and what I've read here so correct me if I'm wrong. So you have this basic premise where males were too aggressive and someone tried to breed that aggressiveness out and into the women. Maybe instead of all the men and women coming from one culture, they were drawn from cultures all around the world, so this wasn't a race specific problem. It affected everyone, so these people with anger issues were thrown together and someone tried to "fix" them resulting in a culture with different skin tones, kind of like America and Canada. There's the larger general culture of a country and then there's the subtle and fine grain shades where people bring bits of culture from their home lands to create something within the greater whole and enriching it.
 

Graylorne

Archmage
I can try and give a quick sketch of the situation.

Over a century ago there were three peoples living next to each other, the Kell, the Vanhaari and the Unwaari.
The Kell were a nation of warring shamanistic clans, each striving for domination. This internecine war was killing many of them.

The Vanhaari were a a nation of warlocks, each a nucleus of a village or town. All common people worked to enable the warlocks to study. (Not slavery, more like a business). The warlocks were old and reclusive, and the commoners had never developed a purpose of their own.

The Unwaari were ultra-religious mage-priests, following the four aspects of the Sky Goddess. They worked on major scientific projects with the Vanhaari, who were the more theoretically inclined.

Then the four masks that were center to the Unwaari were on transport from their place of safety on an island by ship to Unwaar for the four-yearly festival. The Unwaari followed the progress ot the ship through the magical signal of an amulet. When passing the Kell and the Vanhaari coast, the signal disappeared and the masks were gone. The Unwaari went collectively mad and accused the Vanhaari of stealing the masks. They sent their armies into their brother country and the Vanhaari, being mostly elderly ivory tower scientists and without an army, were mostly killed. Only 99 managed to escape to the island of Malgarth. They found no masks.

The Unwaari attacked the Kell, who were too weakened to offer much resistance. Most of the surviving clans fled, to end up on Malgarth as well. Unbeknownst, one clan joined the Unwaari side and sent only half its people to Malgarth.

A century passed. The Kell built up a new civilization. As they realized the next war would mean their end, they did this transformation thing, to tone down the male aggression. They miscalculated and now the women were bigger and dominant, the men lost too much drive and became weak and will-less.

The Vanhaari were not very welcome, the populace feared their magic, so the high king ordered them to stay at 99 warlocks and to never show their magic power in public. The warlocks, having lost thousands of their kin, cowered in their tower and instead of competing for high places through being the most powerful, they went to being the most beautiful. To prevent more warlocks born, they abolished marriage and sex for themselves (not the commoners). Only when a warlock died, which was rare, could another be born and the Council decided who. This birth was through artificial insemination and after birth the mother was paid off and married away. Should a commoner baby be born with magic, which happened from time to time, he/she would be operated upon and became a magicless simpleton.

On the continent, the Unwaari had lost contact with their goddess and went into collective shock. They abandoned Kell to the one treacherous tribe who followed them (and who remained to old shamanistic patriarchy). Vanhaar became an occupied country of (part-) ruined cities, where the commoners, now without a purpose, declined into poverty. The mage priests went mostly bad, as to them the shock was the greatest.

The story starts a century after the war.

That, more or less, is what happened. I took great pains to show each of the peoples as having their own problems, their own weaknessess and strengths.

Part of the story is that the MC's find out what really happened to those masks, finally end the war and let their people return to their homelands and a normal life. One of the MC's is a Kell boy who is determined to prove the males are not as weak-willed as supposed but more reacting to social pressure.

Besides, I never said anywhere that the Kell were African. I pictured the world of the story looking like South-East Asia, like the many Asian peoples populating the islands. The Kell society was tribal, their military ranks were called lioness, tigress, leopardess and such (all living in Asia), but their structure is more Celtic, even to the clan names (M'Brannoe, with the ' for c). I can imagine them having a Zulu flavor, but I wasn't going that way.

Nor were the Vanhaari/Unwaari European whites. I clearly gave them a color range from alabaster to slate gray, wich doesn't exist, just to underscore their not being Europeans.

Al in all I must have majorly slipped up on the descriptive front, due to inexperience or whatever, to not create a clearer picture.

Then to think that those same 13% and more have been both on Wattpad and my webside for months (under the old name Warlocky). Not even a hint of anything wrong. I thought I had covered all paths.
 

Panda

Troubadour
lioness, tigress, leopardess and such (all living in Asia)

Lions are African, not Asian.

Something I'm surprised no one has mentioned (unless I missed it earlier in the thread): what's with Basil needing to "repair his foot" to "prove his beauty"? I haven't read the book and the review doesn't go into detail, so I might be making an unfair assumption, but I'm kind of uncomfortable with the equation of disability to ugliness. Please tell me your story doesn't portray this kind of attitude as a good thing.
 

Graylorne

Archmage
Lions are African, not Asian.

Beg to differ :) Asian lion

Something I'm surprised no one has mentioned (unless I missed it earlier in the thread): what's with Basil needing to "repair his foot" to "prove his beauty"? I haven't read the book and the review doesn't go into detail, so I might be making an unfair assumption, but I'm kind of uncomfortable with the equation of disability to ugliness. Please tell me your story doesn't portray this kind of attitude as a good thing.

Panda, I wouldn't dream of it. On the contrary, it is the first thing that shows my male MC how stupid some of his Council's rules are (Why they are this way is a plot secret, but the rules were made with evil intent and will be overturned.)
The rule says that a warlock must be beautiful to prove his power. All their beauty is genetically created. Only somehow Basil's toes resist all tinkering. His father concealed this from the Council, but when at the start of the book they summon him, they will discover the truth, Basil will be judged incapable to make himself beautiful thus lacking in power thus unsuited to be a warlock, and they will take away his magic and his intelligence. That is why he flees.

To appease the Council, he sets out to find a spell that could repair his foot, but when he finally finds it, he for several reasons won't use the spell. He has learned to adventure with that foot and he has sworn to end all that beauty-idiocy.
 

Panda

Troubadour

Cool, I had no idea. (You'd think someone with a username like mine would know more about Asian wildlife...)

Panda, I wouldn't dream of it. On the contrary, it is the first thing that shows my male MC how stupid some of his Council's rules are (Why they are this way is a plot secret, but the rules were made with evil intent and will be overturned.)
The rule says that a warlock must be beautiful to prove his power. All their beauty is genetically created. Only somehow Basil's toes resist all tinkering. His father concealed this from the Council, but when at the start of the book they summon him, they will discover the truth, Basil will be judged incapable to make himself beautiful thus lacking in power thus unsuited to be a warlock, and they will take away his magic and his intelligence. That is why he flees.

To appease the Council, he sets out to find a spell that could repair his foot, but when he finally finds it, he for several reasons won't use the spell. He has learned to adventure with that foot and he has sworn to end all that beauty-idiocy.

Awesome. :)
 

Graylorne

Archmage
Cool, I had no idea. (You'd think someone with a username like mine would know more about Asian wildlife...)

Panda_Lion_by_skillery_scallery.png


Here, then.
 

Darkwriter

Scribe
I just bought your book for my iPad's Kindle App, Graylorne. Give me a few days to read it and see if I disagree with that reviewer.

I can confidently say I have no problem whatsoever with the concept of a sexy black female warrior, especially if she's the heroines. Lots of white and other non-black women get to be sexy warrior heroines in this genre, so it's only fair to see black heroines receive the same treatment. The "big powerhouse" trope is the only trope I see that might be construed as offensively masculinizing, but on the other hand it does make sense for a warrior race. And I presume she's the love interest anyway?

As for the cover art, I agree that it whitewashes your heroine, but your reviewer (who frankly sounds to me like a social justice troll) should take that up with the cover artist.

I'm the person who wrote the blogpost and I've been watching this discussion unfold over the weekend and I'd like to say a few things.

First off- it's not a review; it was an update of my reading progress. I find it comes in handy to keep running notes about a book, plus it often helps to generate interest in it. I don't understand how everyone keeps calling it a review, especially when I clearly stated that I wouldn't be posting one for the book.

Second- can someone explain how any of you got the idea I was female?

To Jabronsky- thanks for the condescenion. You don't know me so you should keep your snide judgments where you get them from. At least until you get to know me.

And I think we all owe Mindfire a great deal of thanks. He's articulated the problems I had with the book succintly and probably more eloquently than I ever would or could have.
 

Darkwriter

Scribe
Nimue: The magic used by the black people isn't bad. I never said it was bad. I said their shamans got power mad. Bit in the Shaka Zulu style. The women and their magic were perfectly fine.

This is awful! Maud is big and strong, and 18 and playfully amorous, and pretty, and very very feminine. And a highly educated officer of the queen, trained as both liaison officer and commando. And she had blue eyes, like http://afritorial.com/black-people-with-blue-eyes/. And she get a very happy, joyous relation with one of the 'white' boys.

I've been a teacher; I worked with refugees from all over the world. I wouldn't dream doing silly things. This whole book is based on equality.

Sigh, I'm getting upset. Sorry, Nimue.

To the question of Shamanic Magic, it's true the idea initially presented is skewed through history as Maud knows it to be. But when encountering the kobolds the leader tells them that the mage used them to assist his experiments and he didn't care about their lives, inferring that he's just as power-mad and cruel as we've been led to believe the other males were, leaving one of two options: the Magic Negro as Mindfire explained, or the last of the evil Shamans to destroy. Neither's very promising.
 

Darkwriter

Scribe
I didn't dream that one up; it was a series of discussions on another forum where there points were discussed.
Of course you're right, it's a matter of how you portray your orcs.

But that's beside the point. I want to write books about people and to me the color of their skin isn't very important. Their characters are, and the things they do.



I'm quite willing to listen and learn, only several points literally make no sense to me, because I don't understand the insinuations.

By now I get the blue eyes, I think.

I get the mulattoes, too, although they aren't and I only said many of them were halfbreeds. Ah, now I reread it, they probably mean the word light-skinned To me that means white, Mediterranean white, but certainly not mulatto.

So a lot of the problem is in the description of the peoples that goes with the map. I can rewrite that, no problem.

Still, seeing this blog post is part of a Virtual Book Tour, it would be nice if she'd read the whole book before blogging.



NB: I sent an email to the tour coordinator, with the request to pass on to the blogger that I am quite willing to discuss things and see what I can do to take the bad impression away.
Seems to me the most reasonable thing to do.

Mulatto is, in the context of the word, half-breed: an (in)direct mix of black/white genes. Here in the US the term 'light-skinned' is the most common euphemism. Having an entire region populated by such and catergorizing them as troublemakers didn't make a good impression.

And I understand your intent to discuss matters was sincere, but for future reference avoid trying to contact reviewers directly, regardless. You may not be aware that bloggers/reviewers are being 'attacked', for lack of a better word, by lots of self-published John and Jane Does when they get a bad review (sort of like what happened here but on a more intensive scale). You may recall a recent incident where a UK author tracked a woman down and assaulted her with a wine bottle because of her review, as well as the Kathleen Hale debacle here in the US. You mean well but leave things alone; I'm only here because I found the discussion and felt it warranted a response to help clear things up.
 

Darkwriter

Scribe
When writing outside of your experience, it's always helpful to get more perspective. It's no different than writing about a city and traveling there to get the feel of the place.

As far as worldbuilding goes I'd strongly suggest Patrcia Wrede's excellent questionnaire, which remains freely available online. There's also author Holly Lisle's series of books that expand of Wrede's work and really helps nail things down. Imagine designing a culture from scratch and providing them not only their own language (complete with syntax) but also their own versions of King Arthur, the Tower of London, collected works of Shakespeare, Stairway to Heaven, etc. I can't recommend those enough.

If you're having trouble with descriptors- skin tones, etc- I'd then recommend Gary Gygax's Worldbuilding books; while similar in many respects to Wrede and Lisle's work, to me their real value is in the appendices- comprehensive lists of just about every adjective and adverb you can imagine for anything ranging from body parts to architecture.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
To Jabronsky- thanks for the condescenion. You don't know me so you should keep your snide judgments where you get them from. At least until you get to know me.
My inference that you were a "social justice troll" came from a history of bad experiences with people whose rhetoric sounded superficially like your own, at least on that one blog post. It's a bit like how a guy saying anything critical of certain strains of feminist thought might be (mis)taken for a "men's rights activist" or even a full-blown misogynist. But you're right, people are always more complex than what one blog post might reveal, so I still owe you an apology for my brash judgement.

PS. I don't have enough information to presume you female, but the stereotypical "social justice warrior" is indeed a militantly "feminist" woman (or transwoman).
 

Darkwriter

Scribe
My inference that you were a "social justice troll" came from a history of bad experiences with people whose rhetoric sounded superficially like your own, at least on that one blog post. It's a bit like how a guy saying anything critical of certain strains of feminist thought might be (mis)taken for a "men's rights activist" or even a full-blown misogynist. But you're right, people are always more complex than what one blog post might reveal, so I still owe you an apology for my brash judgement.

PS. I don't have enough information to presume you female, but the stereotypical "social justice warrior" is indeed a militantly "feminist" woman (or transwoman).

Accepted. Shall we proceed with our katana fight? :cool:

Followed your blog, btw.
 
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