Racial and cultural expression in fictional characters

[edott]

I remember reading H. beam Piper in High school and a lot of his characters would be descirbed as Zulu argintinian mix or japanese irish or such as he had the idea of race just blending away. i liked that myself. course evryone seemed to hang on to a bit of thier culture to.

 

[edott]

Of course. If you are to picture a person you don't know anything about that would suggest one appearance, then you would immediately assume they are similar to you. So chinese imagine other chinese, mongolians other mongolians, whites more whites and blacks more blacks.

Just like how humans assume aliens as things with two legs, two arms and a head. No reason why we should, its just familiar, so we do.

Though i think even a name might influence how you percieve a charater, joseph would be a white guy to me and for the exact reasons you state, but joesph chang brings something different as would a character Jose or yusef.

 

[Thadlerian]

Simply listening to news interviews I can usually place where an interviewee is from, their race, colour and often basic character. So if you are good with characters, especially in handling speech patterns and dialect, you should never have to mention colour, race or much else at all, it will shout it straight from the page.

But what if the setting is non-realist, like an alternative universe or far future? The influence of race/skin color/ethnicity on a person's identity depends on the current reality and its constructions and norms; all these are temporary. It's hard to imagine our ethnic associations as something universal.

 

[Steve Jordan]

But what if the setting is non-realist, like an alternative universe or far future? The influence of race/skin color/ethnicity on a person's identity depends on the current reality and its constructions and norms; all these are temporary. It's hard to imagine our ethnic associations as something universal.

In such a case, SF/fantasy writers usually compensate by slightly exaggerating an aspect of dialect or action, specifying somewhere that the trait is typical of a particular group, and allowing that trait to define the character's group in the future, ie, when you hear: "Do. Or do not. There is no try," you imagine a short, green swamp dweller... or if you hear: "That does not compute," you imagine a robot or computer.

 

[Aes]

In my various projects, I just kind of mix all of (what we consider to be) the various races into just "humans." What dictates their cultural traits and mannerisms is based more on where in my little scifi world they have lived most of their lives. This can be anything from the difference between nomadic tribes and a huge, materialistic kingdom, to the difference between a poor worker and a pampered noble. In other words, I don't want someone who may have asian features in a fantasy-based story to act in a way that we would consider asian in our world, because what they live in is not our world.

So in summation, when I make up my various cultures, I try to put as much importance on skin tone as I do on eye color and hair color.