deoridhe: (Default)
Deoridhe ([personal profile] deoridhe) wrote2006-10-20 03:06 pm

Race in Fantasy

So I was reading a favorite series again last night when once again, like a bolt of lightning to my brain, I was struck by how pale all of the characters were. There were many "races," but all of them were described as looking similar, with perhaps olive skin as the darkest skin could get.

This is an insidious sort of "whitewashing," I think. Not only are darker skin tones unimportant - they don't even exist! And this, in a fantasy world! Talk about fantasies; seriously, what does this say about the author? That isn't to say I will dislike the stories now for this single aspect, but for people who write fiction out there who have races and species, study their skin color for a bit and see what it says about you.

When I was in elementary school, I began creating a world. In junior high, I became aware of how shallow my comprehension of good and evil were, leading to a schism and war in the fictional landscape I had made. In college, contemplating my species along side three professors, I made a rather radicat decision about melanin - one inspired by a favorite book of mine where someone was "burned pale" - melanin was pale. Of course, since my first story was about Dwear'selenes, who were a slight, underground dwelling race, this meant that their skin tone took an abrupt change. Strelin is darker than Jarnaax - her lover (yes, they became lesbians, too; don't ask me, ask them - that was in high school) because she comes from a group that had settled deeper in the caves.

I wonder, sometimes, what it says about me that my decision to alter the color of my humanoid species' races came from a recognition of the effects of melanin from a biological standpoint. A peculiar sort of blindness, I think.

Don't ask me where the homosexuality came from, though. That was Strelin and Jarnaax's idea.

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