Is this a good idea? (A Character's Race)

ghostly 2020-11-30 00:21:14 UTC #10

@domisotto This would be a good idea, but I want to make them humans for this story!

@Tanako Thank you! I absolutely want to do this! I realized recently that since I mostly create female or nonbinary characters, that I do have multiple female black characters and one(not enough) nb black character, but zero male ones?? I never realized it until I search for one on my Toyhouse and couldn't find one. (Except for a Sims, but that doesn't count!)

@foxnflames Thank you for your comment! I will definitely do research! While the story is fantasy, I refuse to fall into the trap of not doing research on ways that my writing could be offensive! I also plan to get a sensitivity reader(or multiple!) to be sure. As for the risk of creating a flat character, I will make sure that it doesn't happen!

foxnflames 2020-11-30 00:41:19 UTC #11

That’s good! Sensitivity readers and/or thorough research are important for topics out of your range. Good luck on your story! The premise sounds interesting

paracosmosfiction 2020-11-30 00:44:58 UTC #12

As a white male writer I often find myself worrying about issues like this regarding my writing as well. Not just from a race perspective, but from a gender perspective as well. Fortunately, I have a great reference as my Fiance is both non-binary (fem identifying) and a POC, so any decisions I make before I post regarding women or characters of a different race I always run by her before settling on them.

It can be difficult because you want your writing to be inclusive and diverse, yet you don't want to inadvertently step into a pitfall due to ignorance of the culture you're trying to represent. If someone gets offended because they don't like how violent my work is, or because they think it's too vulgar, or something like that, I really couldn't care less. That comes down entirely to a matter of taste. But if someone is offended by my work because they think it's demeaning to women or supports racial stereotypes, that's a different issue entirely.

Ultimately, because of my race and gender identity, there's very little I can do beyond a ton of research. Because a lot of my work is set in Japan, I try very hard to be respectful of that nation's culture in my portrayal of them. Even if it's not one hundred percent accurate, I at least try to make it believable and not fall into racial or cultural stereotyping.

I don't have much advice to contribute beyond that. Do your research. Do your homework whenever you're about to start writing something you don't know much about. And if you can, always get the opinion of someone you're close to who can speak for whatever race, gender, or culture you're writing about. I think it's great you're making your writing as inclusive as possible, and that's something I strive to do as well.

foxnflames 2020-11-30 00:54:14 UTC #13

I’d also add that asking one person isn’t always enough. It’s good to have people who are close to you because you feel more comfortable with them, but varied opinions make for a better scope. Especially when it comes to race, asking one POC could give you a narrowed lens due to different upbringings, socioeconomic status, colorism, etc.

paracosmosfiction 2020-11-30 01:02:38 UTC #14

Very true. While I do trust my Fiance on these matters I know that ultimately my readers are going to be my biggest source of critiques regarding my portrayal of race and gender. I'm especially interested to see what my readers think of my portrayal of women. As a cis-male, I'm ultimately going to be writing from a cis-male perspective. But I try really hard to make my work appeal to other genders as well. Or failing that, at least keep it approachable to them.

elyss 2020-11-30 01:18:46 UTC #15

I'm personally fond of a Black prince and White witch. Media often associates witchcraft as negative and by grace of negative, dark and then you have a black person. Or you get a White prince and a poc who breaks their back in 'servitude' for the White higher being. I'm not saying yours is any kind of servitude, I look forward to reading this. I'm black btw, if you wanna know.

GoldenHoneydew 2020-11-30 01:39:11 UTC #16

There's nothing wrong with both of them being black! However, I noticed a trend where non-black people can be scared to get creative with the characters' physical traits. If this is a novel then don't be too scared to branch out a bit when it comes to describing skin color, it gets extremely tiring to see black characters get described as "caramel" or "dark chocolate" or "cocoa butter." I've read novels where every single black person's skin color was described as a product or food of some sort. if there's going to be drawings don't be too scared to get creative with hair, I'm not exactly sure what era this is going to be set in but the hairstyles from the Christmas movie "jingle jangle" are good references and it's okay to take inspiration from the hairstyles of black singers, actors, musicians, artists, etc. I wish you luck with this story of yours!

rajillustration 2020-11-30 02:17:20 UTC #17

So first off, I'm white, but I'm just gonna throw out there that the trope of the black character dying first isn't about how in a lot of fantasy stories your characters get resurrected. Getting resurrected can happen to any race in any fantasy. That's just most fantasy that you read. People die violent deaths. They come back. Welcome to fantasy.

The negative stereotype in media concerning black people dying so often is about horror and action movies where the black character, who is usually added for diversity as a legal requirement, gets like 4 seconds of screentime before getting axed. It's a problem because it gave black characters smaller roles that didn't pay nearly as well as the leads. They're throw-away characters. But in your story it sounds like this character is a main character...their role is huge, and they don't stay dead. So...perhaps this falls into a different trope, but just because a black person dies in your book doesn't automatically make it racist.

And as far as the white savior trope goes, it isn't really about white people falling in love with black people, either. The white savior trope is about a white person who goes to a native culture, becomes better at the native culture than the natives, and then becomes their king and savior (like James Cameron's Avatar.) If you have a white person who falls in love with a black person and happens to save that black person they're in love with, that doesn't make it racist, either.

It sounds like the witch's race is currently undecided anyway, but writing a mixed race relationship is like...not a negative thing. Especially since it sounds like he isn't really dying for her, but just blissfully unaware he's about to die. And that she isn't so much saving him as going "woops, Ctrl-z" and going back in time to try and change fate. Like it sounds more like a fate story than a race story, to me.

But then again, I don't know the whole story, so do what you think is best, run it by people if you're still concerned before you post.

ghostly 2020-12-02 00:25:45 UTC #18

@IndigoShirtProd @tanako @foxnflames @elyss @GoldenHoneydew (Update!)

Hi so here's an update on the characters!

First of all, the Prince's name is Kasuli and the witch's name is Sabidi. For now. I'm still not sure about them though. (They aren't real name, they are from name generators) I decided to make them both black men.

Here are some character sketches I did for them. Those are really bad haha And I'm not sure about the designs or their hair.

And here's a more detailed sketch for Sabidi.

Opinions? Thanks!

foxnflames 2020-12-02 01:46:52 UTC #19

@rajillustration white savior trope isn’t just for a native group, it’s where a white person helps any non-white race in a self serving manner.

And depending on how the story goes and how often the prince is resurrected and their overall relationship, a power dynamic may be developed that is perceived with the opposite intent.

As far as the design goes, i don’t think it’s cute, I love the hair. The only thing I’d be mindful of is depicting certain features. I’m not sure if this is an overall style choice, but be cautious of how you draw noses and lips

Tanako 2020-12-02 02:15:43 UTC #20

wow looks great. I really like the idea of vertigo on his skin.
be careful of asking for too much opinion. remember its your story and whatever you want goes. remember that.

indagold 2020-12-02 02:28:35 UTC #21

It's not wrong to have a minority character in a tragic role. We need representation for both positive and negative aspects on life like villains, death and despair. If anything you getting worried about race kinda reveals your own implicit biases about story writing that you need to rethink when it comes to portraying characters.

IndigoShirtProd 2020-12-02 02:56:31 UTC #22

Man I don't want to start anything in this very simple advice thread, but this:

Is the whole reason she started the thread in the first place. She wanted an outside opinion to address her biases when is comes to writing these characters. Of course POC representation should be varied to include villains and heroes, happy endings and tragedy. Why are you trying to undercut her efforts by restating them like she wasn't already trying to do that. It's so weird. Get me a GPS cuz I'm lost on what you were trying to do here.

I really don't mean anything vile by it just bothered me I had to say something.

indagold 2020-12-02 03:16:16 UTC #23

I said it feels like seeing her characters as their race rather than as characters, that is what I get from this. If anything most commenters are giving into that specific bias as true which is a problem in story writing. Focusing on a character's motivations and goals to flesh them out should be more an important issue, hell even if you're afraid of falling into a trope due to gender/race, make fun of it and flip it on its head by addressing it through commentary. Create something new out of it than backing away. It could be an excellent satirical take if anything poking fun at inherit stereotypes or cliches others are too lazy or ignorant to parody. Also i'm kinda sad people think a mixed race relationship is iffy even though we rarely get that in media.

IndigoShirtProd 2020-12-02 03:38:06 UTC #24

This would be fine if the context is different, and if the author themselves wasn't considering her biases. The story at hand is, I'm assuming, a fantasy romance with drama and tragedy. Now of course moments of comedy will likely occur and some fun can be made at the expense of the character race, but why would you. Why not at the expense of the situation or the character's personality or home-life or something to that extent? Not that race can't be made of at all, but why do that in a story where it doesn't matter. The only reason she brought up race was to ensure that the writing wasn't unknowingly falling into more harmful stereotypes about black characters in media. (though I don't know if race is a cornerstone of the story, it just doesn't feel like it's going to be)

I'm gonna make an assumption and say that when it came to this story, @ghostly asked herself, why not make this character (the prince in this case) black? There is no deeper meaning, she is not trying to make a grand statement about race, she was just adding more representation to her cast of original characters (which is already a diverse cast). And on top of that, she wanted to have a prince character as black because you don't see much of that in common media. This is an assumption, I'm not in her head. My point here is that she likely already has this character's motivations laid out, but now she wanted to address the implications or the arguably superficial elements of her characters, in other words their race. And she, as a white person, wanted to see if what she had planned for the character had any bad or offensive attributes.

I see what you're saying, focusing on race can lead to a creator imbuing biases and stereotypes that muddle and distract from the plot. But that's not what happening, based on what I've gleamed from the thread, that's not what's happening at all.

vothnthorvaldson 2020-12-02 03:49:00 UTC #25

This is terribly sad. The amount of suspicion, if not downright abuse, mixed couples go through show us we are still far from having a fair, balanced response to racism. Seeing that starting to be a problem in fiction too is disheartening for me. I have enough of that IRL

ghostly 2020-12-02 04:09:48 UTC #26

@foxnflames Thank you! For Sabidi's face, I studied some Black men's faces and chose some features I felt fit him, but I've never drawn lips that big before and they feel a little bit awkward Gonna try to make them better! As for my style choice, here are some of my Black ocs as references? This is from most recent oc to oldest.

Summary

Compared to some of my non-black ones.

Summary

@Tanako Thank you! And don't worry! My ideas go first, but if I'm worried that something may not be taken well, I will do some researches and ask for some opinions

@indagold I asked this because I was worried of hurting people with my writing. I'm not worried about portraying characters though. I have Black characters that play villain roles in some of my stories (2 of them are in the drawing examples! Guess which one! and some of them do die without reviving like the Prince here(one of them is also in the examples )! (Talking of Black character dying, after deciding that this character would die, I realized that, of my current characters at the time, none of them were Black. So I decided to make another character Black and later created more Black characters. I didn't want my only character with dark skin to die for a light skin one.) Please don't judge me on this one thread!

@IndigoShirtProd You're right! Race won't really be something important in the story. I also already had ideas about their characters, even before I started thinking about their race. Now I just started thinking about this story so not everything is laid out, but I don't plan on giving up on developing his character I wanted to get the physical design out of the way first because once I've designed a character, it's really hard for me to change it because of attachment.

@vothnthorvaldson (and indagold) I agree I decided for the main couple to both be black this time because most of my other couples with Black ocs are mixed! But the Prince(Kasuli) is going to be mixed as his parents(aka the King and the Queen) are not the same race!

indagold 2020-12-02 04:10:57 UTC #27

Making satire of political and societal expectations on race or minority status is not the same thing as making fun of minority status and can be done in any genre. Satire isn’t purely “haha laugh out loud funny”, it can take form as a lot of writing styles. I brought it up specifically how there’s ways to address issues in stories cause i’ve read a lot of minority focused stories that do that (and are pretty enjoyable, not gonna lie)

And no, i’m not imagining it. I have had several conversations of this variety on race when discussing writing since I am myself a racial minority lol I’m seeing people get hyper focused on race and become afraid of even portraying it. There needs to be a balance, why I said there is ways to get past those issues through satire as an example.

IndigoShirtProd 2020-12-02 04:29:12 UTC #28

I must have missed this when I read the post before. Again, I'm so lost, I'm in the middle of a desert I'm so lost. Where, my guy, where was this in the entire thread? There's nothing wrong with a mixed race relationship, no one said that, no one implied that. I would love more mixed race relationships in media, but that's not the issue at hand. She came for advice on what could be implied within the context of story between two characters that could be of two different races.

All I said in my initial response is it may be in poor taste to have this black character die repeatedly for a white character. I just pointed out the possible imbalance in the relationship. Would you rather the opposite, where the relationship could be perceived as unhealthy? With the implicit biases that everyone has, it wouldn't take that much for one person to make a bad assumption of author based on how they treat their characters of color, especially if the author white (because most of know the stereotype there)

You're not wrong here. And I wasn't saying that satire isn't a way to address the topic of race in media. All I was saying was that, it's probably not applicable here within the context of this story.

I don't think I said you were imagining anything, I was just referring to the context in which the thread was started: Asking black people about the implications of the dynamics of a relationship with black person and another person of a different race, presumed white. I think you're talking about this line:

But I'm not trying to downplay your statement, just trying to say what you mentioned is not present in this thread.

At this point, I think were talking past each other, seems like an agree to disagree situation. Sorry @ghostly for starting all this, I'll take my leave and come back to give you more advice on the characters when my mind is in a better place.

ghostly 2020-12-02 04:52:53 UTC #29

It's totally ok! I just feel a little confused by the assumptions, but I don't really mind haha Thank you for standing up/explaining my point for me though!