Ethnicity in Space
Apr. 24th, 2011 02:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAm currently writing from the point of view of a human who didn't grow up on Earth. He needs to describe two other characters. To describe on Earth now is pretty simple, one is Asian and one is African. But, slight problem, he's never been to Earth, and wouldn't have much reason to have more than the vaguest idea of what the continents would be called.
But I know where the people that settled his world came from - Highlanders from Ethiopia, Tibet and Peru, lowlanders like him from Colorado and before that lots of places, hence a right mixture. So hey, he'd totally know Highlanders with roughly the same ethnic characteristics in terms of skin color and facial features, he'd totally have descriptives for these two! Except, no, because his home world is 0.5g so he, at 6'1", is a short arse. The two who just walked in are 5'4" and 5'8", and are like a foot too short to be Highlanders. (Also, I need a new name for all the Highland groups anyways, cause I can't name them for skirt wearing immortals in my own head.) Plus would the groups in question call themselves Ethiopians etc? If not the descriptions are no good to the reader anyway. They'd have their own languages and names, even before centuries of cultural drift. And lastly I figured the three groups would blend to get the genetic adaptations to altitude combined, so really most Highlanders would be a whole new ethnicity. Which I would have to describe from familiar referents, from the point of view of a character who wouldn't just think 'Highlander'. Is no use for this one sentence of description any which way.
So, I went for 'bronze' and 'dark'.
And then I thought, hang on, their spaceship has bronze? Is bronze big in space? Is it a steampunk ship? Did they travel to other planets and bring their bronzes with them?
I picked the word cause it's a bit martial and weapon-y, at least compared to gold, but that connotation would be long since gone, doesn't fit this guy's brain.
So now I need two words - and only two - that connote slightly martial and somewhat mysterious, to both my readers and this dude from a far away planet.
That means I kind of have to design his planet.
For two words.
... obviously only if I'm being picky and obsessive about it, but the logic is logic shaped.
So... I know what technologies come from his world. Mostly crystals, to be sufficiently-advanced-science. All the ultratech like stargates comes from his solar system. The gates themselves are made by automatics in the asteroid belt. There's ultratech ship hulls in set shapes and sizes, all pretty diamonds grown in zero g. Again they'd need fed, again it would arrive in little asteroid chunks through a gate, eating some appropriate rocks. That's out in the system, that's not his home world.
Alpha is all made of canyons and crystals. Complex sedimentary shiny things with patterns in them. Data crystal. Crystals to do things I haven't thought of yet. The whole industry down there is based on either mining known varieties of crystal or discovering new sorts. There's people that don't believe there's any useless rock in the place, they think every inch they've ever discovered was designed to specific purpose, albeit somewhat wrecked by now. Ancient lost civilisation, whole lot of rock fall, interesting circular lakes, places gone glassy.
When it was first discovered everyone was awed at the evidence of alien civilisation; they lined up for a chance to explore the abandoned cities. Then they found a whole lot of empty rooms, and no writing anywhere. Then they got really really bored. So they decided the place had water (in the channels) and dirt (up the top) and rooms to live in, and Earth had too many people and a whole ton of homeless, so they shipped lots and lots and lots of people in. Poor people, mostly, with a competitive advantage going to those who could breathe in thin atmosphere and farm where it's mostly vertical. The ecosystem wasn't much to write home about when humans found the place, and then people brought bits and pieces of home they thought would grow, so it's an unplanned mess of high country. And nobody planned the parrots, but they now fill the ecological niche that pigeons usually do in cities on Earth.
Then someone moved dirt off a solar collector and someone else sat on the right surface and suddenly they discovered their homes were designed to do things. So then richer and more technological people moved in to try and exploit it. Ever since there's the people trying to make the planet self sufficient vs the people who know they can be incredibly rich on selling their unique products, as long as they sell them far away. Also there has been a slight problem with assorted militaries thinking they can own the place. And a tension between the people with the genetic quirks that let them breathe outside even on the high places vs the people who need masks and breathers even in the lowlands.
So... canyons and crystals.
And an aviator from a culture with a whole lot of birds they don't necessarily like much.
Alphans might make all the ship hulls but they don't usually go into space much. The vast majority of humans prefer 1g and a much higher pressure atmosphere. Mostly Alphans can adjust, but it's always going to be annoying.
When Alphans take their own ships out they're looking for something specific: traces of the Builders. They made ships, so they obviously went somewhere, but so far humans have found only Alpha. Alphans reckon that's because humans are looking for Earth type planets, whereas anything that grew up on Alpha would for preference go looking for Mars. If Alpha wants to find more of that sort they pretty much have to do it themselves.
My guy didn't do that. So even for his home planet he's weird.
So... words that will spring to mind for an Alphan? Will include lots of crystals.
I was thinking amber wouldn't do because it's an organic and would form only on Earth.
Then I figured, that's exactly why they'd value it. A culture that thinks crystals are Win, that understands the value of things that are unique to a single planet, forms their whole economy on those factors: they'd value the unique-to-Earth crystals pretty high, even though they're not functional. That would give them the right air of extravagance, to bring them all that way when they're not for making or survival. They'd be swapping their crystals, that other worlds need, for these shiny pieces, that they merely want.
So Wiki reckons the organic gemstones are amber, copal, coral, jet, pearl, abalone. Abalone, coral, and pearl, are from alive things that will probably be extinct by then, or if I'm being less pessimistic could be imported and grown local. Amber and jet take a bit longer to form.
So, amber and jet people?
Pretty much lacking connotations though.
Slight problems in that jet doesn't immediately bring to mind the black stone, and that people aren't that black anyways. Also amber can be lots of colors.
Humans in general don't be much like the cartoon coloring in versions. I mean, there's a lot of variation of skin color and darkness, lots of variations of face shapes, and people drawing people from far away pick out a whole different set of features than people drawing near to home people.
Even bronze and dark are just conventional markers, but they're ones that are actually in use now, rather than trying to engineer some for the future. They'd be invisible. They'd probably work.
I should probably just go with those, really.
... it's fic that I am making, I could just grab some pictures and say 'these two'. But that feels like cheating somehow. I wonder why? Partly because of the lost opportunity for character voice in the descriptions. But just in general, if I made up a 'cast photo' and wrote it script style I'd feel like that was... admitting I couldn't do it the words way? Hrm. But it only matters depending on what effect you want, what you want to make. Is no cheating in arts.
Brains are weird.
... also, if I tried to do photos, I would crunch on the thing where I'm writing like Malcolm Park is an asian guy cause I want some variety in my main characters, but in my head I just borrowed Malcolm Reed. In writing it's easy to cheat that. In pictures he would never look right ever. :eyeroll:
ANYway... I don't think I got anywhere after all that thinking. But it's a bit of a general problem: set things way the hell in the future. Describe people. What's the point of reference? What's the distinguishing features? Do we just admit we're writing in 20th century English and use the current words? Or do we worldbuild down in the descriptives?
But I know where the people that settled his world came from - Highlanders from Ethiopia, Tibet and Peru, lowlanders like him from Colorado and before that lots of places, hence a right mixture. So hey, he'd totally know Highlanders with roughly the same ethnic characteristics in terms of skin color and facial features, he'd totally have descriptives for these two! Except, no, because his home world is 0.5g so he, at 6'1", is a short arse. The two who just walked in are 5'4" and 5'8", and are like a foot too short to be Highlanders. (Also, I need a new name for all the Highland groups anyways, cause I can't name them for skirt wearing immortals in my own head.) Plus would the groups in question call themselves Ethiopians etc? If not the descriptions are no good to the reader anyway. They'd have their own languages and names, even before centuries of cultural drift. And lastly I figured the three groups would blend to get the genetic adaptations to altitude combined, so really most Highlanders would be a whole new ethnicity. Which I would have to describe from familiar referents, from the point of view of a character who wouldn't just think 'Highlander'. Is no use for this one sentence of description any which way.
So, I went for 'bronze' and 'dark'.
And then I thought, hang on, their spaceship has bronze? Is bronze big in space? Is it a steampunk ship? Did they travel to other planets and bring their bronzes with them?
I picked the word cause it's a bit martial and weapon-y, at least compared to gold, but that connotation would be long since gone, doesn't fit this guy's brain.
So now I need two words - and only two - that connote slightly martial and somewhat mysterious, to both my readers and this dude from a far away planet.
That means I kind of have to design his planet.
For two words.
... obviously only if I'm being picky and obsessive about it, but the logic is logic shaped.
So... I know what technologies come from his world. Mostly crystals, to be sufficiently-advanced-science. All the ultratech like stargates comes from his solar system. The gates themselves are made by automatics in the asteroid belt. There's ultratech ship hulls in set shapes and sizes, all pretty diamonds grown in zero g. Again they'd need fed, again it would arrive in little asteroid chunks through a gate, eating some appropriate rocks. That's out in the system, that's not his home world.
Alpha is all made of canyons and crystals. Complex sedimentary shiny things with patterns in them. Data crystal. Crystals to do things I haven't thought of yet. The whole industry down there is based on either mining known varieties of crystal or discovering new sorts. There's people that don't believe there's any useless rock in the place, they think every inch they've ever discovered was designed to specific purpose, albeit somewhat wrecked by now. Ancient lost civilisation, whole lot of rock fall, interesting circular lakes, places gone glassy.
When it was first discovered everyone was awed at the evidence of alien civilisation; they lined up for a chance to explore the abandoned cities. Then they found a whole lot of empty rooms, and no writing anywhere. Then they got really really bored. So they decided the place had water (in the channels) and dirt (up the top) and rooms to live in, and Earth had too many people and a whole ton of homeless, so they shipped lots and lots and lots of people in. Poor people, mostly, with a competitive advantage going to those who could breathe in thin atmosphere and farm where it's mostly vertical. The ecosystem wasn't much to write home about when humans found the place, and then people brought bits and pieces of home they thought would grow, so it's an unplanned mess of high country. And nobody planned the parrots, but they now fill the ecological niche that pigeons usually do in cities on Earth.
Then someone moved dirt off a solar collector and someone else sat on the right surface and suddenly they discovered their homes were designed to do things. So then richer and more technological people moved in to try and exploit it. Ever since there's the people trying to make the planet self sufficient vs the people who know they can be incredibly rich on selling their unique products, as long as they sell them far away. Also there has been a slight problem with assorted militaries thinking they can own the place. And a tension between the people with the genetic quirks that let them breathe outside even on the high places vs the people who need masks and breathers even in the lowlands.
So... canyons and crystals.
And an aviator from a culture with a whole lot of birds they don't necessarily like much.
Alphans might make all the ship hulls but they don't usually go into space much. The vast majority of humans prefer 1g and a much higher pressure atmosphere. Mostly Alphans can adjust, but it's always going to be annoying.
When Alphans take their own ships out they're looking for something specific: traces of the Builders. They made ships, so they obviously went somewhere, but so far humans have found only Alpha. Alphans reckon that's because humans are looking for Earth type planets, whereas anything that grew up on Alpha would for preference go looking for Mars. If Alpha wants to find more of that sort they pretty much have to do it themselves.
My guy didn't do that. So even for his home planet he's weird.
So... words that will spring to mind for an Alphan? Will include lots of crystals.
I was thinking amber wouldn't do because it's an organic and would form only on Earth.
Then I figured, that's exactly why they'd value it. A culture that thinks crystals are Win, that understands the value of things that are unique to a single planet, forms their whole economy on those factors: they'd value the unique-to-Earth crystals pretty high, even though they're not functional. That would give them the right air of extravagance, to bring them all that way when they're not for making or survival. They'd be swapping their crystals, that other worlds need, for these shiny pieces, that they merely want.
So Wiki reckons the organic gemstones are amber, copal, coral, jet, pearl, abalone. Abalone, coral, and pearl, are from alive things that will probably be extinct by then, or if I'm being less pessimistic could be imported and grown local. Amber and jet take a bit longer to form.
So, amber and jet people?
Pretty much lacking connotations though.
Slight problems in that jet doesn't immediately bring to mind the black stone, and that people aren't that black anyways. Also amber can be lots of colors.
Humans in general don't be much like the cartoon coloring in versions. I mean, there's a lot of variation of skin color and darkness, lots of variations of face shapes, and people drawing people from far away pick out a whole different set of features than people drawing near to home people.
Even bronze and dark are just conventional markers, but they're ones that are actually in use now, rather than trying to engineer some for the future. They'd be invisible. They'd probably work.
I should probably just go with those, really.
... it's fic that I am making, I could just grab some pictures and say 'these two'. But that feels like cheating somehow. I wonder why? Partly because of the lost opportunity for character voice in the descriptions. But just in general, if I made up a 'cast photo' and wrote it script style I'd feel like that was... admitting I couldn't do it the words way? Hrm. But it only matters depending on what effect you want, what you want to make. Is no cheating in arts.
Brains are weird.
... also, if I tried to do photos, I would crunch on the thing where I'm writing like Malcolm Park is an asian guy cause I want some variety in my main characters, but in my head I just borrowed Malcolm Reed. In writing it's easy to cheat that. In pictures he would never look right ever. :eyeroll:
ANYway... I don't think I got anywhere after all that thinking. But it's a bit of a general problem: set things way the hell in the future. Describe people. What's the point of reference? What's the distinguishing features? Do we just admit we're writing in 20th century English and use the current words? Or do we worldbuild down in the descriptives?
no subject
Date: 2011-04-24 06:46 pm (UTC)