- Location
- Hell
- Pronouns
- She/Her
/r/woooosh
SV has an Imaginary Number problem
- Thread starter Fivemarks
- Start date
- Discussion
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
What does this even mean??? Act a certain way ... what???
You know I'm all for having people do a little math for their sci-fi ships and writing mail instead of chainmail in their fantasy settings but well, fiction doesn't always have to make sense. Because both fantasy and sci-fi derive from real life, it's why so much fantasy is 'not-european' or why sci-fi settings have 'not-America'. Very western-centric stuff.
So if you wanna write a sci-fi setting where black folk, brown folk, asian folk, still exist 1000 years into the future ... well so be it. It may not be the most creative, but that's the power of writing: anything works if you're creative enough.
To further address the issue of under-representation of minorities in fiction, particularly written fiction, since SV is a place where we write things down.
- Consider the over-representation of East Asians and Europeans (or Americans of European descent). Know what has been around in such cultures for a long time? Written language.
You may think this is a stupid idea, but this is a rather important point. It means that the idea of writing down things in general is long-established, and that their ideas, their culture and traditions, even their myths and legends, have been written down. It also means a disproportionate chunk of fiction writers are native speakers of those languages. There is no shortage of East Asian authors, or Western European authors. For some ethnic group who only learnt to write their own language down for a couple centuries at best? There may be a shortage of authors. Especially if their group doesn't have a large population to begin with. (Note: I am basing this on native languages. Very few people attempt to write entire fics, or poetry, in a second language.) And with the whole "write what you know" advice, this means an under-representation of said ethnic group.
The OP mentioned the Maori. The Maori only began to write their language down in 1820, which was in a sense too late: The Musket Wars had already begun, and with multiple tribes being destroyed or absorbed by others, chunks of Maori lore, and some aspects of their culture, which were orally transmitted, were gone by the time the written language was widely taught in the 1860s. Combine this with the fact that Maori are now a minority in their own country, and the fact that Maori hardly ever show up in written fiction is unsurprising.
Also, the idea of a Maori Empire in SPACE is utterly foreign to the Maori, who never formed an empire to speak of. (There is a Maori king, but not all tribes recognise the legitimacy of that kingly line.) Trying to create one will involve making a lot of stuff up.
- Consider the over-representation of East Asians and Europeans (or Americans of European descent). Know what has been around in such cultures for a long time? Written language.
You may think this is a stupid idea, but this is a rather important point. It means that the idea of writing down things in general is long-established, and that their ideas, their culture and traditions, even their myths and legends, have been written down. It also means a disproportionate chunk of fiction writers are native speakers of those languages. There is no shortage of East Asian authors, or Western European authors. For some ethnic group who only learnt to write their own language down for a couple centuries at best? There may be a shortage of authors. Especially if their group doesn't have a large population to begin with. (Note: I am basing this on native languages. Very few people attempt to write entire fics, or poetry, in a second language.) And with the whole "write what you know" advice, this means an under-representation of said ethnic group.
The OP mentioned the Maori. The Maori only began to write their language down in 1820, which was in a sense too late: The Musket Wars had already begun, and with multiple tribes being destroyed or absorbed by others, chunks of Maori lore, and some aspects of their culture, which were orally transmitted, were gone by the time the written language was widely taught in the 1860s. Combine this with the fact that Maori are now a minority in their own country, and the fact that Maori hardly ever show up in written fiction is unsurprising.
Also, the idea of a Maori Empire in SPACE is utterly foreign to the Maori, who never formed an empire to speak of. (There is a Maori king, but not all tribes recognise the legitimacy of that kingly line.) Trying to create one will involve making a lot of stuff up.
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vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Ever noticed that even in sci-fi settings, 90%+ of the time all blacks have English as their primary language, and one with a North American accent with a touch of Martin Eden at that, and if they make political statements or have political concerns, there's a huge chance that their views will be centred around the context of 1800-2020 North American concerns?
Over the course of the last decades of consuming media, I recall three cases of exceptions: (a) the clearly French officer of the EU army in EndWar, (b) Mickey/Ricky from Doctor Who, who at least doesn't behave in a stereotypical North American fashion because he's from UK (but still anglophone), and (c) the primary cast of Black Panther which averts the stereotype hard (but even there we have Killmonger)*. But let's go into, say, the allegedly gathered-from-whole-world cast of Legends, you have Jefferson Jackson (duh) and Amaya who, despite allegedly having a strong connection to her home culture, still behaves almost much the same. Or Jacob in Mass Effect.
Where's the quirky Nobel-grade scientist from the South African Coalition who wants his home country to build a space elevator? The disciplined, patriotic and eloquent French Foreign Legionnaire? The the son of a Nigerian student who grew up in Central Europe and became a singer there, speaks Slavic languages, and whose primary political concerns are legalisation of weed and war against Russia? The Australian who adapted to city life and started a business? Somehow we rarely see original blacks like those in media much; instead, they tend to behave in accordance to a very USAian idea of how a black person should behave and think. Even though USA only accounts for about 40M of the world's black demographic.
* == A recent non-sci-fi example I remember would also be (d) the recurring Nigerian janitor and his wife from ER. Recent in terms of when I watched it.
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Nobody remembers the Concussion movie? Doctor Omalu didn't grow up in the USA, he grew up in Nigeria and only came to the USA as an adult.
Act in whatever way it is people think blacks are "supposed" to act. That after all is the complaint being made, that black skinned people in fantasy fiction and sci-fi don't "act black".
Something I think can't actually be done in most settings without making them come across as racist cliches.
In a large chunk of sci fi everyone and everything speaks English, from wherever or whenever they are from, including alien squid monsters. It's just lazy, lowest-common denominator, writing; I don't think there is anything inherently discriminatory about it.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
This is quite true; making up languages is hard and people who aren't at least somewhat familiar with linguistics should probably never attempt it. But I think Vicky has a point on how UScentric a lot of fiction and the discourse around fiction is.
True. In my view that's mostly a combination of how many people whose primary language is English are Americans, and how provincial Americans tend to be. Americans tend to think of themselves as the norm, and the American way of doing things as the only good way; so we end up with lots of future civilizations that are Space America, or Space America with a thin facade of Space British Empire stamped onto it for those writers who like the idea of royalty and aristocracy.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Whether or not X-centrism is discriminatory is a complicated question and people will disagree about it. But writing everyone to be one's race and writing everyone to be one's language or culture are fundamentally caused by more-or-less the same sort of reasons.
However, I noticed that while in fictional international contexts, people of white looks and/or Europeoid bloodlines are more varied, diglossic or more, and with signs of their native cultures - you'll see Brits, French, Germans, the occasional Iranian (usually in first-world works) or Caucasian (usually in second-world works), a bunch of Czech people, a Croatian, the occasional Ukrainian or three (though for some reason almost never a Belarus, despite being so close!) . . . but if you look at blacks in the same sorts of works, they're overwhelmingly depicted as monolingual residents of North America with little interest in their native cultures even in the age of information, like probably 95%+ of the time if not more. Black Panther is radically unusual in that it has so many blacks who don't belong to that narrow stereotype.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
While I mostly agree with the point of your post, I must raise my eyebrow at that formulation.
Tbf, Belarus doesn't quite seem to know itself whether it wants to be a nation.
- Location
- The Midlands.
That depends on context somewhat, mind you. If English (or some other language being rendered as such for reader convenience) is established to be a widely-spoken language in the location where the story is set then it's reasonable to have every major character speak it more or less fluently unless there's an explicit narrative reason not to. (It's nice when the writers take the time to acknowledge that some characters are speaking it as their second language and had to go to the trouble of learning, but not essential.) It's when characters who have no obvious reason to speak that language or even be aware that it exists start speaking it without even the barest hint of an explanation that credulity gets strained.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Honestly we can buy even the laziest of excuses for why everyone is speaking English. It's not that big of a deal.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
If you want a more precise formulation, "people of nations, peoples and ethnoses that are autochthonous to the European part of the Eurasian continent, people of diasporas of said nations, peoples and ethnoses currently residing elsewhere". Using and/or because there is a partial but not 1:1 overlap with 'white' (especially given that some regions seem to use the latter based on political divisions and not skin colour, such as splitting Spaniards into a separate colour for some reason).
Linguistically speaking, they had a worse luck than we did. But culturally they're still distinct from the North-Asian big brother, despite all that's going on. But even disregarding the linguistic choices, I noticed that authors seem to be less inclined to come up with characters who have their homeland there, or have last names indicating they're from there or the like. As compared to Ukrainians (e.g. Márchenko [not Marchénko!] from Deus Ex, the janitor from the second modern Sherlock Holmes, the dock workers from the Pretender etc.).
Monolingualism being the norm is so stereotypical for portrayals of USians. (It's certainly not the norm in Canada, and I doubt it's the norm in Mexico either.)
Imagine a story featuring a group of dark-skinned characters, and suddenly they're speaking Oromo, Swahili, or if you want to go out there, Tamil. (No, it's not just people of African descent who have dark skin - many Tamils have skin tones that people from the USA would call "black".)
Kokurokoki
"IDW DA NYA!"
- Location
- Area S09
The way I see it, you can just do the DnD thing and have english represent the common language that the audience can understand. Learning languages is hard and time consuming and not every writer has the time or capacity to do so without running into issues.
PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Written works targeted for an English-speaking audience should be written in English, regardless of whatever language the characters are technically speaking.
Acknowledging when characters in a multi-lingual setting aren't speaking English seems like a good idea though. It could help establish characters and their voices plus it gives a nod to diversity.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
For the record, so is learning cultures or subcultures. We just all* think our culture is easy to learn because we are so used to it.
* == not actually all, but apparently far too many many.
Well, maybe, 50/50. Diglossic and even polyglossic films are really great and improve immersion and have other upsides (e.g. in the local screening of Deadpool, Colossus often couldn't find a word and thus spoke parts of sentences in Russian, which made the scenes even funnier; or people in some ER episodes speaking Spanish or French or ASL and I think at one time Weaver spoke Swahili). But I do appreciate having subtitles in the language which is marked as primary for a given film.
PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'd say those are visual-audio works, not written works. I didn't get into visual-audio works because they're more complicated.
Edit: To clarify, I think you're right about polyglossic visual-audio works.
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vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
What I described applies to written works too. For instance, parts of War and Peace are written in French; writing it in a single language would result in making the work more 'flat', detract from characterisation of the people within it etc. The humour in Ostap Vyshnya's First Dictation would likewise be totally lost had it been a monoglossic work.
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PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I can't tell if you're intentionally missing my point for the sake of argument, quibbling over details, or if I just did a poor job initially communicating my point. Near any rule or guideline in writing can be broken for specific effect if you know what you're doing. My suggestion that "written works should be written in the target audience's primary language" is not exception.
Writers shouldn't be expected to learn an entire new language and write their work in that language just because that language is used in the setting. Injecting bits of other languages into some characters' dialogue for specific effects is an entirely different thing.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Man could you imagine the kind of git who would write mostly in Lojban for an English language audience?
- Location
- secret base
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Влщз кошщпе незиларз ниьещаьтар лизщелри итвпотьт елзщрлтат иоерат, оекпшщроещш, еошщрежщнт, куамирзщ. Окпщз укшощпоещ иешщпол; окшщпоещ мьлрьдпьтдл амипдзтдхрзпдтхрзп. Фущшкапотиопр кепшщ ленщзрлтьрп лдвапи екшщирпдьп аошпкшзп:
"Chair."
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
TBF, I think there was an assumption in Russia at about that time that an educated person would speak French, as French was one of the countries with an extensive tradition of education? I remember hearing something like that, anyway.
... Doesn't actually make the whole 'Randomly FREEEENCH' thing less annoying. I hate when books quote stuff in another language and then don't translate it.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
That was still done for a French speaking audience.