Avoiding Stereotypical Fantasy Counterpart Cultures

Caucasian-based characters described in writing as having black hair or eyes happens to be my biggest pet peeve.

Yeah, the epicanthic fold is hard to describe without sounding ridiculous and/or racist- describing eyes as 'angular', 'slanted' or 'almond-shaped' doesn't fly anymore. I would recommend introducing the ethnic group as having rounded cheekbones and low-bridged noses, and (mostly) dark hair and eyes, and hope that works.

... but then you get stuff like Harry Potter who has brown hair in the movies. Obviously movies change things a lot but I never actually heard a comment on that even when I was into the series.

Also... I clicked through on a few of the live action series/film examples there and I'd describe most examples as brown hair—some of them dark enough that they could be described as black in standard lighting, but others are pretty distinctly brown in the character page pictures.

So. Hm. I see character descriptions of black hair occasionally and managed to realise not everyone is Asian, but... if the hair was not actually black... Those writers lied to me.

That said, black hair should be pretty common as a whole among people not of European descent, at the very least. Black eyes, also not rare.

Although, if its your Main Characters who are Asian-looking, you could just leave their racial features unmentioned, but have them describe a foreigner as being pink skinned and round eyed. That way, even though you don't actually describe the Asian characters' appearance, the reader will still be able to guess how they look, because they know how they don't look.

And there are plenty of European people with black hair. It's nowhere near as common as in other parts of the world, but it certainly exists (for example, Courtney Cox or Steve Carell). Of course, you're rarely going to find anything (hair or otherwise) that's pure black; there's almost always some smidgen of color in there, even if it's not immediately apparent to the eye. Where to draw the line between "black" and "really really dark brown" is ultimately a judgement call.

edited 20th Nov '13 9:59:26 PM by RavenWilder

Nnh... Steve Carell's looks distinctly brown to me. Courteney Cox's I guess often can be called black. (The difference between the two people might be minimal and it's just that the initial pictures show them under different lighting? I'm just using what pops up in the images corner with a standard google.)

I think I get the picture of what is widely considered black hair though. Which is. Well. Interesting.

Slightly more on topic, depending on context and conworld, you can use cultural cues to invoke certain kinds of people. Not going for stereotypes, but things like the food they eat or consider traditional (blurred a bit if there's a lot of trade/globalisation), the names they're given (surnames are more telling nowadays), clothes (pre-globalisation), etc. Works best if they're living in large groups of the same people (like their original country) but even those who aren't might have, e.g., rice with most meals eaten at home, maybe a rice cooker within a couple of metres of the kitchen sink. Probably don't have to clarify that not all Asian etc, you don't have to be Asian to etc etc. What details you use and how prominent they are depends on your story and world. This works particularly well in tandem with being within the culture and looking out and describing white people as though associated physical traits are abnormal.

edited 20th Nov '13 11:42:46 PM by greedling

But what if you want characters to look Asian, but have a culture that's completely unrelated to Asia?

P.S. Check out the Black Irish.

edited 21st Nov '13 1:54:01 AM by RavenWilder

Better, I guess (nice to see that it's considered important to figure out where the genes came from), but I think it's been clearly established that people don't even need to picture that when black hair is mentioned...

If you're not using an Asian-inspired culture that matches the people you're taking the appearance from, then you've stripped yourself of a useful tool. I don't know why you'd be attached to a particular ethnotype in that case though.

Well, I've got an idea for a culture/people that's based off of American Indians, but in order to avoid certain Unfortunate Implications, I want to have them be European looking. And if they look like Europeans, then people from the European-ish culture need to not look like Europeans.

P.S. Alternatively, you might want all your characters to be from the same culture, but still have a diverse array of appearances. Though, since it's a fantasy setting, you could just invent racial characteristics that don't exist in real life, like a group of people with dusky purple skin, or silver hair, or long, drooping ear lobes.

edited 21st Nov '13 8:59:54 PM by RavenWilder

Even regarding people with pure black hair and light skin, that still doesn't only describe Asians. That description also fits some Italians and Spanish as well as Native Americans.

I was also planning on using some aspects of their culture as well to connect them. I just wanted to ensure that it remains subtle and doesn't reach Space Jews levels or something. I don't want to do something like have the OBVIOUSLY JAPANESE culture or the OBVIOUSLY -Whatever culture.

If you have some racist character calling them squinty-eyed or something similarly racist-sounding but reasonably accurate, coupled with the black-eyes-black-hair-tanned-skin descriptors, then the reader will probably guess that they're Asian.

Why not instead of starting by borrowing from a specific culture, start with a theme? A lot of different cultures use similar characteristics that are adapted to a specific environment. That gives you a framework from which you can do worldbuilding. It requires research on variants of that theme and a little intuition but it can work fairly well and when fleshed out can be unique or at least not stereotypical.

I used a Proud Merchant Race that had the themes of a combination of "generic clan-based culture" and "generic city-state culture" for Worldbuilding and then added to it elements that seemed attractive to me, some of whom had coincidental reflections in Real Life cultures that I hadn't studied; not because it was deliberately copied but because they were following the same adaptation to the same situation. My culture in fact turned out to have a lot of resemblances to Renaissance Italy, but there were a number of other resemblances, some coincidental, some deliberate.

edited 24th Aug '14 6:31:53 PM by jatay3

'Almond shaped' and 'curved' eyes is considered racist now?

Perhaps you could take a culture and set it in a different geographical location than the real world one?

I thought almond-shaped eyes referred to some kind of feminine beauty ideal?

I just googled to check, and got a bunch of face-close-ups of women models from different ethnicities. Seems like a really confusing description if you're trying to describe race.

Anything can be racist if you're willing to play fast and loose with the definition of racism. For reference see tumblr.