Are rainbow casts bad?

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Marian Perera

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I'm a big fan of rainbow casts in novels where it fits. You'd have a harder time populating a novel set in a tiny farm town in Nebraska with a full rainbow, but if it's downtown in some major city, or if you're a fantasy writer, or sci-fi, where the entire world is up to you, then there's no excuse to not have some kind of diversity.

I write fantasy novels set on other worlds, and I always have people of different races in them, but those races are hardly ever differentiated on the basis of skin color. Diversity in terms of biology and religion and social behavior, yes, but I don't know if that falls under the rainbow cast umbrella.

If it didn't, I still wouldn't be comfortable about including skin color as a differentiating factor in this particular fantasy world. I feel I have enough differences already between my races without adding that as well.
 
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tutty

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i know this thread is a month old, but since there's not a ton of traffic here, i'll put in my thoughts. i'm from a mid-sized town in the south, and at one point, my core group of friends were asian, white, latina and arab. i'm black. so if anyone wants a "rainbow cast" for their novel, but is worried about realism, i say go for it. you'll be reflecting someone's reality.
 
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Kitty27

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I second Tutty.

Go for it. It will be HEAVEN for someone to read a diverse novel and see characters like them reflected in a well written and non stereotypical way.
 

oooooh

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Missus Akasha, don't know if you're still reading this thread as it's so old, but I fully support all of the characters, even if they sound "too" mixed/diverse/deliberate. It's not as if thinking about race happens unconsciously (unless we're talking Assumed White), so yeah, who cares if it's deliberate? It's supposed to be.

I guess I just identify with your story because I too am writing an Urban Fantasy with what is pretty much a rainbow cast. Yes, part of the reason was because I want to see more representation in YA Fantasy, but also because the friend group closely mirrors my own (as does the setting, contemporary London). So if you can imagine this group of people being together, it is by all means realistic.

What does bother me though is the one or two people that have said this wouldn't be commercial. I could feel my gut nodding in assent, going 'uh-huh'. It's the same thing as when Katniss and Gale and all of the others from the Seam in THG were described as 'olive skinned', yet movie franchise had an all white cast. Even if Suzanne Collins did write a mixed/rainbow cast they were awfully whitewashed in the movie. Grrrr.

Is there any hope of something like this being super commercial?
 
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Kashmirgirl1976

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Go for it. Rainbow casts is the reality for more people than not. To think otherwise is myopic and stagnant. It would be appreciated.
 

bluelight

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It's the same thing as when Katniss and Gale and all of the others from the Seam in THG were described as 'olive skinned', yet movie franchise had an all white cast. Even if Suzanne Collins did write a mixed/rainbow cast they were awfully whitewashed in the movie. Grrrr.

The worst was how the casting directors specifically stated in the casting call that they only wanted to audition Caucasian actors and actresses for these parts.

This is kind of an old thread, but I say go for rainbow casts. And I would rather an author explicitly tell me a character is black, white, asian, mixed, etc. than leave it ambiguous. I've recently noticed in some of the YA novels I've read that a writer will describe a POC character as attractive but then give them Caucasian features that almost negate any features that would signify their being a person of color.

For example, an Asian male protagonist/love interest with big beautiful blue eyes and light brown hair.

This combination of features is possible, but incredibly rare. Does this bother anyone else, or just me? Because YA is so popular, I feel like this sort of thing just leaves the door open to not cast a POC if the novel is ever adapted for film or television.

I won't think the male love interest a writer has created is any less interesting or worthwhile if he has black hair and dark eyes. Are writers/publishers afraid that's not the case for the rest of the world?
 

shaldna

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I second Tutty.

Go for it. It will be HEAVEN for someone to read a diverse novel and see characters like them reflected in a well written and non stereotypical way.

This quote made me smile because this week my daughter has been home from school ill (she has recurrent breathing issues) and we happened to be flicking through an array of bad daytime TV when she got all annoyed about a couple of guys on a TV show and said 'why are they talking like that? Edwin doesn't talk like that. And neither does Jordan.'

Ed is one of her friends. He's a first generation immigrant from India. Jordan is her cousin, 18, son of a while Irish woman and a first generation Indian immigrant . If my 7 year old daughter can spot a racial stereotype then I see no reason why anyone else can't.

Perhaps we are lucky - we have a very diverse family group and social circle and I'm lucky enough that my daughter goes to a parish school - it only has around 65 pupils, and only about half of those speak English as a first language. Her two best friends are French and Polish. She has no concept of a difference in skin colour, nationality etc. And that's how I want to keep it. She's well aware too that, especially in our family group, that just because you have white parents doesn't mean you are white. And the best bit of it all - she doesn't CARE. And that's how it should be.

I think, personally, that there have been too many movies and influences that have led to characters being portrayed in a stereotypical light. I mean, I know that I'm sick and tired of seeing pretty much all African American males being shown as semi-literate thugs, just like I'm tired of every Irish character being a drunk farmer.





Go for it. Rainbow casts is the reality for more people than not. To think otherwise is myopic and stagnant. It would be appreciated.


In the estate I live in, in Ireland, just outside Belfast, being a white native is the minority. I'm not saying that this the case for all estates in Ireland. I'm just saying that, where I live, in this street, this estate, the majority of residents are not white Irish people. By far the majority are immigrants - Indian, Turkish, a large Chinese population and a lot of Eastern European families.

While 'rainbow' is a reality, we need to look at it in terms of location and setting. I mean, if I were to set a book in my home town and had an exclusively white, native cast, that's not going to work. But neither is having my book entirely populated with white, English speaking Northern Irish. It's all about location, demographics and being realistic.

In my first novel one of the main characters was Chinese by birth. She'd lived in the country all her life, spoke with a local accent etc. I was actually asked buy several readers why she didn't 'sound Chinese'


The worst was how the casting directors specifically stated in the casting call that they only wanted to audition Caucasian actors and actresses for these parts.

This is kind of an old thread, but I say go for rainbow casts. And I would rather an author explicitly tell me a character is black, white, asian, mixed, etc. than leave it ambiguous. I've recently noticed in some of the YA novels I've read that a writer will describe a POC character as attractive but then give them Caucasian features that almost negate any features that would signify their being a person of color.

For example, an Asian male protagonist/love interest with big beautiful blue eyes and light brown hair.

This combination of features is possible, but incredibly rare. Does this bother anyone else, or just me? Because YA is so popular, I feel like this sort of thing just leaves the door open to not cast a POC if the novel is ever adapted for film or television.

I won't think the male love interest a writer has created is any less interesting or worthwhile if he has black hair and dark eyes. Are writers/publishers afraid that's not the case for the rest of the world?


I HATE this. I mean, I'm a grown woman with my own tastes and opinions. If you need to CONVINCE me that your character is attractive then you aren't doing your job very well.

And I don't need everyone 'whitewashed' either. That really peels my plums.
 

LupineMoon

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My friend and I are trying to write a story we've been playing around with for years. Over the last several months, we've started playing with our characters and making it a more diverse cast as we realised that there were only one or two non-white characters. Strangely, as a bi-racial Asian-American who has kept that part of myself in all of my writing (granted some of it is autobiographical), I have made this version of me completely white.

I like the idea of a diverse cast of characters and don't see nearly enough of them in literature.
 
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