Blarg
Banned
Continuing controversy is also probably a strong incentive not to change anything, if money and/or notoriety (and the money that notoriety can garner) is much of a motivator.
Nice. Perhaps even softballing Foyt's book a bit. The difference between "insulting" someone by calling them a pearl versus insulting them by calling them a coal (those being the two supposedly derogatory terms in Foyt's book) seems to have been given short shrift. I guess I found it more important -- far from being an insult, calling someone a pearl strikes me as a compliment. And not matching that by choosing another gem-like term for blacks (onyx perhaps?) seems odd. Why the mismatch in tone? How does one do that by "accident"? Alternatively, terms for both races could have been derogatory -- whites could have been called "sandfaces" or "fades" in an allusion to their looking faded out and lifeless or some of the present-day terms like "cracker." At any rate, if one race is going to get a derogatory name, then both should; if one gets a wonderful name as a supposed insult, the other should too.
I hope someone one day insults me by calling me a pearl. Or maybe diamond. That would be all right. Anything marvelous. I'm sure I'd be crushed.
Ghosts? It would have similar connotations to slavery. Though the book itself would need an overhaul on at least the world building.
I take ghosts because of "ghostly white" and also in certain Asian countries (Vaguely I remember some African nations too? Or am I remembering wrong?), the color for mourning/death is white, not black, which would play into that.
Also, you would be playing into the ORIGINAL zombie mythology, which stemmed from a fear of becoming slaves and becoming mindless. This would mean you'd have to do a little borrowing from other cultures where ghosts are considered mindless or have empty desires, but none of those as far as I know would be European countries.
I could buy it, given that the other "lesser" groups (Asians and Latinos) are also called by semi-precious gemstone names (amber and tiger-eye), if the world/society were structured so that shiny-but-useless things were utterly despised, perhaps in a pendulum-swing from our current world where we covet and value gold and gems but won't lift a finger to stop global warming.The thing that makes no sense is that it seems like all of the terms were supposedly defined by the ruling class -- why would they have made a "slur" for their own class?
I'm mostly just impressed that the racial divides are so clear. Asian = this! Latino = that! Black = this other thing! White = this! Because race is obviously clear-cut, and there's clearly zero variation in Latinos ever, and there's also no such thing as people of mixed or Arab or Native descent or or or...
True, though one could throw it back to reclaiming a term. Which would mean hanging a lantern and getting back to it later, then address it with *tight* world building woven into the story. Humans do revenge terms as well. =P I have to wonder if that slur was a preventative measure, though it does show the rudimentary Genesis thought where black==dark==bad. (misuse thereof)First thing that occured to me, if one used "ghosts," is the similarity to "spooks." http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spook
Not sure if that would be good or bad, but it shows how many nuances are involved in choosing a name.
Native people exist. They live on the surface using their Holy Native Magic to keep them alive, in a generic Native way that makes all the groups interchangeable.
Though I'd put money on the Aztecs being Aztecs so there can be human sacrifice, with Eden as the target because she's blonde. The blurb and cover rather suggest it, and there's no reason to suppose the author has learnt anything.
It's like when I tell people I live in NYC and they immediately ask if I've been mugged. Or if I carry a gun.
Thanks for the tips The paranoia hasn't stopped me from writing these characters, but from time to time I do wonder what if I'm getting this all wrong, what if I'm not "in" the character as much as I thought. Oh well, the cure is to read and learn more, I suppose. And expose the work to critique. Sure, there are some clichés I guess. The one I'm working on now wears cornrows when boxing. To keep her hair off the eyes. So do the white chicks in the gym too. But still, at least where I live, cornrows is a hairdo people think when they think of people of African descend.First of all, welcome to AW!
As far as writing POC? Think about if someone wrote a story about you but only focused on one thing. And every story you read with a character like you focused on that same thing. Over and over and over again. Or they picked another thing. And someone would beat that horse to death. The one thing you rarely saw was a story with you as the multi-layered person you are. A story where you get to be the hero, not the sidekick. You're the one the hot guy or girl desires above all others.
It's like when I tell people I live in NYC and they immediately ask if I've been mugged. Or if I carry a gun. Or they'll start doing really bad 'fugedaboudit' impressions. Yes people get mugged here. Yes, some people carry guns. Yes, some people talk like Soprano casting rejects. Most of the 8 million of us don't.
Makes sense. Keeps the hair out of the way and when wrestling, your ponytail or braid doesn't get stuck somewhere and distract your performance; as if it those bouts weren't hard enough already.My husband watches MMA fights and cornrows seem to be popular for the women regardless of their ethnicity. As for everyday people? Around here I only see the style on Black or Latino people.
My husband watches MMA fights and cornrows seem to be popular for the women regardless of their ethnicity. As for everyday people? Around here I only see the style on Black or Latino people.
As for the gun thing? It's still rare to get a permit. In another life I worked for a law enforcement magazine. My boss had a permit but I have no idea how she got it.