Activity

@storyseeker Haha, I get you. 🙂 I think what would help most here would be watching foreign movies! Foreign movie-makers understand what cultural values their people hold and also what their people are like, so you can easily get a sense and a feel of what people are like. So watch a ton of foreign movies, and take a ton of notes. Also, make sure to put on the author cap to analyze character personalities and motivations. The reason why I am recommending movies rather than books is that for movies, you get to hear the original language, whereas with books, meanings are often lost across translations. I think that one author who really pulls of representation well (at least in his time period) is John Steinbeck. I explain more in the other thread. But, yeah, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men both have well represented people of other races.  I was gonna say something else, but I can’t remember, so I’m gonna leave you with that.

Also, this might be totally unrealistic, but living in a foreign country for a period of time can also help (A LOT) in understanding other cultures. There’s this one white guy who lives in China and runs a Youtube channel, and I think he’s more Chinese than some of my friends.

@r-m-archer I think that in fantasy, I feel much less offended when reading characters of my own race, since in fantasy worlds there is much less in common with our real world, and thus, cultural influences would be less dominant. In fact, since I write fantasy, I feel much more at ease when writing races that are not my own. Occasionally I feel that books with a main character of every race out there is a bit unrealistic, since, let’s face it, we all like being with people who are similar to us. I think one great fantasy world way of representing different people/cultures is having different regions/countries filled with those people. Fullmetal Alchemist has two countries that are predominant, one representing Germany and the other China. And although I’ve never watched this one, I believe that Avatar: the Last Airbender also does a great job of this.

Also while some people hate stereotypes, there are occasional times when I think that it’s okay to use stereotypes. For example, occasionally I get confused if the guru type of person is white instead of Asian, but more specifically, I think that portraying the Asian as the hacker, the martial artist, or the take-out restaurant owner is perfectly fine, because these are all accurate. I have friends who do all of these things. It’s fine. Just don’t limit yourself to just these things. It’s okay to think outside the box.

That being said, an Asian jock is probably not out there, because we are, indeed, on the weaker side.

So that being said, for fictional worlds, I think I would just keep world-building in mind. if your not directly bringing in a real country and changing it to be fictional, then I think that even last names don’t really matter. Just…genetics have got to be realistic. If the prince is Asian, then the whole royal family is too.

My brain is fried so I might sound like I’m contradicting myself or repeating something of the other…but for really original fantasy worlds, I think that you can come up with your own cultures too. I’d be ok with that. Also, the new Star Wars trilogy, while it felt only a little bit shoehorned, I was not offended with it at all like I was with the Heroes of Olympus series.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I’m sorry for taking up your time :).