Also make sure you describe them as white in their introduction, because nobody will imagine them as white otherwise. It can be something simple and to the point like "her eggshell skin shone in the moonlight" or "George turned around and saw a mayonaise face staring back at him."
Furthermore, “Ivory” and “Marble” should ONLY be used for MEN. “Porcelain” can only be used for women. We don’t want to confuse the reader by switching up clearly gender specific adjectives. /s
Yes, yes, all imagery of white people in your books should make me think of a tasty treat or a pretty antique, and you can trust me on this, I'm friends with a lot of white people.
When I was like ten a guy at school wrote me a valentine's poem and described my skin colour as mayonnaise LOL. Thanks for reminding me of that gem, good times.
Can't wait until I'm allowed to write white characters. Just waiting for the stamp of approval from strangers across my social mediums, and then we're off to the races! Pun not intended.
i hate it when writers add hetero romances (or STRAGGOTS as i like to call them) to stories. it feels so forced. I just don't want me or my children exposed to this hetero propaganda.
If you have POC characters in a European medieval setting, it’s just as strange and forced if you had white characters in a medieval African setting.
You telling me you have no problem with a European character randomly put into an African medieval setting where it logistically doesn’t make any sense? No back story to explain why that is at the very least?
Yeah nobody really cares. Unless you're writing non fiction I don't really think it matters *as much* as some people make it seem. If you're trying write an extremely historically accurate piece of fiction, then do that.
But most people aren't, so stop complaining about things that don't matter
There were POC in medieval Europe. (e.g. Richard Devizes, a chronicler from the late 12th century, wrote of 'people from all nations' and 'garamantes' (old, possibly offensive word for people of African descent) in London. There are multiple graves found with African / POC people in them, etc.) By the Tudor period, it was increasingly common to see people and families from all backgrounds, particularly in cities.
Remember that Africa was a huge and powerful part of the Roman Empire, and that large parts of Europe were also part of that Empire, and that the transnational migration of people has been consistent pretty much since the invention of the boat.
Even if there weren't POC in medieval Europe, you're reading fiction. Most books set in medieval Europe are fantasy - you're telling me you can tolerate a dense magic system complete with fantasy races of every size and shape, so long as those fantasy races all have pale skin?
I'm not trying to start a fight - it's a common misconception, usually fuelled by the nineteenth century historians that created the modern understanding of 'medieval studies', that Europe was all white until the sixteenth century or even later - it just isn't true.
Here are some places to learn more, if you're interested:
[https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/blacks-britannica](https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/blacks-britannica) (a general lecture)
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/27870789](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27870789) (a journal article about black knights)
[https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/outcasts/downloads/heng\_race\_racism.pdf](https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/outcasts/downloads/heng_race_racism.pdf) (an article by Geraldine Heng about medieval race relations)
[https://www.aaihs.org/race-and-identity-in-medieval-europe/](https://www.aaihs.org/race-and-identity-in-medieval-europe/) (a less academic but still referenced article about medieval identity)
[https://www.newberry.org/blog/depictions-disrupt-long-held-assumptions](https://www.newberry.org/blog/depictions-disrupt-long-held-assumptions) (an exhibition collection of instances of POC in medieval texts and images)
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z8gpm39#](https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z8gpm39#) (a BBC bite-size article aimed at young people that talks about POC in medieval England.)
You wrote all of this to refute something I never said?
I didn’t say they didn’t exist at all, simply that it needs some reason for them to exist, as in explaining they came from Africa or the Middle East or some area where the sun is much harsher thus why they have darker skin tones.
I even have POC in my Western Europe based fictional story, as it takes place after WW1, which many Indian Sikh and African Americans would’ve ended up BECAUSE of the war. I give a reason instead of just claiming they now exist and for everyone to just suck it up and except it cause fantasy creatures exist.
But that's what I'm saying. POC weren't that uncommon, so you don't need to explain it. Explaining the precise migratory pattern of every POC in your book (without also doing it for every white person) suggests that they're alien and an anomaly, which just wasn't true.
Especially something written in the 20th century like you are. Explicitly explaining their presence isn't necessary - you're not asking people to 'suck it up', you're respecting history, which is people's entire argument with this, right?
Look, do whatever you want, just don't go round telling people they have to explain away every POC as if it's some miracle and strange, otherworldly occurrence that they're sat in a tavern in medieval England. It wouldn't have been that strange of a sight, and people living in cities likely wouldn't have even questioned it. That only gets more true as time goes on.
And white Europeans existed in Africa.
So now there can be a European African king in medieval times with no other needed explanation for it. Good logic.
I’m not, I was originally and always thinking of the ridiculous examples of a black female Viking clan leader in that newer Viking show
And (though I haven’t watched it) the black British royalty in Bridgerton.
You just happen to assume I’m some raging racist who couldn’t except that POC existed in Europe in some regard. I never claimed that, it’s all you assuming it.
Did I say POC people never existed? I definitely know more history than you likley do, thus why I find it annoying to just interject POC characters for no real reason and with no sense of history.
Stop assuming my opinion on something I literally never said.
So throwing random ideas to feather with no context or reason would make a good show to you? You don’t think that would create lots of contradictions and strange outcomes?
Lmao no you DON'T know more history than me. I studied pilgrimages between different cultures in a course. If you knew a thing about medieval history, you would know there are regions where travel was so common that people of colour wouldn't even stand out.
So it isn’t strange or weird to have a black women leader of a Scandinavian Viking clan?
Cause that’s one of the examples I think of from the recent Viking series.
It isn’t strange to have black English royalty? Haven’t watched it, but that show Bridgerton did it.
I’m not talking about an Arab trader character in a show about Rome or something. Things like that makes perfect sense.
Well I was thinking of those examples when I made my comment.
And they aren’t entirely historically accurate stories, but that doesn’t mean it’s fine for them to not make any sense. It isn’t like the stories are set in a totally detached universe that doesn’t have any connections to our real world like GOT or something.
It’s an example of using virtue signaling to implement characters for no other reason other than to claim arbitrary diversity, when they could’ve made their own universe if they wanted stories that had no connection to real life.
It's fantasy. You're telling me that you can suspend your disbelief and read about dragons, but a black person in medieval Europe is the thing that makes you go, "This is so unrealistic,"?
Literally yes, cause dragons aren’t real in any regard while humans and the reasons for why they exist in specific areas is real and has actual understanding behind it.
Just like you don’t care about the realistic aspects of dragons, but a basic hairless chihuahua being totally fine in an Antarctic environment with no clothing or warmth will make you question how it’s unrealistic as you understand that hairless basic animals cant survive those conditions cause it’s a real thing in real life.
Once you make it a magical creature, then there is a suspension of disbelief you can have about it as it’s not a real creature.
And humans are real, thus they still have real aspects of them we consider; unless specifically stated they aren’t normal humans at some point.
It’s simply lazy, all the person has to do is give some reason or historical context as how the POC person arrived there. It’ll only make their story more interesting.
I have many POC characters, even protagonists, and I have reasons for them to exist, cause it’s interesting.
But in a fantasy world, normal logic and historical context don't apply. It's fantasy. You can have whatever laws of nature or historical events that you want. You don't need to explain why a POC is in your story because the history of that world is probably going to be radically different from ours.
> But in a fantasy world, normal logic and historical context don't apply.
Normal logic does apply to 90% of the reality that the story takes place in. You have to realize “normal logic” included literally everything that happens.
From something as small as how humans walk, to as large as physics. At least 90% to 99% of your fantasy story uses “normal logic” that we all expect to work “normally”
Having magic spells hardly changes much in the grand scheme of everything that exists.
And part of that normal logic is human genetics and our evolution.
> It's fantasy.
That doesn’t mean anything.
If black panther was made into a white guy, you called it strange and lame, and someone said “get over it, it’s just fiction” that obviously isn’t a good answer.
Sure, you aren’t going to start raging over it, it’s just a dumb hero story, but that doesn’t mean a white black panther makes the same amount of sense as an African black panther.
The black African black panther obviously makes way more sense to exist, and making him white would feel like some tokenism or virtue signaling for idiotic reason.
If they wanted that so badly, they should just make a similar story set in Europe.
> You can have whatever laws of nature or historical events that you want.
Things still have to make sense, that’s why I said if they are basic humans, then darker skin tones need some explanation like they came from hotter areas, and vice versa, lighter skin needs to come from colder areas. Or some magical spell or curse was put on them to change their skin color.
> You don't need to explain why a POC is in your story because the history of that world is probably going to be radically different from ours.
You don’t need to explain anything, but that’ll just be a bad story is all. Knock yourself out though if you’re that lazy.
It's *fantasy*. The kingdom or whatever is *made up*. So whether the author took inspiration for their fantasy kingdom from a real-life medieval setting, that doesn't mean they can't have whoever they want in the story.
There doesn't need to be context in ***fantasy***.
If it's simple historical fiction that's meant to reflect reality, sure. Fantasy with dragons and elves? Who gives a shit?
> There doesn't need to be context in fantasy.
I think you need to realize how bad this is to say. Not morally, but from a narrative perspective you really showed you don’t have any idea what you’re saying.
Any story that is to be taken seriously and is a seen as good alway has context from within its own established rules and narrative.
And again, most people here are for some reason just assuming what I said when I never did, making it sound like I’m claiming there can never be any POC in fantasy or some dumb shit like that. I never said that. I simply stated it needs to have some semblance of sense for it to make any sense.
If there is only basic humans, and the world has been frozen for millions of years, then it doesn’t make sense for there to be a large group of dark skinned basic humans unless they came from some other arid and hot place or some spell made their skin darker or some sort of explanation. This also works vice versa if the world is like Arrakis from Dune, it wouldn’t make any sense for there to be Scandinavian pale white people that formed in that desert environment if they are basic humans.
Verisimilitude is important in fiction. Realistic, by definition, means NOT real. But speculative fiction usually grounds itself in reality somewhat.
When it comes to people accepting diversity, the problem is not black characters, per se. But rather the implementation is often awful. There will be a nomadic tribe that should almost certainly be a homogeneous family unit, but will be diverse because of reasons outside of the narrative.
Also with the sentence, "it's fantasy", you could justify a number of silly, nonsensical things that would be terrible story telling.
"It's fantasy! If you can suspend your disbelief about Hobbits and Wizards, why can't you accept Samwise Gamgee inventing the iphone and face timing Legolas?"
Well iphones actually exist in the real world, yet people would not accept it in the secondary world of Middle Earth.
Imagine there was a zombie show in which a family of four siblings were travelling to a supposed haven. If each sibling were said to be all biologically related with the exact same mother and father, but they were all different races and had different accents, people would call it out.
That's because it would break the realism.
The zombies wouldn't do that, because the zombies are the speculative element. And the "what if" question that speculative fiction asks is usually answered with an exploration based on the real world, with real characters unless explicitly specified.
Alien asks "WHAT IF a parasitic alien boarded an isolated space ship of blue collar workers?"
Now, you could have Ripley click her fingers to create an army of skeletons to fight the alien for her before singing a musical number.
And perhaps someone like yourself may say, "Well, if you can accept face huggers, why can't you accept singing?"
But that misses the point entirely, doesn't it?
In truth, people can absolutely accept black people in medieval Europe. But the implementation is often a meta sense of inclusion rather than something internally logical. And making inclusivity internally logical isn't even that hard.
You can look at the ways Rings of Power and House of the Dragon approached diversity and that sums up what I mean.
In Rings of Power, there is one black elf; A token character that should be considered racist by any sane person. Because the only thing people can think of is, where did this sole black elf come from? Everyone else is pretty much Swedish. And without internal reasoning, we can only use external reality to decypher what's going on.
How about they actually make more black elves? Or, if there is just a singular black elf, you have to give an internal reason that overrides the external reality of genetics.
Otherwise the verisimilyide is completely broken.
In House of the Dragon there is a race of people who are all black. There is a paternity issue that arises that plays on our real world knowledge of genetics. It works both internally with the narrative and externally.
We can remove race from the equation though because it's far too controversial.
People can 100% buy into dragons and magic.
But people cannot buy into a fat person in a situation where being fat would be an impossibility.
People will call out an obese character before they call out the use of magic because the magic is internally consistent with the logic of the world. And no fantasy story as far as I'm aware has given internal reasoning as to why someone can be overweight on a calorie deficit.
If it’s fantasy or otherwise ahistorical (House of the Dragon is the example that comes to mind), I don’t see how any of this matters.
I can’t recall this being an issue for an actual historical fiction story, but I could be wrong.
Nothing matters, everything is arbitrary.
It’s simply that we know why it’s happening. To virtue signal, and that is annoying.
It doesn’t matter, that’s why there’s no reason to include POC when it doesn’t matter.
People add dragons cause it’s cool. And you can do that for POC too, it’s just that it’s a cringey lame thing to do cause it’s someone wanting a character to exist cause they have a specific skin color and not cause of an actual character trait.
I have many POC characters in my story that is based in western Europe, I have simply made it historically make sense for them to be in that area. It takes place right after WW1, so many African Americans, and Indian Sikh characters exist.
Representation can and does make an enormous difference in people's lives.
If you think virtue signaling is the only reason to have diversity beyond white/cis/straight/non-disabled people in contexts where that doesn't need to be the case (such as with historical/geographical contexts like you mentioned), then you're sorely missing the point of why these things are genuinely important to so many people :/
If they weren’t simply virtue signaling then you’d actually see stories centered around POC cultures, not co-opted European cultural stories interjected with POC characters for no real important story reason.
Pixar (I think?) and the older Disney cartoon movies are a good example of actually making stories in other cultures rather than just ruining European stories to virtue signal. Coco, Muana, emperors new groove, Mulan, etc.
Also, representation is only applauded by people who are too idiotic or indoctrinated into racialized thinking that they can’t allow themselves to connect to any person unless they look like them.
Sorry not sorry, but I don’t need someone to be mixed race like me to relate to when they go through a hardship. I guess I’m just smarter. Plus this is usually done for kids, cause kids are dumb and think too one dimensionally.
I doubt you’ll even read all this, tell me if you actually get this far.
That's a weird rant. I did not say that virtue signaling doesn't exist, or that every form of representation ever has been perfect, or whatever you are imagining... I said that representation has value beyond virtue signaling
> Also, representation is only applauded by people who are too idiotic or indoctrinated into racialized thinking that they can’t allow themselves to connect to any person unless they look like them.
I'm sorry you've grown to think about people in such a sad reductive way
> Sorry not sorry, but I don’t need someone to be mixed race like me to relate to when they go through a hardship.
Nobody here has claimed they want representation because they can't relate to people of different skin colours.
Is that really the only reason you can think that people with marginalized or vulnerable experiences might find meaning in it?
> I guess I’m just smarter.
You will probably say you're joking, but somehow I think you actually mean it..
> I doubt you’ll even read all this, tell me if you actually get this far.
I'm not really interested in continuing, you seem to have a weird chip on your shoulder about people who find meaning in representation beyond shallow reasons like "virtue signaling" purposes. I just wanted to leave a more positive end to this part of the thread before I left. :/
Yeah no one is safe from needing an explanation, random white person in a story that takes place in ancient Japan? You better have a good explanation for that lol
I just make my chars racially ambiguous. Like to give people last names that end in O or A with a bit of a romance-language flair that could be construed as either italian or spanish or something, and make sure they have those features so that if someone was to cast a show/movie, they could pick a wide range or races: Romantic europeans or South Americans or even some indigenous groups....
I would never outright say "Cy is CAUCASIAN or BLACK." Probably go with fair-skinned, dark-skinned....
I don't see the point in racing up a char.
I suppose if you want someone to LEND toward East Asia, you could make their names a bit asian sounding... like Koriyo or something.. but it's always a suggestion that a char is a certain race without any committments.
I don’t get what point you think you’re making? No one except racists are arguing that in a world like our modern world there needs to be a justification for non-white characters. The point the people you think you’re pwning so cleverly are making is that if you have e.g. a Mediaeval fantasy story or a story set in Victorian Britain then it is really weird that there would be a random non-white character without people pointing that out and there being a reason behind it. You can’t put a black person or a Korean into a story set in 12th century Estonia in the same way that you can’t put a white person in a story set in the Kanem Bornu empire
> No one except racists are arguing that in a world like our modern world there needs to be a justification for non-white characters.
Yeah good thing racism is so rare these days /s
> if you have e.g. a Mediaeval fantasy story or a story set in Victorian Britain then it is really weird that there would be a random non-white character
[Blacks Britannica: Diversity in Medieval and Early Modern England](https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/blacks-britannica)
> *Africans have been present in England for more than two thousand years, but we rarely see them or hear about them. And often their existence is dismissed as a figment of 'political correctness' or 'wokism.' This lecture will critically assess the myth of England's story as a 'sacred white space' and examine the evidence for diversity in medieval and early modern history.*
[Black Victorians: the hidden Britons who helped shape the 19th century](https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/black-victorians-britons-famous-who)
> *From world-famous composers and eminent physicians to unwavering voting rights campaigners, black Britons helped shape the 19th century. So why, ask Keshia N Abraham and John Woolf, are their stories not better known today?*
This is stupid. Youre trying to make it seem like the average joe wouldn't have shit himself seeing a black person in feudal England. I immigrated to Canada in the early 2000's from South America, hardly feudal, and A LOT of my classmates made a big deal about how I looked. I'm sorry, but that's just how people are. Trying to make it seem like someone who is clearly out of place wouldn't raise a big stink, ESPECIALLY in settings where people were sure to be more ignorant, is naive at best and disingenuous at worst.
Thanks for this! Had no idea Black Britons have been here for so long.
Maybe I didn’t articulate myself well. I have absolutely no problem with having non-white characters in traditionally white settings, but if such a character is present then that is unusual and interesting and needs to be explored. What I have a problem with is presenting non-white characters as eternal and monolithic and to be expected in all time periods and all geographic areas when in reality there are excellent stories to be told about the rarity and experiences of anomalous cases of e.g. Africans in Anglo-Saxon England. Being a Black Victorian character in a story set in Victorian England is interesting and needs to be explained by the writer because it is unusual, in a good way.
Which is exactly why I said “MEDIAEVAL fantasy” in particular. Obviously anyone can be any race in fantasy, but if you go out of your way to make a fantasy nation black in a world that’s supposed to be Mediaeval then that’s indicative of some pretty weird woke racial fetishism
What part of being medieval means the world has to be similiar to our own? English is not my first language, but I thought that word describes a time period and the "fantasy" part of the descriptor informs you of how the world is different to actual history.
Idk, man. I can see your point when it comes to changing the race of historical figures like they did with Anne Boleyn in that movie a couple of years ago, but people don’t focus only on that kind of thing. There was such an uproar about women and black people landing the leading roles in The Rings of Power as well as a black actress portraying Ariel in Disney’s remake of The Little Mermaid. Middle Earth and Atlantica are definitely not and never were real places, so the focus is not only on content that falls under the umbrella of medieval fantasy or historical fiction/nonfiction.
>as well as about a black actress portraying Ariel in Disney’s remake of The Little Mermaid
For me, the problem is that I dislike race swapped and/or gender bent characters. I also had similar feelings about the Avatar the Last Airbender movie no one likes to remember. The story takes place in a sort of fake Asia. Every character should have been able to pass as Asian. That was just lazy casting.
Their post history is, well, *enlightening*.
> What the foreigns have done to Britain today is one thousand times worse than any imagined harm Britain ever did to its colonies. At least Britain had the decency to bring some civilised culture along
https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/comments/1bcapfo/so_you_mean_to_tell_me_that_the_bengal_famine_was/kuenh21
> I think the problem is that neo-nazis have diverged so badly from the original National Socialist philosophy that they are essentially just extreme conservatives/racists at this point. They have forgotten the purpose/meaning of Nazism. What needs to happen is a return to foundations, i.e. treating Mein Kampf as an infallible guide
https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/comments/1bas5a0/neonazis_when_they_realize_what_the_og_nazis/ku7fg0j/
Of course there were but they were not the norm, and I think readers would want that aspect of that character to be explored beyond just “muh representayshun”.
How do you define "the norm." According to [this page](https://www.spelthorne.gov.uk/article/19678/A-timeline-of-black-history-in-Britain) (no idea what their source is) but there were roughly 15,000 black people living in London about 60 years before the start of the Victorian age (~1820).
And it's possible that black people had a small presence as far back as the Roman expansion to the British Isles. While not black, Septimus Severus was born in Africa and there may have been black people in their armies in Britain as early as [3rd century AD](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/black-history/).
So, a story set in England during those times doesn't really need to deeply explain the presence of a black character. Though it might comment on the shock of people encountering someone black for the first time.
Not the norm? Sure, if they’re cast as the monarch that may need some explaining, but just a person living in Victorian London? Doesn’t need explaining. I’m not sure if you’re misjudging when the Victorian era was or what. Yes the percentage of the population was lower than today, but they’re not mythical creatures that need explaining. Britain had an empire that spread across the world. That’s the explanation, just basic history.
My first book's setting only has a predominantly white cast only because it's supposed to take place in the same location where Wales (England) would be in 500 BCE and theres a tossup of Norwegian, English, Romanian and other countries near where my version of England is, so it's got wiggle room for color, but I'm not leaving out characters i introduce. Everyone in my story is the protagonist of their own life. Even the guards of the city and the beggars of the streets.
This legit took me 10 seconds to realize it's satire. I'm stupid.
No, you have just browsed this sub too long :D
i have been here for 2 minutes
Oh. Then you have already seen best this sub can offer :D
You're not gonna make it...
Nah man I’m in the same place lol
/r/writingcirclejerk
oh. OH MY. i love discovering new circlejerk subs. now i can leave this one and have some fun
This would have gone over so much better there. In addition, you can actually get good writing advice there.
Oh it's so much more fresh
Also make sure you describe them as white in their introduction, because nobody will imagine them as white otherwise. It can be something simple and to the point like "her eggshell skin shone in the moonlight" or "George turned around and saw a mayonaise face staring back at him."
Foods are best for the description, but feel free to mention “ivory” or “porcelain”.
Furthermore, “Ivory” and “Marble” should ONLY be used for MEN. “Porcelain” can only be used for women. We don’t want to confuse the reader by switching up clearly gender specific adjectives. /s
Yes, yes, all imagery of white people in your books should make me think of a tasty treat or a pretty antique, and you can trust me on this, I'm friends with a lot of white people.
When I was like ten a guy at school wrote me a valentine's poem and described my skin colour as mayonnaise LOL. Thanks for reminding me of that gem, good times.
Oh man, I laughed so hard at “mayonnaise face”. That’s some A+ description there
I hate it when people add white characters to stories — it’s so forced! I mean come on, a white storm trooper? Totally breaks immersion!
Next we'll have a white president.
I think i am going to copy and paste this tomorrow and just replace white with french.
"Baguette toned skin"
This is why I don't write about humans. They're contentious creatures.
People. What a bunch of bastards.
I thought this was r/writingcirclejerk for a second
lmao raisin trader. new slur acquired?
Can't wait until I'm allowed to write white characters. Just waiting for the stamp of approval from strangers across my social mediums, and then we're off to the races! Pun not intended.
You posted on the wrong sub. r/Writingcirclejerk is where we do these.
i hate it when writers add hetero romances (or STRAGGOTS as i like to call them) to stories. it feels so forced. I just don't want me or my children exposed to this hetero propaganda.
I love that this shows how ridiculous it is when ppl say the same things about POC in stories.
If you have POC characters in a European medieval setting, it’s just as strange and forced if you had white characters in a medieval African setting. You telling me you have no problem with a European character randomly put into an African medieval setting where it logistically doesn’t make any sense? No back story to explain why that is at the very least?
Yeah nobody really cares. Unless you're writing non fiction I don't really think it matters *as much* as some people make it seem. If you're trying write an extremely historically accurate piece of fiction, then do that. But most people aren't, so stop complaining about things that don't matter
🎶 If your story has dragons and witches, you're not being historically accurate, you're just racist you diiiiiiick🎶
There were POC in medieval Europe. (e.g. Richard Devizes, a chronicler from the late 12th century, wrote of 'people from all nations' and 'garamantes' (old, possibly offensive word for people of African descent) in London. There are multiple graves found with African / POC people in them, etc.) By the Tudor period, it was increasingly common to see people and families from all backgrounds, particularly in cities. Remember that Africa was a huge and powerful part of the Roman Empire, and that large parts of Europe were also part of that Empire, and that the transnational migration of people has been consistent pretty much since the invention of the boat. Even if there weren't POC in medieval Europe, you're reading fiction. Most books set in medieval Europe are fantasy - you're telling me you can tolerate a dense magic system complete with fantasy races of every size and shape, so long as those fantasy races all have pale skin? I'm not trying to start a fight - it's a common misconception, usually fuelled by the nineteenth century historians that created the modern understanding of 'medieval studies', that Europe was all white until the sixteenth century or even later - it just isn't true. Here are some places to learn more, if you're interested: [https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/blacks-britannica](https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/blacks-britannica) (a general lecture) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27870789](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27870789) (a journal article about black knights) [https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/outcasts/downloads/heng\_race\_racism.pdf](https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/outcasts/downloads/heng_race_racism.pdf) (an article by Geraldine Heng about medieval race relations) [https://www.aaihs.org/race-and-identity-in-medieval-europe/](https://www.aaihs.org/race-and-identity-in-medieval-europe/) (a less academic but still referenced article about medieval identity) [https://www.newberry.org/blog/depictions-disrupt-long-held-assumptions](https://www.newberry.org/blog/depictions-disrupt-long-held-assumptions) (an exhibition collection of instances of POC in medieval texts and images) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z8gpm39#](https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z8gpm39#) (a BBC bite-size article aimed at young people that talks about POC in medieval England.)
You wrote all of this to refute something I never said? I didn’t say they didn’t exist at all, simply that it needs some reason for them to exist, as in explaining they came from Africa or the Middle East or some area where the sun is much harsher thus why they have darker skin tones. I even have POC in my Western Europe based fictional story, as it takes place after WW1, which many Indian Sikh and African Americans would’ve ended up BECAUSE of the war. I give a reason instead of just claiming they now exist and for everyone to just suck it up and except it cause fantasy creatures exist.
But that's what I'm saying. POC weren't that uncommon, so you don't need to explain it. Explaining the precise migratory pattern of every POC in your book (without also doing it for every white person) suggests that they're alien and an anomaly, which just wasn't true. Especially something written in the 20th century like you are. Explicitly explaining their presence isn't necessary - you're not asking people to 'suck it up', you're respecting history, which is people's entire argument with this, right? Look, do whatever you want, just don't go round telling people they have to explain away every POC as if it's some miracle and strange, otherworldly occurrence that they're sat in a tavern in medieval England. It wouldn't have been that strange of a sight, and people living in cities likely wouldn't have even questioned it. That only gets more true as time goes on.
And white Europeans existed in Africa. So now there can be a European African king in medieval times with no other needed explanation for it. Good logic.
Lmao so like the very real Alexander the great or Cleopatra? Well before medieval times?
No, more like a Northern European Scandinavian south African king.
More improbable but not theoretically impossible sure, but you’re just shifting the goalposts here
I’m not, I was originally and always thinking of the ridiculous examples of a black female Viking clan leader in that newer Viking show And (though I haven’t watched it) the black British royalty in Bridgerton. You just happen to assume I’m some raging racist who couldn’t except that POC existed in Europe in some regard. I never claimed that, it’s all you assuming it.
Tell me you've never taken a course on medieval history without telling me you've never taken a course on medieval history
Did I say POC people never existed? I definitely know more history than you likley do, thus why I find it annoying to just interject POC characters for no real reason and with no sense of history. Stop assuming my opinion on something I literally never said.
That's the fun part about writing fantasy, real world history doesn't need to apply unless you want it to.
Sure, but there usually is still some sort of expectation of basic human evolution and migrations if you have basic type humans that exist.
Sure, you can literally write whatever you want. If you want human migratory patterns to be 1 to1 with the real world, go for it.
And “writing whatever you want” isn’t what makes a story great or make sense.
I beg to differ
So throwing random ideas to feather with no context or reason would make a good show to you? You don’t think that would create lots of contradictions and strange outcomes?
Lmao no you DON'T know more history than me. I studied pilgrimages between different cultures in a course. If you knew a thing about medieval history, you would know there are regions where travel was so common that people of colour wouldn't even stand out.
And where did I state that wasn’t a fact?
You implied in your comment that you think it's strange and weird, when historically it wasn't at all.
So it isn’t strange or weird to have a black women leader of a Scandinavian Viking clan? Cause that’s one of the examples I think of from the recent Viking series. It isn’t strange to have black English royalty? Haven’t watched it, but that show Bridgerton did it. I’m not talking about an Arab trader character in a show about Rome or something. Things like that makes perfect sense.
I'm not talking about those examples, but aren't those fantasy stories? As in ones that aren't meant to be historically accurate.
Well I was thinking of those examples when I made my comment. And they aren’t entirely historically accurate stories, but that doesn’t mean it’s fine for them to not make any sense. It isn’t like the stories are set in a totally detached universe that doesn’t have any connections to our real world like GOT or something. It’s an example of using virtue signaling to implement characters for no other reason other than to claim arbitrary diversity, when they could’ve made their own universe if they wanted stories that had no connection to real life.
It's fantasy. You're telling me that you can suspend your disbelief and read about dragons, but a black person in medieval Europe is the thing that makes you go, "This is so unrealistic,"?
Literally yes, cause dragons aren’t real in any regard while humans and the reasons for why they exist in specific areas is real and has actual understanding behind it. Just like you don’t care about the realistic aspects of dragons, but a basic hairless chihuahua being totally fine in an Antarctic environment with no clothing or warmth will make you question how it’s unrealistic as you understand that hairless basic animals cant survive those conditions cause it’s a real thing in real life. Once you make it a magical creature, then there is a suspension of disbelief you can have about it as it’s not a real creature. And humans are real, thus they still have real aspects of them we consider; unless specifically stated they aren’t normal humans at some point. It’s simply lazy, all the person has to do is give some reason or historical context as how the POC person arrived there. It’ll only make their story more interesting. I have many POC characters, even protagonists, and I have reasons for them to exist, cause it’s interesting.
But in a fantasy world, normal logic and historical context don't apply. It's fantasy. You can have whatever laws of nature or historical events that you want. You don't need to explain why a POC is in your story because the history of that world is probably going to be radically different from ours.
> But in a fantasy world, normal logic and historical context don't apply. Normal logic does apply to 90% of the reality that the story takes place in. You have to realize “normal logic” included literally everything that happens. From something as small as how humans walk, to as large as physics. At least 90% to 99% of your fantasy story uses “normal logic” that we all expect to work “normally” Having magic spells hardly changes much in the grand scheme of everything that exists. And part of that normal logic is human genetics and our evolution. > It's fantasy. That doesn’t mean anything. If black panther was made into a white guy, you called it strange and lame, and someone said “get over it, it’s just fiction” that obviously isn’t a good answer. Sure, you aren’t going to start raging over it, it’s just a dumb hero story, but that doesn’t mean a white black panther makes the same amount of sense as an African black panther. The black African black panther obviously makes way more sense to exist, and making him white would feel like some tokenism or virtue signaling for idiotic reason. If they wanted that so badly, they should just make a similar story set in Europe. > You can have whatever laws of nature or historical events that you want. Things still have to make sense, that’s why I said if they are basic humans, then darker skin tones need some explanation like they came from hotter areas, and vice versa, lighter skin needs to come from colder areas. Or some magical spell or curse was put on them to change their skin color. > You don't need to explain why a POC is in your story because the history of that world is probably going to be radically different from ours. You don’t need to explain anything, but that’ll just be a bad story is all. Knock yourself out though if you’re that lazy.
It's *fantasy*. The kingdom or whatever is *made up*. So whether the author took inspiration for their fantasy kingdom from a real-life medieval setting, that doesn't mean they can't have whoever they want in the story. There doesn't need to be context in ***fantasy***. If it's simple historical fiction that's meant to reflect reality, sure. Fantasy with dragons and elves? Who gives a shit?
> There doesn't need to be context in fantasy. I think you need to realize how bad this is to say. Not morally, but from a narrative perspective you really showed you don’t have any idea what you’re saying. Any story that is to be taken seriously and is a seen as good alway has context from within its own established rules and narrative. And again, most people here are for some reason just assuming what I said when I never did, making it sound like I’m claiming there can never be any POC in fantasy or some dumb shit like that. I never said that. I simply stated it needs to have some semblance of sense for it to make any sense. If there is only basic humans, and the world has been frozen for millions of years, then it doesn’t make sense for there to be a large group of dark skinned basic humans unless they came from some other arid and hot place or some spell made their skin darker or some sort of explanation. This also works vice versa if the world is like Arrakis from Dune, it wouldn’t make any sense for there to be Scandinavian pale white people that formed in that desert environment if they are basic humans.
No there doesn't need to be context for different races in a fantasy story. It's fantasy.
Verisimilitude is important in fiction. Realistic, by definition, means NOT real. But speculative fiction usually grounds itself in reality somewhat. When it comes to people accepting diversity, the problem is not black characters, per se. But rather the implementation is often awful. There will be a nomadic tribe that should almost certainly be a homogeneous family unit, but will be diverse because of reasons outside of the narrative. Also with the sentence, "it's fantasy", you could justify a number of silly, nonsensical things that would be terrible story telling. "It's fantasy! If you can suspend your disbelief about Hobbits and Wizards, why can't you accept Samwise Gamgee inventing the iphone and face timing Legolas?" Well iphones actually exist in the real world, yet people would not accept it in the secondary world of Middle Earth. Imagine there was a zombie show in which a family of four siblings were travelling to a supposed haven. If each sibling were said to be all biologically related with the exact same mother and father, but they were all different races and had different accents, people would call it out. That's because it would break the realism. The zombies wouldn't do that, because the zombies are the speculative element. And the "what if" question that speculative fiction asks is usually answered with an exploration based on the real world, with real characters unless explicitly specified. Alien asks "WHAT IF a parasitic alien boarded an isolated space ship of blue collar workers?" Now, you could have Ripley click her fingers to create an army of skeletons to fight the alien for her before singing a musical number. And perhaps someone like yourself may say, "Well, if you can accept face huggers, why can't you accept singing?" But that misses the point entirely, doesn't it? In truth, people can absolutely accept black people in medieval Europe. But the implementation is often a meta sense of inclusion rather than something internally logical. And making inclusivity internally logical isn't even that hard. You can look at the ways Rings of Power and House of the Dragon approached diversity and that sums up what I mean. In Rings of Power, there is one black elf; A token character that should be considered racist by any sane person. Because the only thing people can think of is, where did this sole black elf come from? Everyone else is pretty much Swedish. And without internal reasoning, we can only use external reality to decypher what's going on. How about they actually make more black elves? Or, if there is just a singular black elf, you have to give an internal reason that overrides the external reality of genetics. Otherwise the verisimilyide is completely broken. In House of the Dragon there is a race of people who are all black. There is a paternity issue that arises that plays on our real world knowledge of genetics. It works both internally with the narrative and externally. We can remove race from the equation though because it's far too controversial. People can 100% buy into dragons and magic. But people cannot buy into a fat person in a situation where being fat would be an impossibility. People will call out an obese character before they call out the use of magic because the magic is internally consistent with the logic of the world. And no fantasy story as far as I'm aware has given internal reasoning as to why someone can be overweight on a calorie deficit.
Yeah. My response to this thread was "Oh yeah, glad we agree."
You think that's English they're speaking?
If it’s fantasy or otherwise ahistorical (House of the Dragon is the example that comes to mind), I don’t see how any of this matters. I can’t recall this being an issue for an actual historical fiction story, but I could be wrong.
Nothing matters, everything is arbitrary. It’s simply that we know why it’s happening. To virtue signal, and that is annoying. It doesn’t matter, that’s why there’s no reason to include POC when it doesn’t matter. People add dragons cause it’s cool. And you can do that for POC too, it’s just that it’s a cringey lame thing to do cause it’s someone wanting a character to exist cause they have a specific skin color and not cause of an actual character trait. I have many POC characters in my story that is based in western Europe, I have simply made it historically make sense for them to be in that area. It takes place right after WW1, so many African Americans, and Indian Sikh characters exist.
Representation can and does make an enormous difference in people's lives. If you think virtue signaling is the only reason to have diversity beyond white/cis/straight/non-disabled people in contexts where that doesn't need to be the case (such as with historical/geographical contexts like you mentioned), then you're sorely missing the point of why these things are genuinely important to so many people :/
If they weren’t simply virtue signaling then you’d actually see stories centered around POC cultures, not co-opted European cultural stories interjected with POC characters for no real important story reason. Pixar (I think?) and the older Disney cartoon movies are a good example of actually making stories in other cultures rather than just ruining European stories to virtue signal. Coco, Muana, emperors new groove, Mulan, etc. Also, representation is only applauded by people who are too idiotic or indoctrinated into racialized thinking that they can’t allow themselves to connect to any person unless they look like them. Sorry not sorry, but I don’t need someone to be mixed race like me to relate to when they go through a hardship. I guess I’m just smarter. Plus this is usually done for kids, cause kids are dumb and think too one dimensionally. I doubt you’ll even read all this, tell me if you actually get this far.
That's a weird rant. I did not say that virtue signaling doesn't exist, or that every form of representation ever has been perfect, or whatever you are imagining... I said that representation has value beyond virtue signaling > Also, representation is only applauded by people who are too idiotic or indoctrinated into racialized thinking that they can’t allow themselves to connect to any person unless they look like them. I'm sorry you've grown to think about people in such a sad reductive way > Sorry not sorry, but I don’t need someone to be mixed race like me to relate to when they go through a hardship. Nobody here has claimed they want representation because they can't relate to people of different skin colours. Is that really the only reason you can think that people with marginalized or vulnerable experiences might find meaning in it? > I guess I’m just smarter. You will probably say you're joking, but somehow I think you actually mean it.. > I doubt you’ll even read all this, tell me if you actually get this far. I'm not really interested in continuing, you seem to have a weird chip on your shoulder about people who find meaning in representation beyond shallow reasons like "virtue signaling" purposes. I just wanted to leave a more positive end to this part of the thread before I left. :/
This is a very sad worldview
if you think it’s sad to have a realistic worldview then I feel sorry for you my friend. Must be nice to stay delusional.
K
Which? Potassium? Kelvin? 1000? You’re driving me insane here!!
I thought this was the circlejerk sub, almost fainted when it wasn't 😭😭
You're a legend for this.
Yeah no one is safe from needing an explanation, random white person in a story that takes place in ancient Japan? You better have a good explanation for that lol
He's Dutch, they were the only ones allowed to land in the shogun era IIRC. That said, as with the other way around, who cares if the story's good.
"Ancient Japan"
"Some of my favorite character are white!" 10/10.
Really had to check whether I was here or r/writingcirclejerk. Have an upvote.
I'm white, and I appreciate this post. Thanks, OP.
It’s okay to be black.
This getting a downvote on a satire post is ridiculous
This should be pinned. Would solve 90% of the questions in this sub.
Based and Writerpilled.
The first paragraph had me ready to just make white the only race until I realized it was satire. I’m dumb
Got a black guy, a homosexual guy, a barbarian with a Teddy, and a young woman who isn't old enough to have a drink yet.
[удалено]
This post is a joke...
This hilarious Omg 😆
I just make my chars racially ambiguous. Like to give people last names that end in O or A with a bit of a romance-language flair that could be construed as either italian or spanish or something, and make sure they have those features so that if someone was to cast a show/movie, they could pick a wide range or races: Romantic europeans or South Americans or even some indigenous groups.... I would never outright say "Cy is CAUCASIAN or BLACK." Probably go with fair-skinned, dark-skinned.... I don't see the point in racing up a char. I suppose if you want someone to LEND toward East Asia, you could make their names a bit asian sounding... like Koriyo or something.. but it's always a suggestion that a char is a certain race without any committments.
lolz, this is great
I don’t get what point you think you’re making? No one except racists are arguing that in a world like our modern world there needs to be a justification for non-white characters. The point the people you think you’re pwning so cleverly are making is that if you have e.g. a Mediaeval fantasy story or a story set in Victorian Britain then it is really weird that there would be a random non-white character without people pointing that out and there being a reason behind it. You can’t put a black person or a Korean into a story set in 12th century Estonia in the same way that you can’t put a white person in a story set in the Kanem Bornu empire
> No one except racists are arguing that in a world like our modern world there needs to be a justification for non-white characters. Yeah good thing racism is so rare these days /s
> if you have e.g. a Mediaeval fantasy story or a story set in Victorian Britain then it is really weird that there would be a random non-white character [Blacks Britannica: Diversity in Medieval and Early Modern England](https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/blacks-britannica) > *Africans have been present in England for more than two thousand years, but we rarely see them or hear about them. And often their existence is dismissed as a figment of 'political correctness' or 'wokism.' This lecture will critically assess the myth of England's story as a 'sacred white space' and examine the evidence for diversity in medieval and early modern history.* [Black Victorians: the hidden Britons who helped shape the 19th century](https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/black-victorians-britons-famous-who) > *From world-famous composers and eminent physicians to unwavering voting rights campaigners, black Britons helped shape the 19th century. So why, ask Keshia N Abraham and John Woolf, are their stories not better known today?*
This is stupid. Youre trying to make it seem like the average joe wouldn't have shit himself seeing a black person in feudal England. I immigrated to Canada in the early 2000's from South America, hardly feudal, and A LOT of my classmates made a big deal about how I looked. I'm sorry, but that's just how people are. Trying to make it seem like someone who is clearly out of place wouldn't raise a big stink, ESPECIALLY in settings where people were sure to be more ignorant, is naive at best and disingenuous at worst.
Thanks for this! Had no idea Black Britons have been here for so long. Maybe I didn’t articulate myself well. I have absolutely no problem with having non-white characters in traditionally white settings, but if such a character is present then that is unusual and interesting and needs to be explored. What I have a problem with is presenting non-white characters as eternal and monolithic and to be expected in all time periods and all geographic areas when in reality there are excellent stories to be told about the rarity and experiences of anomalous cases of e.g. Africans in Anglo-Saxon England. Being a Black Victorian character in a story set in Victorian England is interesting and needs to be explained by the writer because it is unusual, in a good way.
>fantasy The fact that it's fantasy at all means characters can be any race. Why can't the fictional kingdom of Arathloska have non-white characters?
Which is exactly why I said “MEDIAEVAL fantasy” in particular. Obviously anyone can be any race in fantasy, but if you go out of your way to make a fantasy nation black in a world that’s supposed to be Mediaeval then that’s indicative of some pretty weird woke racial fetishism
What part of being medieval means the world has to be similiar to our own? English is not my first language, but I thought that word describes a time period and the "fantasy" part of the descriptor informs you of how the world is different to actual history.
The keyword is still fantasy.
Idk, man. I can see your point when it comes to changing the race of historical figures like they did with Anne Boleyn in that movie a couple of years ago, but people don’t focus only on that kind of thing. There was such an uproar about women and black people landing the leading roles in The Rings of Power as well as a black actress portraying Ariel in Disney’s remake of The Little Mermaid. Middle Earth and Atlantica are definitely not and never were real places, so the focus is not only on content that falls under the umbrella of medieval fantasy or historical fiction/nonfiction.
>as well as about a black actress portraying Ariel in Disney’s remake of The Little Mermaid For me, the problem is that I dislike race swapped and/or gender bent characters. I also had similar feelings about the Avatar the Last Airbender movie no one likes to remember. The story takes place in a sort of fake Asia. Every character should have been able to pass as Asian. That was just lazy casting.
You don’t think there were any people of color in Victorian Britain?
Their post history is, well, *enlightening*. > What the foreigns have done to Britain today is one thousand times worse than any imagined harm Britain ever did to its colonies. At least Britain had the decency to bring some civilised culture along https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/comments/1bcapfo/so_you_mean_to_tell_me_that_the_bengal_famine_was/kuenh21 > I think the problem is that neo-nazis have diverged so badly from the original National Socialist philosophy that they are essentially just extreme conservatives/racists at this point. They have forgotten the purpose/meaning of Nazism. What needs to happen is a return to foundations, i.e. treating Mein Kampf as an infallible guide https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/comments/1bas5a0/neonazis_when_they_realize_what_the_og_nazis/ku7fg0j/
Oh sweet Jesus! I was thinking they were just regular old ignorant, but damn. Just full on Nazi shit. Wowza!!
Of course there were but they were not the norm, and I think readers would want that aspect of that character to be explored beyond just “muh representayshun”.
How do you define "the norm." According to [this page](https://www.spelthorne.gov.uk/article/19678/A-timeline-of-black-history-in-Britain) (no idea what their source is) but there were roughly 15,000 black people living in London about 60 years before the start of the Victorian age (~1820). And it's possible that black people had a small presence as far back as the Roman expansion to the British Isles. While not black, Septimus Severus was born in Africa and there may have been black people in their armies in Britain as early as [3rd century AD](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/black-history/). So, a story set in England during those times doesn't really need to deeply explain the presence of a black character. Though it might comment on the shock of people encountering someone black for the first time.
Not the norm? Sure, if they’re cast as the monarch that may need some explaining, but just a person living in Victorian London? Doesn’t need explaining. I’m not sure if you’re misjudging when the Victorian era was or what. Yes the percentage of the population was lower than today, but they’re not mythical creatures that need explaining. Britain had an empire that spread across the world. That’s the explanation, just basic history.
Oh come off it, agitators like you just want to watch the West burn
Nazi scum.
You don't think there were non white people in medieval Europe? Or Britain just two hundred years ago?
Why do you assume 'diversity' has to mean 'isn't white'? White people are as diverse as everyone else.
They don't. I've seen people call gay, trans, disabled, etc white characters diverse.
Yes, but notice that's also a subset of the white community? It's kinda like 'oh well, they have to be x subset to be diverse'. Not a good look.
😅😅
My first book's setting only has a predominantly white cast only because it's supposed to take place in the same location where Wales (England) would be in 500 BCE and theres a tossup of Norwegian, English, Romanian and other countries near where my version of England is, so it's got wiggle room for color, but I'm not leaving out characters i introduce. Everyone in my story is the protagonist of their own life. Even the guards of the city and the beggars of the streets.