What about PoC?

Game Development
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That’s a rather confusing question. How can you write what in a way that fits your story? I mean… it’s a fantasy story where real world ethnicities don’t actually exist right? I mean, blond east-asian is pretty much self contradictory unless they’re also albino, but there is no asia in this fantasy world so what does it matter. On the subject of science, well, I don’t really understand why you keep bringing it up. Realistically, if someone has naturally blond hair and blue eyes then they aren’t monoracial East Asian genetically. Races are a combination of actual biological differences and artificial social constructs. They’re extremely subjective and semi arbitrary labels that humans created to differentiate groups of ourselves from other groups of ourselves based on the appearance of relatively superficial genetically inheritable environmental adaptations. So basically if you make someone who has traits that aren’t a part of a certain “race” then they just aren’t only that race.

It’s a little like dog breeds. Dog breeds exist because humans genetically modified dogs through breeding. We took the basic dog we had all those years ago and with our basic understanding of genetic inheritance at the time, artificially selected for traits that we wanted to promote and against the traits we wanted to discourage. Over time we created the different breeds, many of which have health problems due to our tampering. All the different breeds of humans(“Races”) are a the product of a similar process. Based on the environment, those individuals whose traits didn’t disadvantage their ability to breed, or gave them an advantage over others passed on their genes. The environment of human evolution of course includes what we generally consider “the environment” or “nature” but it also includes what we consider the trappings of civilization. It’s very complicated because humans have more power than any other species to alter their environment, which in turn alters them. But we’re still affected by the things we can’t affect.

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Thanks for being so informative! And, sorry if for not being clear enough. What I want is for there to be a reason for my PoC characters to have traditionally European features (blond hair, blue eyes) while having scientific evidence to back up my reasons for giving them these physical characteristics. There really doesn’t have to be a reason for my PoC characters to have “white features” in this fantasy world of mine, I just want to know if it’s possible.

Basically, I want my story to be scientifically accurate. I want to know if it’s scientifically possible for monoracial Asians and other people of color to have different features as a result of evolution.I want it to make sense from a logical and scientidic standpoint, if possible.

I mean, blond hair, blue eyes, and other typically white features are mutations, right? What if these mutations appeared in other races as well and were more prevalent in people of color? I’m note sure if that would be scientifically accurate, nor would I know how they appear and what not. Which is why I need help.

And if I can’t find any scientific, real-world evidence to back up my PoC characters having blond hair and blue eyes, well. I’ll just say that it’s a fantasy world, that anything can happen.

That’s actually a really good example. But that still brings me to my first points listed above. Sorry for being so relentless about this.:sweat:

Making some edits to this post. I didn’t read your comment clearly enough, I’m sorry.

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I feel like we’re thinking about this the wrong way. Asian people don’t actually exist in this fantasy world because Asia doesn’t exist. What’s important is the environmental factors at play in the area these people evolved. Lighter colored features are more sensitive to light, so they’re a disadvantage in sunny environments, but making things dark takes melanin, which requires more energy. So that’s why people adapted to living further from the equator are generally lighter over all, skin, hair, or eyes. People who lost the darkness were at an advantage in those environments due to saving energy. That doesn’t mean that differences are impossible. Even if the gene for blond hair is completely suppressed in the East Asian strain that doesn’t mean anything in a fantasy world.

Mutations are also a completely different thing. Mutations aren’t based on inheritance. They’re a seemingly random change in a genetic code, so it’s perfectly possible for that to happen… It’s just very unlikely. Having multiple people having the same mutation is even less likely. In this case it’d be safe to assume that there’s some sort of observable environmental factor altering the DNA.

Of course there’s a lot more to environmental adaptation than melanin.

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O.k.

If you want historical, psuedo-scientific mumbo jumbo to allow a European tribe to exist in the Far East territories there are two ways of accomplishing this.

1: Most European tribes originate from the central Asian plains of Eurasia and were forced to migrate due to stronger tribes kicking their butts and them fleeing to safer lands. Just divert one or more of these migrations to other parts of the Eurasian land mass. The White Huns were a “European featured” tribe that you can base your world on.

Here is how the Byzantine (Greeks) described them:

So, in your world build upon this tribe migrating into the lands you want them in and take over the area.

2: The second way is to portray a forced migration much like Russia forced on its internal peoples or other empires like the Ottoman did as well. This is the modern Diaspora scenario and you can have any number of requisite peoples forced back from their homes in Europe to new homes in Asia.

The trouble with method two is that there are some very controversial ideas attached to such forced movements. Things like Genocide can insert themselves into your story if your not careful.

Hope this helps.

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If you are writing science fiction , you can just make up the science like ALL science fiction stories.

But, if you want a more plausible fiction:

  1. What do you define as race?

Webster’s dictionary defined it as “a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits.”

Race deals with physical characteristics. Ethnicity deals with cultural characteristics. Some people use those words interchangeably and it doesn’t bother me, but definitions are nice.

For example, are people who are racially / skin color wise / geographically from Africa, but live in America since slavery days (or later)( African-Americans) monoracial or are they half American and half African? If a Caucasian lives in Africa, are they African?

Defining race by geographically would be easier for you.

  1. How did race come to exist? A common ancestor (Adam and Eve, monkeys, aliens). We can all breed together, so it probably wasn’t parallel evolution and we can just assume there was a common ancestor and not have a theological debate.

  2. What is the time period?

If it’s early in history, maybe we haven’t had time to adapt to our surroundings after we separated from the common ancestor and that’s why people of different geographic locations have shared traits.

If it’s a more modern story, use hair dye, colored contacts, skin bleaching ( or tanning) and an idealization of the white race to explain everything.

All the “Asian” anime people who have non-Asian characteristics accomplish want you want, so you could use that logic and write your story as a manga.

  1. Is there culture?

A post nuclear apocalyptic world could cause the kind of mutations you want.

Are certain physical characters culturally seen as more attractive? Is there a small isolated population and lots of inbreeding? If there is, that could explain how certain recessive traits or genetic mutations are favored.
I think the Amish (small isolated population with close inbreeding) have a higher rate of having more than ten fingers when compared with the general population.

:sweat: I don’t know why I can never number things correctly.

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@Sovereign2Lilith I feel I should point out that the practice of skin whitening in certain cultures has nothing to do with “the white race”.

Also, we have to keep in mind that this story is apparently set somewhere other than Earth. It could follow the same scientific rules as Earth without having the same history.

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Sorry, I don’t really know why most people do most things, but I didn’t mean to sugest that all body modifications are done to resemble someone that’s white.

If the story is not set on earth or a version of earth, there should be no Asia. Using the names of real places like Asia, America, Europe etc. When the story version is nothing like the real version shouldn’t be done because it’s confusing. But, I don’t feel that @TruMaknae is talking about this because you have already stated this.

@TruMaknae

I don’t know much about techtonic plate movement, but maybe this along with random mutations ( I’m specifically receding to heritable germ Cell mutations any time I say mutation) can cause monoracial people to have different people.

I just remembered the report I did on heritable genetic modification using the CRISPR/CAS system in the production of GMOs. You could probably look it up on your school’s library system- the first article was published in the 2000s (2007ish?) on acquired prokaryote immunity against bacteriophages.

Well in laymens terms, it’s kinda on the same path to creating Jurassic Park or "designer babies. " It’s possible that one day foreign DNA (like blue eyes and blond hair, wings, etc.) can be inserted into a cell without that DNA and the new organism can have those characteristics (we do small scale cloning and parts of this in school). In a futuristic society, it’s possible to have a monoracial POC with features often associated with Caucasians.

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@Sovereign2Lilith The world the story is set in was specifically described as “high fantasy” so I’d argue that futuristic technology or it being set on a fictionalized version of Earth aren’t reasonable assumptions to make about it.

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These are some really good ideas. I’ll incorporate some of your suggestions into my story. Thanks!

Sorry if it got confusing. I haven’t even come up with the names of the continents in the fantasy world. Should I instead just use quotations around the names of the actual continents so people understand that I’m not referring to the actual continent? (ex. “Asia,” “Africa”)

But this brings me to another point. I could always use the terms black and white, which I may do. But when it comes to other races, it can get controversial. I’d rather not use the word “yellow” to describe characters who have East Asian features.

I’m so sorry if this is confusing. I’m not the best at explaining things and I’m not sure how else to describe my character’s races when Asia and other continents don’t exist.

First of all, I would like to say thank you for adding the “in laymens terms” part because I would have gotten lost very quickly.

But as @Shoelip said, it is set in a high fantasy setting and is heavily inspired by The Witcher series. So, technology isn’t as advanced as it is today. It’s super behind compared to today’s technology.

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[quote=“Shoelip, post:309, topic:15997, full:true”]
Mutations are also a completely different thing. Mutations aren’t based on inheritance. [/quote]

Maybe you’re talking about new mutations, but mutations are certainly heritable, and they may be genetically linked to other mutations via linkage disequilibrium.

The odds of any specific new mutation like blue eyes occurring are exceedingly small. Nevertheless mutations in general are extremely likely, and over the billions of base pairs that exist in the human genome it’s pretty much guaranteed that everyone will have a few new ones. Thus everyone is a “mutant” in some way even if it isn’t noticeable, and it’s certainly within the realm of possibility for the same mutation to occur more than once independently over an extraordinarily long period of time.

The allele for blue eyes was originally a mutation. Today lots of people have it. We can call it an allele instead of a mutation if you prefer, but that doesn’t change the fact that originally it was a mutation.

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@TruMaknae If their skin is yellow and they distinguish people by skin color in-universe you could use the term yellow race. It would be better than using terms like Asian, African and Caucasian in a world that is not our Earth.

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I didn’t say mutations aren’t inheritable. I said mutations aren’t based on inheritance. What makes something a mutation is the randomness. If it happens it can be passed on, but passing it on isn’t how it shows up in the first place, otherwise it wouldn’t be a mutation.

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Ok. I’m fine with that clarification.

BTW @TruMaknae I’d lay odds that a non harmful blue eyes mutation occurred multiple times in the human population over the ages, but that only once prior to modern times did the individual with the mutation along with any of their descendants survive long enough to form a stable population that wasn’t wiped out at some point, as infant and child mortality rates were very high in ancient times.

As far as modern times are concerned, whether an African or Asian with blue eyes and no known racial mixing has a new mutation or not is impossible to tell without genetic testing and most people don’t get genetically tested unless they’re an albino, or have a serious case of Waardenburg syndrome. A harmless, neutral mutation that only changed the eye color is unlikely to get tested and confirmed. It’s considered medically possible however.

So in an alternate universe with real world scientific laws, there’s no reason why an Asian looking people couldn’t have the same or a very similar blue eyed gene mutation as many Europeans do today. It’s no less likely an occurrence than Europeans having the allele in our world. So if you want blue-eyed Asian looking peoples in your fantasy world, go right ahead. There is no genetic reason why it couldn’t happen.

As for whether or not blue eyes is somehow at a significant disadvantage in more equatorial climates, that is I believe more supposition than fact at this point. There are a lot of blue eyed people whose eyes are just fine in bright light. The connection of blue eyes to photophobia is more a statistical correlation than an established cause, one of a large list of statistical correlations, and natural selection tends not to be that picky about disorders that only affect part of the population seriously, or fatal genetic conditions like sickle cell anemia wouldn’t exist. So even if blue eyes did somehow lead to photophobia in a small percentage of people with blue eyes, that is highly unlikely to have resulted in the population dying off even in ancient times.

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My area of expertise is not genetics. However, for the longest time, I assumed that only “white” people had mutations/recessive genetic traits such as blue eyes, and that’s just not true.




https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LyNmz32bqf8/hqdefault.jpg

So, it’s not as incredible as you might think. Similar things are true about hair color, which can vary.

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@Sashira Whoa. Meeting someone who looked like that IRL would freak me out. I mean, it’d be very shocking on initially encountering them, especially since they’re kids. Adults at least I could just assume had contacts, but I’ve never met anyone with blue eyes who didn’t also look somewhat Caucasian. It must have been really awkward for those kids growing up.

@P_Tigras Just to be clear, I wasn’t referring to anything as extreme as photophobia. I was just talking about melanin.

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@TruMaknae So, question I don’t think I’ve seen asked: You described the people you’re describing as ‘East Asian’, but then gave them entirely European characteristics. What in the context of your story makes them ‘East Asian’ to you?

@WulfyK I’d stay away from ‘Yellow’ as a descriptive term for people period. In fact, in setting a fantasy scenario, I’d stay away from 'White and ‘Black’ too if possible it just to encourage more thought in how a fantasy world might differ from ours, but calling people ‘Yellow’ is a much bigger thing.

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If the setting is not modern and it’s not a science fiction piece, I don’t think it’s necessary to state why people have the features they do.

That’s a good question on how to describe skin without refering to race or ethnicity. You want to describe an Asian skin tone, but Asia doesn’t exist.

I wouldn’t use yellow because that makes me think of the Simpson’s (google Homer Simpson if you don’t know the show). It’s fantasy so people could actually be yellow, red, blue or whatever color.

I don’t know to that, but you should probably use words that everyone is familiar with so it’s easy to understand. Maybe use olive ( even though I never liked eating olives)?

But then again, skin color caries greatly. Some people who identify as black are way lighter than others. India is in Asia, but some Indians are Brown skinned. Some Africans, such as egyptions, are lighter skinned with a more straight hair texture than other Africans.

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Regarding the European characteristics on people based on East Asian cultures; these people look exactly as most East Asian people do. Except they have different hair and eye colors. And freckles are more heritable as well.

Aside from having more diverse hair and eye colors, they look like most monoracial East Asian people.

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Personally, I don’t think skin color or ethnicity should be a big deal. Diversity is a good thing, of course, but nowadays most people are obsessed with it and shoehorning it everywhere. Each writer should deal with race and ethnicity in whatever way they see fit, or is most comfortable for them.

One of things game writers should NEVER do, in my opinion, is constantly point out a character’s race/ethnicity. Not only is this usually annoying to the reader, but it can be rather hard to believe. Normal people don’t really do that in real life! (Heck, it took my friends two years to realize I’m not a white American!)

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It’s also an example of poor writing. If it’s a major character (or the main character) you should make them complex. If the entire basis of your character’s personality is based on one trait that you absolutely cannot control, then…they’re probably not very interesting.

I’ve actually had a friend who made it a point of constantly mentioning his German heritage. And lately I’ve been seeing on the internet constantly reference certain aspects of their identity out of the blue. I was actually one of these people during one of my many phases, but have since improved. Gosh. I was so cringey.

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