And colour (or, appearance generally) is one facet of racial diversity - but it’s hardly the only factor. Food, ideas about family, music, clothing, philosophy, religion, attitudes about business, the list is practically endless.
Good diversity, I think, must attempt to cover at least some of the other aspects of diversity than just physical appearance. Otherwise it’s a bit like paintbrushing - rather like certain companies’ attempts at ‘ethnic’ dolls for children, where the colour of the skin is changed but all of the other features are exactly the same on every single doll. Sigh.
And the top entries in the blog all refer to St. Maurice who comes from Southern Egypt during the time of the Roman Empire and Jesus’s crucifiction, which occurred in the Middle-East, and which while primarily semitic, was enough of a cultural crossroads that you could easily have characters of almost any racial origin popping up.
He’s effeminate, has the stereotypical hooked nose, unlike Aladdin and Jasmine he was not based off a white model or actor so they don’t have an excuse for why he looks like the racist image of a middle-eastern man while they look mostly like white people with tans. I’m on mobile currently but he’s a blatant caricature and it’s hurtful that the character who actually is supposed to look ethnic is evil and exaggerated in his features.
There is a search button! You can’t just expect to flick through the first page of a blog that’s been around for years and declare “that’s it, no PoC in medieval Europe ever”.
Well the blog is quite long, and the first few entries don’t in any way contradict my point, in fact they reinforce it. If you’re going to refer to it as evidence supporting your disagreement, than please point out some examples from the blog that we can discuss.
I’m half-white (mainly Swedish) and half-Korean! I grew up with a lot of people who were mixed-race like me, but that was before we became more aware of racial issues so I never got to know how they identified. For my case I was always both, so answering that was and still is hard.
But there’s nothing wrong with wanting more representation, I totally understand. But I think the WIP you talked about was something like Seven Winds? I played it a lot while I was a lurker and the thread was still active. In a way, sometimes fantasy stories can help people get a better glimpse at different cultures and how unique and interesting they are. When I was younger I’d always look for picture books that were culturally diverse and had myths and legends from different places. I can’t remember some of them since it was so long ago, but they were all pretty cool.
But back to PoC in Europe, the Mongols were a huge example since their empire spanned from Poland to Korea. The Huns are another example, along with the Byzantines.
I honestly never thought about it like that! But that’s a really interesting perspective that you brought up, and now that you mention it I wanna try and incorporate that into my writing.
And the example with the dolls is a really good example now that I think of it, since literally every Barbie doll looks identical?
I’m not going to search through something when I provided someone with the information they could have sifted through with cheer, were they interested in proving themself wrong. I’m not going to constantly be the information-fetcher of this forum, lmao/s
But, alas, I get it, it’s too much work to actively search for examples of representation in history. It’s much easier to stick with what you know than challenge it, after all.
In terms of race/appearance choices within a game, how much would you want it to affect things? Is it enough to be able to chose at one point that you are X nationality, or have X colour hair, even if it doesn’t really come up again? (or only in the ‘why, that’s some nice [colour] hair you have there.’ way?)
Those Indians weren’t treated as equals. They were indentured servants, little better than slaves. Furthermore, this was during the time of the British Empire, centuries after Chaucer died, with land possessions in many non-European parts of the globe such as India. So it doesn’t in any way contradict my earlier point, and it does throw in the thorny issues of inequality and racism.
I’m not too picky about it, it all depends for me. If a game offers race options I’d like to be able to choose both sides of my race, and not just have to pick one or the other since I’ve had to do the latter a lot in games and in real life. I understand that in period pieces that race may be a large factor that affects gameplay, and I’m not upset with that if I’m being honest. That’s how it was in the olden days, sadly enough. Some games are like that with gender and I still like them.
Again, I’m not picky about it and will accept it on any terms so long as it’s done in a way that’s not problematic and/or stereotypical; I just want some representation from both PCs and NPCs, if that makes sense.
In that case she and I don’t have an argument. I’m not sure why she thought we did. Let me clarify. For a historical piece that takes place in our world, it all depends on the time and place. Add whatever “races” make sense for that place. For example, medieval Spain is very different racially speaking from medieval England due to the Moorish conquests of the 8th century and racial mixing that occurred as a result.
To be fair to them (they ID as nonbinary, I think, so I’m not sure which pronouns they prefer), some of your answers did sound a bit curt.
You’re right that historical pieces should be accurate as possible, but personally I find that reason to exclude people of color from historical fiction a bit tiring. If you can’t include them in your standard medieval fiction, why not look for a new setting? So many people do medieval settings and it would be nice to change it up a it. Maybe do a story set in Constantinople, or Rome in its decline, or in one of the port capitols where trade ships from Asia or Africa or even the Turks can show up? Just…not the same old English stuff.
(Again, I do like all sorts of historical fiction or history-inspired fiction, but I want to see more diversity too)
