Ethnic and cultural diversity in OCs discussion

topic: writing characters of color in a fantasy setting

can i get some writing opinions from a person of color?

alright so, our story is going to be a fantasy world, not earth you know? very D&D inspired ya know? but we dont want everyone to be white because thats lame you know? and most of my research on writing characters of color has included stuff like "make sure to include their culture!!" but in this world there IS NO south america, asia, caribbean, etc? im not sure if it would be harmful to have a character of color that was simply not white with no IRL cultural background? 

dabriian You certainly can include characters that are "Ambiguously Brown", but that usually comes off as pretty lacking, even to me as a POC that was raised white. The Ambiguously Brown trope is just "nobody knows where the character's from, everybody else is white, but this guy here is brown and that will never be explained." It leaves people wondering about the character, and often looks like the character was put in only for social kudos (or because they "look exotic"). So I don't recommend putting in a character that's just tan for no reason.

 There doesn't have to be a specifically South  American-/African-/Asian-like culture in your universe for a character  of color to be inclusive. Sure, you could include pieces of real-life  cultures from those continents, but since you're making a fantasy world,  the inclusion of different cultures is entirely in your control. As a writer, I personally find it interesting to try and figure out what kind of cultures can be added in - maybe they're from a viking-like society that attacks from sand dunes, or perhaps their political structure was based off of knowledge of science rather than a vote or monarchy.
The cultures of any characters don't have to resemble any real life culture in a fantasy setting. That's just something people tend to default to because it's familiar and relatable. I recommend coming up with a new culture rather than focusing on representation of real-life races - you're doing Fantasy, not Slice of Life, so like you said, there isn't a representation to go off of.

FRAT-RAT not gonna lie, it doesn’t bother because there are things like anthro worlds. If there are only animals in the world which all have there different cultures I don’t see it as a problem, since animals are basically the humans. If anthros and humans co-exist then I can see a issue.

I don’t wanna be a volunteer, but rather answer questions in the dms or here (I’m ok with pings).

 I am born and raised in the United states, New York. I‘m a poc (Haitian). I love to give as much information as can about Haiti and it’s culture but I’m kinda disconnected from it I grew up very American, liking America food and language. I also love to chat about the stereotypes people have about Haitians and what superstitions and rules Haitians have. They are very family oriented.

Warning

My dms are always open😓😅

Siyu added!

JamieMations I've added you to the list specifying questions only because the post could potentially be lost both in the thread and the doc, let me know if you would prefer otherwise.

For dabriian: I second what FreeFallingUp13 has said, and as a (not poc) person who loves worldbuilding I suggest to consider the wider picture for your setting. Like practical matters such as how big your fantasy world is, where do people live in it, and therefore if it even makes sense for races or even different possible somatic features to exist in humans or humanoids. If you have only one big hot desert land for instance, or only one big cold and not constantly sunny land, there probably won't be much somatic variation (outside of occasional genetic mutations) in your characters, therefore races might not be a thing, unless tribes/clans/towns/nationalities/cultures become races because of basically just political/power reasons ("I don't like the people from the Big Bear town and their mostly wavy brown hair, and they have less resources than my town right now and a different religion, so they're not actual humans like I am, I guess they're just bearpeople, so I can treat them like not humans now, and everyone in my town agrees with me now so let's raid and capture all of them!" ). If different enough places exist, there still won't be much variation if people don't have advanced enough technologies to travel around. If they do have the means to travel, they might have used them to create the conditions on which part of real world racism and white supremacy thrives (instead of people from Big Bear town, entire civilizations, cultures and/or races being dehumanized and treated as lesser because other ones had the power to do it and an economic interest in it). If instead bad historical things didn't happen, everyone has been travelling for a long time, and people already know racism is bad or didn't even really invent it, then it would make more sense to have everyone be "ambiguously whatever color they are" and/or just one race; or otherwise, have one character of a different race be there because, for example, their parents live in the place the story is set because they import some fantasy product that ends up being plot relevant (ex. turns out that a big bad monster is allergic to the mineral that is only available in the Country the character of a different race parents' are from, and since it's also relevant in their culture for some reason, they conveniently gave them a bracelet made of it that they can now share with the group that made fun of them for having it earlier). Or you could have mixed scenarios, where for example the humans are like one race where many skin colors are accepted as ok, but they're terribly racist against the elves; or light skinned humans are terrible with dark skinned humans and dark elves but not light elves; or it's light skinned humans against everyone else and dark elves are on the very bottom of society; the important thing is have this dynamic always be explained in some way I think, and it not being just a collective "dark elves bad because idk, they look weird, I don't want them near me" but rather have historical roots of some kind, or it would risk to be a clumsy attempt to condemn racism while oversimplifying what it is and what it does.

While for the animal thing, yeah I also noticed it and it's often stereotypical in very casual ways? Like I don't know why there's those three crows with Italian names and have some vague coding in Animal Crossing, and I don't particularly mind it though it's weird, but having fun because Mario is a character that was made (not by Italians) is not really the same thing as vaguely depicting a set of cultures that were functionally destroyed as cows covered in feathers (which from my vague understanding is also quite insulting because feathers are a big deal), and even if it were to be done in a furry setting it would still be quite insulting. Also Chinese people being constantly associated with pandas in vaguely historical settings are a common thing somehow?

to all that answered: thank you all for the tips, all will be kept in mind! i really appreciated it!

I've played WoW and also get really confused by the idea of "adopting a culture" and having it be mostly architecture and aesthetic. I'm in no place to call cultural appropriation for cultures that aren't mine; I've just always wondered how much of the "culture" being implemented is actual, researched culture, and how much of it is just "I've seen imagery like this in movies, so I'm putting it in like this."

FRAT-RAT so the Mario thing is yeah, we also like him, but like everybody else, we don't really look into it. He's the happy character that does the funny videogame things, not the character to really analyze in how it was designed by a company of people, and I don't think it's even a big problem representation wise 'cause nobody really hates our guts anymore? It's kind of annoying when people from the USA go "mamma mia!" and "it's-a-me, Mario!" more than once in their lives ever, reference the most uncreative stereotypes or expect us to know what they're talking about while saying "Italian food", but other than those pesky inconveniences that will make the weird people post angry posts on their social media account, most of us (aka "white-y and Christian-y enough" Italians) don't ever experience the effects of racism anymore - to the point many seem to have forgotten the history of heavy emigration that was going on not too long ago, having tangible consequences. The Country is not that powerful on its own, never really was despite the attempts at doing war stuff and colonialism at some point (turns out causing suffering to other peoples is very easy unfortunately), but it's at least relevant enough power that will make sure someone will listen to complaints about representation outside of memes and the happy videogame - you gotta sell that movie you just made here too don't you? And that's a luxury many peoples and races don't have or are just barely starting to get unfortunately.

Also definitively many contexts don't really care about the actual culture but rather the aesthetic - I don't know enough about WOW to express on that, but definitively it's a thing that happens so often. Had I a kind of compensation for every time I've seen a frickin' montage of monuments, art and food with opera music over it in a foreign movie for no reason, Roman Empire inspired stuff with neither an explicit intention to fictionalize it nor the understanding of what the thing even was, and supposed aesthetic and moral direct links between the ancient civilization and the modern State that only really make sense when you're being dishonest to yourself, I'd probably be way more wealthy than I am now for sure.

Hey, I'm not sure if you're still accepting volunteers for Poland, since there are 3 of them already, but I'm willing to help with things regarding the culture or anything else one could be curious about! I've lived in Poland ever since I was born.