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deadanddeactivated · 5 years

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Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Put on Your Pants

Fandom: Sanders Sides Pairing: DLAMP Characters: Virgil, Deceit, Remus, Logan, Patton, Roman Notes: Day 12 of the fluffuary event being hosted by @tsshipmonth2020 - DLAMP. i am so far behind opps. Summary: Remus doesn't really mean to meet his brother's soulmates first. He just sort of does.

AO3

In a world of soulmates, Virgil sometimes wonders what end of the stick he got when words started appearing on his skin. They weren’t First Words or Love Words, static words that marked a special moment. Rather they were Written Words - the things that his soulmates had written on their skin. Or drawn. Or accidentally marked themselves with. Basically whatever ink spills onto his soulmates, leaks onto his.

Sometimes it’s nice, like the little ‘I love you’ that always appears in light blue pen at his wrist. Other times it’s annoying, like back when he was trying to figure out exactly how many soulmates he had.

The ink only remains on him as long as it remains on them. Which is why that ‘I love you’ is usually faded by the time he goes to bed but fresh in the morning. It’s also how he got a completely free and mostly painless tattoo of a yellow snake on his hip.

But there’s a thousand other connections Virgil could have developed, and sometimes that thought keeps him up at night.

A timer would have been interesting. An exact count of the seconds until he met his soulmate, or the moment he fell in love with them. It also would have been terrifying and a lot of pressure and Virgil’s really glad he didn’t get a timer.

First Words might have been nice. Solid words that didn’t change or fade. But then he ran the risk of having terrible first words, or gerentic ones. Sure, no one really greets strangers with a ‘hello’ for that exact reason but the risk is always there. And what if he misheard someone? Or if two people said his words? It all sounds like such a nightmare.

Virgil would just straight up hate having a first touch soulmark. He isn’t a touchy-feely type person, just brushing up against a stranger in the street leaves him wound tight all day. And what if that was how he and his soulmate touched? He’d never notice.

Of course there are also the invisible connections. Like Strings of Fate, or Guides. Then there were the colourblind soulmates. And the mental connections. Virgil’s pretty sure any type would make him nervous. It’d be too easy to ignore the strings and guide, to run away from who fate deems his match. Being colourblind doesn’t seem too bad, but Virgil would always be doubting if he had soulmates at all. Same if he had something like a soul song.

Besides, he’s seen Aunt Patty cornering his cousins with invisible connections before, grilling them for news way worse than everyone else. That is something he’d rather avoid, thank you very much.

So yeah, Virgil often wonders about the other connections. But usually he decides written words suit him just fine.

Usually.

“Oh come on.” Virgil complains when he steps out of the shower. Red’s got a moustache drawn across his face, which means Virgil has a moustache across his face. Virgil also has class today. Where people will see the moustache across his face. And stare.

“I so don’t need this today.” He grumbles. Unfortunately, there’s really no avoiding it. He can’t miss this class. Only hope his soulmate will rub the moustache off soon.

Another piece of ink catches his eye as he gets dressed. Light blue ink right beneath the usual ‘I love you’. ‘Sorry! It was a joke! -- thinks hes funny.’ One word, likely a name, is smudged and unreadable. Like names always are. Virgil isn’t sure if Light Blue doesn’t know those details wouldn’t show up or if they just never think about it.

What he does know is that Light Blue and Red have met, a few months ago at least. He figured it out when the usual ‘I love you’ appeared in red text on his other wrist, the handwriting matching Light Blue’s perfectly.

Virgil also knows that, despite Light Blue’s tendency to talk to him, none of his soulmates share his Written Words. Which is fine, it’s whatever. Most soulmates don’t share a connection.

He’s pretty sure Red can see strings, based on the rings they sometimes draw around the base of their fingers. Light Blue told him he has Love Words, one night long ago when he was wondering about a person he doesn’t know exists. Virgil has suspicions that Yellow is coloured, because sometimes they write the names of colours up their arms. To Virgil they’re all yellow, but he doubts that's accurate. Dark Blue is a mystery. If Virgil had to guess, he’d say Dark Blue has Timers because, very occasionally, Dark Blue writes numbers and dates that don’t quite match their usual science-math mumbo jumbo.

All of that is fine with Virgil.

Really.

“Put it out of your head Virgil.” He orders himself, huffing. Why is he so focused on his soulmates this morning? Does a stupid moustache prank really have him digging deep right now?

Or, a quiet and very honest voice says in the back of his head, maybe it’s because it’s your birthday. Which, Virgil knows, is much more likely. That doesn’t mean he wants to admit it.

So what if it’s his birthday? So what if he’s another year older and no closer to finding his soulmates?

So what if it’s another year he doesn’t even exist in their lives. Not really. Not the way they exist in his.

Because if he’s right about his soulmates, then they don’t have a changing connection like his. They have some flat, unchanging thing that doesn’t tell them anything.

But Virgil? Virgil already knows them. He knows that Red likes theatre, because they’re always writing down their lines or the dates of shows or the roles they want, sometimes later circling the ones they got. He also knows that Red always forgets the milk.

Then there’s Light Blue, who will write on his skin for hours because he doesn’t want Virgil to feel alone. Even though he doesn’t even know Virgil’s there, reading his every word. He also sounds like the sweetest person on Earth.

Yellow likes to draw. They also have a pet snake, and a pet rat. Virgil thinks they’re terrible with names too, because they like to write people's names only to give them little nicknames or descriptions.

Dark Blue probably writes the least, but when they write boy do they write. Virgil’s arms have been covered in various math formulas and half-finished thoughts. It’s like Dark Blue can’t find enough paper in the world to contain all the thoughts in their head.

That’s what his soulmates are to him. Full people that… well, that he’s sort of already fallen in love with.

It hurts to think they know nothing about him.

“Okay great, I guess we’re just having a bad day today.” Virgil huffs, fitting a scarf over his face in hopes it’ll cover the red moustache. It must have been drawn in some heavy duty stuff.

Great.

“Trying to look anime instead of emo today?” Virgil sighs as he falls into his seat, not even sure he wants to give Remus a response. No matter what he says, Remus is likely to make something of it and Virgil just isn’t sure he has the energy.

Of course, his friend is likely to make something of it even if he doesn’t say anything so…

“No.” He admits, pulling the scarf down to reveal the mark. “Apparently someone played a prank on Red this morning.” Remus gasps, then grins.

“Matchy!” He says.

“Sadly.” Virgil agrees, rolling his eyes and fixing his scarf back up. “Hopefully by tomorrow they’ll both be gone.” This time Remus’ gasp is more offended.

“Are you insulting my moustache good sir?” He demands.

“Always.” Virgil smirks.

“I’d throw my gauntlet at you but Roman refuses to give it back.” He claims.

“You’d duel me on my birthday?” Virgil asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh most certainly. It’s like birthday punches but with sharp pointy things!” Remus grins. “But, since it is your birthday…” Virgil’s amusement turns to caution at the look in Remus’ eye.

“Don’t make a big deal out of it.” He warns.

“I won’t, I won’t!” Remus assures, brushing him off. “I’m just saying you should come to my dorm later to get your present.”

“Isn’t that my present there?” Virgil asks, gesturing towards the lump on the desk, horribly wrapped in a mix of purple spider-themed paper (the spiders look self-drawn) and green octopus paper.

“Nop!” Remus claims, very concerning grin on his face. “This is something else!”

“Seriously?” Virgil sighs.

“As a heart-attack!” Remus grins, and then grins all the more as Virgil mutters about how that doesn’t work.

‘It’s ready!’ Virgil sighs at the message for the thousandth time, trying to pretend he wasn’t nervous. And excited. Nercited. Oh god, he’s been spending way too much time with Remus lately.

And he’s about to be spending more time with him too, because he’s just reached the door to Remus’ dorm and the mysterious birthday present beyond. Raising his hand to knock, telling himself he just wanted to get this over with, Virgil pauses right before his hand connects with the door.

“Remus, this is ridiculous!” An unfamiliar voice snaps from the other side of the door. Does Remus have guests? Although it could be Remus’ roommate, that guys so exlusive Virgil’s not convinced he exists. Should he still go in?

“Just trust me Ro, you’ll love this!” That’s Remus. What is he talking about? Surely it’s not… no, Remus wouldn’t be trying to play a prank of him. He’s better than that. Right?

“I don’t trust you.” Mysterious Person, possibly roommate, probably ‘Ro’, huffs.

“Oh come on Roman,” a new mysterious voice speaks up, “I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

“The last time you said that I ended up with a moustache drawn on my face!”

What?

“Shush!” Remus shushes the other. “Shhhhhhhh!”

What?

Did, did Virgil hear that right? Surely he didn’t. Surely he misheard, or it was a coincedience or-

A ding sounds from his pocket as Virgil’s phone goes off. The door opens a second later, revealing a wide-eyed Virgil with his arms still raised to a pouting Remus.

“You heard, didn’t you?” He whines. “Roman you stole my thunder!”

“What?” Virgil finally manages to say it as Remus steps back, revealing the owners of the mysterious voices. Two men are standing side by side in the middle of the dorm, chests wrapped together with a mix of purple wrapping paper and green paper covered in octopus’. One has browny-blond hair and big blue eyes framed with glasses. He smiles at Virgil, seeming entirely unbothered by Remus’ sheddigans.

The other man is clearly the twin brother that Remus has mentioned having. They’re practically spitting images of each other, although this one looks more… well, less like a chaotic mess. He has his arms crossed and a moment ago he sounded very put upon. But now? Now he’s staring at Virgil like a deer in headlights.

A lot like Virgil is staring at the two of them really.

Surely these aren’t…

That can’t be possible, right?

But right under the twins nose is a somewhat smudged, slightly faded moustache. It’s drawn in a black marker but it other wise matches the red mark on Virgil’s face perfectly.

“Hi!” The blond greets, waving. “I’m Patton! You’re a friend of Remus’, right?”

“Um, hi?” Virgil manages, swallowing around the lump in his throat. If Remus’ twin is Red, and Virgil is starting to really think hope he is, would that mean Patton is Light Blue?

Holy shit was Virgil really… really staring at half his soulmates right now?

“He’s a friend of mine, but his much more to you.” Remus says, grinning ear to ear and wrapping and arm around Virgil’s shoulder. Still stunned, Virgil doesn’t even push him off.

“Huh?” Patton asks, tilting his head tiltly. In response, Roman holds up his hand and wiggles a finger. Virgil can just barely make out the purple ring at the base of the finger. “Oh my gosh, really?” He asks, hands raised to cover his gasp and growing smile.

“I uh, I think so.” Virgil says.

“Well I know so!” Remus grins. “I recongized that moustache immediantly, I mean I did draw the original. Aren’t I the best best friend? I got you your soulmates for your birthday! They’re even wrapped!”

Virgil takes a moment to let that sink in.

And then…

“You got me stuck with a moustache on my face!” He accuses, turning to glare at Remus.

“It was for a good cause!” Remus claims.

“Good cause my ass.” Roman huffs.

“This is so exciting!” Patton grins, bouncing and accidentally breaking the wrapping Remus had done, much to the mams dismay. Without the paper in the way, Patton quickly bounded over to grab Virgil’s arms. “What’s your name? What’s your soulmate connection? Wait, you were talking about the moustache does that mean you have Written Words? Oh my gosh that’s so exciting! Does that mean you got my words?” Words tumble out of his mouth so fast that it takes Virgil a moment to catch up.

“Uh,” he starts, “I’m Virgil. And uh, yeah. Um…” he trails off again, not quite sure what he’s meant to say. So instead he gently pulls his arm out of Patton’s hold, turning it over so he can see the words there. Words that Patton wrote. Every morning. Holy shit.

“Oh my gosh!!” Patton squealled, pulling Virgil closer to look at the words.

“Babe you’re overwhelming him.” Roman warns, having recovered a lot more completely than Virgil has.

“Oh please.” Remus says, leaning more completely on Virgil’s side. “I’m the most overwhelming person he knows.” This time Virgil has the sense of self to bump Remus off, although he has to do it with his shoulders since Patton still has his arms.

“That’s not a good thing.” He huffs.

“Ignore my brother.” Roman says, he taps Patton’s shoulder and Patton, begrudingly, steps away. Virgil’s arms don’t stay free for long, Roman taking his hand and bowing over it. “I am Roman Prince, I have been searching all my life for you Virgil. You are more beautiful than I ever dreamed.” He says, ending his little speech with a kiss to the back of Virgil’s hands.

“Uh,” is all Virgil can manage, his face flushed red.

“That was really good Ro! You didn’t even stutter this time!” Patton praises, making Roman’s face turn red as he stands back up.

“Patton! You’re not meant to tell him that!” He hisses. His face goes all the redder when Virgil laughs.

He knows these people, he suddenly remembers, he’s known them all his life. Red is just as dramatic in person, Light Blue just as sweet. Virgil never should have expected anything different. The thought calms him. Why was he so overwhelmed in the first place?

“I’ve been waiting all my life for you to find me, Roman Prince.” He teases, laughing again when Roman stutters. It reminds him of the grand declarations Red would write, the hearts he would draw, only to quickly scribble them out in embarrassment. It’s cute.

“Using our dorm for a party I see.” A new voice speaks up. “And blocking the doorway.”

“Hey De!” Remus grins. “Guys this is my roommate, I told you he was real!” The three soulmates look over, meeting the mysterious mans yellow eyes. Roman makes a strangled noise but Virgil doesn’t get time to think about that. He’s a bit distracted as De’s eyes roll into the back of his head and he stumbles.

“Shit.” Virgil curses, quickly stepping forward to catch the stranger.

“I’m fine.” De claims, eyes already blinking open again. “It was just… lots of colour, rather quickly.”

“Oh my gosh!” Patton grins, looking from the now yellow band on Roman’s wrist to the new comer.

“I am the bestest best friend and the bestest rommate!” Remus announces, cheering.

“Huh.” Is all Virgil can manage for the moment, staring at his soulmate as gets back on his feet.

He’ll never actually tell Remus this but… yeah, best birthday present ever.

“I am determined to find our last soulmate first.” Roman announces, slamming his lunch onto the table the others have claimed for lunch.

“I’m still reeling from the fact there’s only one.” De, actually Dante, says. It didn’t take long for him, and Virgil, to get used to Roman’s particular brand of dramatics. Or Patton’s practicular brand of ‘constantly, unintentionally adorable’.

“I’m sorry!” Virgil says for the thousandth time, although there’s no heat in it. “I can’t help my eye colour!”

“Colours.” Dante corrects. He’d been only a little put out when he realized Virgil had mismatching eyes, apparently he’d spent his life assuming he’d have five soulmates not four. That has been added to Virgil’s ‘con’ list for being colourblind.

The little messages his soulmates send him have been added to the ‘pro’ list for Written Words, not that he’ll say aloud how much he loves them.

“Why first?” Patton asks, because he’s a kind heart who will actually play along and not just tease Roman.

“Because Remus keeps meeting my soulmates first! He’s convinced he’ll meet our last soulmate first, and I won’t let him!” Roman explains.

“Well he does have a fairly good track record.” Virgil says.

“You meet Patton first at least.” Dante offers.

“No, I meet Remus first.” Patton admits.

“Patton was his favoruite barasita.” Roman says, like it’s some great tradegy.

“You know, it shocks me how good he is at finding soulmates. He couldn’t even find out classroom today.” Virgil says.

“Seriously?” Dante asks, smirking.

“Yep. Apparently he ended up in some science class and decided to just stick around. He made a friend though.” Virgil elbroates, pulling out the text messages they’d been sending earlier that day.

“Oh, maybe his friend is our soulmate!” Patton suggests, deaf to Roman’s dramatic ‘noooooo’. “He does write a lot of science-y things, right Virgil?”

“Lots of people do science-y things Patton.” Virgil points out.

“Still, maybe there’s a clue in the things he writes to you.” Dante says.

“He doesn’t write anything to me, he just writes on his arm.” Virgil argues.

“There has to be some sort of clue.” Roman claims, suddenly in good spirits again. “This could help us track him down, so we can meet him before Remus.”

“I hate to break it to you but any ‘clues’ would probably be smudged.” Virgil shrugs. “All I know is that he’s probably got a timer.”

“A timer?” Patton asks. “How can you tell?”

“Well it writes weird dates sometimes.” Virgil explains, lifting his sleeve to show the date on his shoulder. There’s a date about three weeks from now, which has be crossed out. “But it changes almost every time.”

“I hear that’s common with timers.” Roman says. “Apparently the timer changes when your fate changes, like you were meant to meet today but you missed your train and now your won’t meet for another three months.”

“Seriously?” Virgil frowns. “Okay that’s terrifying.”

“I like it.” Dante says. “Soulmates seem way too ‘free choice is a myth, our lifes are completely pre-determined’, you know?”

“Okay! Let’s not have another one of those talks! I need to sleep tonight!” Patton quickly shuts that down.

“Yes, let’s go back to talking about how we’re going to meet our soulmate before my brother!” Roman says. “If he’s crossed it out, does that mean that’s not the date anymore? What’s the new date?”

“How am I meant to know?” Virgil sighs.

“Hey guys!” Remus calls out. “Look I made a friend! His names Logan.” He gestures to the man beside him who suddenly raises a hand to his head, wincing.

“Go away Remus, I’m trying to organize how to meet my soulmate without you.” Roman says, back to his brother.

“Might be too late for that.” Dante warns.

“Seriously?” Virgil asks, looking from Dante’s smirk to the new comer. Roman turns to look, eyes glued to the end of a red string that no one else can see.

“Oh come on!” He exclaims, frowning.

“Four for four!” Roman cheers.

“Why does Remus keep meeting my soulmates first?!” Roman demands, standing from the table to glare at his brother, hands on his hips. For his part, Remus is finding quite a bit of amusement in his brothers annoyance.

“Oh last soulmate!!” Patton grins, jumping from the table to wrap his arms around Logan. “We found you!”

“Or Remus found you, he has a habit of that.” Virgil says.

“It’s a horrible cruelty of fate.” Roman huffs.

“Way not to be overwhelming everyone.” Dante comments, resting his cheek on his hands as he looks between Patton, Roman, and Logan. Virgil just watches Logan, seeing all the stages of surprise and confusion that he went through meeting Pat and Roman.

“Ah,” Logan finally manages to speak, “I was wondering why they suddenly all matched.”

“What luck!” Patton grins.

“Remus luck.” Virgil says.

“Stop giving Remus all the credit for my soulmates!” Roman snaps.

“We’re not just your soulmates.” Virgil argues, just to rile Roman up a bit more. As they bicker, Patton lets go of Logan and instead leads him to their table. It was a little cramped with just the first of them but they managed the six.

“They’re always like this.” Dante warns from his spot across from Logan.

“Don’t lump me in with them.” Virgil says, only to immediately return to his overplayed argument with Roman.

“Believe it or not, this is actually them giving you space. De almost passed out when he met everyone.” Remus faux whispers to Logan.

“It was because of the colour!” De claims, face turning red.

“Oh my god!” Patton exclaims, suddenly standing and looking mortified. “We didn’t do introductions!”

“I think,” Logan tells De, looking over the chaos, “I might not mind.”

“Yeah, they get you like that.” Dante sighs.

“Don’t let him follow you, he’s just as bad.” Virgil says.

“Oh so’s Logan, you guys just didn’t see him in class.” Remus grins.

“Falsehood!” Logan claims. Virgil can’t help but laugh, grinning as he feels something settling. They go through proper introductions. Roman goes last, giving his customary prince-y bow. And then getting flustered as Patton, Dante, and Virgil clap because they’d made a secret pact and they all agree Roman looks adorable flustered.

When Virgil goes home, he’ll fret that they scared Logan off. He’ll worry they were too much.

But tomorrow, Logan will join them for lunch once more. And the day after, and the day after. Then, when the semester ends and they have the time, they’ll all look for a place to live together.

And when Roman comes home, grumbling about how Remus found his own soulmates and Roman wasn’t at all involved, Logan will be there to chuckle about it.

All of them will be.

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

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Musings on Race in Fantasy or: Why Ron Weasley isn't Black

Blogger’s Note: This particular article is kind of funny in retrospect, now that drawing black!Harry and black!Hermione has become so common in the fandom.

Last year (or maybe the year before, time flies doesn't it), the Sci Fi channel produced an adaptation of Ursula le Guin's Earthsea stories. It caused something of a furore, because most of the main characters were white. I mention this for two reasons.

The first reason is that the TV company, with typical mealy-mouthed style, insisted that they had practiced "colourblind" casting and in a stunning manipulation of middle class guilt, immediately implied that it was somehow racist to expect them to cast a Native American in the role, just because that was the real world ethnicity which most closely approximated that of the people of Earthsea. Obviously the white guy just happened to be the best guy for the role, obviously he stood out by a mile over the other contenders. The second reason I mention it, though, was because when I read the books (many years ago now) I had completely failed to notice that Ged wasn't white. With the white middle class man's ingrained fear of being labelled a racist, I immediately constructed for myself very much the kind of justifications that the Sci-Fi channel had. "Oh well it's all about the character isn't it, Ged's character is the same whether he's black, white or whatever". The thing is: it's natural for people to assume that a fictional character of unspecified race is the same race as them. Similarly I have a strong memory of seeing a picture in my year nine RE class of a depiction of Jesus from a church in China. Their version of Jesus, of course, looked Chinese, which broke a few of our tiny fourteen year old brains. Jesus is Chinese in China, black in Africa, Caucasian in England. He might even be Jewish somewhere, but that seems rather unlikely. But there's another thing. I, yes, will generally assume that a non-racially-specific person is white. And I'm pretty sure that a Chinese person reading a book written in Chinese by a Chinese author will assume that a non-racially-specific person (who will probably have a vaguely Chinese sounding name and live in a fictional setting that looks pretty much like medieval China) would be ethnically Chinese. My girlfriend pointed out over lunch that, when she reads Haruki Murakami, she imagines all the characters as white, even though they're presumably mostly Japanese. It gets more complicated when you put minorities into the mix. Put simply, I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that a black person living in England has the same luxury that I - and Chinese people in China, and Indians in India - enjoy. I, and I would imagine a great many other people who read the Earthsea books at a similar age to me, assumed Ged was the same race as me. I sincerely doubt that there are any black fantasy readers who made the same assumption about Aragorn when they read Lord of the Rings. Currently, then, I'm in one of those horrible situations where I think there's a point to be made, but I'm not entirely sure what it is. It's one of those "individual instance versus general trend" problems. I don't think you can look at any single work of fiction and say "that character, right there, should have been black". It's all very well saying that non-whites are underrepresented in Fantasy, but that's partly just because ninety percent of fantasy is set in a world that's functionally identical to medieval Europe. Most fantasy worlds do have black people in them, it's just that because they come from the Hot Continent In The South. Indeed most fantasy worlds seem to assume the existence of exactly four races: White Anglo Saxon, Black African, Asian (the Asian culture will invariably be a vast Empire in the East, and usually look like Han Dynasty China, plus Samurai, plus ninjas) and Arab (the Arabic culture will be either very religious or very mercantile, or both). In fact, the races that are the most underrepresented in Fantasy are - arguably - the non-Anglo-Saxon "white" races. A remarkable number of Fantasy settings include quasi-Venetian city-states, quasi-Roman empires and quasi-Spartan warrior cultures, who none the less manage to look remarkably like they were born in Colchester, nary a Mediterranean complexion in sight. I can just about accept a quasi-European world with no black people in it (Fantasy worlds don't haveimmigration after all). It's rather harder to accept a fantasy analogue of Florence in which nobody looks Florentine. (This weird omission applies almost universally in fact: when was the last time you saw a Roman Emperor actually being played by a Roman? Why when it is unthinkable for a white man to play Othello does nobody bother to find a Venetian-looking Desdemona). Of course I might be making a fuss about nothing. As I say, it's easy for me to assume that everybody I read about is white (even when there's textual evidence to the contrary). I don't really have any evidence that Locke Lamora isn't Latino, or that the men of Westeros aren't Hispanic (the Dornishmen are, of course, Generically Arabic but like most fantasy worlds, Westeros seems to have an invisible line across the equator, with the people going from "white as milk" on one side to "coffee-coloured" on the other with no in-between). So maybe it isn't a problem with the genre, maybe it's a problem with me. There is, after all, nothing stopping me from imagining Robert Baratheon as looking like a Greek Cypriot, or Ron Weasley as being a black kid who just happens to have red hair. If I assume that a character of unspecified race is Caucasian, that's my look out. The problem is, though, that if I am making the assumption that J Random Character is white, just because I am white, then it seems overwhelmingly probable that the white middle class writers of fantasy are making the same assumptions. And I think this is an issue. When JK Rowling was designing her boy wizard (and I really don't mean to single her out here, it's just a good, well known example) I'm sure it didn't even occur to her that Harry Potter could be a black kid, any more than it occurred to me that he would be. When she was designing Ron Weasley, she imagined a character that would be her ideal image of an honest, supportive friend, and what she wound up imagining was a boy with red hair and freckles. And it's that more than anything else that causes the trouble. The problem with "race" in fiction in general and fantasy in particular, is that it has two very distinct implications. The first implication is the social and political one " "black" and "white" carry tremendous social connotations in the real world, and that bleeds over into created worlds as well. The second implication of a character's race, though, is much more prosaic. A person's race affects what they look like. Well, duh. But actually, it's the cosmetic implications of race that wind up being the most important. It is considered absolutely and unambiguously wrong in the modern world to judge somebody by their race. It is considered totally okay to judge somebody by their looks, particularly in a work of fiction, where somebody's physical appearance is often expected to tell you something about their personality. Ron Weasley has red hair and freckles: the average reader knows instantly what that is supposed to imply about him. He's boyish, a little impetuous, but basically a good person. He has "hero's sidekick" written all over him. The problem is, having "red hair and freckles" effectively precludes Ron Weasley from being black, because very few black people have red hair (although it isn't unheard of) and black skin tends to freckle far less visibly than white skin. Again, just to be clear, I'm not saying that JK Rowling is "a racist" but I am saying that when JK Rowling formed in her mind the image of a true and decent friend, she deliberately gave that person particular physical characteristics which she felt created the appropriate image, and those traits are traits you are very, very unlikely to find in a black person. Try to write a description of a beautiful woman, and the odds are better than even that you'll make her tall and slender with long, golden hair. Chances are, you'll make her tall and slender with long golden hair even if you're more into brunettes. "Tall and slender with long golden hair" is our cultural shorthand for beauty - it's what Cinderella looks like, it's what Rapunzel looks like, it's what Laura Fairlie looks like, Sweeney Todd's dead wife and lost daughter are both "beautiful and pale, with yellow hair". Snow White's a brunette, but she's still got skin as white as snow. No writer would dream of suggesting that a black person couldn't be beautiful, but our "generic" idea of beauty is pale and blonde, just like our "generic" idea of boyish charm is a freckly redhead and our "generic" idea of a wise man is a white guy with a long beard and a pointed nose (I'll talk about noses more in a bit). The "race affects how you look" issue is also another strike, I think, against the idea that I only assume that everybody in Fantasy is white because I'm a white man myself. When people talk about "race" they tend to just think in terms of skin colour, but of course it actually affects a whole lot more than that. I can't think of a single point in the Potter books where it explicitly says that Dumbledore or Harry are white (so you could argue that it's just my preconceptions coming into play), but race isn't just about skin colour. Harry Potter is famous for his messy, floppy hair (again, it's a characteristic that makes him seem more like "a regular kid" - or at least a regular white kid). Dumbledore, of course, has his long, pointy nose. Even if their skin colour isn't mentioned explicitly, neither of these physical characteristics are terribly likely to be possessed by a black man. There are exceptions, of course, but in general black people don't have "floppy" hair or pointed noses. All in all I feel confident that, when I assume a character in a fantasy novel is white, the author is making the exact same assumption. I've just spent about 1700 words slating Fantasy writers for not including enough black people in their books (and certainly not including enough Latino or Greek people despite a great many settings looking a whole hell of a lot like Spain, Greece or Italy), but I'd like to spend a moment backpedalling. The thing is that what I said at the start, about it being natural to assume that a person of non-specific race looks pretty much like you still holds. If I was a Fantasy writer I am damned sure that I'd make my protagonists white, just because it wouldn't occur to me to do otherwise. If I had to write about a beautiful woman, you can bet your arse I'd make her tall and slender with long golden hair, because that's how I instinctively think of a "beautiful woman" looking (even though I do, in fact, far prefer dark women in real life). The other problem with race in Fantasy is that, because it's not our world, you can't use nationality as a short hand. It's actually remarkably hard to describe many non-white races without resorting to (a) cliche or (b) rather dubious ethnic stereotypes. You can get away with it fairly easily in something set in the real world, because you can just say somebody is "Chinese" or "Azerbaijani" and either people will know what you mean, or they can look it up on the internet. In a fantasy world you don't have that luxury. This is probably why there are only four races in most fantasy worlds. Anybody whose race isn't described is white. Anybody who has dark skin is Generically Arabic, anybody who has very dark or black skin is black, and anybody who has a long moustache or does Kung Fu is Asian. Some fantasy worlds similarly include a quasi-Mongolian culture, who we know to look Mongolian because they have a close relationship with their horses. You might, if you're very lucky get "olive skinned" people (who are presumably therefore green) tending Big Fields of Ancient Wheat, but that's about your lot. Again however, I wonder how much more Fantasy writers can realistically be expected to do. The simple fact is that the real world is unimaginably complicated. A fantasy series is praised for its worldbuilding if it contains more than six moderately well realised nations. The CIA World Factbook lists the real world as containing over two hundred and sixty. Similarly, while fantasy worlds may grossly oversimplify the concept of ethnicity, it would be impossible to do otherwise - just looking at the CIA world factbook again, we see (for example) seven distinct ethnicities depicted as existing within Albania alone (Albanian, Greek, Vlach, Roma, Serb, Macedonian, Bulgarian) while the entry for China lists eleven (Han Chinese, Zhuang, Uygar, Hui, Yi, Tibetan, Miao, Manchu, Mongol, Buyi, Korean). The complexities of real-world ethnic diversity are beyond even the most talented of fantasy authors, never mind your average Quest-and-McGuffin merchant. In the end, then, the thing I find most upsetting about the appallingly whitewashed nature of most fantasy settings is that I can absolutely understand why they're like that. Even though I'm a thoroughly modern, thoroughly liberal man, even though I work in an international school am therefore able to feel smug and cosmopolitan because I know what people from Kazakhstan look like and have a reasonable chance of identifying an Azerbaijani accent I still, deep down, instinctively assume that "person" means "white person", and I can't ultimately condemn JK Rowling for giving her white protagonist a white best friend and a white mentor, and having them marry a couple of nice white girls and have nice white kids who they named after their dead white relatives. I know I'd do exactly the same. The sad fact is that most white people don't think about race that much, because we simply don't have to. While this is arguably better than being actively racist it's still kind of a sorry state of affairs, and it's unbelievably pathetic that after all these years, Ursula le Guin is still pretty much the only person in the industry who seems to give a shit.

Themes: J.K. Rowling, Books, Minority Warrior

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Comments (go to latest)

Arthur B at 00:49 on 2008-03-15

The amazing thing about the racial mix in Earthsea is how many people completely miss it, despite le Guin's valiant efforts in throwing out evidence pointing towards it. The only other author I can think of who's played with people's cultural stereotypes in this way is (big surprise coming here) Gene Wolfe; in The Book of the New Sun you need to pay attention to notice that Severian lives somewhere near where Buenos Aires is in our own time, that the Commonwealth it is a part of is South America, and that the Maoist-flavoured despotism threatening the Commonwealth exists in North America; the average fantasy reader (in the Anglo-American world, at least) is going to tend to assume that Our Hero lives in the northern hemisphere and that slogan-spouting Maoists are Chinese.

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Guy at 04:34 on 2008-03-15

I remember it coming as quite a shock to me when I read Wizard of Earthsea to discover that Ged was dark-skinned. I'd already formed a picture of him in my mind and it was disconcerting to be told that this picture was wrong. It did make me think about race in fantasy worlds, though... later I read an essay by le Guin in which she said she did this deliberately... the idea being to try to secure the reader's identification with the protagonist before letting them in on what that protagonist looked like. I think maybe the reason fantasy worlds tend to be so ethnically homogeneous is that they're mostly seen as (and used as, probably) an escapist outlet and we don't like difficult social questions in our escapist fluff. I imagine a similar racial mix can be found in Mills and Boon novels, for example? I think le Guin is one of those fantasy (and sci-fi) writers who is intent on doing more than providing formulaic escapism and showing what the genre is capable of extending to... it's a shame there aren't more like her. I think escapism is great, but I'd hate to think that was all the fantasy genre had to offer.

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Dan H at 10:08 on 2008-03-15

As I say, I can actually forgive fantasy for not handling race well, because it's actually very hard to do well, and I can certainly forgive purveyors of light, escapist fantasy for not dealing with complex real-world social issues. On the other hand it kind of does bug me that - say - JK Rowling has an all-white cast saving their 99% white world from all-white villains and then gets praised for (a) her sensitive handling of the issue of racism and (b) her amazing courage in having two black characters who never do or say anything, and a character who is revealed to be gay in an interview (and was therefore Never Able To Find True Love Or Happiness Because of His Unnatural Predelictions). Look! It took me all of three posts to turn this into JKR-bashing! The ethnic makeup of Westeros also seriously confuses me. Why do the blonde people live two miles north of the black people? Why?!

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Guy at 12:01 on 2008-03-15

Very crisp edges on the ozone layer?

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Sister Magpie at 16:45 on 2008-03-15

I've always felt a little lucky that I didn't read Earthsea until after the TV movie came out. I didn't see the TV movie, but I read the complaints about this, so I went into the book knowing what Ged looked like in the book. If I hadn't it's quite possible I would have overlooked it the same way. Which means the best I can say is that I'm willing to make the effort to keep non-white characters non-white--which isn't much!

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Arthur B at 16:55 on 2008-03-15

More likely the mighty efforts of the stalwart warriors manning the Kingdom's defences against the marauding hordes of dark people. :( Actually, let me nominate David Gemmell as someone who can, when the mood takes him, handle racial issues fairly well, or at least not appallingly badly. Even in Legend, his most black-and-white clash-of-cultures novel, he takes pains to make sure that both the Drenai and the Nadir civilisations have a mix of admirable and disreputable qualities, and there is genuine cultural mixing at the borders between nations; he even hints in The King Beyond the Gate that the Last Great Hope for Peace is not, in fact, the decadent, played-out, and European Drenai, but the vibrant, young and vaguely Mongolian Nadir. Then again, you do have Pagan as the Token Awesome Black Dude in The King Beyond the Gate, but I half-suspect that Gemmell introduced him simply because his publishers pressured him to and he was fed up of having his manuscripts rejected; he manages to make the dude reasonably three-dimensional and interesting later on. More importantly, he manages to make the dude three-dimensional and interesting in a manner which doesn't hinge simply on him coming from a vaguely African culture, but engages with him as a human being with very human flaws that, like all of Gemmell's heroes, he strives to overcome. At the end of the day, I suppose that giving characters from diverse races and cultures a similar treatment without stripping them of any distinctive cultural identity is the best that fantasy authors can hope for. (Which ties in, of course, with Dan's concerns about JKR. Sure, she throws in a few black and Asian kids in Hogwarts, but they pretty much never get a chance to do any of the cool stuff that the white kids do.)

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Arthur B at 16:56 on 2008-03-15

whups, Magpie and I cross-posted "More likely the mighty efforts of the stalwart warriors manning the Kingdom's defences against the marauding hordes of dark people. :(" was a response to Guy's comment about the ozone layer.

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Rami at 20:08 on 2008-03-15

It is really quite annoying how not that many fantasy series ever have an equivalent to South Asia ;-) but then, I'm a little biased...

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Guy at 07:37 on 2008-03-16

Incidentally, I saw a bit of the TV series of Earthsea... and I think with a certain amount of harrumphing I could have accepted the racial changes, if it weren't for the fact that it was a badly written, badly acted, utterly generic "McMagic" blancmange with no real reason to have the Earthsea name attached to it.

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Arthur B at 09:26 on 2008-03-16

Incidentally, does anyone know whether the Studio Ghibli version of Earthsea is any good? I know that le Guin was disappointed that Miyazaki gave the directing job to his son rather than doing it himself, but I also seem to remember that she isn't nearly as upset with it as she was with the SciFi channel version. Of course, anime has its own problems with dealing with racial issues; in most of Ghibli's films all the human beings seem to be of exactly the same race, whereas when other anime studios try to do non-European, non-Japanese characters it doesn't always work well.

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Jen Spencer at 09:48 on 2008-03-17

This is reminding me of Jazz in the Transformers movie. That hurt my brain.

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Rami at 11:56 on 2008-03-17

Jazz in the Transformers movie Oh, God, he really was just gratuitously ethnic, wasn't he? Just like in Not Another Teen Movie, which despite being a bit crap did hit the nail on the head with their Token Black Guy.

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Andy G at 19:54 on 2008-03-18

Interesting sci-fi / fantasy comparison here - are there any fantasy settings with heterogenous societies? I can only think of Ankh Morpork in the later Discworld stories, where he is deliberately focusing on the issue. It seems to be a much more common feature of sci-fi - Firefly, Star Trek, the Foundation series etc. Fantasy is perhaps still taking a Tolkien world-view as a point of departure, rather than the modern world - whereas the visions of the future in sci-fi have changed along with the visions of the present? More generally on all genre fiction - since sci-fi is only COMPARATIVELY progressive - perhaps it's also significant that the world-view in them tends to be much more white-centric in the assumptions on the part of the author and reader because we don't read from fantasy, sci-fi, detective stories, romances, thrillers from authors outside the UK and US? I can think of Night Watch from Russia and that's it. Even in Germany they tend to read just English fantasy / sci-fi. Oh and a final thought that just came to me - what about the whole question not just of characters' appearances but their accents - isn't that quite revealing about our assumptions too?

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Dan H at 10:56 on 2008-03-19

I think there's two distinct things to think about here actually. One is the comparative homogeneity/heterogeneity of the *setting* and the other is the application of the same principles to the actual *story*. Ankh Morpok is "heterogeneous" chiefly in terms of its non-human races, and the presence of the odd Klachian. In this sense it's actually not much different to JKR's world (where we're told categorically that Dean Thomas Is Black). Firefly basically has one black chick, one Mysterious Old Black Dude (who skates dangerously close to what tvtrops.org would call a "Magical Negro" at times) and that's about it. For a world where society is supposed to be fully 50% chinese, they run into surprisingly few Chinese people. Original trek was well done by the standards of its day - it was massively tokenistic but it was the sixties for crying out loud. TNG was actually far worse (there's what, one black guy on board, and he's an alien). Again, I'm not saying that there's anything *wrong* with white writers who write for mostly-white audiences in a mostly-white country in a predominently white industry writing stories where the protagonists are themselves mostly white. It's when they start making a big song and dance about how totally racially diverse they are it gets to me. Firefly does reasonably well in including a just-above-tokenistic proportion of non-white characters but when you remember that it's supposed to be set in a society where the chinese are actually a majority they start to be notable by their absence.

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Andy G at 12:38 on 2008-03-19

Absolutely, I think that's a much clearer explanation of the qualification I was trying to get at when I said sci-fi was only 'comparatively progressive.'

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Jamie Johnston at 11:01 on 2008-03-24

Very interesting stuff. I find myself wondering what is the best way for a writer to deal with the fact that his readers will make these assumptions. The Rowling approach of simply relying on them (and probably sharing them) and therefore not bothering to specify anything about a character's ethnicity unless it happens not to conform to them (e.g. Dean Thomas Is Black) reinforces the assumptions at least in as much as it doesn't challenge them. On the other hand, if a writer carefully specified the ethnicity of every character it would (1) get very tedious for the reader and (2) give the reader the impression than ethnicity is very important to the story, even if it isn't. Then again one can do what Gaiman does in 'Anansi Boys', which is to wilfully ignore the fact that your readers are making these assumptions and just to write the thing on the basis that *you* know all your principal characters are black and your readers will figure it out eventually. That may in principle be a very noble way to go about it, in that it doesn't indulge your readers' unhelpful ways of thinking and in fact makes them feel they've been rather silly and faintly racist, when the penny finally drops, for thinking in that way in the first place; but it also means that at some point around page 100 your readers will be massively distracted from the story you're telling them by having to make extensive retrospective mental adjustments while feeling they've been rather silly and faintly racist. Which doesn't really make for a satisfying aesthetic experience. P.S. Andy raised the point of science fiction from outside the Anglo-American sphere: I haven't read any, but I heard on the radio the other day that there's a big boom going on at the moment in Indian sci-fi. Might give an interesting angle on things, especially since (as has already been pointed out) fantasy and sci-fi tend to ignore the Indian subcontinent altogether because there's only room in The East for one civilization and it's usually Vaguely Chinese.

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http://draxar.livejournal.com/ at 20:50 on 2011-07-14

A very late comment, but one book that purposefully plays with this idea is Anansi Boys, where the majority of the main characters are black, and if I recall correctly, it mentions when a character is white, but not when they're black.

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Cammalot at 23:50 on 2011-07-14

I adored the hell out of that book for just that reason. It felt... refreshing. :-) Basically everywhere else in life (in my experience of Western culture, anyway) the opposite is done. "A woman walked own the road" followed by actual detailed description, versus "A black man got out of the car." The end. (Not even "A man got out of the car; he was black..."

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http://keysersose.blogspot.co.uk/ at 16:41 on 2017-03-16

I had a similar argument with my writer chums the other day, and Harry Potter was the example we used as well. Generally, fantasy writers treat white as default (consciously or unconsciously), and expect the readership to assume characters are white unless otherwise specified (again, consciously or unconsciously). That annoys me, so I have a somewhat petulant policy of mentally depicting all characters as black unless their ethnicity/race is actually specified. Harry Potter actually deserves some praise for never specifying the race of characters, which is a thing a lot of authors do dp. Rowling implies ethnicity through character description, or with stereotypical "ethnic" names, but she never goes so far as to tell you that Hermione is white British or Dumbledore is Persian. This is better than when a writer tells you a character is black (when skin colour has no apparent significance to the story or setting). I assume this is a middle-class, white guilt thing where they feel it necessary to indicate there are indeed people of colour in their book, but it kind of backfires because they only mention a character's skin colour when they are not white, implying white is the default setting. It is also usually the case that these POCs are relegated to support characters, and the author has reinforced the fact that the protagonist is lily-white. If I was a non-white reader, I might have imagined the protagonist up to a point of matching my ethnicity. The lack of mention initially communicates that I can imagine what I like. But then this stupid rule about pointing out the brown people asserts the white-is-default rule, and that means my mental image must be wrong. This issue also came up when reading the Kingkiller series, in that one of the characters is meant to be non-white, but it wasn't apparent to most of the readership because the character was described as "dusky" skinned, which could be used to describe anyone from Megan Fox to Grace Jones. Qvothe has the red hair, and the references to pubs and lutes imply a generic European medieval setting, but now there is this weird alternative problem where the description is so vague, it is basically pointless description except to imply everyone else isn't dusky coloured (and so therefore white). Qvothe himself has read hair, but is also from some cultural equivalent to Romani/Travellers. Fine, I think. Qvothe is black too.

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Arthur B at 17:31 on 2017-03-16

Interesting to see this one pop out of the archives, seeing how, whilst Ron is still not black in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hermione is. I am with you on the utter uselessness of "dusky" as a description of someone's skin colour. So far as I can make out, it can apply to anyone who is not an actual albino.

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Orion at 19:47 on 2017-03-30

There's actually a quite sensible reason that Ron Weasley isn't black, and indeed why he has red hair, which is unrelated to the character-type-signaling. The Weasleys are an aristocratic old-money family that has been active and well known in Britain for a long time. They're not wealthy any more (or at least neither they nor the Malfoys would describe them as wealthy), but they're blood relations to many of the genuinely powerful families and have intergenerational rivalries with at least one. I think it's a pretty safe assumption that most (though perhaps not all) of the wizard families with ancestral estates in England and blood relations to other wizard families with ancestral estates in England are white. I suppose they could have been the descendants of a foregn merchant house that transplanted to England or it could have been one of Ron's parents rather than Ron who married a black outsider, but I think those changes do lead to different stories. Given that they're white, it makes sense that the Weasleys have red hair. It's because of their hair that everyone knows who they are and what they look like and can spot them across a room. One assumes that Ron might not be so cripplingly self-conscious if he weren't so easy to spot and recognize. Also, while everyone has to acknowedge that the Weasleys are wizard highborns, many think the Weasleys are somehow "not as good" as the other highborn families. I'm an American and liable to be mistaken about this kind of thing, but I'd expect that when English people in the UK see a family of redheads, they would assume that family was probably the the UK, but more likely to be Scottish or Irish than English, and that English nobility would feel that Scottish nobles are definitely nobles, but not really as good as English nobles.

#Harry Potter #J.K. Rowling #Earthsea #Ursula K. Le Guin #Race #Ferretbrain #Minority Warrior #Dan H

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