the politics of character creation.

[breakfastofchampions]

i'm beginning to think peter's ethnic origins are south american-- native, of course. it may be herzog's fault. i don't know if other writers do this, but i really do sit around pondering the ethnicity of my characters, as well as their sexuality and gender. i want to be representative and fair-- yet without compromising my story. when i choose a character's ethnicity, i try to think of what i might unwittingly be saying about people of that ethnicity. some people might say it is unbearably "pc" of me-- but it is my thought process. i can't help it. that might well be why i decided peter shouldn't be a blue-eyed blonde as he was for so long. i wonder if this is wrong of me, some kind of reverse discrimination. but so many stories seem so whitewashed. sometimes it's understandable, depending on the setting, but sometimes it just seems like non-caucasian characters have been forgotten! maybe i just don't read a wide enough range of books. hm, i guess what i mean to say is that a lot of books seem to have characters of all one ethnicity, and why is that? hopefully it is changing! please tell me if i am wrong, as i would be happy to be mistaken.

i also obsess over what my kinder eat. if there is a scene with food in it, you can bet i put a lot of thought into it-- and if someone eats meat-- you'd better believe it troubled me on some level! i try to avoid detailed eating scenes, so it doesn't come out that i think of almost all of my characters as vegetarians or vegans. i think the only character of mine who has ever actually come out and said they are a vegetarian is khiem from orange pekoe. ah, food politics. another obsession.