askerian | tyr 2011! - writing woes.

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tyr 2011! - writing woes.

1) ... why is Tyr angsty this time around. Why is he emoing. D: STOP EMOING RIGHT NOW YOU HEAR ME YOUNG MAN.

2) holy infodumps, batman AAAAAAH NO WRITE FIRST BETA LATER. (though I find it funny how easy it comes to me, to plop two characters together and see them be banterrific almost on their own. the issue is when I try to insert stuff like, y'know, plot. Maybe I should just let them blather on for 2k words a day, no matter if it goes nowhere. betcha i'd finish NaNo then. 9__9)

3) first three characters who ever appear on screen are white men. (Tyr, Dian Keller, and Colonel Reynolds.)

It has to be Dian with Tyr in the first scene due to new background I developed recently. Can't switch him for Serrano. :/

I don't want to make Dian black, he's already white trash who likes to use slang, I don't want him falling into the rough/tough ghetto black man stereotype, really not trusting myself there, and also I don't like the dynamic of white man hero, black man snarky sidekick. Then again is it better or worse to have a black guy sidekick than no black guy... Gabe is black but it's not like there's a quota either. argh race issues.

I could make Reynolds a chick, but the issue here is he/she is a... benevolent (so long as you're on her side), but really rather ruthless/manipulative person who hides it behind friendliness and smiles. IDK, wouldn't that verge onto negative female stereotypes... AAA EVERY TRAIT IS MORE NEGATIVE WHEN A WOMAN HAS IT. Or I could make him part Native (a lot of characters in this story are so it wouldn't be super rare either. Amongst the main characters Serrano is Inca/Spanish.) I don't wanna make him/her both female and Native, though, background character twofers are annoying, kinda like "okay I had one non-white, one woman (no matter they're the same person) now I can write a guy, a white guy, and a guy who's white."

Then again I think it's rather telling about my own biases that my two favorite characters so far just happen to show up in my head being so very strongly white and male. *hangs head* .__.;;;

Okay um characters I've got so far:
* Military weres:
Tyr Andersen (white, male, asexual? he's giving me that vibe. at least not very strongly sex oriented.)
Dian Keller (white, male... no idea if he's het or bi but v. sexual)
Neve Serrano (hispano/incan, female, straight? )
Gabe Wright (black, male, straight)
Xiang Lin (chinese, female, straight)

Why is neither of the two girls white. Also I think Dian gets to be bi because everyone else is kind of heteronormative and Tyr flies under the radar on assumptions and his own lack of giving a crap. Hm. (I like Gabe's issues with women re: his issues with his mother, and I don't want either of my main badass women soldiers to fall into the "might as well be one of the dude"!dyke stereotype. But that means I need lesbians elsewhere.)

* Natural weres:
Old Pack Leader (white male)
First Alpha Contestant (male, hispano? Native? careful there with the angry/hotblooded stereotypes.)
Second Alpha Contestant (male, WASP? kinda doughy in personality, so I can't help but see him like that physically too XD)
Third Alpha Contestant (female, white? angry!!)
Teenage Girl Who Got Herself Knocked Up Because The Pack Must Live On (no clue what race she is. Hrrrm.)

* Military
Colonel Reynolds (??, ??)
Athena the Secretary (xiang's best friend) (black, female. Maybe a lesbian? I like the idea of a straight girl/lesbian platonic friendship. pffhaha oh self i'm already shipping it just the way i'm shipping everyone/tyr even despite his aceness. My fandom brain is so well-trained by now, I do it even for my own ofic.)

* Others (mostly deceased/background/otherwise not really counting)
Tyr's Great-Uncle (white, male, dead)
Gabe's Mother (black, female)
Gabe's two sisters and niece (also varying shades of black and female)
Serrano's three/four brothers and two sisters (hispano/incan)

and uh, I forget.

But fuck that noise. In the main and secondary, six guys, five girls, one undecided... Okay, I think a mastermind-type Lady Colonel would be pretty awesome. Reynolds? c'mere, baby. :D *snip snip*

(for the guys familiar with my old ofic Cercle, Reynolds started out an AU!Reiyel, except not quite as selfish. But the ruthlessness and the happy manipulations, oh yeah baby. XDD)

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Thank you for not going the funny!black!sidekick route with Dian. Even without the race issues, it's so cliched.

Out of curiosity, why does Tyr have to be white? The Scandinavian name? The generic-white-bread lead who gets unexpected internal depths trope? Just see him that way? I'm not arguing with it, I'm just curious about your mental process on that, especially considering that he was originally inspired by an Asian guy.

I also like the idea of Xiang being in a lesbian/straight girl friendship. And I don't think you need to worry about the shippiness showing through, since you should know we'll throw everyone together in our heads anyway (also, leader-type main characters who come off like they're banging half their subordinates are a long standing tradition, damnit).

I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with here, even if it's only a few thousand words of chars rambling and bantering at each other. You made me fall weirdly in love with Serrano last time (even though she's a character type I'd swear never does much for me), so I'm looking forward to seeing what you make me love this time.

Well, Dian's been leaning away from funny-hahah and more toward black humor recently... but yeah, it'd still have been clichedy. >__>

Tyr is white 'cause he comes from Northern Europe where the enemies are -- his background is that he emigrated to Vinland (haha no USA here!) when he was, i dunno, between eight and twelve, and his great-uncle was a scholar of Norse myths. (hence the name. God names are in fashion, but usually people go more for Greek/Roman or precolumbian names.) They had to flee from one of the last big pushes of the enemy that invaded the last pockets of human settlements in Northern Europe. I guess he might still have been non-white, but I don't know if a lot of people from other continents wanted to emigrate *to* Europe, he'd have been from a very small minority group if he had that history.

(also Heero has never read very Japanese to me. He might be part-Japanese, but with blue eyes he'd have to be less than half anyway (okay, yes, maybe it'd work if he's two-fourths instead?), and he wasn't socialized in Japan and doesn't have many cultural markers of such, so even if in my headcanon he has some traits like the shape of his eyes to indicate part-Asian ethnicity, in the end he doesn't even really identify as Japanese. Maybe as japanese-colonial, but is that even a recognized group in AC195, or do they shove that under L1-ese or whatever? Then again this is Heero, does he identify as anything apart from "gundam pilot" and "citizen of the Earth Sphere"...)

(I'm already fivesoming them in my head, oh god.)

I didn't expect to like Serrano so much either, so i'm really glad to hear i'm not the only one! I hope she'll keep on being awesome. .__. ♥

Maybe I should just let them blather on for 2k words a day, no matter if it goes nowhere. betcha i'd finish NaNo then.

Well that is pretty much the goal of NaNo, quantity over quality. Let them banter until they get somewhere and do something plot worthy, you can hack out the extra verbiage in December. :)

When I went through last year's NaNo to get it set up in Scrivener (my new favorite piece of software) last month I hacked out 10k without even trying. Entire scenes got the axe. Granted, last year was the hardest year I've had thus far, and there was a lot of crap that was definitely there just to pad the count. Some of it got saved over into my "research" notes because it did develop the characters in my head, even if it wasn't needed in the story.

First Alpha Contestant (male, hispano? Native? careful there with the angry/hotblooded stereotypes.)

Depending on how fixed his image is in your head, I'd suggest going with something Asian, because most of the Asians I know (four, I know big number) are very particular about what exactly they are, especially the Korean and the Thai, also to my knowledge they're not stereotypically hot-headed, so having something like that be a hot-button...I lost my train of thought...

I can see your reasoning for not wanting to make Dian black, but why does Tyr have to be white? He could be the one who's part Native.

Also I totally approve of everything you have in the parenthesis under Colonel Reynolds name. <3

re: tyr, that's explained in more detail in my reply to Acechan. There's even less of a likelihood of him being Native than being Black, he's from Denmark and since they've been in a war of extermination for the last couple centuries there's much, MUCH less immigration toward any part of Europe in this 'verse than in ours.

:333

Huh, that could work, thanks. Korean, hmm. Or maybe Filipino. Any other stereotypes to avoid about them?

Whoop, should have read the comments first. I still think it'd be cool if you could work in a way for Tyr to be a non-white character. Don't think I know enough about the verse to make specific suggestions though.

Ninja.

If you've seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (and if you haven't, you should because it's awesome), I think the song "Nobody's Asian in the Movies" from Commentary! covers the stereotypes pretty well.

Lyrics: http://drhorrible.com/commentary.html#nobody
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNmzegQUtFA

Sorry, drive-by comment. Couldn't Tyr be a white ethnic minority, e.g., Sami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people)? Those are similarly underrepresented.

Huh. He might be part-Sami (pseudoelves don't like the cold much so the Sami population might have been safe for a good long while) but from the way he was raised he's not going to have much of the culture, and from the pictures I see on Wiki, Sami people tend to have round faces, when his face is pretty narrow and with sharp, prominent cheekbones and nose. So if he doesn't look Sami and he doesn't have cultural traits (that i'm not sure I could represent right besides) it'd be a bit of a stealth minority card, like oh okay I only LOOK white so I get the privilege from such but really I'm totes not! so you can't fault me for it.

Still, shiny research things! Thank you for the link, it's very interesting. I'll keep it in mind for other characters. *_*

My fandom brain is so well-trained by now, I do it even for my own ofic.

I know your pain. That is all.

Reynolds? c'mere, baby. :D *snip snip*

This made me choke on my spit laughing. I support your gender changing ways...and methods. :P

Sorry for the late reply, been away from the computer for a few days. If the interferes with / interrupts your NaNo writing please ignore.

I think the idea of Tyr being mixed heritage-but-raised-(mostly?)white/Danish is shiny. He could have any random immigrant in his history... or he might not know (or care) what his ancestry is. Maybe he's part Jew? Part Inuit or Indian? Maybe he had contact with Muslim people as a child? Though the idea that he has Viking ancestry is really interesting!

About Athena: somehow, (probably because of the name, sigh) she always read as dark-skinned/very-tan Greek to me. Or somehow brown, at any rate (Northern African, Spanish/Indian, Burgher-Sri Lankan).

Are you reluctant about making Gabe + family the only Black people? You might want to make Colonel Reynolds black too? And how about making female!Alpha-contestant asexual, or maybe bi-but-mostly-into-girls?

Just some thoughts =3

nah, it's fine. I love distractions. XD

I don't see the point in making Tyr white-looking and not knowing that he's anything but mainstream white but still being it. It'd be a bit of tokenism. He still gets white privilege either way, and his culture isn't a huge part of him anyway.

Athena's black, actually. XD Probably Kenyan in origin. It's really in fashion to use god names, but in her grandparents' culture it's insulting to use the names of actual gods they worship/think have existed, and I think her parents and herself have lost their culture a bit anyway, so they went mainstream. but I think it suits her really well, and there'll be other languages/traditions names elsewhere. Here she is. Though I think I'll make her a couple shades darker in the end. Hmmm. >__>

Gabe & family aren't the only black people, there's Athena and a couple of Weres and stuff. I just didn't want to have everyone white except for them. But there's Latinos and Asians and Natives and stuff, too, so hey.

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tyr 2011! - writing woes.

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