김윤미 Kim Yoonmi Author

So I was looking up past skin color, and eyes, and realized that looking these things up for someone WITHOUT dysmorphia was messing with my head. Make up tutorials were left and right and there was a lot, actually a TON of body shaming without neutral terms. URRGGGHHH. I wanted to throw things across the room.

I need the neutral terms because our society judges so much on physical features and I really want to celebrate body diversity. Also, I think by me doing it, rather than a writer with dysmorphia, etc, that I might be saving someone else from mental distress. The internet is rough out there an not everyone can afford Gray's Anatomy.

Of course you could mix it up, add judgment, but I think we all need a good baseline without being inundated with "Your facial features are wrong." and "Asian nose" and "Black nose" and all of the realllly racist things from Wiki How. WTF do you mean a "Roman nose" means one is a "ruler" and having a "Nubian Nose" (the slant way to describe a "Black nose") means you have "power" SHUT UP. !@#$.

I tried to report the article, but Wikihow doesn't allow you to do that...

There is not one nose that all of Asia with that many ethnicities has. Same with ANY population. Diversity within. Always.

I tried to organize it from if you saw this person from a distance what would you notice first. I kicked out all racist and judgy terms, fruit, meat, knives, food and otherwise colonizing/imperializing products that would give people flashbacks.

This took quite a bit of time to look all of this up and the mental hits I took reading all of the plastic surgeon and cosmetic crap they post, so if you spread it to others I ask for credit. It was a few days of work, trying to read anatomy, etc.

I also tried my best to link to neutral sources like anatomy books. I could not find the vocabulary for the little wrinkles on the lips inside of the vermilion zone. I looked everywhere, but if you're an anatomy nerd and know, you can drop a note.

As I said before, you don't need the complete list for every character. Use what sticks out to the PoV character. I also made these lists to push myself and others to represent different standards of beauty and also push more diversity within characters.

Voice, BTW, is covered by my character profile sheet which is already posted.

Overall Body

Basic Height

Height: short, petite, moderate, lanky, tall Waist to leg ratio: short-waisted, medium-waisted, long-waisted

Basic Build (without fruit)

Overall weight: ectomorph, endomorph, mesomorph Overall shape: (classification from Kibbe without the style notes?), round, diamond, triangle, hourglass, rectangle, inverted triangle Adjectives: skinny, thin, slender, medium, chubby, chunky, fat, Muscle mass: Flyweight, Bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight, heavyweight (note from Boxing, Weight class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weight_class_(boxing)) Bonus: Muffin top, Dad bod

Basic Skin

Skin tones: brown, black, white/pale Extra color modifiers: Light, pink, medium, dark Skin undertones: warm, neutral, cool Skin texture: smooth, wrinkled, rough, bumpy, Skin types: dry, moderate, combination oily Pore size: large, medium small Bonus: Ashy knees [for the Black community[, freckles [mask, overall, only on cheeks], moles, skin tags, cellulite, saggy, baggy, pimples, blackheads, pustules, white heads, cysts, nodules, papule, acne, vitiligo, skin cancer, sun burnt, rashes, Hirsutism, psoriasis, albininism [do your research before doing this], soft, smooth, shiny

Faces

Basic Face Shape

Overall Face Shape: Square, Round, Heart, Diamond, Oval, Rectangular/Oblong jaw shape: square, round Chin Prominence: low, moderate, high Chin Shape: rounded, square, pointy, chin cleft Cheek prominence: low, medium, high Forehead: low, medium, high, medium, low Teeth: Straight crooked, missing, snaggletooth, prominent canines, worn down canines (Balinese do a tooth filing ceremony) Bonus: dimples

Hair

Hair Types: 1a-4c (Andre Walker classification) Straight, wavy, curly, kinky/coily Hair Texture: Fine, medium, coarse Hair Density: low, medium, high Hair Length: pixie, bob, lob/bowl, armpit, mid-back, tailbone Hair Color: white, silver, Blond/e, orange, copper, red, auburn, brown, black Hair Moisture: Dry, oily, combination, Scalp type: dry, balanced, oily Hairline: square, Widow’s peak Bonus: Bleached, semi permanent color, permanent color, bald, shaved, balding, matted, build up, eczema, lice, dandruff See also: Hair dressers on Youtube. They often have extra vocabulary and Historical hair care.

Basic Eyes (without poetics)

How close/far: close set vs. medium set vs. wide set Lid shape: single lid vs. hooded vs double lid Eye angle: upturned outer corner vs. no angle vs. downturned corner eyes Overall size: large vs medium vs small Eye depth: deep set vs medium depth vs protruding Height vs width: thin/narrow vs. medium roundness vs. round Eye Color: black, brown, blue, hazel, amber, green, gre/ay, heterochromia iridum, Red and violet [albinism, blind] Limbal ring color: darker, same color Eyelash length: long, medium, short Eyelash density: lush, medium, sparse Eyelash Color: Match or does not match hair? Bonus: iris, sclera, dilated, constricted, reflective

Basic Eyebrows

Eyebrow width: thick v. medium vs. thin. Where on the head: Heavy set vs. middle/relaxed vs. High on the forehead Hair thickness: Bushy vs. medium vs. thin Color: Is it the same as the hair on the head (if there)? Grooming: Plucked/manicured vs. au naturel Bonus: Unibrow, burned off

Basic noses (without poetics)

Overall size: Small vs. Medium vs. Large Overall shape: Hooked, droopy, aquiline, tall, button, flat, snub Upper lip vs. Lower lip: heavy/fuller upper lip, even lip fullness, fuller upper and lower lip Bridge: smooth, bumpy, prominent Nostrils: large vs. wide vs. small Base: wide vs. medium vs. narrow Tip direction: upturned, downturned (hooked, beak or bird-like, when being derogatory), straight-on. Tip overall shape: bulbus, sharp, small, pointed Bonus: nasal cavity, sinuses, septum, nasal piercings

Basic Lips

Overall Shape: thin lips, heart-shaped, round lips/unilipped, full lips, bow lips very full lips, double lobbed lower lip, uneven Overall Size: small, medium, large, narrow, moderate, wide Mouth corners: down turned, median, up turned Proportions top-to-bottom: Even top and bottom lip, fuller upper lip, fuller bottom lip Bonus: lower lip dent, philtrum, philtrum ridges/philtral columns, upper vermillion border, lower vermillion border, vermillion zone, cutaneous upper lip, oral commisure, lower lip tubercles, upper lip tubercles, nasolabial fold, mesolabial fold, Glogau-Klein ridges (top of lip definition defined by philtrum), marionette wrinkles (from corner of mouth to either side of the chin), wet line, mucosal lip, cupid’s bow, ergotrid, cleft, canker sores

Basic Ear

Overall size: Small, medium, large Earlobe attachment: attached, semi-attached, detached Ear Prominence: flat, medium, protruding Bonus: piercings, earwax, ear folds, cauliflower ear, ear hair See also: https://elementsofmorphology.nih.gov/anatomy-ear.shtml

The reason I think that Lit professors like it is in the psychological realm of a snappy title, but also they really don't understand the essay because he didn't write it clearly. At the same time, because he's a white straight man they give him a lot of leeway they would not give any other writer. OMG, a white man wrote unclearly, it must mean they have greater meaning. (Much like people like the KJV for having words they don't know the meaning of.)

HE DID NOT COME UP WITH THE IDEA. HE PLAGIARIZED THE IDEA AND NO ONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IT.

Humans, psychologically, do like having neat coinages for things and phenomena. And through my work on this particular blog, I think I've also shown a propensity throughout time for people to give credit, sometimes overly, to people who were 1. AHs 2. White straight abled men (for their time period) Something I know John Green would not agree should be the case, but is the case (and if he had done the project I am doing would likely find equally frustrating, if I'm giving him a lot of leeway from his past history).

This is why I think Death of the Author took off... even though the idea was already much better expressed and argued in 1921.

Also, it's really, really inconvenient for Lit professors to actually understand that conflict didn't cross into story theory lore until 1921, so citing Lubbock would be really uncomfortable, because then they would have to fairly study the story driver rubric for every book before 1921, find the phenomena that Lubbock complains about in his justification, and then OMG, have to revise every paper after 1921 and ask a lot of uncomfortable questions. For me, though, I find it unbelievably fun to find that it had changed over time and why and argue it changed after 2000 as well and argue about why.

I would staunchly argue, that you can say Barthes came up with the coinage, but the argument for it first was Lubbock. And TT I read every theorist I could get my hands on up through 1940's. I might be missing a handful in the 1950's if they are locked behind library paywalls and universities, but I'm very, very sure Lubbock came up with the idea first and maybe we need to kick out Barthes for being a racist man who can't cite anything and not an example Lit students should emulate. Unless we really want to say what Kenneth Rowe did to poor Selden Lincoln Whitcomb is acceptable. Plagiarism should never be acceptable. And Barthes for this particular essay did a lot of it.

The majority of editors cannot cite for the fucking life of them why a writing rule exists. They think it's a good rule because someone else who cited nothing also was told it was a good rule, but if you ask tem, "Why is this a good rule." They DO NOT KNOW.

This drives me up the wall and I hate it. The swath of Youtubers who do this, I see you.

Can you cite when this became a rule?

Who came up with it definitively?

If the rule is subtlely sexist in nature and it was a bunch of white men trying to hate on white women (a lot of the rules are this way as I've gone over in this blog, pulling linguistics)

What psychological trick, philosophy or linguistics reasoning does this tickle?

What exceptions are there to the rule?

Where does breaking the rule work in theory and WHY? What psychological trick are you making by doing this?

But OMG, I'm an editor. And my great grand sensei told me many moons ago that this rule was true.

Yes. And still, you should be able to cite your sources and not retcon it into place and ask the blind to follow you into battle.

If you have been reading this blog you see that writing theorists pull from history, philosophy, sociology, science, social sciences and psychology to try to get certain effects (Not Poe, BTW, though I was taught it was Poe, which is why I'm calling out Lit Professors to check and give their sources if you want your students to give their sources) out of the reader, in what Gertrude Stein argued for. (Take a drink every time a structuralist bashes her).

I know. Critical thinking and actual literary discussion. Oh Noes.

Some of my hits I've posted on this blog have included the original of man v. man which was really man v. mankind and the others that came later were pulled from philosophers. And finding out that stakes was an accidental addition to Writing vocabulary (Hilarious, BTW), Finding out about 98% of the vocabulary of the 3 act story structure. I'm missing the justification phase (the new Emic) for conflict "being interesting".

I also figured out that a lot of the sentence level common ad nauseum repeated writing rules are anti-PoC and anti-women's writing, mostly to the 19th century. (The way adjectives and adverbs are disciplined particularly targets white women and Black people...)

I also tracked down the origin of the conflict theory into books... and how and why other story drivers came to be.

And I did some tracking down of oral storytelling as well.

I can tell you why and also some of my more self minted writing theories and where I got those ideas from:

The dialogue upgraded philosophy is mostly from learning various languages, and reading psychology books. I try to cite it if I remember the source.

The Description vs. detail mostly comes from reading way too many psychology books. (Attention taxation is mostly the core philosophy there.)

I do put an effort into citing things where I didn't come up with them. say the rules to giving and receiving a Critique which I posted on Nanowrimo, which got corrupted, but came from my late great writing teacher, Tom Joyce and he would cite exactly why he had those rules. Since he's passed on, I put up his name, so he does get credit. His rules on how to shut up, combined with Holly Lisle's Mugging the Muse more people need to read, in general, outside of writing.

This is also why one should read widely. One can come up with the next writing theory revolution if one is basically a nerd extraordinaire.

Example of one of the Nevers.

So let's see one of the theories I saw posted where someone admonished it as "wrong" and one should "Never" do this.

She saw...

She realized

She noticed

He heard

He thought

He felt

The usual clap trap of OMG, I'm an editor, but I don't know the origin of this rule.

Usually the justification for this rule is as follows, "Show me the action. It's show, not tell."

The origin of this idea of show don't tell from what I can find, dates mostly from white men in the 20th century. SOME of it, is hating on women, but mostly it's a reaction to 19th century moralizing energy. There are more cushion words from women (which I've covered), but also in the 19th century, in general, there are more cushioning/hedging than in the 1950's. I can cover this in minutia using Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, and comparing them to later authors. But I think this is excessive and this is not a college essay going over the particulars of the subject.

Generally, the next generation hates what the previous generation did and the whole these people are invading in academia and writing is not a new thing. Aristotle was complaining about a version of it from his time period (Epic Plays are horrible, mainly. We should have a simple, straight-forward storyline no side event threads, quiet bashing of Ta'zieh...)

Since books, particularly in the 20th century were heavily influenced by the advent of movies, where there was a contingent of people that believed books and movies should be the same plot-wise, I think justified by the idea that books would be easier to adapt into movies this way... (this is a whole philosophical debate that was being had in the background of many of the writing books I read, where some strongly where against it like Sheldon Lincoln Whitcomb.) As I've said a lot, the 3-act and 5-act are by their nature meant to be event-based, not character based, because the y axis is TENSION, not emotion, and one can manufacture tension without character, which is why there is often a tug-of-war in writing rhetoric over character v. events that's absent in other descriptions of other story structures.

What removing the "She saw"... really does is make it more "action based" and more "action forward" by removing her from the picture and framing only on the action itself.

BUT there is a secondary problem that arises from doing this which editors should ALSO flag. By making the character not observe these things and often inserting an opinion, often the writing takes a very US stance which might not work for all worldviews.

Let's play with an example:

She saw a black cat cross the road.

A typical editor would edit it to great white US expectations:

A black cat crossed the road, sending a chill down her spine.

Perfect. You've passed level 1. You cut the "She saw." and added an opinion/reaction.

But wait. What if the character is not a white abled person from the US. Why would you use "She saw"?

Play with psychology of the character here:

They feel distant from the action because they are dissociating.

They are hallucinating and you need to emphasize this is true.

They are having a mental breakdown.

They have issues with their inner feelings, but this is an outward manifestation.

They are not very self aware.

They live in a society that does NOT emphasie ME FIRST like the US does, and they are more thinking about collective actions, so by having a detached she saw, is a way to compartmentalize before having an opinion.

It's supposed to be a cold observation.

To which the person on the other end usually retorts, "But but, this is unusual."

YES! Which is why you should be listing these things in the video so you don't look clueless???

There's a host of other reasons on the reader effect end that on might want to harness by doing this.

Reader Effect reasons:

Sometimes holding the reader at a distance is key for setting things up like unreliable narrator. If the whole book is narrated with all of these cushion words, sometimes that can lead to mistrust in the narrator.

Showing the character is entirely unsure of everything/insecure. She THOUGHT she saw the black cat. But she blinked and it was gone. This sets up a lot.

One can set up tension between narrator and reader.

Cushion words in white US and UK English are often used to hedge or for politeness. "I said, yep, I said to her, 'You know what she saw a black cat.' and she disbelieved me."

The action is not the point. The character's emotions and reactions to everything are the point.

Beyond this, there are dialects that do use more cushion and hedging words.

"had had" shows up in BAE, mostly NE US and would be flagged by white editors. (Again, read more than your worldview.)

Rhythm, manipulation of word length, assonance and alliteration.

I had a controversial opinion on Nanowrimo that people didn't like (waaaaayyyy back) that one should avoid bold and Italics and one could word smith into getting out of it.

People still dislike this opinion. But I can demonstrate it with some posts from speeches and news articles. You should have learned this in literature classes.

"Three days after floodwater swamped David McRaw's Bachelor apartment, forcing him and his neighbours to seek shelter at the neigbouring fire hall, the Dauphin resident said he and many others are just beginning to take stock of the damage."

"Dauphin residents start long slog of flood cleanup."

Did you spot how they did italics without italics here?

if you said yes, it's the s, you are correct.

"days, swamped, McRaw's, slant alliteration on Bachelor, his, neighbors, seek, shelter, resident, said, just, stock."

There is a secondary on on "h "as well, visually and sound-wise.

days and damage also match.

Then residents, start, slog, and there is an attempt at assonance with u visually. Do you need Italics after crafting the sentences so succinctly?

"People across the country are pushing for moratoriums, and electeds who approve projects are being pushed."

Did you catch the alliteration and slant alliteration? It's subtle, right? But it punches up the words you're supposed to pay attention to.

People, pp

pushing, p

approve, pp

projects, p

being, b (plosive)

pushed, p

And then to just kick it up a bit more, the word that is outside of the p/b alliteration that needs attention is what? longer.

people, 2, pushing, 2 syllables, approve, 2 syllables, projects, 2 syllables. Being 2 syllables. pushed, 1-2 syllables (depending on accent.)

Moratoriums is a multi-syllabic word that you need to slow down for. The other words are 2 syllables or less and more common words. A long nasal is a softer sound that the plosives.

Mamdani: "Therein lies the work of America — striving, a bettering, the reaching towards perfection. What a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that everyone of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses to prove ourselves worthy of those who came before."

-ing is being used to help flow striving, bettering, reaching.

A lot of the assonance and alliteration is at the end of the sentence. therein, ing, ing, ing, ten it ends on the word "perfection." n. This establishes a rhythm.

perfection and nation match, so you are more likely to pair those words together in your head.

perfection and privilege are paired by 'p' in the sentences. This makes the flow easier.

its and inhabitants, and tion has a softer alliteration. the its and inhabitants, because of the rhythm scheme carry certain weight. But the words, "can shape" fall off the rhythm.

"s" in responsibility calls back to the "tion" allteration/assonance of earlier. It also continues the t. (responsibility) and introduces a shift which reflect a shift in the meaning as well. from the ing, ing, tion to p, which is a plosive:

responsibility possesses, prove, ourselves (o assonance) worthy, (o), those (o) before.

This has a lot of little manipulation of speech in rhythm, sounds and shifts it on meaning. Dd you need italics?

tldr; in, ing, ing, ing->ion, p->p, recalling ion, s call back to tion, t new alliteration, plosive call back, o assonance.

Take away

First off, if the ONLY thing you describe on Asian characters is their eye shape and NEVER describe it for any other race, you have issues.

Equal opportunity to detail for all characters and all features with a mind for diversity within, as filtered through the POV character's perception filter. Keep saying that every time you reach for it.

1 full paragraph on a Black character's skin color and hair texture and then 1 full paragraph on the exact shape of the East Asian's eye shape and then 1 full paragraph on European eye color and hair color, and you really fucked up. Balance it out. Make sure you're capturing the diversity within. I'll beg you as an anthropologist to at least examine more than the stereotype and think about LIGHTING. Eyes, skin, hair, all change color in light, dammit, doesn't matter the genre. That's physics.

But looking online, I found there was a dearth of really good concentrated charts. Most of them are "Hey, plastic surgery." "Hey, want to enhance your natural beauty by changing your eye shape with make up and I'll shame you for having say, deep set eyes or a 'monolid'" And there was vocabulary used like "regular" and "normal" which makes me feel stabby since it defaults European beauty standards. And then a bunch of them were straight up racist. "The Asian eye" WTF is the Asian eye? JFCOAC, how many times do we have to explain that there are a shit ton of countries in the continent of Asia and even in East Asia there is no one singular eye type. And saying "Asian eye" to someone in the UK they think of someone Desi. I'd go through feeling stabby to depressed to dysmorphia so... to save a bunch of writers time and headaches, and because no one wrote a guide for us writers, I figured I'd come up with basic vocabulary to help.

I tried to stay neutral. Of course you can add judgment, but much like skin color, saying light/dark, naming cool/warm undertones and basic shade of brown (see wikipedia) I tried to keep it simple and let you embellish on your own.

I know there is an inherent agreed on, in the US constitution separation of Church and State. I want that for Corporations too.

This isn't saying, I think all corporations should not exist and therefore are evil.

It's saying that corporations should not be able to:

Bribe hired, elected or appointed government officials or their families at any level (South Korea has this law)

Donate to candidates (overturn Citizens United)

Be considered people

Buy sports college or school sports teams

Donate large sums to private or public schools

Own more than 100 real estate properties in any county, this includes all subsidiaries and LLCs which should be at least transparent to the government in a singular list at any time and can be requested by the residents. This also applies to corporate management companies, where they should also be limited to number of properties they own and they should be subject to being able to pass basic knowledge of all ordinances on housing every say 5-10 years?

Corporations SHOULD

SHOULD pay fair taxes under our laws.

SHOULD pay fair wages under the law.

I'd also like:

And media corporations cannot be owned by people with other interests or sectors (Computers, Social Media, etc) If they have to file a separate Trademark category in order to get a trademark to run the news media, they should be prohibited from owning it.

Oh, My God, I own a major toy company and want to own a media company too. I think that should be considered a conflict of interest and not allowed.

I'm ALSO a bit on edge about them being able to own sports team in towns in order to get favor of the city in question.

I actually think this is quite a conservative and progressive position... if you're drumming about "traditional values." In the past when could corporations "at the founding of the Constitution" as the Right wingers like to say, do any of this type of influence?

The only function of a corporations is to own and run businesses that are separate from the state, schools, and public life.

SK also needs to limit corporations... I'd hard, hard suggest they do similar and up workers' rights for men and women. And limit corporate landlords and landlords when they do Jeonse through escrow agreements.

I DID listen to one US congressperson who is for mandatory volunteering in the community, which I like aesthetically, but I also think that it should come with on site job training for all people allocated by interest and that there should be room for pay for lower income people by doing that volunteering since some people don't have the luxury of doing unpaid labor, even when in college. This might also ease some of the job market problems worldwide, in general, if trades had workers with training and a way to ease them in. (BTW, which would help some of South Korea's problem with young men also after mandatory army service if jobs were forced to be made available by corporations and minimum wage forced to be paid by those workers and pay gaps forced closed between top and bottom.)

COWARDS.

So it was bait and they are cowards. Good to know.

First, NB, so shut up. OMG, I'm going to be referring to the goddess Artemis by calling you a Bitch. Like that's really an insult. Artemis isn't my favorite, but she was cool. I had K-chan give me a huge argument on why Artemis is the best Goddess ever.

Second, you're really that mad I write and maintain a list on anti-AI.

No one is on your side except corporations. I hope you get that.

You're saying, "Oh whoopee, I'm in favor of giving people cancer and destroying their homes. Why don't you let corporations steal your personal information and ideas?"

And my reply to that is: "Why don't you go rent an apartment in one of the data centers and listen to 10 airplanes taking off all at once all day every day and breathe in those cancer fumes and then not be able to go to a hospital. And then you can lecture to all the rest of us about how you have slept 100% fine, and have a clean bill of health."

Go ahead. I'm sure people will watch that video and you'll get 2 million likes if you survive say 2 years in one of those things with a bill of health before and after. You can have a segment where you directly smell those cancer fumes and drink the water that residents complain about. You worship them so much, so show up how much you want that. Go ahead, suck their waste.

Probably selection bias by Youtube algorithm, but there are a swatch of videos that state things like Classics shouldn't be questioned.

And Lit agents don't shape book discourse because they are helpless and stuff. (and not really gatekeepers and clutch their pearls over that idea) ==;;

So, I've been an editor at manga translation company and I did reject one manuscript handed to us. So yes. I do know about the publishing industry. I can absolutely tell you minutia like Jack London for his time period was paid more for is short stories than Jane Austen was for her books. And also that relative to the times, Jane Austen was paid less than PoC authors today, making the amount that white male authors paid today egregious. And then I can launch a whole discussion into it.

I can also go over the history of Literary agents as illuminated by Stephen King in the first edition of his book, "On Writing" because I semi-memorized it and then his more recent 7th edition retort of, "Agents aren't evil."

And I absolutely can break down the idea of where conflict in stories come from with the whole Man v. nature with dates because that's my mini Anthropology project on this blog that very few pay attention to. lol The fact that the whole thing started as an accident is hilarious, BTW.

I also have a degree in Anthropology with a minor in Comp Lit, so yes. If you want me to go over the influences from Dante's inferno and Troubadours on current Romance genre, I absolutely can and so on.

So let's go over the assumption that Classics are good because they are classics and therefore shouldn't be questioned on why they are classics.

Are Lit professors getting even lazier? Or is it that students are failing to engage in Literary discourse completely.

A GOOD Lit professor will not say a Classic is a classic because it was designated a classic. If you have such a Lit professor, they need to go back to college.

A GOOD Lit professor will argue that all of the Literary tools you learn in class can be applied to any media. Cat in the Hat? Absolutely. Captain Planet. Sure. My Neighbor Totoro. Yep.

And instead of saying that circular logic, they will ASK why is this considered a classic and WHEN was is considered so. And what flexibility and lack of flexibility do classics have? Should this really be considered a classic? Are we examining it wrong? What lenses should you study this classic through? Historicism? Cultural relativism? Does readercism add anything to this picture.

They should ALSO entertain the idea that often the books that are considered classics tend to disinclude whole classes and identities of people.

For example, people discussing the KJV Bible, absolutely often want to ignore that KJ I would be through contemporary eyes gay or Bi. He might have "hated sodomy" but he had male favorites, where he might have liked oral sex with them, but as Historians like to say, "We aren't sure."

Likewise, I can question if the portrayal of Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is fair since the conception of him dates to a questionable Bronte paracosm of a Black man which in parts makes me cringe as it's elucidated. Just because I launch a criticism does not mean I do not understand the book. It means I have to wrestle with this extra information I have and my modern conceptions of race compared to the lackluster (in my opinion) portrayal of this recycled character. I absolutely understand it is not a love story Romance, but being critical of a classic to that degree puts me in no obligation to like it. (Especially since Abolitionists and other intellectuals of the time period, I felt, did better in many ways)

One could criticize me for my lack of willingness to look at my Readercism without a historical lens, and that is a fair assessment, but it is not fair to say that all Classics for their time period were "good" because later critics deemed it so.

For example, Anthony Trollop, well, was considered trollop in his lifetime, being mainstream popular books, but intellectual trash according to contemporary people. But he was later rebranded as a Classic. BTW, his story driver is obviously morality OVER AND OVER again, it drives this home and the plot points live there.

Jane Austen also fell out of favor for a time.

Does that mean for the time she was not considered a Classic, she can't be considered a classic now?

One can distantly hate a classic, but still like the execution. One can also think that something doesn't deserve to be a classic and something is better.

Likewise I'm allowed to not particularly love Mr. Darcy, but absolutely think that Henry Tilney is hot stuff.

What Lit professors should be driving home is that you can argue these things using the tools they gave you to examine the text.

Yes, Northanger Abbey is both a Comedy of Manners and a short-lived parody of a Gothic novel, where the plot driver doesn't live on morality for all of it, but does live on it for large portions of the plot. (Typical for the time period, BTW, as I said, Morality was the most popular plot driver from about Aristotle to Shakespeare until the advent of the Printing Press and then the Rotary Printing press)

I have to admit, Anthony Trollop isn't a bad person, but I still don't like him that much as a writer. I also think his hand is a bit too heavy in places, which, BTW, aligns me with his earlier critics, who thought he was a bit too much of a blunt force object, which I found out after I read him.

On the other hand, I hate the dickens out of Dickens as a person, but I have to begrudgingly like his writing style and approach to poverty, but still loathe to deal with his weird moralities around women.

Edgar Allen Poe, I find delicious as a character to think about (especially when portrayed by Jack Black in Drunken History, BTW), and I admit that my personal favorite story of his is not the favorite of everyone else, probably being one of the least adapted short stories of his because most of it is psychological, but shows the strength of what stories can do.

I mostly hate Aristotle and think he's a dick, but still respect that I'm missing half his text. I vehemently disagree with him, even with historical context.

I still have mixed feelings about Shakespeare and I admit most of my indignation over him is with his scholars over than Shakespeare's writing itself. However, David Mitchell's portrayal of him, often runs rent free in my head along with the fact that there was a report there was supposed to be an episode of Ben Jonson included and I WANT TO SEE IT (Why, perchance, was the show cancelled before I saw the performance?), at the same time my head is going over all of the details of the show.

And I think I'm allowed to have and debate these opinions if it's an open dialogue, no?

At the same time, one can wonder at who isn't getting mentioned and published and those who are marginalized at published on what grounds? Why are they getting published? Are they compromising some part of their identity to get there? Why was Percy Lubbock erased from the conversation about conflict? Should E.M. Forester be more popular than he is? Is Baldwin only liked because he was with someone white? Why are so many Black men civil rights leaders who are chosen to publish married to white women?

The conversation should not end because it is a classic, it should start with the question, "Should this be a classic, or are there things more deserving?" Who gets to decide and why do those people get to decide? Should Literary devices be relegated to only LIterary, or what the start of that category a way to push intellectual discourse into college and PoC and women's books as token and specialized insertions? What happened to the disabled writers and characters in conversations?

Why exactly is so many contemporary-written Regency Romance so conforming of contemporary gender roles and delete any mention of slavery in the time period?

This is what you should be doing with intellectual discussions of books in the first place.

A classic is NOT a classic because it's a classic. It's a classic because a bunch of academics deemed it so and worthy of study, but any piece of media should be worthy of study. Even those easy beach reads.

Agents have no influence over books

Iunno, I wonder if Romantasy is going to fall victim to the whole, "End of Romance" discussions that mostly white straight women have about Romance without thinking about other voices. (The whole white discussion of Romantasy is so new and never done before gets a deadpan from me, whose been reading both Romance and Fantasy from the first time I could read. And seriously, no one consumes Xianxia??? Ooohhhh, but it's not like US Romance and it fails the US romance definition... Yes, that's why you consume outside of your country. Not to mention Japanese Fantasy Romance as well.)

I, personally, still think the comp model of getting new books is clearly failing and it's still locking out the marginalized people from the market or asking us to write like the privileged people, rather than innovate.

For me, I'd absolutely love if someone could mainstream apply the feeling of sensory overload and form it into a book without trying to make abled people happy.

I'd also LOVE it if a horror writer could totally write the Uncanny valley as a story structure. Creeping and increasing disgust and dread... isn't that the superior Horror story structure rather than Syd Field's? and then dump you in the Uncanny Valley forever to never recover.

But as long as agents keep gatekeeping on "What is correct" and "we have to submit it this way" and Editors likewise aren't willing to take risks in particularly the UK and US markets, frankly, other markets are going to kick our butts on innovation, IMO.

Those intellectual questions of if one is being asked to write like a white straight abled NT (Mostly Christian) man comes to the fore, especially if those in the industry are unwilling to really consume outside of the US and also take on emic POVs of things like Disability, trauma, queerness, etc.

Yadda Yadda, Anthropology BA, concentrated in systems, though my real interest is in Multimedia trade and adaptation. But I guess you only need to know the anthropology part.

Anyway, I wanted to give you a really quick way to make your world building feel richer than it is, which I did cover previously, briefly and repeatedly, but I'm seeing people do less and less of in worldbuilding I've been reading lately.

This applies to Social Historcial/Fantasy/Horror/Science Fiction Novels. Probably is the bread and butter of Absurdism (particularly Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass). I will come up with real world examples, and also books that did it well, did it medium well and did it clunkily.

Often culture does something, for a good reason, and then over time, people forget that reason and then come up with a new justification.

This is illuminated through Etic views (Outsider looking in) and Emic views (Insider explaining their own culture. One is NOT superior to the other and a good anthropologist as lectured in 101 can and will be able to switch between them fairly well to write about the culture in question.

The academic definition can be found here:

Real World Example

they give in every anthropology class ever is that in India the cow is viewed as sacred and Holy, that's the Emic view. The Etic view is that eating your living plow in an agricultural society is often economically a bad idea.

I'll give another one that's more close to home. The view that you'll have 7 years of bad luck if you break a mirror is because often reflective surfaces are thought to contain the soul, (if you get into religion and magic anthropology this is in the whole Contagious v. sympathetic magic theory). This explains the mirror, but the 7 years is more arbitrary and dates roughly to the Roman belief that the soul renews every 7 years. So in order to counter this, you had to wash the mirror pieces in a body of water or in water. That's the 100% Emic view, if you come with the belief system and origins, even if you forget it.

The Etic view is the practical one. Oh, mirror pieces are sharp and you need to deter people from breaking glass on purpose. They are less likely to break glass in a window, but a mirror is a piece of glass that is free agent.

Often the Emic view does NOT give a date for first belief and tries to erase the name of the person who came up with it. Because what? It was forever and always, like gender. OMG, macaronis are at it again. Masculinity as covered by J. Draper, was invented around the same time (Always in crisis... which is the truth for all privilege, BTW) I mean can you and all of the people around you name the exact person who deemed that lace is only for girls off the top of your head?

The Etic view is often the outsider looking in. This isn't always superior either, because if you only take the Etic view, you can run into errors, like say Jospeh Campbell and the whole all people from the tropics are cannibals thing he promulgated. The Etic view is incomplete if you have an incomplete Emic view.

An example of this, for example, is the Etic view that Japanese are all submissive. But if you take a more advanced Etic view and look at the true Emic view of Japanese, one can see a clash between Japanese modes of socialization and communication and Standard (White) American communication. (Highlighted in a really fascinating story of Office Workers and Factory Workers book I read once)

In order to do a study, you need to be able to switch between both.

How to Apply this to writing?

Say you have a seven book series, and it covers 1,000 years of history, the facts WILL NOT stay stable over time.

I gave the example of the Stinky snail river soup and how we lost in our lifetime who invented it. *In our lifetime*.

Luosifen's origin is lost.

Humans have the worst amnesia. This is why archaeologists exist.

If you write one book and make them a famous character who is beloved, it is entirely acceptable to make them hated 100 years later through miscommunication and misunderstanding.

I mean people FORGET that George Washington OWNED SLAVES. !@#$ Do I have to repeat that? He also tried to chase a slave down. And that slave had an adjoining room to his bedroom.

So you need to create these things: 1. The creation of the idea with a reasonable explanation for why.

2. The forgetting/ amnesia of the reason. 3. The continuance of the tradition Into positive or negative, (often amplified/exaggerated) 4. The new justification when people can't remember why it was created.

I've gone over this with gender, story structures, food, and so on. So let's try Christmas.

The reason for Christmas trees is said to be German, and the lighting of them is because of Winter Solstice (Etic reason, it's depressing around Winter Solstice and in temperate regions you need a reason not to kill each other stuck in the cold). The popularization is said to be Prince Albert, but some historians say that it was in England prior.

People forgot part of the Emic and Etic reason over time.

And now you have flashy display of Christmas lights and because of A Christmas Carol, you have the idea that Christmas is because it what? "Spreads joy to everyone" (Forget the non Christians, who are attacking Christmas. Look upstream to what I said about Privilege constantly feels attacked)

So why do we light Christmas trees and decorate them. If you said during Christmas celebrations it's to stave off depression and to keep everyone from killing each other, you'd get dirty looks. You get the secondary justifications: "It's fun" "It's to spread joy" "Because Jesus said so (though he literally lived in a desert/Mediterranean climate, so... where did he see fir trees, but ignore that part).

Examples from books

Through the Looking-Glass:

Painting the roses red. They don't know why they are doing it, but our Etic view is that it is strange.

The Emic view is that the white rose bush is there by mistake. But the Etic view takes over, why a red rose bush is more correct.

This is subtle and not a blunt hammer moment, which then leads to the Red Queen showing up.

Now we know why.

This is missing the exaggeration over time, though... so a better example probably I would pull from Anne McCaffrey's PERN series.

PERN

In Pern, despite the large discussion of dragons from the books, there is a secondary species that no one discusses... the "ship fish" or the dolphins.

Most of the books say they exist, but not why they exist, so there is a huge thing in the books where the characters can finally communicate with these dolphins and find out that Dolphins helped mapped the seas. There is an emic PoV of how they came to be, and the Etic PoV of how they came to be. However, the Emic PoV was exaggerated over time, which I thought was done well, though she could have gone harder on it.

I still have a view that this was a medium execution for me. I never bought the Emic view that well, and I know Anne McCaffrey was a victim of the 1960's fad on dolphins (which is also referred to in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's And Thanks for All the Fish) , but I still thought it was a little clunky in places. (I can hear someone object, "But, but it was published in the 1990's," Yeah, but Anne McCaffrey grew up in the 1960's... and the whole dolphins experiments is its own rabbithole)

Patricia C. Wrede in The Raven Ring Series

I think she handled it really well. Often she would have an Emic view of why something was done, not explained, but then through the action, the reader could figure out the Etic PoV, and this, to me, was far more enjoyable than having a whole book info dump to me why something existed.

Unfortunately, it didn't meet sales, and she ended up writing Star Wars movies as a book... TT But I wished to collect the entire series. In the Enchanted Forest series she often did this well. Where the belief was promulgated and the Etic belief you could kind of get from being an outsider.

L.E. Modesitt also did this fairly well.

Often he had outsiders coming to a society, so balancing both became important and often the character had to absorb the Emic belief for their magic to work.

I like when Historical dramas and books approach this with a sense of humour or they approach it with a sense of that's wrong. For example, showing how people believed that disabled people were disabled because of demons, which shows up in The First Jasmine (Chinese drama) where the disabled character is whipped for being disabled to "cleanse their soul" which is a good way to show how those beliefs can clash.

And Horror loves, absolutely loves to play with these back and forth. 地獄少女, Jigoku Shōjo plays with this a lot. What is true versus what is believed to be true and exaggerated.

I bet Star Trek fans can tick a bunch of episodes off from every series.

What to do then?

The basics is this, the sense of discovery it gives the reader without info dumping the etic reason on them directly often gives a fun to worldbuilding as they get to piece together the puzzle of the belief system they are exposed to.

This is also why I find the whole pseudo-Agricultural Christianity religion boring most of the time. Because it's taking things from our world, half understanding them, and giving no room for any sense of Etic discovery. Wonder comes from discovery. Give me some sense of wonder.

Remember, also, Christianity did NOT originate in Europe. !@# No matter what the white nationalists like to say. The bones of the religion are not agricultural. True Druidism is more agricultural than Christianity. Christianity is a Pastoral religion based in Judaism, so attributing it to an agricultural society who organically came up with it on their own makes no sense since a lot of the scripture and laws in Christianity and Judaism are very, very Pastoral specific to that region. Like the cursing of goats and calling them evil (I've gone over that one too in the Food Worldbuilding doc.)

There might be reason to info dump the Etic reason, but to be honest most of the time I'm not reading those genres for the Etic reason. Give me the immersion of a totally different and strange belief system.