The Shop, continued

( The plot continues... )

My usual rambliness and probably complete idiocy

tigerbright, who among others has been enormously helpful in dealing with my GRAAAAGGGGHHHH issue a while back, is up in arms about this, and rightly so.

First off, the central point is valid, as it always has been, and I support it whole-heartedly. You do not, in these days, make white people up in blackface to play black people. You do not, in these days, use European actors to play Asian characters (John Bennett in The Talons Of Weng-Chiang is a bit of a guilty pleasure, because he is so good in the role, but I am sure that an Asian actor could have been found who would have been as good if not better). You match the ethnicity of the actor to the ethnicity of the character, just as you would the gender. Ethnicity is a constant. It doesn't change: one's ethnicity remains the same from birth to death. In the case tigerbright is talking about, the writers of the series in question went to great pains to research and create a specifically east Asian milieu for their characters, and therefore presumably intended their characters to be themselves east Asian. (Unlike the creators of some Asian-origin series, whose characters are intended to be of Western origin. I'm thinking of Pokemon among others: someone correct me if I'm up the creek.)

More power to them. However, the larger point which the original poster draws from this, about the "tyranny of Eurocentricism," is what gives me pause. The fact that European fantasy writers mostly choose to write fantasies set in a broadly European-ish world does not speak to me of "tyranny." If my far future worlds seem to be based on the landscapes and peoples I have grown up with, that does not mean that I believe all fantasy should be the same. I am simply writing about what I know, and about what I love. The people who buy books and DVDs, or go to see films, that express a European worldview, are not being tyrants. They are exercising their right as individuals to choose the means of their own entertainment. To quote a very ancient and traditional folksong:

"We wanted to read what we wanted to read,
And not what you wanted to write."

That there should be every possible shape and colour of fantasy available goes without saying. That some will be more popular among some audiences than others is likewise both true and obvious. That the creative choices of the writers of a story should be respected when that story is transmuted into another medium is one of those things that seem obvious to idealists like me, but seldom seem to hold true in the brutal reality of the marketplace.

AKICILJ--and Frank's team will now define it three different ways...

There's a joke I keep wanting to quote, but the wording is important and I can't remember it well enough, and the source is now lost in the blur I call a memory. (Cloud computing? Do it every day of my life...) A visitor to (I think) Rome is asking an older and wiser head how long it would take him to "do" the city, and the successive answers seem to suggest that the longer he spent there the less he would understand it, the final answer being that a lifetime wouldn't be enough.

Has anyone else encountered this thing, or did I dream it?

And just in case you thought the conservatory kerfuffle was over...

We are still waiting for the handrail and the electricals. I've been told tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath, because after all it's difficult this close to Christmas. I have been in touch with Trading Standards, who agree with me that we have been poorly treated and that compensation of some sort would be appropriate.

On the other hand, we have experienced yet another instance of someone who is not EverCRAPest providing a service both efficient, competent and timely. They said their man would come on a specific day. He turned up at eight a.m. on that day, with all the right bits and equipment, worked through till gone six p.m. to get the job finished, caused a minimum of disruption and cleared up after himself. As a result, the conservatory is now looking a lot more like what we were promised. Shame it cost us £££ on top of what EverCRAPest quoted us, and that the standard of service puts their shambolic operation even more in the shade.

EDIT: didn't come. For the excuse, see a later post.