Why oh why does everyone have to have a freakin' red-haired culture? (Nothing against redheads, obviously :) And the weird-colored eyes! Why, why, must everyone show their specialness by having weird-colored eyes
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And yeah - this is why I couldn't deal with Kay's Byzantium - because one of his major themes was "Look at those Christians arguing about the Trinity? Aren't they contentious idiots? What kind of moron would go to war over something that minor?" And, look, I'm not saying you need to believe in the Trinity to write about late antiquity, obviously. But you need to have a solid understanding of why those doctrinal arguments were incredibly important at the time and meaningful and how they shaped all of later Christianity. I guess what I'm saying is that you need to respect the culture you're borrowing from, in the sense of "respect" as distinct from "tolerate." One of the reasons I probably won't ever write fic in certain eras is that, well, I have trouble respecting Victorian English gender and class ideologies.
If I ever write a red-head culture, I will address the fact that you CAN'T HAVE a redhead culture unless it's practicing extremely strict outsider-exclusion and eugenics. Because the redhead gene is RECESSIVE.
Probably that would be an interesting culture, but not necessarily a very nice one.
MZB's Darkover has a slew of red-headed six-fingered telepaths that were produced by a draconian eugenic breeding program for telepathy! Lots of miscarriages, stillbirths, and lethal recessives, too. Fun times!
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And yeah - this is why I couldn't deal with Kay's Byzantium - because one of his major themes was "Look at those Christians arguing about the Trinity? Aren't they contentious idiots? What kind of moron would go to war over something that minor?" And, look, I'm not saying you need to believe in the Trinity to write about late antiquity, obviously. But you need to have a solid understanding of why those doctrinal arguments were incredibly important at the time and meaningful and how they shaped all of later Christianity. I guess what I'm saying is that you need to respect the culture you're borrowing from, in the sense of "respect" as distinct from "tolerate." One of the reasons I probably won't ever write fic in certain eras is that, well, I have trouble respecting Victorian English gender and class ideologies.
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Probably that would be an interesting culture, but not necessarily a very nice one.
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