Because it must be said

[flemmings]

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a fan of vampires. I just don't *get* it.

OTOH extreme loose-endedness has driven me back to my Chinese grammar book where, hearteningly, the sample sentences keep giving me words I've heard in Woxin, like 可是. (Listen, 可是 is a very useful word.) First the context, then the explanation, is how it works. Alas, my grammar book won't give me that set phrase one uses when referring to one's ancestors' spirits, and my wobbly memory won't either.

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher.

This is the series I was ranting about being cliche and predictable several years ago. It got better, though not enough better that I would necessarily recommend it to you. The Discworld fans here are are seriously into it. I read it but then I read the sides of cereal boxes, too.

The interesting idea is he breaks vampires into two types, disengaging the blood sucking monster trope and the sex trope, as it were. What he does with them isn't all the important, though it's not bad, it's the idea that's intriguing. If you want, I can find out which book it is that deals with that issue in particular.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I'd prefer you simply spoil me for the idea involved. Life is short and I read slowly.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

So Dresden vampires quick summary. Three types
black - undead monsters, not much known
red - monsters that can take on a human appearance, sucks blood, biased toward violence, directy actiony types
white - sexy human shaped monsters, emotion eating, mind control (crudely broken into three subgroups, fear eating, lust eating, and I forget what) In the books, appears to be the basis for all kinds of ancient fertility and sex gods. Heavily biased against violence and towards politics and finesse.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

And no one has said anything snotty about the fact that the white monsters are sexy and human shaped and advanced in the ways of diplomacy but the black ones are mysterious and unknown (from the Dark Continent maybe even?) and the red ones are violent and threaten the white man?

Cause I would, for sure.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Black, if I recall correctly, are nearly extinct, thanks to Red.

There are no "people of color" that I can recall in those books, it's white, Catholic, European fairy tales all the way, all the time, from my impression of it. Emphasis on Celtic and Eastern European mythology, Catholicism, secret societies. But then, it's alternate world Chicago, as written by white, Catholic, European descent male writer. Shrug.

As for black, red, and white. It seemed very American. But now that you've pointed it out ... LOL!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Surely even white Catholic European-descended males in Chicago run into the occasional black person there, if nothing else? People, people.

So we're in a period of adjustment and periods of adjustment make everyone more sensitive to nuances and I have to look at my dragons occasionally to make sure I'm not going with this society's default assocations of brown, black, white and yellow. (Yellow is easiest because I never heard it as a human skin colour.) But it's supposed to make everyone more sensitive to nuances.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Most of the characters in this series are colorless, which defaults to white.

I'm running through all the major and minor characters in my head and there are a few black cops and wizards. I think. The major gangsters are all Italian. The cops are stereotype Irish, Italian, or black, which may be accurate for Chicago. The wizards include all major American token minorities? Hispanic, middle eastern, black. I don't recall any Asian asians in there, but I was skimming.

The low level witches are all dumpy, mousy, white (females). The fairie are stereotype Celtic-Welsh jonesing on Scandinavian stereotypes. The white vampires are pretty uniformly all Scandinavian-northern Italians. There was one character who was a Tibetian practicing Japanese, but he only lasted one book. There's a blond haired, blue eyed, Catholic, high school football star paladin. The females are all sexy, except for the mousy dumpy ones. The teenage city punks, if I recall correctly, read white suburban to me.

For the Butcher vampires, I think American emotional reactions to black, white, and red are convenient manipulation tropes. 'Twould it have been negligent of the author not to use them? They could just as well have been purple, orange, and green, as long as there are enough explosions to satisfy the reader.

I rather expected you would be careful of nuances, just because you're you. Dragons is enough disconnected from modern society that I would hope the nuances are a bit easier to catch.