"The question of marginalized characters is a political issue"
Can I just say, on behalf of my SFF characters, that they would giggle hysterically at the notion that they're political issues solely by virtue of not falling within US statistical norms? I'm sure that's not how you meant it, but the wording of your comment did read a bit oddly to me. :)
Taking this back to the writer's point of view (because I certainly don't want to police how readers approach stories): I suppose whether the mention of character appearance is out of place depends on who the POV character is, what his reason is for noticing appearances, and what the author is trying to achieve.
Personally, I'm fond of Chekhov's Gun: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun. I don't mention something in a story unless it's of importance. If it is of importance, then I want to ensure the reader has the opportunity to notice what I've included.
Example: I have a character who lives in an area where there are people of differing skin colors. When he's in his own territory, he tends not to think about skin color, unless someone (usually an outsider) raises the topic.
But when he ends up in an unknown location, he uses the appearance of people to try to identify where he is. And much later, when he's among people who are dark-skinned like he is, and they're on the run, he notices their skin color because he's trying to assess whether they'll all be noticed in the area they're travelling to (where the inhabitants tend to be darker-skinned). All this is sheer characterization and plotting; I think leaving such thoughts out would be odd, in the same way that it would be odd to write a contemporary story about a white person moving to a black neighborhood and not being aware of the skin color of themselves and the people around them. (I've been that person, and though I liked the neighborhood, I was very much aware of being the only white person on the block.)
As the writer, do I want the reader to notice that my protagonist is a darker skinned person of mixed ethnicity? Not if it gives the reader the impression that skin color is of the same importance in his world as it is in the US; that's why there aren't any long speeches by characters in my series over issues of skin color. But skin color does, to a certain extent, indicate national origins in this series, and the entire series is set around clashes between nations. So skin color is one of the many ways in which I tag a person's national origins.
A reader like you, who doesn't care what the characters look like, might get a bit confused in passages where the only indicator that the protagonist has of another character's nationality is their skin color. That might be considered to be a disadvantage to the reader, but no more so than being a reader of romances who prefers to skip
over the sex scenes (*points at self*). Every reader has their own reading style, so I try to supply multiple ways to convey important information to readers.
no subject
"The question of marginalized characters is a political issue"
Can I just say, on behalf of my SFF characters, that they would giggle hysterically at the notion that they're political issues solely by virtue of not falling within US statistical norms? I'm sure that's not how you meant it, but the wording of your comment did read a bit oddly to me. :)
Taking this back to the writer's point of view (because I certainly don't want to police how readers approach stories): I suppose whether the mention of character appearance is out of place depends on who the POV character is, what his reason is for noticing appearances, and what the author is trying to achieve.
Personally, I'm fond of Chekhov's Gun: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun. I don't mention something in a story unless it's of importance. If it is of importance, then I want to ensure the reader has the opportunity to notice what I've included.
Example: I have a character who lives in an area where there are people of differing skin colors. When he's in his own territory, he tends not to think about skin color, unless someone (usually an outsider) raises the topic.
But when he ends up in an unknown location, he uses the appearance of people to try to identify where he is. And much later, when he's among people who are dark-skinned like he is, and they're on the run, he notices their skin color because he's trying to assess whether they'll all be noticed in the area they're travelling to (where the inhabitants tend to be darker-skinned). All this is sheer characterization and plotting; I think leaving such thoughts out would be odd, in the same way that it would be odd to write a contemporary story about a white person moving to a black neighborhood and not being aware of the skin color of themselves and the people around them. (I've been that person, and though I liked the neighborhood, I was very much aware of being the only white person on the block.)
As the writer, do I want the reader to notice that my protagonist is a darker skinned person of mixed ethnicity? Not if it gives the reader the impression that skin color is of the same importance in his world as it is in the US; that's why there aren't any long speeches by characters in my series over issues of skin color. But skin color does, to a certain extent, indicate national origins in this series, and the entire series is set around clashes between nations. So skin color is one of the many ways in which I tag a person's national origins.
A reader like you, who doesn't care what the characters look like, might get a bit confused in passages where the only indicator that the protagonist has of another character's nationality is their skin color. That might be considered to be a disadvantage to the reader, but no more so than being a reader of romances who prefers to skip over the sex scenes (*points at self*). Every reader has their own reading style, so I try to supply multiple ways to convey important information to readers.